by Aiden Bates
“Watch them!” I snapped to Gunnar, and turned my back on the two Vipers to face the newcomers.
Ten Vipers climbed off their bikes. All wore patched leather jackets, and a few had weapons gleaming menacingly in their hands: knives, brass knuckles, even a crowbar. About half wore bandanas tied across the lower halves of their faces decorated with a snake’s open, fanged mouth.
“What’s the word, boss?” Siren snapped from the other side of our circle.
“Hold it!” I said.
“Well, how ya doing there, Blade?” The vice president of Viper’s Nest stepped forward, offering his dinner plate-sized hand for a handshake. The patch on his worn leather jacket verified his status. I’d never met Bane, but I knew him the same way I knew all the senior members of Viper’s Nest: from their reputations. I glowered at him and snapped my knife open and closed a few times.
“Fine then,” Bane said. He towered over the rest of the Vipers, making them look shrunken and tired compared to his bulk. “No pleasantries, then. I was trying to make it easier on you.”
“You’re on my turf, Bane. Choose your words carefully.”
“Ooh, scary.” Bane grinned at the Vipers, who laughed flat and dutifully. “I bet you’re wondering how I managed to turn the tables on you. Want to know how we figured out your cute little setup?”
“Not particularly,” I deadpanned. I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of getting a rise out of me. I wondered, though. I had been so sure the trap was clean.
Bane laughed, causing a ripple through the Vipers as they all echoed his laughter. When he stopped, they all stopped immediately as well.
“Fuckin’ creepy,” Gunnar muttered.
“You’ve got a pest problem at the Hell’s Ankhor clubhouse,” Bane said. “A little mole.”
My blood froze in my veins.
The enforcers with me exchanged worried looks. Gunnar stood tense and still.
Could it really be? I cursed myself. Now that it was right in front of me, it was so fucking obvious. I had purposefully ignored the warning signs, but it had all been too convenient. Logan’s car breaks down the same time the drugs appear. The obvious secrets. The weird phone call he wouldn’t talk about… How many phone calls had I missed? Even the scars could be from fights, not abuse. How could it all be coincidental?
And it didn’t matter what a background check pulled up if there was nothing for the background check to find because it had been covered up.
Just as I thought my chest would burst from panic and anger, one of the Vipers shouldered through the rest of the group, his deep-set brown eyes gleaming. He pulled the snake’s mouth bandana under his chin, revealing a flat, familiar nose and a grin.
“Hey, boss,” Jed said. “Pretty good party, wouldn’t you agree?”
Bane clapped Jed on the back. “Old Jed’s been rising through the ranks around here fast!”
“Months, Blade,” Jed said. “I’ve been giving the Vipers information for months.”
Shame hit me in the stomach like a physical blow, even more so for the relief I felt at the confirmation that it hadn’t been Logan. How could I have let a high-level member compromise the safety of the club for months? Under my nose, he’d been slipping information to the Vipers—he’d threatened me, attacked me, and I’d just let it slide because I’d been too soft on him, too willing to give him second and third chances. To make matters worse, when he’d disappeared, I hadn’t tracked him down well enough. I’d been distracted, trying to get Logan closer and closer. And on top of all that, I’d doubted Logan, who’d never given me any true reason to think such a thing. Who’d done nothing but help us since he’d arrived.
No more. It was time to step up and be the president Ankh and Priest trusted me to be.
“I knew you were too much of a bitch to enforce your territory’s borders,” Jed continued. “You’re too warm and fuzzy with everybody. Too concerned that everyone is having a good time instead of keeping the club powerful. Too distracted by your little fuck toys. This is prime fuckin’ territory, man! This is the crossroads of every major city in California, and the intersection of nearly every club that’s worth a damn. And you’re sitting here fucking wasting all that potential!”
Bane nodded. “See? He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”
Shame turned to rage.
“The Viper’s Nest has the right idea with what to do with this territory,” Jed said. “More dealings. More money. Everybody wins.”
