Page 52 of Grave Curse

“Good for you.” I tried not to gag. “So, Hades had a plan? What did he want you to do?”

“He said your chapter was nothing but a bunch of dumbasses playing at being 1%ers—a load of butter knives pretending to be machetes. With all your fancy glitter-bike sales and your candy-ass businesses, he swore you’d become fat pussies that anyone could fuck over, even me.” Her fingers tightened on the bottle, making the plastic crinkle. “He was wrong. You’re just way better at hiding what you really are.”

No shit. “What did he want you to do once you got here, Yoyo?”

Again she looked at me through the lank curtain of her hair. “What else? To slit your throat, Mr. President.”

So we were back to that, were we? “And how would you ever get a chance to do that?”

“You have to sleep at some point, yeah?” Her smile was sweetly demented. “I’m good at one thing only, or so my daddy says. That’s what I was supposed to do withyou.”

“Jesus,” Ajax muttered behind me. “That goddamn Radar.”

Yoyo ignored him, her eyes clinging to mine like her life depended on it. “And once you had drifted off to dreamy-land all happy and satisfied, I was supposed to give you a nice, long slit from ear to ear. I had the straight razor in my boot, ready to do the job. It’s gone now. Poof. Bye-bye.”

“Straight razor.” A dark foreboding hit me, and I looked to Ajax. “Where?”

Ajax moved to hand over a familiar-looking, gold-edged razor folded into a mother-of-pearl handle.

Well, well. Thought I’d never see this again.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Yoyo stared at the razor as though she longed to grab it so she could start dicing me up into bloody chunks. She sighed when I tucked it away in my back pocket.

“There’s a code among bikers,” I said evenly, watching her. “When war breaks out, men fight men. Menkillmen. Our women stay the fuck out of it. Sending a teenaged bitch into enemy territory to killme, the goddamn president of the Gravediggers… That’s a fuckinginsult.”

She flinched.

“But it’s also a sign of weakness on H’s part, and there’s nothing that disgusts me more than weakness. Ifyouare his secret weapon, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re worried about. At this point, Hades is nothing more than a pissy little joke, and we should just leave him alone to run his has-been chapter into the ground.”

She shifted. “He might be weak. Orrrrrr, he might have seen me for what I really am.”

“And what are you?” This should be good.

“A killer.”

“Yeah? How many people have you killed, Yoyo?”

“None. Yet. But I’ve always wanted to see if I could kill someone. I think about it alllll the time.”

“No surprise there,” Ajax muttered, running a hand over his shaved head. “Someone broke this bitch long before she fell into our laps.”

“Hypocrite,” she hissed at him, then hid behind her water bottle when he scowled at her. “So all the fun of killing is meant for the boys, but not the girls? That’s not fair. I told Big Man Hades all about how I wanted to see if I could kill just like the boys, and he finally gave me a shot at it. He even said he’d throw me a party if I brought him your balls, Mr. President. Said he wanted to make earrings out of them.” Another wild laugh, choked off too soon. “He’s super-obsessed with your balls, in case you didn’t know. Guess that’s weird since he’s your uncle. But I try not to judge. My daddy’s weird that way about some of my body parts, too.”

“We’re going to kill Radar for that,” I heard myself promise her, because it had to be said. In this case, it wasn’t club business. It was just the right goddamn thing to do. “When we do, do you want any body part of his that you can make into earrings?”

“I just want Daddy dead. Mommy too, because she knew. She knew all the things happening under her roof, and she did fuckingnothing. My family sucks and deserves nothing but horrible, bloody death.” She said it with such viciousness I knew she meant every word. Too bad I couldn’t arm her to do the deed herself, but the fact was Yoyo would happily end me if I were ever stupid enough to give her a weapon deadlier than a spork. No matter how batshit she was, she was still programmed to be loyal to the people and club that spawned her.

Then again… Maybe not.

Not if I played this just right.

I rose and looked to Ajax. “What else have we gotten from her?”

The naked bulb reflected off his ever-present sunglasses. “The Chicago Gravediggers have filled up that bedbug-ridden flophouse out on the Kennedy, close to O’Hare—Arrowhead Inn. Hades probably got the idea from you and how you use the Barracks for all our brothers when they’re in town. Problem is, Hades never cleaned out the Arrowhead. Even as we speak, that lazy asshole’s still running his stable of whores out of there, so an all-out attack won’t work. Too many civilians, too many witnesses.”

Shit. “Numbers?”

“According to a quick internet search, the Arrowhead Inn has fifty rooms. Double capacity minus the working girls, we’re putting the numbers at slightly under a hundred. The Arrowhead is five minutes away via surface streets from Rooster Juice and the Chicago Gravedigger hangout.”

---