Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Lock the fucking doors!” Lyric screamed when they found themselves surrounded.
“Get outta the fuckin’ cage,” one yelled, jerking on the door handle. “Get outta the fuckin’ cage, you fuckin’ bitches!” He kicked the door next, surely leaving a boot-sized dent behind.
One began pounding on the passenger side window. Another climbed on the back bumper, using something in his hand to try to break the rear window.
This was not good.
“Bri! Lyric’s right. We need to go! Put the pedal to the metal and take that Harley out.”
The Soul standing in front of the SUV climbed onto the hood, leaving behind more dents as he went.
“Oh, shit,” Lyric whispered as the biker with the long, greasy hair and crazy-long beard began to punch the windshield.
So far, she’d seen no guns…yet…but that could change in a split second.
“Goddamn them! They’re fucking up my new car!” Bri yelled.
“They’re going to fuck us up next if we don’t do something!” Avery yelled, leaning as far away from the passenger window as possible.
“I have a bat in the back, Lyric. Grab that.”
A bat? These guys probably had bullets! “Let’s just go, Bri! Run that bike over.” Or at least push it out of the way.
Why the hell was she putting the SUV in Park?
“No, we have a score to settle first. And who says running over that sled won’t fuck up my car enough that it disables it. Then we’ll have no damn escape!”
“It’s four outlaw bikers against three women,” Lyric warned.
“It’s four assholes against three pissed-off female bikers,” Bri growled.
Lyric began to worry that the Souls were not shooting them because they had a reason to keep them alive.
And that was even scarier than if they simply wanted them dead.
Like she predicted, a gun appeared in the biker’s—the one currently a hood ornament—hand, but instead of shooting them, he used the butt of the handgun to crack the windshield.
“Son of a bitch!” Bri yelled and flung her hand back toward Lyric. “Bat!”
“Bri!”
“Bat! Before he breaks through.”
Lyric was more worried about the Souls hitting the thinner windows on the sides of the vehicle than the thicker windshield.
As soon as Bri had the bat, she unlocked the driver’s side door and shoved it open. Once out of the driver’s seat, she began swinging.
“She’s fucking crazy!” Avery shouted, but then grinned and got out next.
What the hell was going on? Had they lost their damn minds? “Avery!”
Bri swung the wooden bat toward the head of the Soul on her side of the car. Unfortunately, he ducked, causing her to miss. Then the one on the hood slid off and went to help his buddy.
At the same time, Avery was crouching in a position taught to everyone in the sisterhood by the MMA fighters and boxers in the DAMC family: Steel, Kat, and Slade.
All the women were strongly encouraged to join the self-defense classes at the club-owned Shadow Valley Fitness when they were young.
Some still trained with the “pros” and others lost interest once they had the basics down.
Lyric was one who had stopped going on a regular basis. Now she regretted it. Though, those Souls had over fifty pounds on them. They wouldn’t go down easily, even with training.
While Bri was facing off with two of the Souls, the other two ganged up on Avery.
Screaming like a banshee, Bri kept swinging the bat wildly, trying to knock the brains out of any biker within her reach.
Holy shit.
As Lyric scrambled to get out to help them, she saw Avery knee the one closest to her in the nuts, dropping the biker to his knees. As the other advanced on her, she struck him in the solar plexus with a very impressive roundhouse kick. That biker folded over instantly, but he didn’t go down.
Lyric rushed over to the Harley in front of the Toyota, rolled the heavy bike out of the way, and let it drop to the pavement.
Now nothing prevented them from leaving.
When she turned, she saw a biker grimacing in pain, with blood leaking out of his ear.
Bri must have hit a home run. She was jabbing the bat like a professional fencer at the other one not stumbling around dazed and confused.
Only, Lyric doubted that sport allowed the stabbing of your opponent’s gonads.
And Bri was attempting to knock his nuts all the way up into the guy’s throat.
“The path is clear! Let’s go!” Lyric screamed. “Avery! Bri! Let’s get out of here!”
“They fucked up my car!” Bri screamed back.
Lyric had no doubt that if one of those bikers went down completely, Bri would bash his head in. To the point of killing them. Would it be considered self-defense? Most likely. Could Bri live with herself after taking a life?
Knowing her, no doubt.
As for Avery…
She was struggling with the one she hadn’t dropped. Lyric ran over and launched herself onto the biker’s back, hooking her arm around his neck and squeezing the shit out of it while reaching around to jam two fingers into his eye.
The howl he gave off made Lyric’s hair stand up, but it also gave Avery the opportunity to kick the guy again. This time in the best target. He abruptly dropped to his knees and Lyric went tumbling down. She rolled as she hit the ground, just as she was trained, and immediately popped to her feet.
