Chapter 3 Augustine #2
“I aim to please,” I said, and then realized she might pass out if I joked. “You want this jacket or not? Yours is pretty fucked.”
She clutched the torn lapel like it was a lifeline. “I don’t need your charity.”
“Alright.” I shrugged off the cut anyway and set it on the grass between us. Bloody Scythes patch glared up like a dare.
She eyed the jacket, then me. “You’re with them.” Her nose wrinkled—not with disgust, just calculation. “Of course.”
I didn’t bother confirming. Instead, I dug a cheap pack of tissues from my pocket and tossed them her way. “You’re bleeding. And it’s cold as shit.”
She dabbed at her mouth, which left a clown smile of red across her cheek. “I said I’m fine.”
I nodded, watching the way her hands shook so bad the tissue disintegrated.
Her nails were manicured, not those fake press-ons, but the real deal—French tips, three-hundred-dollar salon work, now ragged and brown with dirt.
Her shoes were ridiculous, the kind you buy at Barneys, suede and impractical, mud caked up to the calf.
Her blouse, or what was left, could’ve fed me for a week if I pawned it.
All of it totally at odds with the way she sat in the grass, hunched and hollow.
“You got a name?” I asked.
She hesitated, eyes darting back to the graves like she was afraid her attackers would pop up again, like daisies. “Melissa.”
I waited, but nothing else came. “Melissa what?”
She glared. “You first.”
I smiled, showed a little of my own teeth. “Augustine.”
“Like the saint?”
“Only on Sundays.”
The smallest smirk tried to form, then vanished. She looked at the grass, drawing her knees up tighter. “What now?”
I shrugged. “You tell me. I can call the cops, call an ambulance, or pretend this never happened. Dealer’s choice.”
At that, she laughed—a single, brittle bark. “No police. Absolutely not.” Her accent sharpened on the last word, pure prep school panic.
“Fine,” I said, “but you need stitches. And you probably got a concussion.”
“I can walk.” She tried to stand and immediately crumpled, bracing on her palms. Her wrists had lines, not from tonight but from the before-times: white and straight, the kind you only get if you’re very committed or very bored. I filed that away.
She stayed down, eyes watering, but didn’t let out a sound. I admired the stubbornness.
“You want to tell me why a girl in shoes that cost more than my bike is out here at dawn, picking fights with local meth heads?” I tried to keep it gentle, but it came out flat.
She gave me a look like I’d just spit in her food. “You wouldn’t get it.”
I shrugged. “Try me.”
She looked at the sky for a long moment, jaw grinding so hard I thought she might snap a tooth. “I was making a delivery. It went bad.”
“What kind of delivery?”
She stared at the ground, shaking her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Alright,” I said, and let it go. “But it matters to those guys. You want me to deal with them, or you want to just walk away?”
That got her attention. Her face closed up like a fist. “You think I want payback?”
“I think you want something,” I said, “or you wouldn’t be here.”
Her breathing got sharp. “I just want to leave.”
A little clatter from behind a tombstone, maybe thirty yards out—the sound of a boot or a hand scrabbling at marble. Melissa’s whole body stiffened, eyes wild.
“Hey,” I said, low and direct, “if you want out, I can get you out. But you gotta move now.”
She looked at the jacket on the grass. Her mouth worked, but nothing came out.
I stood, slow and easy, and held out my hand. “It’s a ride or die situation, princess.”
For a second, I thought she’d spit in my face.
But she took my hand, ice-cold and soft, and let me pull her upright.
She was taller than I expected, maybe five-nine in those ruined boots, but light as a scarecrow.
Up close, I could see the pattern of bruises blossoming under her collarbone, already turning green at the edges.
Her skin was so pale it made the blood stand out in almost neon lines.
“You good?” I asked.
She nodded, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I turned, keeping myself between her and the noise. “Let’s get gone before the other half of that gene pool figures out how to walk again.”
We moved fast, no looking back, her grip white-knuckled on my wrist. The fog had finally burned off, leaving the world raw and bright. As we cleared the cemetery gate, I heard the scrape again—someone getting up the nerve to follow.
I glanced over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of Baldy, the ringleader, hunched and bleeding, eyes fixed on Melissa with murder and something nastier.
