Page 32 of Damron (Bloody Scythes MC #1)

Chapter seventeen

Damron

I limped into church with a gutful of stitches and a head full of revenge.

The clubhouse was hotter than hell and twice as loud.

Fifteen men—some patched, some prospects, all carrying that wide-eyed, post-trauma voltage—watched me shoulder my way to the center of the room.

Augustine, one arm in a sling, was already perched at the table, a stack of burner phones lined up in front of him like little plastic tombstones.

Nitro sat at my right hand, field-stripping a SIG with the kind of reverence priests save for communion.

Seneca sat smug, chest out, chin up, waiting orders.

I didn’t waste time on ceremony. “Listen up,” I said, voice steady. “We lost two good men last night. Three more are in the ICU. Dire Straits did this, and they did it on our patch.” My voice hit the drywall, bounced back harder. “So here’s what happens next: We hit them at home. Tonight.”

A few guys looked away—maybe they had wives, maybe kids, maybe just a functioning sense of mortality.

But most nodded, jaws set, fingers twitching toward the loaded weapons on the tables.

I took a second to catalog every man in the room.

Some were hungry for payback. Others just wanted to survive the week. All of them were mine.

“They came to our turf,” I said, letting each word sink like a punch. “They shot at ours. Now we bring the war to them. Nitro, run ‘em through the plan.”

Nitro stood, eyes scanning the room like he was about to brief a squad of Marines before a suicide op.

“Santa Fe. Bowling alley off Cerrillos. Old AMF, been theirs since Ghost bought it out of bankruptcy. Main floor’s got two exits, both caged, but there’s a side door near the dumpster that’s not on the blueprints.

” He slapped a printout of the building onto the table.

“We go at midnight, stack up here.” He pointed to the map.

“Flash-bang first, then in hard. We take out the VP, then torch the stash room on our way out. Total time, two minutes, max.”

Augustine grunted approval and started passing out comms—earbuds and mics, nothing that would last more than an hour before it jammed with blood or static.

The prospects began loading mags, their hands shaking just enough to rattle the table.

Nitro started a checklist, military-style: “Weapons. Vests. Gloves. Masks. Nobody rides without a helmet. No drugs until the job’s done, unless you want to die with your head up your ass. ”

A nervous laugh, then silence.

I leaned over the table, ignoring the fire in my side where the nurse had gone at me with a staple gun. “Nobody gets left behind,” I said, locking eyes with every man in turn. “If you run, I’ll put you down myself. If you freeze, I’ll drag your corpse out by the balls. Clear?”

A mutter of “yes, Prez.” Some were more eager than others.

Nitro finished assembling his SIG, snapping the slide home with a crisp, practiced motion.

“Don’t count on the element of surprise,” he said.

“After what happened, they’re gonna be twitchy.

But they’re not expecting us to be this fucking crazy.

” I didn’t smile, but a few in the room did.

The kind of men who’d rather die on offense than hide behind deadbolts.

I reached for the Mossberg shotgun, racked a round for effect, and winced as my stitches threatened to pop. Nitro caught it, just a flicker of concern behind the dead eyes. He handed me a speed loader, already packed with 00 buck, and a bottle of pills I recognized from the ER.

“Two for the pain,” he murmured, sotto voce. “You want to be sharp when you pull the trigger.”

“Always am,” I said, palming the pills and swallowing them dry. They caught in my throat, burned all the way down.

Augustine started assigning teams, pairing the wildest bastards with the coldest ones. “You and you, take the door. Prospects with me, we’re cleanup. Damron and Nitro, you’re the wedge.”

I nodded. “We’re on point. We get in, we get out, nobody gets creative.”

The room buzzed with nervous energy, the kind that turns ordinary men into murderers or martyrs.

Helmets went on, cuts got zipped tight, kevlar panels slotted under denim like a shitty attempt at body armor.

I caught Seneca, the oldest guy in the crew, duct-taping a pack of Marlboros to his chest plate. “Planning to smoke ‘em after?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Figure if I’m gonna go, might as well taste something good on the way out.”

The hours ticked by. Nobody said much. Nitro and I took the time to check every weapon ourselves—no faith in fate, no trust in the guy to your left.

Just action, and a plan, and the knowledge that if you failed, your name would end up on a patch sewn to the clubhouse wall.

