“Don’t be hasty folks,” one of the suits said, “We haven’t come here to fight.”
Red gathered his composure and walked to the front, directly across from the man who had spoken, showing as much calm as he could muster, hoping that he could forestall any violence. He’d seen what these men could do, and this was not the time or place to test them again, especially with all the non-fighters in the crowd.
“Then what exactly did you come for?” Red asked, modulating his voice so that the sheer disgust and fury didn’t come through.
“We’ve come to return something to you,” the man nodded to one of the other suits who turned to go back to the car, “and we have a… proposal.”
“I doubt we’ll be interested in any kind of proposal with your kind,” Red said, barely keeping the snarl out of his voice. The man who had gone back to the car returned and sat an ornate black box down in between Red and the suit who was speaking.
“Don’t be so hasty. Frederick sends his regards,” the man’s hand indicated the black box, “and makes you this generous offer: join with him or your entire community will be destroyed. Some will be killed, some will be kept as test subjects, and you’ve seen how that plays out.”
Red remembered the lump of breathing meat on the table and felt his stomach turn, “The answer is still no.”
“We’ll see. We’ll be back in a week for your answer, and there will be a lot more of us.”
Red let his lip curl, exposing his teeth. The shift was coming, it was almost beyond his control, “And what if we just kill you now? That will give Frederick his answer won’t it?” He felt his skin beginning to stretch and his teeth elongating, and he could feel the answering response from everyone around him.
Until a hand pressed against his chest pushing him back. It was Sno, with Demon at his side.
“Then we’ll see you in a week,” Sno said, his eyes on Red, not on the suit, challenging him to back down.
Red turned his eyes toward Demon. This was his doing, he was once again thwarting Red, but he back down anyway.
“Good, a person with some sense around here,” the suits turned and got back into their cars, leaving just as suddenly as they’d appeared.
“Why the fuck did you do that? We could have killed them and been done with it, there are enough of us here,” Red pushed Demon, making him take a step back.
“Look around you, brother, what we’ve got is a bunch of women and children, and all of them are trying to grieve for their families. Do you want to add more to the list just so you can blow off some steam because you’re too angry to be reasonable?”
“Fuck reasonable, I’m tired of being reasonable, the only reason those fuckers are –“ he was cut off by a scream from the crowd. Both Red and Demon turned to see a woman with her hands over her mouth and horror written in her wide eyes.
Sno had opened the box left by the suits and inside staring out lifelessly were the heads of Squint and Squirt.
Demon turned up the glass and drained all the liquid in one smooth motion and the whiskey burned a lovely trail down his throat and directly to his stomach. The grimy old bar didn’t have many patrons and none of them paid Demon any attention, which was just the way he wanted it, and the reason he was drinking in the local bar instead of at the clubhouse. He needed to get away from all of that, from Red, for a while. He needed to be alone.
Because it had been one hell of a day.
After the funeral it had been a pissing match the whole way. From calming everyone down instead of riling them up, which Red seemed determined to do, to keeping him from gathering all the guys and chasing them down for a nice old fashioned slaughter. If he had a God he believed in, he’d be wondering what the hell he was doing right about now. Because shit was fucked up. And there was no easy way to fix it. It was like walking through a room full of glass barefoot and hoping you didn’t get cut.
And when they’d got back to the clubhouse Red had really lost his shit.
“So you want to find out what Big Dog and the others know? Lets go do it,” Red had said and Demon had followed reluctantly behind. What happened after was something Demon wished he’d never seen.
“Man, there are better ways to get information than this,” Demon grabbed Red’s arm, the one holding the red hot fire poker that was aimed straight for Big Dogs impressive gut.
“No, you wanted to get information before we killed him, so here we are, we’ll get what we can out of him, but we’ll do it my way.”
Demon looked to the other guys standing around them for support, this wasn’t the way the Club operated, but Red had a crazed look in his eyes and nobody wanted to be the one to stand up to him.
Demon let of his arm, “Fine, but this is on you brother, I want no part in this.”
“What? Demon, the big bad wolf who takes such pleasure in killing is afraid of a little torture?”
Demon wanted to shout at him, tell him he’d never enjoyed killing a single soul, be he knew Red wouldn’t listen, all he saw was what Demon was, not who he was. “He might be a traitor, and he might be a piece of shit, but he’s family Red. Family doesn’t do this to family. Ask your questions, he’ll answer, he knows he’s going to die anyway, this is,” Demon looked for the word bad enough to describe what he was seeing, “This is inhuman.”
Red’s eyes hardened, “You forget Demon, I’m not human, and neither are you, so you can get off your fucking high horse. He lost the right to be called brother when he sold us out and put our family, my Morgan, at risk.”
Demon shook his head, “There are better ways to do this, man.”
“What the fuck would you know? You goddamned half-breed.”
Demon looked around and everyone’s eyes were on him.
“That’s right, he’s a motherfucking half-breed. His mother was a witch. Ever wonder why you hardly ever see him shift, even when we’re fighting? It’s because he hates it. Says it feels alien and unnatural, he’d rather rely on his magic than his wolf. His dirty fucking magic.”
