Page 31 of Lockout (The Vikings MC: Tucson Chapter #11)

Lockout

I paced around the compound, checking the perimeter while the women and kids watched movie after movie upstairs. My phone was in my hand so that I wouldn’t miss a text or call from my guys if one came in. It was radio silence.

I was about ready to rip my fucking face off because of all the pent up aggression and anticipation.

Usually, I went with my club to these kinds of things.

My brothers hadn’t been wrong about it being best that I not be there, which was why Ruck was also stuck over at Billie’s ranch tonight.

Either of us falling into the LoS’s hands would just make things harder for our men.

So we were left behind. Daryl and Robert had opted to go play a few rounds of poker with Ruck, rather than hang out with the women and kids.

We’d be lucky if they weren’t all drunk inside an hour. Those two together were like looking at Toxic and Butcher in another twenty-five years. Gave me an idea of what I was going to be dealing with. Looked suspiciously like it did now, only more fucking attitude.

Rolling my shoulders, I tried to loosen up my muscles. It wasn’t a surprise when it didn’t work. I turned and made my way back inside. Coffee was the last thing I needed right now in my amped up state, but I was still going to drink it. Or maybe I’d try that energy drink in my fridge.

I took the stairs two at a time up to my apartment and grabbed the can.

It might make my heart explode inside my chest, might not.

I was willing to risk it. I’d taken one large gulp on my way back toward the stairs when the front door of the clubhouse burst open and five men stormed through it.

There wasn’t time to do much but call out to the women inside Seek’s apartment because I’d already dropped the drink and was running. “Lock the doors!” I shouted.

The fuckers infiltrating my clubhouse were coming straight up the stairs.

I met the first man with a boot to the face, sending him flying back into the second man and tumbling down.

I didn’t bother with my gun. Not yet. I needed this fight.

The fact that these shitheads had the fucking nerve to break into my club, to come after my family, was what sent my already frayed nerves over the edge.

A third man side-stepped the two who were in a tangle of limbs at the bottom step and launched himself at me, wrapping his arms around my waist. He was trying to take me to the ground, but I drove my elbow down into his neck, then brought my knee up into his chest. It was enough to get him to let go. Not fast enough though.

The fourth man caught me in a flying tackle and did what the others couldn’t, he got me to the ground.

We rolled across the floor of the upstairs hallway, his fists landing on my ribs, chest and arms. The pain was a faint echo that I hardly noticed.

All I could feel was the blood hammering in my veins as the fury clenched inside my chest.

I managed to get my arms up over my face to protect it, but the bastard was on top of me now, and his friends would be on their feet any second. I couldn’t see where the fifth guy was. Fuck.

Any second they’d be bashing on the doors, going after the women and kids. My men were all gone, I’d sent them away. I’d promised to watch over their wives, their children. That I would protect them.

Grunting as a fist slammed into my side, I returned the guy’s hits, blow for blow.

There wasn’t much power behind my punches since I was stuck under this fucker’s weight.

My gun was stuck in the middle of my back, I couldn’t get to it while this behemoth of a man was sitting on me.

Five motherfuckers came into my home while my brothers were gone. While my family was vulnerable.

That was the point, wasn’t it? If they thought the guys were here, they would have sent an army, not five men.

They would have come in guns blazing, literally, shooting and moving.

The fact that I wasn’t greeted with a hail of gunfire…

let me know that they wanted hostages. A way to twist our arms into doing whatever they wanted.

These assholes had been watching the place, waiting for their opportunity. I just hoped they hadn’t notified the rest of their club that our guys had left. It would put everyone else in danger too.

I’d been seeing red from the moment they crashed through my front door, but everything was narrowing into one pinpoint. Tunnel vision. And it was focused on the guy pinning me to the ground. A second guy showed up and started hitting me in the head.

Then I heard a scream. It wasn’t a woman’s scream.

Despite how horrible this was, these women weren’t the screaming type.

They were fighters, scrappy to say the least. No, that wasn’t the type of scream an adult would make.

