Animal 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

dramatically.
    â€œKahllah will keep your lady safe,” Priest assured him. “Now, let’s go. We have a lot to cover, and time is not our friend.”
    â€œSo where are we going?” Animal asked.
    â€œTo a funeral,” Priest told him with a knowing smirk, and walked out.
    Reluctantly, Animal followed Priest.
    When he got to the door of the apartment, Kahllah called after him. “While you’re gone, I’ll check in on your comrade Ashanti. I know you’re worried,” she told him.
    Animal smiled. “Thanks for that, Kahllah. I wonder what the little homie is up to.”
    Kahllah shook her head. “Knowing him, probably mischief, as usual.”

FOUR
    A SHANTI SAT IN THE PASSENGER seat of the rental car, watching the block from behind hooded eyes. Every so often, he would take a toke of the blunt pinched between his fingers. The weed was primo, so good that it stung his nostrils every time he blew smoke through them. When his finger grazed his lip, he noticed that it was damp. His palms were sweating. He set the blunt in the ashtray and wiped his hands on his pants. No sooner had he dried them than they started sweating again. That was a bad sign.
    â€œI should’ve stayed on the block,” Ashanti mumbled to himself. He had been thinking it for the past few hours, but that was the first time he’d said it aloud. Ashanti didn’t know why he had allowed himself to be persuaded to go out that night, other than he needed some action in his life. He’d been sitting around for days, and it was driving him nuts. It had been a rough time for Ashanti. He had lost some friends and gained some enemies, with the scale being tipped toward the latter. His test scores during his first few semesters at the University ofthe Streets had elevated him from the status of mischievous kid to recognized shooter, and his name was ringing in the hood. Ashanti would bang on anything if the price was right or the offense serious enough, and everybody knew it.
    Ashanti had become the poster child for the abused and unwanted, and those who felt his pain flocked to him like he was the Oliver Twist of the projects. King James currently had the hood on smash and therefore held sway over the present, but Ashanti controlled the future and not everybody was comfortable with that.
    For as many disciples who had rallied to Ashanti, there were two knuckleheads he had a special love for, Cain and Abel. Zo-Pound didn’t particularly care for the two brothers, because they were young, wild, and in a rush to die, but these were the qualities that made Ashanti love them. Like him, they were broken children whom the world had thrown away.
    Cain and Abel were a set of twins who were identical in appearance but like night and day in personality. As kids, Abel was always the happy and outgoing twin, while Cain was bitter and quiet. He was the kind of kid who took pleasure in torturing and killing stray cats. It had been apparent since Cain was a child that he was damaged goods, and a freak accident would make him just as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside. The twins were playing with their mother’s crack pipe, imitating what they saw in their home, when Cain decided to put a lighter to the pipe. The glass exploded in his face, scarring him and nearly blinding him in his right eye. Fearful of catching a Child Services case, their mother treated him at home, plucking the glass out of his face with a pair of old tweezers and cleaning the wound with Johnnie Walker Red whiskey. After patchingher handiwork up with a wad of napkins and some tape, their mother laughed and told Cain, “Now you wear the mark, just like your namesake.”
    Abel tapped Ashanti’s arm. He was behind the wheel. “Blood, you hear me talking to you? I asked if you fucking with this,” he extended the pint of Hennessy he’d been sipping from.
    Ashanti took the bottle and turned it up to his lips. The