KNOW ME (DEFIANT Motorcycle Club)

KNOW ME (DEFIANT Motorcycle Club) By Cora Brent


Prologue


Crest Tolleson told me a story once.  About two boys who’d come of age in fearful

shadows with only each other to cling to.  One gloomy afternoon after another miserable

day at school where they were taunted and abused, the two boys navigated the grimy

alleys of their dingy city.  The three kids who followed them silently through the

bleak landscape had violence on their minds.  They figured the two lonely outlanders

would be easy targets.  But the smaller of the two was frightfully quick and had a

knife in his pocket.  The other was already strong and was learning daily how to make

his body into a weapon with deadly effect.
That was the day they figured out how invincible they were when they stood together. 

They watched in triumph as their tormentors fled in shock and terror.
That was the day they gave themselves new names and acknowledged that they were

brothers in every way that counted. 
That was the day which was responsible for everything that came later…



Chapter One


The keys were nowhere in sight but it didn’t matter.  Crest had taught me how to hot

wire a car when I was ten.  He didn’t usually approve of me learning anything which

remotely smack of criminality, but he must have figured it was a useful skill to have. 

He was right.
My shaking fingers breathed life into the sputtering engine and I was suddenly consumed

by the soul-rending loss of my father.  I jammed a fist into my mouth and bit down,

welcoming the pain as a distraction from the new memory of his brutal murder.  My

father’s body would still be lying on the floor of the clubhouse with the rest of the

Warlocks, their blood drying on the cracked leather of their cuts.  I hadn’t had time

to do anything about it.  The police sirens were already audible and the SF’s were

everywhere.  And anyway, the dead didn’t care about their remains.  Only the living

cared.
I couldn’t begin to guess what had provoked the SF Outlaws.  It might not have been

much.  They were a brutal club run by a man called Ruger who was the biggest blonde son

of a bitch on the west coast and more vicious than Vlad the Impaler.   I knew Crest was

involved in things which weren’t aboveboard but for the most part he kept me at school

in Berkeley and out of central San Fran, away from the Warlocks and the world they

inhabited.
He’d been surprised to see me when I showed up in the late afternoon.  Amy was an

acquaintance who lived on my residence hall floor and when she mentioned she was

driving to town for a cousin’s wedding, I asked if I could tag along.
When Amy dropped me off in the fabled Tenderloin section of the city, she peered

doubtfully at the graying warehouse and then scanned the row of bikes lined up in front

of the building.  “Here?  You sure, Kira?”
“Yes,” I said cagily.  “My dad uh, works here.”
Amy shrugged.  “Okay.  I’ll call you on Sunday to let you know what time I’ll be by

to pick you up.”
“Sounds great.  Hey, thanks for the ride.”
I waved to Amy as she sped out of the city’s sketchiest neighborhood and toward the

serene comfort of Pacific Heights.  I didn’t turn to the building until she was out of

sight and I couldn’t have said what filled me with disquiet even then.  I’m not a

believer in mysticism but the chill which washed over me was at odds with the balmy

spring air.  I knocked on the door a little uncertainly, suddenly regretting my

impulsive surprise.  Crest Tolleson was not a man who liked to be blindsided.
“Shit, Kira!  It’s Kira,” grinned a man named Dice as he greeted me at the doorway. 

He was a collection of sinew and bones and although he was older than dirt he’d always

followed my father with faith since the Warlocks were first imagined twenty years

earlier.  The meth habit had taken a couple of Dice’s teeth and a chunk of his

cerebral power and he only smiled vaguely at my happy greeting before retreating into

the depths of the clubhouse.  Mario and Ford, a pair of tough angels I’d known since

infancy, nodded at me from a card table which was littered with the shot glasses which

had made them visibly piss drunk at four in the afternoon.
The regular girls I knew could look back on golden childhoods populated with friends

from next door or across the street.  In my earliest years I didn’t have pool parties

and play dates.  I had these men.  The Warlocks.
“Your daddy’s in the shitter,” said Mario helpfully as I squinted at the sorry mess

inside the clubhouse.
“Thanks,” I answered, settling into a smoky reclining chair and trying to believe the

air of tension in the room was only my imagination.
I hadn’t been back here since last fall.  In fact the older I got the less comfortable

Crest seemed in having me around.  He preferred to visit me at UC Berkeley where we

could pretend we hailed from the mainstream.  I had the fair looks of my mother and