Evil’s Pact by Raven Dark

1

Traitor

It’s still dark outside when my goddamned cell starts ringing.

Groggy from sleep, I grope for it on the nightstand, resisting the urge to smash it with my fist and silence its incessant ringing. Rat’s name flashes on the screen. I put the phone to my ear.

“What?” I growl.

“Spidy?”

As if he thinks anyone else would be answering my fucking phone.

A soft, sleepy moan drifts from beside me. Emma burrows deeper into the mattress. Her thick, dark curls splay across my pillow like a waterfall of black silk. Bite marks and bruises left behind from when I sucked on her flesh stand on the smooth pale skin of her back and shoulders, a canvas turned silvery in the moonlight. The small protest she makes, as if against the unfolding of a dream, causes my dick to twitch as I imagine her making the same sound while I hammerfuck her ass the way I did last night.

Resisting the urge to wake her with another sound fucking, I settle for patting the slope of her ass. She gives a soft whimper and nuzzles into my pillow, as though seeking comfort from the monster that’s decided to share the bed with her instead of lurking under it. I smile.

“Spidy,” Rat repeats when I don’t respond.

I shake off the distraction my Wildcat has provided. “No, it’s Emma,” I deadpan. “What the fuck do you want, Rat?”

He snorts. “Shit, you’re so cranky in the morning. Dragon wants you at The Devil’s Den.”

I sit up, all tiredness gone. “What’s hell’s going on?”

“Better to explain when you get here.”

Shit. Not good.

I growl under my breath. It’s probably another fight with those motherfucking MMA guys who trashed the club the day we came back from White Springs.

“Jesus Christ. I’m on my way.”

Stabbing the “end call” button, I toss the phone aside and lean down to Emma, brushing my lips over her shoulder.

Her perfect skin needs marking. The collar I gave her last night gleams black steel, and it has my spider emblem on the front as a mark of my ownership, but it’s not enough. I want more. One of these fucking days I’m going to put a spider tat on her, just like mine. Then everyone who sees her will have no doubt she belongs to me even without the collar.

“Sleep well, Wildcat.”

“Again?” she murmurs. Even half asleep, there’s a hard-on inducing mix of arousal and dread in her voice.

She thinks I mean to give her a repeat of last night’s savaging.

I smile to myself and give her little ass a light swat as I get up.

If whatever happened at the strip club didn’t demand my attention, I’d have ripped the sheets right off of her and taken her right there.

She hates me, and she should, but that only makes me want her more. Besides, she needs to know that there is nothing in my heart for her worth saving. Nothing between us that will soften the demon in me the club relies on.

I dress quickly and grab my gun from the nightstand. Once the holster is clipped to my hip, I put my cell in the inside pocket of my cut. Then I brand her shoulder with one last kiss and leave her alone in the dark, in my bed.

Dragon thinks I’m becoming distracted by her, that my keeping her alive means I’m losing my edge, but he can go fuck himself. I may have let her in once, but I shut that shit down. She betrayed me, just as I should have known she would. I won’t make the same mistake again. Gary’s attacking her had shaken me, but I’d been careful not to let her see it, and that’s all she gets of me.

Twenty minutes later, I pull up at the front of The Devil’s Den, and without even going inside, I can see that whatever shit’s gone down is a big deal.

Dragon’s bike sits at the head of the line with Striker’s, Snake’s, and Rat’s. Snake is never up before noon if he can help it. He leaves Dee to tend to matters at The Den when he can, only showing up when shit happens that he wouldn’t leave his old lady to handle. And the last time Dragon showed up here was for his birthday last year, when the guys sent two of the top girls in to grind on him. For him to show up here means it’s official business, and that means trouble of the highest order.

Inside the club, the lights are low as always. The blue-white lighting that illuminates the room casts the girls making love to the golden bars on stage in a silvery glow, tinting the smoke that clouds the room a ghostly blue. With no windows on the ground floor, you’d never know it’s daylight. Dee’s girls continue to serve drinks even in the early morning. Like most establishments in Vegas, we never close. The whole club is designed to throw off customers’ internal clocks, tricking the mind into thinking it’s still night, prime time to ogle a pair of tits and ass.

Looking at the front room, you’d never know anything is wrong. At least not until Dee comes storming from the back hall and across the room to me.

“What’s going on, Dee?”

