Devil's Advocate: Vlad (The Bedlam Horde MC Book 1)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  One of the Tennessee men rips a trail of bullets across the forecourt through the gate. I watch in horror as one of my brothers goes down. No. No. I can’t tell who it is yet, but the men fighting here stood with me and my lieutenants as we took on Rage.

  I take my aim. Hold my breath and fire. The automatic rifle hits the street at the same time he does, but it’s not enough. When Rage moved on us—he fucking moved. He’s got what looks to be the entire Tennessee chapter behind him, along with whatever brothers didn’t go down at the farm.

  There’s no way with the brothers we have left for us to fight off their numbers and stand a shot at winning.

  “Fuck,” I mumble, hating myself for what I’m about to do. This bloodbath has to end and there’s only one way I can see to get it done. I hope my brothers forgive me then say a quick prayer to the universe that this goes my way before lowering my weapon to pull my phone from my pocket and dial 911.

  “911, what’s your emergency?” the dispatch asks.

  “The Bedlam Horde compound, off Long Furnace Road, is under attack.”

  “I’m sorry?” she asks. “Under attack?”

  “Tennessee Horde. Automatic weapons. Bullets flying. It’s a warzone. We need help.”

  “Horde are attacking Horde?” As I just told her this, I hope it’s for clarification and not that I’ve lost at life roulette by getting the dispatch dim bulb on the line. I hear the clicks as her fingers move quickly across the keyboard.

  “Been trying to clean up the club. Pushback. Help.” That last gets shouted as I narrowly escape death from a bullet flying way too close to my head, forcing me to move to block my whole body with the tree again.

  “Units are en route. Hold the line.”

  “I can’t hold the line. Men are dying.”

  “Please, sir—”

  “Tell them my men are inside the gates. We’re trying to hold the men outside back. Don’t hurt the men on the inside.” I hang up, take aim, and fire off another shot. It’s a hit, but not a kill.

  Waves of blood crash against the street and tarmac as the cries of men become as prevalent as the gunfire. An eternity passes before the first echoes of sirens pierce the veil of war blanketing the compound.

  Swarms. There are swarms of police vehicles. Men in heavy combat gear flood the surrounding properties.

  As I take in all the bodies, Rage’s men and mine, littering the ground, they want my patch, they can have it because at least my brothers will be breathing while they take it.

  The Tennessee Horde and Rage’s men split their firepower between my men and the mobilized army of police officers who just keep moving on us. They start to scatter in retreat, being chased down and rounded up or shot dead when they refuse to drop their weapons.

  My phone vibrates. Reaper. “Where are you? Police,” he shouts.

  “I’m here. Property left of the compound. Where are you?”

  “I came in from the property on the left. Ran to the back—took out some men trying to circle around. Climbed the security fence. Now I’m inside.”

  “How? The fence is electrified.”

  “I didn’t say it didn’t hurt, only that I made it inside alive.”

  Thank Christ. The man’s fucking crazy, and now I have to find out from this crazy man if I’m not only losing my club, but my brothers. I suck in a breath, hesitate for a moment longer, then do what needs to be done. “I called the police,” I confess.

  There’s a moment of heavy silence right before Reap lays me out. “Good call,” he says. “That’s why we voted you in as president.”

  If I had time to consider his easy acceptance, I’d be pretty stunned but the din of gunfire begins to diminish as the police gain the upper hand. It’s time to move out. “Tell the men to drop their weapons,” I order Reap. “All those Horde cuts, they’re liable to get dead.”

  “Vlad’s orders,” he yells to our men. “Drop your weapons. Let the cops handle it from here.”

  The cops continue to shout. I leave the protection of my tree, jogging over to the mess of men on their knees, some resting in pools of blood. More sirens in the distance have to be paramedics coming to help the wounded.

  “Halt!” an officer shouts at me, and I do, slowly lifting my hands above my head.

  “I’m Vlad. Kentucky chapter president. I’m the one who called.”

