Phoenix

by Trent Jordan

  “I would like to believe that it is an if,” Cole said. “But Owen, you know that the Fallen Saints will not be happy with just Springsville. They will want to expand and take what they believe is theirs, or just what they can. And they will stop at nothing to make that happen. If the Black Reapers are not able to hold them, we will need to fight them eventually.”

  “That’s an awfully big if, though,” Owen said. “The fight had always been between your father and Lucius, and now it’s between Lane and Lucius. We are out of it.”

  Except...

  “Lucius knows we came to help Lane those two previous times, Owen.”

  Yep.

  “Even if we say that they didn’t know that we helped, if they somehow were blinded and thought that devils and angels of a supernatural kind came to help the Black Reapers, they will realize that we exist, that a Carter runs this club, and they will see us as a threat. Especially since, let’s be honest, we’re not exactly walking around with a name like the Monarchs. The name Gray Reapers is as much a near-mirror image of the Black Reapers name as it is a homage to me improving what my father started.”

  But Owen didn’t look convinced. Half the room seemed to agree with what Cole said, while the other half seemed less bothered.

  “Who’s to say that we can’t just figure out this issue when the time comes?” Owen said. “It’s not like the Black Reapers will collapse tomorrow. They got men, they got resources, they got guns.”

  But they don’t have men anymore. Not like they used to. We took that from them.

  And for that reason, they’re screwed.

  I had my own opinion on the matter, of course. I preferred to let the Black Reapers die, every single one of them except Father Marcellus, whom we could integrate into our club. It was really MC Darwinism at its finest; if the club couldn’t survive an attack from someone else because of weak leadership, then that club didn’t deserve to live.

  The club that your father loved.

  I trembled at the thought.

  My father loved the Black Reapers, or at least what they had once been. He loved them when Roger Carter was around. He always said that the Black Reapers were the reason he had not gone to jail and that I had even been born in the first place. Was that something that I could throw away so easily?

  I mean, I had walked away because that club had murdered my father. So, yes, maybe it was something I could easily throw away.

  But walking away from it was a lot easier than letting the Fallen Saints demolish it entirely. In some ways, it was like the difference between breaking up with a crazy girlfriend and then hoping someone killed her—one was common sense, the other was just cruelty.

  I guess maybe my opinion on the topic wasn’t as strong as I had thought it was.

  “Phoenix?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you have an opinion on this?”

  I blushed as I felt caught red-handed. I’d gotten so lost in my own little world that I had failed to pay attention to the meeting. It wasn’t my first meeting, but it was one of my first, and anything like this was not going to help my cause.

  “I... hmm,” I said, trying to find the right words. “Well...”

  I felt the weight of all eyes on me. I shot a glance at Cole, who looked concerned. I ignored it as best as I could, swallowed, and spoke.

  “I think as long as we’re not being attacked, why do anything to provoke the beast?” I said. “It’s not like we can take these actions and not draw some attention. Whatever we do will get noticed somehow. So...”

  “Look, we’re dodging the elephant in the room here,” Cole said, looking frustrated. “I don’t think we have the manpower to take on the Saints if they come for us right now.”

  Whatever people around the table were doing, they all stopped right there. No one was saying a word right now; no one was doing anything but looking at Cole.

  And as much as I hated to admit it, he wasn’t wrong. The Saints, even with the casualties we had inflicted—why did I just say we? I’m not with the Black Reapers—had a numbers advantage. The Black Reapers had a technological and resource advantage, but it’s not like they had drones or automated machines that could attack the Saints on their behalf.

  And we were newer, with fewer members, fewer weapons, less experience in leadership, and rusty combat skills. I had to give props to Cole, he would not have hit such a heavy topic in the past, but that didn’t mean that honesty translated to preparedness.

  “No one here wants to admit such a thing, least of all me as President. I don’t want to acknowledge that we’d get overrun. But I didn’t get this club off the ground by being arrogant or blind. Now, on the other hand, if we collaborate...”

  Cole didn’t finish his words. We all knew what he would have said if he had kept going.

  But there was no way that I was going to be the one to finish those words. Not when it meant going back to those Reapers.

  “I would love to believe that there’s something that’ll allow the Saints to crumble and us to live our lives here in Ashton, but right now, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Cole said after a long pause. “Something is going to have to happen to invigorate the Black Reapers to punch above their weight.”

  Let’s hope so. Maybe the two clubs can wipe each other out and then we can be left standing to celebrate over their graves.

  “For the time being, I think we remain neutral,” Cole said. “We obviously aren’t going to ally with the Saints, but I don’t think anyone at this table or in this room is in a major rush to join forces with the Black Reapers.”

  I actually laughed out loud at that. I didn’t mean to be so rude as to sound mocking, but really, join forces with the Black Reapers? After Lane and Butch had come for an attack on us just days ago? After they’d had the audacity to come to my father’s funeral?

  If we somehow got sucked into a battle between those two MCs, it would quickly turn into a game of rock-paper-scissors, with all three sides attempting to wipe out the other. We’d just be smart enough to stay above the fray until the last possible second, claiming victory by default.

