1
Nitro
Alow-pressure system swept the canyon that afternoon, all drier than the mouth of a corpse and just as metallic, wind scraping the leaves into the air in raw, flayed gusts. I rode with my face into it, helmetless, letting the cold slap me hard enough to remind me I was still the ugly bastard clinging to the living world. The Harley’s engine—my engine, my heartbeat—throbbed beneath me, the vibrations riding up through the soles of my boots and straight into the fucked-up meat of my hips and spine. I was my own accelerometer, tuned to every quiver in the frame.
Being out on the road, straddling a monster bike, was one of the best feelings in the world. The shitty side was not having an old lady in the seat behind me. I needed an attitude adjustment and fucking knew it.
My right hand, still warped from the old IED, gloved in cowhide patched with black tape, looked like it belonged ona corpse. Burn scars showed along the seams, spiderwebbing from the base of my thumb down toward the wrist, but the hand worked. It always worked. I throttled up, and the Softail responded, all matte black and mean, the custom bars set a little higher than factory because I needed the leverage to muscle it through corners. Wind and exhaust and the club’s scythe emblem on the tank, bleeding red enamel at the blade, always caught the light just right to look wet. If you squinted, maybe it was.
Los Alamos Canyon was a ribbon, all twist and drop, with rock walls rearing up on one side and a breakneck plunge to the riverbed on the other. I rode like a man keeping the world at bay, because that’s exactly what I was. One mistake, one slip of focus, and gravity would do what even the Marines and the Feds had failed to. But my mind was never blank, never present, never just the ride and the road. It was always plotting, triangulating, scanning the horizon for the next bad thing.
The news had been circling the Bloody Scythes like a murder of crows for weeks. Federal investigation that included racketeering, possible terrorism, the word “narco” hissing through the back channels. I pictured their dossiers: St. James, Damron, ex-foster kid turned club president; then me, Nitro, with my record all jagged edges and the dark spots redacted. Feds liked their bogeymen, but they didn’t know how little separated us from the men who hunted us.
A twist in the canyon, shaded deep in pine needles, forced me to downshift and kick the bike left. I dragged a toe for balance, not for show, and the machine tracked true, scraping chrome and sending sparks in my wake. There was a kind of peace in this—total control, total exposure, the edge always closer than it looked. The speedometer hovered at forty-five, but I felt every mile of the wind shear.
I let my mind drift again, past the clubhouse and the latest round of loyalty tests, to Damron and his ghost-wife, Senator Carly St. James, queen of New Mexico, and a woman built from contradictions. Damron wouldn’t talk about her, not in detail, but the rage simmered in him like a pilot light, always ready to torch everything. We all felt it, secondhand, through the way he barked orders, the new twitch in his jaw when the mail came with government seals. She was the kind of baggage that got men killed in my world, and he still carried her like a relic.
The next straightaway ran flat for half a mile, the river below catching just enough sun to look clean. I considered opening up, letting the Harley eat the distance, but I kept it tight, disciplined. The ride wasn’t for show, not today. I was headed up to the overlook to kill fifteen minutes before the meet—Damron didn’t tolerate earliness, considered it a sign of desperation—and I wouldn’t give anyone that leverage.
Up ahead, a pair of state trooper cruisers idled in the gravel turnout. I recognized the stance of the officers before I saw the faces—shoulders squared, posture too stiff for this time of day. They watched me pass, but I could feel the weight of their gaze like a pair of sniper dots on my chest. Even in a town like Los Alamos, a biker cut still meant “suspect.” I gave them the “up yours” with a flick of the wrist, and the engine sang as I dropped down two gears, the pipes splitting the air like a challenge.
I reached the cutoff for the overlook, sign printed with bullet holes and sun-faded like everything else in this town. I braked in and set the kickstand, turning off the ignition with a sense of ritual. For a second, the only sound was the ticking of the engine cooling and the wind picking at the pine needles. The road below was empty. So was the horizon. That’s what I loved about this place. It was full of secrets, sins.
I flexed my right hand, feeling the crackle of scar tissue and the old ache. There’d been a time when I believed the pain wouldfade, but it didn’t. You just got used to it, and if you were smart, you made it part of the weapon. I watched a raven spiral above the canyon, scavenger in a world of scavengers, and I thought about the club. About Damron, about the brotherhood, about the coming storm.
