The memory blinked out as I hit the city grid. I caught my reflection in the window of a payday loan shop: dark hair slicked back, face sharp as broken glass, patch dark against the denim. I looked like every warning label come to life. James would’ve approved.
A cop in a Ford Explorer eyed me from a parking lot, chewing on a pen and pretending not to care. I gave him a two-fingered salute. He looked away, but not before memorizing the license plate.
I split off from the main drag and hit the old state road that curved toward the hills. The wind shifted, carrying the metallic stink of the city dump and the sweet, chemical bite of fertilizer. My stomach flipped and landedsomewhere near my knees, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since Tucumcari.
At the edge of the cemetery, the road bucked up and down, just like James’ old Harley had when I was fifteen and hanging onto the back for dear life. I remembered that ride, him gunning it out of Santa Fe with a pack of Scythes on our ass and the sun burning the sand into molten glass.
James yelled over his shoulder, “You drop, you’re dead. You hold on, you live.”
I held on.
When we finally stopped, my hands had locked onto his waist, and I couldn’t let go. He peeled my fingers off, one by one.
“You got it?” he said.
I nodded, too tired to talk.
He lit a cigarette, handed me a cold can of Shiner from the saddlebag, and said, “See? Not dead. That’s the job. Stay not dead.”
He didn’t hug me. He never did. Instead, he punched my arm and started up the bike again. “Don’t tell your aunt.”
By sixteen, I was living at the clubhouse, mopping floors and cleaning the glass from barfights I wasn’t old enough to join. I slept in a cot in the boiler room, kept a Glockunder my pillow like a teddy bear, and prayed no one would notice when I jerked off at night.
The first time they let me in on a patch job, it was in the basement, under a single light bulb that flickered every time the jukebox shorted out upstairs. Two old-timers, Crow and Bender, flanked me like executioners. They’d shaved my scalp down to skin and given me a white t-shirt two sizes too small.
Crow handed me a sewing kit and a strip of red cloth. “You want to be one of us, you do it yourself.”
Bender grinned, missing a front tooth. “You fuck it up, we redo it. The hard way.”
The scissors were dull, and the cloth kept sliding off my knee. My hands shook so bad that I stabbed myself twice before I even got the needle threaded. The blood mixed with the red dye, and nobody could tell the difference. I worked by the hum of the boiler. When I finally got the patch on, my fingers looked like I'd run them through a wood chipper.
Crow put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing until my bones creaked. “Good. Now let’s make it official.” He pulled out a bottle of Jack and poured a shot. I drank it, then puked in the utility sink.
Bender laughed and slapped my back. “He’s one ofus, all right.”
After that, the violence made sense. The fights, the deals, the jobs that came with a bullet and a name. It all fit. The world was a circle, and I was just another link in the chain, rust and all.
Now, riding up the hill, I saw the clubhouse squatting at the edge of town, a shit-colored rectangle with a faded mural of a scythe-wielding skeleton grinning down at the parking lot. The smell of weed and frying meat seeped out through the broken windows. Two prospects were out front, chain-smoking and pretending to sweep the sidewalk.
I eased the Harley to a stop and killed the engine. For a second, the silence pressed in on me, heavy as a body bag. Then the front door banged open and the party started early, voices echoing down the street.
I wiped the sweat from my eyes and flexed my hands, the scars catching the light. It was showtime. Time to prove that all those years and all that blood meant something.
I walked toward the door, every step a dare to the ghosts still following me.
2
Melissa
There are a thousand acceptable ways to die in this corner of New Mexico, but getting vaporized in a three-way game of chicken with the Leatherbacks on the 550 isn’t on my personal bingo card. I palmed the steering wheel, French-tipped nails digging moon-craters into the buttery tan leather, and floored it.
The Mercedes AMG shrieked in protest. Zero-to-dead in four seconds flat, the six-figure torque snarling like a caged animal. My own reflection in the rearview—hair that cost three bills to highlight, lips lined in Guerlain’s best—looked like it belonged on a mugshot, not a magazine ad. Sweat traced the contour of my cheekbones and pooled under my sunglasses. There was a drop rollingdown my cleavage, tickling in the worst possible way, but letting go of the wheel meant death.
Behind me, three leather-clad fuckwits gained ground, not even bothering to stagger their formation. Idiots. If I were packing the kind of hardware Daddy’s boys normally did, it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. But my old man didn’t do me the favor, not this time, not for this run. I guess it was supposed to be an olive branch, some family-bonding bullshit after his last stint in county. “A simple drop,” he said. “Keep your head down,” he said. “No heat,” he said.
Yeah, about that.
I squinted into the mirror. The first biker was so close I could see the godawful tattoo covering half his face, something blue and scaly. All of them wore the signature black leather cuts with the Leatherback turtle patch—obnoxious, but at least it made target ID a breeze. Even from here, I recognized the grinning, gap-toothed psycho in the lead: Vulture. He lifted his chin when he caught my eye, tongue flicking out, and made a gun with his fingers.