“You need to pull your head outta your ass, VP. You wouldn't be wearing the patch if I didn't trust you to have some reason mixed with the psycho killer bullshit. You were smart enough to listen to me that night you showed up, asking for blood, telling me you'd go for it yourself. That would've been suicide – we both know it. You were patient. You were fuckin' smart. And now, it's almost time to get what I told you. Everything I promised.”
“I ain't getting shit, Prez. Let's face it. Even if we kill some fuckin' animals, yeah, I'll feel better for a few hours, maybe a week. But once the party's over and I finally sober up, cleaning their blood off my knife...Freddy's gone. Grandpa's fucked. My hometown's a goddamned shithole that won't ever welcome anybody with a patch again – not after the dirty shit the Deads have been pushing there. Putting the motherfuckers down won't un-fuck anything.”
“That's why you gotta reach inside and feel your own guts. Don't fuckin' wait for the final battle, Joker. Do it sooner. Now. 'Cause if you wait, we'll win like we always do, and you'll still walk away empty fucking handed.” He leaned forward a little more, his steely eyes boring into me. “Bullets and knives only kill the demons outside you, Joker. The shit underneath your skin – that's where you gotta use your brain, your heart. You're the only one who can.”
“Prez –“
“Shut up and listen for a second, brother. You think you're the only one who misses Piece?” He paused, just long enough for the anger to burn hot in my eyes, trying to ignite the gray ice in his. “Fuck, Joker, you miss him most. Fuck yeah, you do. But goddamn if the rest of us don't. You were both hell on wheels. Both of you made this club stronger. Shit, both of you were there when my old man bit it. Your votes gave me the gavel, helped keep this club in one piece when it'd been rocked to its fuckin' core.”
What the fuck was he saying? Trying to pretend he understood? Trying to tell me he could even fuckin' fathom one tenth of the deep, hellish loss ripping me to shreds every goddamned day I opened my eyes?
No, no, hell no.
“He was my brother!” I roared, standing up, halfway to hallucinating Freddy sitting next to him, smiling on that damned beat up sofa. “By blood, by patch...maybe by fuckin' soul. They took him, Dust. Tore his fuckin' head off, ripped his eyes out. I walked in and saw my grandpa on the floor. His poor heart snapped like a twig when he saw those holes where Piece's eyes used to be. I gotta watch him flinch a little every fuckin' time I see him, and he looks me in the eye, knowing he's still seeing Freddy when he looks at me.”
Big goddamned mistake, spewing the poison like this.
It flashed before my eyes, a hundred times more intense than most days.
Even now, it was all a sadistic blur.
My hands on grandpa's chest, pumping furiously, fighting the molten tears in my eyes.
Freddy's fuckin' severed head sitting on the bed, taunting both of us, worse than seeing my own dead face looking back at me.
Summer walking in, freezing up on the spot, horror in her eyes. Didn't take me two fuckin' seconds to tell her to leave.
And Summer...fuck.
Fucking goddamn it to hell! That's what this was all about, wasn't it?
I couldn't lose anyone else. I couldn't lose her again.
Fucking couldn't! I'd pushed her away because I had to, get her the fuck away forever.
“Joker,” Dust said, sitting up straight in his seat, his pipe in one hand. “Look at me.”
Took forever to finally do it. I fucking hated how well he knew me, knew every man in this club, like the father most of us never had.
“Time to be straight. It ain't just Freddy or the war with the Deads eating you like a case of fuckin' termites.”
“No!” I growled, still denying it, even when it caused my damned heart to beat a million miles an hour.
“Yeah, fuck yeah. I know about the girl,” he said. My head jerked up, and I looked at him like hot death given a human face. “Skin told me the other day. So did Lion. Said she worked you over good, got you madder than a fuckin' hornet, so pissed off you covered the bitch in mud.”
Goddamned Skin. Fucking Lion.
I'd put our Treasurer into a coma for ratting me out, and that scruffy motherfucker, Lion, back in one.
“Honestly, makes me wanna crack your jaw for fuckin' with a lady like that,” Dust snarled, holding the flame on his skull-tipped lighter to his pipe. “Especially when she's the only one who's been able to get shit outta you for three years, only one besides that damned dog.”
“She's nobody,” I said coldly.
Yeah, another lie.
“Bullshit,” Dust said, taking a long pull on his pipe. “She's somebody you fucked and didn't wanna walk away from, or somebody who fucked you over. Maybe both. Point is, she's pulled your pin like a damned grenade, and that's dangerous as a knife to the throat when this club's about to swing its nuts harder than we did in a generation.”
“So, what, Prez?” I growled, shaking my head. “What the fuck are you telling me to do?”