  Another officer moves to the first’s side, pointing his weapon at me. “You can get onto the compound?” he barks at me.

  “Yes. But I have to pull my phone from my pocket to call my man on the inside to open the gate.”

  While one officer keeps his rifle trained on my head, the other jogs over to me to pull my cell from my pocket. He pats me down, as expected, removing my gun from the holster. “I have a permit. Conceal and carry.”

  He confiscates the firearm, as I knew he would, but allows me to call in to Reaper once again.

  Because we had so much illegal shit going on under Rage, the club had upgraded to a state-of-the-art security system a couple of years ago. This included the electrified fencing system and gate controlled from a security panel inside the security room in the clubhouse.

  Unfortunately for Rage, he wasn’t smart enough to learn their functional operations. The men who know are on our side.

  We kept with the old ways, maintaining a visible guard on the gate, because that’s usually enough to deter unwanted visitors. Clearly, today it wasn’t. I bet he never thought a security system would be the thing to bite him in the ass.

  The gate rolls open. Police flood the compound. All my men are on their knees, fingers linked at the backs of their heads.

  Guns drawn, the cops shout at my men. “On your belly… On your belly…”

  The brothers comply without hesitation. Roughneck gets a knee to the back as an officer begins to cuff him. “What are you doing?” I shout. “He’s one of mine. The men inside called you.”

  One of the cops catches me in the jaw with his fist. “Shut it. Now.”

  Fuck, that hurt. Another cop—or hell, it could be the same dickwad—shoves me down to my knees by the back of my neck. I go down because I don’t want to die or spend my life in prison for taking him out permanently.

  I’ll be damned if some young punk in uniform doesn’t jog over to where we’re waiting to be cuffed. “Got a call from Sgt. Tommy Doyle of the Thornbriar PD,” he says.

  “Sgt. Doyle, good man,” the dick with his knee to my back answers.

  “Yeah, well, he heard the call go out over band. Says he’s been workin’ with the Kentucky Horde to clean up the club like they did for the Lords over in Thornbriar. Been keepin’ their noses clean. If any of ’em have warrants out or illegal firearms, we obviously take ’em, but I guess one of the men here called him after they called us. They were under attack. Says he personally vouches for the Kentucky club.”

  “The fuck does that mean? They’re all Horde scum,” the dick responds.

  The young punk shrugs. “Look at the cuts. They say Kentucky, he’s askin’ out of professional courtesy for us to let ’em go.”

  Another cop stands to remove his knee from one of my brothers’ backs. “Known Tommy Doyle for years. He’s a decorated officer and a good man. He wouldn’t steer us wrong. If he’s asking us to let these men go, I say we let them go.”

  “Right,” the dick says. He still hasn’t removed his knee from my back and it pains something fierce. “Check the cuts. Any man that says Kentucky, bring them here. From anywhere else, load them.”

  Since all my brothers were behind the gate, not much transfer happens. The not-dead or wounded Tennessee Horde are loaded up first. It’s a bit trickier with the not-dead or wounded men who follow Rage. All their cuts say Kentucky. They’re all either carrying illegally or have warrants out for their arrests. Only two of my brothers have outstanding warrants for misdemeanor shit and one for possession of an unregistered firearm. I hate to say this, but I warned all my brothers to get rid of any illegal shit. If they didn�
��t, hey—I’m not their mama. I’m not cleaning up after them.

  In the time between the first pictures of Nic and Rage’s ambush, my phone blew up with more evidence of how badly my woman is suffering. Fuck, what kind of man leaves his woman to that? I have to get to her.

  It takes a while for the cops to return my phone to me. Tommy Doyle gets a fucking celebration dinner for helping us out, or I have no doubt my ass would be sitting in a jail cell now.

  Sarge is the first man I call. “Any luck?” I snap, worried and impatient into the line.

  “I think we’re getting close, but they keep moving her, man. Where are you?”

  “At the compound. Too much to tell you over the phone. I’m forwarding the pictures.” I have to hang up to get them to send. The next step is locating my lieutenants.

