Chapter 35
Pyre
“Wait. So you gave her fingers and toes?” Jury asked, his lip lifting in disgust. “We should start calling you Corpse-man.”
I nodded with a shrug, wondering why they were all staring at me like I had a dick growing out of my forehead like a unicorn.
“Wh-” Demo paused and shook his head. “I’m not sure I actually want to know the answer to this… But what did she do with them?”
“What do you think she did with them?” I asked, as though they were the fucking assholes, because really they were.
“We don’t fucking know,” Cynic said, catching the others’ eyes as they all nodded. “That’s part of the problem.”
Cypher rubbed a hand over his face. “I can’t believe I need to run some kind of workshop for all you weird ass fuckers on how to attract and keep women.
” He pointed at Warrant. “He was this fucking close,” he held up his finger and thumb and inch apart, “to losing his old lady. Now you, Pyre.” He shook his head and gave me an incredulous look.
“When did flowers stop working?” Torque asked the room. “Roses, lilies, don’t those usually make the ladies melt?”
We all looked over at him. “What’d you know about it, Kid?” I asked. “How many women have you swept off their feet?”
“Can’t be many,” Glitch said with a grin. “He’s basically a virgin.”
“No, that’s you, asshole,” Warrant said, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t go passing that shit off on others. Kid’s got a pretty fucking face. No way he hasn’t gotten his dick wet.”
Warrant jerked as someone scooted their chair a little, making a slight scraping sound. There wasn’t more than a pause before his head jerked in the opposite direction. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear…what?” Demo asked, looking at him like he was insane.
It was a fair assessment because Warrant had been jumpy as fuck for the last week or so. Every little noise seemed to make his left eye twitch. No one knew what the fuck his deal was, but it was actually pretty funny to watch. He looked like a cracked-out squirrel.
Glitch looked horrified, ignoring both Warrant and Demo’s question in favor of Warrant’s earlier comments. “Are you saying I don’t have a pretty face?”
That made everyone pause and study him.
“Pretty enough,” Scythe muttered. “And you have muscles even though you’re a fucking nerd. But you have to leave your cave at some point in order to bring women home.”
“At least I can charm them to come home with me when I go out,” Glitch said with a scowl. “Unlike you, who they go running and screaming from because you scare the shit out of them.”
“But he’s the scary fucker…right?” Rotor asked, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “Because…body parts?”
“I still can’t believe you fucking take trophies,” Demo told me. “That’s serial killer shit.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not a damn serial killer. You’re making it sound weird. And I only take trophies from the bad pieces of shit.”
“No, we’re not making it weird,” Warrant replied, digging a finger into his ear as though he was trying to clear it. “It’s just weird. Also the bad pieces of shit are the only kind we kill, so…”
I nodded, conceding that point. “I want to know if you found anything out about Forge?” I asked Cypher.
We were all sitting around the clubhouse.
It’d been two weeks since I’d left Rae my gifts and I hadn’t heard anything.
I was doing my best to give her the space she asked for, but I was also slowly going insane.
I hadn’t fucking started seeing her just to find out about the case she’d been working on.
It fucking killed me that she believed that.
But she also didn’t want to hear any ‘excuses’ from me right now, as she’d put it.
I was teetering on respecting her wishes, and saying fuck everything and going over to her place to make sure she heard me out.
It was a precarious balance right now and respect was winning, but not for long.
Especially not when my brothers were encouraging me to do the latter.
Cypher was right. We all probably needed serious help.
Honestly, Torque was probably the most normal of us when it came to wooing women.
The rest of us were a bit fucked up. And by a bit, I meant wholly.
Even Cypher. I didn’t know, it just seemed that breaking into her house and making her see reason was well…
the more reasonable thing to do. What the hell was, ‘I need space’ anyway?
“I’m really starting to dislike that fucker,” Scythe growled, picking up on the change in topic so he could complain about Forge. “He rolls into town, starts shit—if what he told Rae was the truth—then heads back out again.”
“You’ve got to give him some credit,” Demo replied. “He fixes whatever shit he fucked up to begin with.”
“Or even helps where he doesn’t have to,” Cypher said, his voice even and calm. “It wasn’t his job to help Riggs’s children. Hell, he didn’t even have to stick around to help Rae. Or Owen. Thanks to Rae, Forge knew exactly where he was and could’ve ratted him out. Speaking of, how is Owen?”
“On the mend,” Warrant answered. “Grateful to be alive.”
“Grateful enough to overlook our…help?” Rotor asked in a hopeful tone.
