by Aiden Bates
Blade
Hell’s Ankhor: Book 1
Aiden Bates
Ali Lyda
Contents
1. Logan
2. Blade
3. Logan
4. Blade
5. Logan
6. Blade
7. Logan
8. Blade
9. Logan
10. Blade
11. Logan
12. Logan
13. Blade
14. Logan
15. Blade
16. Logan
17. Blade
18. Logan
19. Blade
20. Blade
21. Logan
22. Blade
23. Logan
24. Blade
25. Logan
26. Blade
27. Logan
Chapter 28
Raven
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Blade
1
Logan
“No, no, no!” The temperature gauge in my beat-up Plymouth Sundance’s dashboard ratcheted into the red zone. “Come on, not now!”
I slapped the steering wheel with both hands, like a moron, and the impact vibrated up my arms into my sprained shoulder. Sharp pain coursed through my muscles. “Fuck!”
The Sundance rolled weakly onto the highway’s shoulder, sputtered, and died. With the engine went the air conditioning, and in no time, the interior was sweltering from the late afternoon California sun. I climbed stiffly out of the car, my sore hips and legs protesting the movement, and popped the hood to survey the damage. Smoke billowed from the engine and blew into my face. I coughed hard, and my ribs ached with the force of it.
Of course this would happen here, just a few miles north of Elkin Lake. The last place I wanted to be. I ran my good hand through hair and grimaced at the sweat. The fast-paced travel had not treated me well so far. But I had plans, and I really, really needed something to go right.
Sucked to be me, apparently. “You just had to screw me over, too, huh?” I kicked the Plymouth’s tire, and then sat down in the dirt, leaning up against the car to search for a local towing company. I called the first number I found.
I had planned to hit Los Angeles before nightfall, grab a hotel room on the edge of the city, wake up, eat huevos rancheros somewhere, and then drive east. Kansas City was sounding good. Maybe Austin. Anywhere but the miserable, fog-drenched hills of San Francisco. Tinny hold music played in my ear as I held my phone up with my shoulder. I pulled up the leg of my sweatpants and examined the long, purpling bruise that ran across my shin where my father had kicked my legs out from under me. It was still swollen and throbbed under my fingers, but it didn’t seem to be getting any worse.
“You’ll do as I say, Paddy!”
My father’s barking commands from last night still echoed in my head. I hated that fucking infantilizing nickname. I could almost still feel the freezing concrete under my cheek.
“You’re a disgrace to the Viper’s Nest. If you want to stay under our protection, you’ll make my trouble worthwhile and do what I tell you.”
The smell of liquor had been thick on his breath when he’d hissed those words into my ear. The pain in my shoulder was sharp like a stabbing when he’d wrenched my arm behind my back and pushed me to the ground, keeping me pinned with a knee on my back. I’d thrashed against the hold, tried to break free, but he had probably a hundred pounds on me. It had been hopeless. The copper taste of blood had filled my mouth.
A grouchy, gruff voice in my ear brought me back into reality, and I quickly gave the towing company on the line my location. Once I hung up, I tried to shake off the memory. I was free now. I had a car—it was the same age as I was, but a car nonetheless—and it probably only needed a minor repair. I had a skillset that would allow me to get a job anywhere in the country. Every hospital needed nurses. My stop in Elkin Lake would be brief, and then I’d be back on the road.
Sure, Elkin Lake was Hell’s Ankhor’s territory. Sure, they were the direct rival to the Viper’s Nest. But I wasn’t a Viper, and no one here knew I was Crave’s son. It’d be fine.
If I repeated that enough to myself, maybe I’d eventually believe it.
The tow truck arrived as the sun was creeping toward the horizon. The driver maneuvered his immense bulk out of the cab like a clown emerging from a tiny car. He slapped a ball cap onto his bald head and appraised the car with narrow eyes.
“You been waiting long?”
“No.” My bad leg throbbed as I stood and shifted weight onto it. “I don’t know. An hour or so.”
“Hm.” He poked around the engine for a few minutes, then slammed the hood closed. “I gotta take it in, that’s for sure.”
“I figured,” I said. “If you can go ahead and take it, I’ll call a cab.”
The man shook his head. “Don’t waste your money, kid.” He nodded at the tow truck. “Hop in.”
Figuring I didn’t have much to lose, I grabbed my bag from my car and did as he said. The truck rumbled south on the potholed highway, with my sad purple sedan rattling along behind.
“You from around here?” the driver asked.
“Just passing through,” I said. No way in hell I’d tell a local I was from Viper’s Nest territory. It wasn’t a lie, either. I was only passing through—if things had gone according to plan, I wouldn’t be stopping here at all. And hopefully I wouldn’t be here long. My stomach clenched as we turned off the highway and toward Elkin Lake. “Kind of in a hurry. My car chose a bad time to die.”
“Might not be dead. I’ll take a look once I get it to the shop and let you know the verdict.”
“So you’re the mechanic, too?”
He shrugged. “I do a little bit of everything around here.” He handed me a business card off the dashboard. “I’ll drop you off in town. Call me in about an hour.”
