Hard Rider

“Call me what I am, son,” he said. “You’re tryin’ to hold onta me, and I do think it sweet. But you listen to your old man. For once. You listen to me. And you mind me.”

“Blade,” I turned to the man who would become our leader, the highest ranking Crusader present. “Tell them that’s a damn foolish offer.”

Blade was silent for a long time, and each second had my heart dropping further and further into my chest.

“It’s a noble one,” he finally said. ‘And we’re gonna take it, Cross.”

I could hear Boon and Eagle release audible sighs of relief. I could have clocked ‘em. I could have clocked my father, for that matter. I didn’t want to see him fall. After so many years of servin’ Dutch, to think that he might die at his hands…

“We ain’t debatin’ anymore,” Lip said, calling an end to the whole thing. Before I could speak another word. “We’re ridin’.”

The sound of the Blackhawks revvin’ up broke through the pre-dawn silence. Birds that had just started tweeting fell silent, or were overpowered by the rage of thirty bikes all starting up at once. Our little band of Crusaders – the last true Crusaders – joined in.

Grinder gave me one last look, his eyes stern but his mouth soft, before he started down the road, the old guard coming up behind him. Blade motioned for me to follow him just behind, and I had no choice then but to do just that. The Blackhawks brought up the rear. We rode tight and hard into the morning, breaking into Cutter city limits just as the sun started rising.

Bex

The closest thing in grabbing distance was the bedside lamp, so that’s what I grabbed. For one awful, long moment, the cord snagged, and I was sure that it would stick and I’d be empty handed. But then it popped free with a spark, and I was on my feet. If whoever was on the stairs made it to the top before me, it’d be game over, and from the creak of the stairs it seemed like they were halfway up.

I ran like the devil through the door, into the hallway, to the top of the stairs, and didn’t look twice before hurling the glass lamp at the figure on the stairs. A bullet just barely missed my arm as it lodged itself in the wall behind me, but the lamp did its job: shattering on the intruders head, it forced her down the stairs with a high-pitched and angry screech. She landed on her ass at the base of the stairs, the gun clattering away from her hand, blood running in a thick rivulet down her face.

I knew that face.

Sylvia.

I didn’t have two seconds to think about how she’d found me or what she was doing there – the second answer was obvious enough, at least. I took the stairs two at a time, sliding down the last two and scratching the shit out of my calf. Sylvia screeched again, clawed at my ankle, but her fingers couldn’t latch and I was sprinting into the kitchen. I glanced over my shoulder once before grabbing my bag; she was going for the gun again.

This stupid fucking bag.

She had the gun in her hand before I could get my own from the black hole at the bottom of the purse, and I half-slid into the only shelter I could see, crouching behind the wooden divider that separated the kitchen from the living room. The cold steel of my Beretta touched my fingers and I pulled it free, unlatching the safety at the same time.

Did she know? She didn’t know. She didn’t know I had the gun, and that would be the only thing that saved me. I could hear her, cursing and stumbling; but she seemed to regain her composure soon enough. I waited, heart threatening to break through my ribs, for her to shoot, for her to walk into the kitchen and shoot me down like a pig raised for bacon…

Things went silent. I couldn’t hear her walking anywhere. I wished I could see her, poke my head around the divider and figure out what she was doing. But that’d be inviting death, and I wasn’t in the mood for taking a bullet between the eyes.

Sylvia had never been a very talkative woman; not, at least, to me. She was always whispering in Dutch’s ear, but I hardly ever heard her say more than two sentences to anyone else, myself included. That day, she talked more than she had in the past two months combined. Apparently, Sylvia had quite a mouth on her; she just saved it for special occasions.

I nearly jumped clear to the ceiling when something big and heavy flew past the divider, landing on the kitchen floor in front of me. The leathers landed patch-up. I could read the rocker saying Prospect. It didn’t mean a god damn thing to me, until she said his name.

“I want you to know exactly what your traitorous ass did,” she hissed. “Probably got half the club killed, for one. And it definitely killed Hunter. If you hadn’t opened your cock-hole to Cross, he wouldn’t have been pressing the kid for answers, and we wouldn’t have had to put a hole in his head and dump his body in the river. Someday, you’re gonna meet his mother in hell, and have to explain why her baby boy is rotting in the water, while she pisses fire into your eyes.”

