Spike: Satan's Disciples MC

by Zoey Parker

  He stuck his hand into the small watch pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small baggie of cocaine, carefully, almost lovingly, rolling it between his tan, bony fingers.

  “Can I trust you to do it?” Georgia asked quietly, interrupting his reverie. “Or do you need me to?”

  “No,” Felix said firmly, strength filling his voice. “I can do it.”

  He walked to the bathroom quickly, almost running, desperately trying to make it before he lost all the willpower his sister had imbued him with. The toilet flushed and Felix came back to the living room. He sat on the couch, rested his elbows on his knees, and then buried his head in his arms.

  “I love you, Felix. Good night.” Georgia kissed the top of her little brother’s head and turned out the light, as she had done a million times before.

  The next couple of days had the Lewis siblings in high spirits. Georgia had found a potential buyer for her car that was willing to pay three hundred over the asking price, and Alex had said his cousin would help kick in two grand in thanks for keeping Alex safe. Between the money Alex promised to bring by, and the cash Georgia had made from selling a few other things, they were only eight hundred dollars away from saving Felix’s life.

  Georgia woke up to the sounds of songbirds outside her window and the soft thud of the morning paper hitting her front door. She got up and went into the kitchen, passing her snoring brother on the couch. Starting the coffee machine, Georgia went about making breakfast, not caring to be quiet. Felix slept like a dead horse. The only way to wake him up was with an air horn or a cold bucket of water.

  Testing this theory, she gave him a sharp prod in the shoulder where she knew he was uninjured. Nothing. Shrugging, Georgia walked to the front door to retrieve the paper. Her neighbor, Mrs. Fitz, was walking by and waved hello. Georgia waved back as she bent down to grab the paper, not paying attention to what it was she was reaching for.

  At the last second, she looked down, and saw her fingertips inches from a dead, brutally dismembered dove. Georgia shrieked and fell back, scrambling on her hands to get away from the bloody creature.

  Felix’s head popped up, his brown hair pointing in all directions. “What is it?” he cried, pulling himself over the couch as fast as his sleep-laden limbs would allow him.

  Georgia’s trembling fingers reached for the dove once again, using her thumb and forefinger to gingerly pluck a small, folded piece of paper from the bird’s beak.

  “A warning,” she said, the paper falling from her hands.

  TIME’S UP.

  Chapter Two

  It was only once Georgia put on two pairs of kitchen gloves and a bandana around her nose and mouth that she was able to carefully place the dead bird into a shoebox. Felix was gagging too much to be any help at all, so Georgia put the box in the garage, resolving to bury it once she had some time.

  “What the fuck is a dead bird doing on my doorstep, Felix?” she demanded, washing her hands for the third time. “I thought you had another four days!”

  Felix sat on the couch, staring dully at his feet. “I guess Ivan doesn’t want to wait any longer. If I don’t pay him by tonight…that’s it. Game over.”

  Georgia stopped in the middle of the living room, hands on her hips. “Then I guess you won’t be here tonight,” she said finally.

  “What are you talking about?” Felix tiredly raised his head to give her a confused look.

  “We still need eight hundred dollars to pay him off, Felix,” she explained. “Can you guarantee that we’re going to be able to get that by tonight? Because I can’t.”

  “So, what?” Felix said blankly. “You want us to run?”

  “Not us,” Georgia said, looking down at her feet. She raised her head to look her little brother square in the eye. “Just you.”

  “If you think that I’m going to leave you behind, you’re fucking crazy,” Felix said with a small, disbelieving laugh.

  “Don’t argue with me, and don’t swear,” Georgia scolded him. “They’re only after you, Felix. You only have to leave for a couple of days, until I can manage to pull some more money together.”

  He scoffed. “Yeah? And how are you going to do that? Are you going to hit up the Tooth Fairy? We’ve tapped every resource available to us, Joja.”

  Georgia bit her lip. If she told Felix who she was planning on asking for the money, then he would really worry, and they didn’t have time for that right now. “Don’t worry about it. I have it under control.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where you plan on getting almost a thousand dollars in a day’s notice,” Felix insisted, folding his arms.

  Georgia rolled her eyes. “You’re insufferable, you know that?” she said angrily. Her brother merely shrugged. “Fine,” she spat. “I was going to ask Dad. Happy now?”

  Felix looked at her incredulously. “Dad? You were going to ask Dad?”

  “Well, we don’t exactly have a lot of options, Felix!” she cried. “It’s either ask Dad or a bunch of scary men come to the house, kidnap, and murder you!” He looked at the ceiling, shaking his head. “You know he’ll have the money,” Georgia quietly added.

  Their family had never been wealthy growing up, but their father, Cameron, had kept a decent paying job, despite his rampant alcoholism. A few years after Felix was born, Cameron’s two or three beers with dinner turned into a six-pack. And then into whiskey-Cokes. And then just whiskey.

