Grumbler's Ride: Satan's Devils MC San Diego #2

by Manda Mellett

  He stares at it as though it’s a poisonous snake, then tentatively reaches out to take it. His grip isn’t firm, allowing me to take the opportunity to show him I might be old, but my strength hasn’t gone.

  “Give me your cell, and I’ll call you when I’ve got the models lined up.”

  Rattling off the number I know by heart, I wait until I’m sure that he’s got it. Then I don’t dally, starting the engine, kicking down into first, and pulling away with a loud roar of my exhaust.

  On the way back to the clubhouse, I’m grinning. If this comes off, there might be some easy money for me in it. I take my hand off the clutch and stroke the tank of my baby. After all, she’ll be doing all the work if you can call it that. All she’ll need to do is sit there and look pretty. And boy, she can certainly do that.

  Chapter Two

  Grumbler

  “Moving to the next point for discussion. Alder.” Lost, our prez, looks around at all the members gathered in church. “Those loose ends we thought might be hanging? Well, Utah assures me there’s nothing more to worry about. I’m tempted to now remove this item from the agenda.”

  “While we might not want to discuss it weekly at church, we should still keep our ears and eyes open.” Wearing my sergeant-at-arms hat, I look out for all the members of the club, and that includes old ladies. “I’m not sure I trust our Mormon brothers.”

  Dart, the VP, barks a laugh. “They’re based in Utah, that doesn’t mean they’re Mormon.”

  I shrug, reserving judgement about anything to do with that club. Whatever that chapter is, they aren’t normal, or not like us anyway. We’d always thought they weren’t any different, but as it turned out, what we’d assumed had been wrong.

  That all came to light a few weeks back when Prez and the VP had flown to an emergency meeting in Utah called by Drummer, the mother chapter prez. When they’d returned, what they had to say had blown our minds.

  Our Utah brothers, who to my mind are lucky to be able to still call themselves that, have been pulling the wool over all the other Satan’s Devils’ chapters’ eyes. Having led us to believe they had no computer expert, or certainly not one the calibre of our guy, Token, the opposite was in fact true. More than that, technical expertise was the main focus of the chapter. Oh, and that comes along with a sideline of rescuing people who’d been kidnapped, together with putting an end to human trafficking wherever they found out about it.

  Topping that, their president was a double amputee and couldn’t ride a bike, not to mention, to hide that indigestible fact, his VP had swapped out his rag to make everyone else believe he was the prez when meeting other clubs.

  It hadn’t been a short-term deception. Instead, they’d been fooling all the other chapters for ten years.

  Once things had come to light, as deceit and lies so often will, Drummer had called a meeting of all the chapter prezes and VPs, and together they’d sorted the whole mess out, to theirs, if not my, satisfaction.

  Emotions had run high after Lost and Dart had returned and informed us of what had been discussed and what was agreed. Pip, the man who couldn’t ride, was relegated to being the club advisor, and Snatcher, who’d we thought was the prez all along, became that for real. Oh, and this one really sits in my craw—what I can’t understand is that they’d allowed a woman member, and she had become the fucking enforcer no less.

  I don’t care what her fucking capabilities are, no way are we allowing females into the San Diego club. Though apparently, Satan’s Devils regulations don’t prohibit it, just lead to the assumption we are a males-only MC. Women members? Over my dead fucking body comes to mind.

  Once we’d absorbed all that, there was more. The fucking icing on the cake was that the sniper who took Alder out, the man our prez had a very personal reason for wanting to question and had been robbed of the chance by the bullet to his head, was none other than Stormy, a member of the aforesaid Utah club.

  Alder had been after Patsy, Lost’s old lady now, but we didn’t know for what reason. In case there was anything that hadn’t died with the man, Lost had needed to learn what he could before he dispatched him to meet Satan. Was anyone else coming for Patsy?

  Stormy’s admittedly impressive head shot from a distance had stopped us getting answers that would give Prez and Patsy peace of mind.

