Page 2 of Serendipity

Finally, the man looked at me, the depths of his gaze chilling me to my bones. But still I nodded.

“Yes.”

The man smiled. “Good. From today, you will no longer be who you were. You will no longer be the Punishers MC. You will no longer have your own names. You will be the beginning of the Damnation MC.” I was mesmerized; I couldn’t look away from him if I tried. My gun fell to the dirt as my hands went limp at my sides.

He reached past me so quickly I couldn’t see his hands, placing his fingers on the chest of our

Sergeant-In-Arms. “Goliath.”

My Brother dropped to the ground like his bones were liquified, and I jumped away. My eyes whipped between them.

“Solomon.” He did the same to the Captain, who went down in a heap. My eyes searched for signs of life and I let out the breath that had been caught in my throat when I saw their chests rise and fall.

He looked at me, and I stepped away. He didn’t pursue me. I had a feeling I had to come into this willingly. “They aren’t hurt. The swell of power just takes a while to settle into human bodies. Come forward, my Horseman.” I stepped forward even though my feet tried to carry me away. He placed a hand on my chest. “Cain.”

Something rolled through my body like a freight train, dropping me to my knees and then onto my back. I tried to stand, but it was like my body was paralyzed.

He stopped in front of the Pres, and I struggled to keep my eyes open. I needed to protect us.

“Judas. That is your name now. Own it. Revel in it. You will never feel weak again.” Then the Pres was on the ground beside us, but awake like me. “Your sacrifice needs to be greater, Judas. It is always hardest being the leader.” He leaned forward and pressed his thumb into the President’s eye socket, popping out his eyeball like a grape. The Pres screamed and I roared as I struggled on the ground like a dying fish. The man waved a hand, and the Pres passed out.

“It’s always an eye for an eye in these stories, no?” he said softly to me.

As my limbs came back online, I struggled to my knees. “Who?” I croaked out, but I already knew.

I just needed to hear it before my mind shattered into a million pieces.

The man smiled, and it wasn’t a pleasant expression. There was a flash of huge black wings splaying either side of his shoulders, gone so quickly that I wondered if I’d seen it at all. But when I drew my eyes back to his smiling face, I knew I had.

“You can call me Luc,” he said softly, and then he disappeared.

1

CAIN

Icouldn’t help but look at the girl in the passenger seat, my hands flexing around the steering wheel as I drove down the freeway too fast. Judas was going to murder me; just put a gun to my head and paint my brains all over the Clubhouse walls. Wouldn’t do much, but fuck it would hurt.

The girl, woman, whatever, slid her eyes to me, catching my gaze with her own violet ones. I swallowed hard and tried to ignore the bump of her stomach. Nah, Judas would take one look at her round belly and let me off the hook. He might be pissed that I’d agreed without consulting him or the rest of the guys, but he was a sucker for a woman in distress. We all were, after what happened to…

I snapped down my mental walls on that thought. This wasn’t the past. We weren’t who we were any longer. We were better able to protect the more vulnerable. Better able to close ourselves off to that emotional bullshit. I took the turnoff, pulling up behind a bar and strip club. On the other side of the lot was the Clubhouse. It had its own bar, with a bunch of rooms out back. That’s where I’d take the woman. I’d get one of the Prospects to clean it something fierce, because let’s face it, it had seen more bodily fluids than a fucking spank bank, but she’d be safe here.

A former customer had dropped her off like an abused puppy at Pestilence Tattoos, my shop in town. The redhead, Hope was her name, had come in once before looking like she’d been beaten half to death, and I’d wanted to rip the head off the pretty-boy she’d come in with, despite the fact that he had a real fucked up vibe that made the hair on my neck stand on end. But Hope apparently remembered, so when this woman, Serendipity, needed a place to stay, why not send her to your friendly local tattooist with a bad attitude? I don’t know why she decided I was the safe option, considering I had so much blood on my hands that I could have painted the town red, but she’d taken one look at me and decided I was the good guy. She was wrong; I wasn’t a good guy. But I’d never turn away a woman in trouble.

I couldn’t fathom how Hope knew that, but she’d picked the right person.

I’d always been a sucker for a battered woman. Even before I’d joined the MC. Back when I was little and my father used to smack around Mom, it had broken something inside my head. Now, the idea of a man hitting a woman made me snap. I’d put my father in the ground, and joined my local chapter of the Punishers Outlaw MC. Then I’d loved a woman who’d had her life ripped away from her in the most brutal of ways, and my heart had died. Now, all that was left in my chest was the black lump that pumped with the near-demonic need for vengeance against those who would use women and children as pawns.

I wanted to punch myself in the head to chase away any thoughts of Laura. She was dead. A ghost.

The only thing keeping her alive now was that guilt that infected my soul like the plague.

I got out, grabbing the woman’s bag.Serendipity. Not the woman, I chastised myself. What kind of backwards, new age name was that anyway?

“Come on, we’re gonna have to pass you staying here by the Pres, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.” I hope I sounded more self-assured than I felt.

Serendipity looked around, her eyes flicking between the stripclub and the Clubhouse, and all the motorcycles in between.

“You’re a biker?”

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