• “Mom. Mom. Mom. MOM!”
    Thomas slammed the skull against the alley wall. With each slam, his cries got louder.
    “What’s the matter? Need a little time to wake up? WELL?!”
    I finally woke up, drenched in sweat. Luckily, it was morning. I got up, got dressed, and was out the door. I took my knife, but left the gun. I figured it would be just as useless as it was the last time.
    As I was about to have a smoke, my phone rang. It was Kriss.
    “Hello.”
    “Matt, I need you. He got another one. Come down to the alley by the school.” She hung up.
    I dropped the cigarette and ran.
    ~*~
    When I got to the alley, there were puddles of blood that led down to a dead end. There the victim lay, covered with stab markings and blood. Around his body was a pentagram.
    “How do you know it was Thomas?”
    “Because of this,” Kriss said as she pointed to a message on the wall, written in blood of course. It read “Confused, Mathew?”
    “I have a vague idea of which direction he went, but…”
    “But what?”
    “I found signs that led us to believe that he was kidnapped when he walked out of the alley.”
    “So you need me to find out where he went? Easy enough.”
    I walked over to the spot he was supposedly kidnapped. I smelled a small trace of drugs.
    “He was kidnapped by the Crips. The man that Thomas killed was arrested for taking money from his business and buying drugs from them. He was one of there very good customers.”
    “How do you know all this?”
    “When I was very little, my mom took us to this part of town to teach us how lucky we are, well were. But I got stupid and decided to wonder off with Thomas. We were lost for a couple days before my mom finally found us wondering in an alley. This one in fact.”
    “So what now?”
    “There little gang isn’t far. We’ll drive there, but we’ll need some reinforcements.”
    ~*~
    Our reinforcements sat in the back seat. Each, undercover cops. One was Kriss’s brother, and the others were two friends I used to work with when I was still in the Air Force.
    When we got to the hideout, each Crip was dead. All marked in Thomas’s new symbol. In a way I was relieved, but mad that I just missed him.