Scrubby grass crunched underfoot where I waited, shrouded in shadows, for permission to unleash the darkness that tainted my soul.Hold on…wasn’t that the title of a Fall Out Boy song?Rein it in, Emo Kid. No one got to where we were, in our lifestyle, without some flavor of damage. I was just better at hiding mine behind a charming mask than most. That mask slipped the moment Priest gave us the signal, letting us know it was time to move. Our motley crew had been split into two, with half of us at the back door and the other half at the front. Priest and I were at the front entrance with Vale, Echo, and three Russians. A Russian stood at the door with a compact battering ram while the rest of us waited, weapons in hand, to storm the entrance. Maxim had led the rest of his men, Bard, Nyx, and the other three Furies I hadn’t met, to theback and were in exactly the same position behind the clubhouse. I reached behind me and pulled out my bat, twirling it in my hand. It's been far too long since I’d been able to let the monster out.
At exactly 1:15 a.m., we kicked their motherfucking doors in. As soon as the door crashed open, Vale tossed a flash-bang grenade into the room. Bellows of rage and confusion rang into the night, and a sinister smile spread across my lips as I felt the charming glint I worked so hard to keep in my eyes flicker and fade. I crossed the threshold behind a nameless Russian, one of the silent ones who’d stood stoically in the hangar, and was followed in by Echo. The flash-bang had done its job, disorienting the five Raiders in this part of the clubhouse. It was considerably smaller than our own LCMC chapter house, consisting of a central area, a bathroom, and a kitchen on the bottom level and a few bedrooms upstairs. One Iron Raider made it down the stairs, tripping in his haste. My bat met his left shoulder blade with a meatythunkas he passed right in front of my position just over the threshold. I stepped forward and caught him in the forearm as he raised his hands to his head, hitting him so hard I felt the jarring vibrations of bat meeting bone where I gripped the handle. A strangled sound behind me drew my focus, and my eyes widened slightly at the sight they found.
Another Raider, who must have come down the stairs late to the game, was behind me. The gun in his hands dangled, forgotten by the fingers of his right hand, while his left rose to touch the tip of the blade that now protruded through his sternum. He looked down at the blade in shock for a moment before it was jerked away, slicing his fingers as the blade made its exit.
“Vicious little Hobbit,” I rasped at Echo, who stood behind the Raider. She gave me a grin, the bloody spray adding to the freckles dusting her cheeks. I gripped my bat in both hands and drew it in a high backswing before bringing it down in a brutal arc, right into the back of my Raider’s head where he was trying to crawl away. Blood flew from a deep laceration in his bald scalp. I brought my bat down in two more vicious hits, the last with such force my boots actually left the floor as I followed through with my swing. Now it was my turn to send a blood-flecked look to the Frozen Fury, though mine was far less mischievous than the sprite’s. No, if the look on her face was any indication, she sawa slightly different man before her than the one she chatted up in the hangar.
Eyes roving over the chaos, Echo whooped in a piercing, high-pitched sound, drawing an answering whoop from somewhere deeper in the clubhouse. She darted off between bodies struggling and fighting against one another, searching for her sisters in the fray. Gunshots rang out, and I had to pray that if any of ours got hit, it was in the chest. We were all kitted out with bulletproof vests before we left the hangar, but none of us wanted to compromise our lines of sight in a ballistic helmet.
The Iron Raiders might have been surprised by our entrance, but by the time the haze from the flash-bang began to fade, I could see that they were putting up a decent fight. A wolfish grin spread across my face as I saw Priest put a bullet into the head of a Raider who’d been wailing on one of Petrov’s men. My moment of distraction cost me, though, and someone took the opportunity to hit me across the shoulders with something bulky. I stumbled forward into the back of a couch, caught myself, and pushed away from the furniture with a one-handed swing of my bat as I turned to see the dead fucker who hit me.
Some Iron Raider piece of shit had bashed me with a metal chair like we were in a goddamn WWE SmackDown. He swung the chair at me again, but this time, I blocked it with my bat. His slow two-handed grip on the chair left one of his sides completely open, so I took the opportunity like the sloppily wrapped gift it was, and smashed my bat into his ribs. The hit caused the Raider to drop the chair with a pained grunt and collapse to the floor. My steel-toed boot came down, ready to stomp this fuck knuckle into oblivion, but the Raider’s hands caught my boot and twisted. The spilled drinks, toppled furniture, and blood on the floor caused me to slip when I tried to force my boot down on his face. I landed hard on my back on the disgusting floor, my head landing in something damp.