I thought about Carly, about the look in her eyes when I told her I was going to finish this.

She’d wanted me to play defense, but I’d never been a shield. I was a battering ram.

Eleven-thirty, we assembled in the back lot.

Bikes lined up two by two, the battered F-150 trailing behind as our ambulance, escape hatch, and hearse all in one.

I climbed onto my Harley, Nitro beside me, his eyes scanning the horizon.

He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t afraid. Maybe the two were the same thing.

Before we mounted up, I turned to the club. “Tonight we write the story. Not them. Us. Let’s make it one they can’t fucking ignore.”

A cheer—guttural, hungry, the kind of sound that belongs in war movies and funeral processions. I felt my heart pound against the stitches, knew some of them would open before the night was done. That was fine. I’d always healed faster in motion.

We fired up the bikes. The engines drowned out doubt. Nitro punched my shoulder, just hard enough to sting. “Don’t get dead, Prez,” he said.

I grinned, baring my teeth. “Not before the rest of ‘em.”

The Bloody Scythes rolled out, and for the first time since this all started, I felt alive enough to welcome the pain.

###

The Dire Straits ran their kingdom out of a converted bowling alley on the ass-end of Santa Fe.

Once, it had been a place for birthday parties and midnight leagues; now, barbed wire twisted along the roofline, the neon sign glowed half-dead, and the only thing getting bowled inside was the occasional skull.

We rolled up at 00:27, parking the bikes in an abandoned Kmart lot a quarter-mile out.

The night was New Mexico-black and cold enough to burn your lungs.

Nitro and I humped the distance on foot, helmets low, gloved hands on the grips.

Augustine’s van circled out behind us, the prospects inside praying to whatever dollar-store gods kept them from shitting their pants.

At the edge of the property, we crouched in a weed-choked drainage ditch and watched the alley for movement.

Nitro spotted two lookouts, both with rifles, perched like crows on the old sign.

They smoked, bullshitted, and scanned the street in lazy figure-eights, too used to being on top to expect an ambush.

I gave Nitro the nod, and he slipped off into the dark.

I waited, counting heartbeats, then followed the fence line toward the side door.

Two minutes later, both lookouts slid off their perches—one slumped forward, head boneless, the other crumpled backward in a slow, soft arc.

No alarms, no screams. Just two less problems in the world.

I signaled the rest of the team, and the Scythes fanned out, hugging the shadows.

Augustine’s van rolled into the fire lane, headlights off, side door already cracked for egress.

We stacked up on the side entrance, a battered employee door held together by generations of bad welding and wishful thinking.

Nitro set the flashbang, gave me a shit-eating grin, and mouthed, “After you, Prez.”

I kicked the door. The wood buckled, hinges giving way with a bark like a dying dog. Nitro tossed the bang—one, two, three—and the world inside the doorway exploded in white, soundless light. We poured in.

The first room was a storeroom: shelves of cleaning fluid, racks of rented shoes, the same chemical stink as any bowling alley from the last forty years.

A Dire Straits footsoldier staggered out of the smoke, dazed, ears bleeding.

I put him down with a two-tap to the chest, his body jerking against a tower of Budweiser cases.

Down the hall, the main alley had been gutted—lanes replaced by pool tables and long tables lined with cheap folding chairs.

Twenty men or more, most half-drunk, all armed.

The flashbang had turned the room into a chaos of ringing ears and wild fire.

Nitro took the lead, SIG barking three times, dropping two men before they even knew who they were shooting at.

Gunfire erupted everywhere. The drywall splintered, glass shattered, fluorescent tubes popped with a blue-white snap.

I ducked left, hugged the wall, and shot a guy through a paper Target-branded banner.

He went down face-first, dragging half a string of pennants with him.

The Scythes came in hot: Seneca, Augustine, and two prospects who’d probably never killed anyone before tonight.

But you couldn’t tell. They moved like sharks, instinct over fear, teeth bared and eyes wide as they cleared the first two rows of tables.

Someone started the jukebox by accident—a roar of “Born to Be Wild” played at double speed as the bullets sang through the speakers.

A Dire Straits brawler charged me with a pool cue, screaming. I let him come, then sidestepped and shattered his kneecap with the butt of my shotgun. He dropped, howling, and I stomped his head until he stopped.

