by Nicole Snow
Jesus Christ. I can't breathe!
I snorted with all my might, struggling for precious air. Feeling the sharp whiskey blast out my nostrils and sinuses almost made me pass out.
“Jesus, brother! That's enough.” Ursa growled, slapping Irons' shoulder.
Vicious reluctance flashed in his eyes as he finally pushed my head level. The glass retreated, and I coughed violently, spitting pure liquid fire in all directions.
“Whore!” He struck me across the face, sending my choking lungs into overdrive. “You spit that shit on me again and you'll do it with a busted lip and half your tongue gone. This is your last chance.”
I looked up, dripping and moaning pathetically. As bad as I sounded, I wasn't beaten. This monster pouring poison down my throat just pissed me off more.
“Just give us what we need,” the old man said behind him. “You can walk out of here alive.”
I was too sick, too far past fucked up to speak. The whiskey kicked in like lightning on an empty stomach. I already felt it rumbling in my veins and turning everything hazy as it throttled my system.
I shook my head one way. No.
“Give the girl a damned break,” Ursa said. “We got other ways to do this without killing her...”
Irons chuckled. He reached into his pocket and I watched him light a thick cigar with an old silver lighter. He stepped aside and threw his arm around me.
Bastard. I instantly recoiled at his touch and tried to shake him off, but it was no use.
“See your brother over there? He's about to get the special treatment. This is what we do to little cocksuckers who turn tail on our patch and snitch.”
My heart started to pound. Even through the drunken haze, I cleared my throat, tensing up as Ursa moved around him.
“Don't! Don't hurt him. He's been through so damned much...”
“Sure has.” Irons laughed. “Don't worry, baby doll. You can't hurt a man if you're sending him straight to heaven.”
What the hell was he talking about? Ursa reappeared in the light a second later, holding something long and plastic he'd produced from a little black box. When it caught the dim lamp perfectly, I saw the huge needle on the tip.
“This is for both of you,” Ursa growled at me. “For the next five minutes you refuse to talk, Brass here gets a little deeper into a trip that's truly out of this world. We gotta do it for him, see. This fucknut doesn't have the balls to shoot a dose that would stop an elephant's heart.”
Ursa gripped the syringe savagely and stabbed it right into my brother's chest. My mind blanked with horror and whirling whiskey. His thumb pressed down, sending the cloudy shit into his veins.
Jordan's arms and legs moved, suddenly energized. He groaned, as if entering a deep ecstasy, like someone had just given him the best blowjob of his life.
“Holy fuck. Holy fucking shit! It's too...sweet.” My brother slumped, moving his mouth like a fish, suddenly speechless.
Irons' dirty fingers tightened on my shoulder. I was too numb to turn away in horror as Ursa produced a second shot from the black box. Only my throat still worked, and it swallowed a small boulder.
“Heh. Look at him go. Knew a guy who used to shoot up junkie fuckheads for fun and watch 'em self-combust. Vulture, I think. He was a hell of a guy.” Irons turned to me darkly. “Until your asshole boyfriend and his pussies blew him sky high.”
The second dose went into Jordan's arm. His delirious groaning lessened, and his breathing grew slower. His head rolled on his table and he stared in my direction, looking right through me.
He was too fucked up to beg me for help.
I'm sorry, I thought, looking away from the gruesome scene as much as I could.
Who was I kidding? Sorry didn't begin to cut it. But even with my brother dying in front of me, I wouldn't talk.
As long as I kept them away from Blaze and the club, they'd get what they deserved. I knew it. If I let fear take over and I spilled everything, then they wouldn't just kill me or Jordan.
They'd kill Blaze, his brothers, and how many more? How many innocents who've never been in an MC at all?
Men like this didn't stop. I had a flash of the future where the Grizzlies were back on the rampage, owning Missoula like they used to, piling their victims higher and higher in a mass grave.
On the third shot, Jordan stopped breathing. His whole body seized up thirty seconds later and started to convulse. I watched him twitch and foam and jerk, sniffing back tears.
Oh my God...