She saw him too. Her breath hitched, and I felt her body go rigid.
Pride was dead. Survival was in.
This wasn’t over. Not even close.
We didn’t run, but we moved like people who remembered how.
The sky had gone raw, almost metallic, and the fog was a bad memory in the rearview.
Melissa kept her head down, hair curtaining her face, but her steps matched mine stride for stride.
When we hit the main path, she veered left, clocking the gate.
I steered her right, toward the iron fence and the bike waiting beyond it.
She hesitated when the Harley came into view, as if it might eat her alive. The chrome caught the sun and spat it back in her face. I saw her posture shift—shoulders up, weight on the balls of her feet, ready to run if I turned out to be the bigger monster.
“Look,” I said, keeping my voice soft, “we can hoof it. But we’re two miles from the nearest civilization, and there’s still a guy back there who’d love to finish what he started.”
Melissa glanced over her shoulder. “Think he died?”
“Baldy? Too dumb to die. He’ll rally.” I tapped the seat of the Harley, the universal language of let’s fucking go. “This is the only safe play.”
She eyed the bike, then my hands. The Glock was holstered, but I let one palm rest near it. Just enough to reassure her—maybe keep her scared, too. Trust is a slow-cooked meal.
She hovered by the gate, a few yards out of reach. “How do I know you’re not just going to—”
“Kill you? Fuck you? Sell you for parts?” I grinned, mean on purpose. “I’m not a morning person, but I’m not that ambitious before coffee.”
“Funny.” She didn’t sound convinced, but she took two steps closer.
“I’ll take you wherever you want,” I said. “No strings. And if you want out, you can jump at the first red light.”
Melissa studied my face, like she was searching for a weak spot. Finding none, she kicked at a patch of clover and said, “Fine. But you don’t touch me.”
I held up my hands. “You do the touching. That’s how you stay on.”
She looked at the Harley’s backseat like she was prepping for a pap smear. I swung my leg over and fired the engine. The sound shattered the morning, set every bird for a half-mile into flight. I didn’t look back as I waited for her to climb on.
It took a full ten seconds, but finally she mounted, stiff and awkward, hands clutching the seat behind her instead of me. I didn’t move. I just revved the engine and let her get a taste for the power.
“You’ll fall,” I said over the noise.
She glared, then gave in and looped her arms around my waist—barely, like I was a sack of radioactive trash.
“You ever ride before?” I yelled.
“No.”
“Good. I like virgins.”
Her hands tightened a notch. We pulled away from the cemetery, the rear wheel chewing gravel, and hit the main road at a roll. She stayed rigid for the first few hundred yards, but as I leaned into the turn, she pressed closer, her hands moving up to my ribs for leverage.
The highway was empty except for the ghosts of roadkill and a few reckless crows. I punched it, and the wind peeled the last of the cemetery stink off us. Her body, all angles and tension, fused against my back. The warmth seeped through both our clothes, slow but relentless.
Half a mile in, I realized my jaw was clenched hard enough to crack a tooth.
Not from the ride—this was routine—but from the jolt I got every time her fingers dug in.
I’d taken enough passengers in my life to know how it went: terror, surrender, then boredom.
But she didn’t move through the steps. She just clung like she expected the world to try and kill her at any second.
Her perfume fought through the wind and gasoline—something high-end and vanilla, out of place against the sweat and engine grease.
I wondered if she’d picked it for a funeral, or if that’s just how she always smelled.
I caught myself breathing deeper, and then wanted to punch myself in the face for noticing.
We hit the straightaway and the bike leveled out. I eased off the throttle, just enough for her to find her breath.
“You okay?” I shouted.
“Don’t slow down!” She squeezed, voice muffled by my back.
I grinned and gave it more gas. As we tore up the shoulder, I checked the mirrors: nothing but empty sky behind us. The world got simpler at speed. No questions, no bullshit, just the physics of survival.
By the time we hit the outskirts of town, her grip had changed. Less desperate, more calculated. Like she was using me for ballast, not salvation.
I cut a quick left and eased the bike into a wide parking lot behind a boarded-up liquor store. I killed the engine and let the silence crash down.
