Skirt (Ruthless Kings MC Book 5)

by K. L. Savage

  “Well, we have to stay around here for a few days, wait for the rest of the club to come down. I think the Hellhounds might make New Orleans their new home. Lots of business here. The Mississippi is a great way to transport the goods we need.”

  Goods.

  That’s what he’s calling human beings, these poor children. The families that will never see them again... It’s devastating to even fathom. “I hope you burn in hell,” I say to him, hoping that hell does exist because men like him don’t deserve to live.

  Cohen’s acerbic grin has my skin pebbling in the broiling heat of New Orleans. “Bitch, I was born and raised in hell. Who the fuck do you think is in charge? It sure as shit ain’t Satan. And you better hope I don’t buy you two from under that old man’s feet. Can you imagine?” He stands from his hunched over position and chortles malevolently as he strides down the aisle.

  Cold fright numbs my core. Dread is now a forcefield surrounding my soul that guards any positive emotion out of my psyche, trapping the bad ones in.

  “Aidan, baby? Aidan,” I whisper, grab his face, and shake him. “Hey, angel. Come on, wake up. It’s me; Mommy is here. Come on, baby, open your beautiful blues. Let me see them. Come on, wake up, Aidan!” I beg with tears in my eyes, but his beautiful face is still as he sleeps. “Okay, baby. Okay, you rest.” I rub my hand through his hair and hold him tighter. “I missed you so much. I love you. I love you so much. I won’t let anything happen to you again. I swear.” I rock us back and forth hope by some miracle Skirt finds us.

  The little girl next to us grabs on to the metal, her small chubby fingers curl, and she stares at me with large brown eyes and thick lashes. She’s beautiful. “Are you a mommy?” The little girl looks around, making sure she’s speaking low enough that no one can hear.

  I give her a watery smile and nod. “I sure am. I’m his mommy. This is Aidan. I’m Dawn, sweetheart. What’s your name?” I ask her.

  She turns around and grabs her blankets, then pushes them over to the side of the cage closest to me, and she sits down. “I’m Maizey.” Her chocolate-colored hair almost matches the tone of her skin. She’s older than Aidan by a few years, maybe six or seven since she’s missing a front tooth.

  “Maizey? Wow, that’s such a pretty name. I like that.” Talking to her helps me keep calm, and Maizey seems to want to talk to an adult who doesn’t scare her. The bang of a cage opening and closing has Maizey turning around, but I reach out and hold her hand, stopping her from looking at the child being carried out and will probably never be seen again. “Hey, sweetie. Tell me your favorite story. Who is your favorite princess?”

  “I love Princess Elsa. I want to be just like her when I’m all growed up.” She pops the P at the end, then laces our fingers together. “Can you be my mommy too? I don’t have one anymore.” The statement comes out of nowhere and breaks another chunk of emotional control off me.

  “Of course, I will be. Do you want a bedtime story? How about you rest, along with Aidan. I’ll wake you up if anything changes.” I lift my eyes above her shoulder to see the child going out the back door, hand in hand with the old greasy man I met previously. The best thing for these kids to do is sleep.

  “Okay! I haven’t had a bedtime story in so long. Can it be a happily ever after?”

  I squeeze her hand and stare into her doe-like eyes and grin. “Of course. What other kind of ending is there?”

  “A bad one. I’m tired of bad ones,” she mumbles through a yawn and lays down, keeping a tight hold on my hand.

  I lean my head against the cage separating us, keeping Aidan tucked against my chest. I try to think of something happy this little girl’s imagination can get lost in while she sleeps. “Once upon a time, on the tallest cliff near the sea, with the cloud-high trees soaring in the sky, was a pink castle.”

  “Pink!” she gasps, blinking up at me in shock.

  “Pink,” I say. “It’s the Princess’ favorite color. Since she lives all alone, it’s the only thing left that keeps her truly happy.”

  “She’s alone? That’s so sad.”

  I look around to see a few other children at the front of there cages, watching me, listening, needing to hear something magical and happy. I’m their source, and I can’t disappoint them.

