Page 60 of Massacre
“FUCK!” my mother roared as she too walked off, heading straight for the bar.
Confused, I stood there as everyone looked at me. “I don’t understand. Did I do something wrong?”
Cerberus, the older man with kind eyes, holstered his gun and smiled. “You did nothing wrong, darlin’. Massacre did.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Cerberus smiled again, placing his arm over my shoulder. “It’s a long story, but all you need to know is that Morpheus ain’t gonna kill him. Oh, he’s gonna beat that fucker’s ass black and blue, but he won’t kill him.”
Blinking at the big guy, I muttered, “Thank you?”
Cerberus just laughed, a rumble in his broad chest, and squeezed my shoulder gently. “Don’t mention it. Come on, let’s get you something to drink. You look like you could use it.”
I let myself be guided toward the sticky counter beneath the flickering neon light, every eye still tracking me like I might fall apart at any moment. The murmur of voices started up again—low, sharp, broken by nervous laughter. Cerberus waved off the bartender and poured me a glass of whiskey with steady, practiced hands. The edges of my anxiety softened, at least a little, under his quiet attention.
“Drink up,” he said, nudging the glass toward me. “You’re in the thick of it now, girl. But you’re not alone.”
My mouth felt dry, tongue thick with questions I couldn’t voice.
“Was Massacre not supposed to give me his patch?” I finally asked.
Cerberus’s expression turned thoughtful, a shadow ghosting across his features. “Sometimes people do reckless things for reasons that make sense only to them. Massacre’s got a lot of ghosts chasing him. Don’t take it on yourself to carry them too.”
From the other side of the bar, Val’s sharp laugh cut through the haze. “Save your sermons, Cerb. She needs facts, not fairy tales.” But even Val’s voice was softer now, edged with something like concern.
“Drink,” Cerberus rumbled again, softer now, almost gentle. “You’re here for a reason. Massacre saw something in you. Don’t waste time doubting it.”
I finished the whiskey in a single swallow, the heat spreading through my chest, steadying my hands. Somewhere in the distance, a jukebox crackled to life, its song too old and sorrowful for a place this raw.
I didn’t know what the hell either of them meant, but my gut was screaming at me. That somehow, the balance of power had shifted and as much as I wanted to find Massacre, I was starting to believe that something bigger was at play.
The thought hadn’t even fully settled into my mind when the tremor hit—the floor vibrating under the thunder of Morpheus’s return. He filled the doorway, a hulking silhouette against the fading light, not just a mountain of a man, but a weaponized one. Black leather straps, slick with sweat and smelling faintly of gun oil and something feral, crisscrossed his broad chest, barely containing the arsenal strapped to him. Pistols, cold and brutal, gleamed in their holsters; more lined his thighs, adeadly, gleaming grid against his worn denim. From his hips, two wicked machetes, their blades honed to a razor’s edge, swung with the raw power of his movement, a sickening whisper of steel against leather. The air itself crackled with the barely contained rage radiating from him, thick enough to taste, and bitter.
His eyes, the color of glacial ice, locked onto Cerberus, burning with a fury that sent a shiver down my spine. The words he spat were less a command, more a curse, as each syllable dripped with contempt. “She. Fucking. Stays.” The air vibrated with the unspoken threat, a promise of violence hanging heavy in the suffocating silence that followed. Then, his gaze shifted to my mother. A predatory gleam replaced his raw anger. His voice, a gravelly growl that scraped against my eardrums, carried the weight of a lifetime of brutality. “Let’s go, bitch. I haven’t got all fucking day to play nice.” His words felt like a physical blow. I could almost feel the heat of his barely controlled rage as he turned his back, leaving me in the shadow of his terrifying power.
Downing the rest of her drink, my mother got up and followed the large man out of the clubhouse, along with five other men.
The second they were gone, Cerberus chuckled. “Welcome to the Brotherhood of Bastards, girl, and more importantly... welcome home.”
Looking at the cards in my hands, I bit my bottom lip, deciding which card to discard.
“Come on, babygirl. You’re burnin’ daylight here,” Cerberus groaned as he shook his head at me.
“She’s thinking too hard,” a brother named Scythe teased. “I can see smoke coming out of her ears.”
“She takes any longer and I’m gonna need another fucking bottle,” Heretic grumbled, motioning to the brother behind the bar to bring him another.
Lighting a cigarette, the brother named Wanderer exhaled. “Maybe Cerb didn’t fucking explain the game correctly. It’s five-card draw, not solitaire, girl.”
I knew what they were doing and it wasn’t going to work. Poker was my jam, and I played to win. But I’d never played with these brothers before, and like Jingles taught me.
It was all about watching and learning everyone’s tells.
Cerberus was easy. He was the club goof. One of the oldest in the club, the man constantly smiled as years of laugh lines were evident around his eyes. There was a contented gentleness about the man, almost as if he never got riled up.
Scythe was different in every way. I hadn’t seen the man smile yet and wondered if that had anything to do with the wicked-looking jagged scar that ran down the left side of his face from temple to chin. To make him more interesting, he also wore an eye patch over his left eye. I could clearly see the scarring around the patch. My guess, he was missing that eye, but I kept that thought to myself.
Heretic, while drinking whiskey like water, was more sedate. More reserved. More standoffish. He watched everything around him, almost like a coiled snake ready to strike at any minute. Heretic, for all his grumbling, had a gaze as sharp as a hawk’s, and I caught the way his fingers drummed restlessly on the table, betraying a nervous energy under his tattooed exterior.
