“I can feel you,” she whispers, barely awake but sharp enough to wound.“Breathing like I scare you.”
You do, I think.
“You watching me again, Biker Boo?”she murmurs.“Can't sleep unless you know I'm still chained?”
I don’t answer.
She smiles.I can hear it.
“I ain’t afraid of you, Royal.”
She should be.
Because I’m afraid of her.
Afraid I’d burn the world down if something happened to her.Afraid I’d enjoy doing it.I push off the wall and force myself to walk away.
Her cry chases me down the hall.“You dream of me.I hear it in the way you breathe.”
I stop breathing entirely.
Then I shove my hands into my pockets and leave before I break the door off its hinges and prove her right.
Tomorrow, we make a deal.
Tonight, I dream of the cemetery.
Of the blood.
Of the basement.
Of Becki whispering fire into my ear in a voice that was meant for another man.
And of her whispering it again, this time with my name on her tongue.
Chapter 26
Legend
Fog rolls off the cemetery hill like spilled breath from something sleeping beneath it.The tail lights of the last patrol bike fade into the pines, swallowed whole by the dark.I stay mounted for a moment, my hand locked tight around the handlebar, cigarette burning down between my fingers.
We staggered patrols.We took every back road, every forgotten trail.Sent Derby, Oaks, Rye, and Vandal out in rotating pairs.No engines roaring.No club presence.Just shadows watching shadows.
Nonetheless, it appears we are already failing.This ain’t a war with patches and territory.It’s something that wears the dark like a second skin.Something that moves when the wind does.Something that takes girls we should’ve protected long before now.
And all this time?
We were too busy fighting our own damn ghosts.
I flick ash to the gravel, stare at the creaking cemetery gate.It opens a few inches, no wind to push it.Like some dead bastard is inviting me in.
Or warning me away.
Derby swears he saw something out here last night.Something tall.Wrong.He ain’t easy to rattle.The biker walked away from a fiery crash once without screaming.But last night he came back pale, shaking, saying the woods felt… aware.
“You think the Reverend’s behind this?”I asked him.
He just stared at the tree line.