  Cole led a discussion about a few other topics, such as a potential revenue source opening a liquor store down the road, the opportunity to throw a community BBQ, and a couple more points, but none were of any importance to me. I voted for the exploration of a liquor store, figuring the chance to make money and have access to better alcohol was a plus, and I voted against the community BBQ. It was too similar to an activity the Black Reapers had done just before my father’s death.

  Cole ended the meeting, but just as I started to stand, Cole asked me to stay behind.

  “Won’t be long.”

  I hated that everyone knew that I was being called to meet with Cole, as if the teacher had just announced I needed to go to the principal’s office. I got why Cole wanted everything to be out in the open and public in contrast to his brother, but it’s not like being open to the world meant spreading your legs in public and inviting everyone to take a peek inside.

  Cole and I walked over to a corner, out of earshot but not eyesight of everyone. I suppose one good thing, though, about open spaces like this being so common was that it didn’t really surprise anyone when I went over there. No one kept staring at the two of us.

  “What’s up?” I said. “Something about my dad?”

  “Huh? No, no, I’m past that,” Cole said, who suddenly looked embarrassed at how he had phrased his words. “I meant, sorry, I meant that to me, your father is resting in peace, so I didn’t want to keep bringing him up to you over and over again.”

  “You’re good,” I said with a short smile. “That’s just what we’ve spoken about the past few times.”

  “No, no, sorry, I trust you to bring it up to me if you need to talk.”

  If you need to talk. I swear this is the first club I’ve ever been a part of where we actually supply support and not just drinks and silence.

  “Anyway, look, I need
to ask you a blunt question, Phoenix. What would happen if we had to reunite with the Black Reapers?”

  The gasp that emitted, the jaw drop, and the scrunching of the eyes should really have said it all.

  “That’s... you can’t possibly be thinking about that, Cole,” I said. “I, you... you’d... fuck, man, seriously?”

  “It’s not something that is set to happen anytime soon, just to be clear—”

  “It shouldn’t be set to happen ever!” I said. “Let’s just leave my father out of this for a second, because that’s too… whatever. Cole, Lane kicked you out of the Black Reapers. In that time, despite his distancing, despite his arrogance, despite his... his Lane-ness, you still came to help him twice. And how does he thank you? By bitching about you, by being a giant pain in the ass, and then bringing his club down to Ashton to try to kill you. It’s a fucking miracle that nothing happened!”

  I took a breath. This proposal was pissing me off, and I didn’t mind showing how much. I was aware that it was Butch who had actually prevented the greatest amount of violence, but that just delayed the inevitable. He hadn’t done anything special.

  It didn’t make up for him murdering my father.

  “Look,” Cole said. “I wasn’t posturing at the meeting. I really don’t think we stand much of a chance against the Fallen Saints if they get past the Black Reapers. And you know the Saints will not content themselves with remaining in Springsville. They are like a virus. They’re not going to just... they’re a cancer that grows, OK?”

  I could hear real fear in Cole’s voice. I think he feared retaliation for the last joint strike we’d conducted, the one that had landed Lucius in the hospital. The one that gave us a chance to deliver the crippling blow, only for Lane and the rest of the Black Reapers to be a bunch of pussies and refuse to strike.

  Oh, yeah, the one where my father voted to strike and end it all. Could have saved the club.

  Or his own ass, maybe...

  “For now, we don’t have to do anything, so we’re both OK in this regard,” Cole said. “But... just think about it. Think about if you can...”

  “What, forgive them?”

  The fact that Cole had no reaction said it all to me.

  “I’d sooner see them die a painful death in fire than forgive them,” I said.

  “I know,” Cole said. “When the anger subsides, think about it. Because if that happens, if they die, then we may die.”

  Cole walked past me, but his message hadn’t really hit home as hard as it might have until those last words. When the anger subsides... if they die, then we may die.

  Anger hadn’t just consumed me—it had practically become me since my father’s death. And damnit, I didn’t feel a fucking drop of remorse for that anger.

  But at some point, somewhere down the line, that anger probably would go from being a spike of adrenaline, making me something of a super soldier, to more of a toxin that would poison me and weaken me. I mean, shit, my father said he used to have serious temper problems, and the reason he sought to be so calm was that he believed tranquility and serenity were the paths toward being the best version of himself.

  But I wasn’t a fucking old man in his sixties with less than a few years of natural life to go. I was a goddamn healthy, fit, muscular, and agile man in his late twenties. I could afford some time to let this anger turn into something else. I could afford to suck in some of the toxin if it meant I could transform it into venom for my enemies, for Lane and Butch and all the Black Reapers.

  But as for right now… I just needed a goddamn drink. After a meeting like that, I needed a very literal type of toxin, one that could subdue my anger a bit and make me feel a little more at ease. Shit, I also needed to sleep at some point tonight.

  Cole wasn’t even in the clubhouse anymore; he had either left or gone outside. No one else was looking my way, so it was time to get the fuck out.

  And when it came to grabbing a drink and, more importantly, quelling my nerves, I knew just the place.

  I’d only needed one visit to already know where I was going to go to feel a little more at peace.

