by April Lust
The rage surfaced again and I wanted to kill someone. I wanted to kill a lot of someones in fact. I wanted to go after every asshole who’d thought he belonged, who’d taken advantage of our brotherhood and then pissed it to the wind because he decided that it got a little hard.
Revenge was starting to sound like a tall order as the list of people I needed to exact it upon grew.
But then the rage simmered down. I reminded myself that some of those guys were old, ready to retire when I’d been put up and lingered only for my sake. I reminded myself that some of them were just kids, too stupid to know what they wanted. I reminded myself that this had been a culling of sorts and the fifty men who were left were my hell riders. They were the men who I could count on no matter how rough or crazy things went.
It was a blessing in disguise, I told myself, though I wasn’t sure how true the words really were. I guessed it was time to find out.
Taking a deep, soothing breath, I let it out and finally fixed Jackson with a stare hard enough to make him flinch. “Alright. Then call the fifty. I want to see them all tonight at ten.”
Jackson’s eyes got huge for a second, then returned to normal as a slow, almost eager smile crossed his lips. He nodded. “Yeah, you got it, boss. Where we meeting?”
“Old stomping grounds,” I answered, thinking of where that little fucking club had started in the first place. “The old rock quarry out on Foch. I want a place where we can make some damn noise.”
Now Jackson was actually grinning and nodded. “I’m on it. Tonight, ten, the rock quarry.” He got up and pulled out his phone at the same time, already starting to dial up the fifty numbers he would have to call that day. He didn’t care that it was only a little after five in the morning. The fuckers would pick up and show up or they wouldn’t be my boys anymore, whether they’d stuck around or not.
I relaxed a little after Jackson left the room. I could hear his low voice drifting in from the other room, but didn’t pay much attention to it. Instead, I tried to push away the buzzing in my brain. There hadn’t been a whole hell of a lot of sleep for me in the past twenty-four hours and it was finally starting to catch up with me. I’d need sleep to stay focused, especially tonight.
Because tonight I’d remind them why I was leader of the Berserkers.
***
We drove separately because it was important for the sake of the meeting—appearances being far more important than I wanted to give them credit for—that we ride our separate motorcycles. Besides, it was still too much of a novelty for me to be on my own damn bike out in the world, free again, and for Jackson, well, I was starting to get the impression that he didn’t ride as much as he used to.
When I got there, Jackson tailing behind me, there were already several guys waiting. I was surprised, since we were half an hour early, and from the way Jackson had said it, there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of Berserkers left in the end. But here they were, beginning what looked like a line of motorcycles right now but what would quickly turn into a circle surrounding the whole place.
The quarry was huge. Much of it was underground at this point, but they’d dug and delved into the side of a mountain, leaving a huge cliff face on one side where the road wound up and was generally speaking off limits to the public. Down the other side was a manmade lake where they’d used water to wash out the debris that came out and kept it from seeping up and clouding over the entire damn city.
There were remnants of broken pieces of equipment, including a crane which had been set up years ago and ended up killing at least two men, and a tractor of some kind that was used to dig and haul large quantities of rock and loose earth. There were some scaffolding skeletons and loose two-by-fours lying around from when they were still trying to brace beneath the ground where they’d been digging, but in the end, all of it was half rotted.
It’d been here forever.
I jumped the fence easily because I wouldn’t let anyone call me chicken. Besides, ghost stories or not, I wasn’t afraid of a damn place like this. How many run down hell holes had I seen in my life? Dozens. I’d lived in them, called them home, watched as people too drunk and too high let them fall below livable levels until they crashed into what I fondly called “Desecrated Ground.” If I could survive all of that crap, then I wasn’t going to worry about a little thing like ghosts.
Behind me a half a dozen kids from my school were holding back, leaning against the fence, watching me as I headed towards the belly of the beast as they liked to call it.
About ten years ago, a man had died on that scaffolding up ahead. There was some tragic story about how he had been in love and the love of his life betrayed him or something. Cheated with another man, a friend or a coworker or his brother. Something sort of epic and destructive.
I didn’t care. If the story was true—the death probably was; the girl not so much—then he wasn’t much of a man to begin with. What sort of asshole got all broken up over some chick who clearly didn’t love him enough to not stay faithful?
Loyalty was a big deal to a guy like me and any girl I dated would show it in spades.
There was supposed to be a ladder that led down below to the lake and some of the older pieces of machinery, and as I crept closer towards the edge I noticed it. A shadow in the distance. It was the movement that made me freeze, but it was the taunting voices behind me—“Chicken already?” and “Some tough guy you turned out to be”—that spurned me on.
More determined than ever, I made a beeline for that shadow. I was seventeen and I wasn’t about to be scared of some shadow haunting an abandoned rock quarry.