Blaze, where the hell are you?
He was lifeless by the time Ursa injected the fourth hit into his neck. The old man was starting to turn red, pissed as all hell that I hadn't reacted to the nightmare the way he wanted.
“Fuck number five,” he growled. “Bastard's gonna be dead anyhow. And this bitch still won't talk to save her brother. Looks like we're not the only ones who hate this little cocksucker.”
Without warning, Irons grabbed me with both hands, picked me up, and slammed me against the wall. The knife returned, pressing so hard I swore he'd nick an artery and I'd bleed out right there.
“I see you've made your choice, baby doll. If you're not gonna cough up what we need about your boyfriend and his Prairie Pussy buddies, then I guess we'll do things the hard way.” His dirty smile appeared. “Lucky for you I like it hard.”
“Kill me now. You're a dead man either way,” I snarled. “Just wait until they find you.”
Moving like a beast, Irons lived up to the club's name. I imagined being mauled by a grizzly as he tore at my pants, fumbling with my belt. The jeans dropped as he mumbled something about how he was going to take his sweet time before killing me later.
When he found my tattoos, my heart stopped. Calloused fingers passed over my roses, and I jerked until he flattened me harder, steamrolling me with his weight.
No! The only fingers that should be there are Blaze's. Not there. Please. God.
“My, my. Pretty flowers for a pretty lady. It's nice to have something I can ruin. Hold still, doll. Those flowers can't do much screaming, but you sure as hell can...”
My jeans hit the floor. Dirty cigar smoke rolled up my nose and I pinched my eyes shut, just as the heat began teasing my inked skin.
“Stupid fucking cunt. It didn't have to be this way...”
The tip went deep. Somehow, I held in my screams and my sobs. A little wince and a feral growl was all he got each time he stamped the cigar to my flesh, burning away my life's trail. The blank spot near my thigh hit me the hardest, the place where I was going to get PROPERTY OF BLAZE tattooed between two new flowers.
I cleared my mind and let the fire burn.
Maybe it was the whiskey or just the surrealness of being taken and tortured, watching my brother get killed in front of me. Whatever it was, I didn't think about the agony. All I thought about was Blaze.
Beautiful, powerful, insatiable Blaze.
If I died here tonight, I'd go thinking only about him.
Irons laughed each time my body jerked away from the flaming tip branding my flesh. He had to re-light the cigar several times to keep the torment going.
Do I regret this? The same question echoed in my head, over and over as each flaming imprint destroyed my tattoos, annihilating my flowers.
No. Hell no.
I wouldn't change a single thing. If these brutes were meant to end my world, then so be it.
Irons' cruel stabs over and over on the same spots must've left second degree burns. I literally couldn't feel a damned thing on my skin anymore except for a dull heat. Knowing I was being tortured to death burned, sure.
Just not as bright as my love for Blaze each time I thought about him. These bastards keeping me from seeing him alive again was the real hell.
The whiskey's stark numbness hit my brain in deeper, darker waves. Even Blaze's memory became a blur and I totally shut down. A rush of cool air bristled on my skin as Irons stepped aside, letting me slump to my knees. It was only
then I realized he'd torn my panties down and planted several thick burns on my bare ass.
His next words came like a demon speaking from another world.
“Well, doll? Are you gonna talk? Or do I need to start in on that pretty pink pussy next?”
VIII: Inferno (Blaze)
I swore I'd kill every last asshole when I found them. Hell, that was coming before they took Saffron and her bro away from me, before Moose caught the last glimpse of her limp body disappearing into a truck at the fucking drugstore...
Now? It was a goddamned certainty.
Nobody with their patch was leaving Montana alive.
Church went fast. We didn't bother using the meeting room. My boys met me in the big garages instead, everybody except Roller, who was still shaking off that shit they pumped into his system.
“All right. The good news is the little shit gave up their clubhouse before he disappeared. We know where they are. We know how to hit 'em. That doesn't mean it's gonna be easy.”
All my brothers nodded at me solemnly. Tank, Moose, Reb, Stone, and Smokey. Miner didn't have to worry about riding into battle, but even he looked ready for war. Stinger was especially strange without his big smile.
