by Jackson Kane
Now to see which shade of evil was it.
Fifteen bikers pulled in – not a bad showing to deal with just one guy. I couldn’t make out the name at that distance, but I could easily see the colors they were flying. Yellow and red. Los Lobos. They knew the area better, so it made sense that they would get here first.
Although founded in California by some white guy veteran, most Lobos up here were Mexican, and they fucking hated the Veins. There was lots of bad blood between our clubs which was probably why they had such a strong showing.
So much of the MC lifestyle was about sending messages.
The Lobos didn’t bother going in and talking to the guy that called them. They parked and pulled out whatever weapons they had on them. Half of them beelined to the room I’d rented while the other half stayed behind in the parking lot to catch me if I came out another door or to spot other Veins or even cops that were stupid enough to show up.
I heard them kick my rented room’s door in all the way down to the room I was currently squatting in. These walls were so extremely thin.
When they didn’t find me, they started down the line, kicking in door after door on either side. Eventually, they’d find me through the process of elimination alone. The second part of my plan had to get here soon, or it was about to get very messy.
Not wanting all his doors busted, the manager hollered and rushed out with his master keycard. The fourth room down from me had people in it. Junkies, high on a nod, ran screaming down the hallway.
The Lobos just let the pitiful creatures pass as they didn’t want to risk anyone calling the cops for hearing gunfire, at least not until they found me.
I checked the ammo in the one clip I had on me. There weren’t many doors left now...
Slam! Another door unlocked and flung opened.
They were two doors down, and it began to look pretty grim. I quietly lowered the table on its side. It wouldn’t do fuck-all for protection against bullets, but at least it offered some visual cover when they busted in.
If the Kill Team was already in town, they should’ve been all over me by now.
C’mon, Lorrenzo. I know you hate me! Hurry the fuck up, and come and kill me!
Slam! That was the last one. The next would be mine.
Any second now, I would hear the master keycard jammed into the slot, and the door would be thrown wide. I hadn’t reupped my ammo, and only had five bullets left, I could be a crack shot all I wanted, but if six of them showed up, I doubted they’d want to share.
The odds weren’t in my favor.
I needed to focus, but my thoughts kept drifting back to Star. I had to remind myself that she was probably still better off with the cops than she was with me, despite Deadeye having a connection in the precinct here. I couldn’t but selfishly want her here with me. If anything could force me through a situation, it was knowing I had to protect her.
How fucked up was I wishing I could put her in harm’s way just to have her near me?
It was good that she was safe from me. I’d done the right thing for once in my life. But that was fleeting solace was short-lived. With her and my family gone, what did I really have to fight for anymore?
The crazy hope that I might make it through this and see her again? No, I’d been on the other end of enough last stands to know when it was all over. When the Lobos burst in, I’d give them fight of their lives, but without Lorenzo’s kill team here, there was no way I was walking out of this.
“Rage!” I growled softly to myself, bracing against the piteously indefensible table and preparing for the Lobos to barge in. “Rage against the dying of the light!”
Figures darkened my room’s only window, then the keycard ground hurriedly into the lock. Any second now.
I’m sorry, Star. I’ll miss you most of all.
The opening slam didn’t follow.
Suddenly, I heard shouting and bustling around outside. Had someone already called the cops? That wasn’t it. More bike engines were arriving. It could’ve been Lobos reinforcements, but it didn’t make sense to show up segmentally. It was common practice to group ahead of time and ride en masse.
The Lobos fled out of the room next to me, cursing in Spanish.
Knowing the Lobos would be too distracted to spot me, I opened the shade just enough to get a good look outside. Salvation rode in in the form of the assholes that were sent to kill me. The kill team that Deadeye had sent after me had finally arrived. With them came a tidal wave of tension, threatening to crash over the Steel Veins vicious rivals.
It was the most beautiful thing I’d seen, second to Star’s hazel eyes.
Seven of the worst psychopaths we had to offer dismounted, wearing black bandanas pulled up over their noses. I didn’t need to see their faces to know each and every one of those heartless killers by name. The masks were for intimidation and for their exit if, or rather when, the cops came. Kill teams never wore club colors either for the same reason. They didn’t want to be associated with the club if the public witnessed them doing horrible shit.
There were five kill teams total within our MC. We called them the Fist of the Steel Veins. We’d created the teams to fight other clubs mostly. Each “finger” specialized in something different. Lorenzo’s team – the Pointer Finger – was the most direct – assassination. They found and pressed out specific people. They didn’t give a damn about collateral damage, therefore were mostly looked down upon by the rest of the club while still being acknowledged as a necessary evil.
My team was predominately demolition, but we were versatile enough that Deadeye had us doing a lot of the more nuanced jobs like intimidation, and sabotage of real estate projects of rival entities that tried to horn in on our turf. Before I quit, we had our share of executions, too. I hated those the most.
We were the Steel Veins’ Middle Finger.
I was surprised to see them riding bikes to a hit. My crew always took clean burner cars, so it would look like regular gangland violence. But Lorenzo was a prideful fuck who was far too reckless and short-sighted. It was a goddamn miracle he hadn’t been killed or caught yet, and I had no idea why Deadeye kept such an obvious liability in the club.
