Max

 

It took me a moment longer than it should have to realize what was going on. I was drowsy still, heavy with sleep and sated after the pleasure I’d taken from Lucy. She was still lying beside me, but, like me, had jerked awake at the sound.

 

It had been loud, like a car backfiring or a small cherry bomb blowing up a mailbox, but that wasn’t it. I knew because I’d heard the sound before a time or two. Occupational hazard of leading a biker club, even if we were mostly legitimate.

 

“Shit,” I muttered as I realized what that sound was, and the potential for what it meant.

 

I reached for the bedside table and jerked open the door, pulling out the piece I always kept there, just in case. Even as I threw back the covers and leapt out of bed, I checked to see that the gun was loaded. It was. Safety off. I made a quick run for the window, it was the only one in the room and faced the front lawn, which was where I thought the shot had come from.

 

A gunshot. Someone had been shooting in my fucking front yard.

 

“Max, what’s going on?”

 

It was Lucy, her voice small and worried. She was tough when she had to be, but so much of that was an act. When she could, she relied on me to be the tough one, and I couldn’t let her see that I was scared, too.

 

“Get on the floor and stay away from the window and door!” I told her in a fast, hushed tone.

 

I didn’t look to see if she obeyed, but heard the ruffling of clothing, the padding of feet, and knees hitting the floor. Focusing on the shot, I went to the side of the window and carefully looked around the frame, pushing back the curtains just enough to see outside.

 

It was late still, dark outside. The streetlights were on, but three in the area were broken and unlikely to be fixed anytime soon. The neighbors’ lights were out and I knew they’d remain that way. It wasn’t that they hadn’t heard the shots. It was that they didn’t want to get caught up in what those shots meant.

 

I searched the street for the shooter, and prayed whoever it was wasn’t too close to here, though it seemed the most likely scenario.

 

Quickly, my eyes fell to a dark shadow in the night. His arms were up, his bulky frame lined perfectly to fire away from the house and down the street. There was the faintest gleam of light reflecting off his smooth, shaved head, and after I made that connection, the rest fell in place quickly.

 

“Bills.”

 

“What?” Lucy asked. She was on the other side of the bed on the floor, but had come up just enough so she could look over the bed at me. “What about Bills?”

 

“Stay here. He’s downstairs. I’m going to meet him and ask him what the hell is going on.”

 

“Max!”

 

I didn’t listen or pause. I headed out the door of the bedroom and headed down the stairs immediately to meet Bills. I still had my piece and it brought me some comfort. I couldn’t say why I was nervous, this was Bills, one of mine, but there was something off about tonight. A lot of things had been off lately.

 

The front door opened and there he stood, a dark silhouette in the doorframe. I gripped my piece tighter, then flipped on the damn light. He squinted against the sudden brightness. “Fuck,” he growled.

 

“That’s my line,” I told him, gripping the handle of my gun tighter, but keeping it lowered at my side. “What the hell is going on?”

 

He gestured back out towards the night. “I caught some fucking guy creeping around your house,” he told me, his voice dark and serious. “He had a fucking knife, man.”

 

A tendril of cold ran through me. A knife? All things considered, it wasn’t the deadliest weapon in a lot of respects. A gun would have maybe been more intimidating, but if that guy weren’t interested in intimidation, if he were interested in just taking care of business, then there was a lot of reason to choose a knife.

 

A knife was quick. A knife was quiet. A knife was hard to fight off and it was hard to fix without medical attention.

 

And it meant you had to be up close and personal. Whoever this guy was, he meant business.

 

“Who the fuck was it?” I demanded of Bills, anger and fear mixing in my belly to come up with something like adrenaline, but more like fire and whiskey. “Did you see him?”

 

Bills shrugged his shoulders. “It was dark, but we grappled. I got a few good hits in, I think, but it’s hard to say. The chickenshit ran off, but when I saw him, he was standing on the front lawn and he was staring up. He was staring up at the window, Max.”

