by Paula Cox
“We should help him,” Lena said. “He got me back here---”
“So my boy could just watch you die?” Aggie asked as she kept shoving Lena away from the room. “Take the gun and just go.”
Jax nodded his consent, and Lena almost turned the corner when her eyes went back to Aggie, the woman’s nostrils flaring as she aimed her gun and stepped over the shards.
“Aggie, get back!” Brutus barked. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Like shit it doesn’t.”
Another round of gunfire thundered through the farmhouse, and Lena crouched in a corner as Aggie kept moving through the storm like she was covered in an impenetrable force field, every bullet bouncing off the walls failing to find her flesh when Jax eased Artie to the ground and crawled towards his mother.
“Get down, Mom!” he bellowed. “Just go with Lena!”
Lena hid in the corner, her fingers nervous around the trigger as she watched the door. A small part of her almost wanted Eric to barge in and take aim. Aggie seemed primed to lay waste to the man, and that was something that would do every heart in the room a world of good.
“Aggie, stop!”
She shrugged Milo’s words off and opened the door, crouching in the space of the frame as she pointed into the night air.
“Face me like a man, you coward!” Aggie screamed. “Or don’t you got the stones anymore? Like you ever even had them in the first---”
The chorus of bullets grew quiet, and Lena fought her fear as she started to crawl into the room.
“Lena, don’t!”
She slapped her hand over Jax’s mouth, his lips soft against her hand as they watched Aggie steady herself to her feet and step onto the porch. Her face stayed like slate, and Lena held her breath, clutching Jax tighter when Aggie’s harsh mask expanded into a cold smirk.
“Wish I could say the years have been good to you,” Aggie said. “But time don’t lie.”
Lena felt the other Silver Horses packing heat as she huddled against Jax’s arm, hearing nothing else until a familiar, cold laugh raced up the stairs and hit her soul.
“Don’t you see in the running for any prizes either. Wife.”
Jax’s blood seemed to boil at her side, and Lena moved with him as he struggled to his feet. Armed again, Jax started to walk towards his mother’s side when he turned back to Lena and stopped her in her tracks.
“You can’t do this with me,” he said.
“I don’t want to be alone, Jax.”
“Get back in the bedroom. Try to stay safe.”
“Don’t even think I’m leaving you now,” she said.
Jax tried to object when Eric’s voice drew closer. Milo was up when Aggie rushed from the house.
“I should have shot you in your sleep! Fuck you for threatening my son and mine!”
“Mom, stop!”
“Jax, wait!”
Milo pushed her back as the men headed to the porch, but Lena would not be swayed and followed after them, feeling the trigger curl in her finger and wondering if she really had the strength to take aim at this man when Eric Stiles beat her to the punch.
“Mom!”
Lena screamed as she watched Aggie sink into her son’s arms. Milo started taking aim at every Black Legion man in his sight when Lena grabbed his arm.
“What are you---?”
“Just help him get her back inside!” Lena screamed.
Milo grunted as he followed her order, and he slammed the door shut, the crew ducking around a fresh spray of bullets as Jax eased his mother’s body into the corner, and covered her with his jacket.
“Baby,” she moaned as she touched his cheeks. “You’re still hurt. You should go and---”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
Blood poured from her temple, and Brutus shimmied on his belly towards the others as he took hold of her hand.
“Aggie, I---”
“Looks like a flesh wound,” Milo said. “But she needs to get out of harm’s way.”
Brutus stared to hoist her off the ground when Aggie took hold of her son’s hand.
“Don’t let him win,” she whispered. “Not again.”
“I won’t, Mom. I… what the hell is?”
“She’s slipping off,” Milo said. “Get her in the back, Brutus.”
The scarred man pressed Aggie to his chest, her limp arms swinging against his back as Lena took Jax’s hand.
“You go, too,” Milo said. “Can’t have you getting in the way.”
“I’m not---”
“Lena, please!”
Jax’s lip quivered as he spoke, and she longed to take him into her arms when he pushed her back and pointed towards Brutus’ departing form.
“Look after her for me, Lena. Please just do that.”
Maybe it was all she could manage; Jax would be no good to anyone if he were frantic with worry, and Lena almost welcomed the chance to not have to use the gift of Aggie’s gun on Eric as she followed Brutus into the back.
“What’s happening?” Viv asked, her knees knocking together as she stepped away from the bed. One glance at Sully told Lena he was out cold, and for a second she thought he had left her for good when Viv thrust an empty bottle of scotch before Lena’s watering eyes.
“He just kept going,” Viv said. “Nothing left for us.”