When I finally got within arm’s length of the shadow, I reached for it, and as my hand wrapped around something solid and clearly not ghostly, I swung the form around. Then I caught my breath.
Even in the dim lighting she was beautiful. She had a sweet face and full, kissable lips. Her hair was thick and wild, falling about her shoulders in heavy waves that seemed to defy gravity, as dark as the night. And her body? Well, that was any kid’s wet dream. Her tits were the size of melons and the urge to reach for them was almost overpowering.
Instead, I licked my lips.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, glad that my voice wasn’t breaking all the time like it had the previous year.
Jerking her arm out of my grasp and startling me, she folded her arms beneath her chest, causing those damn tits to smoosh together and push up until they looked ready to spill from her shirt at any moment.
Which wouldn’t have bothered me a bit.
“What are you doing here?” she returned back to me. “I was here first.”
At that, I smiled in the darkness, deciding instantly that I liked her. “My name’s Nester Perry,” I introduced, taking a step closer to her instead of offering her my hand.
She didn’t back down. Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “Zelda. Zelda Rivers.”
It had been the first time I’d ever met Zelda, just at the time when my life was finally shifted. We wouldn’t date for another two years—she had always been picky like that; I wasn’t sure what changed—but she was always in the peripheral of my life. Hanging out cautiously on the edges of it, maybe watching, maybe waiting to see what I would do, maybe waiting for me to finally work up the nerve to ask her out.
In the meantime, I started the Berserkers. It was small and started with only a few guys—Jackson being one of them and Santos finally refusing to be a party to my madness, as he said—but it would grow with time.
And we met here, because that night had been something special to me.
Thinking back on it now, I almost regretted deciding to meet here. There were a lot of memories here and not all of them had to do with the club. They had to do with Zelda on her back, calling out to me as I drove into her, not caring that we were outside or that someone might find us or that she was fucking loud and the place echoed. They had been good memories once, but now it was hard to think of them.
/> Harder still because my body still responded to them physically.
I needed to get laid, I decided, and was starting to think it didn’t matter with who. I had almost decided that I would just call the damn waitress when everyone really started to arrive.
I spent the next twenty minutes getting reacquainted with those who had remained loyal and true to the club. I was pleased to see who I had left, even if some of the absences disappointed me. When it looked like everyone was here that was going to be here, I started.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” I began in a harsh tone that had people cringing as they heard me, even Jackson, “but it’s got to change. Fifty? Really? Fifty of you assholes managed to get their shit together and be a true rider. The rest run scared.”
There were murmurs around the club, but no one outright said anything. Which was fine; mostly, this was for show. This was about explaining to them that I was pissed—and that I was grateful.
“Well, fucking good. Good, because I’m not interested in dealing with any half assed wannabes. This is about the people who are. The fighters, the powerful. This is about the guys who are gonna follow me when I lead them into danger, because, damn it, that’s what we do! And if you’re not interested in that, then you’d best leave now. And I’m not just talking about the club or the quarry. Get the fuck out of town and get the fuck out of my way, because I don’t have time for the likes of you.”
There were murmurs that once again rippled through the semi-circle of riders surrounding me. There seemed to be hesitation, even fear, but no one made a move. No one spoke out. They were holding fast as I hoped they would.
“Good. Because I’ve got a plan and I need some goddamn warriors to carry it out. Are you warriors?”
There wasn’t a pause this time. No hesitation as a roar went up and echoed through the walls and across the surface of the water. I knew then that the quarry had been a good choice, regardless of the connotations for me personally.
After my little speech, we broke it down. Not everyone needed the specifics yet, but I needed a few guys on my side who knew the intimate details of just what we were getting into.
“Santos?”
It was Bob, Jr. who spoke, who wasn’t really a junior at all. He was roughly my age with noticeable facial hair and some scars from a bad car crash he got years ago smearing his otherwise good-looking face. He was pretty quick on the wit and reckless as hell, especially when coupled with Bob, Sr., who was in no way related.
They just happened to have the same name and were generally regarded as the Bobby Boys because where one was, the other wasn’t far behind.
Bob, Jr. straightened, folding his arms across his chest and shaking his head. “Why the fuck you wanna go messing with Santos? I mean, the Wicked Titans are a bunch of flashy assholes, but ain’t no way we can win a war with them. They’re like four hundred strong now!”
I raised an eyebrow at him. I’d known that the Wicked Titans had grown in size, but I was surprised by how much. That didn’t mean I wanted them to know I was surprised. Part of being a leader was keeping your cool even when things didn’t go your way. This was definitely not going my way.
Bob, Sr. snorted. “So what the fuck ever? We’ll cut ’em down no problem.” When Bob, Jr. sent him a dirty look, Bob, Sr. just shrugged. “What? They’re a bunch of pansies.”
