Page 84 of Karma

“It’s the same place,” Hawk says after Ice hands him the phone. “The town of Justice. This Joker’s got a sick sense of irony, I’ll give him that.”

“All I’m gonna give him is a slow and painful death,” Ice says through clenched teeth. “When are we riding?”

Cross and the Devils are still perfectly silent and still as they look at the pictures Joker sent, but the others are starting to shift around and mutter things to each other. None of my brothers or sisters are here, so no one is talking to me. I glance at the photo they’re viewing when I get the chance. It’s of a woman’s bloodied and battered body and now burning bile is rising in my throat. But it has nowhere to go because my throat is clamped shut. Joker killed Eden? No! Getting her back alive and unharmed wasthe only chance they had at getting out of this mess. The only chance Scorpio had of staying alive.

“We ride soon,” Cross says, his deep voice cutting through the escalating noise in the room and in my head. “But we’re going in to kill them all. And that’s gonna take some planning.”

The noise in my head drowns out all else now. It’s not forming any words or pictures. It’s just screams.

We had a chance to save Eden but we fucked up. And now she’s dead. And now they’re all dead. And so are we.

I leave the room, walking the dark, hot corridors of this bunker alone. The blinding light streaming through the open door at the end of it seems to be getting farther and farther away with each step I take. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad one.

I’ve known this day was coming since Scorpio told us about them entering this stupid war. I knew it was coming since the day we failed to get Eden away from them.

And now that it’s here, I don’t have the strength to face it.

I want to ride out. Find Scorpio, get one last night of happiness before everything turns to black forever. But I have no idea where to find him. I need these men who mean to kill him to show me the way.

Since I can remember I’ve wished to have the ability to turn back time and change what happens. But never as hard as I’m wishing for it now.

45

Scorpio

Here we are. Battle Number Two. It should actually have been Battle Number One, but Joker had us fight that disaster in the desert first. Doesn’t matter. We still have plenty of men and now we’re on our turf, defending Justice, everything set up the way Joker originally envisioned it. Minus the anti-personnel mines I managed to talk him out of buying in what seems like someone else’s life.

I did that right before I barged into Grim’s hotel room and gave him the blowjob that started this black downward spiral I’m spinning in now. But I promised myself I’m done thinking about that runaway train of happiness, desire, lust, and love I rode with Karma and Grim for the past couple of weeks. It derailed. It crashed and burned. But it also gave me closure for things I never thought I’d get closure for. Let me be whole for a while. That’s why I don’t regret it, I can’t. I don’t regret taking the bullet for Karma either. I’d do it again. She—they—gave me the ability to die a whole, complete man. Not one so tormented by the past there were huge areas of my mind I never touched.

But it’s all over now.

The Devils are on their way. They think their precious princess Eden is gone. They’re gonna kill a bunch of us and we’re gonna kill a bunch of them now. Get revenge.

That should excite me. And in a way it does.

Eden’s not dead. Far from it. Joker finally claimed her and he’s been spending all his free time for the past week or in bed with her.

I don’t know how they mean to continue that after today’s battle, but I’ve stopped worrying about that.

Maybe Joker needed some closure of his own. So he could die a happy man. Like me.

Either way, she went from being the one person who will surely die in this war, to being the one person who will almost certainly survive it.

The town of Justice is nestled between rows and rows of hills stretching out on all sides of it. Because of that, it has all the natural protection we could wish for. Joker made meticulous plans for this battle. We have guns and men on all those hills. Men armed to the teeth. Over three hundred of them. They came from all the MCs still standing in this war against the Devils. We have snipers. Bazookas. Mounted machine guns. And everything else we could get our hands on. I kinda wish we had those mines too.

The Devils came with the dawn. And they tore right through the first two circles of our defenses. They lost men. We lost more.

Joker and I, along with our closest MC brothers are in the last circle. Only Main Street of Justice is behind us. And the Devils are still coming from all sides. They’ll take the town. There’s no question about that. The only question is how many we’ll take with us before we die.

Our whores are hiding under porches and in cellars all over town, their only job to stay out of the path of bullets. The Devils have such a soft spot for women, they’ll be fine after we lose thetown. Some of them wanted to fight with us, but that would just be a lot of carnage for nothing so Joker stopped them.

From our vantage point atop a hill, but hidden from sight by a bunch of boulders, I can see the Devils approaching, accompanied by gunshots, explosions and the screams and grunts of men dying amid all of that. Joker has some big and elaborate plan of getting the Devils stuck in a crevice where we’ll be able to pick them off like fish in a barrel.

Nothing much so far has gone like Joker planned. But maybe this will.

And in case it does and we succeed in defeating the Devils today—which is a colossalif—I have no idea how he plans to go back to Eden after it’s all done to tell her he’s murdered her entire extended family and then some. She’s not gonna love him very much after that. But that’s their problem to overcome. I’ve got my own love lost issues to deal with.

Since this battle started, a part of my mind’s been hoping to catch a glimpse of Karma’s long blonde hair catching the rays of the morning sun. Or to feel Grim’s laser blue eyes focused on me. Not the part of my mind that wants to leave them in the past, but the one that can’t wait to see them again. The stupid part stuck in the past with them. Sharing their bed, entangled in their arms, happy.

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