Page 19 of Vows & Violence
The Non Cras fills the room like a thundercloud. No one's yelling, but the tension hums in the air like a live wire stretched too tight.
Poison stands at the head of the old farmhouse table, Kitty beside her with his hand resting on her lower back like a silent anchor. Scissors leans forward on her knuckles, eyes cutting to me, then Ghost, then back again. Wendigo’s pacing. Gypsy’s setting up a laptop. Tabs watches the window. Viper tosses her blade from hand to hand, waiting for someone to flinch.
Me? I wait for MV because whatever the hell is coming, they saw it first. The screen comes to life as a voice crackles through, smooth and tired, like it's been whispering from the bottom of a grave.
MV.
“Didn’t think you’d all make it to the party,”they say.
“No one’s in the mood for cryptic bullshit,” Poison snaps. It’s unlike her to get short with MV, but sometimes Poison is wound too tight to take any bullshit.
“I’m past cryptic,”MV replies.“We don’t have time. You’re not just up against Vale or Raven. This goes deeper. Bloodline deep. Ritual deep. The Hollow Sons aren’t a gang. They’re a cult.”No one speaks.“Vale’s just one of the faces,”MV continues.“But there are others like him. I’ve been tracking them for years. They move in cells, like tumors. Always recruiting, always expanding. They look like MCs. Act like criminals. But what they’re doing is older than all of us. Blood for favor. Sacrifice for power.”
Scissors snorts. “You mean demons?”
“I mean deals,”MV says.“Power like this doesn’t come free.”
I shift my weight. The spiral on my side pulses, like it heard them.
“They call themselves the Hollow Sons because they believe they were emptied to be filled with something else. Something old.”
“What the hell does that mean for us?” Viper asks.
MV’s voice drops lower.“It means if you kill one, another grows in their place. Unless you burn them out at the root.”
Poison narrows her eyes. “And you know where that root is?”
A pause.“I’ve found one of the original sanctums in Louisiana. Deep in the bayou. No roads in. You’ll need to ride light and move fast. It’s where they make the marks. Wherethey anoint their ‘Heirs.’ If you want to hurt them, and I mean really hurt them, you burn that place to ash.”
Gypsy glances at me, then at the others. “And how do we stop them from summoning whatever the hell they’re trying to bring in?”
MV hesitates.“You already carry part of the answer.”
Everyone looks at me. I feel it in my chest. It’s hot and spiraling. My skin itches under my patch. “You mean the brand?” I ask, voice low.
“You’re not the door,”MV repeats, same as before. “But you might be the lock… or the key. They marked you because they think you’re important. Because you’ve touched the veil and didn’t break.”
Ghost moves closer. His hand grazes my arm, steady, grounding. “What do we do?” he asks.
MV exhales.“You go to the sanctum. You kill anything that moves. And if you see Vale…”
“We finish it,” I say. My voice is steel.
MV’s voice goes quiet again.“You won’t have backup. No signal out there. If you die, you die in the dark.”
Poison folds her arms. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Wendigo grins, teeth sharp. “Sounds like a good night.”
I push off the wall, pain screaming through my side, but I don’t care. “We end it,” I say. “Tonight.”
They all look at me. No one argues. The club’s ready for war.
Chapter Nine
Phoenix
The bayou doesn’t whisper, it warns. Branches claw at us as we weave deeper, the path disappearing behind our wheels. There’s no map for this place, just instinct and MV’s last coordinates, barely a breadcrumb trail through the swamp’s throat.