It was higher pitched, delicate. Despite the blows being rained down on me I recognized it. Soft, sweet, and scared. Caitlyn.

I was down on the ground. Practically the easiest target these men might ever have, and the motherfucker decided that this is the moment to go for the little girl? The little girl! In my home ?

Fuck no.

The piece of shit who put his hand on my brother’s child didn’t even know that he’d just signed his own death warrant.

The noise that echoed off the walls could only be described as primal.

I wasn’t just seeing red now, it overwhelmed me.

Men went flying in each direction as I shook them off like I was Billie’s pissed off bull shaking off flies.

I was on my feet as they hit the ground with thuds.

The man dragging Caitlyn along with him was my target. He didn’t even know it yet.

Piece of shit.

I don’t remember moving, but suddenly he was right in front of me.

My hands shot out and grabbed the fucker’s face, I drove my thumbs into his eyes until my knuckles were lost in his skull.

His scream of pain was like music, driving me on to keep creating the sounds.

I shoved him back, leaving him screaming in agony clutching at his eye sockets.

Isla appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Caitlyn around the waist. The door to Seek’s apartment opened and Isla passed the little girl off to Seek. She’d keep Caitlyn safe, though I wasn’t sure where Jenny was. “Stay in there,” I barked at Seek. “Keep everyone inside.”

She nodded, but Isla didn’t listen. She blocked a punch from one of the men, then crouched down in a swift move and with a sweep of her leg took him off his feet.

She fell on him like a ravenous wolf, as pissed off as I was that they’d come here.

As long as the others stayed safe inside the apartments, I didn’t mind Isla helping.

She needed it as much as we did. Needed to feel useful to the club. And she was.

I didn’t need a mirror to know my grin was feral as I focused back on the fight. This fucker on the ground at my feet had beaten down Jenny’s door and taken Caitlyn before the women had gotten a chance to do anything.

I wasn’t sure why she and the girls weren’t in Seek’s apartment. The women must have taken a break from the movies and Jenny had gone back into her apartment to get snacks or something. Didn’t matter. They were in there and now another guy was trying to get to them.

My rage flared again as he managed to shove the door open and gave me a brief glimpse of Jenny before she slammed it closed

She was braced against the door, trying to hold it shut as the guy lowered his shoulder and slammed into it again and again, and I could see the other girls huddle behind her, terrified.

But pride welled up inside me because Gabby, Taylor, and Cassie were all holding onto knives.

The man whose eyes I’d fucked up beyond all repair had blood all over his forearms. The girls hadn’t stood by and let him take Caitlyn.

They’d fought back, just like Butcher, Toxic, and Isla had been teaching them to do.

A scream of pain came from behind me. It was followed by an inhuman yowl of rage.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Auron, Jecht, and Isla’s bobcat, Murder, had converged on one of the men who’d come up behind Isla.

She was still fighting with the man she’d taken to the ground, but the animals had her back.

More precisely, Murder had her claws in the man’s back and her teeth in the man’s neck while the dogs each had an arm in their mouths.

Focusing back on the shithead trying to get into Jenny’s apartment, I let out a yell and charged the man.

He turned in time to realize that it was too late.

Catching him by the neck, I lifted him off the ground and kept running toward the end of the hallway, slamming him into the wall.

The sheetrock broke into a distinct man shape.

I pulled him back by his neck and slammed him again and again until the two by four studs in the wall were starting to crack.

Then I pulled my own knife from where I kept it and jabbed it into his gut a couple of times.

On the last thrust, I jerked my blade as hard as I could before I removed it.

Then I left him there, stunned and trying to hold his fucking intestines inside his own damn body, and turned to the other men.

Three were left in the fight. Even the blind motherfucker was waving his arms around and coming at me, but he didn’t count, so I focused on the others. I knelt and caught the closest one with an uppercut to the balls, grabbing and twisting, until he sank to the ground with a shrill shriek.

Letting go of his balls, I slammed him into the wall nearby. The snarls and screams filling the air were just adding to the orchestra of death that was pounding in my head.