by A. J. Downey
“You’re twins.”
The two men exchanged a look, “How the hell do you get that?” Rev asked.
“She’s right,” Nox shrugged.
“You two don’t look a damned thing alike,” Rev frowned.
“It’s called fraternal twins. Identical twins come from the same egg that splits in two. Sometimes a woman’s body lets go of two eggs at the same time, if they both get fertilized then you end up with two babies, sometimes two boys, sometimes two girls, other times a boy and a girl at the same time. They don’t look alike but they shared the same womb so they’re twins.” Revelator looked like he was turning a little green the longer my explanation went on. Disney started cracking up.
“Rev’s girl, Red, is pregnant,” Disney said, and boom.
No, really. Boom! Something in my apartment upstairs exploded. We all jumped, and Dragon and Trigger calmly walked out the courtyard gate.
“Let’s roll,” Dragon ordered and, before anymore conversation could be had, we moved. Revelator climbed astride his custom rig while Nox and Rush piled into the truck along with Disney. I ghosted up the sidewalk behind Dragon and got on his bike behind him without a word. He handed me his helmet and I put it on as he pulled away from the curb, but honestly my gaze was affixed to the orange flames licking inside my bedroom window.
I turned forward and caught Dragon considering me in his side view mirror. I inclined my head, expression grim but determined, and he laughed to himself, shaking his head.
“You and Thirteen are going to make a hell of a pair!” he shouted over the wind.
“How’s that!?” I shouted back.
“You got a matched brass pair!”
I considered everything that had just happened and chewed my bottom lip. I could see his point. For three years I’d been a girl who’d done as she was told, who lived in fear and under the thumbs of mad men. Then I had met Thirteen, who’d shown me that risks were worth taking and truthfully, I’d suspected that he wasn’t all that he seemed. I’d certainly known he was different.
I closed my eyes. I didn’t know the Dani I was back there. She just didn’t jive with the Dani of a year or even three years ago. Never had I been an incarnation of myself that had been okay with murder, let alone condoning the murder of a man right in front of me, staring me in the face, in the eyes, as I begged someone to put a bullet in his brain. I’d straight-up seen the bloody aftermath of what Reaver could do with my own eyes, yet I’d gladly handed him a knife wittingly, knowingly and let him go off with Pig-Pen. I thought about Pig-Pen. Thought about the flames consuming my childhood home, and couldn’t scare up an ounce of remorse or sorry.
I felt stone cold and empty. I felt powerful. I felt in control of my own destiny for the first time since, well, ever and it was all because I finally felt supported. Thirteen had given me more than just the gift of finding my own bravery. He’d given me the gift of my freedom, of the ability to dream and plan and scheme for something better for myself. His brothers, The Sacred Hearts, were the ones backing not only Thirteen, but also myself in laying the foundation for a future free of terror and pain at the hands of not only Pig, but The Suicide Kings.
I thought about all of this on the ride back to the SHMC’s club house. When Dragon pulled up into the drive he turned right, into the expanse of parking lot and around the club’s building, waving Disney to follow him. He pulled around the building and down a blacktop lane wide enough for just one car. We followed that around the expanse of grass and pulled up in front of a tall, corrugated metal building with three big, roll-up garage bay doors. He cut the engine on the bike and put down the kickstand. I got off and unbuckled his helmet from my head and handed it back.
“It’s illegal in this state to ride without one, you know,” I said with a faint smile.
“Do I look like I give a fuck, Pretty Girl?” he asked, grinning. I laughed and turned to look up at the building.
“What is this?”
“Well that far one there is a garage bay, the middle one is mostly storage, though we ain’t got nothing in it, and this one,” He said, waving a gloved hand at the bay door in front of us, “Is yers now.” I turned.
“Mine?” I asked.
“We’ll get you set up in here so you can do whatever it is you do. No charge, nothing like that. You get yourself back on your feet with what you got. Get some money in your pocket. Figure things out with our boy on if you’re going to stay or if you’re going to go… just do us all a favor?”
