Chapter 45
45
Scorpio
Here we are. Battle Number Two. It should actually have been Battle Number One, but Joker had us fight that disaster in the desert first. Doesn’t matter. We still have plenty of men and now we’re on our turf, defending Justice, everything set up the way Joker originally envisioned it. Minus the anti-personnel mines I managed to talk him out of buying in what seems like someone else’s life.
I did that right before I barged into Grim’s hotel room and gave him the blowjob that started this black downward spiral I’m spinning in now. But I promised myself I’m done thinking about that runaway train of happiness, desire, lust, and love I rode with Karma and Grim for the past couple of weeks. It derailed. It crashed and burned. But it also gave me closure for things I never thought I’d get closure for. Let me be whole for a while. That’s why I don’t regret it, I can’t. I don’t regret taking the bullet for Karma either. I’d do it again. She—they—gave me the ability to die a whole, complete man. Not one so tormented by the past there were huge areas of my mind I never touched.
But it’s all over now.
The Devils are on their way. They think their precious princess Eden is gone. They’re gonna kill a bunch of us and we’re gonna kill a bunch of them now. Get revenge.
That should excite me. And in a way it does.
Eden’s not dead. Far from it. Joker finally claimed her and he’s been spending all his free time for the past week or in bed with her.
I don’t know how they mean to continue that after today’s battle, but I’ve stopped worrying about that.
Maybe Joker needed some closure of his own. So he could die a happy man. Like me.
Either way, she went from being the one person who will surely die in this war, to being the one person who will almost certainly survive it.
The town of Justice is nestled between rows and rows of hills stretching out on all sides of it. Because of that, it has all the natural protection we could wish for. Joker made meticulous plans for this battle. We have guns and men on all those hills. Men armed to the teeth. Over three hundred of them. They came from all the MCs still standing in this war against the Devils. We have snipers. Bazookas. Mounted machine guns. And everything else we could get our hands on. I kinda wish we had those mines too.
The Devils came with the dawn. And they tore right through the first two circles of our defenses. They lost men. We lost more.
Joker and I, along with our closest MC brothers are in the last circle. Only Main Street of Justice is behind us. And the Devils are still coming from all sides. They’ll take the town. There’s no question about that. The only question is how many we’ll take with us before we die.
Our whores are hiding under porches and in cellars all over town, their only job to stay out of the path of bullets. The Devils have such a soft spot for women, they’ll be fine after we lose the town. Some of them wanted to fight with us, but that would just be a lot of carnage for nothing so Joker stopped them.
From our vantage point atop a hill, but hidden from sight by a bunch of boulders, I can see the Devils approaching, accompanied by gunshots, explosions and the screams and grunts of men dying amid all of that. Joker has some big and elaborate plan of getting the Devils stuck in a crevice where we’ll be able to pick them off like fish in a barrel.
Nothing much so far has gone like Joker planned. But maybe this will.
And in case it does and we succeed in defeating the Devils today—which is a colossal if —I have no idea how he plans to go back to Eden after it’s all done to tell her he’s murdered her entire extended family and then some. She’s not gonna love him very much after that. But that’s their problem to overcome. I’ve got my own love lost issues to deal with.
Since this battle started, a part of my mind’s been hoping to catch a glimpse of Karma’s long blonde hair catching the rays of the morning sun. Or to feel Grim’s laser blue eyes focused on me. Not the part of my mind that wants to leave them in the past, but the one that can’t wait to see them again. The stupid part stuck in the past with them. Sharing their bed, entangled in their arms, happy.
The battle noise grows louder. I’m starting to see the Devils clearly. It’s easy to tell them apart. They’re the ones moving like assassins for whom defeat isn’t an option. They’re the ones mowing down everything in their path. They’re the ones winning this battle.
“This fucking wait is killing me,” I whisper at Joker.
“Keep your eyes on the horizon,” he says. “They’ll be here any moment.”
“They’re so close,” I insist. “Can we strike now?”
I’m so done trying to corral all the conflicting, painful, noisy, thoughts swishing across my mind. I need this to be over. One way or another.
“I want them just a little closer… “ Joker says, eyeing some middle distance point, which I assume is the line he thinks the Devils have to cross before we can execute his plan. I hope to Christ they’re close to it.
“Now!” he suddenly yells into the walkie-talkie he’s holding and my heart actually leaps for joy. Fina-fucking-ly.
Several explosions go off, sending the ground in front of the approaching Devils into the air. More explosions follow and now a wall of sand is hiding the Devils from us, sparkling in the sunlight. Maybe it’s over. Maybe we killed them all.
