"Daddy, stop! Please stop! Daddy, please! Don't hurt him! Stop!"

She screamed and screamed, but her father ignored her. Until Michael was unconscious, and Fat Jack finally stepped up and put his hand on Blue's c.o.c.ked arm.

"Enough, brother. You lost the vote to end him. You need to stop before you do."

The room then was quiet. All the men were somber. Blue dropped the chain and turned to face Margot and Faith. He was spattered with Michael's blood. He looked at Faith first, his eyes sad.

"Daddy..." Faith wailed.

He looked away, to her mother. "Get her the f.u.c.k out of here. I don't want her back here ever again."

Then he stalked away toward the clubhouse.

Faith tried to go to Michael, but Margot yanked her back. "Don't be stupid. You've done enough. You are never seeing Demon again. You come with me right now."

Dusty and Hoosier were taking Michael down. The last thing Faith saw before her mother dragged her out of the building was his body landing on the floor in a lifeless heap.

CHAPTER TEN.

Demon rode and rode, Kota's blood drying on his skin. As long as he was moving, he could focus on his bike eating up the asphalt under him, the way his headlight made the reflective stripes flash and glow. He could watch that, and feel the wind, and not think. He couldn't think. The thoughts in his head would kill him.

He rode until there was nothing around him but California desert: rocks, scrub, hard-packed soil, and the spa.r.s.e, spiny trees known as Joshua trees. One of the homes he'd been in as a kid-not the worst one, by a long shot-had been run by a church. He knew who Joshua was in the Bible. The tree was supposed to have been named after him because it looked like Joshua raising his arms in prayer. Demon didn't see it. Diaz had once told him that he'd been taught the tree was called a desert dagger. He liked that name better.

Whatever anybody called them, Demon liked the trees. They were ugly and lonely, and they grew where things didn't.

There was a spot he knew, not far off the road, where a loose group of those trees cl.u.s.tered around a big, flat rock. He'd found the place years ago, shortly after he'd come back home, when he'd pulled off the road to take a p.i.s.s and had seen the sun setting, silhouetting the trees and the rock in fire. Sitting on the rock had made him feel calm.

When he'd been struggling to find a tether after years of being the psycho Nomad who got called in to tear s.h.i.t up, he'd come out here, after a long, silent ride, and just sit where no one could provoke him, no one could hurt him, and he couldn't hurt anyone. He'd sit on the rock, look out at the horizon through the spindly foliage, and wait until he was calm, however long that took.

He hadn't headed toward that rock on this night with any sense of doing so. He'd just ridden, seeking solitude, striving for distance, trying to get far away from people he loved before he could do any more damage, before he could see them finally know him for what he really was, before he could see the love they had change to disgust.

Faith had been there. Oh, f.u.c.k. Faith had seen it all.

When he dismounted, he took his Glock out of his saddlebag. It was a risk, carrying an unregistered weapon when he was trying to stay clean, but with Dora Vega and her guilas cartel stomping on the Castillos, and the Dirty Rats gunning for the Horde, the risk was greater lately to be unarmed.

Not that he thought anybody would come up on him tonight, in the dark desert. That wasn't why he had his Glock.

He walked through the desert daggers and climbed onto the rock, facing west, even though the sun had set long ago. He set his gun on his lap and stared into the night. And then he thought.

It was a clear, late-winter night, with a bright half-moon, and he was far enough from the ma.s.sive glow of SoCal civilization that the stars even made it through. The sky was huge and the horizon far. In a place like this, miles from any other soul, Demon could almost believe that his own soul wasn't a ruin.

But it was. He was a ruin. Everything in his life was a ruin. Only yesterday-even earlier on this day, in fact-he'd been letting himself think that he could have what he wanted. Now, it was all gone. Kota had exposed his worst secret. But more than that, he'd let Faith see him become the animal that lurked inside him.

And he'd lost Tucker. What he'd done to Kota before had kept him from his son. He'd never get custody now. They'd probably even take him from Hoosier and Bibi. Unless he wasn't around. If he wasn't around, maybe Hoosier and Bibi could keep him. Demon trusted them with everything. Tucker would grow up happy with them. He couldn't doom his son to repeat his own childhood.

