The Dead Saga (Book 5): Odium V

by Claire C. Riley

  “Shooter, it isn’t what you’re thinking,” Amara says, running to stand in front of Gunner. “He wasn’t hurting me, I swear he wasn’t.”

  Shooter looks away from Amara, his gaze landing on me before moving to Balls. “What the fuck happened?”

  “I heard shouting and headed outside. Gunner here was getting a little too slaphappy with Amara. He’s been warned before. It’s time to end this once and for all, Shooter. There’s no helping him. Sometimes you gotta let ’em go.” Balls looks across at me, and instead of the laughing and carefree cancer victim I had been talking to earlier, in his place is a fearsome, bloodthirsty biker. His expression is chilling. I guess I’m a shitty judge of character after all.

  “No, no, you got it all wrong. Tell him, Nina.” Amara turns to look at me. Her face is red and patchy, with tear streaks staining her cheeks. Everyone turns to look at me now; even Gunner glances up from the ground.

  I swallow, not knowing what’s for the best. It’s obvious that if I tell the truth Gunner is a dead man, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing; I saw him brutally gripping Amara, and with him being so huge and her being so small, he could have snapped her like a twig. Yet despite what I saw, she did not look like a victim, she looked like…

  “Amara?” I say, walking toward her. “Are you in love with him?” I ask her, my own shock tainting my words as the realization hits me. “Are you in love with Gunner?”

  It all seems so obvious now, and when I look up at Balls I can see the jealousy on his face. Amara looks down at Gunner on the ground and then back up to me, fresh tears filling her eyes as she nods.

  “Yes,” she whispers, her chin trembling. “I love him. He wasn’t hurting me, I swear he wasn’t.”

  Gunner reaches out for Amara, his hand touching her ankle, and she looks down at him. He smiles up at her, a shy smile that does not look right on a man of his size and stature, and certainly not one who’s on his knees. I realize that I’ve probably just blown their first I love you moment and I should probably feel guilty for that. After all, your first I love you should be special.

  Actually, fuck it, I may have just saved his life, so I guess that’s pretty damned special after all.

  “And does he…ya know…ummm,” I start to say and look down at Gunner.

  Gunner’s gaze moves to me. “Yes,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. But it’s not love that taints his words, it’s fear.

  “Well there you go then.” I smile, looking up at Shooter. “She loves him, he loves her, and this wasn’t what it seemed like. It’s all good, right?”

  Everyone is staring at me like I’m an idiot, and I’m left wondering when the hell my life turned into such a damn soap opera. Seriously, you’d think life would be in many ways simpler at the end of the world and we could all just forgo the bullshit of normality.

  We’re in an apocalypse, people. There are bigger things to worry about here than who loves who. At least, that’s what my brain screams.

  “No, it’s not all good,” Balls says with a dismissive shake of his head. “Not even close.”

  “But why?” I whine.

  “Because Gunner was supposed to be in recovery,” Shooter grinds out, sounding even more pissed off.

  “Sounds like he’s recovered from whatever he was recovering from. Can’t we just let them be?” I’ve toned down my whininess and added a huge dollop of for fuck’s sake, leave the man alone. But by the death stare Balls is giving Gunner, it makes no difference.

  “It’s not that simple, Nina,” Shooter says, dragging a hand down his beard. “My men, they’re not supposed to go near women until they’re out of recovery. At all. No kissing, no fucking, nothin’.”

  “And you definitely don’t raise a hand to them,” Balls snarls out.

  Shooter’s hair is down today, giving him more of a bedraggled appearance than normal. He looks tired, worn out from all the bullshit.

  “Prez,” Gunner says, looking up at Shooter. “We love each other. Ain’t that enough?”

  I feel like all the air has been sucked out of the room. Like between the testosterone and the declarations of love, I can hardly breathe. But what really takes my breath away is what Shooter says next.

  “No, brother. It ain’t enough. You know the rules: you don’t ever hit your woman.” Shooter’s stare is icy cold. “You broke the rules, now you gotta pay the price.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’m still floundering around for the right words when Balls finally notices Gunner’s hand is on Amara’s leg, and it doesn’t go down well at all.

