Lily’s Eagle: Devil’s Nightmare MC Next Generation, Book 1, page 1
LILY’S EAGLE
DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE MC NEXT GENERATION, BOOK 1
LENA BOURNE
PROLOGUE
LILY
The dream is always the same. I’m eleven years old, and my grandparents had just died. It’s early spring at dusk. The air has the sharp, crisp quality of winter not wanting to let go, and it feels like a cold knife pressed to my cheek. What I can see of the sky through the shabby pines lining the dirt road we’re walking down is indigo slashed with silver.
My mom is walking beside me. Her arm is around my shoulders and her thin, long fingers are digging into my shoulder. She’s not trying to comfort me, she’s using me for balance as she navigates the root, rock and pine needles covered forest path in her high, thin-heeled, patent leather shoes. She’s also wearing a very short leather skirt and a blood red, see-through shirt under a black fake fur jacket. I’m in my jeans and hoodie and I’m getting very cold. Yet we just keep going deeper and deeper into the trees.
The pines around us are hissing in the wind that rarely stops blowing here. And the path is getting darker and darker. I don’t know why we’re here.
My mom mutters curses under her breath as her heels snag on the roots and rocks, but otherwise we don’t speak.
Suddenly a scream rents the air and a tall, strong man grabs me. I think it’s my own scream. I can’t see him at all, he’s wearing all black, every inch of him covered, even his face. All I feel is his arms holding mine. I kick and scream as he carries me deeper into the trees, into the darkness that the little light of dusk can’t penetrate anymore.
My mom is nowhere. The forest path we walked together is empty now.
And that’s the point in the dream where I always wake up.
Nothing like this has ever happened to me in real life. But each time I wake from this nightmare, I feel like it had.
Like it had, and I forgot.
1
LILY
I have absolutely nothing in this world to worry about. Nothing to fear. Nothing to dread or be anxious about. My life is good by almost anyone’s standards.
So why am I always fighting? Always looking for causes to obsess over?
It’s a question that’s been asked of me many times and it’s only lately that I’ve started asking it of myself too.
Especially today.
I’ve been standing in the heat in front of the old recreation center, which is meant for kids from unprivileged homes, my head feeling like my brain is boiling inside it, my voice hoarse from chanting mostly the same thing over and over. “Human rights belong to all!”, and “Stealing from the poor to give to the rich is a crime!”
Stuff like that.
They are tearing the rec center down tomorrow.
About twenty of us are gathered in the parking lot of the shabby, brownish-grey two-floor building that houses a gym, a computer room, library, several classrooms, and a small theater. About six months ago, a big developer out of Sacramento purchased it—or purchased the land it stands on, more like—and now wants to tear it down to build more store fronts, or a condominium complex, or some such nonsense.
I don’t think the town of Pleasantville can handle any more upscale buildings. As it is, I’m sometimes afraid that it’ll just collapse in on itself creating a big glittery, shiny, colorful pile of rubble. It’ll probably smell of roses or the perfume of five-thousand women, or something equally strong and invasive. When I moved here twelve years ago, the town was almost as run down as the South Dakota Indian reservation I was born on. Now it’s the place to be for the rich up and comers moving to the country.
This rec center is one of only a handful of buildings in the town center still standing from that time. I took a drama class here when I was thirteen. The play we put on was Pocahontas and I was the lead. And even though that’s cliched as fuck—the only Native girl for miles playing an Indian Princess—I loved it.
I want other kids with big dreams but small means to have the same opportunity. Or just be able to come here and watch movies they can’t afford to see in the fancy new cinema at the edge of town. To attend classes their parents can’t afford to send them to, find all their hidden talent and get the tools to make all their dreams come true. And to have fun.
But there aren’t a lot of unprivileged families living in Pleasantville anymore. They’ve long since been pushed out by the glitter of gentrification.
We’ll lose this fight for the rec center. Tomorrow the bulldozers will roll in and tear this building down to the ground. Good riddance, most people say.
The roof’s been leaking for years, there’s roaches everywhere, the facade is falling off in chunks, there’s a moth infestation in the costume room that nothing will ever get rid of, and the toilets don’t work more often than they do.
When the threat of it closing down first started looming, my dad, the big bad MC president offered to get it for me to do with as I liked. He also offered to buy any other property anywhere in town so I could build a new community center.
I said no.
My protest is not about that. It’s almost exactly the opposite of that.
I don’t want his blood money financing any of my causes. Devil’s Nightmare MC, the club my dear old dad runs so efficiently, is involved in so many criminal activities that nothing good can possibly come out of it. They were killers for hire when I first came to live with him. they’ve cleaned up some now that they only sell weapons, but not by much.
And that’s the reason I’m standing out here in the heat, afraid I’ll pass out at any moment. Because good has to come out of it. And I’m the only one who can create it.
“So, what do you think, Lily? Is it time to go inside and chain ourselves to the pipes yet?” Josh asks.