“That dirty fucking magic just saved your life,” Demon’s voice was as quiet as ice cracking.
“You should have let me die.” Red turned away from him and stuck the poker to Big Dogs bare skin, the scream of agony cutting off further conversation.
Demon had looked around the room, imagining distrust blossoming in each set of eyes, the chasm between him and the only family he’d ever known growing into something that could never be breached, so he’d turned without a word and left. His secret was finally out. Or at least part of it. In a way it felt like a relief, he’d find out now how the rest of the club would deal with him being a hybrid, even if he wasn’t exactly the kind of hybrid they thought he was.
For years he’d hidden behind a mask, separating himself from the only family he’d ever known so that they wouldn’t see him for what he was, or what Red and Glory had been led to believe he was. And now all of that was over. He took another shot of whiskey, the chips would fall where they may, he was tired of giving a fuck.
“Hey man, haven’t seen you around in a while, where ya been?” An old man in a flannel shirt and a baseball cap came and sat down on the leather barstool beside Demon. He couldn’t remember the man at all.
“Oh you know. Around.” He signaled the bartender and the busty brunette placed another beer and a fresh shot in front of him without being asked. “Thanks, honey.”
“I haven’t seen your mama in a good long while either,” the man said, nursing his own beer. Demon looked at the man more closely trying to place him. His face was a ruin of wrinkles and dirty looking grey stubble, his eyes drooping and partially hidden by lids that seemed like they’d collapsed from the sheer weight of his bushy eyebrows. “She back in town too?”
“No,” his mother hadn’t had any friends in town, in fact the only reason she’d moved there at all was so that he could have some sort of relationship with his father and his brother. And that had turned out wonderfully, as was evidenced by Red’s di
splay of contempt earlier that night. But she’d kept mostly to herself, only venturing into town to get supplies or drive Demon somewhere before he was old enough to drive himself. This man had no reason to remember her at all.
He was about to start asking some questions of his own when the door to the bar opened and Sidney walked in, still dressed in the slinky black dress she’d worn to the funeral. He watched as she took her own seat at the bar and spoke quietly to the bartender, asking very politely for a glass of Pinot Grigio. Demon smirked as she was told that they had beer or hard liquor and nothing in between and then was asked to show some ID.
The woman was from another plane of existence, one where they served fine wines in bars and said ‘oh dear’ when they stubbed their toes. Even after having been rained on and wading through mud she somehow managed to look fresh and clean, as if she’d just stepped out of the salon.
He pushed the questions he had for the inquisitive man out of the way, he could get to him later, and instead picked up his beer and made his way over to Sidney.
“Needed a night out on the town, huh?” he sat with his back against the bar so he could watch her. She looked over, like she couldn’t imagine who would be talking to her and he saw the recognition when it hit her eyes, along with something else.
“I had to get out of the house, Jessica was driving me crazy. I didn’t know the funeral was going to include so much… shifter stuff. And then there were men yelling and severed heads and… well she just has a lot of questions that I don’t have the strength to answer right now. Hell, I have questions of my own that no one seems interested in answering.”
“Such as?” he asked.
She looked at him, maybe trying decide whether or not he had any answers she wanted, “Well I doubt you can help me very much.” He could see the moment she remember him healing Red and knew the conversation was going to take a turn he didn’t want it to take. “Or maybe you can. Are you some kind of witch? Is that the reason Red called our potential children ‘abominations’?”
Demon winced at the word. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard it and it wouldn’t be the last. He shrugged, “The Book of Moons and Mysteries says that any being created between two non-humans is an abomination. It doesn’t matter which two it is. The Book also seems to play to a shifter’s natural ego, making it seem like they are the pinnacle of creation, the end point of evolution and to sully the line would be a great offense to one’s genes.”
“But it’s ok to mate with humans?”
“Humans are the basic building blocks of almost all other sentient beings. With very few exceptions all, other beings mutated from humans in some form. There are a few… powers? Entities? That predate humanity, but they are rare and no one really wants to fuck them anyway.”
Sidney shook her head, and Demon sympathized. It must be hard coming from a background of absolute mundane existence and being thrown into a life full of things she hadn’t thought existed.
“So Jessica is your sister?” he asked, realizing he knew almost nothing about her life before he’d seen her in that day in the clubhouse. She nodded without expounding on the subject, “Do you have any others? A brother maybe, who might want to break my nose for what happened in the park?” He teased her, hoping to coax a smile.
He watched the flush travel across her cheeks, down her neck and over her chest, he was going to have to embarrass her more often because the effect was lovely.
“No it’s just Jessica. How about you? Any siblings other than Red?”
Demon coughed, giving her points for hitting a sore spot, “None that I’m aware of.”
“Red never told me you were his brother you know, I figured it out on my own. I thought all that ‘brother’ talk was just because you were both in the club.”
“Half brother actually, we had the same father, different mothers.”