“What?” I croaked, my voice very nearly betraying me.
“Thirteen is a good man. He’s a boon to this club, a better brother none of us could ask for and he risked his ass for you in a big way. Now if you can’t handle it, I get it… but just do us all a favor and really try before you do anything like try to make him choose, because I know enough about Thirteen to tell you if you asked, he’d probably hand in his cut, and it would be a damned shame if he did.” Dragon’s dark gaze held mine and at the same time held such sorrow.
“I wouldn’t do that…” I said, deathly quiet. The bay door was raising and the men who had stayed behind at the club were coming out to help unload. I was surprised to see Archer among them. Nox and Rush standing aside with him, talking to him. They looked in my direction.
“Wouldn’t do what, Honey?” I turned back to the Sacred Hearts President.
“I wouldn’t make him choose. I would just… I don’t know… I would just go away, disappear. I know this life, the bonds that you’re supposed to have with your club. The Suicide Kings don’t have it, they just have this violent, perverted, half-assed facsimile of it. I see it here, though. You all had no reason to help me. To come to my house, to put yourselves in danger, burning it down simply because I asked. No reason at all except…” Dragon’s mouth quirked up in a one sided grin, “Except for Thirteen. You didn’t do it for me. You did it for…” I stopped because it was scary to say it out loud.
“Let me ask you something, Dani?” I nodded.
“You ever give yourself willingly to that son of a bitch?”
“Who? Pig-Pen?” I very nearly physically gagged. “No!” I said, horrified.
“Listen here, you’re a lot like my late wife, like a lot of the fine women we have attached to this club. You belong to Thirteen, you’re Thirteen’s woman because you choose to be.” He poked me in the chest with a gloved finger, “You ever choose not to be anymore, that’s up to you. But as long as you belong to Thirteen, as long as he stands strong and takes on all comers in your defense, well then you belong here with us too. Anything happens to Thirteen, you still belong with us. Bein’ a part of an MC is more ‘n just a bunch a guys wearing black leather lookin’ and actin’ badass on the back of a Harley, drinkin’ and fuckin’ and generally tearing it up. You get what I’m sayin’ here?”
“You just described The Suicide Kings to perfection there; you realize that, don’t you?” I mused.
He snorted, “Just one in a long list of mistakes those assclowns have made, and look where it got them.” His dark eyes blazed with an absolutely unholy light, and it was a scary look. I swallowed hard.
“I thought for sure you were going to kill me, when I brought Thirteen here.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Honestly? The old version of us, the misguided, cocky, and just generally arrogant version of us would have.”
“What happened to that version? If you don’t mind my asking…”
“It wised up in a big God damned hurry about six, seven years back when it got my wife, Dray’s momma, killed.” His expression clouded with a long held deep… just… sorrow and grief.
“I… I’m sorry that happened to you.” I swallowed past a hard lump that developed in my throat.
“Just listen to what I’m tellin’ you. You’re a smart girl, Dani, for all you got mixed up with the wrong people.” I nodded. I think I understood perfectly well what Dragon was telling me. Everything about his
actions, everything that he was doing bespoke one thing, here is your second chance. You’re safe, you’re sound, now build a life for yourself.
“You might wanna go on and tell them how you need that stuff set up, otherwise they’re just gonna drop it wherever,” he said, and put his helmet on his head. This entire time he’d been straddling his bike, comfortable. I nodded.
“Thank you just doesn’t cut it,” I said dubiously.
“Just give us a chance,” he said and started his bike back up, “That’s all the thanks we need.” I stepped back and nodded and he followed the black top loop around the grassed-in area and back out to the lot. I heard a couple of other bikes join the chug of his over the main building and then listened as they faded into the distance, mulling over everything he’d said.
“Dani, how do you need this stuff to go?” Disney called, distracting me. I went over.
