I was sicker than a dog run over twice by a sixteen-wheeler.
It was late January and the latest round of chemotherapy was kicking my ass worse than it ever had before. Logically, I knew it was because they were targeting the cancer more aggressively than they had before, that this was a new technique that had proven very successful with women my age in my condition.
I was young and fit, it had seemed like a good idea to my parents and my doctors at the time to knock me around for three rounds of chemo in the depths of dreary winter to see if they couldn’t beat the cancer out of me. My mother was the only one who kept in touch with the doctors now and made sure the insurance papers were signed, but I hadn’t seen her or my dad since the incident at the dinner party before Christmas.
I sure as hell felt beaten but I didn’t feel cured. Not even close.
The only things I was grateful for in all of it was that I didn’t have to go to school sick as I was, and Zeus was gone on a run with The Fallen, so he didn’t have to see me like this.
He hadn’t wanted to go but things were going badly for the club. The second round of fires had revealed that there was definitely another snitch in their ranks, and Z didn’t feel comfortable leaving the San Diego run to anyone else, not even his most trusted brothers. After all, back in the day, Zeus had earned his presidency by backstabbing his President and he didn’t want history repeating itself.
When he’d left, I hadn’t been that bad but the past two weeks had been rough. I’d barely left the house and I hated getting out of bed because my entire body ached like a livid bruise. Zeus called every day to check in and I was never without at least two brothers in the house, lounging around shooting the shit with me as if they actually wanted to hang out with an invalid, and watch marathon sessions of Game of Thrones. I knew they reported back to him that I was getting worse, so I wasn’t surprised when Z called to tell me he was coming home early and leaving Bat in charge on the run to California. I’d tried to downplay things because I didn’t want to cause an issue for club business, but I was thrilled my guardian monster was coming home.
Without him, Mute, Harleigh Rose, and Bea were my angels.
H.R. and Bea helped me in the shower, which was embarrassing but necessary and they brushed and braided my hair away from my face. H.R. helped me get dressed in new pajamas each day so that the old ones didn’t smell like sick sweat and puke, and she made me countless pots of tea that I could barely bring myself to drink. Bea visited nearly every day and she always brought teen magazines, outside world gossip and endless optimism. Apparently, Mum knew she visited but Dad didn’t. I didn’t know what to think about it until Phillipa gave Bea my old Hephaestus Auto toque one day and told her to give it to me. It was a nice gesture, nowhere near enough, but nice.
Mute didn’t do much and yet he did everything. He was there when I woke up in the morning and he was there when I went to bed at night. Most of the time, I think he slept in the old tree house in the backyard for a few hours before coming back to hang out with me. We watched cult classics because we both loved them; The Godfather trilogy, Star Wars, Quentin Tarantino and Alfred Hitchcock collections. We played board games and card games but spoke as little as we could because Mute, obviously, preferred it and I found it tiring.
My entire body ached, but it was my feet and lungs that faired the worst. By week three, I needed a respirator because my oxygen levels were so low. The bottoms of my feet were deeply bruised and even though I was used to a lifetime of pain in them from ballet and pointe shoes, this was worse. I whimpered at any contact against them so poor Mute had to piggyback me around the house if Bea demanded I get out of bed more often.
I was too sick to see Sammy at the Autism Centre so Mute or Margie brought him to me at home. He was curious about my illness and wanted to know how to fix me. But I didn’t have the answers to give him and he’d twice had a tantrum because of it and the fact that when he’d last visited, I’d been too weak and pained to cuddle him as he liked.
I was tired of being sick and I was sick and fucking tired of Zeus’s house even though it’d only been my home for two months.
So, when another Friday rolled around, I begged Mute to take us all up to Z’s cabin outside Whistler. I missed my man so much it made my heart palpitate just to think of him and the cabin was our place. Mute wanted to refuse me, I knew, but he couldn’t deny me anything, especially not when I was like this. We couldn’t go on his bike obviously but he borrowed a truck from Hephaestus and the four of us loaded it with all the yummy health food we could find and about twenty cherry lollipops because they were still my weakness and we headed up into the mountains.