But then the dust clears and shows us the Devils retreating. The look of triumph on Joker’s face plainly tells me they’re going exactly where he wanted them to go. I’ve known him for so long and so well, I can read him like an open book. And right now, it’s the sort of book that has a happy ending. This part of his plan went the way he wanted it to go.
“Move, get in position,” he orders over the walkie. “Keep the cover fire going.”
We move too and find the Devils all clustered together at the bottom of a narrow crevice between two flat-topped hills, ready for the plucking.
The expression on Joker’s face changes, turns dark and frustrated. The happy ending must be retreating for some reason only he can see. But I think I see it too. It must have something to do with the fact that only about fifty Devils are in the crevice. But before I can ask him what the problem is, bullets start flying at us from all directions.
“Retreat, pull back, pull back to Point Zero,” Joker shouts through the walkie.
He looks around, waiting until everyone else starts running before he does too. I’m by his side where I belong.
Point Zero is what he calls our very last circle of defense. It’s right above Main Street. And as we run, the Devils are closing their own ring around us.
“They broke through on the main road. The bastards just rode right in, at least fifty strong,” Manic’s voice comes over the walkie. “All our fucking bullets just bounced right off them.”
“Pull back to Point Zero,” Joker instructs him. “Get behind them.”
“Can’t move… sniper got me in the leg,” Manic says. “They got snipers everywhere. Up high and far out. Everyone here’s down.”
Manic had thirty guys with him. I’m guessing over fifty already fell in the hills. We’re down to less than three hundred men. Even if the Devils have an equal number left, we’re still outnumbered.
The roar of bikes approaching down Main Street makes it impossible to keep doing that math in my head. The men on those bikes are shooting as they ride and bullets are flying everywhere, hitting everything in their path, the noise as they hit wood, glass and metal even louder than the roar of engines.
The Devils have turned the tables on us. We are the fish in a barrel now, surrounded on all sides.
I finally spot Karma’s golden hair flying free on a hill behind the town. Grim is beside her, looking like a lone wolf put on this earth just to protect her. For a while, I tricked myself into thinking he was here to protect me as well. But that was just pretty lies I wanted to believe.
All that talk of never wanting to betray me and here they are standing with men who want me dead? Fucking liars. I almost believed them back there in the settling dust of the last battle we found ourselves on the opposite sides of. But if they meant it, they wouldn’t have come to this one too.
I still want to believe them, especially as Grim’s eyes find me, the laser as hot, sharp and inviting as ever, and focused just on me. How can someone lie so well with just a look?
But that’s a stupid question. Maybe my ghost haunting them will get the answer. I’ll find out sooner rather than later if that idea holds any hope.
Ice himself has dismounted in front of the Saloon, and he aims his gun directly at Joker. The bullet flies right between us, missing us both by only a couple of inches. Joker looks at me, the look on his face saying all that needs to be said. This is it. The end scene of the revenge we’d been plotting for the past fifteen years.
“Come out, Joker,” Ice hollers. “You’re surrounded. You lost. But we’ll let the others live if you come out and face me now.”
“I’m right here,” Joker yells and tosses his walkie to me.
“I’m coming down now,” he adds. “No one better shoot me in the back and make Ice a liar now.”
“You’re not going down there,” I say, my voice sounding very distant and faint. I’m not ready to never speak to Joker again. I’m not ready to watch him die. “He’s bluffing. They’re not gonna let anyone here live.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Joker says. “The plan is still on. We fight to the death. But I’m gonna take this chance to kill the guy who brought us all here. And you’re gonna get to watch it happen.”
I nod, accepting this gift from him. It could be the last one he ever gives me. “OK, I got your back. Good luck.”
We grip hands, a silent goodbye passing between us. There’s no words for saying goodbye to your best friend in the whole world, so I won’t even try to find them. Just like there were no words to ever say goodbye to Karma and Grim. Goodbyes are overrated anyway. I never got to say goodbye to my father or brothers, or to Honey, she was just dead one day when I came home from school.
I watch Joker descend the hill, watch him approach Ice who is standing in the middle of Main Street, wanting to think about anything other than the gunshot I know I’m gonna hear any second now. Everything else is as silent as a graveyard. Even the moaning and wheezing of the wounded has died down. The only sound I hear is the beating of my heart.
Until a woman’s scream rents the silence.
Eden is running down the hill from the house, dressed in white, her dark hair streaming behind her.