“Um, I think the kiln needs to be more like… Um, yeah! That’d be great…” and I immersed myself into accepting Dragon and the SHMC’s kindness, all the while beating down the voice inside my head that was telling me that if it was too good to be true… resolutely telling it to shut up because after everything they had done so far, and after so long under the tyrant’s spell, I was ready to believe again.
Chapter 19
Red-XIII…
Point Nowhere was as deserted as a church in the heart of a red light district. Reave and I let Blue and Duracell do the heavy lifting after pulling the van into the building. Really we just opened the back doors, handcuffed Pig’s hands in front of him, and let the ceiling-mounted engine hoist do the rest. Now he was hanging from the ceiling, feet around a foot off the floor, still unconscious. With as hard as Blue had cracked him, I was starting to wonder if he’d ever wake up. Blood ran in a slick wash down his back from the cut on his scalp, rivulets spilling over his shoulder and midway down his chest.
“Think we should get some salts under his nose?” Duracell mused. Blue frowned and shook his head.
“Naw,” Reaver intoned. “Best wait for the others. Let sleeping…” he wrinkled his nose, “Yeah not even going to finish that thought.” Reaver glowered.
“I want to hurt him.” I stated simply. “First time I ever laid eyes on Dani, he had her backed into a corner, threatening her. She looked so damned small and so afraid, but she stood her ground, smarted off to him, and he backhanded her a good one.” I sniffed. “Last time he really laid his hands on her was around a month ago. Backhanded her a good one… Months back I had to watch this animal fuck her on the club room’s pool table so’s everyone could watch. I don’t even know what she did to piss him off, but the look on her face, just blank and staring… was like she was dying inside a little at a time.”
Blue was scowling, Duracell was giving Pig a decidedly unfriendly look, but Reaver was looking at me. “That what made you wanna save her?” he asked.
“I think it was the start. Honestly, what sealed it for me was after Rev gave me that cover story ass-whoopin’. She got saddled with patching me up, and she wraps these two Oxy in a piece of paper and stuffs ‘em in my pocket.” I pulled out the receipt with her note, which I had carefully folded in my wallet. I handed it to Blue, who read it, raised his eyebrows and passed it on to Duracell.
“She stuffs that in my pocket, then writes on my arm to check my pockets. Man, if this scum bag or any of the others had caught her dipping into their stash on account of helping me, they would have beat her ass in to the next week and maybe even in to the week after that. Not going to lie, when I felt her hand go in my pocket I thought sure she was going to roll me, but no. She was trying to save me some pain.”
We talked, mostly about Dani, what I’d seen, and what I’d heard from the Suicide Kings about her. I didn’t share anything that she’d told me out of turn but I could tell, the more I talked, the hotter and deeper the water Pig was sittin’ in was getting. Finally we were interrupted by his groaning and coming to, just in time for the roar of pipes to drift into the building from outside.
Dragon, Trig, and Ghost came through the door and I nodded in their direction. I was stiff and fucking uncomfortable as shit where I stood, leaning heavily against an old metal work table.
“Just in time, he’s just waking up,” I called out. Trig and Ghost stood off to one side, Dragon took the lead on this one. He marched up to Pig and grabbed him by a fistful of hair, hauling his head up to look at him.
“Only got a couple of questions for you, Boy,” Dragon intoned in his deep baritone of a voice. “Where can we find the rest of your crew?” Pig spit in our President’s face. Dragon socked him in the ribs. Pig grunted. I leaned back.
“You know what? I’m gettin’ too old for this shit…” Dragon uttered, walking away from him and wiping his face with a spare bandanna. “Reave, you go ahead now.” Reaver stepped up and I swear the dude was made of fuckin’ ice. He just exuded creepy motherfucker as he stepped across the concrete floor in his soft-soled sneakers.
He brought out the switchblade he’d given to Dani, “This here is my very favorite knife. I gave it to Dani…” Pig frowned and there was no recognition, I sighed…
“Coon, you jackass!” I called over. Reaver frowned at me and turned back to Pig.
