4. Malachi
MALACHI
The moon hangs low over Tartarus Pass, a jaundiced eye peering through the ragged pine needles.
Below, the compound hums with its usual midnight rot—the low thrum of a generator, the gravel-crunch of a sentry’s boots, and the distant, raucous laughter of bikers drowning their ghosts in cheap malt liquor.
My own ghosts are more discerning. They don't want rye; they want answers.
I reach the guest cabin, the wood smelling of ancient sap and damp earth.
I don’t knock. Not immediately. I just lean against the porch railing, lighting a cigarette.
The flame flickers, illuminating the sharp lines of my face in the window glass.
I’m looking for the ripple in the dark, the breath out of sync.
The door doesn't creak. It simply ceases to be closed.
Savannah stands in the gap, framed by the dim amber light of a single kerosene lamp.
She wears a black thermal and a shirt three sizes too large, the "HELL COURT" logo swallowed by her slight frame.
Her hair is a dark river down her back, her eyes scanning my throat, my hands, and the shadows behind me.
"You’re late for the welcome committee, Preacher," she says. Her voice is a cool cellar floor.
"I find the best conversations happen when the world is too tired to lie," I say, offering a lazy, lopsided grin. I hold up the bourbon like a peace offering. "And I brought the truth-serum. Expensive, woody, and far more polite than Gideon's fist."
I move toward her, not with aggression, but with a fluid, feline grace that usually makes women forget why they were angry. I let my gaze linger on her lips, then her eyes, projecting a heat that is entirely curated.
"You shouldn't be out here alone, Savannah. It’s a tragedy to keep a mind like yours in the dark."
She leans against the doorframe, mirroring my posture with a terrifying, mocking precision. She doesn't blush. She doesn't fidget. She just watches the way I breathe.
"You’re good," she murmurs, a ghost of a smile touching her mouth. "The cadence, the eye contact. You’re trying to find the crack in the glass. But Malachi, I’m the one who broke the window."
I set the bottle on the porch railing and took a slow drag of my cigarette, the cherry glowing hit-man red.
"A broken window lets in the draft," I say, stepping into the sliver of space she’s occupying. "I’m just curious about what you’re trying to air out.
You spent eight years playing house with the Sombra.
That much time in the pit changes the way a soul tastes.
What was it? The power? Or the way the blood felt on your hands? "
I reach out, fingers hovering near her jawline, a calculated move designed to short-circuit her defenses with intimacy.
"You speak like a man who memorized Keats to hide the fact that he used to have a trust fund," she says, her voice flat and rhythmic.
She doesn't move away. Instead, she stares through my pupils until I feel like I'm standing naked in a courtroom. "Your posture is too straight, Malachi. You’re mimicking a leader because you’re terrified of being a follower. You touch people to feel for the tether, to make sure you’re the one holding the leash. "
I pause, my hand frozen mid-air. The mask slips an inch. "Is that what you think?"
"I know it," she counters, stepping forward until her chest nearly brushes my leather vest. "The vocabulary is a smokescreen.
You use five-syllable words so nobody notices you never say anything about yourself.
You're just a ghost in a silk tie, pretending the MC is your choice and not your hiding spot. "
The air in my lungs feels thin. I laugh, but the sound is hollow, catching in my throat. I shift my weight, intending to lean in and reclaim the narrative with a whispered joke, but as my shoulder dips toward her, she goes rigid.
It’s instantaneous. One second she is a taunting provocateur; the next, she is marble.
Her breath hitches, a jagged, silent intake that stops in her chest. Her eyes don't widen—they sharpen, turning into amber glass.
She doesn't pull away or scream. She simply becomes still, the kind of stillness found in a deer a millisecond before the arrow hits.
It isn't fear. It's the autonomic shutdown of a woman who has learned that a flinch earns a harder blow.
"Savannah?" I murmur, the flirtatious edge dying.
She exhales, her muscles unspooling with a slow, agonizing deliberation. She forces her shoulders down. "Don't move so fast," she says, voice a dry rasp of Spanish before she catches herself. "The air is heavy tonight. It tricks the senses."
The bourbon sits untouched between us, the amber liquid glowing like trapped heat. I drop my cigarette and grind it into the wood with the heel of my boot. The performance is over. The silence in the cabin thickens, no longer a weapon I’m wielding, but a weight pressing against my ribs.