That slimy, selfish motherfucker. He’d seen everything that this club represented: he’d seen Ankh and Priest build it from a small group of misfits into a vast family. He’d seen the purchase of the clubhouse and the growth of Ankhor Works. He’d seen Raven grow up and Gunnar climb the ranks. And he’d been with all of us those dark weeks after Ankh died. He’d seen all that—and still he betrayed us to the Viper’s Nest. He was practically spitting on Ankh’s legacy, and doing so with such nonchalance that I couldn’t stand it. With a wordless roar, I flipped my knife into an overhand grip and lunged at him.
The parking lot exploded into violence.
Jed thrashed violently beneath me. I pinned him to the gravel and snarled as I slammed my fist into his nose, breaking it easily. Blood poured from the wound and Jed wailed.
Bane grabbed the back of my jacket and ripped me bodily off Jed. His fist slammed into my gut, knocking the wind out of me; dizzily, I stumbled backward, bones vibrating from the impact. Bane stalked towards me, his hands in loose fists. A move meant to intimidate me. Stupid. Treating me like some kid who’d never been in a fight. I rushed him, cut a sharp angle with my feet and then brought my elbow down hard across his face. His cheekbone cracked under the impact and his nose bowed sideways. A howl ripped wet and bloody from his throat.
Jed tried to stand, lifting himself weakly up onto his elbows. I slammed my foot into his ribs and he dropped back down. Jed moaned weakly, rolling into the fetal position.
“Fucker,” I gasped. “Traitor.”
“Your anger’s a little misdirected,” Bane growled. Blood ran freely from his nose. He spit a mouthful of it onto the gravel. “Any president worth his salt would’ve caught him ages ago.”
“You let a traitor into your ranks,” I hissed. “You know what a good president does with traitors?”
Bane leveled me with his eyes and pulled a knife from his jacket. Between us, Jed was moaning in the gravel, blood pouring from his face.
With my eyes fixed on Bane, I kicked Jed in the back of the skull. The bone cracked under my steel toe.
Jed stopped moving.
I should’ve done it long ago. I should never have let him out of my sight.
Coop whooped from the center of the tussle. The two Vipers who had been the first to arrive were prone in the dirt at his feet.
“Wrench,” Maverick said, and Coop tossed Maverick’s wrench back to him.
Maverick grasped the wrench around a Viper’s neck and got him in a rough headlock, choking him until his eyes rolled back. Two other Vipers, one with a broken arm and another with a broken leg, were crawling in the gravel, dragging themselves away from Siren. The air was thick with the coppery smell of blood and sweat.
We were holding our own.
“Gunnar!” Tex called. He liberated a crowbar from a Viper and tossed it to Gunnar, who caught it and then brought it down hard across another Viper’s face.
“You sure you want to keep dancing?” I said.
“You think I’m a bitch?” Bane lunged straight at me, stepping carelessly over Jed’s body.
I sidestepped his attack easily and slammed my knife full-force into his shoulder. Bane howled. I twisted the knife and pulled it out. Blood poured from the wound, staining his jacket dark and sticky. His arm slumped to the side, useless. I wrenched the arm behind his back and he screamed. With my knife to his throat, I hissed in his ear: “Run home. Tell the Vipers I’m coming.”
21
Logan
I dumped an entire box of b
lueberries into batter I’d prepared and began to slowly fold them into the mixture.
The waiting was killing me. I’d done all the nonsense tasks I could think of—cleaning the already spotless house, channel-surfing, sorting Blade’s record collection by artist and release date. I should’ve been asleep hours ago, but there wasn’t any point in trying. I’d moved on to baking, just for something to occupy my hands as the night stretched on without any sign of Blade.
Priest had asked me to hang out at the clubhouse with him, but I’d declined. I didn’t need Priest to take care of me—I didn’t need to be babied whenever club business arose. In the past, when my dad had left to handle club business, I only cared about his return because it usually meant I’d get knocked around; when he’d gone out, part of me hoped he wouldn’t come back. But I wanted Blade to come back, more fiercely than I’d wanted anything in a very long time. And, selfishly, I wanted us to be alone when he returned, not in the clubhouse with all the other members.
Besides, if I wanted a relationship with Blade, I’d have to get used to this new, all-consuming worry. I would, eventually. I was resilient. But it was so new. Anxiety gnawed at me.