Nitro moved like a ghost, never exposed more than a shoulder, never firing more than two shots before shifting position. He dropped another man, then another, clearing a path to the back hallway. “Prez’s office is down the line!” he yelled, voice hoarse over the gunfire.

“Go!” I shouted, shoving Seneca and Augustine to cover the door.

Nitro and I pressed forward, weaving through the bodies and broken glass.

A stray bullet clipped my shoulder, right where the stitches lived.

I felt blood wet my shirt, hot and sharp, but ignored it.

The pain was nothing compared to the surge—pure, ugly adrenaline, the world in bullet-time.

We reached the door. Nitro planted his boot, braced for return fire. Inside, I could hear the frantic crosstalk of men shitting themselves: “Don’t let them in! Hold it! Fuck, fuck, fuck—” Then a shotgun blast from inside shattered the knob, sending a flower of wood splinters into my face.

I grinned, licked the blood from my lips, and kicked the door in.

The office was a joke: wood paneling, old bowling trophies, a desk littered with cash and pills.

Two Dire Straits heavies, both hiding behind filing cabinets, emptied pistols at us, but Nitro’s flashbang went off midair and turned the room into a strobe-lit abattoir.

I stepped inside, put a slug into the first man’s jaw, then ducked as the second tried to flank me.

Nitro dropped him with a single, perfect shot—through the eye, out the back, paint and brain on the carpet.

For a half-second, there was only the sound of the jukebox and the click of empty guns.

“Clear,” Nitro muttered.

“Clear,” I echoed, my breath ragged. My side was on fire, blood pulsing between my fingers as I tried to keep the wound closed. We waited, backs to the wall, as the rest of the Scythes swept the building.

Augustine came in, face pale, rifle barrel still steaming. “Main floor’s ours. No sign of the VP, but Giammati’s here—he’s in the VIP lounge, shitting his own pants.”

“Take us,” I said, voice tight.

The corridor stank of death and burned insulation.

The lounge was worse—a velvet-rope fantasy turned bunker, the carpet sodden with spilled whiskey and someone’s blood.

Three more men inside: one unconscious, one sobbing, and Giammati, white as a corpse, trying to dial his phone with trembling hands.

Nitro ripped the phone away and flung it into the wall, shattering it.

“Evening, Senator,” I said, smiling through a mask of blood and gunpowder. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He whimpered something, but I didn’t care enough to listen. I grabbed him by the lapel, dragged him upright, and slammed him into the wall. Nitro leveled his SIG at the man’s heart, just in case he grew balls.

“You want to explain why you’re pissing yourself in a room full of dead bikers?” I asked.

Giammati just sobbed. From down the hall, the sounds of violence were fading—just the last few shots, the scrape of boots over tile. I could hear the city waking up around us. Sirens, far off but closing in. It was time.

I turned to Nitro. “Time for the fun part?”

He grinned. “Always.”

We dragged Giammati out, through the bowling alley-turned-charnel house. The Scythes were already torching the place, setting gasoline trails along the lanes and lighting the trophies for good measure. Outside, the sky was tinged with dawn.

I held Giammati upright, made him watch as the building burned. “This is how it ends,” I told him, my voice colder than I thought possible. “Not with a vote. With fire.”

He tried to run, but Nitro clipped him behind the knee and he collapsed, sobbing into the dirt.

The police would be here in minutes. We had seconds to disappear. But the job was done. The Dire Straits would never recover, not from this. And the message was sent: You come at my family, I take yours apart piece by piece.

As we mounted up, I looked at Nitro. “You think they’ll get the message?”

He laughed, the old, real laugh I hadn’t heard in weeks. “They’re not that dumb, Prez.”

We peeled out, showering Giammati with rocks and smoke, the city lighting up behind us, the sirens coming on like a chorus.

Tonight was what the outlaw biker life was all about—retribution, turf wars, family.

We didn’t fuck with those who left us alone.

Los Alamos knew this. It’s why we were able to coexist. The MC was about a lifestyle its members wanted to live, essentially giving the middle finger to the 9-5.

Although we had parameters, we did what we pleased, went where we pleased, and fucked with who we pleased.

Bikers had this shit in their DNA. We weren’t meant to be tied down.

We weren’t meant to comprise. We loved the club and the brotherhood.

It came first and everything else was a distant second, and therein laid Carly’s issue with the club.

For the first time in years, I felt something close to peace. If only for a minute.