Chapter 7
LUCKY CLOVER
T he full moon had risen high above the desert, casting a pale glow upon the sigils I’d drawn in the cracked earth on what would reveal itself to be a significant May’s Eve.
After exhausting every other possible avenue, I’d reached a point of desperation.
After all, the last time I asked my brother hadn’t turned up much.
“ S omething! Brother, give me something!” I begged Asmodeus for what seemed like the hundredth time.
The sight of him made me sick. Sick with rage.
Sick with remorse…a knife constantly twisting in my gut.
“Anything at all you can remember. If I am able to hunt him down, would you not want to seek retribution for what’s been done to you?
I will be your vessel for revenge. Please , brother.
Help me. Let me do this for you. What do you remember? ”
“He moved like a pro…” Asmodeus rasped, dabbing his drooping lip, which the fire had melted and fused to his chin. “Like he had training.”
“What did he look like?”
“Dark eyes…dark hair…”
“I need more than this!” I bit out, my patience worn through by this time. “Did he have scars? Piercings? Tattoos? Something identifiable?”
“He had a wedding ring…and a woman’s name tatted on his forearm…”
A spark of hope flickered within me… It was something … “What name?”
“Lucinda…”
Not an extremely common name. “What else? What did he say to you? Any indication of motive?”
“ I’m the only Demon you need to worry about…and this party is just getting started.”
I made a valiant effort not to look upon my brother with suspicion. “He said that …and you can’t fathom a motive?”
“ Look at me …he took everything…” Asmo held his deformed, blister-scarred hands up to me with a broken expression that mirrored my own emotions in that moment.
“I’ll never ride again… I may never walk normally again…
My crew’s dead. This territory will fall back to the Jackals MC…
. Perhaps it was a hit ordered by them…. ”
“You don’t think I’ve already exhausted that possibility?” I snapped. For all I knew, I discarded the remains of a few Jackals MC members somewhere in the desert alongside our own missing brothers in my bloody quest for information.
“I don’t know anything else! Maybe you should let it go!”
“ I’ll have to! If these minute clues you’ve given me amount to nothing! But if I do find him, do I have your blessing to act? Will you allow me to repay you for what you did for me as children?”
Asmo looked upon me with remorse. “You have my blessing…and a debt owed to me, wiped clean.”
“I’ll find him, brother,” I promised, a strange wave of relief quelling my barely contained rage at his concession. I needed this, perhaps even more than my brother did. “I’ll find him…and I’ll take everything from him. I’ll make him pay with every shred of contentment in his life.”
“ A re you alright?” a timid voice asked from somewhere behind me in the darkness, pulling me from the memory.
“No...”
A year had passed since I acquired Asmo’s blessing, and I was no closer to finding the man who had brutalized my brother.
The whore, my best earner, whom I mockingly called Puppet for the last two years, dropped to her knees beside me in the desert.
I’m not sure how much sanity I’d have retained throughout this ordeal, had it not been for her. Not that I confided in her. Puppet’s ability to damn near suck the twisted remnants of my soul out of my cock when my frustration reached a boiling point had proven beneficial to all within my vicinity.
“You’ve cut yourself…” The hint of concern in her tone annoyed me.
“A blood sacrifice,” I muttered. “Mind your business and stick to sucking cock. You’re good at that.”
“I can see you’re in pain.” For some inexplicable reason, my foul moods never deterred her. In fact, they made her all the more eager to please me.
“I live there.”
She looked over the remnants of the ritual, then the bloody knife in my hand. “You’ve been very private about your practices until now… Is it true? Do you really worship the Devil?”
“ I worship no one. Though I am not opposed to making dark bargains with the demonic realm. They are far closer and more willing to lend a helping hand than the absentee landlord you call God.”
She looked at me curiously. “You’ve seen them?”
“I see them whenever I look in a mirror.”
“ Legion… because Demons dwell within you…”
“Precisely. Now fuck off … You’re interrupting my ritual.”
Her contemplative expression deepened. “The demons…they require blood to help you?”
“Nothing comes free. You should grasp that better than anyone.” I’d glared at her.
She grabbed my knife and pressed it to the pale, delicate flesh of her inner forearm, cutting herself.
She reached her arm out toward the fire within the circle, letting the blood drip from the five-inch incision, as if physically offering her blood to unseen beings.
Her hazel eyes shifted back to me. “How else may I serve you, Master?”
Puppet had always been eager to please me. I’d known she was crazy to seek me out, even more so to willingly remain within my vicinity all these months. However, it was this moment I knew the bitch was fully off her rocker, and that I would come to use her in so many twisted ways…
SIX MONTHS LATER
“ G et ready to be happy, boss.” Palpable excitement emanated through the speaker of my cell when I answered Vein’s call. “Talking to a guy here, at the fights out near Phoenix. Says he knows the guy we’ve been looking for.”
“Do not let him out of your sight! I’m on my way.”
After a lifetime spent in survival mode, I’d learned to wear a mask of calm indifference as if it were a second skin. Only Vein could have connected the speed at which I had ridden to the old warehouse on the city’s outskirts to how eager I was to make this fighter’s acquaintance.
He was standing with Vein behind the old structure, beside a chain-link fence.
I dismounted my bike, already reaching into the inner pocket of my cut.
“I understand you’ve crossed paths with someone of interest to me.
” I flashed him the wad of cash, fanning out the hundred-dollar bills between my fingers as I approached.
“Aye… Fought him before,” he boasted in a thick Irish accent, staring greedily at the reward money. “Been itching for another match. Ain’t like we got each other’s phone numbers though.”
“How about a name?”
“That I do have… Name’s Keegan… Dean Keegan . He ain’t from around here. Pretty sure he’s on the East Coast.”
“Got anything more specific? An accent? Something distinguishable?”
“Never could place his accent… Why are you looking for him, anyway?”
The Irishman’s suspicion was my cue to walk away. I shoved the folded cash into his clover-tatted hand and got back on my bike. Hope thudded in my chest faster than my motorcycle rocketed down the dark alley.
Dean Keegan. East Coast. Underground fighter. Married to a Lucinda . Shouldn’t be too difficult to hunt down.
And he wasn’t. I found him within moments once privy to his name. A quick criminal records search confirmed he was indeed my intended target.
Dean Keegan , arrested in Bermuda County, North Carolina. The record had been sealed, however. Though with a bribe to the right clerk, I found out he was charged with violating an order of protection filed by one Lucinda Keegan . Turned out, he had recently divorced. Must have been a nasty split.
A quick check of his assets revealed several businesses he owned, including a bar that appeared to double as a biker clubhouse.
The Saviors MC.
“Saviors… ” I chuckled to myself. From what I dug up on their founding members, the Saviors MC was originally rooted in a Christian foundation. Oh, what fun it would be to take a jackhammer to that…
As I shut down the laptop in my office at The Morning Star, a wicked grin stretched my mouth. “Dean Keegan… You’re about to lose so much more… Your fate is in my hands now…and I’m going to rip your world apart.”