  “What have I just said about touching her, Gunner?” Balls growls out and dives for the other man. He juts his elbow out, crashing the hard bone into Gunner’s lower back with a grunt, and Gunner calls out in pain.

  Amara is in the way, and as Balls reaches back to smash his fist into Gunner’s face, she tries to grab his arm away and ends up getting hit hard enough to send her flying sideways. She clasps a hand to her cheek and begins to sob again, looking too dazed to get back up on her own.

  Gunner sees Amara get hit and turns from submissive to domineering in a split second, and grabs Balls around the waist and throws him backwards. Shooter fires a shot into the ceiling to get everyone to calm the hell down, but it makes no difference to either Balls or Gunner, who are now full-on fist-fighting and oblivious to anything else but each other’s bloody knuckles.

  I, of course, do what is typical of me and get even more involved than I want to be, waiting for the right moment to dive on Balls’s back. He grunts in surprise and attempts to throw me off until I press my machete blade up against his neck.

  “Nina,” Shooter grinds out. “Don’t!”

  “Easy, bitch,” Balls snarls at me. “I don’t take too kindly to being threatened.”

  And there is personality number three. Not the carefree cancer victim or the protective male, but the all-out violent thug. And people say women are complicated.

  “Have I ever told you how much I dislike being called ‘bitch’?” I snarl.

  “Calm the fuck down, Balls,” Shooter says. His gaze flits to me. “Let him go.”

  I scowl. “Ummm, no, because then he’s going to kill Gunner if I do.”

  “For fuck’s sake, woman, let him go before I shoot you myself!” Shooter bellows so loudly that it makes me and everyone else jump. “You have no idea what’s goin’ on here, woman!”

  The shock and hurt must have shown on my face, because the guilt sure as hell shows on his. Unfortunately, Shooter really doesn’t know me if he thinks yelling is going to get me to do what he wants.

  “Balls,” I hiss in his ear. “Throw your gun to Amara, now.”

  “Fuck off, bitch!”

  I press the blade closer to his throat.

  “He’s dangerous!” Balls says, sounding desperate now.

  “Not as dangerous as I am right now, so throw your fucking gun to Amara.”

  He cusses me out under his breath before sliding the gun over to Amara. I’m not sure if I’m doing the right or wrong thing right now; I’m just going with my gut feeling. And my gut is telling me that Balls is the man to be feared right now. Not Gunner.

  I remove my machete and take a quick step backwards, expecting Shooter to blow my damn head off, but he does nothing but glare at Gunner. Balls slowly gets up to his feet, which takes some time because he’s such a big dude. By the time he’s up on his feet he’s panting and coughing. His cigarettes have fallen out of his cut pocket and I bend down, pick them up, and offer them back to him as an olive branch in the hopes that he won’t shoot me in my sleep anytime soon.

  Gunner is still on his knees, but he looks different. He still seems broken and a shadow of the man he had probably once been, but he also seems stronger—like perhaps seeing Amara and me fighting for him had made him want to do the same.

  Balls snatches the cigarettes from me and lights one up, his gaze staying on Gunner and Amara the whole time, and I keep a firm hold of my machet
e and pray that I won’t have to use it. I was starting to like Balls, and killing him would not bring me any satisfaction.

  “I need to speak to Gunner and Amara. Alone,” Shooter finally says now that everyone has stopped fighting.

  “Shooter—” Balls begins.

  “I said alone!” Shooter shouts. “Get the fuck out of here, now.” He looks from Balls to me. “Both of you before I shoot you both myself!”

  Ouch, that hurts.

  Shooter clearly doesn’t like seeing the hurt expression on me because he adds on. “I promise not to kill him, alright? At least not until I’ve talked to them properly.”

  I swallow and nod and then I start to back out of the room, not really wanting to leave him alone with Gunner. Amara looks at me and nods and then she crouches down to Gunner’s side.