  “What’s the news about Stormy?” Salem, our own enforcer, asks, as though he’s plucked the thought out of my head. Yeah, he too was robbed of a chance to put his skills to use. He also has no love for the man he’d never met.

  “Still in the wind,” Prez answers, his face grim.

  It had transpired that it wasn’t only us who had issues with Stormy, even his own chapter hadn’t been impressed with his behaviour. He’d gone rogue, had acted without his prez’s agreement, not once, but twice, causing a rift with the other chapters. He had to be punished.

  If left to me, he’d have been sent out in bad standing, but the assembled presidents and VPs at that meeting in Utah agreed that he was to indeed lose his patch, but would have a chance to regain it if he went back to being a prospect for six months and proved himself all over again. Oh, and a beatdown had been ordered as well, but before the sentence could be carried out, leaving behind his precious cut, Stormy had taken off on his bike and disappeared. No one has seen or heard from him since.

  “It’s been what, four weeks now?” Salem’s frowning. “What’s Snatcher doing about it?”

  Lost grimaces. “You’d think with all the tracking skills Utah has, they’d have been able to find him, but they can’t find a trace of the man. Snatcher’s losing his patience, but he’s giving him three months to get his head straight and still hopes he’ll come back. If he doesn’t put in an appearance and take his punishment like a man, he’s out bad.”

  Dart growls. “He’ll deserve it.”

  “Getting back to Alder.” Token raises his hand. “I got Utah’s man Duty to send me all the information they had. I’ve been through it a few times, and I think they’re right. Alder’s organisation died with him, and I concur Patsy is safe now.”

  This is good news. I like Lost’s old lady. She’s a good influence on the prez. He seems to have grown in self-confidence since she’s had his back. When I’d first met her, I had my doubts as to how she would settle into MC life, but she’s surprised me. She’s only a few years younger than me, will become a grandmother in a few months, but her outlook on life is youthful, if not downright surprising at times. She doesn’t blink an eye when Kink brings one of his ‘pets’ naked into the clubroom, she just laughs.

  “I’ll cross the item off the agenda.” Lost circles back to the suggestion he’d made a few minutes before, while breathing out a sigh of satisfaction. There can be no doubt about how much he feels for Patsy and wouldn’t want to lose her. “Any other business?”

  I glance around, hoping there’s not. It’s been a standard meeting. Updates from businesses have been given and discussed, Salem’s new premises for customising bikes is up, running and doing well now, the tattoo parlour’s gaining in reputation, the shop selling bike apparel has increased its profits and our bar is proving popular with weekend warriors and non-bikers alike. All good stuff. But if anyone raises their hand in this part of the meeting, it’s usually because something is off. Me? I’m all for a quiet life. Long may it continue.

  I glance across at Niran when no one speaks, I raise my chin to him. When I was injured and recovering, Niran had become my right hand, taking on my duties as sergeant-at-arms. We’d developed a good working relationship, and I rely on him a lot now. We’ve become good friends, though subject to jokes about only having two good legs between us. One of mine is fractionally shorter than it was before—the leg still aches and I need to favour it which give me at times a pronounced limp. But at least it’s flesh and blood. One of Niran’s is prosthetic. Saying that, though, even given his disability, Niran’s nimbler now than I ever was.

  Lost bangs the gavel. “Church is over,”
he declares.

  En masse, everyone stands and starts walking out of the meeting room, as normal with the predictable thing on their minds, getting a drink in their hands. I push myself up from the table, not surprised to see Niran waiting for me to stand.

  “I went through the inventory earlier. We’re looking good, Brother,” Niran enlightens me, and I’m glad he’s taken the stock check off my hands. Seems like we don’t need to order more ammunition right now. It’s worth keeping an eye on. Brothers use it for target practice most of the time and it’s not unusual to find more than a few rounds missing. The last time we used it in earnest was when we were shutting Alder’s operation down.

  “Thanks for doing that.” I give him a chin lift.

  “I’m trying to get the brothers to note what they take out, but I think herding cats would be easier.”

  I grumble at the laziness of my brothers as I follow the big Black guy out.

