Page 2 of Karma

“What the fuck happened?” Grim says, his voice so tight it sounds like rock grating against rock.

I’m touching Reaper all over, trying to find the source of his weakness. His riding jacket is soaked through with his blood. It steams in the cold night. I fumble with his zipper to get to the wound, but it won’t budge.

“Leave it,” he whispers as Grim lays him down on the cold ground. “It’s too late.”

I shake my head and pull harder on his zipper. Until he lays a very weak, shaky hand on mine. “I took these bullets for you, my sweet princess. I’ll die a happy man knowing I saved you.”

He’s the only one who sees a princess in me. Or anything sweet. To everyone else I’m just a warrior, hardened by years of fighting hard.

“No, no, no,” I mutter as I finally get the zipper of his jacket to budge.

His strong chest is a sea of red, hot, steaming, black blood bubbling up from the depths to feed it with unstoppable speed.

“Yes,” he says, the death rattle following that terrible word. “This is it. Goodbye.”

He cups my cheek in his warm, blood-covered palm and looks up at Grim, who is standing statue-still above us.

I watch the warmth leave Reaper’s dark eyes, watch them turn as dead and cold as the night once the final shuddering breath leaves his strong body.

Grim’s scream rips through the silence, full of anguish, pain, disbelief and all the love we both had for this man. It reverberates through my chest, louder than my racing heart. His scream is loud enough to tear right through the fabric of this world, exposing the nasty, seething, steaming mess that it’s made of. I wish that chasm would swallow me up too. But it’s a wish I’ve often had and it’s never come true yet. Those bullets he took for me… I’d gladly have taken them myself.

I rise and wrap my arms around Grim who is once again just standing there, as still as a rock, his eyes locked on Reaper’s.

“We’ll get those fuckers,” Grim says in a voice that sounds so much like Reaper’s last dying breath I shudder.

“Every last one of them,” I say as he wraps his arms around me and holds me tight.

I was covered in blood when they found me, when they saved me, and now I’m covered in Reaper’s blood as he leaves us. There’s no bright future before me this time, no promise of love and safety. Only pain. Only darkness. Only a grave where a piece of my heart will forever lay next to Reaper. Until I go to my own.

PART 1

THE CABIN

1

Present Day

Scorpio

Chicago summers were something I was used to long for while I was growing up here. Fucking dreamed about them while trying not to freeze to death in the winters. Dreaming never helped much. I’d worked hard to forget all about that. And I hate the ease with which it’s all coming back to me as I ride over the bridge and into the stinking, seething, cesspit of downtown Chicago.

It’s the stench that’s causing it. Smell always carries the strongest memories. In this case, the smell of piss and shit and rotting garbage and whatever you might call the vapor of millions of dead and rotting dreams.

I haven’t been back here in over fifteen years. And I wouldn’t be back now if Joker hadn’t insisted we stop here on our way back to the desert. He’s my president, the Prez of Lost Sons MC, and I’m the VP. But that’s just pointless, expected titles. Much more for show than anything tangible where the two of us areconcerned. I do as I please and he’s made the Lost Sons into his own private army with one single goal: Kill off every last member of Devil’s Nightmare MC—the club that did the same to the one we were born into.

We started the Lost Sons together fifteen years ago here in Chicago, standing in a dark, drafty, run-down house under the train tracks. Standing over the dead and mutilated bodies of the first two people we’d killed. The trains rattled by, shaking the walls, the very foundations of that house. As they would. Hour after hour, day in, day out. Masking my screams.

We’ve killed a lot more in the fifteen years since. And we’re gearing up to kill a whole lot more. I’m no longer sure how I feel about that.

He pulls up into the parking lot in front of City Hall, an imposing, ugly rectangular building. The nasty black gargoyles atop its Corinthian pillars all seem to zero their gaze directly into me as I park beside him, staring at me from the shadows. Screaming at me to leave this hellhole of a city. Or maybe that’s just my own voice screaming in my head.

“What the fuck are we doing here?” I ask, pulling off my helmet but not dismounting.

Joker grins as he walks up to me. “I thought it was high time we found out where Honey’s buried. You know, to pay our respects.”

“The fuck do we need to know where her grave is?” I snap.

He gives me a look that’s a lot of parts pity. “Don’t you wanna know where she’s buried? We couldn’t ask before, but things are different now. We could take her some flowers, maybe light a candle. I thought it’d be a nice surprise.”

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