That childhood was clamoring to be remembered now in ways Demon never allowed. He kept all of it as far back as he could, locked up. But he knew that his problems, the way he couldn't keep control, the way he couldn't stop even when he knew he should, the weird ways he saw things, all of that was his old s.h.i.t leaking out the sides of the box he tried to keep locked.

In sixteen years as a ward of the state, Michael, the boy that Demon had been, had been used like that in four different placements. He'd been five and in a family placement the first time. The man had used his hands, his fingers. He had also taught Michael how to give a b.l.o.w.j.o.b.

That placement had only lasted a couple of months. Though the man had told him never to tell about their secret 'fun,' when Michael got expelled from kindergarten for beating up another boy, he'd told the woman what was happening. She'd slapped him hard and sent him back to the state. He didn't tell anybody else. He hadn't wanted to get hit again.

When he was seven, he lived in a small group home, run by a husband and wife. The woman worked the night shift. That man had liked to be jacked off while he watched television. He'd sat with his arm around Michael and curled his fingers in his hair, moaning and whispering how beautiful he was.

The man who'd scarred him with a cigar had been a supervisor at an inst.i.tutional group home. Michael was there three years, from nine to twelve. By the time he left that placement, on his way to his first stint in juvie, he'd been taught just about all of it. That man had liked to put the boys on each other and watch. Boys who got hard got to be tops. Boys who didn't...Michael never did.

His first stint in juvie, a guard took a shine to him.

By the time he got out, when he was thirteen, no one was ever going to touch him again and live.

Which was why he'd done a second stint in juvie and aged out of the system behind bars. But no one touched him anymore.

It had taken him all those years to grow strong enough in body and spirit to stop it. Resistance had meant more pain and fear and loss-beatings and shame, dislocation and deprivation. When he was so small, that fear had been greater than the fear of what had been done. More than that, after a while, he had begun to understand the things that had happened as simply his life. He'd never accepted it, but he had come to expect it.

When Demon remembered his childhood, that resignation was his greatest shame. That he had let those things happen. That so many years had pa.s.sed before he'd really fought back.

He would eat the gun in his lap before he'd risk a fate like his for his son. It wasn't even a question. If being gone kept Tucker with Bibi and Hoosier, then it was easy.

But he didn't know if it would. So he stared at his gun and did nothing.

He saw the motorcycle coming up the empty road long before he could hear that it was Muse. He sat and watched him ride up, a beacon of white light on a black road. He pulled off at almost the same spot Demon had. He wasn't surprised. Muse had found him here before, and Demon knew that either Bart or Sherlock could track him with the GPS in his phone.

He'd been half expecting Muse to show up. Only half; the other half thought they might just let him disappear.

So he sat where he was and watched Muse dismount and climb up on his rock. They were sitting side by side before a word had been exchanged between them.

"She's dead, Deme."

Demon hung his head. He still thought the club would help him cover it up, but he'd killed a woman, someone innocent in club business, and he'd done it in the clubhouse. Best case, he thought, they'd send him away again. Away from Tucker, away from Faith, away from his home. He stared at his gun.

"You didn't do it. I did. Hooj's call. She was already loaded up to her eyeb.a.l.l.s with s.h.i.t. I filled her up the rest of the way and dumped her in an alley in San Bernardino. It's gonna look like a junkie wh.o.r.e turned a bad trick while she was high off her a.s.s. n.o.body's gonna give half a s.h.i.t about it. You're clear of it, Deme. You're clear of her. You and your boy. She can't f.u.c.k you up again."

Without yet lifting his head, Demon began to cry, and Muse put his arm over his shoulders and let him.

After a minute, as Demon choked off his tears, Muse asked, "You plannin' on huntin' coyotes out here?"

Demon turned and looked a question at him. Muse nodded at the gun in his lap.

"What's that about?"

He shrugged. He didn't know how to say everything in his head, or even if he should say it. What he said was, "I'm not gay. What Kota said-I'm not gay."