It was exactly what I needed. I felt like a teenage girl having a slumber party with her friends as we all got into our jammies—even Mute who wore, hilariously, sleep pants that looked exactly like his normal blue jeans and one of his standard black tees—and made a mound of pillows in front of the TV so we could sprawl out comfortably to watch our Banshee marathon on HBO.
I was lying diagonally with my head on Mute’s stomach, his hands in my gold hair he loved so much, and my legs over H.R. who had Bea curled into her side when Zeus called.
“Little warrior.” His rumble came over the phone and pierced my heart like an arrow. “How’s my girl?”
“Better,” I said, because even though I had the portable respirator beside me and my body ached like it was decomposing, my mind was happy and that was enough for me. “We’re watching a super violent show.”
He laughed and I could picture him leaning against his bike in the open air outside a bar while he talked to me, rolling a cigarette in his hands by habit but not smoking it because he’d made a promise to me to quit.
“Glad to hear it.”
“Tell Dad I say hi,” H.R. called out with popcorn in her mouth and more in the fist she was ready to shovel in just as soon as she had the space.
“Tell my other girl I love ’er, yeah?” Zeus said, hearing her over the phone.
“I will but just saying, you never told this girl you love her,” I pointed out.
“Love you, little girl. Loved you for ten years and love you for ten decades more,” he told me as if it was the simplest thing to do, to declare your undying love for a person like it was nothing special.
To Zeus, it wasn’t the miracle it was to me. To him, it just was.
There was a beauty in the simplicity of that that I knew I’d never cease to appreciate.
A low rumble sounded through the cabin and at first, I thought it was the TV show but Mute had turned the volume down low when I picked up the phone.
Immediately, my protector slid my head off his lap and went prowling to the window. I watched frozen but electric with static as his posture slammed ramrod straight.
“What is it?” I asked even though I knew whatever it was couldn’t be good and I knew it even before Mute reached into his boot for his knife and ducked down beside the couch to grab his gun.
“What’s goin’ on?” Zeus asked me, somehow sensing my fear through the radio waves.
“Mute,” I whispered as he took up his spot beside the front window and used a single finger to push aside the curtain slightly.
He looked out the pane then turned his head until our eyes locked. His dark gaze was filled with muted horror.
I was on my feet in a second, wincing at the tender pain in them but so far past caring I barely noticed.
“H.R., I need you to take Bea into the back, hide in the closet or under the bed or something, okay?” I asked, already hobbling over to the duffle bag I’d packed for the trip.
Ever since he’d given it to me for Christmas, I’d carried the gun Zeus gave me everywhere I went.
“Lou, what the fuck is goin’ on over there?” Zeus barked into the phone.
I was startled to find myself still holding it loosely in one hand. I tucked it against my ear as I searched for my gun and watched as H.R. kicked into gear like the biker girl she was and raced to the kitchen to grab a knife. Bea sat in the middle of the sea of pillows looking so young and so afraid it made my heart ache.
“Loulou,” Zeus snapped again.
“Sorry, sorry. I don’t know what’s happening but Mute is standing at the window looking out at the front yard of the cabin like someone really bad is outside.”
“Hand ’im the phone now,” he ordered.
I half crawled across the floor below the open window to put the cell in Mute’s outstretched hand.
“Three guys,” Mute said immediately, his eyes still on the action outside.
Vaguely, I heard the opening and shutting of doors.
Bea whimpered.
I went over to her and wrapped her up in my arms, keeping my gun ready in my right hand.
“Recognize two of ’em, Lysander Garrison and Ace Munford.”
Shit, Lysander was Cressida’s brother. The guy had been blackmailed into working for the Nightstalkers and spying on The Fallen. His actions had nearly gotten Cress killed and as far as she or I knew, Zeus and King had beaten him close to death then told him never to come back to town on fear of death.
He was back and clearly, he was back with the rival MC.
“Don’t know. They’re all carryin’ far as I can see but that’s it. They look calm. Someone told ’em we were here,” Mute continued.
