by Nicole Fox
“You’re telling me I should have let you rape her.” I force out a laugh. It’s growly, like a broken engine. “You must really be bat-shit.”
“Maybe.” Todd shrugs. “Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore. Do you want me to take you to your girl?”
“Do you think I don’t know this is a trick?” I counter.
“No. I’m guessing you know that it’s a trick. But I’m also guessing that you ain’t gonna say no, because if you say no that’s as good as giving her to us. And I doubt you wanna do that, do you?”
“No,” I admit. “That’s the last thing I want. But before we go I need to let you know that if she’s hurt in any way, there’s gonna be blood. And fire. And bone.” I clench my fists, walk right up to him, let the shotgun press against my chest. “If she’s hurt, you’re a dead man.”
Todd smiles. “I wonder if I was ever as dramatic as you,” he says. “I don’t like to think so, but you can never be sure, can you? You can make all the threats you want, Granite, if it makes you feel tough. But you’ll come with me no matter what. I reckon this was decided a long time ago and there’s not much we can do to change it.”
“I reckon that’s horseshit,” I tell him. “But fair enough. Let’s go.”
He prods me with the shotgun and I turn around, heading out of the bar and across the street to his four-by-four. We wait for a few minutes and then the doormen from before join us, sitting in the backseat with their guns out.
Chapter Eighteen
Granite
“These are my friends,” Todd says. “That there’s Russel.” He nods to the fat guy in the rearview mirror. “And that there’s Larry.” He nods to the younger kid.
“Todd, Russel, and Larry. This sounds like the start of some bad joke. I mean, goddamn, for outlaws you sure do have some shitty names.”
“We don’t live by our names,” Larry says. “We live by our code.”
“And right now our code is to get him where he wants to go. Isn’t that right?” Todd grins. “Because the first thing we do when somebody stabs one of our friends—”
“Disfigures him for life,” Russel interjects.
“Yes, the first thing we do is ask him what he wants to do, where he wants to go, and take him there. You want to see your girl? Then we’ll take you there. Of course, we will.”
I don’t have to be a genius to work out that they’re talking out of their asses. They’re not taking me anywhere but an early grave. I glance in the rearview. There’re no signs of bikes or jeeps, but then I hope that Dallas and the other fellas will be smarter than to use bikes and jeeps. Or maybe they didn’t get to the bar quickly enough and they’ve got no clue where I am. The only thing I can wish for is that the GPS on my cell is working.
“You know,” Todd says, as we stop at a red light. A couple walks across the road, normal-looking. It’s strange to think that there are normal-looking couples in the same world as men like me and these assholes. “We’ve looked into you, Granite, and you haven’t had a steady girl since—You’ve never had a steady girl. In all your years of outlawing. And now, suddenly, you decide that this woman is the one for you: the one you’ll risk everything for; the one you’ll make some pretty fuckin’ stupid decisions for.”
“Maybe I have made some pretty stupid decisions,” I agree. “I can’t argue with that. Maybe I have done some stupid shit in my life. But I don’t reckon going after Allison is one of them.”
“How can you judge that?” Larry says. “You haven’t seen the full consequences yet.”
I grip my knees. They’re right, I realize. I went about this all wrong. The fuck was I thinking, storming into their place like that? But I wasn’t thinking; that’s the point.
“You know, you fellas might be right. Maybe going steady with Allison was a mistake, or will be a mistake. I don’t fuckin’ know. I try not to think of big questions like that, questions that’ll get under my skin and really make me wonder. I try’n keep it simple. And to me there’s one simple fact that overrules all this other shit. When I stabbed your boy in the face, he squealed like a goddamn pig.”
“All right!” Russel snaps, taking a knife from his belt. “Let me gut him, boss. Let me gut this motherfucker.”
Todd turns a corner, past a residential neighborhood and toward what looks like warehouses. “Easy now,” he says. “We’re taking him to his girl, remember?”