Elkin Lake was nestled in a valley surrounded by a vista of mountains. The main strip was dotted with bars and restaurants and shops, none higher than three stories so as to not disrupt the beautiful views. It could’ve been any northern California tourist town if not for the sleek cruiser motorcycles outnumbering the cars.
The truck stopped outside a bar in the center of the strip where the motorcycles seemed to congregate the most.
“Hang here for a bit,” the mechanic said. “Try the Irish coffee, it’ll make you feel better.”
A biker bar. Of course, I had to pass the time in a biker bar. Sweat prickled on the back of my neck. What was worse? Going into the bar, or trying to explain why I couldn’t? The bar was guaranteed to be brimming with Hell’s Ankhor members. Anxiety twisted in my chest. I’d have to sit there, surrounded by Hell’s Ankhor guys, pretending like their sheer presence didn’t set my teeth on edge. Logically I knew it was impossible for any of them to know who I was, but I’d been raised to hate them indiscriminately. But in my case, what was supposed to be hate had become a bone-deep fear. Hell’s Ankhor had better territory, more members, and a reputation of taking no shit from those trying to encroach on their boundaries or disrespect their club. If the Viper’s Nest was a group of rabid mutts, Hell’s Ankhor was a well-trained pit bull. They didn’t fight without reason, but when they did, they fought hard.
The doors clicked loudly as the driver unlocked the already unlocked doors. I took the hint.
“Thanks,” I said.
The driver nodded.
My Sundance grew smaller and smaller until the truck turned a corner and disappeared. Despair fell over me suddenly like a heavy blanket. My father hated me, my brother had abandoned me, the Vipers had lost me my job. In my world, that jacked-up old car was my most reliable friend. And now here I was, in enemy territory, empty-handed.
The bar’s metal door loomed above me like the entrance to a hospital morgue. Above the door, a simple unobtrusive sign read BALLAST in black block letters.
Trapped in Elkin Lake. Exactly where Dad wanted me to be. Exactly what I had planned on avoiding. The only thing I had going for me was my anonymity. It wasn’t late yet, so the bar was likely to be quiet. I wasn’t going to stroll in there and try to make friends. A drink or two to take the edge off, to uncoil the knot in my stomach and dull the throb in my body, and then I’d call the shop and be on my way. It was probably just a coolant leak. It’d be fine. I’d be in Los Angeles before midnight.
I walked through the door of the bar and almost directly into a man’s broad, muscled chest.
A chest wrapped in a leather jacket.
A leather jacket with a Hell’s Ankhor patch at the heart.
A patch with a “P” on it.
Shit. I was staring–definitely staring–at the Hell’s Ankhor president. I’d always thought I had a knack for pessimism, but apparently things in the real world could always get worse than I ever imagined.
Shakily, I stepped backward, and the man reached out to steady me with a firm grip on my biceps. The pressure hit a bruise, sending a bolt of pain through my arm. I winced, instinctively trying to pull away. It wasn’t just the pain, though. Having a biker’s hands on me without permission turned my stomach.
“Whoa, there,” he said, in a low, gravelly voice. His dark eyes tracked over my face, lingering on the bruise on my chin. He shook a strand of dark hair out of his eyes and furrowed his defined brow. “You all right?” The muscle in his square jaw clenched slightly, and I followed the tension down his strong neck to his broad shoulders until I wrenched my attention back to his face. The warmth in his eyes shocked me. His gaze wasn’t assessing or suspicious, just… no, it couldn’t be concern. That wouldn’t make any sense.
I stood frozen in place. I should’ve put distance between us, but I couldn’t tear myself away.
My heartbeat quickened. Not from anxiety this time, not out of fear of his strong grip—but from the faint smell of sweat, leather, and sandalwood.
He stepped the barest amount closer.
A confusing clash of sensations rushed through me: I needed to get away from the president as quickly as possible, but his deep, intense eyes drew me in. Like a bug in Venus flytrap. The instant rush of attraction that cut through me was unfamiliar, but undeniable. It had never been so sudden, so strong, so dizzying. And for a biker? After everything my father had put me through, the only thing I felt for bikers was disgust. At least, until now.
But it still wasn’t enough to outweigh the fear. If I wanted a life of my own—a life away from Crave and the Viper’s Nest—I needed to get out of Elkin Lake as soon as possible.
2
Blade
“It’s a death wish,” Priest said. “No one would try to start dealing in our territory willy-nilly like that. Before we jump to conclusions about sourcing, we need to consider that kids might just be picking them up at school or in LA and bringing them back.”
I scrubbed my hand across my stubbled chin as I considered that. Priest was my vice president for a reason. He was in his mid-sixties, so he had about thirty years on me. Since I became Hell’s Ankhor president a year ago, I’d leaned heavily on Priest for guidance. Ankh, Priest’s late partner, had been the president and founder until his accidental death the previous year, but Priest had no interest in taking over that role. The presidency required a heavy hand sometimes, a violent hand, and that didn’t suit Priest. It suited me just fine.
