Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Phoenix
Back inside, the walls feel closer. The safehouse hums low with generator noise and half-buried fear. Outside, thunder rolls, but inside it's all sharp eyes and quieter threats. The kind you can’t shoot your way out of.
Ghost stands near the window with his fists clenched like he’s gripping some invisible lifeline. His jaw ticks with words he won’t say.
I match his silence with my own. Mine’s sharper. Colder. Laced with control and stitched with violence. Blood on the floor is easier than feelings in the air. Always has been.
But the space between us? It’s not space at all. It’s tension and love. A livewire. One wrong move and we’re fire and ruin again.
The more I try to move away, the more I feel it. That magnetic pull like we’re both pieces cut from the same cursed metal. Same war. Same wound. Whatever hell built us, it used the same damn blueprint.
Ghost’s voice cuts through the quiet, low and rough. “Have you ever thought this isn’t a coincidence?”
I meet his eyes. Haunted blue like drowning in memory. I nod once. “I think it’s fate,” I say, slipping a knife into my boot. “And fate’s a bitch with a bone to pick.”
He doesn’t smile. Just watches as I gear up like I’m suiting for war, and I am. We both are. The war just keeps shifting faces, literally.
The burn on my side is worse. Hot and wrong, like something is alive beneath the skin. I peel the bandage back, and there it is. A spiral etched in red, not from the outside in... but from somewhere deep.
It pulses. Branding me. Not marked by Vale. Not by the MC. Something older and hungrier.
I don’t tell Ghost. But he sees it anyway. “You’re hurt.”
I shrug and pull my shirt back down. “Pain reminds me I’m still here.”
Ghost steps forward, his voice lower now. “You’re not just hurt. You’re changing.”
I don’t answer. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t know the answer.
MV’s voice breaks the silence. Crackling through the earpiece, softer than usual. Less machine. Almost... human. “You’re not the door, Nix. But you might be the lock… or the key.”
The words dig deeper than they should. I close my eyes, just for a second. And in that second, I see things I shouldn’t.
Flashes.
Blood. Screams. Ash is falling like snow. A woman’s face I don’t recognize but somehow do. She whispers our names, mine and Ghost’s, like she’s been waiting centuries to say them.
I snap my eyes open. Ghost is watching me like he saw it too. The dream keeps changing, but the spiral is always there. And so is she.
I suck in a breath and finish strapping the holster to my thigh. I load a fresh mag and check the safety. I still believe in safety, just not the kind you can feel.
“We leave in ten,” I tell him.
He nods. But his eyes say more. You’re scared.
And mine says back: I have a right to be.
Because if I am the lock and Ghost is the key... Then someone or something is already turning us.
And what waits behind that door? God help us if we find out.
We leave the Shotgun Shack with the smell of cordite still in our lungs and the echo of gunfire stuck behind our ribs.
The night swallows us whole. Me on my bike, Ghost is on his. He’s riding right next to me, offering me comfort in the unknown. Viper, bringing up the rear. We ride without speaking, shadows trailing behind us like regrets we didn’t have time to feel.
The highway bleeds out ahead in a line of pale gold under a cloud-stained moon. No traffic. Just the hum of engines and the drumbeat of rain starting to fall in fat, slow drops. I don’t mind it. Rain has a way of washing the wrong things off, just not deep enough to touch the rot underneath.
It takes us an hour to reach the safehouse. Long enough for my shoulder to start throbbing again, long enough for the spiral under my skin to feel like it’s humming in tune with the engine.
The place is a forgotten rancher on the edge of nowhere. One road in, trees on all sides, no neighbors, no lights except what we bring with us. The kind of place people drive past and never wonder about.
Ghost pulls in first, kicking up gravel. I kill my engine a beat after, letting the silence wrap around us again. I pulled my helmet off and let the cool air bite my cheeks. No words are exchanged. Not yet.
We don’t go inside. Instead, we wait.
Headlights break the dark like a blade, then another, and another. Six in total, rolling in with thunder and attitude.
The Non Cras had arrived.
Front and center is Poison. Chrome-and-black Dyna, matte skull on the gas tank, a queen without a crown but with a presence that can gut you.
She’s wearing a sleeveless cut that shows off her ink.
Ink that tells stories no man has survived long enough to read.
Eyes sharp and unreadable. Her red hair is braided back in a war rope.
To her right, riding tandem on his own beast, is Kitty.
Poison’s Knightmare. He’s skinny like a swimmer and quiet.
The kind of man who moves only when needed, but when he does, it matters.
His presence isn’t loud, but it grounds Poison like a loaded anchor.
His cut bores the title with quiet pride: Property of Poison. No one dares question it.
Behind them is Scissors, the Vice President, long-legged and sharp-eyed, her dark curly hair is tight against her head in braids, making her look twice as mean and half as patient as anyone else on the road.
Her girl, Sissy, rides with her, bright lipstick, a cracked-knuckles kind of beauty.