I began to scoop the batter spoonful by careful spoonful into the pan.
Behind me, the door clicked open. He was back, and even earlier than he’d anticipated. The plan must have gone well; relief flooded me.
But before I could turn around, a blinding pain shot through my skull. My vision went white. Then darkness.
Dizziness.
How much time had passed?
Nausea. Unconsciousness. Lost time. I was concussed.
I blinked my eyes open. Above me the fluorescent lights exacerbated my pounding headache. I rolled my head to one side to try to stay in the darkness.
Where was I?
I was slumped in a straight-backed chair. Concrete beneath my feet. Cold. I wiggled my arms and legs slightly. They were unbound. They all worked. That was good, no spinal injuries. I reached up and checked the back of my head gingerly. There was a swollen knot there, and my fingers came back gooey with old blood.
“Paddy, you’re awake!” The deep, cigarette-roughened voice was familiar. Familiar like the throbbing of a long-healed wound when a storm is arriving.
From the shadows my father emerged.
Ice-cold terror flooded me. I tried to scoot my chair backward but in my weakness my feet just scrabbled against the concrete.
My father clasped his hands at his belt buckle like a promise. His crooked nose was ruddy from his perpetual drinking, and sweat gleamed on his face and balding head.
“Nice work, son.” He paced the room leisurely, like a bored tiger in its enclosure at the zoo. “I really thought you were onto something with this whole plan. For a second there, I thought you were gonna finally show up for the Nest after all we’ve done for you. I was just about ready to forgive everything and patch you into the club.”
I could hardly breathe through the paralyzing fear constricting my chest.
“Seducing the president. Now there’s a strategy. See, I thought they’d like ya ’cause you’re a queer, just like the rest of them, but you really pulled out all the stops. When I told you to get close, I didn’t think you’d get bodily fluids close. Hell of a way to gain trust.” Crave’s grin didn’t reach his eyes. “But lucky for me, I got an inside man. Good ol’ Jed.”
Jed? What the hell did Jed have to do with anything? Sure, he’d hated me since he’d laid eyes on me at Ballast, and he’d clearly had it out for Blade, but I never would have guessed he’d been working for the Nest. But then, through the fuzz of my concussion, a faded memory surfaced: Jed had been one of the Vipers in the hospital that day I’d been fired. There were so many of them that day, and my attention had been focused on managing the injured one and avoiding my father’s rage—I hadn’t paid Jed any attention. He’d just been another man in the background.
God, I was an idiot. My head tipped forward, chin falling to my chest.
“And what Jed told me really surprised me, Paddy. He told me it wasn’t a ruse. That you were fucking the president for real. ‘Falling’ for him.” Crave made a noise of disgust. “Thought I raised you better than that.”
I chuckled to myself softly; then, like I was caught in its current, the chuckle became a laugh. I was going to die here. I really thought I’d gotten away. And here I was, back where I’d started, only worse, and now he was going to kill me. Funny, how cyclical life could be. And dear old Dad was right. Even though I should have known better, I had fallen for Blade.
For Byron.
The sweet pressure of his lips on my neck this morning with his strong arms wrapped around my waist. He was forever pulling me close to him, shielding me. With my eyes closed, I could almost smell his leather-and-sandalwood scent and hear his boisterous, booming laugh.
Whatever happened now, at least I’d gotten to meet Blade. After Mom’s death, Crave had made me believe I would never know love again. I’d expected the world to just grind me down until there was nothing left. But I was wrong.
What I had with Blade—maybe it was fleeting. Maybe it ended now, as my father cut my throat. But my father didn’t get to control me anymore. He didn’t get to control my freedom.
My father grabbed me roughly by the chin and jerked my head up. “You think this is funny, boy?”
I had nothing to lose anymore. I was done cowing to my father. No matter the consequences, he wasn’t going to paralyze me anymore. I didn’t belong to him anymore.
I belonged to Blade. And I chose Blade, even if he wouldn’t choose me back after this was all said and done.