Warrant nodded. “What help? According to both Owen and his deputies’ reports, his deputies took care of everything.” He winked. Or maybe it was just his eye twitching again. I wasn’t sure.
Cypher nodded, satisfaction settling over his features.
“Good. And I’m glad he’s healing. Last thing we need is yet another sheriff.
Especially one we’re not already on friendly terms with.
Besides, the DEA is going to be rolling into town soon enough and it won’t be solely Owen’s mess to deal with anymore. ”
“So Dolan’s gone,” Jury said. “The Iron Circle is disbanded. What do we do about Forge?”
“Do we even know where he is?” Warrant asked with a shrug.
“Do we fucking care?” Demo asked, looking over at Cypher.
“So long as he’s not fucking with us,” Cypher replied, “we won’t mess with him. He’s done us a solid now a couple of times.”
“I owe him a debt,” I told them. “If he requests help, I’m honor bound to give it.”
“That’s some old school shit right there,” Demo said with a chuckle.
“That’s Pyre for you,” Jury added. “Weird as fuck, but honorable. So we’re not hunting him down?”
“For what reason?” Scythe asked.
“I have questions,” Jury admitted.
“So the fuck what?” Scythe replied.
“Dude. I don’t like not knowing shit. Drives me nuts.
” He shrugged. “Why he keeps helping people doesn’t make sense.
Far as we know, he’s a piece of shit bad guy…
right?” He looked around the table but now everyone was shrugging.
No one knew what Forge’s deal was. “But then he goes and has some kind of moral code.”
“Sounds like he’s more like one of us than a piece of shit bad guy,” Rotor pointed out. He was digging a splinter out of his index finger with the blade of a knife.
“He’s not one of us,” Jury snapped. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Where the fuck did you get that knife?”
“I’ve had it,” he replied with a slightly guilty tinge to his words.
“The fuck you have. I know every knife you have, Rotor. That’s way too fucking nice for an asshole like you.”
“Maybe I found it in the Iron Circle armory,” he snapped. “The fuck does it matter to you?”
Scythe stood, reached over and snatched the knife out of Rotor’s hand, examining it. “Says Dan Channing on it.”
“Who the fuck did you steal that from?” Demo asked with a grin.
“May have been the dead guy at the bridge.”
Cypher narrowed his eyes. “Which dead guy?”
“The one in the SUV,” Rotor muttered, staring down at the table like a petulant child who was being reprimanded.
“The dead guy the cops were out there for?” Warrant asked in pure disbelief. “The one the cops, and Rae, examined from head to toe? Who they took pictures of at the crime scene?” His voice was getting louder with each question.
“...maybe.”
Warrant sputtered something unintelligible, then looked over at Cypher like, are you going to do anything about this?
Cypher heaved a heavy sigh and stared up at the ceiling like he was asking what he’d done to deserve the things that happened to him. Namely us. We were what happened to him. “Rotor. You can’t keep a knife that was the murder weapon in an open investigation.”
“Why not?” Rotor scowled. “There were so many fucking people trampling all over that place after the cops left and before they got back again, there’s no way for them to tell who took it. Besides…I like it.”
Warrant looked like a fish gasping out of water at his explanation. “All it takes is for Owen to fucking see that thing. Or for it to show up when you kill someone with it and forget it.”
“I won’t forget it,” Rotor shot back as he stood and jerked the blade out of Scythe’s hand. “I’m keeping it. It’s precious to me.”
“It’s got some other guy’s name on it,” Cynic pointed out.
“A dead guy,” Torque added with a sardonic smile.
“It’s fun keeping dead people’s shit,” I said, almost as an afterthought. But it was enough that they all stopped arguing and were staring at me again as if I was the psycho. I wasn’t sure why they kept doing that.
“You want to be like him?” Demo asked, jerking a thumb in my direction.
Rotor studied me, then stared down at the knife. “It’s mine.”
Cypher sighed again. “Fine. Keep the damn thing.” He lifted his hand, cutting off Warrant’s explosion before he had the chance to lose it. “But if you fucking leave that at one of our jobs, I’m going to make you regret it, Rotor. Keep track of your shit.”
Rotor grumbled something about never losing his shit, that was Jury, but nodded and slipped the knife back into the sheath on his belt.
Cypher shook his head. “The plan right now is to just lay low. Make sure none of those other bodies surface, and let things die down.” He eyed each of us. “Which means all of you need to keep everything buttoned down tight for now. Don’t cause any fucking problems.”