  “It is sad, but things for the Princess are about to change.” I try to think of anything, something children will find even the least bit interesting. “She’s sitting near the window, and the ocean’s breeze caresses her face when she sees something in the distance. The Princess is brushing her long, purple hair—”

  “Purple! Cool. I want purple hair!” Maizey says.

  “While she’s brushing her hair, she stares at the dot in the sky that’s coming closer and closer. The Princess gasps when she sees…” I look around to see the kids have wide eyes as big as the moon staring at me. “A dragon!”

  “Wow,” Maizey blinks at me in awe.

  “And on the dragon is a man, but not just any man—a knight! He has a sword in his hand, ready to fight whoever to free her from the tower. No man has ever been able to get inside the castle because there is a spell that doesn’t allow anyone inside. Only love stronger than the spell can break it, freeing the Princess once and for all.”

  Maizey’s eyes droop shut as she listens to the made-up fairy tale.

  “But the knight on the dragon isn’t any knight; he’s her knight. He jumps off his dragon and lays his hand on the door like, so many others before him, hoping on all hope that he'll free his true love. With a twist of the knob the spell breaks, unlocking the castle. He runs inside to save the Princess. They share their first kiss, and true love wins once and for all. The knight helps her onto the dragon, and they fly into the sunset, living happily ever after together, with no more chains, no more spells, and no more evil.”

  If only real life was as good as a fairy tale.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  SKIRT

  “Well, it’s good to see you again, Reaper. Hate the circumstance,” Pocus greets us, clasping Reaper’s hand in a friendly shake.

  “Maybe when all this is said and done, you guys can show us how NOLA really is, Pocus.”

  “Don’t think you city boys can keep up, Reaper.”

  Pocus and Reaper share a few laughs, and I try not to get annoyed by sharing pleasantries. Dawn is out there. We only have about five hours before the feds roll in, and we need to get going. The sooner this is over with, the better. For everyone’s safety.

  “Long time no see, Tool. Well, I guess I can’t really say that. I saw ya’ll were comin’ round yesterday,” Seer taps his temple, and Tool gives the guy a wide berth, not greeting him.

  I stand outside as the rest of the guys walk into the old plantation house. I never thought a badass group of bikers would own something like this for a compound, but whatever works, I guess. The lot is big too, filled with trees, and the swamp is a few miles back. The clubhouse seems to be on its last leg, needing some big repairs.

  Seer stands out there with me and leans against the towering column that holds up the second floor. “I’m sorry I couldn’t warn ya ahead of time.” His Cajun accent thick and hardly understandable.

  “I know that’s not how yer … gift works,” I say, sitting on the broken porch step. “I know you would have called if you saw something.”

  “I have to say, when it comes to ya situation, I haven’t seen anything, Skirt. The future is undecided still.”

  “The fuck ye mean undecided? We’re here. We’re about to leave to go get her! There’s nothing undecided about that. I’m going to get her back.”

  “My gift isn’t set in stone. The future changes. Nothing is certain, okay? Everyone tinks dat is how it works, and it ain’t, mon amie. Being the only man here with the power of sight, it ain’t easy. Everyone expects it to work every second of every day. Some are skeptical. Some live and breathe for it, waitin’ to see if I know what the winnin’ lottery numbers are. It’s annoyin.’ I cannot see when there
are selfish motives.”

  I can’t imagine feeling like an outcast like that. I thought him and his MC brothers shared similarities, but if it’s just him, then that must be lonely.

  Seer slaps a hand on my shoulder and inhales a gust of sharp air. I stand as fast as I can and see a distant expression on his face, his eyes are vacant, and a gust of wind blows as thunderclouds fill the air.

  Seer lets go of my shoulder with a huge gasp and doubles over, holding his stomach, gagging.

  “Pocus!” I yell for the Prez of the NOLA chapter and kneel on the ground to see if Seer is okay.

  His dreads hang in his face, and his mixed skin tone seems paler than usual.

  “Are ye okay, Seer?”

  “We need to go,” Seer pants, reaching out for the column to brace himself. “We need to go now.”

  Pocus runs out the front door with a few other guys behind him. Seer is the VP, and the big guy named Bones must be the Sargent at Arms. Makes sense since he’s the biggest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.