  Reaper and Dark find me. “Roughneck and Cut both got clipped. Shouldn’t be serious, but they’re being transported to get stitched up,” Reaper says.

  “Fuck.” I’m being pulled in a million directions and I need to get to Nic.

  “Calm down, brother. You’re gonna stroke out,” he says.

  “Nic was taken. Rage has her. He’s sending these barbaric torture photos—now we’ve got brothers down and police interference. She’s going to fucking die and it’ll be my fault.”

  “Whoa—” Dark looks around the compound before bringing his attention back to us. “You’re our president, but we got this.”

  “Dark’s right, man,” says Reap. “He and I can make shit happen here. The club goes down, that’ll suck. But you lose your woman, you’ll never recover.” There’s experience in his words. Fucked-up shit no man should ever have to live through. It brings on a shudder just thinking about how messed up that was.

  “Then I’m heading out.” No goodbye, I run for the adjacent property, back where I left my bike.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pull my phone, tapping Blood’s contact. “Any leads?” I ask the second he answers.

  “We’re going over the photos you sent, trying to work out a location. I’ll get back to you soon as we figure it out.”

  “Where are you? I’m heading that way.” Blood gives me their details. I hang up and start my ride. Before I leave, something tells me to take another look at those photos. As I scroll through each carefully, nothing feels familiar until I reach the very last one.

  “Son of a bitch!” I gasp, rolling out like a bat out of hell.

  18

  Nicola

  When the truck finally opens again, it’s not to the greasy-haired, pot-bellied biker who’d last shoved me into the trunk. Trunks, I’ve found from my adventures today, smell heavily of exhaust. As dizzy as that got me, I still preferred that to the stench of body odor radiating off the offending last meathead.

  Despite that, I’d rather be up close and personal, hugging that odiferous man, than staring into the beady eyes of pure evil. Rage.

  Rage. How apropos. He suffuses the air with it. Thickening every breath with it.

  Without a single word spoken, I know there’s no way I’m making it out of this alive. Not when looking into the face of the devil. His level of hatred, of murderous intent—he’s acting on it. Now. If I could be sure of one thing in my life, it’s this.

  I’ll draw my final breaths here. Here being a ramshackle block building missing windows and doors, but surrounded by a forest of trees. A two-story building like this doesn’t fit here.

  “Where are we?” I make the mistake of asking, causing him to shake me by the hair violently until I cry out and he lets go, sending my knees and hands careening to the dirty cement floor. A cloud of dust puffs up around my head, particles settling in my eyes, causing them to water, and in my lungs with every last, precious breath, leading to a series of choking coughs.

  Catching me off guard, he kicks my arms currently bracing me out from under me, sending my body crashing to the floor face-first.

  So it begins.

  His hand presses hard to the center of my back, hard enough that something pops. My nose smashes flat against the floor as his body weight settles on top of me.

  He kicks my feet apart.

  My stomach churns and my heartbeat pounds so hard against my chest, it’s in danger of cracking my ribcage. A field mouse squeaks as it scurries across the floor, across my splayed hand. Oh god, I could vomit.

  The barn cat—or in this case, abandoned building cat—stalking it pounces. I’ve never heard the shriek of a mouse before, but that’s what it does, shrieks until the cat rips its teeth through the poor little critter. I don’t want it scurrying across my hand, but that doesn’t mean I want it dead.

  I’ve seen too much death in my life.

  “Shut the fuck up, bitch,” Rage snaps, pressing his hips against my butt. “Your voice’ll put me off my mood.”

  How terrible. Put him off his mood? I hate him so much, I hope I’m the one to put him off his life.

  “Pussy good enough for Vlad’s legendary dick to go back for seconds must be fucking great pussy. Though it won’t be when I’m through with it.” Then the asshole laughs, like talking about violating a woman is the least bit funny. And he licks the skin behind my ear right before whispering, “I’m gonna tear that pretty cunt up.”

  My splayed hands ball into fists as new tears form in my eyes. Tears of anger and hatred. Never again.