“You’ve been tormenting that girl for years and you can’t even recognize her name when you hear it?” Reaver looked disgusted and started carving, Pig started screaming and I don’t think a single damned one of us really felt all that damned bad about it. I scrubbed my face with my hands after about an hour of it. We weren’t getting anywhere.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!” I called, “I got a better idea.” I went over to the supply bench and plucked off a handheld propane torch. I opened the valve and got it hissing and used a spark lighter to get it to catch. Once ignited, I walked towards Pig, adjusting the flame until I got a nice, steady blue burn on her.
“Tell us where the rest of ‘em live.”
“Fuck you!”
“Get his pants off him.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Pig started screaming and thrashing as Ghost and Trig did what I told them with grim faces. When he was hanging there nude I asked him,
“Have I got your attention?”
“Yes!”
“You going to tell me what I wanna know?” He was crying now and it was pretty fucking pathetic watching a grown ass man cry, but I was thinking about Dani’s tears. He would need to cry a hundred to match a single one shed from her cornflower blue eyes and I still didn’t think that would be enough.
“Yes! I’ll tell you what you wanna know!” and he did. Spilled everything. I took the torch to his balls anyways. The smell of his flesh cooking drove Blue and Ghost out into the night retching, but I stood there and burned the motherfucker anyways. It was Dragon who stopped the high and piteous screaming, he blew a hole right through Pig-Pen’s head. I shut off the torch and stood there grimly. It was Reaver who took it from my hand.
“You’re going to need a while before you go back to Dani. Trust me,” he said quietly. I nodded and went with him out to the edge of the property. We sat quietly.
“That’s the most fucked up thing I think I’ve ever done.” I sniffed, “I’ve done some pretty fucked up things, too,” I admitted.
Reaver gave me a baleful look. “It isn’t so fucked up by half, Brother. You’re good. Still human. I promise,” he said. I stared up into the star-shot sky. We’d been at it a good long while.
“How do you do it, Man?” I asked.
“I just don’t care…” he said honestly and shrugged, “That’s what it is, really. I care that I don’t care. I know it’s wrong and I know it’s fucked up and I just don’t feel anything. Get to that place with this before we go back. You have to, but get to that place only for this, you understand me? Don’t make a repeat visit. I’ve made too damned many.” He got up and went back to the ugly metal building and I nodded.
I didn’t have a fucking clue how I was going to do that. Not clue on
e.
Chapter 20
Dani…
I woke so late at night it was the wee hours of the morning, to Thirteen sliding into the bed behind me. He drew me back into the curve of his body and kissed the back of my shoulder, sighing out as if the weight of the world was upon his shoulders.
“Are you okay?” I murmured, concerned.
“No, Babe. I’m really not, but I will be,” he kissed the back of my shoulder again.
“Is he…?”
“Yeah.” He sounded terse, incredibly so, and so I dropped it immediately. We were silent for a very long time and I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep.
“Thank you,” I whispered and my tension eased. I melted into the hard warmth of him and he murmured back to me,
“Don’t thank me, Babe. Not for that. Please?” he said. I nodded and bit the inside of my cheek.
“Okay.”
I was a complete coward. I didn’t want to know. I’d asked Thirteen to do something so terrible that he came back to me in such a state, and I didn’t want to know. I closed my eyes and slept, but it was far from soundly and fraught with twisting nightmares and dreams.
We spent the next two days, essentially, in bed. Rising only for meals, forget showering; and most of the time we spent together was spent facing one another, hands clasped, sometimes speaking softly, sometimes just searching the other’s face, communicating comfort through gentle touches and meaningful looks. We kissed but that was all, the day’s events from my move taking a real and exhausting toll on Thirteen physically, and both of us emotionally.
On the third day, Doc came to Thirteen’s room and said, “Get your asses out of bed, the both of you, and come out here,” before he turned on his heel and strode out into the common room. Thirteen and I exchanged a look and got out of bed. He pulled on a pair of flannel pajama pants and I pulled on his robe and we went out into the common area. Doc held out two trifolded pieces of paper, one to me and one to Thirteen.