We were tight—Damron and me, thick as blood can get when you’re not actually related. The club saved us both, just in different ways. For him, it was a purpose. For me, it was survival. I’d joined because I couldn’t function in civilian life, because every job interview ended with someone flinching at my record or my face. Here, nobody cared how fucked up you were as long as you bled for the patch.
I lit a cigarette, letting the smoke numb the rest of the nerves the VA couldn’t medicate. The meeting would be tense—Damron hated loose ends, and the Feds were one hell of a loose end. But I had my part to play as the loyal VP, the guy who never blinked, never hesitated, never questioned a call, even if it meant burning down the only good thing left. That was the job. That was the brotherhood.
The wind picked up, scattering ash and dust across my boots. I leaned back against the Harley, letting the chill settle into my bones, and waited for the clock to tick down. In the distance, the sun slipped behind a cloud, the canyon darkening a shade.
A truck passed on the highway below, headlights already on, though it wasn’t even dusk. I watched its progress for a moment, then let my mind slide sideways, back to Afghanistan. It was a favorite party trick for my brain—pick a moment, any moment, and ruin it with a memory.
We’d been north of Lashkar Gah, a bombed-out ribbon of nothing, doing route clearance for the convoy. They called it “winning hearts and minds,” but it was really just counting how many days you could avoid getting blown up. I remember thedirt, the vibration of the RG-31 under my ass, and the look on Doyle’s face when he spotted the kid with the cellphone.
My last day in the Corps came down to a single choice. Watch the blast take the entire squad, or disobey every standing order and end the threat myself. I chose, and for that, I got the nickname and the discharge. The kid survived. Most of my team did too. Nobody said “thank you.” Nobody wanted to talk about how close it had been, or how close I’d come to murder for the sake of brotherhood.
When I came back stateside, the Marines dumped me like a hot grenade. No pension, no “thank you for your service,” not even a dog tag for the effort. The club was waiting. Bloody Scythes MC, a rehab for the incurable. Here, the rules were simple, and loyalty wasn’t an HR poster in a recruiting office. You bled for the patch, or you bled out. I was good at both.
A cloud crossed the sun, plunging the National Laboratory below into shadow. I watched the shift in the light, the instant flattening of every surface. Up here, it was easy to think the world below didn’t matter—just lines and shapes, dead things under glass.
My phone buzzed once—a text, terse as a drill sergeant. Damron’s style. “Don’t be late.”
I snorted, flicked the cigarette butt into the chasm, and stood. My boots made a rough sound on the rock, and for a second, I let myself stare at the horizon. I was supposed to be worried about the Feds, about the Club’s future, about how much longer we could all keep outrunning the world. But honestly, I didn’t feel fear anymore. Not for myself. Maybe for Damron, maybe for the brothers. For the men who’d trusted me with their lives and expected, in return, that I’d never blink.
The wind tore at my jacket as I slung a leg over the Softail, the patched leathers creaking like the bones of a dying animal.I wiped my gloves down the sides of my jeans—habit, nerves, or maybe just some old drill left in me from before.
The clubhouse sat in the shadow of the mesa, an old Quonset hut rebuilt in concrete and hate. No colors outside—strict rule, ever since the last drive-by. I parked the Softail in its marked spot, engine echoing in the steel-boned dusk, and swung my leg off with practiced ease. For a moment, I just stood there, letting the pain in my joints settle, breathing in the sharp stink of oil and dust and old cigarette butts.
Inside, the place was quiet, just the mutter of voices behind a closed door. I caught my reflection in the streaked glass—burn scars and all, eyes like two empty shell casings. I shrugged out of my jacket, letting the VP patch catch the weak light. There was comfort in the ritual, the steps and orders, the predictability of it all. Even as the world went sideways, even as the Feds closed in, there was still this: a man, a machine, a brotherhood that didn’t give a damn how ugly you were.
I didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate. I walked in. The cut belonged to me now, as much a part of me as the scars and the stories. If tomorrow brought the end, so be it. I was Seager “Nitro” Culberson, VP of the Bloody Scythes, and I’d ride straight into hell before I let the world decide my last day.
2
Seraphina
The Los Alamos Canyon trail ran like a suture across the flank of the plateau, all fractured basalt and scrub, the kind of terrain that punished distraction with blood. I’d started late to avoid the sun, but by the halfway marker, my shirt clung to me in a salt-soaked second skin. My left boot was already full of tiny stones, and the dry air tore at my throat like fiberglass insulation. The brochure said “invigorating switchbacks, breathtaking mesa views.” The reality was a low-grade hypoxia and the constant, involuntary calculus of risk versus reward.