"Eight years," she says softly. She’s looking past me now, toward the black jagged line of the mountains. "That’s how long it’s been since I slept more than two hours at a stretch.
My body doesn't trust the quiet. In the Sombra camps, silence meant the guards were changing, or someone was being moved to a shallow grave.
Silence was the breath before the scream. "
She picks up a piece of pine and a small carving knife, her fingers moving with a frantic, rhythmic precision. A tiny bird begins to emerge from the wood, shavings falling like snow onto her lap.
"I don't know how to turn it off," she whispers. "I close my eyes and I’m still hearing the click of a safety or the sound of a zipper."
I stop leaning. I sit on the porch bench, the leather of my vest creaking.
The "Preacher" persona—the witty, untouchable strategist with a quote for every tragedy—feels suddenly garish, like cheap gold paint flaking off a rusted hinge. I’ve spent a decade convincing everyone in this club that I’m the smartest man in the room so they won't notice I’m the most isolated.
"People don't want the man who can't sleep, Savannah," I say, my voice stripped of its theatrical lilt.
"They want the one who makes the numbers work. They want the charm that smooths over the bloodstains on the floor. I’ve spent my life building a character because the actual version of me is just… empty space and old grievances."
I look at my hands, the knuckles clean and unscarred compared to Gideon’s, yet heavy with a different kind of violence.
"They love the curation," I admit. "They love the mask."
Savannah stops carving. She raises her head, her eyes boring into mine, stripping away the remaining layers of my East Coast polish.
"You're lonely, Malachi," she says. It isn't an insult or a guess. It’s a diagnosis. "You’re surrounded by brothers who would die for you, and yet you’re starving to death right in front of them because you won't let them see what you're actually hungry for."
I feel a strange, sharp ache in my chest. I finally understand why Dante monitors her with such obsession, and why Gideon’s rage hides a desperate curiosity. She doesn’t just see us. She reflects us.
"Maybe," I say, and for the very first time in years, the word doesn't feel like a lie.
The tiny pine bird is nearly finished, its wings emerging from the grain under the frantic bite of her blade. I watch the way her eyes dart to the rafters, then the floorboards, then the gap beneath the door. It’s a rhythmic, mechanical sweep of the perimeter.
"You've checked the north corner four times in the last three minutes," I say. My voice is low, devoid of the usual melodic performative honey. "The shadows haven't moved, Savannah. There are no snipers in the rafters, and the floorboards aren't going to give way to a crawl-space assassin."
Her knife slips. A curl of wood shavings hits her knee, and she freezes, the blade digging deep into the bird’s unfinished throat. She doesn't look up, but her jaw tenses until the muscle jumps.
"I’m relaxing," she says through gritted teeth.
"Is that what this is?" I tilt my head, studying the rigid line of her neck.
"You're a coiled spring waiting for the release.
Even now, your thumb is hovering over the pressure point of that knife.
You aren't just scanning for threats. You're measuring the distance between my carotid and your hand. "
She looks up then, and the raw vulnerability I glimpsed a moment ago is buried under a layer of freezing amber. The air between us goes brittle. She sees too much, but God, she hates being seen in return.
"Stop looking at me like that," she hisses.
"Like what?"
"Like something you want to eat. Like you can reach in and rearrange my parts just because you’ve read a few books on the human psyche.
" She stands abruptly, the wooden carvings tumbling from her lap.
The knife vanishes into a pocket of her oversized shirt with a lethally practiced flick. "Get out."
I don't move immediately. I let the silence hang, savoring the way she bristles. "I thought we were having a moment of mutual honesty, Savage."
"We were having a mistake," she counters. She points a trembling finger toward the porch. "Out. Now. Take your vintage bourbon and your observations and go play King of the Mountain with Dante. I’m done being your evening's entertainment."
I rise slowly, picking up the bottle. I don't feel the sting of rejection; instead, a strange, electric hum vibrates beneath my skin.
I step onto the porch, pausing in the doorway to look back at her.
She is already retreating into the center of the room, her shoulders hunched as she rebuilds the fortress I just tried to dismantle.
"Be careful, Savannah," I murmur. "The problem with being a mirror is that sometimes people like what they see."
I pull the door shut behind me. As I walk down the gravel path toward the main clubhouse, a faint, genuine smile tugs at my lips. I set out to peel her like an orange, but for the very first time in a decade, I’m the one feeling exposed. And I’ve never enjoyed a drink less, or a woman more.