Axle Read online

  “We’re not making up for lost time, LeCharles,” I said, trying to make my voice as soft as possible. “We’re starting anew. And in this new time, we’re going to go all the way. Till death do us part. Are you game for that?”

  He came forward and kissed me. I guess that answered that question.

  “Till the end of the universe do us part.”

  “Oh, one-upping me, huh?” I said.

  LeCharles could only smile.

  “Never, not with you, baby,” he said. “Because I love you, Rose.”

  This time, actions weren’t the only way I was going to show him the same. I kissed him, of course, but this time, I left no doubt.

  “And I love you, LeCharles.”

  Epilogue

  Two Weeks Later

  I sat on the open patio of Bottle Revolution, the de facto new meeting spot for the Black Reapers. We had struck a deal with the owner, Isaac, to get him to extend his closing hours to two in the morning if we promised to have people coming by to drink at least twice a week. Honestly, the deal we struck was extraordinarily in our favor. It wasn’t very hard to negotiate with a man like Isaac, who seemed both in awe and terrified of our very presence.

  Rose stood inside, working the register. There was no one in sight, and in moments like these, I just liked to wink at her, making her think of what would happen later that night. I wasn’t ever going to be the guy who blew kisses or who would do a huge amount of PDA, but I liked the subtle gesture. It was a nice way to tell her on my terms that I couldn’t wait to have her alone.

  The sound of an incoming motorcycle signaled I needed to get ready, though. I took a sip of my beer, steeled myself, and cleared my throat.

  A couple seconds later, I saw Butch walking through the store. He grabbed a beer, which Rose let him have for payment later. He came back to me, took the cap off his beer, and nodded to me.

  “Axle.”

  “Butch.”

  He came to the table and sat across from me.

  “You already got out of the sling, huh?” I said. “I’m still protecting mine, as you can see.”

  “Wasn’t anything,” he said. He hummed for a second before speaking. “How are you?”

  Butch, asking questions? Next thing you know, I’m going to learn he owns a purse dog.

  “Doing good, man, doing good. Made up with the lady, so things are great there.”

  “And Jerome?”

  I shrugged.

  “We’ve talked a bit. I called him out for what he did. He’s not particularly apologetic, but it’s not like we’re sworn enemies now. I think we’ll figure out a proper middle ground and go from there.”

  “Makes sense.”

  He again cleared his throat.

  “Sorry,” he said. “For what I said.”

  I actually smiled. I fucking smiled at Butch.

  “Thanks, man,” I said. “All water under the bridge now.”

  I held out my bottle, and he did the same. We clinked, and just like that, we’d moved past our fight. We wouldn’t forget it—some of the bruises and scars from that fight were still visible anyway—but we’d moved past it.

  Just like I had moved past my history with Rose, and her with me.

  Just like, hopefully, Lane and Cole had moved past their past with each other. And speaking of...

  “You hear anything about the Carters since last Tuesday?”

  “A bit,” he said. “No surprise, there’s major conflict. Cole wants me to mediate. We’ll see.”

  I nodded. I suppose, for now, that was enough. It was one thing when lovers reunited because there was something very special worth chasing after. It was another when brothers did because two strong-headed men like that...

  It would take time. But at least the effort was being made.

  “Well, the good news is we haven’t heard shit from the Saints since then. I wouldn’t dare assume they’re dead until I see their bodies on the ground, most of all Lucius Sartor, but... ”

  Butch nodded. He took a sip of his beer. I did the same, reminiscing on the battle. For a battle that was supposed to end in our destruction, the Saints sure had done a good job of having the opposite happen.

  But these types of battles went in ebbs and flows. We’d have to kill Lucius ourselves.

  But for now, I’d take the respite.

  “Also,” Butch said, hesitating for a second. “I only say this because I know this for sure.”

  “What?”

  “I mean it. I know this for a fact.”

  He swallowed.

  “I know who the rat is. It’s the person we’ve least suspected this whole time. It’s…”

  Butch swallowed.

  “Red Raven.”

  Preview of “Butch”

  Butch and Thea

  Brian “Butch” Young

  In the church hall where we always gathered, the seven of us sat in our usual circle, in a more combative mood than usual despite our recent accomplishment.

  To my left, at the head of the table, sat the club president, Lane Carter, a man who had taken on the title with much more seriousness and genuine interest than he had for most of his early tenure. To my right sat Father Marcellus, the club chaplain, a man who was very spiritual but not exactly someone I thought local priests and bishops would call “pure in action.” To his right sat the man I had accused of betrayal, Red Raven; his breathing was often times one of the few things that I could hear in silent moments. Most people didn’t hear it, but I had an especially sharp sense of hearing.

  To his right, across from Father Marcellus, sat Patriot, the young gun who had seemed to get his shit together. Patriot was always something of the “hot young shot,” the player the club could put forward whenever it needed to charm someone with an attractive smile, but all of us knew beneath that lay a tormented soul over something that probably no one knew about. Thankfully, he seemed better in recent weeks, but we all knew how things could change.

