Page 70 of Absinthe Dreams
I was eerily calm as we rode inside the front gate of the club’s building and down the side between the fence and the cinderblock to the back and into the garage. The rest of the Voodoo Bastards had all turned around in the garage’s great expanse and fallen into line to leave out as one. Only Cypress’s lone bike sat parked against a wall, apart from the rest.
The girls were all here, and it seemed that Chainsaw and I were the last to arrive, even though we were right on time and not a second late.
I kissed Chainsaw and went over to the table that was set up, with all the girls around it.
“I hate this shit,” Jessie-Lou said, looking after her man, Collier.
“Yep, I’m with you on that one,” Velina declared, looking after Saint.
“We all are,” Alina said, staring after LaCroix. Sandy was next to Corliss, who looked like she wanted to cry and had an arm around her, rubbing up and down her shoulder comfortingly.
I took the empty seat that was left for me and leaned back in it like a puppet whose strings were cut. “There’s no real getting used to it,” I told them. “The anxiety.”
“Your dad was MC, right?” Jessie-Lou asked, and I nodded.
“They’ll be okay,” Sandy said, and I nodded.
“They will,” I affirmed, but I had to wonder how much of that was just my bedside manner talking because I couldn’t ignore the knot of dread in the pit of my stomach, either.
I picked up my necklace’s pendant and worried it back and forth along its chain.
“That’s pretty,” Alina commented, and I forced a smile. The back of my neck still tingled from Chainsaw’s touch from where he’d clasped it for me.
Here was hoping that since I was prepared, I wouldn’t need it.
It was emotional, the bikes all firing at once in this absolutelydeafeningcacophony of internal combustion parts coming to life. They fell out in twin lines, Chainsaw bringing up the rear as their tail gunner. Just as soon as they cleared the garage door, Cypress hit the switch to bring it down.
It closed on them with finality as the rumble of their departure became distant, and I think all of us ladies heaved a gigantic sigh all at once.
“Well, who’s in?” Jessie-Lou asked, indicating thebiggestdeck ofCards Against Humanitycards that I think I’d ever seen.
“Goodlord!” I declared, and there was a tittering of laughter around the table set up for play.
We dealt all the cards and got into the groove of things, maybe getting three or four rounds to a half an hour in, when Cypress got up and stretched.
“Gotta tap a kidney. Don’t do anything I would do, now, y’hear?”
Jessie-Lou snorted, and Velina rolled her eyes. I just shook my head along with Alina and Corliss, and Sandy just stared at her cards in her hands with a blank look.
We all looked up at once at the roar of bikes coming up alongside the building. Sandy put down her cards and got up, moving to the big bay door as Cor remarked uncertainly, “They can’t be backalready,can they?”
“Sandy, wait!” Alina called out, but it was too late. She’d already opened the door and was halfway back to us. The vehicle that pulled in wasnota motorcycle. It was a van that had been modified with a big brush guard on the front with V-shaped metal plating welded to the front – a battering ram.
We all stood up as bikes poured in around it, and Cypress came bursting out the door leading up to the bathroom. He pulled his weapon, and everything just happenedso fast.
Within what felt like the blink of an eye, the van doors opened and a big, bulky man with a patch over one eye got out of the passenger seat, dropping down and firing a shotgun blast in Cypress’s direction. It threw Cy back into the doorway, and he slid to the ground, gut shot. The rest of the girls were shrieking but moving, flipping the table and cowering behind it, while I went into full-on emergency physician mode and scuttled around some of the lifts and things, making it over to Cypress. I pressed his hands over the wounds in his stomach as he looked up at me and blinked owlishly, already going into shock.
“It’s okay, I’m here. I’ve got you,” I told him. “Put pressure here.” I pressed my hands over his and pressed them into his gut. “Hold it tight, that’s it.” I fumbled with my jacket, taking it off, lifting his hands and pressing it. He grunted and squeezed his eyes shut.
“I’m a doctor!” I shouted. “It’s not too late! I can help him, I can help him!”
The man with the eyepatch came sauntering over. There were other men fanning out behind him, and they all held weapons, pointing them at the rest of the girls.
“I can help him,” I repeated, and I kept working at holding pressure against Cypress’ stomach.
Eyepatch man reached behind him and took out some kind of handgun. The reports were sharp, the bone fragments, and blood even sharper and hotter where they splattered my face from where Cypress’s head exploded in a welter of blood, bone, and heavier wetter things, when eyepatch man pulled the trigger repeatedly, emptying several rounds into Cy’s skull.
I screamed and threw myself back. The only screaming that was louder and longer than my short, startled shriek was that of Jessie-Lou, who was screaming long and loud and was trying like hell to crawl out from behind the table as Velina and Alina did their best to hold her back.
