He didn’t look at me, didn’t say a word. He just shoved me back, out of the line of fire, and turned to face the rest. The tattoo on his arm seemed to writhe in the dawn, the wolf’s eyes almost glowing.
Vin had two Ghouls on him now, both with knives, both slashing and jabbing in tandem. He kept his distance, weaving, but one caught him on the thigh, a bright line of red opening up his jeans and skin. He grunted, barely a sound, then caught the man’s wrist and twisted, forcing the knife up and into the attacker’s own gut. The other Ghoul tried to run, but Vin tripped him, slammed his head into the stones until he stopped moving.
Shivs was less lucky. The fat man, wounded but angry, tackled him to the ground. They rolled, biting and punching, a tangle of limbs and curses. The fat man got the upper hand, pinning Shivs and raining blows down on his face. I saw the blood spatter,the teeth flying out. Shivs howled, then brought his knee up between the man’s legs. The fat man screamed, doubled over, and Shivs jammed his thumb into the man’s eye, shoving it in to the knuckle. The fat man collapsed, shrieking and clutching his ruined face.
Moab finished the last of the Ghouls by snapping his arm at the elbow, then kneeing him in the temple. The man dropped, twitched, and was still.
For a moment, nothing moved but the steam rising from fresh blood on the cold ground. Vin wiped his face with a shaky hand, then limped over to Shivs, who was still breathing, though his face looked like raw hamburger. Moab stood in the middle of the carnage, naked but unbowed, chest heaving, his body slick with sweat and a dozen cuts that oozed pink onto the white of his skin.
I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to see, or feel, or think. But Moab turned to me then, his face softening, and he reached out, palm open.
“Scarlette,” he said, not loud, not urgent, just my name, gentle and sure.
I crawled to him, shivering, and he pulled me in. The heat of his body was shocking, almost obscene, against my skin. I felt my own blood, the sticky wet of his, and the mingling was a comfort I hadn’t known I needed. He pressed his forehead to mine, both of us slick with the afterbirth of violence, and for a second, the world was just the two of us, breathing.
Vin came over, one hand pressed to his thigh, and looked at me with something like awe. “You okay, Scar?”
I tried to answer, but my voice cracked. “I don’t—” I started, then just shook my head.
Shivs rolled over, spat out a tooth, and said, “Fuck me, that was a party.”
Moab glanced down at the wreckage of men and blood, then at the circle of ancient trees. “Not over yet,” he said. “Not by a long shot.”
I pulled myself upright, still clinging to Moab. My knees were streaked with mud, my chest sticky with portal slime, and maybe a little of my own sick. My hair hung in wet clumps over my face. I looked at the Ghouls, all six of them down, none moving.
The dawn light caught on the blood, turning the ground to glass.
Moab let go, just long enough to check the perimeter, then came back, wrapping his arms around me. “You did well,” he said.
I barely had time to catch my breath before the world announced itself again, louder and meaner than ever. The rumble started as a whisper in the dirt, then became a shudder in the roots, then resolved itself into a wall of sound that battered the trees from all sides. It was like thunder, but with a rhythm, a violence you could dance to if you had the stomach.
The first motorcycle burst through the undergrowth, mud and leaves exploding under its wheels. It was matte black, low to the ground, and the man riding it wore a leather jacket with patches sewn on every inch—skulls, daggers, a crown with a wolf’s head at its center. The next bike was red, the third silver, then more and more, a whole pride of them, maybe a dozen, maybe more. They didn’t slow down for the bodies or the blood or the crowd of trees; they just roared through, riding in tight formation, engines screaming their arrival.
The Royal Bastard MC, Moab had called them once, but I hadn’t understood what that meant until now. In my world, armies moved slowly, rank by rank, their violence a thing of order and hierarchy. These men (and a handful of women) were something else—wild, but in concert, a chaos that knew itself, knew its place in the order of things. They rode like the worldowed them the right, and every engine’s growl was a warning to anyone who doubted.
The Ghouls must’ve known they were outgunned, but they tried anyway. The last of them, Gold Tooth, fat man, beard, and neck tattoo, the whole sorry heap, scrambled to their feet, knuckles white around knives and cheap pistols. They formed a huddle in the center of the clearing, backs to each other, eyes darting. The new arrivals did not wait to negotiate.
The Bastards dismounted in a single, flowing motion. Weapons flashed in every hand. The men advanced together, shouting in a language I could almost understand. “Family first!” “Smoke these fucks!” “Take it to them!”
I pressed myself to the nearest oak, heart jackrabbiting against my ribs. Moab was nowhere I could see, but I knew he was in the thick of it, maybe even at the point where the two packs would meet. Vin hung back, tending to Shivs, who was upright but clutching his bleeding mouth, teeth spit out onto the frost. I should have moved to help, but my legs weren’t working, not with the sound of the engines still vibrating in my bones.
The two MCs met with a sound like a dam breaking. The Bastards didn’t fight clean. They rushed the Ghouls in a wave, bowling them over, battering them with the weight of their bodies and the metal in their hands. There was no time for words, just the crunch of bone, the slap of flesh, the wet, bubbling gasp as one of the Ghouls caught a pipe to the side of the head. Blood sprayed, dark and arterial, onto the white bark of the trees.
Gold Tooth made a break for it, limping toward the tree line with his mouth still leaking red. Moab cut him off, grabbing him by the vest and spinning him into a headlock. He didn’t even bother with a punch this time; he bit Gold Tooth’s ear, right at the tip, and spat the chunk back in the man’s face. I saw Gold Tooth’s eyes roll up, then he collapsed, boneless, to the ground.
The fat man tried to shoot, but one of the Bastards, an enormous woman with a shock of white hair, smashed his hand with a hammer, then stomped him in the throat. He died without a sound, legs twitching in the mud. The woman wiped her hammer on his shirt, then looked up and saw me watching. She smiled, teeth as clean and sharp as a hunting dog’s.
The fight lasted less than a minute, but when it was over, there were only Bastards standing. The last of the Ghouls, neck tattoo, made a run for his bike, but a younger Bastard chased him down, tackled him from behind, and bashed his head against the ground until the only thing left was a red, pulpy smear.
The silence after was worse than the noise. The smell of fuel and blood and hot metal crowded the clearing. The Ghouls lay sprawled, every one of them broken or bleeding or both. The Bastards regrouped, checked on each other, shared nods and short, savage smiles.
Moab finally reappeared, arms streaked with blood, face split by a cut just above the eyebrow. He looked at me, saw the way I shook, and nodded once. It was not a comfort, not really, but I clung to it anyway.
Then the woman with the white hair came over. She moved with the confidence of someone who had never, not once in her life, failed to get her way. Her jacket was patched with a dozen insignias, and a ring of wolf’s heads circled her right sleeve. She crouched in front of me, her face close enough to see the lines carved deep around her mouth and eyes.
“You’re cold,” she said. Her voice was soft, but there was a command in it. “And naked. Can’t have that.”
I tried to cover myself, but her jacket was off and around my shoulders before I could protest. The inside was lined with something I’d never felt before, not fur, not silk, but a kind of softness that seemed to hug my skin all on its own. She tuggedthe sides together, covering my breasts, then pulled a bundle of clothes from her pack.