He’s a twenty-four year old kid I only vaguely remember from high school, with blonde surfer dude hair, perfect facial features, perfectly blue eyes and a perfect body. It was his information that first alerted me that the community center was getting sold, and he’s been helping me organize this protest every step of the way since then.
He’s taking a year off law school to become part of the solution, as he puts it, but I’m pretty sure he’s only here because he’s madly in lust with me. Not love, I’m sure, since it all has to do with my exotic dark looks, my sun-kissed skin and long black hair, I got from my mother. Or maybe the intense black eyes I got from my father. My beauty is what all guys see in me, and the thing none of them ever see past.
This is the first time Josh has ever broken the law. But we might as well be from different planets, that’s how little we have in common. I try not to lead him on too much and I do appreciate his help.
“It would be good to get out of this sun,” I say and smile at him. “But I want to wait until there’s more people on the streets, so they all know we’re in there and why.”
It’s four PM now, and people should start coming out in droves for happy hour, afternoon strolls and evening yoga classes soon.
Roxie, my father’s wife—well, my stepmom—is coming towards us across the parking lot with my little brother Hunter in tow. Well, half-brother, but I never make that distinction. Nor do I think of Roxie as just my stepmom. She’s done more for me in the first two years after I moved here than my bio mom ever did.
“I’ll just go say hi to Roxie and Hunter real quick,” I say to Josh, hand him my banner and walk across the parking lot to meet them.
“We brought you some water and snacks,” Hunter says excitedly as soon as I’m within earshot. He’s carrying a huge red cooler which he proudly lifts up high for me to see, his arms shaking from the strain.
He’s almost twelve, but still mostly a little kid. And with his wavy brown hair and piercing blue eyes as unlike our father as I am like him. He’s also the most positive, gentle-mannered little dude I know. Again, as unlike our father as I am like him. I sometimes wonder if that upsets Cross. If it’s a problem for him that his son isn’t tough, hard and ruthless like him. But I’ve never seen any evidence that it might.
“Did you really?” I say, taking the heavy cooler from him and smiling. “That’s so kind of you.”
“He wanted to help his big sister,” Roxie says, smiling at him. She’s also carrying a cooler, but a smaller, blue one. I bet Hunter insisted he carry the heavier one, because that’s just how he is.
“Can I protest with you now?” Hunter asks. “Can you chain me to the pipes too?”
Hearing it come out of his mouth, makes it sound horrific.
“Hunter, you have school tomorrow,” Roxie says softly, probably thinking the same thing.
“But you can stay out here in the parking lot for awhile with us,” I say, putting the cooler down at my feet and tussling his hair. “We can make a banner for you. I have some markers and cardboard.”
His eyes light up brighter than the sunny, cloudless sky.
“I’ll come get him around six,” Roxie says and places her cooler on the ground next to the red one, before turning to Hunter. “Now, you know what to do…”
He nods solemnly. “What Lily says.”
That’s another quality I doubt either myself or my father ever possessed—the ability to conform and do only what’s right. I worry about Hunter. He’s got my father’s shoes to fill. And they’re big.
Roxie is smiling serenely as she pats him on the head, nods at me and leaves. If she
My real mom is the exact opposite of Roxie. She only ever cared about herself. The way she told it, she spent her youth traveling around the US on the back of some guy’s bike, and one of those some guys was Cross. She didn’t tell him she was pregnant or that she had his kid. Instead, she left me with her parents on the reservation and went traveling some more.
I used to make excuses for her, blamed it on her wild, native blood. Dreamed about being as free as she was one day. After my grandparents died when I was eleven, she brought me here to live with my father who until that moment didn’t even know I existed.
For all that, he took me in and never treated me as anything less than the child he always wanted. I didn’t see my mom again for years, and at the present time, I have no idea where she is. As much as I loved my grandparents, it wasn’t until I came here that I knew what having a family really meant. And Roxie had a lot to do with showing me that.
Hunter is chattering excitedly, running by me all the slogans he’s come up with to put on the banners. He’s a really smart kid. But how far does a guy in my father’s world really get on smarts? Or kindness?
I love my father, and I know he loves us both. But I worry.
Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should just enjoy my little brother’s company and excitement about this project.
The more I listen to him, the more my own fire to stop tomorrow’s demolition returns. And maybe that’s what life’s all about. The happy moments. Not the dark shadows, real or imagined, lurking everywhere.
* * *
EAGLE
Lily is fighting against the demolition of the rec center with her protester friends, who are all sons and daughters of the same exact people who make it necessary. Especially that Josh guy, who follows her around like a lovesick duckling. It’s his distant cousin or something who bought the land on which the rec center stands. And the only reason he’s here is because he’s got it bad for Lily. As do the fifteen other guys with their banners and squeaky voices shouting dumb slogans as they crowd around her. Lily does not appreciate the irony of that.
Nor does she want me anywhere near her protest.