Bloody fucking hell.Now I was pissed. In an instant, I had my handgun drawn. I sprang up as quickly as I could with the pain across my shoulders and the back of my neck from his blow with the chair like he was fucking Stone Cold Steve Austin. The back of my head was wet, and I had no way of knowing yet if it was my own blood or the disgusting mess on the floor that was making my hair feelsticky. Ugh.The Raider was babying his side and bracing his broken ribs as his feet scrambled on the floor in his pitiful attempt to put space between us.
My bullet created a lovely hole right between his eyes. My shot was the last to ring out, leaving a charged silence in its wake. I looked up to find Maxim helping one of his men, who’d been shot in the thigh. Everyone else was checking bodies, making sure the fallen Raiders were dead or sweeping for anyone we may have missed. “Nice hair, Blue Steel,” Priest muttered as I picked up my bat and slid it into its holder. I winced and tentatively touched my head. My hands came away with what looked like blood but smelled suspiciouslynot like blood,and I tried and failed to smother a gag.
Echo came into the room from the back of the building, where her sisters had been fighting. She was following Nyx, who had been grazed in the arm. Nyx had lost some blood, but it looked like it wouldn’t keep her from being able to drive to the clinic Petrov had in a safe house nearby. One of the Furies I wasn’t acquainted with was giving it a quick patch job so she could ride her bike.
“Oh shit!” I heard my brother exclaim from the back room, followed by a single gunshot and a thump. Bard was scrambling to get up off the floor when I came through the doorway, followed closely by Priest and Nyx.
“Pyro!” Bard bellowed and bolted out the door. He didn’t move like he was hit, so I assumed he’d been the one to take the shot we’d heard. Turns out, I was wrong. As soon as Bard and I were through the door, gunshots rang out, causing us to both duck behind whatever we could find on the grungy concrete patio. Beer cans and cigarette stubs littered the space behind the small walled-off area that housed the trash cans. I crouched down, hoping that Bard had found cover and could see enough in the darkness to return fire.
Priest returned fire from around the doorway, and with the door wide open, enough light spilled out to illuminate our surroundings for me to make out Pyro’s figure, squatting behind a huge grill in the yard. Priest definitely wouldn’t be able to see him from his position, but if he could hold Pyro’s attention long enough, I’d be able to sneak over and give him a surprise. I mapped the distance and briefly checked for obstacles, calculating my odds. I didn’t know how many rounds Pyro had left or ifPriest might hit me with friendly fire, but Ididknow that I’d given my darling little sis a promise that I’d stick Pyro’s lighter somewhere extremely unpleasant if he fucked with her again. I was a man of my word.
I stayed low and ran as quickly as I could in that position over to where Pyro was hiding. His magazine was empty, but he kept dry firing, refusing to accept that he was more fucked than a sock in a frat house. “Hello, you dumb cunt,” I gritted out as I kicked Pyro in the back of the head. He lurched forward with a pained grunt and dropped his gun so he could try to catch himself before he sprawled into the yard. My next kick caught him in the abdomen, and I relished thewhooshand subsequent wheezing sound the pathetic excuse of a man made. He was too busy trying to scramble away from me to realize he was heading toward the house and not away from it.
I lunged forward and caught Pyro by his stringy, greasy hair, sneering in disgust. Dragging him by his hair onto the patio, I slung him onto the unforgiving ground where Pyro began to do what could only be described assniveling. I remembered all the times he’d called Indigo a bitch and pulled my lip back in a snarl. Priest must have been thinking the same thing because his harsh tone rang out into the night.
“Who’s the little bitch now, Pyro?” Bard, who I was happy to see hadnotbeenshot, closed in on the traitor with a malicious chuckle. “That son of a bitch was hiding in the bathroom. Tried to shoot me, but he couldn’t even manage not to fuckthatup.”
Priest rolled his shoulders as he stepped out of the clubhouse, the bloodlust from the fight still riding him hard. Pyro had murdered a man he thought of as an uncle, helped our oldest enemies breach his home, and took our people. All of that would be reason enough to kill the bastard at our feet on its own, but add in the fact that Pyro hurt his girl? I knew Priest was one breath away from destroying the traitorous shite, and I knew he had every right to be the one to end Pyro’s life. However, the ugly thing that festered below my surface itched in my veins, and my feet were moving before my brain even registered what I was doing. I put myself between the traitor and my VP.
“I need this one, brother,” I said to Priest, who clenched his jaw and searched my face for a moment. I didn’t try to hide the menace insideme, the need to make him pay for hurting our girl. For betraying Bones. For murdering Ace. For spitting in the face of everything it meant to be a part of our brotherhood. Burying the crotchety old bugger, Ace, had brought up a lot of bad memories for me, and I was still working through the darkness they bred in me. I needed this outlet, and my brother saw that. “I know it should be you, but Ineed—”
“Do it,” Priest commanded in a gruff tone, “but make it hurt.” With a solemn nod, Priest stepped back, giving me room to work.