“Let's wipe their asses out,” he said, pushing his hands together so his muscles bulged.
Good. Everybody was hungry for blood.
They knew the shit the renegade Grizzlies did cut me the deepest. But fucking us over like this, stealing our informant and an old lady was a crime against the club. Saving Saffron became every brothers' business as soon as I claimed her and laid my brand on her.
“All ready to go, boss. What's one more wound? What's the plan?” Tank shifted his weight. The big bastard was supposed to be using his cane, but he refused, afraid I'd make him stay behind if he looked too screwed up to serve as Sergeant at Arms.
“Head on. It's the only way. We bring along the new toys we got from mother charter. Their place is far enough from town to keep a firefight concealed. This is a kill job. Nothing else.”
“You're sure?” Moose stroked his beard. “These fuckers are pretty dumb. We wait another day or two and they'll show up here and rush the clubhouse. We could mow them down then.”
“Laying traps is Maverick's style,” I growled. “Not mine. Besides, we wait ten more hours and our people might end up dead. The fucks are laying into them this minute, probably torturing my old lady to find our weaknesses. We need to vote and get going. Now.”
Fuck, thinking about those dirty bastards hurting Saffron boiled my blood. I promised I wouldn't suffer them breathing a minute longer than necessary, and I wouldn't take any surrender either. Soon as I saw she was safe and they were in our open sights, they were dead men.
This wasn't just a war between MCs. This was a fucking extermination campaign waged on vermin, and there would be the same mercy they'd given to Saffron and her luckless family in all this.
None.
“We vote. Miner goes first because he's proxying for Roller.”
There was no hesitation for anyone. All the votes were unanimous 'ayes,' giving me all the approval I needed. Yeah, Moose had a preference for something more cunning, but it didn't stop him from voting for Satan's Scythe.
These were the times when being President came naturally. I was out to protect my woman and my club, to savage and destroy anyone or anything who got in the way. This was clear cut, without politics or mind games.
My boys knew what was going down. I knew it too. And if anybody forgot, all they had to do was look at the PRESIDENT tag on my chest.
It took a frenzied moment to grab all the new gear and load it into the truck. Tank drove that vehicle since he knew how to use the new shit best. The rest of us were on our bikes.
I fixed my helmet tight, waiting at the head of the line as the gate opened. We rode out in formation, and I sped down the little mountain roads, into the darkness.
Hunting for Grizzlies made everybody's balls crawl up their guts with anticipation. I felt it too, but for me it was all different.
This was about more than putting some really nasty fuckers into the ground. I was going after Saffron, and I had to bring her back in one piece.
No ifs, ands, or fuckups about it.
Hold on, baby, I thought, gripping my bike until my hands hurt. I'm coming.
We slowed when we approached the shitty little building. It was way out in the boonies, an old trading post barely bigger than the abandoned rat's nest we'd searched in town a few weeks ago.
Would've been easy to blow right past it on the map if we didn't have the coordinates marked. As soon as we pulled up several feet away, I signaled to kill the engines. We all paused for a second, listening to the still mountain darkness.
I raised my binoculars. The dim lights in the cracked windows told me we'd come to the right place. So did the small gaggle of beat up old Harleys parked near the back.
The Grizzlies were in there, and so was Saffron and her brother.
My boys went to work like panthers in the night, surrounding the place in the shadows, shotguns and side arms drawn. Tank set up in front of their main door, training a rifle on the place so big he had to keep it mounted on a fucking tripod.
“I'll approach. Need to find out where the fuck they're being kept,” I whispered over the walkie-talkie and quickly cut it.
I dove into the dirt and crawled toward the window where the glow was brightest. The closer I got, the easier I could see silhouettes moving inside, guys with cuts moving around.
I pressed my face to the dirty glass to get a good look. Fuck, I'd know those curves anywhere.
Saffron was slumped in a corner, her arms twisted at her side. Heartbeats so fierce they rattled my fucking bones started thumping in my chest. It looked just like she'd been shot and was applying pressure to the wound.