  Niran’s attention is soon caught by Pennywise, and as he wanders off in that direction. I make my way to the bar, having to wait while Connor, Patsy’s son and our new prospect, is run ragged trying to make sure drinks land in the right hands.

  “Whisky,” I tell him when I reach the front.

  He puts the bottle of beer he was going to hand me back down. Fuck knows why, but I feel like downing a Jack Daniels tonight. Raising my shot glass, I turn, sipping it gently, and take in the sights. Pearl, one of the sweet butts, is swinging around the stripper pole, and I take a few seconds to admire how her lessons with Alex, Dart’s old lady, have paid off. She’s elegant and so damn fucking sexy. Even an old man like me has to admire her skills as she continues to dance while gracefully stripping her skimpy clothes off. That part of the lesson I suspect, Alex hadn’t demonstrated.

  “Enjoying the sights, old man?”

  “Less of the old,” I snap at Eva. Eva’s an interesting girl, being a full-time nurse at the local hospital, and part-time club whore. She works both of her jobs enthusiastically. She’s got a son the same age as the VP’s, and somehow, while living apart, shares parenting amicably with her ex. I sometimes wonder how much he knows of her extra-curricular duties.

  “You want to go upstairs?” she asks in a sultry voice.

  She also knows my preference. I’m too ancient to show my skinny and less-than-perfect ass in public now. Although in days gone by, I was certainly not averse to giving a demonstration to my brothers, showing how satisfying a woman should be done. Nowadays though, I don’t have as much interest in getting off as I used to. Who am I kidding? Sometimes I can’t finish is the polite way of putting it, and the whores here don’t get me so hard anymore.

  During my many years at the club, I’ve seen club girls come and club girls go. For a while they join us, sharing their bodies, getting a bed and food for free, and seem to enjoy the loving they get from us bikers. But in the end, they all move on, their dreams of snagging their own old man always failing, as brothers don’t want anything permanent with someone who’s been biblically known by every male in sight. The result is that the club girls seem to be getting younger in direct correlation with how I’m growing old. Eva, who knows the score, who has more respect due to her profession, has stayed longer than most. She’s mid-thirties now, so when I want to shove my dick into a hole, it’s usually hers I go for without having to think I’m baby snatching, though, I can’t even remember the last time I’d been there. Cindy, Pearl and Tits are in their early twenties. I avoid them like the plague, as all they do is make me feel like a dirty old man.

  “Nah, not tonight, Eva.” I turn her down, but she isn’t surprised. Eva knows me well and takes no offence at my refusal.

  When I was younger, I used sex as a release on almost a daily basis. Now I don’t have the same need or urges anymore. A drink, a good conversation, maybe a game of pool or cards I find just as, if not more, satisfying. Of course, until recently, I spent most of my evenings whiling away the time with Smoker.

  Maybe I’ve just become bored with the easy pussy here.

  Prez, I notice, is deep in conversation with his old lady, his arm around her, holding her tight to him. As I take another sip of my whisky, I ponder how I never expected him to find his one.

  I’d already been in the club as a member for fifteen years or more when Snake had brought him back to the clubhouse. I’m not sure of the whole story there, or how the then VP had come across him, but the handle he’d already picked up had suited him. I’d never seen a man so lost. When I’d gotten to know him, I’d collected bits and pieces and put them together. That his business had failed was common knowledge, but that he'd been burned by a woman was not. Still, he proved himself as a prospect, and when Bird had died and Snake took the role of prez, no one was surprised to see Lost in the VP seat.

  Lost, I know, thinks Snake put him there so he could run the club while Snake carried out his more nefarious business. Maybe he did, maybe it just worked out that way. Snake had fooled us all, and so had a number of the other brothers. It’s down to Lost and Dart that we managed to pull ourselves back from the brink and keep going.

  It had been bad, the betrayal devastating, making more than one of us reconsider our future. For a time I’d thought I was going to have to start all over, even going so far as to revisit my old roots and see if there was anything there for me. I had reconnected with old friends, but that’s as far as it went. My problem was clear. I didn’t know how to exist outside of the MC world, so I’d been hoping there was another club or chapter of the Satan’s Devils who’d have me. In the end, thank fuck, that hadn’t been necessary. Somehow, we’d managed to put distrust behind us and move on. In my view, we’re a better club for it.