  And to his right, completing the circle, was Axle, the man that I had nearly killed in a brawl just a couple of weeks before and whom now knew my greatest suspicion.

  Together, we were a crew that operated well enough; we had worked much better under the leadership of Lane’s late father, Roger Carter, but we were also almost all on the upswing from what we had once been. It had only been less than a year ago that Lane was detached, Axle and I were trying to keep the club afloat, and I was convinced that some of the members were going to join Cole in his Gray Reapers—and that was just considering the ones who had not jumped ship immediately.

  But today, it wasn’t going so well.

  “We sit back and wait,” Axle said. “And the Fallen Saints will become the Risen Saints, and everything that we did at Brewskis will be for naught.”

  The situation was easy enough. The Fallen Saints were in really bad shape after our last battle; Lucius was even wounded badly. He had not yet perished, but the club was in recovery mode. If they were recovering in their headquarters, we could have ended it.

  But they had done something that was deviously brilliant. They had gone to Springsville General, and as a result, they were healing in a very public place. There was going to be no private, nighttime raid to take them out.

  “I take it Kaitlyn’s not going to do anything?” Lane said, asking Patriot about his girlfriend, who worked as a nurse at the club.

  “No way, man,” he said. “Her and Devon are scared shitless, but there’s sort of an unspoken arrangement there. If the Saints don’t do anything to anyone on staff, then the staff will treat them well. And both sides know we’re not going to interfere. Just not gonna happen, man.”

  “Shit,” Lane said. “How do we know they’ll keep their end of the bargain?”

  “Family,” Father Marcellus said. “Lucius’ daughter, Lilly, is by his side. Lilly may be the daughter of the most evil man we know, but she still has a right to care for her father. She will not allow anything to come between him and his recovery, inclu
ding the demonic actions of his club.”

  I shook my head. We knew Lucius had a daughter, but that was nothing but a footnote to us, like saying Lucius had hair that was getting whiter by the day. It wasn’t anything we concerned ourselves with, mostly because none of us had even seen Lilly. I think Lane had said he’d seen her once before, but otherwise, she might as well have been a ghost to us.

  “But that does not mean we cannot strike when they are weakest.”

  I never would have, in my life, guessed that Red Raven would be the one to be speaking now.

  “This is not a war in which we ought to fight fairly. They will take any advantage they can to hurt us; we must not afford them the luxury of healing. Now is the time to end them and end the war that Roger Carter fought for the last several years of his life.”

  Red Raven…

  I was biased, but I believed he was just trying to save his own ass. The demolition of the Saints in the last battle had probably put him in precarious standing with them, and he had to figure their total annihilation was the only way they would live.

  Or maybe I was just wrong, maybe Father Marcellus was the rat, and I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

  “We’re going to put this to a vote,” Lane said. “We’ve argued over this for what feels like an hour now, and we’re no closer to a solution than we were when we came in. We’re going to go counterclockwise on this one. I want to hear the sergeant-in-arm’s answer last.”

  Interesting. We never do it like that.

  “Axle?”

  Axle snorted.

  “As long as we don’t create casualties amongst civilians, who cares?” he said. “There’s no reason we can’t sneak in and take them out bit by bit. I say we strike now.”

  I was conflicted listening to Axle. On the other hand, murder was what I was good at, and I was especially good at murdering people who had crossed me or hurt me.

  But on the other hand, it wasn’t like I was a sociopath. I wasn’t proud of the fact that my greatest life skill was ending other people’s lives. I wanted to listen to my better half, the half that could still find redemption and salvation at some point in my life.

  But if redemption comes through the very thing that has put you in this spot, is that really redemption? Or is that just some sort of weird rationalization to keep doing what you are doing now?

  “Patriot?”

  Patriot grimaced for a second, as if having second thoughts about what he had said initially. Perhaps the idea of striking at the location where his girlfriend worked suddenly wasn’t the smartest idea.

  “I vote… if we can contain the attack only to the Saints clubhouse… yeah.”

  That was not the vote. The vote was for a strike now, at the hospital. But Lane, whether because he and Patriot were best friends or just because he had a stroke of good leadership, knew better than to push forward. He could read between the lines.

  “Red Raven?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Our enemy will show us no mercy. Against an enemy like that, we have no choice but to play by their rules. To rise above their rules simply gives them our underbellies to shoot at.”

  You and your philosophical statements, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Father Marcellus?”

  The chaplain looked pained at everyone else’s answers. And I didn’t mean that just in expression—he was keeled over, his hands on his stomach, like he was going to throw up if he heard another bad answer.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Red Raven?

  “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” he said, quoting one of his favorite Bible verses. “So many people think that means to get rich at the expense of their soul, but that is simply not the case. It means to sacrifice your sacred values for a material gain. We are no saints, and I don’t mean the fallen kind. We are criminals, we are gangsters, and we are troublemakers, no matter how much we say otherwise. But we have something that the Fallen Saints do not, and that is a code of behavior.”

  He had regained his strength, now sitting up at a table.