Lorenzo led the Veins up to spitting distance of the Lobos in the parking lot. Outnumbered two-to-one, none of the Veins showed any fear or hesitation. They were here for me, and they would lay waste to anything in their way. They only had one policy and that was fucking scorched earth.
Lorenzo usually did the talking so he pulled his mask down. He appeared the same as the last time I saw him minus a new scar on his cheek. He was tall, lean, and clean shaven with short, greased-back hair.
Everyone’s guns were out except Lorenzo’s. He lit a cigarette casually like he was waiting to catch a bus. Only after it was lit, did he start talking. He was smooth, and given enough time, he’d work out an arrangement with the Lobos that allowed everyone to come out looking like they won—except me, of course.
I’d be dead.
Even if the shit was calming down in the parking lot, no one on my level could hear the conversation, and that made for a lot of itchy trigger fingers needing to be scratched. The Lobos up here were obviously rattled. They knew who these men were and even having them outnumbered, they probably wished they’d brought more backup.
Sirens sounded across town. The cops were finally coming! Tension was thick in the air like spilled gasoline vapor on a hot summer day. It was time I cracked the door, dropped the match, and got this party started.
“¡Vayan a chingar a su madre, pinches gringos cabrones!” I shouted curses at Lorenzo and the rest of the KT. Still hidden in the room, I then licked off two, carefully aimed gunshots. One struck the tire of a KT bike while the other drilled a hole in the back of the Lobo talking with Lorenzo.
Boom! Everyone in the parking lot and on the second floor balcony with me exploded into action. Bombs and tense conversations could be extremely similar when you had the right ignition. Lucky for me, I was a demol
itions expert.
The Lobos up here unloaded first but were too amped up to hit what they aimed at. Instead, they generated a general, semi-automatic spray of bullets that peppered the parking lot.
The Steel Veins, though, cut with extreme precision.
In a blink, Lorenzo had his mask on, and all the Lobos in the parking lot were dead. Bullets chipped the stucco walls all around me as I scrambled out of the hotel room and darted for the short hallway that led to the back stairwell where my bike was parked. This was not a fight I was going to stick around for.
I cracked a small grin when I saw my bike. I couldn’t help but fantasize about the possibility of seeing Star again.
Most of the pieces in my master plan were set, but the dominoes fell faster than I could ever have predicted. I could hear the cops arrive in the front parking lot. The gunfire renewed as bigger weapons were brought into the fight. It was pandemonium.
Because of all the commotion, no one had time to surround the building with two MCs and the police fighting it out. This was the perfect shit show for a real escape. Everyone would be too busy trying to stay alive to chase me.
I tucked my piece, stuffed my vest into the small bag affixed over my gas can, and took off. Unfortunately, the only way out to the road took me past the parking lot where bodies were littered everywhere. I weaved between cop cars and made my way out toward the I-25. The motel was about two turns off the highway which was why I chose it in the first place.
Shit! Unfortunately for me that was the same direction the SWAT team was using to join the party. I jacked up on my bike’s brakes, planted my right foot hard, and whipped my five-hundred-pound Ninja around like it was nothing at all. Peeling out for a moment my wheels found their traction, and I shot off back toward the firefight at the motel. I’d mapped out an alternate route to get me on the interstate, but it was so staggeringly dangerous at this time of day that I didn’t think it would even work. I gritted my teeth and gunned it.
What choice did I have?
Cutting back through the throng of scattering bikers in front of the Super 8 was a fucking nightmare. A bullet skipped off my exhaust pipe, and I had to swerve hard not to T-bone one of the fleeing Lobos. We hit but didn’t wreck, and only after speeding away did I realize the fucker clipped off my damn side mirror.
My surroundings were still residential, but when I got on the road, I was able to open the throttle a little more. It was a brief calm before the storm as I drove toward what passed as a downtown. I took a deep breath, preparing myself to deal with the early lunch traffic clusterfuck when a bullet flew past me, and punched into my other side mirror.
Through what was left of my shattered mirror, I saw that it was another biker that was hot on my ass. I couldn’t tell if it was Lorenzo or not, but it had to have been a kill team member to make it through the motel war zone.
Come get me, asshole. I was hunched over low and fast. My bike sliced through the narrow gaps between passing vehicles as the urban swell closed in around us. My best chance to lose the tail was to play cat and mouse through the busiest streets of the knock-off Vegas.
I just needed to get back on I-25, then I could really open the throttle.
Most clubs were very formal about which bikes were allowed. It was mostly just Harleys with an occasionally smattering of other American-made motorcycles like Indian or Victory. Lately, some of the fringe chapters like ours were getting a little more relaxed with that shit. Although whenever I rode to conferences or did multi-chapter Steel Veins rides, I’d always bust out my Harley. When it was just our chapter business, my Kawasaki Ninja was king, and fuck anyone that said otherwise. The handling on my Ninja was tighter, easier for me to maintain, and it could fucking smoke any other bike on the road.
On the highway, I was untouchable. I just had to make it there first.