Brutus steadied Aggie at Sully’s side as he brushed a few stands of multi-colored hair from her face. Aggie kept muttering Jax’s name over and over again as he looked up at the women.
“Tell me you can patch her up, too, Viv,” Brutus said in a thick voice. “I can’t lose her like this.”
Viv scurried around the room and bit off a hunk of the sheet. What was left of the ice was melting in a rickety bucket, but Viv fought past her shudders and started to wipe the blood away from Aggie’s face. Lena’s gun banged against her leg, and even though it was not the move that Jax wanted her to make, she took a few steps closer to the window.
“Come on out, Kid!” Eric threatened. “Or the next one is for…”
His voice drifted into the darkness, and Lena was too slow to crouch to the floor when Eric’s eyes locked on hers.
“But why wait.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Get down!”
In that instant, everything transitioned to a slow motion feed, the curl of Eric’s lips into a thin smirk, the twist of his finger around the trigger, and the sound of Brutus’ voice followed by the heavy hit of his booted feet as they stomped towards her, his fingers just pulling her down as another window went out. Viv screamed as she pushed Aggie deeper into the mattress, and Brutus mirrored her movements on the ground. Even louder than the gunfire dotting the breached perimeter were the cries from the other room, Jax’s voice the loudest in the bunch as more bullets seemed to ricochet off the farmhouse’s interior walls and back again. Lena shuddered at feel of glass raining down on her hair, and she offered no protest as Brutus pulled her deeper into the room.
“Don’t make a move, Viv!” he barked up at the bed. “Stay with Aggie!”
Lena saw the girl barely nod through her tears, and Brutus roughly grabbed Lena’s face as her held her shaking body to the corner.
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” he challenged. “What the hell were you trying to do?”
“I thought I could take him,” Lena said as she eased her gun before his eyes. “Maybe take him by surprise or something.”
“Awesome plan,” he scoffed. “Now we got nowhere to hide.”
Jax burst into the room, falling to his belly at the sound of another shot, and he crawled to Lena’s side.
“Get off her!” he demanded as he tore her away from Brutus.
“With pleasure. This one here ain’t none too bright.”
Absorbing the insult, Lena watched with wide eyes as Brutus scrambled back to the edge of the bed.
“Viv? You got a hold of Aggie.”
“I… yes.”
“Then roll over.”
&nbs
p; “Roll…?”
“Just do what I say!”
Viv obeyed, and Aggie groaned as they fell into Brutus’s waiting arms. He brought the women, one wounded and one nearly wailing close to Lena’s side, overturning a table along the way to shield the waiting bodies.
“What now?” Brutus asked. “No fucking cover, thanks to this one.”
“I said leave her alone,” Jax said. “Like one little move makes all the---”
His speech was cut short by another hail of bullets. Viv started to scream, and Brutus clamped his hand over her mouth.
Lena made no sound.
“What?” Jax asked. “She doesn’t get the talking to?”
“She didn’t open the door on this, bright boy.”
Suddenly there was silence and the sound of a motor revving to attention surround by cold, cruel laughter.
“So what was the plan, Kid?” Eric bellowed through the broken windows. “Rally the troops? Run home to mommy?”
Again there was the sound of his gun firing into the air, and Jax gritted his teeth as he wrapped his arm around Lena’s waist.
“Bad call, Jax,” Eric continued from beyond the house. “Now everyone has to pay the price.”
“Jesus Christ…” Viv murmured under her breath. “What do we do now?”
“I ain’t going down like some dog,” Brutus said as he cast a quick glance at Aggie. Her eyes fluttered open as he gingerly patted her pale cheek.
“We’ll handle the dirtbag. I swear.”
Jumping in one motion, tucking and rolling in the next, Brutus made his way to the broken window. He rested his body to the wall and clutched his gun. Eric’s laugher continued to fill the room, and Jax looked past Lena to his mother.
“Jackson, don’t let him get away with this. Not this time.”
“What am I supposed to---?”
“You stand. And you… fight. It’s what your father would have wanted, little man.”
Lena slowly shifted her eyes towards his face. Even as his jaw was set like steel under his lips, Lena saw the fear brimming through his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Never wanted to bring all this back to your door.”
“Too late for that now,” Aggie groaned as she fell into Viv’s shoulder. “Just…high time someone finished it.”
Aggie slipped into a fitful, uneasy sleep, and Jax anxiously reached for her wrist.
“She’s… is she…?”
Lena pressed her palm to Aggie’s chest and exhaled a soft sight or relief.
“Think she just fainted,” Lena said in a flat voice. “No thanks to me.”
“Fucking second that,” Brutus hissed from the other end of the shattered room. Jax started to lunge towards him when she seized his hand and forced his eyes to hers.