My stomach clenched and before I could help it, I was sick all over the pillows behind Bea’s shoulder. She stroked my back with a shaking hand.
“Only got my Glock and blade, Foxy and H.R. got theirs and a coupla kitchen knives. ’S not enough,” Mute admitted quietly.
Not quietly enough for a room gone thick with silence.
Bea pressed her face into my breasts and burst into tears. H.R. returned from the kitchen and knelt beside me on the other side of the puke.
“We need to figure out what to do with her,” she said, tipping her chin at my little sister.
I couldn’t think of anything. There was no space inside the house, it was just the rustic three rooms, no basement, only one closet and…
“You can get up on the roof,” I said, prying Bea’s face out of my breasts. My thumbs rubbed at her tears as I held her tight and drilled my eyes into hers. “Harleigh Rose is going to lift you up so you can get into the crawl space in the closet and then you’re going to climb onto the roof. You have to be really fucking careful and don’t make one single noise, okay?”
She shook her head manically, her tears spraying out onto my own cheeks as she did. “I can’t, I can’t.”
“Listen to me,” I ordered her so harshly, she stopped shaking and blinked at me. “You’re a Lafayette and they might not have given us a fuckuva lot but they gave us a cool head, okay? You can do this. I need you to do this because we can’t concentrate if we know you might get hurt.”
“One’s comin’ to the door,” Mute muttered into the phone he still held to his ear.
My heart thudded in my throat and bile churned volcanic hot in my belly. “Bea, please baby, you’ve got to go with H.R. now, okay?”
“I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered brokenly, her huge blue eyes glazed with tears. “You’re the one who’s sick. You should go up there.”
“It’s a small roof, honey,” I tried to explain with a tight smile. “And you’re right, I’m already sick so if only one of us gets through this, I want it to be the one with better odds.”
Bea burst into tears again but I’d done my part and when H.R. took her shoulders to lead her to the closet in the bedroom, Bea went willingly.
As soon as she was out of the room, I got to my feet and walked gingerly over to Mute.
“What do you think they want?” I whispered to him.
Someone knocked forcibly on the door.
I looked up at Mute and tried to suppress the fear I felt like an electric current running through my blood. I saw it mimicked in his own eyes and we shared a moment of pure terror. He broke the moment by pressing an awkward hand in the middle of my chest and saying in the clearest voice I’d ever heard him say, “Something bad is gonna happen. Need you to promise me you’ll get yourself safe.”
“Mute,” I breathed. “We’ll be fine.”
“If not, you gotta promise me,” he ordered.
Another knock came at the door. This one louder, longer.
Mute held out a hand, pinky extended and thumb already hooked to shake mine. He’d seen me do it with Zeus and he wanted me to swear on the same sacred ground I made all my promises on with the love of my life.
My heart burned as I reached out to lock my pinky with his and shake his thumb.
As soon as I let go, he was striding to the door.
“We didn’t order pizza,” Mute yelled through it.
It was a strange time to be funny but it was so utterly Mute to act against the norm that it nearly my made me laugh and then it nearly made me cry.
The person on the other side of the door laughed. “Listen, kid. We just want the girls, yeah? Nothin’ bad needs to happen to anyone.”
“No girls,” Mute said.
“Know they’re here, brother. A little birdy told me Garro’s sweet teen lover and daughter would be here and looky look, the lover’s bodyguard is here so she must not be far behind. Now, open up before I kick this fuckin’ door down.”
I didn’t recognize the voice but Harleigh Rose seemed to as she came back into the room because she froze in the hallway entryway.
“Who?” I mouthed at her.
“Blackjack’s dad, Ace,” she whispered as she came toward me and peered carefully out the curtains.
There was one man in the front yard, a Mexican man by the look of him, wearing a Nightstalkers cut with the laughing demon face on the back. He sat on the hood of a black van picking under his nails with a huge, curved blade.
“Lysander’s here,” I whispered.
“Why do you want ’em?” Mute demanded.