Sissy blows me a kiss and wink like we hadn’t just come out of a bloodbath.
She’s like that. Soft chaos wrapped in denim.
Next comes Wendigo, all leather and Native American, the club’s sergeant-at-arms. Her presence is more threat than a promise. She doesn’t wave or nod. She scans the trees like they owe her something. Her bike has a wolf’s jaw bolted under the headlight made of real bone.
Then Gypsy, with beads in her braids and mismatched gloves, her eyes are always moving, always clocking the world like a code she’s waiting to crack. The bike under her is lean, fast, made for slipping through shadows.
Tabs comes in behind Gypsy. She’s quiet, average-looking if you didn’t know better. I do. She’s the one you underestimated. The one who’ll kill you with a smile and never raise her voice.
They park in a staggered line, boots hitting gravel like a percussion section from hell. The door to the safehouse opens behind me. I don’t turn.
Poison is the first to speak. “You’re bleeding again,” she says, voice calm but cut-glass.
Ghost shifts beside me, but I don’t move. I square my shoulders to meet each of my sister’s head on, with Viper standing tall behind me.
Kitty steps forward, his voice low, almost kind. “Phoenix. You look like hell.”
I almost laugh. Instead, I nod.
I follow the club inside, blood dripping from my shoulder, the spiral burning beneath my skin like it’s waking up. Behind me, Ghost hesitates at the threshold.
I don’t turn. Just say over my shoulder, “You’re in it now, Ghost. All the way.”
Then the door shuts behind him, and the real war begins. The kitchen smells like burnt coffee and blood. Most of it is mine.
I lean against the wall, arms crossed, bandage clinging half-assed to my shoulder and side while Ghost hovers like I’m going to fall over. I won’t. I’ve bled worse for less.
The Non Cras fills the room like a thundercloud. No one's yelling, but the tension hums in the air like a live wire stretched too tight.
Poison stands at the head of the old farmhouse table, Kitty beside her with his hand resting on her lower back like a silent anchor.
Scissors leans forward on her knuckles, eyes cutting to me, then Ghost, then back again.
Wendigo’s pacing. Gypsy’s setting up a laptop.
Tabs watches the window. Viper tosses her blade from hand to hand, waiting for someone to flinch.
Me? I wait for MV because whatever the hell is coming, they saw it first. The screen comes to life as a voice crackles through, smooth and tired, like it's been whispering from the bottom of a grave.
MV.
“Didn’t think you’d all make it to the party,” they say.
“No one’s in the mood for cryptic bullshit,” Poison snaps. It’s unlike her to get short with MV, but sometimes Poison is wound too tight to take any bullshit.
“I’m past cryptic,” MV replies. “We don’t have time.
You’re not just up against Vale or Raven.
This goes deeper. Bloodline deep. Ritual deep.
The Hollow Sons aren’t a gang. They’re a cult.
” No one speaks. “Vale’s just one of the faces,” MV continues.
“But there are others like him. I’ve been tracking them for years.
They move in cells, like tumors. Always recruiting, always expanding.
They look like MCs. Act like criminals. But what they’re doing is older than all of us. Blood for favor. Sacrifice for power.”
Scissors snorts. “You mean demons?”
“I mean deals,” MV says. “Power like this doesn’t come free.”
I shift my weight. The spiral on my side pulses, like it heard them.
“They call themselves the Hollow Sons because they believe they were emptied to be filled with something else. Something old.”
“What the hell does that mean for us?” Viper asks.
MV’s voice drops lower. “It means if you kill one, another grows in their place. Unless you burn them out at the root.”
Poison narrows her eyes. “And you know where that root is?”
A pause. “I’ve found one of the original sanctums in Louisiana. Deep in the bayou. No roads in. You’ll need to ride light and move fast. It’s where they make the marks. Where they anoint their ‘Heirs.’ If you want to hurt them, and I mean really hurt them, you burn that place to ash.”
Gypsy glances at me, then at the others. “And how do we stop them from summoning whatever the hell they’re trying to bring in?”
MV hesitates. “You already carry part of the answer.”
Everyone looks at me. I feel it in my chest. It’s hot and spiraling. My skin itches under my patch. “You mean the brand?” I ask, voice low.
“You’re not the door,” MV repeats, same as before. “But you might be the lock… or the key. They marked you because they think you’re important. Because you’ve touched the veil and didn’t break.”
Ghost moves closer. His hand grazes my arm, steady, grounding. “What do we do?” he asks.
MV exhales. “You go to the sanctum. You kill anything that moves. And if you see Vale…”
“We finish it,” I say. My voice is steel.
MV’s voice goes quiet again. “You won’t have backup. No signal out there. If you die, you die in the dark.”
Poison folds her arms. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Wendigo grins, teeth sharp. “Sounds like a good night.”
I push off the wall, pain screaming through my side, but I don’t care. “We end it,” I say. “Tonight.”
They all look at me. No one argues. The club’s ready for war.