Colt Book 2

Scorp

Bullets, blood, chaos—we were in the thick of it, all right. Crouched behind a turned-over table, ducking as bullets went whizzing by, I reloaded a clip into my .22, racked the slide, and sprang to my feet, firing at every sonofabitch I laid my eyes on. If the clubhouse was a war-zone, I was a goddamn warrior. The only sensible idea running through my head: kill, or fucking be killed.

And I had too much to goddamn live for.

“Cover me!” I shouted, leaping from the doorway into the pool room.

My men rained suppressive hellfire down upon the enemy, just like in the movies, as I ducked behind a couch.

Right in the nick of time, too.

A bullet came so close to my scalp it shaved a piece of hair from the top of my head clear off.

Guess I’ll need a haircut, I thought, chuckling to myself, reloading once again.

Humor’s a man’s best friend when it comes to killing.

Otherwise, we’d all be shitting ourselves right about now.

Staying low, I looked past the couch and saw three men with a death sentence reloading their semis and shotguns. I aimed for the legs first—

BAM!—dropping one to his knees and finishing him off with a double-tap to the temple.

One down, two to go.

I watched Heder or Hunter or whatever the fuck his name was, one of our new recruits, cowering in the doorway, and gritted my teeth.

“Get the fuck on your feet, boy!”

He stared at me as if I was speaking Swahili, or something.

In shock.

Clearly, his first taste of action.

I could see the two bastards flanking him, cornering him. He was going to be toast if I didn’t act fast. I waited for the two to empty their clips, then jumped to my feet,

shooting one in the chest and sending him crashing through a window in a shower of glass and blood. I aimed for the third and final man just as he was about to put Heder/Hunter out to pasture, pulled the trigger, but—

Click. Out of bullets. ~Shit!~

Without a second to think, I slid across the floor, grabbed a fallen shotgun, and turned it on the bastard just as I saw his finger curl around the trigger.

We fired at once. But little Heder/Hunter was in luck. I’d aimed for the man’s hands, sending his aim askew and saving the boy’s life in the process. All he managed to shoot was the floor. The force of the shotgun blast sent him flying, and, just like that, it was done.

Eerie silence settled upon the clubhouse.

I lay there, shotgun in hand, taking a second to breathe, looking at Heder/Hunter, face flushed, hands shaking. But grateful.

“You…you saved my life, Scorp.”

“Thank me later. We need to clear this place out, Heder. C’mon.”

“It’s Hun—”

“Don’t even fucking start.”

He nodded, smartly shutting his trap, as I got to my feet and surveyed the carnage around us.

Bodies lay everywhere. Some of them were ours, recent recruits from the Devil’s Henchmen. What a fucking waste. Luckily, most of the dead seemed to belong to them. Them. The enemy. The Red motherfucking Crows.

As we emptied one room after another, taking out what was left of them, I thought about how shit had hit the fan so badly.

We’d come to the Red Crows’ clubhouse to negotiate after learning they’d been encroaching on our territory.

It was supposed to have been civil. But, hell, if the second we walked in I couldn’t sense something rotten goin’ down.

Men about to double-cross you always put off a certain scent.

Sorta synthetic.

Like Pine-Sol.

Just as we were about to talk land-swaps, I got a whiff of it—the smell of betrayal, of cleaning products.

Luckily, I managed to beat their mouthpiece to the punch, firing before he’d even had a chance to reach for his piece. And just like that, we went from “negotiation” to fucking shitshow in seconds. Outgunned, outnumbered, we’d had to play dirty just to make it out alive. The question was, why? There hadn’t been time to ask questions with bullets flying. But now there sure was.

I kneeled beside a Red Crow, bleeding out, wheezing, and calmly reloaded my Glock.

“You wanna die fast or slow, buddy? Your call.”

He nodded to my gun, begging, in unimaginable pain. Wanting the easy way out.

“All right, but you’re gonna have to give me something in return. A reason. Why’d you come out guns blazing when we were just here to talk, huh?”

