“You’ve killed two girls already to teach me your sick fucking lesson.” Boss nodded to Hopper and shoved her toward the back door, almost losing his balance. “Go. Now.”
She sobbed and threw herself in Big Joe’s arms, standing on tiptoe to hug his neck. Lowman threw the knife so fast, Mortician didn’t have time to blink.
“Fuck,” Boss snarled and pushed Hopper back. “Get the fuck out of here before he gets another fucking knife.” Grunting, he pulled the knife from his arm. He’d seen it coming and turned to save Hopper’s life.
She was still staring at him and he sighed, bent and kissed her. “Go, babe.”
Yes, fuck, Hopper, GO. Lowman was already getting to his feet, reaching inside the dinner jacket he wore.
Mortician was about to watch this girl die. It was bad enough seeing two dead girls and one so grievously injured. It was—the gun pointed at Mortician.
“Welcome,” Logan said with a benevolent smile, nodding to the bloodied and still bodies. “Like my new decorations?”
Swallowing the bile in his throat, it registered that Hopper was escaping, running to the door. Logan turned the gun on her and fired above her head. Just to terrorize her. She screamed and covered her head. Logan fired again.
Big Joe stood rigid, fists balled, thunderous fury blazing from his face. But he didn’t move except to sway instead of stepping forward to help.
Mortician didn’t want to die. He really didn’t but he couldn’t just watch Hopper die, either. Praying for salvation, he ran into the kitchen, sliding in the blood on the floor. Somehow, he dodged several bullets and reached Hopper, throwing open the door and propelling her outside. A bullet slammed into his shoulder and he fell forward, half in and half out of hell.
Lowman stood over him and aimed at Hopper again.
“John Boy likes her,” Mortician pushed out in a rush of words, trying to save her. “She carrying his kid. If she disappears, he’s going to be heartbroken.”
Lowman kicked Mortician in the stomach and focused on Hopper. “That true, cunt?”
Her eyes were huge. She was pregnant. Not that she knew who the fuck the baby was for, although general consensus was it belonged to Snake. Most of them didn’t fuck with Hopper without condoms. Snake? He took her however the mood hit him.
Stepping over Mortician, Logan reached Hopper and glared at her. He put the gun to her belly and her trembling increased. Through his haze of pain, Mortician saw her pleading with Lowman. Pleading for her life.
Pain was blazing through him, pushing nausea up. A phone peeled through the air and Logan heaved in a breath, backing away. He yanked the phone from his jacket.
“How’s my favorite granddaughter?” he answered, his tone even and calm, as if he wasn’t terrorizing the fuck out of a bunch of motherfuckers at his house and turning Big Joe into the biggest pussy alive. He waved the gun at Hopper and winked at her. “I’m a little busy, Zoann. Let me call you back, princess.”
He ended the call and stood still, his eyes glazing over. “Can’t do nothing to hurt John. He’s my everything.” He nodded toward the front of the house. “Go, you little slut.”
Her face crumpled and Mortician’s heart shriveled. He managed to get to a sitting position, breathing heavy. Hopper’s time was running out. She needed to leave. Why she insisted on staying, Mortician didn’t know.
“B-Big Joe?” she croaked, giving Mort his answer.
Stepping closer to her, Logan patted her head. “He’s probably passed out on my kitchen floor. I’ll put him back together.”
She blinked back tears. “I been doing what you asked,” she sniffled on a whisper. “It’s not right. He been nothing but good to me. You’re ruining him.”
“I’m keeping him in line,” he snapped.
“Logan?”
This day had just gotten more fucked. Of all the fuckers to come…Snake. He glanced at Hopper, then at Mortician, and frowned before narrowing his eyes. His breath huffed out. Grabbing Hopper by the elbow, he walked her to the front of the house and insisted she leave then stormed back to the side door.
“Ever put your fucking hands on her again and I won’t be responsible for what I do to you, motherfucker.”
Logan’s shoulders drooped and he stuffed his gun away.
“Why the fuck’s this asshole’s shot?” Snaked asked, pointing to Mortician.