We blew through lights and signs. On my one side mirror, I spied the guy chasing me clip a jaywalking pedestrian. Technically, we had to keep the speeds down due to the clogged intersections with the oncoming early lunch rush. I couldn’t tell who was chasing me because of the black mask, but whoever it was, he was damn good on his bike.
The metal Interstate 25 sign shined like an angel’s halo. Through the coming intersection, there was only the onramp up ahead, and after that, I was a fucking ghost.
And that’s when my rear tire exploded.
It was just an incredibly lucky shot ‒ or incredibly unlucky ‒ depending on which end of the gun you were on. My beautiful Ninja jack-knifed, and then flipped end over end. Plastic, metal, and sparks sprayed in every direction. I was thrown into the side of a school bus that was slowly turning in the opposite direction. There was a choir of screams inside as my bike and I hit the canary-yellow sheet metal and shattered some windows on the bus. The kids must’ve been heading out for a field trip this late in the morning. I prayed that I didn’t inadvertently hurt any of them. I had too much terrible shit on my conscience to be able to carry hurting a child.
I crumpled in a heap next to my destroyed motorcycle. My head rang. My vision blurred. My whole body was on fire, but miraculously nothing felt broken. I was straddling on the edge of passing out completely. If I did, I knew I was never waking up again.
“Hey, Poet.”
Most members outside our chapter knew me better by my handle “Poet” or just “Poe” if they were clever or lazy. I almost always had a worn paperback sticking out of my back pocket with this time being no different if it was still in my back pocket after the impact. Most likely not.
I guess I was never going to find out how Hercules made it through all twelve labours.
What a stupid fucking thought to have when I was about to die.
“Rocks...” I groaned. I recognized him by the sound of his voice. I should’ve known by his riding. He was probably the only other Vein that could outride me. “Never hit a bus before.”
He briskly walked over with his gun out. I had no idea where the fuck my gun was. After all, I had hit the transportation vehicle so hard—I was surprised my pants stayed on.
“Huh. Usually, it’s the other way around.” His chuckle was muffled through the mask. Rocks was about as smart as a sack full of his namesake, but that didn’t matter because he was efficient at his job. He was given the name because he was sent to jail for killing two men with just a palm-sized chunk of granite. That had been club business that had got him caught, not that he minded.
Rocks was loyal to the MC to a fault.
“Nothing personal, bro.” His thick eyebrows furrowed downward with inevitability of what came next. He raised his gun. “Deadeye’s orders.”
“Yeah.” I rolled over, struggling to get the words out. Breathing was so difficult, I must’ve had cracked some ribs. But it was a good thing we were riding relatively slowly, or else I would’ve been paste. For all that mattered now. I pushed through the pain and struggled to my knees. “Make it clean. We got kids watching.”
“Freeze—” A ballsy security guard from the bank across the street barely got the word out before catching a bullet in the throat. He dropped, wheezing and clutching his neck. For a man who liked getting his hands dirty, Rocks was a hell of a shot and fast, too, as he had been able to turn, line up the shot, and fire before the guard could do anything.
There was a renewed round of screaming on the bus as the kids watched in horror. The bus driver was shouting at the elementary-aged kids to hit the floor, but most just stared at the devastation, too afraid to move.
“Naw, shit! Sorry, kids!” Rocks apologized through his black mask, then the turned back to me. “I wanted to let you say some last words, but looks like we gotta do this quick. When you get to Hell, keep my seat warm for m—”
Out of nowhere, a tan, four-door sedan plowed right over Rocks.
His head whipped forward against the road like a watermelon on a rope. Then he immediately disappeared under the chassis of the car with several bone-splintering crunches. The mangled wreck that came out the ot
her side was wet and at all the wrong angles. A mockery of the human form. Rocks probably clung to life for a few seconds, but it truly was a hopeless scenario.
I guess he’d be beating me to Hell after all.
The car came to a screeching stop, and the passenger door was kicked open. The driver’s hazel eyes were something out of a dream.
Was that Star?
“Get in!” she cried with equal parts horror and excitement.
“Take the I-25 onramp!” I unsteadily climbed to my feet, grabbed Rock’s gun, and threw myself into the car. She took off before I could even get the door shut.
How the hell was Star even here? And she just killed someone... Whose car was this? We both rattled off questions, but I had too much trouble following anything said. It was only when the adrenaline started wearing off that I realized how much hitting that bus really fucked my brain up.
Was this all just a dead man’s dream?
My peripheral vision faded to grey, then blackness took me.
Chapter Four
…
Star
Holy shit! I just killed a man!
The words buzzed around my head like a mosquito. Murder was so heavy and foreign to me that I didn’t know how to deal with it. I pushed it away as much as I could, but I might as well have been fighting against the tide. The big waves would crash eventually, and I was already starting to feel sick.
But nearly sick enough. And that worried me.
The scenery blurred as I absently drove, passing cars on the highway like they were parked. Remy’s chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. I had no idea how bad his injuries were, and talking to him now was useless. The fingertips of my right hand lightly traced the hard lines of Remy’s chest and abs through a ridiculous, crimson red, collared hotel uniform shirt.