She didn’t let go, not at first. I waited.
“Melissa,” I said, soft.
She unclenched, then slid off the bike. Her boots hit the ground with a squelch; she staggered but caught herself. Her hair was a mess, her face even worse, but her eyes were sharper than ever.
“Where are we?” she said.
“Safe. For now.”
She scanned the lot. “You think they followed?”
I shook my head. “You can spot a tweaker car from a mile away. We’re clean.”
Melissa paced a tight loop, then leaned against the wall, legs shaking. She stared at me for a long moment, and I saw her do the math: the odds, the risks, her own bruised pride.
“You could have just left me,” she said. Not a question, just a statement of fact.
“I don’t like leaving messes in my backyard,” I said.
She almost smiled, but caught herself. “You ever do this before?”
“Save a stranger? Sometimes. They don’t usually dress like you, though.”
She snorted. “Yeah, well, I don’t usually get my ass saved by a biker.”
I shrugged. “It’s a new day.”
She looked at my hands, then her own. “I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“Then you’re in luck,” I said, and kicked the stand on the Harley. “Because I do.”
She looked at the bike, then at me. “If you kill me, do it fast.”
I laughed, sharp and loud. “You’re the last person I’d waste a bullet on, princess.”
She straightened, pushing off the wall. “Fine. Take me.”
I took her, and we rode.
We chewed up the miles, hands numb and hearts somewhere between our throats and our asses.
I kept the throttle locked steady, but every few seconds I checked the mirrors, half-expecting to see a rusted-out Ford or a line of bikes chasing us down.
The only things behind us were fenceposts and heat shimmer.
When we finally pulled up to the Bloody Scythes compound, Melissa’s arms went rigid.
I felt the pulse in her fingers, strong and staccato, digging through my cut and into my ribs.
The clubhouse was impossible to miss—a cinderblock fortress with razor wire looping the top, faded murals of flames and skulls leering over the main gate.
A plywood sign with the club’s scythe-and-skull logo hung from a pole, and every window was bandaged in metal grates.
Even on a Tuesday at 8 a.m., there were at least three guards on the porch, all of them packing.
I killed the engine, and the silence was a shotgun blast to the ears. Melissa didn’t move, not at first. She just stared straight ahead, lips pressed so tight they went gray. The club’s colors—blood-red on black—seemed to sap what was left of the daylight.
“Welcome to the safehouse,” I said, trying for a joke.
She peeled her arms from my waist, slow like her body didn’t want to leave mine. She climbed off the Harley, boots crunching in the gravel, and swayed a little. I got off too, legs stiff, and set the kickstand.
The guards on the porch clocked us immediately, eyes raking Melissa’s frame before landing on me. The one in the middle, a guy named Porkchop, raised his chin.
“You bringing home strays now, August?” he called, not unfriendly but not friendly, either.
“Emergency pickup,” I said. “She needs a place to lay low. The real story’s not porch material.”
He grunted and pushed off the rail, but didn’t approach. Respect for the battered and the bleeding.
Melissa didn’t look at the men—she looked at the doors, the windows, the battered pickup trucks in the yard. I watched her do the math: how fast she could run, where she’d hide, what she’d use for a weapon if it all went sideways.
“You wanna go in, or hang out here?” I asked.
She squared her shoulders, like she could muscle her way through the barbed wire with attitude alone. “I want a phone.”
“I can do that.” I offered my hand again, open-palmed.
She ignored it, limped a step forward. Her gait was off—probably the bruised hip or the way her thigh had started to swell up from the earlier fight. She wore the pain like she wore the blood: like it belonged to someone else.
I led her up the walk. As we passed the first line of bikes, she let her hand drift over the handlebars—reading the plates, tracing the custom grips, scanning for clues. She was all in, senses dialed up to eleven, like a deer learning to shoot back.
The door banged open, and another club guy stepped out, this one with a beard thick enough to smuggle contraband in. He clocked Melissa’s face, the split lip and broken blood vessels, then looked to me.
“Trouble?” he asked.
“Not ours. But it might be, soon.”
He stepped aside, letting us in. Inside, the air was heavy with cigarette smoke and old fryer oil.