  The final piece of the puzzle for the prez was finding Patsy. If having an old lady is what you want, and in Lost’s case it seems to be, then he certainly got his reward. As an old lady for a prez, he couldn’t do better than her. And with her beside him, he’s put his self-doubts in his rearview.

  My chance of finding an old lady has long gone. When I was younger, I was all for the variety of pussy, never wanting to be tied down or having any desire to come home to that one special lady. If there was someone out there for me, well, I never found her, though I have to say I hadn’t gone looking. I’m staring at the big six zero coming up in three more birthday’s time and have long accepted I’ve been single this far, I’ll stay that way until I die. Not that I regret it, I’ve never pictured myself with a lady in my life and don’t expect I’ll change my mind now.

  Sex? Eva would provide that if I had a need for it. Food, I cook for myself, eat out, or see who’s cooking in the clubhouse that night. I’m not a cuddler, and even if I were, I’ve a pillow I can hold in my arms. Nah, I do alright. Still, it can’t be denied, Patsy’s put a smile on Lost’s face, much like the expression I wear when I set eyes on my bike.

  Knowing I need to get myself out of my head for a while, I leave the clubhouse, noting it’s a nice evening for a ride. I get on my bike and ease out of its parking spot, then head out of the compound and make my way down into the city.

  Chapter Three

  Grumbler

  It’s another glorious morning in San Diego, the sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere where you couldn’t ride all year around, Utah perhaps. I shudder, knowing I would hate it. The only bad thing about our climate is that it appeals to everyone, which is why Southern California is getting so fucking busy now. Traffic flowing freely on the freeways is a distant memory. Thank fuck I ride a bike and lane splitting is allowed, else I often think I’d never get anywhere.

  “What’s up with you, Brother?” Salem kicks out a chair and sits down opposite me, placing his coffee on the table.

  “Not a lot,” I answer honestly. I’m just letting a very edible breakfast of bacon and eggs digest, the cooking of which Patsy supervised. Under her tuition, the food in the clubhouse has taken a huge step forward. Eva’s cookery skills are okay, but
she’s not always around. As for the rest of the sweet butts, their food is only just edible. Dart’s woman isn’t around much, not since she’s had the baby, and tends to focus on her kids.

  “Where did you disappear to last night?”

  “Same as always, Brother. Out for a ride.” The truth, but maybe not all of it. It seems to suffice as he changes the subject.

  “Lost and Patsy are going out looking at houses.”

  At Salem’s announcement, I narrow my eyes. “Kind of got used to her living in the clubhouse.”

  “Chow’s improved, that’s for sure.” Salem grins. “Still, it shows he’s starting to believe no one’s after her anymore. Must be a relief for them both.”

  I can’t see what’s wrong with living at the clubhouse. Sure, I’ve got my own house, but I rarely visit it. It had seemed the right thing to do years back, but I admit, I feel lonely staying there. Fuck knows why I keep it, but the mortgage is paid off, so may as well hang onto it. Perhaps ready it for a time when I can no longer ride and need to leave the club, but hell, I’d prefer to go out with my boots on, and riding on my baby. Thinking of which I pose a question, “I’ll be heading down to the Harley store later, you want to come for a ride?”

  “Nah, I’ve got to finish up that custom build. The owner wants to pick it up this afternoon. And I don’t know why you’re bothering, you can’t fit anything else on that bike.”

  “Could still change something,” I tell him, while seriously thinking about it.

  “What are you two planning, world domination?” Pennywise comes over, puts his hand on my shoulder for a second, then moves over to Salem and slaps him none too gently on his back. It makes Salem’s coffee spill over the table.

  “Prospect!” Pennywise yells. “Clean this fuckin’ place up.” He points to the puddle of spilled beverage, and Connor comes over at a run. As any good prospect should, he cleans up the coffee carefully and with a smile.