  He had managed to keep up appearances at work, confining his abusive, drunken outbursts to his home, where he could direct them at his wife and children. Their mother had put up with it for five years before one day, she finally packed up all of her clothes and left while Georgia and Felix were at school, and Cameron at work.

  The thing that had bothered Georgia the most about their mother abandoning them was that there had been no letter, not even a note. She had simply left. Georgia tried very hard to understand what would make a mother desert her children like that, but it was difficult not to resent her for the way she had handled things.

  Once their mother left their father, he became withdrawn. He stopped yelling at his kids, and instead began to ignore them altogether. He would get up, go to work, come home, and drink until he passed out. Georgia would have to get up in the middle of the night to turn off whatever infomercial was playing on TV and throw a blanket over her unconscious father.

  Georgia had left home as soon as she could, but stuck close for Felix, who often spent the night at her dorm instead of at home. Cameron had plenty of money, and as far as Georgia was concerned, he owed them.

  “So it’s settled,” Georgia said, firmly closing the discussion. “You’ll take my car, and I’ll get the money from Dad. In a day or two I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back.” It would take her the better part of a day to get to their father’s place in Des Moines, especially since she had to take a bus. Felix would need the freedom of a car if he was to have any hope of getting out of here alive.

  Felix hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t like leaving you here by yourself! They know where you live, Georgia, obviously! What’s to stop them from hurting you to get at me?” he protested.

  “I’m not going to be in town for the majority of the time,” she reminded him. “Also, how are they going to get any money at all if they hurt me? If you’re gone, I’m the only one who will be able to pay.”

  “No, I’m not doing it,” he said stubbornly, folding his arms. “We’ll just have to figure out something else. You don’t understand what these people are like, Georgia!” Felix snapped suddenly, his eyes wild with fear. “This guy Ivan is seriously bad news. I don’t just mean ‘beat and murder me’ bad. He’s got a black hole for a heart, Joja, and he and his boys hunt people down like wolves, methodically, without mercy. He buys himself a piece of ‘bling’ after every job he completes.” He shivered, staring dead ahead, not seeing anything around him. “Ivan’s not half as bad as some of his men, though. Yury’s a special treat. That r
at bastard is a true psychopath, and he loves his work. He looks like a king, but he does all the dirty work behind the scenes.”

  “Well, Felix, if you have a suggestion, I’m all ears,” Georgia said, rapidly losing her patience as her heart began to fill with panic. “But as you told me not too long ago, we can’t call the police! Remind me why that is again?” When Georgia had first mentioned getting help, Felix had freaked and told her that calling the police was absolutely out of the question.

  “Ivan has a guy on the inside,” he told her, sighing. “Probably more than one.”

  “And you know this how?” Georgia asked.

  “There’s a guy—Nicholas. I’m not sure if he’s related to Ivan or what, but he comes around all the time. He’s on the force. He comes in wearing his uniform. Lets Ivan know when things are starting to get hot,” he told her. “If we breathe even a word about Ivan to the cops, Nicholas is going to hear about it, which means Ivan will hear about it, which means you, me, and everyone we know will be killed.”

  “Okay, no cops, I get it,” Georgia said, holding her hands up defensively. “I’m still not hearing you come up with a better plan than what we have.”

  Felix bit his lip and plucked at the hem of Alex’s t-shirt; when he dropped off the money, he had also given Felix some spare clothes to wear. Felix was a little taller, a little lankier than Alex’s stocky figure, so the shirt hung wide and short on him.

  Georgia carefully scrutinized her little brother’s face, but he wouldn’t look at her. He was hiding something.

  “Out with it,” she commanded. “Whatever it is that you’re holding back, now is the time to bring it to the table.”

  “It’s a long shot,” Felix began. “There’s literally no reason I can think of that he would help us, which is why I didn’t mention him before, but he’s the only person I know who Ivan is even a little bit scared of.”

  “So, who is it?”

  “His name is Spike Turner, but I don’t think that’s his real name. He’s the leader of one of the last motorcycle gangs around here, Satan’s Disciples.” Seeing Georgia’s confused face, he continued. “It used to be that the gangs ran things around here, with their own territories. When the Chicago branch of the Russian mob came to town, they made quick work of most of the gangs. There are a couple gangs still clinging to life, but Satan’s Disciples is the only one that’s managing to stay afloat. Mostly because Spike seems to be able to outsmart Ivan at every turn.”

  “How do you figure Spike is going to even be able to help us?” Georgia asked skeptically. “I mean, if he can barely keep his own gang from getting destroyed, what hope do we have with him?”

  “He does more than keep Satan’s Disciples from getting destroyed. More than once Spike has sold drugs in Ivan’s territory and gotten away with it,” Felix pointed out. “He could be trying to draw Ivan out into an all-out gang war. If he is, maybe our situation could be the exact thing Spike needs to push Ivan over the edge.”

  “That’s what you’re going with? We just walk up and ask him?” Georgia said.

  “As you once said to me, I’m all ears for new ideas,” Felix replied drily.