“Come on, man,” I mutter. “You don’t have to play. I’d have to be stupid beyond stupid to really believe that shit. You’re taking me somewhere to kill me quietly.”
“Maybe not so quietly!” Russel snarls. “Maybe we’ll do it nice and loud.”
“Stop!” Todd roars, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. “What did I say about keeping your cool?”
“You want me to stay calm when this fuckin’ animal cut our boy’s face into ribbons?”
“I guess they’ve given up the surprise,” Todd says with a shrug. “You were supposed to believe that we were takin’ you to your girl. I wanted to see your face when you found out the truth, you know? But now it’s all ruined.”
“I guess it is,” I agree. What the hell was I thinking? No cars in the rearview. No weapons. No backup. “This might really be the end then.” I keep the fear out of my voice as best I can. “I guess it comes to every man.”
“That it does,” Todd agrees. “The only thing you can do is try to face it bravely, ’cause otherwise your boys will hear about how you shivered and begged and all that ugly shit. What do you reckon, lads, is this bastard up for facing it bravely?”
Russel strokes the hilt of his knife. “I guess we’ll find out,” he says.
They drive into the middle of a group of warehouses, a large area of tarmac covered in rubber marks and circles of ash from bonfires. Most of the windows in the warehouses are shattered. A crow clings on between the shattered glass, watching calmly. Probably waiting for its meal. My survival motor is running like crazy, but usually it has something to latch onto: a gun, a knife, a plan. Right now, I’ve got shit all. Todd steps from the car and Russel and Larry step out after him, all three of them with their hands near their hip.
“You know how this goes now,” Todd says. “How does it feel to be on the other side?”
“Strange,” I admit.
I step from the car and they pull their weapons, Larry and Todd with handguns and Russel with his blade.
“I’ve gotta say, for someone with your reputation this really was fuckin’ easy. But I guess women’ll do that to a man. Make him think all funny. Make it so he doesn’t know his prick from his brain. She opens her legs and lets a fella in and then all of a goddamn sudden he’s signing over his life to her. It don’t make no goddamn sense if you ask me.”
They lead me to the center of the tarmac and stand in a circle around me, their guns and knives aimed at me.
“You must’ve known this was gonna happen,” Todd says. “I don’t believe that a man can stab another man in the face and doubt that there’s gonna be consequences. That’s what happens, pal. That’s just the way it goes. Life always has consequences. But I won’t do you like a dog. Do you have any last words?”
I swallow. Every outlaw knows this day is gonna come, but we never believe it, not really. We ride, we live; we never die. And now this motherfucker has his gun pointed right at my face. “I’ve never given it much thought,” I say. “That’s the truth of it. I’ve never stopped to care much about it. But I guess now is the time to start caring, right?”
“Now is the time to start caring,” Todd says.
“Then I guess—”
Jax walks around the corner, but he ain’t dressed like Jax. He’s wearing homeless-man gear and his face is covered in dirt. He shivers and strokes his arms, glances all over the place like those real paranoid homeless guys do. He mutters to himself. “Prick—lies—the dark—it’s all dark now—they’ll see—they’ll all see—me!” He walks right toward the circle.
“The fuck doe
s this bum want?” Russel mutters.
“Hey!” Todd calls. “It’s time for you to turn around before somethin’ bad happens!”
But Jax just keeps on walking. “I saw them—I saw them.” He looks up for a fraction of a second and meets my eye. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a smile in his gaze, a secret look, a deadly intent.
I get myself ready, mentally preparing for the moment of madness. Fighting always comes down to madness. Even if you’ve got a plan. That’s just directed madness.
Jax walks right up to Larry and stares at his knife. “Big knife,” he says. “Very big knife.”
“This guy’s out of it,” Larry says, laughing. “Look at his fucking face.”
“Big knife. Whoa, there’s a big knife. Big knife—big knife! Big gun!”
“Big gun?”
