One sharp twist and I've got control of the weapon. Another twist and the rider's flying through the air, separating from his bike in a tangle of leather and screaming. He hits the pavement hard enough that I hear bones crack, and his unmanned Harley keeps going until it crashes into a fire hydrant with the sound of tortured metal.
The other riders abandon their bikes and circle me on foot. Seven men, all wearing Iron Eagles colors, all young enough to have more balls than brains. They spread out in a loose semicircle, trying to use numbers to their advantage.
I've faced worse odds with less backup.
"You King?" The apparent leader is a tall, skinny kid with prison tattoos covering his neck and the kind of pale, jittery energy that screams meth use. "Vulture wants to have a conversation with you."
"Then Vulture can make an appointment like everyone else." I shift my grip on the baseball bat, feeling its weight and balance. Aluminum, decent heft. It'll do. "Tell him my office hours are—"
The kid on my left rushes me before I finish the sentence. They always do that—get impatient, break formation, give me the opening I need. I sidestep his clumsy charge and bring the bat up in a smooth arc that connects with his ribs. The sound is like breaking kindling.
Then it's chaos.
They come at me all at once, which would be smart if they knew how to coordinate an attack. But these aren't seasoned fighters; they're cannon fodder, young prospects sent to test my defenses and probably die in the process. Vulture's using them to gather intelligence, and they're too stupid or too desperate to care.
The bat becomes an extension of my arm, whistling through the air with surgical precision. Kneecap. Elbow. Solar plexus. I don't kill. That would escalate this beyond what Vulture's looking for right now, but I make sure each hit is memorable.
Two of them manage to get close enough to land punches. My lip splits under a lucky right cross, and someone's brass knuckles open a cut above my left eye. But pain is just information, and right now it's telling me I'm still alive and still fighting.
I'm down to three opponents when the cavalry arrives.
The rumble of approaching Harleys is music to my ears, especially when I recognize the specific sound of Torch’s Beast's and Rage’s bikes. My boys don't ride hard through town during the day unless it's an emergency, which means they've been monitoring the radio chatter and know exactly what's happening.
Torch arrives first, his bike sliding to a stop with the kind of precision that comes from twenty years of riding. He's off the Harley and moving before the engine stops rumbling, brass knuckles already gleaming on his right hand.
Beast and Rage are seconds behind him, flanking the remaining Iron Eagles before they can react. Beast, six-foot-four of pure muscle and bad intentions, doesn't even need a weapon. He just grabs the nearest Eagle by the jacket and throws him into the side of a parked car hard enough to leave a dent.
Rage lives up to his name, wading into the fight with the kind of explosive violence that's made him legendary in three counties. His left hook drops one Eagle, his right elbow catches another in the temple, and suddenly the odds have shifted dramatically in our favor.
The whole thing is over in under two minutes. Seven Iron Eagles, unconscious or too injured to continue fighting. The only soundsare heavy breathing and the distant wail of sirens. Someone in the neighborhood finally called the cops.
"Everyone mobile?" Torch asks, checking the cut above my eye.
"I'm good." I wipe blood from my lip and survey the carnage. "Rage? Beast?"
"Fucking fantastic," Rage growls, shaking blood off his knuckles. "Been too long since we had a proper fight."
Beast just grunts, which from him counts as a positive status report.
The sirens are getting closer. We've got maybe three minutes before Sheriff Tom shows up with his deputies, and while he's generally willing to look the other way when it comes to Savage Riders business, a broad daylight brawl in a residential neighborhood is harder to ignore.
"We need to move," Torch says, voicing what we're all thinking.
That's when I remember Luna.
I turn toward the house, expecting to see her safely inside like I told her to be. Instead, she's standing on the porch, blue eyes wide with shock but very much not hiding like a sensible person would.
She's seeing me for what I really am. Not the helpful stranger who brought her coffee and offered to fix her house, but the violent man who just put seven men in the hospital with a baseball bat and his bare hands.
This is the moment she runs. When she realizes that getting involved with someone like me is a mistake that could get her killed. When she understands that Blackwater Falls isn't some quaint small town where she can build a quiet life, but a war zone where people like me solve problems with our fists.
I expect fear in her eyes. Revulsion. The kind of disgust that decent people feel when they see what monsters look like in daylight.
Instead, Luna Hartwell walks down the porch steps slowly, because half of them are rotted through, and stops directly in front of me.
"You're bleeding," she whispers.
"I'm fine."
