Swiss shrugged, unnerved by the fact a man with a bloodstained knife was glaring at him and yelling at him. “She’s already witnessed a felony.”
Claw’s eyes bulged. “So why don’t we add more to the mix? It’s not fuckin’ Pokémon, you don’t catch ‘em all.”
I couldn’t help it, a hysterical giggle erupted from my lips.
Both men looked to me.
I had never lost my composure in the midst of a story. I hadn’t cried. Vomited. Screamed. Expressed sympathy. Anger. Disagreement. I certainly hadn’t laughed in front of two men, one captive—two if you counted me—and a dead body.
But something about Claw’s visceral anger, about the reference to Pokémon, of all things made me lose it.
Or I’d already lost it, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“You think this is funny?” Claw demanded, directing his fury at me. “Hansen’s gonna kill us, and if he doesn’t, Jagger sure as fuck will. No way he’s okay with you seeing this shit.” He jerked his head to the man hanging from the ceiling, the other gagged and bound to a chair next to him.
I finally yanked myself from Swiss’ grip. My arm protested, and I knew it’d bruise. What was a bruise, anyway? “I do not live my life according to what Jagger defines as ‘okay’ for me,” I snapped. His name was rancid on my tongue. “Swiss brought me here. I can’t unsee this.” I nodded my head in the direction of the dead man and the live one. “So I’ll observe it. Like Hansen said.”
Claw gritted his teeth with such force I thought his jaw might shatter. He finally relaxed enough to lift his cigarette up to his mouth and take a pull. His fingers and hands were stained with blood.
“Fuck,” he muttered, smoke wafting from his nostrils as he exhaled.
Swiss seemed to take this as agreement, and he walked over to a table littered with well-worn torture instruments. It was like that stupid close up in a horror movie when you’re presented with knives, forceps, and pliers to tell you all you need to know about the men who used them.
But this was not a horror movie, as much as it had seemed to start to resemble one.
The instruments on the table only worked to tell me things I already knew about the Sons of Templar. That they were ruthless. Held no mercy for anyone who crossed them. That they weren’t’ afraid to draw blood.
That cold fear slithered further up my throat with the knowledge I could’ve been just another stain on a long butcher’s knife if things had been different. But then again, every human being in the world was just one choice away from becoming a stain on the pavement. A body in the ground. Just another tragedy.
Claw stubbed out his smoke and walked over to the bound man. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, but he looked in much better shape than the man beside him.
“Now you’ve seen what happens when you don’t tell us what we need to hear,” Claw said, ripping the man’s gag off, jerking his head to the corpse. “It’s not pretty. And though it was fun for me, I promise you it wasn’t fun for him.” His voice had changed. Taken on something not entirely human. There was a lightness to it, that couldn’t be human when talking about torture and murder.
The man tied to the chair looked at him with an entirely inhuman look on his face. He was too young for such a look.
But I knew better than anyone that youth was the first casualty of war.
And as Liam had said that first night, this was a war.
Not one I was going to be walking away from unscathed.
But I was going to walk away. I had to.
After.
After I got the story.
From the club.
From Liam.
“Fuck you, biker scum,” the man spat.
Claw raised his eyebrow at Swiss. “That’s not a very polite way to talk to hosts, is it?”
Swiss shook his head. “Not polite at all, my friend.” He shrugged, wiping his blade on his jeans. “Some people aren’t brought up right, I guess.”
“It’s our duty, then, as scumbag bikers to teach him some manners, I’d assume?” Claw asked.
Swiss nodded, eyes darkening as he moved forward, snatching the man’s head and yanking it back so he exposed his neck. The flat of the blade laid against it. “Yes, it’s time for manners.”
He let his head go, and instead of making a cut into a part of his neck as I expected him too, he grabbed the man’s hand and sliced off his finger. It was an expert, practiced stroke.
The man screamed as blood poured from the wound.
Swiss regarded the finger for a second, then discarded it, as Claw had with his smoke.
It was the casual brutality that jarred me, not the brutality itself.