Chapter 28 #2
Outside, the fire’s still burning. The smoke is spreading faster now, curling through the yard, making it harder for the Hyenas to see us.
We have the home court advantage and know every inch of this ground.
They’ve lost their leader, and with it, their edge.
The Hyenas are starting to desert a few at a time.
Meanwhile, we’re just getting started. The front door finally gives.
The front door holds long enough for us to get in position but then splinters open with a mighty groan when they try to ram a pickup truck through.
“Fall back,” I call. “The narrow corridor will create a bottleneck. Don’t let any of them pass.”
We retreat through the dining room and take up positions again near the stairs. The hallway is so tight we can barely move side to side. It’s what we planned for. A kill zone. They’ll come through single file here, thinking it’s an advantage. It isn’t.
Onyx reloads his shotgun with quiet precision. Slate’s blade gleams in the dim light. Mica’s limping but holding strong at the back end. I press my last mag into place and brace against the doorframe.
The first Hyena through catches a bullet to the chest. The next takes Slate’s blade across the face.
There’s no time for clean shots now. This is muscle memory, trying to protect the one’s down below.
Blood is creeping into the cracks of the floor.
I fire until I’m dry, then draw my knife without thinking.
The next one grabs at me. He’s got big hands, and that telltale red bandana around his arm.
Marquez! He’s older, gnarled and reeks of sweat and tobacco.
His eyes go wide when he sees me because clearly, he didn’t want to end up face-to-face with me.
Too damn bad, I think to myself, as I drive the blade into the soft place under his jaw, all the way up until his body goes limp against mine.
I shove him off, noticing that my hand is now slick with his blood.
At least I have the satisfaction of knowing I killed the man who started this whole mess, by threatening everything I hold dear.
I hear a loud shout behind me. It’s Onyx, swinging a steel pipe that cracks a man’s forearm clean in two.
The break makes a sound I won’t forget, but Onyx doesn’t even flinch.
He keeps moving forward, driving his shoulder into the next one hard enough to knock him to the floor.
With one sickening crunch, my brother finishes him off.
I don’t feel tired. Instead, I feel energized and focused. There’s clarity in this kind of battle.
Another volley breaks out across the yard, short bursts of weapons fire from new positions. Jesus, not more of these fuckers. They’re in tight clusters and aiming with precision. I know the pattern. That’s club-trained shooting. Not Hyena chaos. That means it’s our people.
“Friendly contact, east side!” someone yells.
And just like that, the tide begins to turn.
Twenty bikes must’ve flown down the ridge trail without headlights, cutting through the trees like ghosts.
It’s the affiliate club from Iron Ridge, patched men who got word that there were interlopers trying to steal territory from us.
They wanted blood and raced to get their share.
They don’t waste a second. They flank the Hyenas from behind, mowing down the back ranks before the bastards even know what’s hit them.
The chaos outside shifts fast. Hyenas scream orders, falling over themselves to regroup, but it’s already too late. Their perimeter’s broken. Their advantage is gone.
And then, above it all, the mechanical whine of a drone trying to lock a target.
I glance up. It hovers just past the roofline, camera sweeping low.
“Third one,” I mutter, raising my rifle.
One clean shot. The drone hiccups in the air, sparks, and spins out towards the dirt. The last eye in the sky just went blind.
There are no flares tonight. Not one. We can’t afford attention from county sheriffs or worse. So we fight in the dark, in the smoke, with our own blood and grit.
I step back into the hallway, reloading with hands slick and fingers stiff. My vest is torn. I’ve got a split lip, and my shoulder’s still bleeding, but I’m standing. That’s enough.
“All units,” I say into the comm. “Push.”
I don’t wait for confirmation. I lead.
Onyx at my flank. Slate and Jinx just behind us.
We move room by room, floor by floor, driving them out like rats flushed from a cellar.
They start to break—no more formation, just retreat.
I see one of them dragging a wounded man by the arm while another tries to cover them both with a jammed pistol.
I let them run. Let them haul their broken dead back into the dark where they belong.
We reach the front, and it’s ours again.
Smoke coils through the open door, the porch scorched and glass glittering like frost. Mica limps over with a look that says he’s done pretending the leg doesn’t hurt.
He hauls a fire axe off the wall—one of the old ones from the station days, red-handled and dulled with age—and jams the blade deep into the floorboards, barricading the door shut with the embedded head.
He wedges it tight, metal shaft bracing across the frame like it’s been waiting its whole life for this moment.
I breathe deep. My chest is tight, and my lungs are scorched. The bastards finally turned tail and ran, taking their injured and dead with them. And we’re still here. This is surely what victory looks like.
The yard looks like something out of a nightmare.
The yard is ripped to hell, and everything is either burned or riddled with bullet holes.
Twisted metal and shattered glass are glinting beneath a haze of smoke.
Pools of blood dot the landscape with bloody trails heading towards the tree line.
No corpses litter the yard, not one. I can’t help but ask myself why they dragged their dead away.
These men don’t seem like the type to care about proper burials and such.
The more I think about it, the more I think I may know why.
I saw the ink on a few exposed arms before the fires took them.
Gangs from farther south, some with reputations for doing things even the Hyenas wouldn’t brag about.
That ink connects them to more than just street violence.
It connects to cartel cash and black markets south of the border.
It tells stories they don’t want the world to hear.
And whoever’s funding this war doesn’t want any proof left behind.
I limp across the debris field, stepping over shell casings and spent mags.
My ribs ache, my shoulder is slick with blood, and my right ear still rings from the first blast that rattled the east wall.
But I’m moving under my own power, and my legs haven’t collapsed out from under me yet.
And most importantly, we didn’t fail the people we love.
Onyx hauls one of the wounded off the porch and hands him over to Stitch to be patched up. Slate’s standing over two busted rifles, muttering about parts salvage. Jinx leans against the outer wall, binding a gash in his side with his own damn shirt.
Brotherhood means bleeding together, and tonight we did just that.
The front lot is quiet now, but the dust is still hanging heavy in the air.
That’s when Rock drags the piece of shit prospect who betrayed us out of the clubhouse and throws him in my general direction.
Rock kicks him forward, and the bastard stumbles face-first onto the concrete.
He’s got zip ties around his wrists and my old man’s boot print on his back.
I was gonna put him in the ground earlier, but something made me spare him.
I nudge him over with my boot, and he blinks up at me, dazed and bloodied, lip split down the middle.
I’m still holding my knife in one hand, the one I used to kill his club president.
He deserves to die. He infiltrated my club and almost cost us a lot of lives tonight.
But he’s so fuckin’ young, confused, and a fuckin’ moron to boot.
“See this knife? It’s covered in your club president’s blood.
Go back to whatever’s left of your fuckin’ club,” I tell him, my voice rough and angry.
“Tell them we’re not prey to be picked over by predators like the Hyenas.
Tell them that this is what happens when you recklessly choose to make an enemy of the wrong club. ”
He doesn’t dare speak back, for fear of saying the wrong thing and blowing his one chance at escape. Instead, he nods once and hauls in a deep breath, before scrambling to his feet and taking off on foot towards the tree line.