I turned to Pyro, and whatever he saw on my face caused the tiniest sliver of desperate hope gleaming in his eye to snuff out of existence, which made the most damaged and sinister part of my soul rumble in satisfaction. I pulled my gun, pointed it directly at Pyro’s crotch, and emptied the remains of my magazine. Pyro’s screams were shrill and hysterical, and I knew without even looking we’d drawn a crowd of bloodthirsty onlookers. “That is for Indigo, you mouth-breathing incel piece of shite,” I bit out, pressing my empty gun into Bard’s hand.
I crouched over Pyro, who had stopped squealing and was now starting to hyperventilate. Smacking him in the face, I tsked. “Oh no, you don’t, cunt. You don’t get to die of shock.” I patted over his cut pockets, fingers searching until I found what I was looking for in the front pocket of his bloodstained jeans. “There we are,” I said in vicious satisfaction as I held Pyro’sstupid, annoying fucking silver lighter. Flicking it open and striking the flint wheel with my thumb, I sparked the flame to life and illuminated Pyro’s terrified, weaselly face. “I’ve always hated this damn thing. Well, that’s not strictly true. I didn’t hate the lighter. I hated the way you played with it constantly. The noise got so bloody irritating.”
The lighter grew warmer and warmer in my hand as Pyro watched the flame bob an inch from the tip of his nose. “You broke your oath as a Crow and killed our brother. You betrayed Los Cuervos, and now you’ll pay for it in blood.” The lighter had grown uncomfortably hot, and I pinched it between the tip of my thumb and forefinger to minimize the only burn I’d ever welcomed. The muscles in my forearm popped as I strained against my instincts toDROP THE HOT THINGand continue to heat the lighter.
“This is for Ace, you bastard,” I said as I gripped Pyro’s jaw and pried his mouth open. I plunged my hand into his mouth, shoving thesearing hot lighter so far down his throat I felt his molars scraping the leather of my jacket over my forearm. Pyro’s screams cut off in an agonized gurgle, followed by the jerky scuffling of his legs and arms as he struggled futilely for air. I released the lighter and yanked my empty hand out of his throat, only to shove Pyro’s mouth closed and hold it that way as he choked.
In his last moments, his wild, shit-colored eyes bloodshot from his screaming, I backed away and watched him die. No one said a word as he stopped twitching, and my heartbeat drowned out all other sounds. I stared down at the man I reluctantly called brother once upon a time, satisfied to know he could no longer hurt the people I cared about, but also still so angry that a Crow would do this to the people who’d tried to give him a family. Family was the most important thing in a man’s life, in my opinion, and to see it treated with such disrespect and cruelty picked at old wounds I’d been nursing since I was a lad. It brought out the worst in me, and now everyone here knew exactly how fucked up I really was.
That was fine, though. I’d do anything to protect my family.Anything.
Chapter 29
Priest
“Maxim!” a woman’s panicked voice rang out through the open doorway behind me. Cricket was still staring at Pyro’s corpse, gray eyes wide and glassy but his breathing even like he hadn’t just shoved his hand down a man’s throat to choke him with his own lighter. Bard, who’d patched in under Cricket’s sponsorship after meeting Cricket one drunken night in Vegas, tucked Cricket’s gun into his jeans and motioned for me to check on the rest of our team while he helped Cricket settle back into himself after doing battle with his demons tonight.
Maxim barked an order to his men in Russian as I walked back into the clubhouse and went rushing out the front door and over to one of their SUVs. His men began placing the explosives we’d brought with us to destroy the Iron Raiders’ clubhouse and the evidence of what went down here tonight. Movement in the corner of the room that served as akitchen and dining area (in the loosest possible terms, judging by the disgusting state of the place) caught my eye. Nyx, pale cheeks flushed and brown eyes holding an edge of panic, was pinching the nose of one of her sisters and tipping her chin up, leaning down to give her CPR. Echo was doing chest compressions while another sister held a sobbing Vale in her arms.
I rushed across the room and pushed Echo aside, her brown eyes flashing with anger. “The vest,” I said when she moved to shove me away. “It has to come off first, or the compressions will never work!” I ripped the Fury’s shirt right down the middle and began tearing at the straps that fastened the vest to her chest. There was a dimple in the bulletproof fabric right over the woman’s heart, and Echo helped me remove the vest so I could start compressions. A startlingly vibrant red bruise had formed on her chest, and my eyes darted to her lips, which had begun to turn blue. Nyx gave her another breath of air, and then I began my compressions, keeping time in my head and praying that we could get her heart started again.