“No way.” Gunnar folded his big hands behind his head as he leaned back in our shared booth. As my sergeant-at-arms, Gunnar was responsible for the security and safety of all members. He was also, for reasons that sometimes evaded me, my best friend. He was suspicious and skeptical, but as devoted as a pit bull, and he demonstrated that with his take-no-shit attitude and the tattoo of the club’s logo on the side of his neck. “There’ve been way too many overdoses over too long a period of time for it to be one bad batch that wormed its way in. Someone is dealing in town, I can feel it.”
Priest hummed thoughtfully, stroking his long, gray beard.
“Don’t stroke your beard,” Gunnar said. “It makes you look like a wizard.”
“Don’t slouch,” Priest said distractedly. “It makes you look like a petulant teenager.”
Gunnar grumbled but did sit up straight.
Priest closed his blue eyes. “It just doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of the clubs around here. We’re not one-percenters, obviously, and all the clubs around here know we don’t deal hard shit. But we don’t have a doormat rep, either.”
“Damn right,” Gunnar said. “What do you think, Blade?”
I took a sip of my beer: ice cold, locally brewed. Only the good shit. I insisted we keep the bar stocked with craft beers and at least mid-shelf liquors, not only for the patrons but if a member of another club came sniffing around. One-percenters were gangs, and their members reveled in the criminal side of things. Drugs, robberies, trafficking—you could fear it, one-percenters did it. Their argument being that’s where the real money was. That a club couldn’t be truly successful while operating on the edges of the law instead of all the way outside of it.
Ballast was our public-facing representation, and I wanted visitors to know: we weren’t one-percenters, and from the fancy shit we sold, it was clear we were doing just fine financially.
And something in my gut told me it wasn’t just kids bringing drugs up from the city. My instincts often aligned with Gunnar’s, and it was Priest who kept us from acting too rashly. But something here wasn’t adding up. Under the table I slipped my pocket knife from my jacket and opened it, closed it, flipped it, opened it, closed it. The tactile, repetitive motion helped me think.
“You’re both right,” I said.
Gunnar rolled his eyes dramatically.
I ignored him and continued. “We’ve got a good relationship with the neighboring clubs. But that doesn’t mean they’re not interested in expanding their territory. Elkin Lake is the prime location between San Francisco, LA, and Vegas. Even if a club respects us, that doesn’t mean that’ll outweigh their desire to control this territory.”
“And imagine their perspective,” Gunnar added. “A club loses its leader suddenly—”
Priest’s face abruptly darkened with sorrow, as it always did when Ankh’s death was mentioned. His pain was like a storm cloud. He’d get soaked—and so would the rest of us—but it would pass.
“—and then appoints a president who’s not even forty. What would you think?”
“I’d think the club was disorganized and grieving,” I growled. “Prime time to raise hell.”
“And that the leader is still inexperienced,” Priest said. “If there were ever a shot at winning control, this would be it.”
“Exactly.” Gunnar crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “End of story.”
“But it’s not that clear-cut,” I said. “Starting with club drugs is a bizarre tactic. It could be as Priest says. Just a bad batch.”
“Great, so we have nothing,” Gunnar said. “What do you want to do?”
“I want information,” I said. “Get the enforcers casing the affected clubs. Low profile. Just let me know what’s going on, what the rumors are.”
Gunnar and Priest nodded. We tapped our pint glasses together.
Behind the bar, one of Gunnar’s three enforcers, Tex, was balanced precariously on top of a barstool, hanging a new portrait of Ankh and Priest at a years-past Independence Day cookout. Below him another enforcer, Coop, was cowering with his hands up, acting as a half-assed spotter. But if Tex were to fall, it was clear his ginger-haired bulk would crush Coop. Siren, the smartest of the club’s three official enforcers, was at her daily jiu-jitsu training.
Gunnar left our booth to go inform Tex and Coop about the plan. He leaned over the bar to say something and sta
rtled Coop, who flailed and knocked into the barstool Tex was balanced on. Gunnar immediately reached across the bar to stabilize the stool, but Tex still smacked his head against one of the hanging lamps and barely managed to keep hold of the photo. They acted like idiots sometimes, but these people were my family.
By club rules, Priest should’ve been president. Not only was he co-founder and vice president of the club, he had been Ankh’s Old Man for thirty years. After Ankh had passed, we’d almost lost Priest to the gaping jaws of grief. He’d disappeared into himself, spending days alone in the home he’d shared with Ankh, turning it into a mausoleum for the life they’d had together. For nearly a week the club had simply shuddered to a stop. Nothing had happened. No one had gone anywhere. No decisions had been made. It had just been the members, sans Priest, sitting together in the clubhouse without any words to describe the pain.
Priest had asked me to his house two weeks after Ankh’s death. The loss had aged him and new wrinkles creased his face. God, that house. It was supposed to be noisy with Ankh singing along to Skynyrd and a young Raven’s footsteps bounding down the stairs. But instead, it had only been Priest on the living room sectional, gazing unfocused at the family photos displayed on the hearth.
“Sit with me, Blade,” he had said.
I had angled my body toward him as we sat side-by-side. “What do you need?”
Priest had smiled to himself minutely. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Ask to help,” Priest had said. “Always trying to be of service.”
