Demon (The Northern Kings MC #1)

Chapter Thirty Nine

Indie

Demon sat on the long side of the table, his eyes glazed and tired. The cut on his lip had dried, but a bruise was forming under it. A shadow, but in a few days, my guess was that it would be black. There was a static around the big oak table. An atmosphere. All of us tense, and probably none of us knowing why.

At the head of the table, my father sat. His face was grey, cheekbones pushing through thin skin and his eyes sunken into his head. Day by day, he was becoming the skull emblem on our cuts. Everyone must be able to see it. Yet only Demon and I knew he was dying. That his days were numbered, even with the aggressive chemotherapy he was due to start tomorrow.

But today was Church, and there was business to sort out and bodies to stash.

“Someone tell me we don’t have four stiffs to find ground for?” he growled into the quiet.

I glanced at Demon and then opened my mouth to answer.

“And then no one tell me that my dumbass son hasn’t killed the second in command of the Polish mafia.”

Demon straightened up, and I recognised that look of stubbornness sweep over his face. Readying for a fight. It’s all Demon ever did.

“Actually, Dad. It was me. I shot the fucker.”

“I know.” He turned to his right, glaring at me. “I know it was fucking you. You should have let Demon beat him. But left him alive.”

“And what would the point in that be?” Demon spat, rage simmering behind his dark eyes.

“Then at least we only had to worry about the Bloody Hand. Now we’ll be constantly watching our backs. Wondering whether the blow will come from the Bloody Hand or the fucking Polish Mafia.”

The President scanned the room, his eyes resting on each and every one of us. If I hadn’t thought the threat from the Bloody Hand was serious enough, the look on his face told me we were descending into a bloody hell. I remembered those days, Demon a little, and most of us round this table had lost someone we knew or loved during the biker wars of the nineties and noughties.

“Kings, we are on the brink of a war. Over the next few months, we need to realign allegiances with the other clubs. And if we lose any. Even one. The Northern Kings will be no more.”

I looked around again, watching heads drop to hands and stolen glances at one another. My father had always been afraid of this, afraid of what he might someday need to do again. He coughed. A hacking, barking cough, shaking his whole body. Maybe he would never have to deal with it? But regardless of the illness filling his body, the Kings would have to fight. I only hoped we remembered how to be the warriors we once were.