“Shit. Fucking traitor.” She rakes her hands through her dark hair. “This whole shitshow’s got my girls all shaken up. Dragon’s fit to be tied. He’s back there waiting for you.” She jerks her thumb toward the hall that leads to the private rooms the Outlaws use for meetings.

Traitor? Shit. What the fuck happened here?

On my way to the back rooms, Monica gives me a nod from behind the bar. She looks a little nervous.

I find Dragon, Snake, and Rat waiting in the same room I’d taken Emma to the first night I’d met her, after she’d stolen that tip jar. Striker and Snake are standing in a corner talking while Snake puffs on a smoke. Dragon’s at the table talking animatedly to Rat. Rat’s holding his laptop under his arm. Dragon’s every second word is a curse.

“Spider,” Dragon says, stomping over when he sees me. “Finally got your dick out of the thief’s ass, did you? Took you long enough.”

Headed for Rat, I ignore Prez’s comments about Emma and tamp down the twinge of possessive anger they induce. The Wildcat has gotten too fucking far under my skin.

“What’s the hell’s the deal, Rat?” I demand.

“This.” He transfers his laptop to his other arm and holds up a small device, all metal and wires, about the size of a penny.

I take it slowly, studying it, and anger roils in my gut. “A bug?”

He gives a nod.

“Who the fuck did this?” I snap. “Where’d you find it?”

“You won’t believe this. It was Tony. I caught him on one of my hidden surveillance cameras planting it under a table in here.” When I raise my brows at the listening device, he adds, “It’s off. I blocked it as soon as we got here.”

“Tony? The fucking bouncer? Christ, that son of a bitch!” I clench my fist around the bug until it crunches in my grip. “Where is he?”

“In the shed. Pips’s guarding him. Prez has had words with him, but he needs you to work your magic.”

He means Dragon’s left it to me to make the traitor talk. This is the darker aspect of my job, the part the monster in me feeds off of. As SAA, it’s my responsibility to protect the club, and that includes dealing with traitorous little fuckers who do anything that threatens to expose our business.

“Who was he working for? Did he say anything?”

Rat shakes his head. “Whoever put him up to this has him terrified out of his fucking gourd. He won’t say shit.”

“We’ll see how long that lasts when I get started on him.”

Truth is, I’ve been looking for a good beatdown since that whole shitshow with Gary.

“And you’re sure he didn’t have a chance to put any more of these fucking things around here?” I ask.

“What is this, amateur hour?” He shrugs. “I swept the whole damned place. It’s clean, Spidy.”

I clap him on the back for a job well done. On my way out, I pass Dragon talking to Striker and Snake by the door. Snake looks ready to put his fist through a wall. I don’t blame him. He was responsible for hiring Tony.

“Spider.”

I turn, resisting the urge to give Prez a bored look, having a feeling I know what’s coming.

“Let’s see if you’re still as ruthless as you were before you dipped your wick in that thief’s snatch. That fucker betrayed us. I want to know who he was working for and why. And then I want some serious fucking payback or I’ll rip that patch off your cut myself and put you back to prospect with Pip.”

“I’ll handle it, Prez.”

I step out of the room and shut the door before I end up putting my fucking fist through his face.

Headed for the shed in the back lot, I pass Monica who’s carrying a tray of drinks to another private room reserved for some associates of the club.

When the girl sees me marching for the side door, her face blanches. She’s been with the club for a few years, and she knows what I do. Women are supposed to be kept out of club business, but word gets around no matter how hard we try to keep the gritty stuff locked down. She’s not stupid; she’s heard about what I’ve done to people who have wronged the club. She keeps her mouth shut, but her expression says it all. She knows the monster’s coming out to play.

The shed sits at the end of the back lot. Those who work at The Den but who aren’t in the MC think the shed’s only purpose is to house empties until they’re picked up every week. Only my brothers know I use it for roughing people up when it’ll be too messy for a private room.

Pip is sitting in front of the shed, polishing one of his boots. He says nothing when he sees me. He does a good job of a deadpan stare that wouldn’t look out of place on a patched in member.

“Has he been giving you trouble?”

“He screamed his fucking head off until Dragon knocked him out.” The throatiness of his voice is the only sign of his apprehension.

Clapping him on the shoulder, I feel a shudder go through him. He swallows. I can practically see him trying not to picture what’s going to happen to Tony once I close that door. He looks ready to barf.

“Stay tough, Prospect.”

I unlock the padlock on the door and step inside.