Bob, Sr. was old enough to have gone half gray and have leather for skin. His face crinkled up in a strangely pleasant way when he smiled, but otherwise he was a sight to look at. Like some kind of pirate cast in the wrong movie, he almost looked like he needed an eyepatch across his face.
Before the Bobby Boys could start arguing—as inevitably they would—Schumacher spoke up. “Senior’s got a point. Santos’s got the numbers, but they’re jittery, nervous. They aren’t ready to go to war for him.”
I thought about that. Not ready to go to war for him. That, at least, was an advantage. I didn’t have near enough men to go head on with these guys, but if I could scare enough of them off, there was a good chance for us.
“Alright,” I told my small group. “We fight this smart. I want dirt on Santos, as much as you can dig up. And I want to know what he’s doing at all times.”
I was going to make Santos pay, and in that moment, standing with a group of ruffians in the place where I’d first met Zelda Rivers, I realized the perfect way to do it. I was going to seduce Zelda all over again.
Chapter Four
Zelda
I wasn’t going to admit it to anyone—not to myself, not to Nester, and sure as hell not to Santos—but I was in a tizzy after seeing Nester. It wasn’t like I didn’t know he’d gotten out. I’d been counting down the days, even though I knew how stupid that was. It wasn’t like there would be some wonderful reunion after he got out, but I couldn’t help myself.
But seeing him like I did…that was hard. Harder than anything I’d ever had to do up to this point, and I’d had to do some pretty hard things over the last few years.
The fact that I was so on edge was what made me decide that it was a cleaning day today. I had started with the kitchen and was about halfway through the living room now. The upstairs would be next. Since getting with Santos, I’d given up a lot of things that, at the time, had been both very important and not important at all in the grand scheme of things.
A job? Who actually wanted to get saddled with work that they absolutely hated?
So when he told me that I should quit, that he would take care of the expenses, well, I didn’t argue. I told myself it was because I hated that damn waitressing job and the secretary job before it, but I knew what the real reason was. I just couldn’t tell anyone else what that was.
As I finished vacuuming and put it up in the closet, there was a knock on my door. I glanced at my watch. Only a little after noon, so probably not Santos. He had “business” in the day, he usually told me, though sometimes I knew the real business took place late at night.
Thinking it was maybe the post or something, I headed to the door, wishing I’d cleaned up a little bit. I was wearing those ratty cutoff shorts that Santos hated so much and a tank top, the kind that actually buttoned down though it was more practical to jerk the shirt over my head than undo them all. My hair was tied up in a messy, wild ponytail. Not exactly the most presentable look in the world, but I was cleaning—what was the point of dressing up?
Swiping at stray strand of hair, I yanked open the door and felt my heart skip a beat. Twice in as many days, I found Nester Perry standing on my doorstep.
I almost slammed it in his face then and there, not wanting to deal with another argument or another round of the blame game. I was done with that, thank you very much. I had my reasons for doing what I did and I couldn’t share them with Nester, so really, what was the point of sitting there and arguing?
But before I could yank the door closed, he pulled out a drink holder with two coffees from that place I loved down on Cedar and a baggie filled with what I had a sneaking suspicion was two huge muffins topped with cinnamon sugar crumbles and toasted marshmallow coating stuffed with gooey chocolate chips.
My absolute favorite.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his face radiating a sweet earnestness that I didn’t think I would ever see again. His jaw was still sharp, the lines beneath his eyes were still deep and long. There was still an edge in his gaze, but I found a little of the old sweetness lingering there, too.
Something I’d missed sorely.
Still. I’d seen his flashing anger last night and I couldn’t for one minute believe that he had just let bygones be bygones after less than a day. There was no chance. Especially now that Santos was thrown in the mix. They’d been enemies for as long as I could remember, fighting with each other like only people who knew each other really well could.
No one had ever volunteered any information as to why, and in all fairness, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t want any part of their little feud and that was just fine wi
th me.
Eyeing the coffee, I folded my arms beneath my chest, trying to hide just how much I wanted to believe that he really had forgiven me. That he was apologizing for real, but how could I? How could I when I knew the kind of hurt he was feeling?
I just couldn’t figure out why else he’d be standing in my doorway with muffins and coffee.
“Are you going to at least say something, or am I just going to stand out here all day while our coffee gets cold?” he asked, putting just a little bit of a lilting tease into his voice.
My frown deepened, but even as it did and I tried to hold strong, I felt myself softening. “What if I just told you to go away?” I forced myself to ask, though I knew that regardless of his answer I would never ask that of him. I couldn’t. I’d already done more than I ever thought I’d manage and it was just too much to expect more.