Beast (MC Fables #1)

Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

B EAST

“It’s a fucking disgrace,” Opie mutters, holding up a lab dish of off-white powder. We’re in one of the brightly lit rooms of the laboratory that runs beneath the clubhouse.

After leaving Belle outside her bedroom, I was on my way to my room to get changed when Opie texted me about the fake phantasia.

Dressed in a white coat over his cut, he pushes his thick glasses up his nose, offended by the powder he’s spent the afternoon investigating.

“How anyone mistakes this for the real thing is beyond my understanding,” he says, shaking his head. He’s right. The fake phantasia is missing the white sparkle of authentic phantasia. This stuff is dull. Almost yellow. Like piss on snow.

The door opens, and Lars and Gambit walk in, fresh from the party upstairs. Lars looking unimpressed by the text message I sent summoning them to the lab.

“We need a clause that says any disruption to a party is unbrotherly and unjust,” he grumbles as they approach the lab bench. “There’s something to be said about being able to disconnect from your boss outside of work hours, you know.”

I give him a sharp look. “There’s also something to be said about being able to disconnect your tongue from your mouth that I’m happy to help you explore,” I growl.

Lars ignores the threat. He knows when to quit.

Gambit nods toward the powder in the Petri dish on the lab bench in front of us. “Is that the synthetic phantasia?”

Opie nods. “Disgusting stuff.”

“What did you find out about it?” Lars asks, instantly switching to business mode.

“It’s one hundred percent synthetic.”

“And the effects?” Gambit asks.

“Designed to mimic the real stuff but it’s unstable. The high won’t be as clean. Users can expect varying reactions.”

“Similar to what?” I ask, trying to gauge what we’re dealing with.

“If MDMA and GHB had a baby and dipped it in cocaine with a bump of meth, this is what it would look like. Users start to feel good, feel horny, get hard, then the nightmare kicks in, the agitation, the over confidence, the paranoia, followed by a plummet in mood and alertness. Finally, if they’ve consumed enough, their respiratory system fails and they die.” He puts the dish on the counter. “And if that’s not bad enough, it’s highly addictive. It makes heroin and meth look like nervous school kids.”

Fucking great.

“Has Bram been able to find anything that ties this to the Psychos?” Lars asks me. “My gut tells me they’re responsible, so it’s only a matter of time before he finds something.”

Fucking Psychos. I’m going to bring the hammer down on their drug trade and pulverize it until there is nothing left.

“Unfortunately, time is not something we have a lot of,” Opie says. “If this is out on the street, then we’re going to see more than one dead girl in an alley.”

I clench my fists, and I’m seeing red that someone is killing our townsfolk and using our logo to do it. There is a lot of trust behind that logo. A clean escape. A safe high.

“I’m calling Church,” I growl.

Gambit steps forward. “It’s Viper’s night. He needs this. They all do. And if war is coming, which it sounds like it is, then this might be the last night they get to enjoy for a while.”

I look at the dirty yellow powder. “We need to take action now.”

Lars frowns. “You want to take a battle to the Psychos tonight? You’ve got a bar full of half-cut bikers.”

“He’s right,” Gambit says. “Bear and Balls are already through a bottle of Jack each. And Sticky just fell down the stairs. Ain’t one of our brothers okay enough to take on the Psychos tonight. We need a plan as much as we need the brawn.”

“And right now we have neither,” Lars adds.

They’re right. As much as I want to storm the Psychos clubhouse and burn it to the fucking ground, this situation requires strategy.

“Okay, we let our brothers have tonight. But tomorrow, we take the next step.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t give a fuck how hungover everyone is, we’re going to spread far and wide until we find whoever is dealing this shit, and when we do, we’ll ever so politely make them take us to the source.” And by ever so politely , I mean we’ll hang them over the side of Deadman’s Bridge by the feet until they give up the name.

Waiting goes against my better judgement. But I need the power of the club behind me. And right now, that power is three sheets to the fucking wind.

Tomorrow, I’ll call Church.

We need to get this shit off our streets and I will stop at nothing to make it happen.