“Jax, was I wrong to come back?” she asked.
“No way,” he assured her. “Don’t even think like that.”
“But look what’s happening? You mom. These men…”
“Lena…”
He kissed her tenderly, his eyes moving down her arms until he focused on the gun still resting in her hands.
“Only if you have to,” he said, echoing his mother’s sentiments as he clasped her close and laid his lips on her brow. “But I’m gonna do whatever I have to do to stop this.”
With that he was gone, twisting and twirling on his back as he hit Brutus’ side and readied his gun.
“What’s our play here?” he asked. “Distract him so Milo and the others can pull off a sneak attack?”
Brutus looked ready to knock him out, but another cry from Eric’s lips seemed to bring him back to the problem at hand and all that ways that they might lick it.
“Best bet,” he sadly confessed. “Though somehow I doubt we’ll be standing to celebrate.”
Lena eased her body away from the table as Jax nodded his head. Even in the dim light, she could clearly see the sweat streaming down his cheeks. One more moment, one yes to Brutus, and he’d meet his maker, end up no better than his father. Just the thought of that turned her heart to ice, and Lena grabbed Viv’s shaking shoulder as she pressed her lips to her ear.
“Tell me you know how to use this,” she whispered.
“I… what?”
“If this doesn’t work, don’t let them hurt you. Or his mom.”
She lightly touched her fingers to Aggie’s still face and waited for Viv’s answer.
“What do you think you’re---?”
“They want a distraction?” she asked. “I’m the distraction. I can fix this. Can you use the gun?”
Viv still seemed unsure, but Lena had no more time to waste or wait. Abandoning the gun with Viv, she stretched to her knees and escaped the room.
“Lena! Stop!”
She shrugged off sound of Jax’s voice. Bypassing the main room and the sound of the Silver Horses entertaining their own strategies, she hit the mudroom and started to crawl up the length of the door. She was barely on her feet when a jagged shard of glass fell from her hair.
“What the hell is…?”
Realizing what she had and what she could do, she hid the broken glass in the folds of her skirt, praying it would stick as she rose to her feet and hit the night with her hands in the air.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Well look who came out to play!”
Her flesh crawled at the sight of him, and she was almost ready to test her luck and try to run back into the house. If he got his hands on her, the last time, the first time, would seem like some kind of a warped fairy tale, cold and cruel but so much sweeter than what he looked like he wanted to do to her now. Eric left his bike, his gun aimed at her vulnerable chest as Mitch laughed from over the man’s shoulder.
“Guess the Kid just ain’t kicking it into high gear!” Mitch mocked.
“Something like that,” Eric muttered.
Lena took a few tentative steps forward when Jax appeared, his gun drawn and his nostrils flaring as he glared hard as his stepfather.
“Don’t you even fucking think about touching her again!” he screamed.
Even with her eyes on Jax, Lena’s shaky hands swaying before his face, she heard the Black Legion, what there was of them here and now, drawing their guns, and her mind filled with the horror of Jax falling and bleeding into her anguished arms.
“Stop!”
Her hand flew up, and she managed to smack Jax’s gun away.
“Clumsy little shit,” Eric sneered.
Even without his weapon, Jax was still on the warpath.
“I’ll fucking kill you for what you---”
“Jax, stop it.”
Her whisper came quick, and she slapped his face. His stunned expression tore at her heart, but she needed to make it look good if there was any hope that…
“Just let me to this,” she pleaded. “I’ll get them away from the others, and then---”
“You’re staying right here!” he screamed as he tried to keep her close.
Lena made a show of struggling, screaming and lying that she’d had enough and wanted nothing more than to go home.
“Can be arranged, slit,” Eric promised. “Get you back to Deerfield before the night is out.”
It could have been another planet without Jax, but she clung to the hope that they wouldn’t get that far. All she had to was keep them at bay, submit if necessary, and pray it wouldn’t come to---
“Stiles! This is our turf!”
Milo stood in the doorframe and, for the first time, Lena registered the fact that his own beard and dark eyes were Eric’s echo trapped in the space of a funhouse mirror. Bearded and dark-eyed to be sure, but where Milo would simply kill if the natural order was threatened from without or within, Eric Stiles would smash, taunt, obliterate until his victim was nearly past all hope.
Jax would never let it come to that.
“Find me,” she whispered. “I’ll take care of myself ‘til you come.”
Again she raced from her side, the sou
nds of Jax’s anguished screams hitting her back. She looked back for all of a second and saw Milo holding him back as he offered a slight nod of his head. Somehow he got it, even if it didn’t look like he entirely approved. But the move was Lena’s to make, and she tottered towards Eric’s side and bowed her head.