“Trying to save your fucking bitch,” Mortician snapped. “Big Joe told her to leave and she was too scared, so Lowman decided to play fucking target practice with her.”
“Lowman?” Snake smirked at him. “I kinda like that. It fits.” He turned to Logan. “Is he telling the fucking truth?”
A gleam entered Logan’s eyes but he nodded.
Mortician closed his eyes, wishing he could go to fucking sleep to escape this pain. He was growing light-headed from all the blood he’d lost, but he supposed, if he was going to pass out, he would’ve already fucking succumbed.
“My father?” Snake’s voice got his attention.
Instead of opening his eyes, he grew stock-still.
“Inside,” Logan mumbled.
“Perfect time to talk about certain matters,” Snake said in low, sneaky tones.
A pause before pain careened through Mortician’s thigh. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from budging. They were about to discuss shit he wasn’t supposed to know. They’d probably do it if he was awake. At least now, Mortician might get out alive.
“Dead? Alive? In between?”
Fuck. Snake sounded as cold as the fucking reptile he’d been named for.
“Manageable.”
Snake sighed. “You got more dead bitches, I take it.”
“Three, maybe. Two for sure.”
Silence. Then: “Nobody’s going to miss these whores but leave Hopper alone. She’s my whore.”
Fuck, man.
“He said she was pregnant for Johnnie.”
Mortician imagined both Lowman and Snake focusing on him. He concentrated, hard, to keep from turning into a twitchy bitch.
“Yeah, well. It fucking worked. She’s still here and that’s all that matters.”
Movement.
“I can’t stand Outlaw, but I swear if you don’t pull back from shooting my father up, I’m going to fucking tell Outlaw what you’re doing to Big Joe.”
What?
“You threatening me?”
“No, I’m promising you,” Snake gritted out. “And I won’t fucking stop with Outlaw. I’ll tell John Boy, too. Let him know what a deranged fucker he looks up to.”
Well, if that wasn’t an insane motherfucker calling another motherfucker deranged. Couldn’t fucking top that.
“He had gotten out of hand. I need those fucking letters. He knows where they are.”
“And giving him blow achieves fucking what again?”
“It keeps me alive. He comes to me because he knows when he leaves his clamminess is going to be gone.”
“You’re turning him into a fucking addict. Tell me what you need me to do. Just ease up on him. He’s been faithful—“
“Faithful? By ruining my business. Our business. By allowing K-P free reign with what he knows?”
“What does it matter? He’s running fucking guns and has drug distribution far and wide. He’s making fucking money for you and all of us.”
“He disrespected me and disobeyed me.”
“Then you should’ve killed him.”
Snake’s simple declaration might’ve been chilling but it was true. The peripheral bullshit was unnecessary. If Lowman felt so strongly, killing Big Joe would’ve been the remedy.
“But you can’t, can you? You’ve found a way to keep my father in line with some things by hanging the threat of Christopher’s death over his head. More than anything you’re just scared. You’re not sure if Christopher could be taken out before he could get to you.”
“You could do it.”
“No.”
“I don’t care what it takes,
who I have to use. Sooner or later, I’ll get rid of him.”
Snake didn’t respond to Lowman’s promise. Maybe, it was because he wanted to get rid of Outlaw just as much as the other man. Or, maybe, because… “You keep me in line by dangling my father’s life. Don’t know why the fuck you’re being kept alive. K-P’s life hangs in the balance, too. All depends on that fucking asshole south of here. Never been a fucking member of this club but he’s pulling all the strings. Right?”
What fucking asshole?
“As long as he pays you, they live. I want to know the connection. What makes this work? Why is it the merry-go-round of a life for a life for a life? Why the fuck he’s paying you to save two motherfuckers who have so much power over you? What makes my father so adamant about not taking you the fuck out? Because, I swear, old man, I feel like blowing you the fuck away right now. Outlaw don’t give a fuck. He’s waiting for an excuse to ice you. Even fucking kings and dictators are brought down. Why the fuck not you?”