Ace laughed. “Zeus Garro killed my best fuckin’ friend, think he deserves to know some pain ‘fore we take back an operation he never shoulda been Prez of in the first fuckin’ place.”
“I’ll bring ’em out,” Mute said after a long pause. “Back away from the door and I’ll get them sorted for ya.”
“No fuckin’ funny business. You got nowhere to go and you know it,” Ace said, ending on a manical laugh.
I heard his boots stomp across the small wooden porch and down the stairs.
“Stuff in front of the doors,” Mute snapped immediately, turning around himself to drag the kitchen table over.
I went over to help him, sweat breaking out across my skin at the effort to walk and then push the heavy oak table over the wood floors.
“You’re going to pass out, sit the fuck down,” H.R. hissed.
“I do, we die,” I said because it may have been dramatic but I had this awful, gut-wrenching feeling that it was true.
Mute didn’t say anything. Once the table was in front of the door, he went to the huge armchair and hefted it into the air before slamming it down over the table, barricading the door entirely.
“Close all the curtains. I’ve got the back door,” Harleigh Rose whispered as she dashed down the hall.
Mute held out my phone to me again. “Call him.”
My fingers slipped with sweat against the screen as I pressed in the number. Zeus answered immediately, “Update me.”
“It’s me,” I told him as lazy male laughter floated into the house from outside.
The bastards weren’t even nervous about what Mute could do to them. They thought we were easy pickings, most of The Fallen’s senior officers out on a run and the President’s women alone in a remote cabin.
Fuck, we were dumb.
“Lou, baby, got guys comin’. You just have to hold out for as long as you can, yeah?” Zeus’s voice was strong and sure as always.
“I’m so fucking scared,” I admitted as I watched Mute grab another knife from the kitchen and add it to his arsenal.
“Nah, not my little warrior. It’s gonna be fine, Lou. I’m on my way home right fuckin’ now and by this time tomorrow, this’ll all be a nightmare and you’ll be safe in my arms in our bed.”
“You don’t have nightmares,” I told him inanely because I was so terrified I could barely remember my own name.
At least Bea was safe on the roof.
But Mute was at the front line and my lover’s daughter, a daughter who strangely enough had become one of my best friends as well, was right there with me.
“Even the devil’s got nightmares, Lou, and mine is losin’ ya so you take care, you hear? No fuckin’ rebel schemes or heroics. You get outta there safe.”
“Comin’ back,” Mute muttered from beside the window.
“Come out, come fuckin’ out,” Ace yelled at the house. He sounded high and he probably was. “No? Eh, we figured as much. Fuckin’ pussies. Don’t worry, we got a cure for that.”
“Fuck,” Mute swore and dove at me.
We slammed to the ground away from the window a second before the glass smashed and something heavy landed amid the glass.
A Molotov Cocktail, a nearly empty bottle of booze with a gas-soaked rag stuck in it, burnin’ bright like a white flag in flames.
Two more crashes followed as more of them were launched through the windows of the house.
“We wanted ’em alive to reason with the fuckin’ Prez but if you wanna do this the hard way, we figure killin’ ’em will work to shake things up just as well,” Ace shouted into the house.
Mute hauled me to my feet and quickly checked me over for bruises and scrapes I didn’t feel. I couldn’t feel anything except for sheer terror. He grabbed my hand and ran down the hall to the back door only to find it hanging open on its hinges.
Harleigh Rose.
Mute shoved me against the wall beside the door and carefully rounded it with his gun up and out.
“Fuck,” he swore a second later as he backed up into the house slowly.
Lysander Garrison appeared in the doorway, Harleigh Rose dwarfed in his big arms, the huge barrel of a sawed-off shotgun to her temple.
“Put the gun down, Mute,” Lysander ordered softly. “I’m not gonna hurt anyone, okay? I’m just doing this because you’ve got to listen to me. The police are on their way but they won’t be here quick enough to save the girls. You have to trust me here, brother. I can help you guys.”
Mute snarled. “Not your brother. Lou, get here.”