  “What is it, Seer? What did ya see?” I reach out to stabilize Seer when Pocus slaps my hands away. “Whatever happened has to do with ya. Don’t go touchin’ him. We don’t know all he can handle.”

  “The girl. Dawn?”

  “Ye saw her?” My stomach drops when sweat drips off him like a leaky faucet.

  He nods, and Bones hands Seer a bottle of water. Seer pours it all over his face, cooling himself off. “She’s safe. She’s in a cage with a boy, but not for much longer. They already took one kid. They are getting a boat ready. We only have an hour.”

  Reaper storms out the door and mounts his bike, my brothers following suit. I run down the steps and jump on my own hog, not wanting to wait any longer. “You coming or am I leaving your ass here, Pocus?”

  “We have ya back. Hex, Shadow, drive the truck since we don’t know how many survivors there will be. Sage, Hemlock, ya in the water. Take the boat. Everyone else, we ride in front of Ruthless. Seer, ya take the lead.”

  “I know where we need to go.”

  “No, ya don’t. They changed location. If it weren’t for me, ya’d be fucked.” Seer hops on his deep purple custom bike and cranks it.

  Reaper curls his top lip in, but stays silent, which isn’t like him. Once he starts his engine, the rest of us do the same, and dozens of growls rumble through the air. We sound like a feral pack of wolves circling the last prey on earth.

  NOLA’s clubhouse isn’t guarded like ours. The driveway is worn grass and dirt, wide from all the bikes coming and going. We speed down the backroads of New Orleans, following Seer as we make our way deeper into swamplands.

  The further we ride into the darkness and evil the swamp holds, the tighter I clutch the handlebars. The trees even have a gloomier appearance. There are weeping willows, the long branches piercing the flesh of the water like a knife to skin. A murder of crows fly above us, hundreds of them, and Seers swerves off the road when he sees them.

  I’m not really a superstitious kind of guy, but that shit is questionable. I know Seer is analyzing what it means and believes that a group of crows are called murder for a reason.

  About twenty minutes later, Seer pulls off into the woods. There isn’t a road or a path, and as we turn in, the bikes scratched, branches slap me in the face, and my suspension isn’t really helping with the shaking and bouncing.

  One by one, the motorcycles turn off, and here’s a moment of quiet eerie, and the hair stands on the back of my neck. Shit is creepy. We park our bikes and hop off. Everyone’s boots snap against the twigs on the leaf-covered ground. Everything is covered in mud, and the mosquitoes are a real fucking bitch.

  I slap my hand against my neck and pull my palm away to see a giant dead insect twitching, then wipe it on my jeans. Fucking hate humid weather like this.

  “She’s about a mile away. I didn’t wanna get too close ’cause the bikes are so loud,” Seer says.

  “Lead the way,” Reaper says, holding his gun in the air. “Weapons out. Be ready. I have a feeling this is going to be a shit show.”

  As a large group, we stay in the shadows of the trees so we aren’t seen.

  Is there ever a normal person anywhere in an MC? I’m starting to highly doubt it.

  I’m not sure how long we walk. It feels like an eternity. My arse is sweating, my eyes sting from the salt, and the swap smells like dead bodies.

  Seer stops and signals us to stay down, then points up ahead. There’s a houseboat floating on the water, old and ready to sink to the bottom of the swamp. There’s a few men pacing on the porch, wearing a Hounds’ cut. I’m going to kill every single one of these arseholes.

  Then I see him.

  Cohen.

  He’s leaning against a beat-up Toyota truck, as if he’s on top of the world as he fans money in his face.

  Money because he brought Dawn here.

  “Don’t.” Reaper’s palm splays against my chest, stopping me from launching through the bushes to kill the man. “We have the upper hand. They have no idea we are here. You do that, we might be fucked.”

  My eyes never leave Cohen. I watch as he pushes off the old tire and makes his way back onto the houseboat.

  “We can take out the first two,” Seer says, and Pocus nods in agreement.

  Right as the words leave Seer’s mouth, a low, silent hum rips through the air, and the men pacing on the porch collapse.

