Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
S triker…
Riding into the Iron Horse, up under the decks and bars on their stilts, and watching the faces on the security guys arguing with the Bloody Scorpions, and the faces of the Bloody Scorpions themselves fall flat – that shit was priceless.
The plan had been discussed, the game was set, and it was time to match.
The thing about the Bloody Scorpions was these motherfuckers were out here playing checkers while the Royal Bastards were out here playing a fucking master class in chess.
The idea was simple as far as plans went. We were here to have a fucking drink. That was all. We pulled up, in our cuts, and sure – we were breaking the rules, but – they broke them first, so fuck it. Right? The rules applied to all of us, or they applied to none of us. The precedent had been set last night when no one got kicked out for sporting colors inside the bar. The slippery slope was slicker than owl shit, and we would have divested if we hadn’t rolled up and seen the Scorpions still sporting their colors proudly without any clapback.
They had theirs, and we’d keep ours, but we’d also keep it PC and play it cool.
We were remaining respectful, throwing little verbal barbs, sure, but we weren’t going to be the ones to throw down first. Couldn’t claim self-defense if you threw the first punch.
That wasn’t in the cards. That wasn’t how things worked.
We rolled up, heeled down our stands, and parked, effectively blocking these losers in. We smiled and nodded politely and took our asses upstairs to have a drink.
We stuck together for the most part, and as we hit the top steps, I spotted her.
She was short, but stacked , her tee fitted and showing off the girls with the deep V of the neckline. Her blonde hair rode in a high ponytail, the beachy waves swinging back and forth as she passed by. She had an ass to match those tits of hers.
What didn’t match was the deep shadow of blue, rotting into purple, surrounding her right eye.
She must’ve been the waitress or bartender who’d been knocked out the night before. I appreciated the pair of brass ovaries she was sporting to be back at it so soon and vowed to get her name.
“Rarity!” the brunette behind the bar called out, and the blonde quickly turned her head.
Well, that was easy, I thought to myself.
Rarity, the barmaid with the black eye, jogged back over to the central bar up here and passed the tub of glassware across it to the brunette before ducking up under the end of the bar and taking up post behind it.
I bellied up to it on her end and smiled at her, turning on what little charm I had.
“Hi!” I called across to her.
“What’ll you have?” she asked, almost demanded , all while looking bored.
That was fair. She’d been clocked into next week just last night. I’d be sick of shit, too.
“IPA,” I called back, and she set about getting me my pour, her face a mix of uninterested, weary, and wary .
“Thanks kindly, baby girl!” I called to her, and she made a face.
“Sweetheart?” I tried.
“Worse!” she called back.
“Beautiful?” I hazarded.
She snorted, clearly, but whatever indelicate sound accompanied her facial expression was drowned all the way out between the band and the din of customers.
“That’ll be eight dollars!” she called.
“Oh! Highway robbery!” I joked.
“Yeah, well, it’s a three-dollar charge just for putting up with you!” she called back. I put both hands over my heart and half stumbled back as Kash came up beside me and laughed at my getting shot down.
I handed her a ten and called back, “Keep the change, baby!”
She didn’t look at me, just rang me up and stuffed the extra bills into her back pocket, moving down the line to help the next paying customer.
“Watch this,” Pud said, tugging on his cut, and he moved in to shoot his shot with her.
“Ten dollars!” she called out.
“You just charged him eight!” he cried.
“Yeah, well, you’re worse!” she yelled back at him, and a bunch of us fell out laughing. He paid her with a twenty, and she gave him back the correct change – which was actually more than ten dollars. Kash stopped Pud before I could.
“C’mon, dude! Tip the lady!” Kash called.
“Here’s a tip,” Pud called over his shoulder, and the girl raised her eyebrows. “Don’t be such a bitch!”
A chorus of ooohs went up around us and she just waved the lot of us off, unimpressed.
I handed her a five and, raising my voice over the din, said, “Sorry about that. He can be a dick.”
“You mean I’m all dick!” Pud said, grabbing his crotch in my direction. I rolled my eyes and was looking forward to him throwing hands with someone who maybe went for his balls. I would let Karma sort my brother out.
I turned back to the pretty little bartender and looked her over.
“I have to guess you know what’s coming,” I said. I tried to keep my voice low and for her only. She leaned in to listen, and I said, “When shit gets started, I want you and the other girl to duck and cover. I don’t want you to come out until after the sirens get here and it’s gone quiet. You understand me?”
She looked up at me sharply, her blue eyes flashing keenly, but she gave a single curt nod.
“Good girl,” I said without thinking, and the prettiest blush worked its way across her nose and cheeks, and she got flustered. Her ears turned bright red as she pushed away from me and the bar and made her way to the other end.
I couldn’t help but grin as I watched her go, and I took a sip of my pale beer. It was crisp, hoppy, and dank as fuck, which is what I liked in an IPA. I would have to try and remember to ask what she’d poured me. It was some good shit.
I drifted on over to stand with some of my Royal Bastards brethren. We were scattered in knots among the varying bundles and micro-groups of Bloody Scorpions. The tension was so thick in the air that you could cut it with a knife.