  Jess

  My paycheck may have come in Ashton, but my heart was in Springsville still.

  Not that my romantic ideal for a location was Springsville—quite literally, my heart and the rest of my body were on the east side of Springsville right now.

  It was rather unfortunate, considering this was prime Fallen Saints territory, and I could hear them driving around frequently at night. Sometimes, even when I had hit all of my required hours at Brewskis, I liked to go in and serve anyway. I’d figured back then that if I needed to stay awake and listen to bikers grouse and talk about slamming drinks and pussies, I might as well get paid for it in the process.

  But now that I worked in Ashton, it was a little bit different. I couldn’t just roll out of bed and be at work within five minutes. I didn’t have a favorable spot in the eyes of the Fallen Saints—no one who didn’t fuck them, serve them, or work for them did. And in any case, now that there was a Black Reaper that I saw coming around here rather frequently—it was the black guy, Axle, I think—this apartment complex was not the safest place to be seen at in the nighttime hours.

  In other words, I had reverted to being the hermit that I usually liked to be. Well, for the next half hour, at least, before an actual shift began at Tom’s Billiards.

  And how are you going to react if Phoenix walks in?

  It was a question that I’d been thinking about a lot more than I wanted to admit the previous few days. At Brewskis, I had made it a personal rule to never fall for any of the customers. I’d made that mistake at my very first bartending job when I was in college, when I more or less used the gig as a vessel to sleep with a guy I’d had my eyes on for some time, but as soon as I realized how complicated that made serving him and his friends later, I stopped.

  But Tom’s Billiards was different. It wasn’t a bar where the bartender stood in the back, slinging drinks, making casual conversation, and staying out of the way otherwise. It was a more intimate space, the kind where, even when a private event with a known guest list was had, it rarely filled up beyond a half-dozen people. It was a true local watering hole, but when the locals were barely in the hundreds, maybe the thousands at most, it wasn’t hard to be more relaxed and engaged.

  And that was just in general. Phoenix...

  Well, yes, he was hot.

  But we’d bonded over something I had never really thought I’d get into a conversation with someone about. Fathers.

  His was gone, never to return. I had said mine wasn’t around, and that was kind of true. He was alive, still. In fact, I’d spoken to him somewhat recently, when Brewskis burned down.

  But he was more of my father by blood than by actual parenting. I...

  I tried not to think about it. It usually led to me being bitterly angry at him or tearfully sad at the fact that I would never have a father like others did. I did, however, pull up our last messages, figuring that that would provide me a chance to close the loop on thinking about him.

  I only had to scroll back to the morning after when Brewskis had burned down. I had written, “Dad, I just had something very scary happen. The bar I was working at burned down while I was there. But I’m safe and alive. I hope you are well.”

  I was hoping the message would be a chance for him to connect with me, to express concern, and for us to build a bridge between each other. We’d never be close; if I ever got married, he might walk me down the aisle, but his speech would be cliché and boring. I just wanted there to be something.

  Instead, I got a joke.

  “I knew the bartending business was hot!”

  And that, right there, was Mr. Walters’ problem. Every conversation was either a chance to crack a joke or make a dismissive remark; when called out, he would simply say that he didn’t understand why things had to be so serious. Things could never be deep; they always had to be superficial.

 
; At least he’d somehow gotten better. In my childhood, he never went deep because he was always dark and mean. After I ran away, he got sober, but his refusal to engage in any way meant I always kept my distance. He still had never apologized for the way he had treated or continued to treat me.

  So, yeah. When Phoenix asked about my father, I wasn’t lying when I said he wasn’t around. I just may not have told the full truth—but for all intents and purposes, he wasn’t.

  My thoughts were broken when I heard the sound of a motorcycle coming toward the complex. It was almost certainly Axle coming to visit his lady, but whenever this sound came, I always double-checked to make sure. I never knew who the Fallen Saints considered enemies, and it wouldn’t be beyond the Saints to burn an entire apartment building down because the landlord had pissed them off.

  Funny enough, though, whenever I saw that it was, indeed, Axle coming to visit, it was the safest stretch of the day for me to exit the apartment. If the Fallen Saints decided to stir up trouble, Axle would step in. And even if he didn’t, he’d have the rest of the Black Reapers on call to come by at a moment’s notice.

  Sure enough, when Axle took his helmet off, I quickly gathered my bag, made sure that my hair was well-enough combed, and headed out. I didn’t lock the door to my apartment, mostly because the damn thing didn’t work. Some places had perfectly functioning locks; mine did not, and attempts to get management to solve it were like trying to call the customer service of a phone carrier. The fix wasn’t worth the hassle, and even if someone did break in, they wouldn’t find anything of value. I was the rare person who found it safer to keep valuables in my car.

  I hurried downstairs and got to my car without incident, although I noticed one guy leaning against the entrance to a pool that got cleaned maybe once a month at most, smoking a cigarette, eying me up and down. He was no threat, just a divorced man in his mid-fifties with no prospects. A leering eye was something that you just accepted as part of being a bartender and, to a wider extent, a single woman.