  Dead.

  “Well, damn,” Reaper says.

  Tongue is with the Demons Fury. The man who calls himself One throws the rifle over his shoulder and comes out of the woods on the other side.

  We step out from the tree line, and Tongue hurries to the porch. He tilts the dead men’s heads back, reaches into their mouths, and cuts their tongues free. “Finally,” he moans, his cock hard and visible through his jeans.

  The man is nuts.

  He lays down on the porch and holds the tongue in the air over calling for the gators like they are kittens.

  “You called. We came,” Whistler says. “And that guy is fucking nuts.”

  “Pretty gator.” Tongue pets the top of the gator’s head.

  “Yeah, we keep him around because of that. Thanks for coming, Whistler.”

  “Anytime, but we still have work to do.” We stare at the houseboat, and it bounces along the small waves of water.

  I can’t wait any longer. I climb up the steps and knock on the door.

  “Password?” the sicko asks.

  “Let me the fuck in,” I growl. My brass knuckle-covered fist punches through the flimsy wood and hits the man in the face.

  “What the fuck?” He stumbles back and touches his broken nose to see that it’s bleeding. I kick the door open. Fuck order, fuck listening—I’m done.

  Dawn is here.

  Aidan is here.

  My family needs me.

  I don’t answer the guy. I crush with a quick jab to the throat. He can’t breathe. There’s no going back as I watch the life slip out of his eyes. the black pupils dilating to onyx drops.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Whistler whistles behind me as he peers around the room, seeing cage after cage of children locked inside.

  A gunshot reverberates the air and slams against Whistler’s shoulder. He tumbles back and hits a cage and the kid screams, fat tears rolling down her face like a hurricane slinging rain. The back of the houseboat fills with Hounds, a row of black and ugly fuckers who have no right to call themselves bikers.

  Reaper and One lift their weapons and fire, careful to make sure they don’t hit a kid. Bullet shells falling onto the floor is the only sound in the houseboat. Tongue runs through the crowd, somehow not getting shot, and plunges his knife into someone’s head. He then slices the throat, digs his hand inside the man’s neck, and yanks his tongue out.

  It’s fucking sick.

  Blood is everywhere, dripping through the cracks of the wood, and the snapping of gators can be heard below. They smell food. We will give it to
them too.

  While my club brothers fight the Hounds, I search the cages for Dawn. I try to open the gate to each cage, but they are locked. I need a key. “Hey, I’m going to get ye out of here, okay? Sit tight. Yer going to be fine,” I say to a little boy who can’t be more than five-years-old.

  “Are you the knight?” a girl asks, gigantic brown eyes and hair of the color of garnet.

  “What? No, little lassie. I’m here for someone I love, though. Have ye seen her? Her and a wee boy?”

  She nods, then points to the back doors where a few Hounds are fighting with Demons and Ruthless Kings.

  “She told me a story. About a princess being saved by a knight. Are you the knight?” She stares at me like I’m some savior, some Prince Charming in a fairy tale. “They were right next to me, but the mean man, the bad guy, he come and tooked them away.” Her eyes well and her bottom lips puckers out.

  Those damn lagoons get me every time.

  “I’m going to get ye out of there, okay? I am. I need to know where Dawn is. I need to save her like the knight in the story saved the princess, okay? I’ll be back for ye.”

  “You swear?” she asks.

  “On me life, little lassie.” I grip the fence one last time, making myself turn away from the terrified girl, and get ready for the fight I’ve been waiting for far too long. I give my knuckles a good crack and swing my arm through the air, knocking the guy out in one swift hit, then I take his head and smash it against the other one, leaving them unconscious.

  I kick open the door and see Cohen getting on a small jon boat. I see Dawn’s strawberry blonde hair and two little boys next to her. I don’t know who is who, but it doesn’t matter. Those kids, that woman, they are my responsibility.

  “Don’t even think about getting on that boat, O’Roarke. Yer time is up.”

  He pauses as he unhooks the rope from the dock, then stands straight. “Damn, if it ain’t the second Blackwood brother. You want to die too, right?”