The shed is dark, the moonlight momentarily throwing what’s inside into sharp relief. Boxes of empty beer and liquor bottles line the walls, stacked halfway up to the ceiling. It’s the middle of the week, so the shed’s nowhere near full. Tony is hanging from the rafters by a rope, his wrists and feet bound.

I suppress a snort. The left side of his face is swollen, his eye puffed shut where Dragon clocked him. His chin is on his chest.

He’s still out cold. Or he was until the door creaked open.

The bouncer’s head jerks up. He glares at me, his good eye a dark, beady stare filled with something between fear and loathing.

Saying nothing, I yank on the chain dangling from the ceiling near the door. His teeth peel back in a silent snarl, his good eye squinting at the sallow, yellow light.

When I first enter a room for an interrogation, I can always tell how things are going to go within several seconds of seeing the person. How the person reacts within the first few seconds usually tells you all you need to know about how they’ll handle it. Some people immediately start pleading for mercy, often telling me what I want to know without my having to say a word. Most will start to sing as soon as they realize what I’ll do to them.

Tony doesn’t say anything even when I shut the door, even though he’s been hanging in here in the dark for at least an hour. It’s a surprise. Meaty with shoulders and arms almost as big as mine, but a few inches shorter than me with layers of fat over muscle and a pudgy, bulldog face, Tony Gaffrey doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d work over an MC from the inside. He looks like a beer-gutted couch potato who belongs in a dirty wifebeater yelling at his woman to get him a beer. I always thought he was the kind of creep who looks imposing only if you’re a woman, who’d fold as soon as he realized he’d pissed off a biker.

Silent, I stalk over to him. He stares straight ahead, not a word.

The message is clear. He knows he’s dead anyway. He thinks he has nothing to lose by keeping silent. He has a lot to learn about guys like me.

“You can make this easy on yourself, Tony.” I step back a pace, watching him, arms crossed. “Tell me what I want to know, and it’ll be over quick. Otherwise, you’ll see firsthand what happens to people who fuck with the Outlaws.”

His eyes snap to mine, watery fear masked with anger. Thick lips peel back into a smile that makes me want to knock his fucking teeth into his throat. It’s full of triumph that says we had this coming.

Now I see what the girls see when they have to deal with him at the doors—the face of a self-entitled fucking predator who thinks only of himself and sees everything and everyone as fair game.

Still, he doesn’t say a goddamned word.

Shit. I wasn’t expecting this.

He isn’t going to answer me without me having to work for it, but some obligatory sense of honor commands that I at least give him the chance to redeem himself.

“Who the fuck do you work for, Tony?”

His gaze locks on mine, chin jutting defiantly. As if he isn’t faced with a man who’ll gut him. His expression is smug.

Fuck, this man has one of the most punchable faces I’ve ever seen.

“Did you get yourself hired here so you could work us from the inside?” I circle him slowly like a shark. “Did you plan to betray us from minute one? Or did someone offer you money to lowjack us and you couldn’t resist, fucking piece of shit that you are?” I stop in front of him again.

Without a word, Tony spits right in my face.

Yeah, the son of a bitch is ready to die. He knows he’s signed his own death warrant, so there’s no way out. He’s also probably trying to piss me off so I’ll skip the pain and kill him faster.

I wipe his spittle off my face and smear it on his white shirt. Then I plough my fist into his stomach.

Tony coughs, swinging back and forth in front of me like a slab of meat in a butcher’s shop. “Fuck. You shit.”

I jab him in the chest, causing him to swing to and fro. His face takes on a sickly grey look. “Give me a name.”

After a couple of winded huffs, Tony’s smarmy smile slips back into place.

“Who’s pulling your fucking strings?” I growl.

“Kiss my fat ass, Outlaw fuck.”

Holy shit. He’s really waving the red flag in front of the bull. He wants me to kill him. No one with half a brain insults me or my club.

I throw my fist right into his face. His nose gives under the blow with a satisfying crunch, his head snapping back. Blood sprays all over his shirt and runs down into his mouth. I expect him to scream or at least curse.

Instead, Tony throws back his head and laughs. His teeth are stained crimson, making him look even more like a maniac than he usually does.

What the actual fuck?

This is going to take a little more work than I thought.

Once more, I step toward him, draw my knife out of my cut. I let him see the blade gleam for a half a second, watch his eyes widen, and then place the tip of the knife under his chin.

His throat works, his arms jerking against the rope. There is a point when the most cold-hearted son of a bitch can’t help but give into his fear. His smile is gone, head trying to pull back away from the knife point.