  “I have an idea!” Georgia cried, frustrated. “You leave town. I leave town. I get the money. I come back. I give Ivan the money. You come back. We all live happily ever after.”

  “Where am I gonna go, Georgia? I can’t sleep in the car—I’m too out in the open. And I can’t stay in a hotel because all of our money is going to Ivan! I should stay here,” he insisted.

  Georgia thought quickly. “You can go stay with Uncle Lyle. He lives in Massachusetts. That should be far enough away.”

  “We haven’t seen Uncle Lyle in ten years, almost as long as mom’s been gone. He’s not going to let me stay at his place.”

  “Goddammit, Felix!” Georgia screamed, snapping. “I will fucking call Uncle Lyle, okay? I will figure out something to tell him and I will call him. Just promise me you won’t say anything if he calls you by mom’s maiden name, Diaz. You know how he feels about Dad.”

  Felix opened his mouth, but Georgia cut him off. “That’s the end of the conversation, Felix. Go pack. Now.” Almost the entire day had passed. The sun was just beginning to set, and her brother needed to be on his way.

  His shoulders dropped, and he knew he was beat. “I just think—”

  Felix was cut off once again by the sharp tinkling of broken glass. A harsh buzz flew by him, followed by a loud thud coming from the wall behind him. He and Georgia stared at each other for a second, then simultaneously turned to look at the wall they had heard the noise come from.

  There was a small, bullet-sized hole in it. Felix confusedly looked at the window, which was now broken. Georgia’s eyes grew wide as she realized what had happened, what was happening. She grabbed her brother by the collar and yanked him down right as another bullet pierced a second window pane, burying itself into the drywall right where Felix’s lungs had been.

  They huddled behind the couch, hands over their heads as they listened to multiple shooters send what seemed like an endless hail of bullets, even though from the first to last shot it had probably only been ten seconds. A minute later, they heard someone yell at them from outside.

  “Felix!” the man shouted in a deep, strong voice. “Felix, get out here! It’s time to take your medicine!”

  “That’s Ivan,” Felix whispered, his own voice shaking.

  “I know you’re in there,” the voice called.

  “You have to get out somehow,” Georgia whispered back. “We need to create a diversion.”

  “When did you turn into fucking Rambo?” Felix hissed. “A diversion? What exactly would you suggest?”

  “One second.” Georgia took a quick peek over the couch and crawled on her belly to the kitchen, which had managed to avoid most of the damage. She stuck one hand up and grabbed a cupboard door. Felix heard the sound of glass and flinched, thinking the mob had begun shooting again.

  “How about this?” she asked when she came back, grinning wickedly. Georgia had grabbed every bottle she had in her booze cabinet. Even the non-alcoholic mixers.

  “Jesus, Georgia, there’s a lot of liquor here,” he muttered, looking at all of the alcohol. “You want to make Molotov cocktails? Who the fuck are you?” Felix said.

  “I’m your big sister, and I’m gonna take care of you,” Georgia said with a small smile. “And stop swearing,” she added.

  Despite the fact that it had been almost five minutes since they had heard anything from the mob outside, Georgia slid onto her stomach once more and army-crawled to her bathroom. She grabbed a stack of towels and the lighter from behind her scented candles, again making sure to stay low on her way back to the living room. She sat up against the back of the couch with Felix.

  He picked up one of the towels and looked at the thick, fluffy, light pink fabric. “How are we supposed to fit these into the bottles? They’re huge!”

  Georgia sighed and gave her brother a look. “Could you at least try to be helpful?”

  “I’m sorry, Georgia,” Felix said, shaking his head. “But there’s no way we’re going to be able to tear these by hand. Couldn’t you have grabbed some scissors?”

  She stared at him, wondering if handing him over to the Russians wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. Georgia picked up a bottle of lime juice and poured out its contents into a nearby plant, wrapping it in one of the towels.

  Felix barely had time to ask, “What are you doing?” when she smashed the bottle on the corner of a wall, the towel muffling the sound of breaking glass.

  Gently opening the towel, Georgia carefully selected a sharp piece of glass and used it to shred the other towels into more manageable strips of fabric. Felix, taking her cue, emptied any non-alcoholic bottles and filled them with liquor, creating more missiles.

  “Good idea,” Georgia said.

  He gave her a small smile and began stuffing the pieces of towel Georgia had cut into the bottle ne
cks. “What do you think they’re doing out there?” he asked her.

  “Probably trying to decide how to get us out of here without being seen by the neighbors. One of them had to have called the cops by now; it’s been at least fifteen minutes since they stopped shooting.” Georgia frowned, realization falling across her face. “I just thought of something—I haven’t heard so much as a siren. Where are the cops?”

  “I told you,” Felix said as he finished putting the last towel strip into the last bottle, “they’ve got Nicholas. He probably told his captain he’d check it out and then reported it as fireworks. That’s the usual story they give,” he said bitterly.