“Sure,” I said. “I think you’re funny. A sad little shadow of a man. You think you know how to lead but you’re just bumbling around with a lost group of addicts wanting to feel tough. It’s pitiful. Hell’s Ankhor is going to wipe this shit-stain of a club off the face of the earth.”
Crack.
His backhand shot sharp pain vibrating through my skull. My teeth sliced into my tongue and the rich coppery tang of blood filled my mouth. Then, heat, the tingling sensation of swelling. I tipped my head forward, blood dripping from my mouth, frothy with saliva.
“You think so? You think your little ragtag group of spineless idiots can stand up to the Vipers? You always were the stupid one.” Crave straightened up, then grabbed my head by the hair and jerked me up to meet his eyes. The wild, bloodshot look in his eyes was familiar—gut-churningly familiar. I saw it in my nightmares. “Pathetic. Can’t even take a hit like you used to, boy. Gone soft.”
I met his eyes. I wouldn’t let him see the fear.
“I never should’ve trusted you with an important job like this,” Crave said. “Should’ve known you’d let me down. Pathetic. But, not fully a lost cause yet. We Vipers, you know, we’re resourceful. One dealer lost—that’s nothing. Just a drop in the bucket. I’ve got dealers coming out my ears. And maybe they figured out the drugs were laced. Still, not the end of the world. My chem guys are always making fun new concoctions to test. So while your boys were getting all riled up and ready to fight, they left you undefended. And of course you’re too weak to protect yourself. It was the perfect time for us to grab you.” Crave grinned. “And if my enforcers haven’t killed them all, I’d bet my bike the stragglers will come to find you. And I’ll kill them as well. Crush that club like the infestation it is.”
Oh, God.
What if—
The human body was fragile. Fragile in ways tough, angry bikers didn’t think about or realize. It was easy to kill, easier to die. All it would take would be a slash across the carotid artery in the neck, or a simple impalement to the femoral artery in the thigh. Maybe a Viper tackled Blade and slammed his head into the pavement, right at the soft spot on the cervical spine. Broken femur, shattered pelvis. Strangulation. Gunshot. All it would take would be one moment of surprise. One wrong choice.
For any of them. Blade, Coop, Gunnar, Siren—any of them could be hemorrhag
ing in the dirt somewhere.
I tried to stand. My father brought his hand down across my face again, an open-palmed slap that cracked against my jaw. I gurgled through a moan, more blood spilling from my mouth.
“Rebel! Restrain him until we’re ready for him.”
From the shadows of the room, a man stepped forward, tall and lean with narrow shoulders like mine, my same cheekbones, my same brown hair, but with my father’s eyes.
My brother. Holy shit. It’d been years—I hadn’t seen him since before I started school. Luke wasn’t wearing Viper leather, just jeans and a black long-sleeve shirt, like he could be any normal guy out in San Francisco. Why was he here? Why was he letting Dad do this? He’d always been more involved with the Vipers, but part of me always thought he’d come to his senses and get out. Thought he had, in the years I hadn’t seen him. Apparently I was wrong.
Crave swung his arm around Luke’s shoulder and gave him a rough, affectionate shake. Luke cast his eyes to the floor but didn’t shrug him off. “Rebel here’s been a real asset to the club, Paddy. You’d be wise to get some advice from him. Your stay here will be a little easier if you behave for once in your fucking life.” He left the warehouse, smacking a pack of cigarettes against his palm.
In the deafening silence it was just me and Luke, alone in the shadow of our father, just like when we were kids.
“Hey,” I said, my words thick in my mouth around the bleeding. “Luke.”
Luke said nothing. He approached slowly and grabbed my chin, just as my father had. But his touch was different. Gentler. He turned my head side to side slowly, carefully touching the swelling in my cheeks with the pads of his fingers.
“Nothing’s broken,” I said. “If that’s what you’re looking for. And I still have all my teeth.” I sniffed hard, sucking blood from my nose where it ran hot and sickening down my throat. “Not that you would care.”
Still silent, Luke released me and then stepped behind me, taking my wrists and stacking them on top of each other. He fastened them with a zip tie, keeping it lose enough so the thin plastic didn’t cut into my skin.