Page 3 of Nightmare

Grunting, I try to pin him down, but my weight at twenty years old is nothing on him. He’s a big man, large and stocky, and he overpowers me quickly. Flipping me effortlessly to my back, he pins me down with his knee, his stony eyes locking on mine. Cold steel presses to my face as I look up into a face that’s as icy as Antarctic snow.

A fucking cold-hearted monster.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the son of my favorite biker. You’re in the wrong place, at the wrong time, boy.”

“Get off me, you filthy mother fucker. I saw everything; you’ll go down for life when I’m finished with you,” I seethe, jerking my knee up to try and throw him off. “You just killed that man.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “Oh, son. You have a lot to learn. Here, let me show you exactly how this will go. I’ll show you what happens when you threaten a man like me.”

Calmly, as if nothing has happened at all, he pushes to his feet, keeping the gun pointed at me. He pulls out his phone and dials, pressing it to his ear, a cool smile on his lips. “It’s Bill. I’ve just witnessed that biker’s son, what’s his name, Western? Yeah, that’s the one. I just happened to see him force a man and his son into his truck in town using a weapon. I followed them into the swamp and watched as he killed the father and was attempting to assault the son. It wasn’t safe, so I’ve gotten shelter, but you need to get out there.”

He hangs up the phone and looks down at me. “You just saved me a lot of time and effort, being here. I can’t thank you enough. I wasn’t looking forward to having to dispose of their bodies and figure out a way to explain where they went.”

“Nobody will believe you,” I sneer. “You’re filth, everyone in town knows you’re filth.”

He laughs, swiping a dot of mud off his coat. “Oh, but they will. I’m the mayor. You’re the son of a biker. Your club has so many dealings in illegal business, this is exactly what they want. They’ll believe anything I tell them to believe. You can squeal as loudly as you’d like, nobody will believe you.”

“You’ll fucking pay for this,” I grind out, panting, fists clenched. “My father won’t sit back and let you get away.”

“You even breathe a word, I’ll take down your entire family. Don’t believe me? Just try it. You will suffer the strongest consequence if you so much as attempt it. Your dad? I can have him put away for life, or worse. Your little club? Gone. Your mother, your sweet, sweet mother ...”

I push up and dive toward him. He slams the gun down over my head. Blood spurts from my temple, and I topple backward, pressing a hand to my head, panting with the kind of rage I’ve never felt in my short life. My vision blurs as I stare at him, wanting to rip his throat out, and yet, at the same time, utterly terrified at the power he holds.

“You touch my mother, you even fucking ...”

“Save it,” he laughs. “It’s the end of the line for you, my boy.”

A small gasping sound from behind me has me spinning around to see the teenage boy, lying on the ground. For a moment, just a moment,I forgot about him. I force my body to move and get myself closer to him. He’s pale, and he seems to be struggling for air. He looks a touch younger than I thought, and it breaks my heart to see him lying here, fighting for life. He’s not even an adult yet, he shouldn’t be tangled up in this mess.

Bill tried to shoot him, without so much as a second thought.

I tried to stop it, but I wasn’t quick enough.

I wasn’t able to stop the bullet hitting him.

“Hey,” I say, placing a muddy hand on his cheek, blood drips from my head onto his pale skin. His eyes flutter open and meet mine. They’re blue, as blue as the sky, and they’re the kind of eyes I’ll never forget. “You listen to me, keep your eyes open, okay. There is help coming, help will be here, just hang in there.”

The boy nods weakly and makes a croaky sound.

“What’s your name?” I ask, swiping his blond hair from his damp forehead.

“Braithe,” he croaks, his breathing labored.

“That’s a cool name. I’m Western.”

In all his pain, and all his agony, he smiles at me. “That’s a cool name, too.”

He finishes the sentence with a cough that has him crying out in agony.

“Hey, Braithe, I’m going to need you to keep your eyes open for me. Can you do that?”

He nods, but I can already see him struggling to follow that order.

I lift his shirt, and the wound on his stomach is bad. He’s bleeding a lot. Ripping at my shirt, I use it to press against him, trying to stop the bleeding. He’ll die out here if I don’t do something. I can’t let Bill get away with this. He needs to be punished. The world needs to see the kind of monster he is. The city needs to know who is leading them. My eyes move back to where he was standing, and I see he’s dropped the gun and made a break for it.

That motherfucker. He wants me to go down for this. He wants to make sure his little lie doesn’t come back and bite him.

I’m not going to let him.

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