Logan sighed. “Answers for another day. Joe will be coming around soon. We need to finish Christopher’s Black off and bury him in the orchard.”
Fuck. No, the fuck they didn’t need to do that. Any moment, Mortician would faint for fucking real.
“As much as I fucking like that idea, I owe him. He saved Hopper and he saved you and whatever your violent death would’ve brought about. I’m calling Outlaw and John Boy so they can get this motherfucker. I’m going to say we were target practicing and I shot him.”
“No. Suppose he can hear?”
Mortician hadn’t heard fuck. All. He wasn’t fucking with grown people’s business. Not when it would get his ass killed. Too much evil and betrayal lurked about the club. He couldn’t understand why Logan was destroying his club from the inside out, little by little, but it wasn’t his shit to understand.
“If he heard me and repeats anything, then I’ll shoot him in the head myself,” Snake swore.
Logan tsked, closer to Mortician now. He could smell the cologne he always wore. He kicked him again and Mortician jerked, unable to stop it from the vicious blow, as he was kicked down the steps while, behind him, a door slammed shut.
“Listen up, asshole,” Snake said, close to his ear. “You’re tense, so I know you’re awake. Forget everything you fucking heard. I suggest you get the fuck back to Cali and stay the fuck away as soon as your wound is seen to. Understand?”
Not trusting Snake, Mortician didn’t respond. Something slammed against his jaw and blackness consumed him.
Chapter Eight: Confessions
Music pumped through Mortician’s body and he twirled his dance partner around the floor of the nightclub he’d gone to. He was a fucking college graduate, a shooting survivor.
And a lone wolf.
He had not one fucking person in the world. It had been five months since he’d been shot. True to his word, Snake had dumped him and allowed John Boy and Outlaw to find him. They’d gotten him to a physician they knew, who’d removed the bullet at his house, and allowed him to recover in one of the guestrooms, although Outlaw had wanted to bring him back to the club.
Mortician had bitched out. He couldn’t go and face Big Joe or Outlaw, knowing what he knew about fucking Lowman and Snake. Not that he knew much. There was some motherfucker, somewhere, paying to keep other motherfuckers alive, while Logan was having Big Joe shoot up to control him.
Right?
Yeah, that shit about sized up the matter perfectly.
Even in his head that sounded like some insane fucking shit, so he’d stayed at the good doctor’s house and ended up fucking the man’s twenty-year-old daughter and getting thrown out.
Fuck, but Roscoe got him in fucking trouble all the time.
The dick in question jumped when the current bitch he intended to fuck grinded against him. He was enjoying this. Walking wherever the fuck he wanted with hardly anyone recognizing him. His dreads, face stubble, diamond stud…all made him Mortician. Not Lucas Banks.
That motherfucker was dead and buried, lost to the need of belonging and acceptance. But Outlaw was like a blood brother to him. K-P, that one-eyed bitch, had spent many nights talking him through the despair of tough classes. And Joseph Fucking Foy? He made it all go round. He was the sun and they were the planets in his orbit.
What would happen if the sunlight flickered out? How would they go on?
Mortician had no doubt Outlaw could run the club, but he also knew Big Joe’s death would destroy his friend. The man was Outlaw’s father, for all intents and purposes, akin to who K-P was for Mort.
The thought depressed him and he pushed away from the girl. He’d never told them he’d patched out—and he really hadn’t. He’d done a couple jobs for them but claimed his head wasn’t in the right place. He’d been a dickhead and used the kid he’d never met.
“I came close to dying, Outlaw. I got to figure out what I’m going to do about my kid. I don’t want to close my eyes forever without seeing him.”
That had been halfway true, but every few months, Char decided to fuck with him. He just couldn’t take it anymore, so, the first thing he’d done when he blazed back into town was tell her to lose his fucking number. She said the kid was Sharper’s, so let him be fucking Sharper’s.
Stop calling him to fuck her.
Stop making excuses for why he’d never seen his son.