“No!” she screams at Joker and her father. “Don’t do this!”
She might as well be taking the words right out of my mind. She reaches them and I can’t hear what she says to them next, but the pleading look on her face as she speaks is loud enough. They’re both staring at her like they can’t believe she’s really there. We all can’t believe she’s here. All the Devils, all the Lost Sons, Karma and Grim, and especially Joker.
I feel for the guy right now. How is he gonna get out of this one? Is he gonna kill her father right in front of her? All he does is plan and re-plan all day and night long, but I’m certain he has no plan for this. I can read it plainly off his face. He also can’t stop this battle. And I can tell he knows it just as well as I do. But I can also see in his face that he’d give Eden anything she asked for. I know that look well. Used to be I got it from him often.
She keeps talking and at one point he glances at me over his shoulder, looking for an answer. I don’t have one. But of the two choices he’s facing—Eden or the war—I think he should choose love. So I shrug and nod, grinning at him. Hopefully he knows what I’m trying to say. He probably does. He knows me just as well as I know him.
Ice looks about as confused as Joker. Neither of them knows what to do or say. Nor do any of the rest of us. Over a hundred men and women are just standing here, so silent I can hear the wind blowing.
“Let’s talk!” Cross yells from somewhere and the silence deepens even further.
But Joker visibly relaxes, his shoulders dropping and the tightness draining off his face. He faces our men, some of which looks shell-shocked, many of which are grumbling and cursing now.
“The way I see it, we can either talk or die,” Joker says, his voice carrying. “But I can’t make that choice for you. I can only make it for myself.”
And with that, he tosses his gun into the dirt. It lands with a thud that echoes over the hills. I know what time this is. This is like that drop of a pin that could either lead to total destruction. Or the end of the war. Seconds pass by long like hours and the silence drags and drags. I’m glad he made this choice. But it doesn’t mean we get to live. He needs my backup, like always.
I toss my gun on the ground too and face our men. “As much as I’d like to go down in a hail of bullets to get my revenge, I don’t think today’s the day. Doesn’t feel right.”
I wish I had better words to say. But I spoke the truth and that’s as good as it gets. Karma smiles at me as she tosses her knife and gun to the ground. Grim does the same. And pretty soon, almost everyone starts getting rid of their weapons.
I still can’t believe no one’s shooting as I jog down to Joker. Ice and Eden are getting reacquainted a couple of feet away and Ice still looks like he might faint.
“I’m sorry,” he says as I reach him. “I had to do it. I had to try and stop the war. For her.”
He glances at Eden and I’d be lying if the look of devotion and love on his face didn’t make me a little bit jealous.
“I’m happy you did,” I say. “I just can’t believe it worked.”
I look around. A lot of our brothers look mad as hell, but they’ve ditched their weapons too and no one’s fighting.
“Yeah, I can’t either,” Joker says following my gaze, but then he fixes his searching eyes on me. “Are you OK with this? I know you needed this revenge.”
I clap his shoulder. “Like I said. It’s not our day to die. And maybe I didn’t need revenge after all. Maybe all we needed was to forget.”
His eyes narrow in doubt, but then he grins. “Maybe you’re right. We have been working real hard to keep our hate alive.”
“Yeah, we were pretty consumed by it,” I say. “But maybe it’s time to get consumed by something better.”
I look in Eden’s direction, but really, I’m looking at Karma and Grim who are slowly approaching from behind her.
“You were right,” Joker says, looking at Eden too. She and her father are huddled beside my house, talking on the phone. “I did fall in love with her. Long before I was willing to admit it to myself.”
“At least you’re admitting it now,” I say.
“But can this peace even hold?” Joker asks.
He’s looking at Cross who is coming down off the hill, flanked by ten of his guys.
“I guess that depends on how well the negotiations go.”
Joker nods and squares his shoulders again. “Better get to them, get this over with.”
He walks towards Cross and I follow.
“So let’s talk,” Joker tells him and the guy nods.
I have some talking of my own to do. Karma and Grim have stopped a few feet behind Cross and I’m pretty sure they’re thinking the exact same thing. Namely that it’s high time we get squared away so we can get back on the happy train. Mad as I still am at them, I want that more than anything.
But my place is by Joker’s side now, as we try and broker peace where there was only hatred before.
It has to work. Because I know I’m not letting Karma and Grim get away from me a second time. But letting them wait and roast in their guilt a little longer won’t be a bad thing either. They did betray me after all. Even if it was for the higher good.