It was reassuring to know she hadn’t forgotten all of her training.
“Let’s go!” she screamed again.
“Fuck these assholes,” Avery yelled, pushing the cloud of red hair out of her face.
Lyric jerked on her arm. “Get in the car!”
“Yeah, let’s get out of here. Bri!” Avery called out.
Both Avery and Lyric scrambled to get in the car, at the same time keeping an eye out for the downed bikers attempting to get back on their feet.
Once Bri passed the bat to Lyric, she jumped into the driver’s seat and locked the doors.
“Motherfucker cracked my damn windshield. It’s going to be fun driving home.”
“At least we’re getting the opportunity to drive home,” Lyric reminded her.
Bri started her Toyota, put it into reverse, jammed her foot on the accelerator, and knocked over the sled behind them. She drove forward, reversed again and slammed into it once more.
Throwing it into Drive, she made sure to swerve from left to right to hit the remaining sleds still on two wheels, knocking them both over.
“I thought you were worried about your car?”
“They already fucked it up. We don’t want them following us.”
“But knocking over their sleds isn’t going to disable them. And if you run them over, you’ll do enough damage to your car that we might not be able to escape,” Lyric reminded her. “I don’t know about you, but I prefer to put some miles between us.”
“True,” Bri finally said, her eyes narrowed.
Despite admitting Lyric was right, she turned the Toyota and gunned the engine, slamming into a sled hard enough to push it into the other. The scrape of metal against pavement made Lyric wince.
“We should pee in their tanks,” Bri said next.
“Are you crazy?” Lyric asked.
“Of course she’s fucking crazy,” Avery answered, then laughed. Again.
“She’s not the only one,” Lyric muttered as Bri sped away, bobbing and weaving her head to see between the long cracks in the windshield. Lyric glanced behind them to see one biker was down for the count, the other three were trying to get to their feet. Luckily, they weren’t moving too quickly.
“Do you think they know who we are?” Avery turned in her seat and stared out of the cracked rear window. “Why would they attack us like that?”
Lyric hoped not. “We don’t have anything tying us to either club. Maybe they thought we were witnesses. Or that we were going to rob them of the drugs.”
“Why would they think that?” Avery asked next.
“I don’t know! I’m just spitballing here!”
“First off, is everyone okay? Avery?” Bri asked, sounding more like her normal self instead of someone who totally lost their shit and hit a home run with two bikers and a bat.
Avery was inspecting her fingers. “Yes, but I broke a nail.”
“Lyric?”
“I think so.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“No.”
“Breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Then as long as you have control of your bowels, you’re okay.”
Was Bri attempting to make a joke?
Suddenly, their phones began to ding off the charts.
“We have coverage again!” Avery did a little jig in her seat.
“No shit. Who the hell was texting us like a maniac?” Bri asked. “Vi?”
“Yes, but not just her.” Lyric skimmed her texts. “Ashton. Nix. Zeke. Indie.”
“Anything good?” Bri asked.
Lyric answered, “Demanding to know where we are.”
None from her parents, though. That probably meant they were unaware of the situation. She couldn’t believe Nix didn’t tell them. Maybe that was for the best.
Avery dropped the phone from her ear. “I got a voicemail from Zeke. He said Rage and some of the Shadows went out to find us.”
Great. Ash was going to lose his shit. As if it wasn’t bad enough they’d gone out to The Pink Pearl, they had also tangled with some Souls.
“Maybe I should let Ash know we’re on the way back.” Lyric sank her teeth into her bottom lip. She wasn’t looking forward to that conversation.
“You could…” Bri drew out. “Or you could just talk to him in person.”
She yanked the steering wheel to the right and pulled onto the narrow shoulder.
“What are you—”
“Because they found us already.”
What? Lyric tipped her head to the left and the right, attempting to see around the spider cracks in the windshield.
Well, shit. Five sleds were coming over a rise in the road and headed directly for them, hell bent for leather. She recognized each of those riders.
“They’re not going to be happy,” Lyric whispered.
“Those Souls will regret ever fucking with us,” Avery claimed.
“Not with the Souls. With us,” Lyric clarified.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Bri said.
Lyric sighed.
Once again, they were surrounded, but while she could see Ash’s angry expression, at least it wasn’t murderous.
Yet.
That could easily change once he heard the details of their recent adventure.
Grim and Ghost stayed on their sleds, keeping an eye on the road in both directions. Ash, Reaper, and Chaos dismounted and circled the RAV4, inspecting the damage.
Their hard expressions said it all.