I order us a couple of beers as she stops so close to him their noses are practically touching. He rests his hand on her lower back gently and pulls her even closer, seeing nothing but her, it seems.
She leans down like she’s about to kiss his neck, but instead whispers urgently. “What are you doing here? You need to leave. Now.”
“How are you doing, Tricia?” Hunter asks, using her real name like he always does and ignoring her warning.
She leans back and looks at him in a way that yes, I would like to be looked at by a beautiful woman too, then runs her palm down the side of his face. The way they gaze at each other, you’d think they were the only two people in the room.
She tried to cover a bruise on her cheek with cakey makeup, and she did a better job with that one than the one along her ribs, which is showing through dark purple edged with red. It doesn’t take long for Hunter to notice them too.
“Why don’t you let me take you out of here?” he asks and I just have to turn away from the longing in his voice.
The five bikers in this place have drawn closer and they’re forming a ring around us. The atmosphere is tense and growing tenser.
“And where would we go?” she asks after a long pause and with much hopelessness. “There’s no place for us, Hunter.”
She is not wrong about that.
“We should get outta here, Hunter,” I tell him, but I might as well be talking to the wall as far as getting a reaction from him goes.
I turn to him and repeat it louder, but by then it’s too late.
From the corner of my eye, I spot all five bikers rushing us and it gives me just enough warning to dodge the knife that comes slashing through the air at my back.
I punch the guy wielding it and hear the satisfying thunk as his head hits the edge of the hard bar counter. He goes down and stays there. The three guys converging on Hunter had more luck. Mainly because he took the time to get between them and Trixie.
He’s doing his best to keep them away by swinging a broken beer bottle in one hand and a knife in the other at them.
I go for the one that’s closest to me, ignoring the one that’s still after me, because three on one is no kind of odds.
My knife is all the way down in my boot and only an idiot whips out a gun in the middle of a knife fight, so that’s still tucked in the back of my jeans. My fists work well enough on the guy coming at Hunter with a black-bladed hunting knife. He didn’t expect me to go for him when I have my own attacker to deal with. His mistake. Now he’s lying on the ground, unconscious, blood flowing from his broken nose. I hope he chokes on it.
I reach down to yank the knife from his hand and barely have time to parry the one coming at me from the side.
The Rider coming at me is one of the younger ones, his face contorted, making it even uglier than normal. He’s taller than me and as strong as an ox and both my forearms are bleeding pretty badly before I manage to stick the knife in his stomach and twist.
I’m just about to yank it back out when a shrill scream drowns out all other noise. Trixie’s scream.
I turn to see one of the last of the Riders still standing plunge his own knife into Hunter’s stomach again and again.
The brothers all say time slows down in life and death situations, but for me it speeds up. In what feels like less than a second, I practically take the guy’s head off with my own knife, shield Hunter with my body and am waving the gun at the room.
The five that came after us are all down, the strippers are all gone, as are the two flannel-clad men, but the door is opening and men are streaming in. It looks like a hundred of them. Hunter slid down the side of the counter and is holding his stomach, blood flowing like a fucking waterfall over them. Trixie is screaming and sobbing and trying to hold him.
“Stay the fuck back!” I yell as I wave my gun at the Riders approaching.
Of course they don’t listen.
There’s a goddamn army of them and just the two of us. And Hunter is down. But I can’t think about that.
So I don’t think too hard about anything, just fire at the first Rider that gets too close. Less talking and more shooting is the way to go in situations like these. That’s one of the first things the Devils ever taught me.
“You little motherfucker,” the guy I shot growls, and I’m pretty sure I recognize the voice. It’s Bam, the Riders’ president. Fuck!
“Call them off,” I yell back. “I’m getting him to a doctor.”
We have no hope of getting out of here alive. None at all. But for the moment they’re staying still and keeping their distance, Bam glaring at me as he hugs his left arm to his stomach. Two of them try to check on Bam’s wound, but he shoves them away.
“He’s dying. We have to go,” Trixie hisses at me in a sobbing voice as if I don’t know that. “I have a car out back.”