  I don’t feel comfortable turning my back on Balls, but I needn’t have worried because as soon as I get to the door Balls barges past me and storms down the hallway. I shut Shooter’s door behind me, giving one last glance at the three of them, and then I turn on my heel and leave. Despite what Amara said about loving Gunner, the fact was he was being violent with her—I saw it with my own eyes—and Shooter would never stand for that.

  Maybe it was Stockholm. Maybe he got in her head somehow and he was fulfilling his sick fantasies with her. I’d barely known these people a week; who was I to really judge someone?

  I had thought I’d seen a good side of Gunner.

  And I had thought I had seen a strong side of Amara.

  But perhaps I was wrong on both assumptions.

  Outside the day has grown warmer, yet I feel cold on the inside. My adrenaline is still pumping and my muscles are taut and ready to fight, but my mind is a mix of so many emotions now that I don’t know what to do with myself.

  I begin walking with no firm direction in mind, my mind reeling from the morning already. Although the gate and fence are back up in place, there’s still a hell of a lot of work to be done on making them completely secure. There’s a crew of men nailing sheets of wood in place, not to mention the cleanup crew that’s scraping brains and dead parts from the ground. I head over to the fence to see if I can help in any way, because I can’t just do nothing right now. I need to do something or I’ll end up barging back into Shooter’s office to check that everyone is all right.

  “Need any help?” I ask one of the bikers as I get closer.

  There’s three men working side by side, nailing large wooden fence pallets up against the existing ones. They’re hammering so loud that I don’t think they heard me so I ask again, louder this time.

  “I said, do you need any help?” I expect them all to say no and tell me to go away, and I’m getting ready with a stack of insults if they do.

  A man with bright reddy-orange hair on both his face and his head, plus an abundance of freckles on what’s showing of his cheeks, turns around to face me. His head is cocked to one side while he looks at me, and one eye is partially closed to stop the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth from going into it. He looks me up and down before reaching up and pulling the cigarette from between his lips and blowing out the smoke.

  “Scrawny wee thing, aren’t you?” he says, and then holds out his hand to me.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry, it’s the Scottish accent. I said, you’re a scrawny wee thing, aren’t you? As in, you’re a tiny bag o’ bones.” He throws his cigarette butt to the ground and reaches down for a handful of nails before holding them out to me. “Hold these, will ya? Me back’s fuckin’ killin’ me from keep bendin’ down.”

  I frown harder because I had heard him the first time around—I was just being sarcastic. Regardless, I reach over and take the nails from his hand, deciding not to argue with anyone else today. Or at least for the next hour or so.

  “I’m Nina,” I say.

  “I know who you are. Stand here,” he says, half pulling and half pushing me to the left of him. “Hold ya hand out.”

  I do what he asks, feeling kind of pathetic that this is the best job for me right now—professional nail holder—but I’m also grateful to have something to do.

  “This is normally the part where you tell me your name,” I bite out.

  “Yeah?” he mocks.

  “Yeah,” I reply tartly.

  “Not really supposed to talk to the women ’round here, truth be known.” He looks me up and down again. “I guess it’ll be okay with you, though. Name’s Highlander.”

  I’m almost whiplashed by the flurry of cuss words that I want to unleash on him because of his obnoxious look toward me, yet the only thing that comes out of my mouth is “Highlander? Well that’s real original.” I roll my eyes.

  “Nah, it’s these bastards that gave me that name, they’re the fuckin’ original ones. Ain’t that right, ya bunch o’ bastards?” he laughs to one of the other men—an overweight, older-looking guy who nods and laughs and then gets back to work, barely sparing me a second glance. “None of the men will talk to the women ’round here, worried they might bite, ya know.” He laughs again.

  “The women?” I snark.

  “Nah, the men,” he says with a glint in his eye that makes me want to drop the fucking nails and run. But of course I don’t, because I’m a rough, tough, and…shit, I can’t think of another word that rhymes, but whatever.

  I’m about to tell him that I’m not afraid of him or any of the men here, but the sound of an engine just beyond the gates catches everyone’s attention. I watch as a flurry of activity takes place on top. The men shout something to whoever it is and then the gates begin to open.