The Red Crow opened his mouth, trying to speak. Blood poured out. He’d taken a bullet to the neck. Tough fucking luck. I moved closer, nodding.

“Try again. Go ahead.”

“We were…paid off…to…”

I got the picture. A bribe. A fucking bribe, of course. Someone wanted the Lords of Chaos wiped out. Someone wanted every one of us dead.

“Who was it?”

The Red Crow opened his mouth once more, choked, and, a moment later, his eyes glazed over and he became still. Dead as a doornail.

“Shit,” I said, getting up and turning to Hunter—not that I would ever call him that now.

“Who’s after us, Scorp?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Heffer.”

That was what I was gonna call him from now on.

The boy did look like a baby calf.

He was about to correct me once again, when I noticed, behind him, a closet door quietly creak open.

The barrel of a rifle protruded, aiming right at him.

I tackled Heffer just in time as the blast flew right past our heads.

Fast as lightning, I turned my gun and emptied the entire clip into the closet door.

A second later, I heard a thunk as the shooter dropped dead. I looked down at Heffer.

“That’s the second time in five minutes I’ve saved your ass, Heffer. Better learn to take care of yourself. For next time.”

He nodded, not even bothering to protest his new name, as I stood up, grateful for my reflexes.

Closing my eyes, I took a second to thank the universe.

Once again, I’d been guided and protected by a force bigger than I could fathom.

My hippie parents may have been full of shit with all their talk of chakras and vibes and energy and shit, but I had to give it to them: there was some power at work here—there had to be.

I could feel it pulsing through me, steering my adrenaline, keeping me and as many of the Lords of Chaos alive as possible.

They may have been disappointing parents in a lot of ways, but the truth was, lately, I’d been finding them more and more in myself.

Maybe there was a reason.

Before I had a chance to consider what that reason might be, I heard one of my men shouting, interrupting my train of thought.

“Hey, Scorp…uh, you’re gonna want to see this.”

I walked over with Heffer and found the man standing over a trapdoor to a basement.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up—a prickling sensation I had learned to trust.

Danger awaited me down there. What kind, I couldn’t tell. I was no goddamn mind-reader, but I knew there was something.

I turned to Heffer. “This time, you’re shooting—got it?”

He nodded, gulping, as I opened the trapdoor and headed down the stairs. It was a dark climb toward a bright orange industrial-looking door. With all my weight, I slid it open, and…

“Holy shit.”

Propane tanks, glass cookware, coffee filters filled with a white, pasty substance.

This was no ordinary basement.

This was a fucking meth lab.

And there, lying at the center, was a small, hooded figure. Looked like, in the ruckus, they’d been knocked over by a metal cabinet. Out cold. When Heffer saw the person’s limbs shift, he immediately lifted his gun, about to blast whoever it was to hell and highwater.

“Hold the fuck on a second.”

I lowered his gun and stepped closer.

The figure was too small to be a man. A woman, I was sure of it. And stranger yet, she was covered in chains.

A slave.

She slowly looked up at both of us, and as her hood fell, and I could see her face clearly, another one of those unfathomable familiar feelings took hold of me. A feeling kinda like…déjà vu.

“Who…who the hell are you?” I tried, stuttering.

She was surrounded by shards of glass, shining, reflected by the fluorescents above. In this dark, dismal space, they appeared to me like stars. Like she was the brightest star at the center. Her force of gravity pulled me closer, and closer.

How had I seen her before?

How did she have this effect on me?

I bent down, and, hands shaking, brushed her hair from her cheek, watched as her eyes—until now, vacant and far away—fluttered open with recognition.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she whispered.

Then, she held out her hand, her fingers opened, and I saw a crumpled tarot card in her palm. A sign that stopped me cold; that told me the universe had once again contrived our meeting.

Or was it a reunion?

Knowing I would have to do some research on tarot, I considered the card in her hand once more. An impossible coincidence, but there it was.

The Scorpion.