Dallas pops up from the rear with a Desert Eagle pistol. He fires off two shots. One catches Larry through the back of the neck. I turn and cover my face on instinct, shielding it, and then dive straight for Todd as hellfire erupts all around me. But Todd is fast. He fires off a shot—my fuckin’ leg’s shredded almost to the bone, blood pissing everywhere as I limp at him. The world spins over and over. We’re both on the floor. I bite his hand, make him drop the gun. Shots fire all around me, turning the air to fireworks. But he wriggles, gets free, kicks me across the mouth. I grab his ankle and drag myself up, but he takes out a knife and swipes at my hands. I’m forced to let go. A bullet catches him in the back of the leg but by then he’s in the car, reversing straight at Michaels. The old man jumps out of the way.
I sit up, panting, squeezing down on my leg to try’n stop the bleeding.
“That was something,” Dallas says, staring down at the bodies, their faces unrecognizable from gunfire. “That really was something.” He clicks his neck from side to side. “Oh shit, Granite, you’re hit.” He walks over to me, kneeling down, studying the wound with a cold, calculating gaze. “Michaels, bring the car around. We’ll drive you down to the hospital. Use our doctor.”
“No.” I spit on the ground and then tear a strip from my shirt. The air smells like blood.
“No?” Jax is wiping the grime from his face. “What do you mean, no?”
“They’ve got my girl,” I say. “The bastards have her and I reckon she must be in big fuckin’ trouble if she’s with them. I won’t leave her. I won’t do that, man. No fuckin’ way. Going to the hospital will take too long. She might be dead by the time I get out.”
I tie the shirt around my leg. The bullet grazed me, grazed me deep but grazed me all the same. There’s nothing wedged in there. Once that’s done, I give Dallas my arm. He doesn’t look happy about it but he helps me to my feet.
“Fuck,” Michaels mutters. “We save your ass and the first thing you wanna do is go running right back into the fire again. You’re one crazy bastard, Granite. Does this girl really mean that much to you?”
“She does,” I say, surprised I don’t have to think on it for long. “I know that surprises you fellas and I know that it might piss you off, but this is it. I’m savin’ her. You can either come with me or head on home. But I’d like a gun either way.”
Dallas places a pistol in my hand. “We’re with you. It’s about time we showed these Brass Skulls what we’re made of.”
Chapter Nineteen
Allison
“Come on, Allison! Come on!” He’s always running ahead of me. He never remembers how much stronger he is than me. Well, he is stronger but it’s only because he’s older. He sprints down the beach with that goofy smile on his face. “Don’t be so slow all the time!” His tone is the same as Mom’s, chiding. “Come on! You’re faster than that, aren’t you?”
I try really hard now, ducking my head and running as fast as I can down the beach, pumping my arms really fast so that my legs go even faster. Brandon thinks he can run faster than me just because he has longer legs! Ha, no way! He might have longer legs but I have quicker legs!
But he’s still ahead of me, holding the ball, grinning from ear to ear. He throws it up in the air and catches it. The beach is quiet down on this end. Further up, there’s the pier and people sunbathing and playing in the shallows, but down here it’s just us. “Okay,” he says. “How about this? All you need to do is catch the ball. That’s it. No games. No tricks. Okay?”
I spread my hands, stand on my tiptoes, stare up at him hoping I look fierce. “Okay. Bring it!”
He laughs in that older-brother way. “All right, Miss Confidence. Let’s do it then.”
He kneels down, swings the ball two-handed between his legs, and then throws it so far in the air that it disappears into the sun.
“Not fair!” I cry, weaving all over the place trying to line myself up with it. “Too high!”
It slams down next to me, a full four feet to my left.
“You’ve gotta be quicker than that,” he says, picking it up. “You can’t be slow all the time. What if there’s a fire and you need to get out of the building? Are you going to cry that the fire is too high?”
“I never cry!” I snap. “Throw it, then!”