I immediately obeyed, racing to him and sliding behind his back. He braced in a slight squat so I could—painfully—climb up onto his back. I wrapped myself tight around him so he wouldn’t have to waste a hand supporting me.
Smoke started to billow hot and black at our feet as the flames in the front room grew stronger.
“Fine but we don’t have time to argue. I’m workin’ with Lionel Danner on this. You gotta trust me here, if not ’cause you want to, then ’cause you know I’m the best chance for you here,” Lysander tried again.
The two men stared at each other for a long moment.
Sweat beaded on my back. It wasn’t a big house and it was only a matter of time before the fire spread, eating up all the wood like a starving, feral creature.
Lysander sighed then slowly lowered his gun from H.R.’s temple before taking a step back and lifting his arms in the air. Immediately, she ran to us and stood at our side, her hand finding my back and pressing in for comfort.
“No harm,” Lysander said, putting his gun slowly over his shoulder so it lay across his back by a thick bit of rope. “Now, if you’re willin’ to take a chance, I’m leaving now. They think I’m back here to catch you if you think of runnin’ but I’m helpin’, okay? There’s a car waiting just through the trees to the left of the estate, thirty meters tops. You run fast and hard, you can make it before they figure out what’s happening.”
“Mute, let’s do it,” H.R. whispered.
“Agreed,” I seconded then louder I said, “My sister is on the roof. You need to get her down.”
Something flared behind his eyes as he thought about my little sister on the roof of a flaming building and I immediately warmed to him for it.
“Let’s go, Mute,” I urged him.
He didn’t move.
The smoke was thick now and the snap, crackle and pop of wood tearing, burning and crumbling to ash was loud all around us.
I could barely breathe from the smoke in my already weak lungs when I begged. “Promised to stay alive for you, Mute. Need you to get me there and that way is through this guy.”
I don’t know if it was the hoarseness of my voice and my resulting body jerking coughing fit or if it was my words, but Mute jolted forward as if he’d been jump-started.
“You get her hurt, I kill you,” he threatened even as he started running to the door and out it.
Harleigh Rose followed us but Mute put her in front, as we followed Lysander around the side of the house and stopped just out of sight of the front driveway.
“Thirty meters through the trees straight ahead,” Lysander said when we came to a stop. “I’ll get Bea and you worry about gettin’ out of here alive.”
I whimpered at the thought of leaving my sister but the shouts from the front of the house alerted us that our time had run out.
There was about ten meters between the forest and us, with twenty meters still more after that.
“Doable,” H.R. said, her soot-streaked face set with determination. She still held a knife in one hand and her gun in the other, both held up to her face as if being able to see them made her more confident.
“Got this,” Mute agreed.
“Good, now go,” Lysander ordered.
Mute took off like a shot, Harleigh Rose on the other side of us, farther away from the driveway. I clung tight to him as he thundered across the grass, his breath and pulse thumping away in my ear as I pressed my face into his neck.
Pop.
The familiar sound of gunshots followed close behind us.
Pop. Pop.
“Let me down, I can run and you’ll be faster without me,” I shouted in Mute’s ear but he only hefted me higher on his back and ran harder.
Pop.
Harleigh Rose screamed.
And in that second that Mute stopped slightly to turn his head and check on her, I saw a fourth man, one we hadn’t known was there, one that looked so familiar, at first, I thought he was there to help us.
He had pale hair and wore a leather vest like brothers of any MC would. He was too far away for me to see clearly but through my haze of adrenaline, I felt sure I knew him. He stood by the trees we were running to, a gun in his hand leveled high and steady at Mute and me.
It felt as though I caught eyes with him in that second and saw a wealth of things in that corrupted gaze: anger and greed, vengeance and fury. He was a man on a mission and that mission was to end me.
I screamed before I even heard the pop.
Mute grunted a second later, faltering in his steps and almost falling to the ground. He collapsed to a knee briefly before pushing up with a hand and taking off again.
“You’re okay?” I screamed into his ear.
He grunted.
Harleigh Rose limped beside us, running fast even though I could see the blood at her calf where a bullet had gone clear through the muscle.