  Nitro, the green-haired demon that had been in Shooter’s office the day before, rides in quickly, his bike coming to a skid and slamming to the ground. He’s up and off it before it’s even stopped, and he throws his helmet off and takes off toward Shooter’s office.

  I look across at Highlander, who only grins and turns back to the fence before hammering another nail into the wood.

  “Guess he just found out that shit went down without him here, huh?” I say, still staring after Nitro. “Worst VP ever,” I snort.

  “Mouthy bitch, aren’t ya,” Highlander says with another grin.

  “Stop calling me a bitch,” I snap. “I’m not a fucking dog!” I turn back to him and thrust my palm full of nails toward him, and though he doesn’t laugh, his eyes shine with amusement as he takes another nail.

  “It’s a term of endearment really, not an insult, so stop shitting bricks every time someone says it. It means you’re one of us now,” he says, slapping me on the back.

  I roll my eyes and ignore him, because though I like the fact I’m seen as one of them, I still hate being called bitch.

  “Yeah, well, I have a name. And it isn’t bitch,” I reply. I have a question that I want to ask, but I’m wondering whether I should, or if I should just keep my thoughts to myself; but Highlander must notice something about me because he sighs and grabs another nail from my palm.

  “What is it?”

  “Shooter, has he um…” I hesitate and look away. It feels almost treacherous to speak out about Shooter, even though I’m not saying anything bad.

  “Aye, spit it out, little one.”

  “Has he ever killed any of you guys? You know, his crew, or whatever you call yourselves.” I chew on the inside of my cheek, feeling better at the sting of pain.

  Highlander stops smiling and he stares at me for a moment in silence before speaking. “Shooter does what needs to be done, and you’d do better to keep any ill feelings toward him to yourself.”

  I shake my head. “No, it’s not like that. I didn’t mean—”

  “Shooter has a soft spot for you for some reason, and what he’s built here,” Highlander looks around, “it’s good. Really good. I hate to say it because I’ll sound like a pussy, but he’s made us all better men for this place.” He looks down at me, his eyebrows pulled in tightly between his eyes. “And if that means putting a brother
in the ground for somethin’ they do wrong—somethin’ that goes against our rules and against our way of life—then so be it. He wouldn’t do it unless he thought it were necessary, because that shit is not acceptable—you don’t kill your brothers unless it directly affects the club. Every soul is worth saving; that’s what Prez says, and that’s what he believes, little one.” He patronizingly taps the side of my head. “That’s what we all believe.”

  I nod and look away, embarrassed for even bringing it up now, and also embarrassed because his little tap on my skull actually hurt and has made me want to cry. Yeah, that’s exactly what’s made me feel emotional…

  We continue working in silence, although that’s a loose term for what I’m doing, for another hour or two. I lose track of time and try to get lost in the mundanity of it all instead of thinking about Shooter and Gunner and Balls and Amara, and not forgetting the very-deceased-and-rotting-somewhere-in-the-woods Mary.

  I refuse to let my thoughts wander to Mikey at all, despite the nagging voice I’ve had in my head for days now. Because right now, thinking about Mikey will just screw up what little sanity I have left.

  I feel guilty, like I’ve somehow betrayed him by staying here for so long and not going to find him yet. I hadn’t meant to. I honestly thought I would be with him now. But being here and seeing the difference I can make has changed everything for me. I’ve made a commitment to these women now, and that’s much more important than Mikey and me. These women, this place, they’re all more important to me now.

  I can’t leave here because they need me. I can’t leave because I’m wanted, because I can do some good. Or is it really that I can’t leave because of Shooter—because of the way he makes me feel? It’s not love. It’s not even really affection. It’s something purer and yet also something equally dark.

  Shooter is the safer option, because there are no feelings involved.

  Whenever I care about someone, they get hurt and they die. Mikey is free of me now, and maybe it should stay that way. I can protect him, and everyone else, by leaving him to live his life.