 

The window. As in, the bedroom window. It was the only one on that side of the building on the second floor. The house just wasn’t that big.

 

“Did he say anything?”

 

Bills shook his head. “No, but he was on a motorcycle and it looked like he was a club member.”

 

I frowned. “Not a Reaper.”

 

Quickly, Bills corrected me, “No. Not one of ours. One of theirs.”

 

“The Slayers.”

 

I thought of that night, of their gift. I thought of that manic look in Blade’s eyes and the way he seemed to be enjoying it all so much. Too much. It made something sick swirl through my guts and I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep from puking.

 

What had I gotten us into?

 

“I can’t be sure,” Bills said, but I could see something in his eyes that told me he had already decided who it was out there, or at least who they belonged to. “But it wasn’t one of ours, that much I am sure of.”

 

I sat heavily on the bottom stair, putting my piece down next to me. My hands went to my hair, running through them uneasily. What the hell was I doing anymore? The Preacher had made this shit look easy, but I had learned it wasn’t. More than that, it was dangerous. That was obvious.

 

What had happened tonight? What if that guy had gotten into the house and made it up the stairs before anyone had heard him? What if Bills hadn’t been there? What if he made it to the bedroom and gotten to Lucy before…

 

I couldn’t finish the thought. It made me sick to think of something happening to Lucy. It was more than I could handle and I finally realized it: I wasn’t cut out for this crap anymore. Somewhere along the way, things had changed for me, too. I thought of Lucy and how she wasn’t happy, how she seemed scared all the time. I couldn’t protect her twenty-four seven, no matter how I wanted to or how I tried, but I could change the type of lifestyle that meant she had to be protected all the time.

 

I could make her safe. I just couldn’t do it like this.

 

“I think this is it,” I told Bills. He gave me a confused look, not following the thoughts in my head. “This is my last big deal. Things have gotta change, man.”

 

I heard a sound behind me, footsteps on the stairs, and almost sensed more than heard Lucy standing at the top landing. I felt like I could hear her breathing and feel the pounding of her heart. Things were like that sometimes. Like we were so connected that there was this sixth sense about her. I always wanted to ask her if she felt it, too, but could never man up enough to do it.

 

“What the fuck?” Bills demanded in a low, angry whisper. He looked like he might argue or say something else, but snapped his mouth shut instead, his eyes moving from my face. He’d seen Lucy, his gaze going to a spot behind me, and the glare there was more than a little intense.

 

Things weren’t great between the two of them, not that I could blame Lucy for that, but I could see what Bills thought was going on.

 

He thought she was a distraction, and maybe she was. Maybe she was the worst and best kind of distraction, but that wasn’t Bills’ call. He didn’t have the right to say one way or the other what kind of leader I was, because everyone had a pretty good idea what kind he would be. Reckless. Dangerous. A loose cannon. If people left the club to him, everyone would be thrown in the slammer by the time the year was up.

 

But that wasn’t the real reason he didn’t like Lucy. It was part of it and the only legitimate thing he could say against her, because no one questioned the validity of the Preacher’s daughter, least of all to me. The other part of it was less pretty and less fair, though maybe made more sense.

 

He was in love with her.

 

Or at least, he wanted to fuck her pretty badly. He wasn’t the only member of the Sin Reapers who’d eyed Lucy like she was a piece of meat or some French model they could bend into all kinds of naughty, dirty positions. But he was the only one who’d made a pass at her.

 

It had been years ago and it was water under the bridge—at least it was for me, more by force of will than any real inclination—but no one had forgotten that it’d happened. Not Lucy. Not me. It was hard when you had as much history as we did.

 

Ten years ago, I’d saved Lucy. Maybe I didn’t look at it that way, but Lucy did. We were just a couple of kids in high school. She was only fifteen and I was coming up fast on seventeen. Even then, her father had been leader of the Sin Reapers. She acted a lot tougher than she was back then, and that along with her father’s reputation was usually enough to keep her out of trouble.