He grins from ear to ear. He looks like a real loon when he does that. Then he throws it again.
I weave all over the place, and then stand right where the shadow of the ball is, growing bigger and bigger. I put out my hands—and the ball smacks into my head. I fall to the sand, coughing.
And I wake to the sound of dripping, and try to cough. But the rag in my mouth makes it harder than it ought to be. My arms and legs ache horribly. I wonder how long they’ve been tied to the chair like this: right to the legs and the arms, so that I’m chair-shaped. My lower back throbs and my mouth tastes like the oil from the rag. The only thing I can move is my head. I’m in a dank room, sunlight a phantom at the very top of the ceiling, coming in through the slit windows. Otherwise it is almost pitch-dark. The dripping sound comes from behind me. This place couldn’t be more horror-movie-like if it tried. I laugh madly. And then I cry. And then I lean back, breathing steadily through my nose.
I try to remember what happened to me. There was a biker. He introduced himself. Then my cell rang and the biker asked me to come outside. “It’s Lucky. Granite gave me your number. Will you come out here quickly? I’ve got a question for you.”
I walked outside and—darkness, Brandon.
“Help!” I scream, but all that comes out is hmmphh. “Help me!” Hmmphmph. I rock the chair from side to side. Maybe I can break one of the arms and slide my hand free. But it doesn’t move, at least not much; that’s when I realize that it’s bolted to the floor.
“Fuck!” a man screams from the other side of the room. “Motherfuck!” Suddenly, bright white lights turn on, flooding the room. Two men stand in the shadows, wearing leathers, hands folded across their guns. Have they been here the whole time? Five or six more men stand further back. Them, too? Handlebar-mustache walks into the room, pacing with his arms at his sides twitching and his hands opening and closing into fists.
“What the fuck?” he snaps, kicking over an old metal chair, and then wincing and clutching his leg. “That fuckin’ guy, that sneaky fuckin’ bastard.” He kicks another chair and then leaps over to me, leaning down with his hands on his knees so that he’s staring me right in the face. “Let me tell you something about your boyfriend, slut. He’s got some real fuckin’ annoying friends, some real fuckin’ bastards. But he hasn’t got you, has he? So that’s something.” He yanks the rag out of my mouth. I suck in precious air, air that doesn’t taste like oil, even if my tongue is so dry that the oil is basically carved onto it. “That’s it. Breathe. Be comfortable. Be happy. Look how many friends you have.” He nods to the men standing in the shadows. I can’t make out much about them except for their smiles, which are like jackals’. “A lot of these men would pay good money to fuck a whore like you, damn good money. They see women like you strutting all over the place with those tight bodies and they get their wallets out. But they don’t need go
od money right now, do they, slut? They’ve got you right where they want you.”
“Where is my brother?” I whisper. “Where is Brandon?”
“Brandon!” He spits. “Don’t talk to me about that worm. That fuckin’ nothing. What sort of a man lets a bunch of other men use his house like that? Doesn’t he have any goddamn self-respect? What sort of a fuckin’ loser does a thing like that? Tell me. Fuckin’ explain it to me.”
“Is he alive?”
He smiles at me. “Now there’s a question. There’s a real interesting question. I bet you’d love to know, wouldn’t you? Is it going around and around your head, little whore? Maybe we strung him up and we took turns throwing knives at him. Maybe we ain’t so good at throwing knives so it took a while, but one fella stuck him in the arm and another stuck him in the prick, and another got him in the leg, and more and more fellas stuck him until there was nothin’ left but fuckin’ gristle. He was just meat when we were done with him. That’s it. Maybe that’s what happened. Or maybe he’s still alive. Look how desperate she is to know, fellas. All right, let’s make a deal.” He strokes my cheek. I flinch away, but I can’t outrun these zip-ties. “You do somethin’ for me and I’ll tell you all about your big brother.” When I don’t reply, he grabs my throat. “Now’s the point where you ask me what you need to say.”