"Didn't think you were."

They were both quiet for a spell, and Demon knew that Muse would let it drop right there. Maybe the whole club would. But it would lie there, in the middle of everything everybody knew or thought they knew about him. He didn't know how to make that not true, and it was choking him now, all the memories loose and screaming in his head, grabbing at him, pulling him into shadow.

He had to get them out, but he couldn't let them be said. He tried to think if there was anything he could say.

"Kota came up in the system, too. She ran when she was fifteen, but she went in before she was a year old. I think maybe that was why I thought I could be close to her. We weren't good long, but when we were, we talked about it. She told me about the s.h.i.t that happened to her. And I told her about the s.h.i.t that happened to me. Never told anybody else, not anybody. I was stupid to trust her. But she lied, tonight. She lied. The s.h.i.t that happened to me-I didn't like it. Not ever. It hurt, and it made me sick. It scared me and made me mad. It f.u.c.ked me up so bad. It hurt. I hated it. I hated all of it. I'm not gay."

"I know you're not, brother." Muse's voice was tight. "But what you're saying-what happened to you wasn't about that. You were a kid. It was abuse, not s.e.x. You were tortured." Muse looked out at the horizon. "And I'll tell you something else. I knew already. I was in the system a little, too, remember. Nothing like you. But I saw what it could be when it was wrong. And I see how you are. It's not a tough puzzle to put together, Deme."

That thought had never occurred to him-that those scars were visible, that everyone in his life had already known his shame. "Do you think anybody else..."

"Maybe."

"f.u.c.k!" he shouted into the desert. "f.u.c.k!" Throwing his hands onto his head, he began to rock, trying to keep himself contained inside his skull. "f.u.c.k!" His gun slid off his lap and clattered to the rock, then slid off the rock and landed on the ground.

Muse's hand locked hard on the back of his neck. "Deme. Five beats."

He heard, but he couldn't. He shook his head.

"Yes. Make it ten. C'mon, brother. One...two...three..." As he counted, his voice low and calm, he steadily increased the pressure of his hand on Demon's neck. "Four...five...six..."

When he got to ten, he was holding Demon down hard, keeping him from rocking. He didn't ease up. In the same calm voice, he said, "It's not a bad thing, my brother. We all love you for who you are. No secrets. No shame. That's family. Trouble is as much the glue as love."

Demon shook his head.

"Yes, Deme. Yes. It don't matter. We know who you are, however you got there."

"Faith..."

Muse's hand eased up a little, became support instead of restraint. "Well, she don't remember me, and I barely remember her. She was just a little thing way back when I went Nomad. I know you two have a past, and I know it's not all pretty. But the woman I saw tonight-she's upset, but it's worry for you she's feeling. She wants you to come back." He shook Demon a little. "You got a family, brother. They're waiting for you. Let's go home."

More scared than he'd been since he was a boy, Demon nodded.

When they got down off the rock, Muse picked up the Glock and slid it into the back of his jeans.

When they walked back into the clubhouse, the Hall was quiet. The pa.s.sarounds and hangarounds were gone. Demon didn't see any women at all. Faith wasn't there. But all his brothers were. Every one of them. Muse led him to the bar, where Bart, Jesse, Lakota, and Connor were sitting. They sat down, too.

Bart slapped Demon on the back. "Beer or Jack, brother?"

"Beer is good." He needed a beer. Just one. It was more than the drink. It was sitting here with his brothers.

Bart looked at Fargo, the Prospect behind the bar, and the kid nodded and reached into the cooler. When Demon had his bottle, his brothers lifted theirs at him, and they all drank.

That was all.

Hoosier walked up behind him and dropped a hand on his shoulder. "How you doin', brother?"

He turned and faced him. "I don't know, Prez. Where's Faith?"

"I had Peaches take her to Bibi. She needed a woman's touch. She'll be glad to see you, I can tell you that."

He nodded. "What Kota said-"

His President cut him off. "No need. You got no troubles here. You understand? It's all good here."

"Thank you."