 

But not that day.

 

I’d never forget it, though my memories were red around the edges and fuzzy in the middle. It was raining. Lucy was walking home. I never did find out why, but it was the last time she did it. I was on the other side of the street trying to bum a cigarette off a guy who wouldn’t believe I was eighteen—which I wasn’t.

 

I saw the guy start following her, but didn’t think much of it. A lot of people walked that way; no big deal. But then she got a little farther and he got a little closer. She finally stopped, leaning against the wall like she was waiting for someone. But she wasn’t.

 

The guy looked like he might just keep going, but when he didn’t I knew things were about to get bad.

 

I forgot the guy and the smoke, turning to cross the street just as the guy reached for her. He grabbed her by the arm and she struggled to shake him off, but he was too strong for her. A car nearly ran me over, making me stop before I could reach her, and by the time it passed that guy was dragging her into an alley between a smoke shop and the Mexican food place right next to it. I heard a scream.

 

I ran. When I got to that alley, she was pressed against the wall, the guy holding her down as she kicked at him, struggling to break free. But his hold was tight and his free hand was already wandering. He had one knee between her legs, forcing them apart, and his hand was starting up her skirt. She screamed. He smacked his hand over her mouth. She bit him. And that was when he hit her across the face, making her fall to the alley floor, her mouth bleeding.

 

I saw red. Fury flared through me, so hot I might have burst into flames. I ran for her as the man started to undo his pants. I heard his sneering voice as he told her, “Scream again, bitch, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

 

The rest, I didn’t really remember. I knew I got there before he reached her. I knew I punched him until his face was broken and bleeding and my hands weren’t doing much better. I knew when I finally came back to myself, Lucy was wrapped in my arms, my bloodied hands stroking her dark hair as I whispered to her that she was okay, I’d protect her.

 

As far as I knew, the man survived. Barely. His face would never quite be the same though. I wasn’t charged only because Lucy was the Preacher’s daughter and he had an in with the police department.

 

After that, I always walked her home. We started making out in little hallway nooks when no one was looking. By the end of the year, my hands were constantly down her pants, making her cry out in pleasure. And on her seventeenth birthday, she took off all her clothes and told me she wanted me to be her first. I was. I’d had other girls before and made sure it was good for her. After that first time, we couldn’t be separated.

 

When she graduated high school—I had dropped out senior year to work full time at an auto shop—I thought she might go off into the world and leave me behind, but she took local community college classes and stuck with me.

 

Eventually, she got dragged into the club just like I had. It was inevitable; her dad was the Preacher, leader of the club. She was more accountant than anything else and kept the books balanced.

 

I always waited for her to leave me, to find someone better, but she never did. Instead, our relationship seemed to just grow in intensity. The sex got better every time we had it and I knew unquestioningly that I loved her. That kind of crazy love that drove you to do things you wouldn’t normally do. Things like beat a man within an inch of his life.

 

Bills didn’t love her like I did, no one did, but he wanted her and he wasn’t the kind of man who took kindly to “no.” I didn’t know what he said to her, she refused to tell me, but something happened that made her skittish around him. All she would tell me was that he told her he was interested and she told him she wasn’t.

 

I didn’t bother asking him. He’d just say that nothing had happened.

 

“You sure that’s you talking?” Bills asked me finally, jerking me back to the here and now. His tone was even, though his face was red and blotchy. He was pissed, no question. I couldn’t tell if Lucy had heard him or not or if he’d meant her to, but I knew what he was trying to say.

 

He always tried to tell me that she distracted me. I always told him to shut the fuck up.

 

“Let’s worry about it another time,” I told him, not interested in dealing with the issues I knew wouldn’t wait for much longer. “Right now, I want to focus on that guy. I want to know who he was and if he really was a Slayer.”

 

Bills nodded his head. “I’ll find out.”

 

I had little doubt that he would.