Page 12 of Vandal Unbound

A guy on the sofa stands, startled, as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing. A cursory glance in his direction says there’s no immediate threat. I don’t see a weapon, and the scrawny guy is all of five feet seven.

Meanwhile, fear makes Chris unsteady. For a second, it looks like he has a hold on the bat, but he fumbles it, and it falls to the floor.

“Do something, Mark,” he yells at the sofa guy as he bends to pick it up, but I slam my boot to his ass, sending him headfirst into the Sheetrock, where his skull leaves a dent before he hits the ground.

I bend to reach the bat, and my whole head spins with memories. The sound of the bat hitting my head, the way the world tilted, how I thought I was gonna die from blunt force trauma. The scans to check for brain bleeds and skull fractures.

“Life or fucking death, Van,” I mutter, trying to shake myself out of the grip the past has on me. Either I get the bat, or I’ll end up looking down the wrong end of it.

With immense effort, I pick it up in sweating hands before Mark jumps off the sofa and launches himself onto my back. Skinny arms and fingers try to get me into a choke hold. He’s stronger than he looks, but bat in hand, I march backwards to the wall and slam him against it, before moving slightly so I can hammer the handle of the bat into his chest. Something cracks. The handle or his ribs, I’m not sure.

For a second I’m thrust back to being on the road again. My hands shake, and the urge to run heightens.

Mark slumps to the floor in agony as a third man hurries from the bedroom. Maybe he’s Joe. He’s dragging on a pair of black jeans and loosely holds a knife. And that’s how I realize he already lost. Because I’d let you see my junk hanging out all over the place before I’d have anything less than a perfect grip on that handle.

Bringing back childhood memories of hanging out on the school diamonds with Havoc, I find my feet, lift the bat, and swing it at the fucker’s hand.

The knife goes skittering off back down the hall, and the man drops to the ground in a howl of agony, nursing his wrist. I raise the bat automatically to hit the guy again, but then I pause.

The look in the guy’s eyes? Yeah, I bet mine looked a lot like that when Alvarez hit me with a bat. And I can’t bring myself to hit him again with it, no matter what happens to me next.

I’m spinning out. The fucking noise is killing me, the bass hitting my chest. Whatever happens tonight, these men are going to be right back to blasting the entire building with their terrible music choices.

Taking a deep breath, I lift the bat above my head then slam it down on the sound system. It takes six swings to destroy both speakers, and the room is suddenly thrust into quiet, only filled with the sounds of groans and curses and heavy breathing.

The shaved-head guy clings to the wall as he tries to shakily point a gun in my direction. And it does nothing to me.

I made peace with dying the moment Alvarez threw me out of his van onto the ground of the motorcycle clubhouse lot, where my brothers could all witness my failure. There have been days since that I’ve felt like moving this whole circus along.

But something makes me think of Daisy and Elsie.

I know nothing about them, except they’re struggling if they live here. And they’ve had to deal with these assholes. Plus, if anything happens to me here, they’re gonna carry the weight of that for the rest of their lives.

So I do the only thing I can think of, given that gun is waving too close for comfort. I throw the bat at him, and in an effort to protect himself, he brings his arms in front of his face. Once his vision is obscured and the gun is raised, I charge him again, wrestling the gun out of his fingers without breaking all of them.

I empty the weapon of bullets in a second, and then I stuff it in the back of my jeans.

“You guys so much as cause a second’s trouble to anyone else in this building, I’ll come back. You tell the police I was here, I’ll be back. And if for any reason I can’t, my whole club will come for you. I’ll personally take great joy in sticking a meat hook through your ball sac and hanging you from that railing while your blood drains out from the slit I put in your neck. But my best friend prefers a bullet hole straight to the brain. Am I in any way being unclear?”

Mark has the common sense to shake his head.

“Good.”

Then I pick up the bat, walk out of the apartment, and drop it over the railing into the dumpster below. As I’m getting rid of the evidence, an old man steps out of the apartment next door.

He reaches for my hand and gently shakes it. “Thank you,” he says. “Was about time someone taught those punks a lesson.”

4

DAISY

“Do you think Vandal will get hurt?” Elsie says when I try to tuck her into bed.

I shake my head as I rub circles on her back to help her feel sleepy. “I’m sure he’s been very brave.”

She smiles at that. “He made the music stop so I can fall asleep.”

It’s funny sometimes how selective a child’s memory can be. It’s like she’s forgotten the screams and cries of the men in the apartment and the crashing that continued after the music stopped. If I had to guess, he executed some kind of permanent damage to the speakers.