Most of all, stop throwing in his face all the money Sharper had thrown her way to fuck Mort over. It wasn’t like she’d been born poor. Maybe, then, Mortician might’ve understood. Maybe.
So fuck her. Fuck the kid. Fuck his father. His latest tat had In the name of the father scrolled on his side.
In the name of the father meant something completely different, and there was nothing biblical about it. For Mortician, it meant in spite of his father, he’d survived and become a man. And, in spite of being a father to a son he couldn’t meet or take care of, he was still a man.
The songs had changed twice and he grooved with the flow, barely paying attention to what the DJ played, moving his body because he knew music. If he could’ve, he would’ve been in the small studio his mother had installed just before she was killed. She’d decided he should start to learn to play an instrument. He’d only been seven. Even then, they’d had to dance around Sharper. His father didn’t want to hear Mort’s noise.
“Wanna leave?” Moana asked, his name for the girl he was out with. She’d moaned like a motherfucker when he fucked her.
She was short and plump, a good girl like Char, looking for a rough rider like Mortician. He didn’t even bother to fuck with her name.
Did she know that?
Who gave a fuck? She had to know a motherfucker wouldn’t change just because she opened her legs for him.
“Yeah, c’mon, baby. Let’s go back to my room.”
A fucking room was all he could afford. Sometimes, even that was a stretch with his shitty job as a gas station cashier. He hated this shit. Civilian society fucking sucked Roscoe.
Roscoe. Another fucking piece of bullshit he’d give up. His dick was his dick, not a little person. And, although that motherfucker sometimes thought for Mort, it was just some freaky shit having a name for his dick.
Guiding Moana by her elbow, he reached the exit and headed toward his bike, pulling her to the side of the building and kissing her before pressing down on her shoulder. “Suck me,” he ordered.
Her eyes rounded and she glanced around nervously, suddenly overtaken with fucking good girl syndrome. Not wanting to be caught doing bad shit but fucking wanting that bad shit on the down low.
Envisioning Char, he tightened his hold on Moana. Panic flared in her eyes and he snatched his hand away, feeling like shit. He loved women. Most of them weren’t like that fucking cunt he’d been in love with.
He glared at her. “You wanna come to my crib, you sucking my dick here. I’m not a motherfucker to fuck and then have you pretend you don’t know me.”
She backed a
way, her chin wobbling and Mortician cursed, pushing away from the wall and dragging her to his bike. “Get on.”
Instead of running the other way, she complied. Didn’t her mother ever teach her to slap the fuck out of assholes like him? Well, maybe, not slap, but walk the fuck away. Most motherfuckers nowadays just slapped the fuck out of girls right back.
Absolutely no respect for females…
And you are showing respect?
Fuck, his conscience.
Instead of taking her to his room and doing all types of freaky shit to her, he sped through the streets of LA, to a quiet tree-lined street and the bungalow she lived at.
“Off.”
Like a puppy dog, she listened and stood before him, looking wilted and confused.
Mortician revved his engine, intending to drive the fuck off, but, fuck, man he just couldn’t do that to her. “You realize I don’t even know your fucking name?”
By the widening of her eyes, he knew she hadn’t known that.
“It’s—”
He held up a hand. “You not listening. I don’t give a fuck what your name is. Understand now?”
Tears rushed to her eyes and Mortician wished he’d felt something. He didn’t. Neither did he give a fuck that he was humiliating her.
“I only wanted pussy and you’ve been putting out for two fucking weeks.” He glared at her. “Next time stick to your own fucking league. Leave the fucking roughnecks alone. You don’t have shit we don’t already get and you especially don’t have it in you to tame one of us.”
Nice, Mortician.
Fuck off.
She covered her face with trembling hands, and he knew he’d absolutely crushed her. For what? Hurting Moana wasn’t doing anything to Char. It was just making him out to be a low motherfucker.
But, fuck, man, this girl was letting him. He hadn’t ridden off and she lowered her hands, sniffling, her eyes pleading with him to take his words back.
Death Dwellers Motorcycle Club:: Fifteen Bad Boy Biker Books Page 182