“So that’s why Glory was so rude to you the other day. You’re a younger brother, meaning Red’s father cheated on her.”
Demon turned around on the stool and faced the bar, wishing the conversation hadn’t taken this path, “Well, that’s one way to look at it.”
“Is there another way?”
Demon took a sip of his beer, “There are always four sides to every story, you just have to pick which one you want to believe.”
“I guess that’s true. But from Glory’s side, and Red’s side, your father cheated, with a witch, and caused their family a lot of pain and drama?”
“My mother is not a witch.” There, he’d said it, the words he’d never said to Red or Glory. He let them believe whatever they wanted, whatever made life easier for them, whatever made them feel better about themselves. That didn’t mean it was true.
Sidney looked confused, and he didn’t blame her, but he was done answering questions for the night.
“Then what was she? I saw how you healed Red, and unless I’ve missed something, shifters don’t have those kinds of powers.”
Demon stood up and pulled some bills out of his wallet, throwing them on the bar without counting them. “I’m going to go get some rest, it’s been a long day.”
He turned to leave but Sidney caught his arm. “Don’t go, I’ll stop asking personal questions if you don’t want to answer them. I just don’t want to be alone right now.”
Splattered with rust colored splotches, feeling sticky and tired Red sat that the bar in the clubhouse, alone, drinking and trying not to dwell to long on what had just happened. Because it had been horrifying even to himself, and he was the one doing it. It was horrifying now, but in the moment it had felt so good, so right, like nothing else had ever needed to be done like that had. Every scream, every time blood sprayed him as his fist connected with flesh, every time he pulled the knife out and watched the damage it left in its wake, it had felt good inside. So deeply satisfying. And that scared him more than anything.
Demon, of all people, was right. As much as he hated to admit it, this wasn’t the way the Dogs did business. This was the way monsters did business. And he had loved it. Even now he was tempted to go do the same thing to Trainz and BillCo, watching them die slowly as he released his frustration on their frail old bodies. The thought excited him and made him want to vomit at the same time.
He looked down at the arm holding his beer, it didn’t even feel like his own, it had done things he would never have done, as evidenced by the red speckles across his skin. He would go wash it off but then he’d have to look at himself in the mirror, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to do that again without seeing the reflection of something he’d never wanted to be.
Even the rest of the guys couldn’t look at him. They’d left the room one by one, until only Donny-O remained to see it through to the end. And it hadn’t come quickly, Red was too far gone in his rage and bloodlust to care what anyone else thought about him, how they saw the cruelty with which he treated his fellow shifter. He hadn’t cared, even up to the end when, despite Red trying to draw it out, letting Big Dog heal just enough to stay alive before damaging him again, the old man had finally succumbed to his numerous wounds.
It wasn’t until Donny-O put a hand on his shoulder, and turned him around, away from the body that Red had seen himself through Donny-O’s eyes. Covered in Big Dogs blood, heaving in breaths from the effort of working over an old man, eyes wild and lost in a wrath that could no longer be traced to just one thing. It was only then that Red had come out of his trance, feeling the slightest smidgeon of shame.
“I’ll take care of Trainz and BillCo,” Donny-O said.
“Give me a little while, I can do it,” Red said, still panting, “It won’t be… like this.”
“No, it won’t be, because you won’t be going near them.”
“He was a traitor Donny-O, he deserved this,” Red tried to justify his actions, not only to Donny-O but mostly to himself.
“Yes he was, but he was also a man, and no man deserves to die like this.” Donny-O shook his head and turned to leave, but
stopped short, “How are you going to look his granddaughter in the face after this man? Killing him was one thing, a thing that had to be done. But every single person in this Club knows what you did here, soon the whole town is going to know about it. No matter what Big Dog did, he had kin who loved him, and they’re our family too. What you did here tonight… you didn’t just do it to Big Dog, you did it to every single person who loved him.”
Red wanted to argue, to shout at him, but the fact was he couldn’t. Because in that moment he knew what he’d done was wrong. He’d let the anger and fear he’d felt when Morgan was taken drown out everything else, he’d let it consume him until he was nothing but his rage, no humanity left to stop and think about the repercussions of what he’d done.
Regret filled him, made him wish he’d stopped just once to think things through with a clear head. Instead he’d now have to live knowing that he had this sick thing inside him. That he was capable of doing unspeakable things, and enjoy it.
He drank the rest of his beer and stood up. He had to go shower and face himself, there was no other option, and seeing the aftermath of such merciless violence and knowing what darkness lived inside him, was a small price to pay and far less than he deserved.
The shower felt wonderful, it felt like an absolution he’d never be able to receive. Not just because of what he’d done but because of how much pleasure he’d had while doing it. Even now, thinking back, each snapshot of pain on Big Dog’s face, every moan every sound of bone crunching, gave him a thrill. He pushed each thought away, determined not to relive each moment and savor the flavor of the pain he’d inflicted, but the thoughts kept coming and he couldn’t find it in himself to find them as disgusting as they should have been.
Dogs of War MC Episode 6 Page 3