  “We are a club that gets arrested for disorderly conduct or drinking, but not for murder or theft. Our crimes are crimes against the illogical rules of society, not against our fellow man. If we go and attack a hospital, where dozens, if not hundreds, of other patients are recovering of their own wounds, we will create casualties even if we do not lay a finger upon them. We will create nightmares for the rest of their lives. And even above that, we must have empathy for the common society of Springsville.”

  “Empathy is not to be had here!”

  I had never, ever heard Red Raven speak so emphatically or so often. I saw Axle glance at me, but I did not look back—I did not want to have anything suggest that we were on to him. Red Raven is facing something serious.

  “When the devil has barged into your home, you do not wait to clear out th home before you strike back,” he said. “You must drive your sword through his heart, even if he has held your wife and children before you.”

  “With all respect, Red Raven, that is exactly what the devil wants, because if you do that, you become the devil yourself.”

  “You are—”

  “That’s enough,” Lane said, banging the gavel before Red Raven and Father Marcellus could continue their fight. “I appreciate both sides of this argument, but I did not come here for a Sunday sermon. And frankly, the reason I put this to a vote is because I knew that this would happen. We need to see where everyone stands so we can find common ground.”

  Red Raven and Father Marcellus settled down, though neither looked at the other. Everyone across from me could not contain their shock at Red Raven’s explosive behavior. I wondered how many of them besides Axle suspected him of being the rat.

  “Butch. You are the sergeant-in-arms. You are the one who would push for violence. What do you believe?”

  What did I believe?

  Oh, I had quite a bit I could have said on that. But that didn’t mean I wanted to say it out loud. We’d already had our philosophical, quasi-religious debate; I didn’t need to add on to that.

  “No, no strike,” I said.

  I could see the room visibly tense as it fell to Lane. He leaned forward on the table, propping both elbows up, taking a deep breath.

  “The thing I keep coming back to,” he said, his voice steady and calm. “Was how I felt the night that both my father died and Shannon died.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever heard him speak of that night in such calm sentences. Maybe he finally had gotten over her.

  “And because of that, I keep thinking about the fact that we know Lucius’ daughter is with him,” he said. “I won’t claim to know a thing about Lilly, but… I’m sorry, Red Raven, but I tend to agree with Father Marcellus here. I have no empathy for the man that killed my fiancee.”

  He finally admits it. Has blamed Cole for so long… maybe there is hope for a reunion.

  “I have no empathy for the Fallen Saints. But I feel like I would become the devil if I put at risk a young woman when I know the pain of losing one like her. I am not willing to do that. And in any case, I am not going to authorize a strike against a fucking hospital unless we have a unanimous decision. And even then, I am certainly not going to launch one until Patriot can give me every assurance in the world that Kaitlyn and Devon would not be there.”

  He sighed.

  “I fucking hate Lucius. He caused me a lot of heartache and he’s caused this club a lot of pain. But I’m just not going to kill his daughter, even if she is evil—which none of us know if it’s true or not—to get to him. So—”

  “Wait.”

  Lane had gone to raise the gavel to declare the matter closed, or at least postponed for the moment. He had gotten as far as swinging it upward in its motion just before, once again, Red Raven had interrupted.

  “You have a chance to finish what your father fought for all these ye
ars,” he said.

  He sounded out of breath, like speaking as much as he had had sapped so much of his strength. I allowed myself to look at him and saw a man who looked much older than he normally did. I did not know how old he was, but he might have been much closer to the end than any of us realized. Was this the act of a man trying to redeem himself? Or was he still in self-preservation mode.

  “You have a chance to end the madness that afflicts this town,” he continued. “And you would allow this to slide? War is hard and requires some awful choices, son. Ask Patriot or Axle. You know that you cannot have a bloodless battle with the Fallen Reapers.”

  Lane swallowed. He doesn’t suspect Red Raven of being the rat. Or, if he does, he hasn’t brought himself to believe it. Red Raven was getting to Lane. We all could see it.

  “We’ll talk about this again on Saturday morning,” he said, somewhat weakly. “We have to have our annual club family party tomorrow afternoon and evening, and we cannot cancel it. But it also means we won’t get trashed like we usually will. So sit on it for the next forty hours or so.”

  With that, Lane slammed the gavel, but unlike most meetings, when someone would get up to move immediately, none of us moved. We all recognized the gravity of the opportunity in front of us, but we all also recognized the serious tragedy that could ensure if we worked poorly.

  I looked at Axle, who briefly made eye contact with me. Without a word, we both knew we needed to get someplace else to talk more.

  I was the first to stand up. It took several seconds before everyone else rose, and even then, it felt like we were violating some sort of unspoken agreement by standing to end the meeting. Such was the grativas of this particular meeting that we had gotten to this spot.

  Rose wasn’t working at Bottle Revolution tonight, but we still had the place to ourselves without concern of someone eavesdropping that shouldn’t have. We sat on the back porch, no one else nearby. The cashier, a man named Isaac with a ponytail, had done so much to placate us that he had even agreed to put up a sign that said “Closed” leading to the back porch.