  Never. Fucking. Again.

  If he kills me, he does it without violating me. I let my whole body go limp. His tense body begins to loosen. I allow him this, to let his guard down. The only way for this to work is if he thinks I’m giving in.

  And that’s when it happens. He moves his hand down to the waist of my shorts, slipping it beneath the fabric and—good for me—letting his attention stray to concentrating on his roving hand instead of keeping pressure on me. How could he be so predictably stupid? Thankfully, he is.

  As he keeps his attention firmly on roaming over the skin of my derriere, I inwardly count to three, then rear my head back with every ounce of force I can muster, the back of my head making contact with his nose with a sickening crack.

  “Fuck,” he screams, pulling his hands to cradle his nose and I pounce. He’s my field mouse.

  I roll us, kneeing him hard in the groin, then scramble to my feet, pausing only for a moment to search the room. There—in the corner, a broken chair. I run to it, lifting the thing over my head before Rage can stand fully, and swing that chair hard and fast using my hatred to fuel my strength. It comes down on his head and back cracking, pieces splintering off. I hit him with enough force to buckle his knees. If he gains the upper hand, I’m dead. He cannot gain the upper hand. Since it’s down to him and me, I pick me to win this match and fight for my life.

  “Fuckin’ cunt.” He screams a gurgling scream. Blood gushes from his nose, soaking his shirt.

  Oh, he has no idea of the fucking cunt I intend to be.

  When I attack, I mean I attack, using that broken chair to knock more of his brain cells loose and refuse to let up, refuse to stop until the leg hits him one too many times and he passes out. I’m relentless, hitting him a few more times to make sure he’s actually down and not faking.

  Once he’s good and out, I search his pockets for the keys to the car sitting outside. There’s no way I’m sticking around to face his wrath when he finally comes to.

  There’s only one key on the ring, leading me to believe the car’s only purpose was to end my life.

  Clambering into the front seat, I have to move it way up to reach the pedals, then stick the key in the ignition, and pray that I’m not in the middle of a slasher flick where the stupid car conveniently doesn’t start.

  Not this day. The engine turns right over. I lock the door just in case, then pull a three-point turn to drive down the narrow dirt path, only to pause at the mouth of the drive, needing to decide which way to turn. I’m horribly lost from here, but turning left to head down the mountain feels like the smartest decision for me to make at the moment.
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br />   With no traffic coming either way, I pull out onto the road, pressing the gas pedal to get me away from here as fast as safely possible. Down, down, down these twisty-turny roads while there’s still enough light left for me to see.

  The sun has started getting low in the sky, which means I have an added dilemma of animals I can’t see until it’s too late creeping up on me. As I descend the mountain, the landscape opens up to these areas of cleared land where signs begin appearing—signs including one for a highway onramp heading toward a city called Kingsport.

  Once I take the ramp, more signs for food, gas, and lodging in Kingsport line the shoulders, leading me to believe it’s a bigger city than the places I’ve been thus far. A bigger city promises a place for me to lie low until I can figure out a way to contact Vlad.

  I fly down the highway with more thoughts of Vlad assailing my mind than should be considering I’m running for my life, but I can’t shake them, thinking about what Rage said concerning Vlad’s legendary dick. It hadn’t been my first time hearing that term since meeting Vlad.

  Briefly, I chance a glance at myself in the rearview mirror and begin to laugh uncontrollably. My hair is a greasy, matted nest from the excessive sweating due to being locked in several trunks for so long. I’m totally unwashed—my skin and clothing—especially after that struggle in the building with Rage. His blood and my blood stain me from top to toe. And the worst part, I stink to high heaven.

  Oh, lord. Vlad will take one look at me and turn tail for sure. Hey, Vlad baby… come give your old lady a kiss. The thought has me choking on my laughter, it comes so hard and so loud, to the point that I begin to laugh-cry. The hysterical ‘I’m losing it’ kind of laughter that inspires doctors to prescribe heavy medications while you vacation in a padded room.