Dudes in plain clothes were scattered throughout all of us patched bikers in even smaller knots of twos and threes. They were all hugging the railing or edging toward the stairs, casting a watchful eye on the rest of us up here, rightfully waiting for the thing that’d make one of us snap and the free-for-all to begin.
They were victims of arriving here before the rest of the lot of us, their bikes blocked in, unable to flee like I know they wanted to.
Instead, they started making their way down to the food, lower bars, gift shop, and down where the heavy-duty sewing machines with all the patches were set up.
They would likely barricade themselves into employee-only areas and duck and cover when the fists started to fly, which was smart. With how much the Bastards and the Scorpions hated each other – shit wasn’t exactly liable to stay at just fists.
Now, we were taking a gamble – and had mostly left our firearms locked away in our bikes or left them off our person altogether.
Was that a major risk?
Fuck yeah, but it was a calculated one. Law enforcement from all over the fuckin’ place was liable to show up, and shit was liable to get searched. It behooved those of us with felony records to not have an unauthorized weapon on our bikes or persons.
Of course, that was what the prospects were for. While St. Augustine didn’t have any, we were relying on Jacksonville’s and Ocala’s to plant some street weapons on the bikes below for the Bloody Scorpions to make their day a real rotten one when law enforcement showed up. When the brawl started – which it would start – our boys in plain clothes who had gotten here early enough were to do their thing with the distraction going on up top.
While just about all of us would wind up in cuffs, and some of us would head to county while the others headed to city lockup for the rest of the weekend, we were prepared for it.
Renegade, The Bishop, and Creed, the Jacksonville chapter’s president, would make their calls to the Royal Bastard’s respective lawyers, and shit would get sorted out.
It all just predicated on us being cool and the Bloody Scorpions losing their shit to where they threw down first.
We knew where the cameras were, and we hung inside their view. That footage would be the first thing collected by the pigs and would likely be the first thing subpoenaed by our defense guys.
While the Royal Bastards were getting a stronghold formed up in North Florida, we’d been doing it carefully and quietly, working mostly above board and legal – nothing that law enforcement could get us on for RICO or other organized crime charges.
That was on purpose.
Strategic.
We were moving the pieces across the board. Building empires took fucking time .
Something these idiots in their Halloween costumes couldn’t understand. I shot a dirty look in the direction of the nearest set of black-and-orange colors and turned back to Switch. He was a sarcastic motherfucker, and his verbal barbs were just loud enough and scathing enough that you could see that tempers were starting to flare nearby.
Wouldn’t you know it? They started edging away from our knot like the pussies they were, and we had a good laugh about that.
I felt eyes on me and glanced in that direction to catch little miss Rarity pulling a beer, but her true-blue eyes fixed on me, staring unabashedly.
I swilled down the rest of my beer and sauntered in her direction to grab another.
A Bloody Scorpion tried “stumbling” into me and knocking me pretty good. I stopped, put a hand out friendly like on his shoulder, gave him an easy smile, and called out, “You good there, buddy?”
“I ain’t your fuckin’ buddy!” he slurred and jerked his shoulder out from under my hand. I put my hands up in surrender, the boys in my knot of brothers and a few other Bastards watching like a hawk.
“No harm, no foul, bro!” I did say that bro, with all due disrespect, even though I kept my tone light and polite.
“I ain’t your fuckin’ bro, either! You son of a bitch!”
“Hey now, let’s keep my momma outta this. She was a good woman – God rest her soul.”
Actually, my mother was alive and well, and I was her main disappointment in life, but that was neither here nor there.
“Fuck you!” he snarled, and I bobbed my head.
“You have a good day now!” I called as one of his brothers who could actually read the fuckin’ room dragged him away.
So close, I thought to myself as I made it to the bar, tossing my cup into one of the nearby trash chutes and asking for another one.
“Sure thing,” she said coolly, eyeing me.
“Mind telling me what that is? It’s dank as fuck, and I like it!”
“Salt Waves & Spanish Moss Brewing. It’s their Haunted Crypt IPA,” she said.
“I’ll be damned. Ain’t they out of Savannah?” I asked.
She nodded. “Split off from the Moon River Brewing Company after a falling out.”
“You know your beer culture,” I said, taking the glass from her and handing her a ten. “Keep the change.”
She threw some chin and operated the till, stuffing her tip in her back pocket, ignoring the shared tip jar in the back which was pretty empty.
I found that interesting – smart, considering the tension riding the air. For real, the sky was blue and clear for miles in every fuckin’ direction, but still, there was a crackle-like electricity in the bar's atmosphere.
Like the barometric pressure was rising or dropping – whatever the hell it did with an impending thunderstorm about to let loose.
“Your shift ending soon?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “Just started.”
“Well, damn,” I said.
“I heard you loud and clear,” she called back and moved on to help a Scorpion.
I guess concern had entered my voice because legit – I was worried about a pretty little thing like her getting hit again, or worse. If one of these dipshits opened up, it was anybody’s game. Here was to hoping they’d keep it at fists.
We could be so lucky.