“You’re a psychotic bitch,” I hissed, daring her to come closer now. Let her find me. I had a bullet with her name on it. And now I had the anger to erase my fear. “I didn’t do shit. You and Dutch have doomed this club…”

“You and that man of yours,” Sylvia clucked. “Small time. You’re small time. You’re a small time cunt, and he’s a small time coward.”

I heard a footstep, then another. My fingers curled around the trigger, the safety already off. My fingers were slick with sweat, and I bit my lip, the pain designed to keep me from shaking and firing too soon. I needed her not to know about my gun. That was the only way I could win this game.

“Me and Dutch? We’re big time. We’re gonna change this city. We’re gonna run it. And the first thing we’re gonna do? We’re gonna get rid of every lying, two-faced, worthless stripper dumb enough to cross us. And their stupid, small time boyfriends.”

The footsteps advanced, and I moved slightly, coming as close to the edge of the divider as I dared.

“You know why I hate you, Bex? You know what it is about you that makes me sick? You know why I told Dutch that I’d come here and blow your brains out myself?”

I didn’t want to know. I didn’t give a shit.

“It’s because you’re weak,” she said, and now her voice was close enough for the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. This was it. Either she’d shoot first, or I would. Either she’d be dead, or I would.

And I wasn’t planning on dying.

“You’re weak. Your man controls you. You should control your man. You give women a bad fuckin’ name. You make me ashamed to have a pussy. Women like you. Strippers, whores, weak little mice…”

“I’m not a fucking stripper,” I cried, all my anger boiling to a point as her words infected my mind. Nothing but rage was going through my mind as I shot to my feet, aiming right at her chest and firing twice. Sylvia’s eyes went wide, but she kept her gun steady enough to shoot; unfortunately for her, she stumbled backward at the same time, and her shot hit the toaster behind me.

“And even if I was,” I said, advancing on her as her knees gave out and blood bloomed across her chest. “At least I wouldn’t be a conniving, gold-digging bitch.”

She gurgled something that could have been a response. Something flashed in her eyes, a last spark of defiance. I watched her hand rise, slowly, the gun shaking. She was on her knees, until falling back onto her heels. I stepped to the side as she shot, the bullet hitting nothing but the ceiling.

It took her a long time to die.

Cross

Blade, Eagle, Boon and I

parked our bikes around the corner; we needed to be able to sneak behind the firefight, around the clubhouse to the kitchen window. Armed with Molotov cocktails, two apiece, we waited behind the small copse of trees that made a ring around the clubhouse parking lot. I could see activity behind the windows on both floors. Dutch and his boys were ready for us. I hadn’t expected any less.

A slow-burning roar of engines rolled down the street towards us; I turned to watch the procession. Eleven old men, on eleven old bikes, riding into a warzone. Brave as any young blood. Braver, because they surely knew the chances of coming out alive. Arthritic or not, they were saving all our asses.

My father was in the lead. As the noise reached the men in the clubhouse, I watched windows creak open, shapes behind the curtains, gun barrels raised and readied. My stomach was a cold pit. As Grinder rode into view, I swear he looked right at me, and gave me a two-finger salute. My father, who’d once been Sergeant, performing his duty one more time.

And man oh man, did he perform that duty well.

The gunfire started as soon as he and the rest of the old guard peeled into the parking lot, both sides firing, bullets slamming into the clubhouse’s dirty shingles, piercing tires, slamming through leathers. But my father? He didn’t pull his gun. He didn’t even stop his hog. He angled his Harley straight for the clubhouse’s front door, revved the engine, and barreled forward.

The front door gave in a terrible crash of splinters, the gunfire slowing for a split second, my father disappeared into the heart of the battle. I watched at least one of the men at the windows crumple to the side, violently, his gun blasting once before flying out of sight.

“Now,” Blade grunted, our path carved by my father’s distraction and the men who still fired on the clubhouse, now shielding themselves behind their bikes or pressing themselves against the house where they were hidden from view. We ran; first staying behind the trees, then cutting through the open lot. The morning was cold and bright and felt wrong, filled as it was with the sound of screaming and gunfire. And it smelled like gun smoke; choking, acrid gun smoke.