We made it to the edge of the trees three seconds later without any more gunfire but I could still hear the shouts back at the house and see the dark plumage of smoke wafting over the cabin through the forest. Harleigh Rose had darted ahead into the brush to get the car started.
“Keys in the ignition,” she shouted from somewhere in front of us.
“Thank God,” I said, about to ask Mute to put me down when my world tilted and we both went to the earthen floor hard.
“Mute,” I cried out before I’d even landed, then as soon as I regained my breath I was scrambling over the cold, wet soil to his side.
He lay on his back, blinking up at the sky like he couldn’t understand what was wrong with him.
What was wrong with him was that there was a bullet hole through his neck. A sob exploded in my throat and tore out my mouth as I fell on the wound with both hands, pressing hard into the blood spilling through his throat. My fingers slipped in the mess and I worried frantically that I was making it harder for him to breathe.
“Help!” I called out, not caring that there were more gunmen in the vicinity. “Harleigh Rose!”
“Fucking fuck,” she said, tumbling to a stop beside me in the mud. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod… fuck.”
“Mute, just wait a second, okay?” I told him, leaning down so I could look into his eyes.
They were wide and eerily knowing on mine as he blinked, gurgled through a deep breath, and blinked again.
“Loulou!” Bea’s voice came to me, pulling my gaze from Mute for a second to see her running toward me with Lysander just behind her.
“You have to help me get him in the car,” I told Lysander. “Quick, please, God, help me get him in the car. He needs an ambulance.”
Lysander crouched down without missing a beat and cursed as he smoothly hefted Mute’s dead weight into his arms. “Get in the fuckin’ car. Now.”
I pushed Bea toward the car with my bloody hands then sprinted forward so I could brace against the backseat and carefully accept Mute’s head on my lap. Bea crawled into the front seat and H.R. kneeled in the trunk.
Lysander jumped into the front seat and immediately peeled out of the muddy clearing just as there was a great bomb as the cabin imploded.
“Mute, Mute, I’m right here and we’re going to be in the hospital in just two seconds, I promise, it’s going to be alright… just hold on, okay?” I ranted as I pressed the bunched edge of his tee into the gushing wound and ran a hand over his head, too fast and hard to be truly comforting.
I could see the blood under his skin thinning, watched as his flesh turned bright red then paler and paler like spilled milk. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t move and couldn’t even really breathe.
“No, no, no,” I sobbed as one of his heavy hands tried to lift to comfort me and fell back weakly to the seat.
There was blood everywhere, pooling warm in my lap, the metallic scent of it stuffed up my nostrils.
He was dying.
God, I knew he was dying.
“Is he okay?” Bea whimpered from the front seat as we drove off the edge of a dirt hill and onto pavement with a rough crash that jerked me and made more of Mute’s blood spurt out over my hand.
“No,” I whispered as my tears rained down on Mute’s face.
There was so much in his eyes as they watched me; pain and stunning acceptance of his fate, pride that he’d saved me and love, so much love it overflowed from him and filled me up to the brim.
I couldn’t breathe, my weak lungs were filled with smoke and too damaged to deal with the added stress but I focused all my energy into staying clear headed so I could hold my silent hero in my arms and look into his eyes as he died for me.
“Love you, love you, love you,” I croaked through my tears, through my lack of breath.
He blinked slowly and opened his mouth, maybe to say something, but instead a thick trickle of blood spilled out.
My sobs ricocheted through the car like the gunshots in the clearing.
“Love you,” I said again as I bent double and pressed my lips to his face, kissing his heavy brow, his broad forehead, his blood-speckled cheeks and nose.
His breathing was faint, so faint I couldn’t even hear him struggle for it anymore. I pulled back just enough to see his face and watched as those beautiful brown eyes, more eloquent than his lips had ever been, sparked one last time and then went out.
I cried out like a wounded animal, so long and low and loud that black spots dotted my vision and my tired lungs gave out. I passed out over Mute’s still warm, dead body with my cheek on his cheek.