"Nothing to thank, son. Finish your beer. Then go see to your lady." With a wry smile, nodded at Demon's hands. "Might wash up first, though."

Demon examined his hands. They were still crusty with Kota's blood.

Weary from the way his emotions had been buffeting his head for hours, Demon thought he might break down. It was Hoosier who'd broken the news to him of his sentence ten years ago, sitting him down and easing him into it. It was Hoosier who'd then led him to the shop to face Blue, giving his shoulder a rea.s.suring squeeze before he let go.

It was Hoosier who'd brought Muse in to teach Demon the Nomad ropes when he was healed enough to ride out.

It was Hoosier who'd welcomed him home after Blue was dead.

He trusted his President implicitly. He understood in this moment something he didn't think he'd ever fully realized. Hoosier was more than a man who was like a father to him. He was a father. The only one Demon had ever had.

And Muse was a brother in ways that transcended the patch they both shared.

Tipping back his beer, Demon swallowed down the rocks that seemed to have filled his throat, and he remembered.

memory They hadn't taken his patch, so he was still their brother. They set him up in his room in the clubhouse and put the P.O.T.s on nursing him back to health. Some of his brothers even stopped by to check in on him. Not many, and not for long. Blue was still on a rampage, so for the most part, they left Demon on his own. Only Hoosier made a regular appearance.

It was a week before he was strong enough to ride-and then only just. But he was ready to go. Knowing that the family he'd lost was everywhere around him had been hard to bear. Knowing that the love he'd lost was close but not allowed anywhere near him, knowing that he had f.u.c.ked up her family and the way her father saw her, remembering the fear and sadness in her eyes in the shop, the pity and guilt-that was just too much. He had to get away. Maybe when he was away, he'd be able to lock it all up with the rest of his horrors.

So he was sitting on the edge of the bed, lacing up his military-surplus combat boots, the pack holding everything he owned but the bike he'd ride out on leaning against the wall near the door.

After two sharp raps on the door, it opened, and Hoosier came in. He was holding a kutte. Demon a.s.sumed it was his own. They'd taken it in the shop, when they'd stripped him to his skin from the waist up, and they'd torn the Los Angeles patch off the front and the California bottom rocker off the back right there. Now, Hoosier set it on the bed at Demon's side, showing a new patch that read Nomads. He knew the bottom rocker would read the same. They were brand new, but they wouldn't stand out much; he'd hadn't even had his patch two months.

He was d.a.m.n lucky he still had it. He hoped he'd feel that luck someday.

"Muse is ready to ride. How 'bout you?" Hoosier closed the door and took a couple of steps to lean against the cheap bureau. "You good?"

Demon had met Muse a couple of times, but he'd been a Prospect, and Muse had paid him no mind at all. He didn't have a read on the man who was going to ride with him, and he had no idea what he knew about why Demon was joining the Nomad charter, or what he thought about what he knew.

Nomads didn't always ride with a partner, but it wasn't unheard of. Demon was glad that he would, even if his partner was a stranger. He thought he'd just spin out into s.p.a.ce if he were left completely on his own.

"Yeah, Prez. I'm ready." He dropped his head and swallowed hard, and then he looked Hoosier in the eye. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you've said. At some point, Deme, that's just words." Hoosier considered him a moment before he spoke again. "There's no send-off out there. You understand? You're still one of us, but you f.u.c.ked up. Right now, you need to get some distance and give your brothers time to remember that patch on your back. When Blue settles down, everything will. Meantime, you get some miles on your tires and some grit in your teeth. You learn to be a brother. Let it show that you deserve that patch. Look to Muse. He's steady."

"Understood." He stood, picked up his kutte, and slid it over his shoulders. Hoosier handed him his pack, and Demon took it, staving off a grimace at the way the weight pulled his mending ribs. Then he followed his former President out into the main room of the clubhouse.

No one was there. None of the men who sat at the table he'd patched in with, none of the brothers he'd lived with, worked with, partied with. Only Muse, leaning on the bar. As Hoosier and Demon came into the room, he stood up straight and took a step toward them, his hand coming out.