A few feet away, a body lay on a table. Had to be dead, and I guessed it was Jordan.
Sick, sick motherfuckers. You boys are done. Should've killed all your asses yesterday.
My finger pressed to my walkie-talkie. “Found her. Probably the brother too. They're both in a shitty little cellar. Have Tank blast the door and give these fucks a wake-up call on my mark. I'll go in to get her out.”
“Roger.”
I raised my hand, ready to swing low and shout over the radio again. I barely heard the distant rumble in time, a sound like thunder rolling in from the road.
Holy fuck. Nobody as experienced as me would mistake the growl of Harleys, and certainly not so many.
“Boss? Company's coming. You want to turn all these guns around?”
“Fuck!” I didn't switch on the radio at first.
I slapped the old brick wall with my fists, staring through the hazy glass. We had the firepower to take them down even if they were about to double their numbers.
Still, I didn't think these bastards had so many in their ranks. There was no mistaking what was about to happen with their friends arriving. We were gonna be pinned down in two different directions, and some brothers were bound to die.
Think about Saffron, asshole. Focus on her. Long as she's safe, everything else is second.
I nodded to myself, stuffing panic down into the deep dark pit in my gut. One hand tightened on my gun, and the other on the walkie-talkie.
“Tank, Moose. You two take the guys on the road. Tell everybody else to shoot anything that comes out through the doors or windows.”
The bikes were on top of us now. Harleys passed our rides and turned onto the little dirt drive, rolling up, just a few feet from Tank's position.
I took a deep breath, ready for all hell to break loose.
Adrenaline pulsed, hot and rough, when I heard the single gunshot. Then there was a long silence, and several loud...voices?
“What the fuck is going on?” I growled into the radio.
No answer for a solid minute. I was about to ask again when it crackled.
“Not the Grizzlies we expected, boss. Man here needs
to talk to you.”
Damn it! I slapped the brick one last time with my fist and walked away. I went running toward Tank's position, and swerved just in time to avoid a nasty hole in the ground.
A bullet exploded past my head. The radio screamed to life.
“Shit! We've been spotted. Everybody down!” Tank's roar may have saved my life.
I got down and kept crawling toward him, stopping a few feet away to fire some shots at the clubhouse. Bullets whipped past and hit the ground. The Grizzlies fired long and aimlessly into the darkness. Doubted they hit a damned thing, but then neither did we.
“Well? What the fuck is this?” I climbed next to Tank, heart racing.
Another man lay on the ground next to him. No, three more men, and one big brute I'd seen once before.
“Fang? You're the last fucker in the world I expected to see here.”
“Came to finish the job you boys couldn't. Thanks for leading us right to them.” He grinned. “Pack your shit up and go. We'll take care of our own. Our right as the MC getting pissed on by these cocksuckers.”
I was fucking seething. “No. They got our people. You're the ones who weren't fucking invited. Let us do this.”
Fang got up and stepped over me. Crazy bastard. Several bullets exploded around us, and another right next to my shoulder, kicking up dirt onto my jacket.
Several Grizzlies – real Grizzlies – ran up to cover their leader. They approached the door and the shooting slowed.
“Hold your fire! We're all wearing the same patch, you dumb bastards!” he roared.
I stood and started to approach. The main door Tank had been aiming at swung open. A pack of the dirtiest, nastiest fuckers I'd ever seen came piling out. They were wide eyed and totally high, fingers twitching in surprise.
“Who the hell are you? Is that...Fang? No fucking way!” The men grunted and chattered among themselves.
“Everybody come on out. Line up.” Fang's voice was wickedly calm. “You boys out here are right about one thing: we've been neglecting you too long. I'm finally here. Just like I promised. We'll sort this all out.”
The renegades had flashlights and guns trained on Fang and his three men. I stepped up behind them, and recognized two of the fuckers. One was Ursa, the same bastard President we'd devastated in Missoula before. The other was the bald headed piece of shit who attacked us, the VP named Irons. Jordan told us about him.