“I’ll bet you thought I’d come in here, break a few bones and then blow your head off if you didn’t talk,” I say in a low, deadly, reasonable voice.

“I ain’t telling you shit.” But sweat is beading on his forehead. I press the knife tip against his throat until a bead of bright red blossoms there. His body starts shaking so hard I can see the ugly coarse hairs on his head tremble.

I allow a smile. “Where should I start?” I pause as if thinking. Then I trace the edge of the knife over his left cheek, letting a thin red line appear. “Your face? Your ears? Or should I go for the gold and cut off your fucking dick and shove it in your mouth?”

Tony hisses in pain.

I slash his other cheek, a single deft swipe. “Who the hell sent you?”

“Fuck you.”

Well, I’d be impressed if I didn’t want to blast his brains all over these walls.

Instead of repeating the question, I slice open his pants and rip the front of his underwear open, exposing a shriveled dick that’s probably produced more laughs from women than orgasms.

I don’t even get the chance to put the blade near his fucking junk before he lets loose. There’s a loud, wet trickling sound as his piss makes a pool on the cement floor.

Aw, fuck. So much for the tough guy act.

I show him my blade again. “Give me a name, or I’ll chop off your fucking pecker and make you eat it.”

His teeth clench until I hear them grind.

It takes a single upward slice, and then the tiny thing is in my hand. Tony’s screams reverberate through the shed and his body thrashers until I’m surprised his back doesn’t break.

Blood is everywhere, coating his pants, the floor, my hand. I wonder how Pip is taking this, listening from outside.

I drop what looks like nothing so much as a stubby, fleshy finger on the floor. Then I turn the knife slowly over in my hand. “Shall we try again?”

He’s sobbing, breathing through his nose like a winded rhino.

“The Outlaws brought this on themselves,” he pants. “You can’t piss guys like him off and not expect payback.”

Guys like him?

I go over the list of enemies Tony could be referring to. The Bastards would gladly have sent in a mole to bug our businesses in hopes of getting something they could use to take us down. Gary might try to get information he could take to the cops. Briggs is high on the list, too, but I can’t see any of the cops hiring a creep like this to do it, especially not Briggs. He isn’t that stupid.

An hour later, Tony has broken fingers and a few more missing body parts to add to his injuries. He still hasn’t spilled a name. He won’t. Anyone who can take body parts being cut off and not spill his guts isn’t going to crack.

Frustration sets in. I smash my fist into his face several times, each blow a price extracted for those MC gods that demand retribution. Bones snap, blood sprays, and Tony thrashes, a gibbering, screaming mess.

“It’ll be over soon,” he splutters through a mouth full of blood. Half his teeth are smashed in. “You’ve gone too far, Outlaw. By the time he’s done with you, you’ll wish you had slit your own throat with that knife.”

Who the fuck? That description could fit a lot of people. Briggs and Wolf included. I killed Wolf’s brother, and the Outlaws have, in Briggs’ eyes, been fucking with his city for far too long.

I won’t be getting anything more out of him. Dragon’s going to have to live with not knowing for now.

“Say hello to the devil for me, Tony.”

His eyes go wide and he instinctively twists, bucking in effort to escape.

I grab the back of his head, yank it back, and slash my knife straight across his throat.

Tony gurgles and blood spouts from the slit in his throat. It runs down his front, a river of red that turns his white shirt the color of fine wine.

Making a point of not looking at the dead man with his throat ripped open, I turn and leave the shed in its bloodbath.

Outside, Pip holds up a rag from his pack. He doesn’t look at me, and his face is white. I allow a smile for his unease.

“Weak stomach, Prospect?” I wipe my hands on the rag and clean my knife before handing the cloth back to him, now soaked red.

“I can handle it.”

“Good boy.” I clap him on the shoulder. Then I send him in to clean up the mess. The door closes, and I hear him gagging from inside.

Yeah, I don’t envy Pip his job right now.

On the way toward the doors to The Devil’s Den, I slam my fist into the brick wall, ignoring the pain that flares in my hand as a result.

After all that, I still don’t know who the fuck wanted the club bugged or why. Sure as shit Dragon’s not going to be happy. When I get my hands on whoever put that son of a bitch up to this, I’ll use his guts to decorate the clubhouse for Christmas.

Rubbing my bruised and bleeding knuckles, I step into the strip club and let the door slam heavily behind me, still frustrated as hell.

Fuck, when I see Emma, her ass is going to suffer.