Her father, Cross, the president of my MC, doesn’t either. She’s let it be known she doesn’t want any protection from the MC at all, ever, and he’s going along with it. At least as far as I know. But it’s not something I’d know if it was meant to be a secret. I’m nowhere near high up enough in the club for something like that.
I don’t see any of my MC brothers anywhere around here though, not now that Cross’ son and wife have left. I’m part of the detail on Hunter now, which is a step up in the hierarchy and an honor. A real vote of trust.
But I’m off for the night. My time is my own. And if I want to spend it where I have a good view of Lily, I can.
Anything can happen at one of these protests. Especially after dark. And I can’t have anything happen to her just because she’s being stubborn. I couldn’t stand it. I wish that wasn’t the case. I wish I didn’t feel that way about her. I didn’t used to, back when we were just friends, but that’s changed. It’s pointless though, because there’s no future for us, any way I look at it.
It’s almost dark, and I’m on my third overpriced beer at a fancy coffee shop with dainty glass tables and spindly, uncomfortable chairs. The type of place I’d usually avoid at all costs, in other words. But it has the best view of the parking lot and the cops are gonna show up soon to chase the protesters away. And who knows what will happen then? Especially with all these wild yuppie children who think they can go first in everything. And if the cops do get physical when they come, I doubt any of those guys slobbering in Lily’s wake will get between her and a baton.
I think I’ll go over there soon. Josh has been looking like he’s about to make his move on her, for better or worse, all day. For worse, probably, knowing Lily. But still. Besides, I feel like a dirty stalker sitting here drinking and watching her.
I wish she didn’t look so damn hot in her ripped black jeans and a loose white t-shirt tucked into them, but nowhere near loose enough to hide those perfect, tight curves of hers. I wish I didn’t feel her silky hair on the back of my hand every time she flips her head and it goes flying.
What the fuck am I thinking?
Mostly, I just wish we had a chance.
In truth, I should just walk away. I have no business lusting over the president’s daughter. She’s so far out of my reach we might as well be on opposite sides of the country.
I wave the waitress over to pay and stand up as soon as she takes the money from my hand.
Here goes nothing.
Almost a hundred people are now crowded in the parking lot in front of the rec center, Lily’s protesters joined by random passersby newly recruited to her cause. Mostly on the back of her striking beauty and sharp tongue. Mostly men.
She pierces me with her eyes as I weave my way through the crowd, and I do love it when she looks at me this way. It makes me feel like I’m the only guy in the world, noticed by the most beautiful woman in the world. She means it to scare me away.
“You didn’t leave with Hunter,” she says as I stop in front of her. So, she did notice me. Not that I doubted it. She just ignored me. “Why?”
Up close, that intense look in her eyes is even more paralyzing. I’ve known her for a long time, and back when I first met her, when she was twelve and I fourteen, that look would render me totally speechless. Just like it is now. I’ve learned to deal with it over the years, but only just.
“I don’t know,” I say, grinning at her and probably looking like an idiot. “I have some good memories of this place too. Maybe I don’t want it torn down either.”
My memories mostly consist of breaking in after hours to get online and whatnot, and smoking and drinking here on long summer nights. This parking lot and especially the metal handrail on the concrete stairs leading to the rec center’s front door was good for skateboarding. Sturdy. Maybe she remembers that too. She was there sometimes.
She’s shocked for the moment by my answer. Her eyes aren’t as intense when she’s confused. I noticed that over the years and have taken full advantage.
“Oh, you want to help,” she says, giving me one of her dazzling, glorious smiles. “Why didn’t you just say so? You can take Hunter’s banner.”
Josh has drawn closer and is now standing right behind her. Too close if you ask me. And if I’m reading the look in his innocent blue eyes right, he wants me gone.
“Sure, I’d love to,” I say, smiling right back at her.
“Plus, you know, the cops are fed up with this protest. And they might use force to remove you tonight,” I add and lock eyes with Josh. “I’m guessing you’re on your own if that happens.”
Her eyes narrow dangerously, the look in them like pure black lightning now. The thunder is about to follow.
But instead of shutting me down, she smiles even wider.
“Remember that time you thought you could take Sticks? That happened right around here somewhere,” she says sweetly. “Who saved who then?”
Do I remember? It’s been almost ten years and I still suffer random flashes of intense shame from that event.
It was a late July night, we’d snuck out to drink and smoke and be merry with the big kids. Sticks was eighteen and a mean bastard. He still is. We’re friends now, but back then he was full of aggression and out to prove he was badder and stronger than everyone. I didn’t like the way he was talking to Lily. He didn’t appreciate me getting in his face about it. I still have the scar above my right eyebrow from where my head hit the bottom concrete step. And the vivid memory of Lily dragging him off me, and standing between us, staring him down before he could give me more scars. Sticks backed down. And he never bothered her again.
She doesn’t bring this story up often, but when she does it always has the desired effect of making me relive my embarrassment.
“Yeah, but I’m bigger now,” I say and grin at her. “And I still owe you for that. Maybe tonight’s the night I get to make it up to you.”
