Page 10 of Chaos & Carnage
“Aye, and now the police have the ones from Demon. We can’t go down that route. Too much risk. They’re watching us too closely now anyway.” Indie looked at the room now, at the bodies crammed into church, expectant faces. “This needs an answer. I want the best intelligence I can get.”
“Why?” Barry the Blade interrupted, and every head turned to him. “Thought we decided this was The Hand.”
“The Hand were not working alone. CCTV shows there were at least five of them. The Hand are controlling things from the other side of the world. I want to know everyone who has switched allegiance, and I want them to feel the consequences. And I want anyone else to be too terrified to do the same.”
“And who’s gonna fear us now, huh?” Beanz grumbled from the far side of the room.
Silence fell on church. Every member glancing from Beanz to our President, but the bald man had found a speck of gall and continued, anyway.
“Come on, Indie. It was a good move. Take out the fiercest enforcer the north east has ever seen? Every bike club in the coalition can decide which side they are on now without fear of Demon breaking their faces. It leaves us exposed, vulnerable. Our biggest strength was also our biggest weakness.”
For a moment, no one moved. No one dared to glance at the person sat next to them, all eyes solely focused on Indie whose face gave away nothing, unless you were looking for the little tick of the muscle in the side of his neck.
Eventually he stood, leaning balled fists onto the table.
“We don’t need Demon to enforce the alliance,” he growled. “We are the fucking Northern Kings. So, act like fucking Kings. Fury, I want a team to hit the Aces. I want them hit hard. I want their crack houses burnt to the ground. I want all their operations closed down. Not one of those fuckers earns a penny, not from a job, from the government or the streets. These streets are ours. Chaos, Carnage, Reap. You lot are coming with me. We need to have a chat with Brie. Check he’s in control of that club of his.”
*****
The sprawling Broken Angel pub stood on a corner at the junction of two streets. Bikes formed an arc around the door, pulled up on the double yellow lines, parking restrictions the club knew no one would ever enforce. Music bounded out of the building, and even the Harley’s parked up, waiting on the street outside, bounced with the vibrations.
“Fuck me,” Reap grumbled. “The fuck sort of party is this?”
“They’re all half deaf. They need to have that music ramped right up just to hear the hint of a tune.” Indie beckoned for us to follow, pushing the heavy doors inwards and through a thick curtain of smoke.
A sea of leather cuts moved in the dark, some wriggling and writhing to the music like possessed grandads, others stood in groups chatting aggressively, shouting above the beat of the music. Hardly anyone noticed us, or cared, as we moved through the crowd.
“Fuckin’ hell. We’re all gonna be stoned before we step outta this place,” Carnage shouted across at me.
The woody, earthy smell became thicker the further we moved in, filling the air and sticking to our clothes.
“Stinks, doesn’t it? Think these guys are lovers more than they’re fighters.”
“Don’t underestimate them. These are the old guard. More of these have seen a biker war before than us lot. Angels and Demons used to be one of the biggest clubs in Britain. The Hand tried their best to wipe them out. If it wasn’t for Brie, the Kings would have fallen too.” Reap tipped his head, beckoning for us to keep step with Indie.
I glanced at my brother and then around at the club packed with grey-haired old men. They may have once been formidable, but I couldn’t see this old bunch of stoners being able to do anything other than cuddle people to death if the shit hit the fan.
We followed Indie through the crowd, side stepping as two men staggered backwards towards us, their arms locked round each other, their pints raised in the air. At the far side of the pub, the club’s president sat in a corner booth, a woman on either side of him. He stared out at us as we approached, his face as stoic as Indie’s, giving nothing away. No hint of welcome, no suggestion of hostility. And just as we stopped at the edge of the table, he tipped his chin up. It was a welcome of sorts, an acknowledgement of our presence.
Brie shrugged his arms free from the shoulders of the women, who clambered to their high-heeled feet, shuffling out of the space we stood in front of, and strode towards the bar. The old man raised his arms into the air, looking from each of us to the other. And then, when Indie slid himself along the red leather seats of the booth beside him, we all followed.
“What’s this about, Indie?”
“Intel, Brie.”
Brie raised his thick grey eyebrows.
“I wanna know what your boys were up to the other week. Fury tells me they’d been drinking with the Notorious.” Indie continued. “I wanna know whether we have to worry that half your club are gonna threaten to swap sides again like last time.”
“And like last time, I’ll nail their dicks to the wall if they even think about it.”
“So, what you do about Minty and his mates?”
“I let them go join the Notorious.”
“You what?” Reap leaned across from the other side.
“Ya gone deaf Reap, mate?” Brie retorted, his mask never slipping a millimetre. “I ripped off their patches and chucked the fuckers out.”