Vice and Void (The Savage Wolves Brotherhood #1)

12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Dakota

The Savage Wolves Brotherhood’s clubhouse was on the opposite end of town from the Guildhall. The original building was once used as part of an old junkyard, and even though it hadn’t been for nearly two decades at the time, Dakota still stepped on a rusted nail as a teenager. She supposed that was why Tex Reynolds purchased it to begin with—the kinship of the club to his beloved mechanic’s shop.

As Dakota pulled her car into the lot, she surveyed the peeling exterior paint, the rusted gutters, and the missing roof tiles, some littering the brown lawn. The club had seen better days, and its appearance was certainly not high on the Lead's priority list. Whoever that was these days. The Vice patch on Callum’s motorcycle cut spoke of an untold story she was curious about but ultimately didn’t want to know.

On the cusp of graduation, Callum was first in line to take over the Brotherhood when Tex was ready to retire, whether he wanted it or not. Prison must have changed that trajectory for good.

Stepping from the car, Dakota lifted a hand to shield against the evening sun glinting off the metal-framed windows. The air was cleaner on the city’s edge, far from the downtown smog and constant bus exhaust. Freshly bloomed wildflowers, warm earth, and pollen. It was a direct contradiction to what Dakota knew went on inside the clubhouse—depravity, gambling, and sex.

The patches of brown grass folded under her sneakers as she aimed for the front door. One of the security cameras bolted to the corner of the roof tracked her every move. The instinct to flee was overwhelming as raw dread clawed at her gut, but there was no going back now. Callum didn't balk at the challenge, and she wouldn't either.

As Dakota reached for the silver handle, the door swung open with a blast of cool air. Stale cigarettes and ale. Honeysuckle and sun-soaked pine needles. Direct contradiction, indeed. Callum braced an arm on the frame above his head, showcasing his broad shoulders and bicep tattoos in a way Dakota couldn't help but notice. And, truly, it was unfair that twelve years and how many years in prison carved his body into that .

“You’re late,” he drawled, instantly cooling any attraction she was struggling to stifle.

“There was traffic.”

Callum pushed off the frame and gestured into the clubhouse. “Kane is waiting.”

“Kane?” she asked, trying her best to slide past without touching him. “I thought I was working with you.”

“He’s the brains.” Callum squeezed by, his elbow brushing the top of her arm. The devastating smirk he tossed at her sparked an amused glimmer in his gaze. “I’m the brawn.”

“I’ll be sure to call Kane if I need anything.”

Callum’s chuckle settled low in her belly, and she chided how her heart clanged at the simple sound of it. Through sheer force of will, she followed him into the club.

The club's interior was the same as she remembered—from the fluorescent lighting to the wet bar nestled in the corner to the scuffed pool table. Her eyes darted from it as an unwanted memory of her balanced on the head rail with him between her thighs blazed forward. Plucked from a place long hidden away.

“This is a bad fucking idea, man,” Ace said from the worn couch, the green and gold pattern a decade out of style. His ankle was propped over the opposite knee, and he didn’t bother with a greeting as he scrolled on his phone. “Duke’s gonna be so pissed.”

“Duke?” Dakota’s gaze flashed to meet Callum’s, but he didn’t look her way. “Since when would Duke take over the Brotherhood?”

Ace let his head fall against the back cushion. “It’s none of your godsdamned business. You’re not an old lady, you’re not a member, you’re fucking nothing.”

“Ace—“

“No, Callum, I mean it. This is fucking trouble.”

“Duke said to find an alchemist,” Callum said, his voice tinted with an acidic warning, “and I found an alchemist. ”

Ace shook his head. “Duke said to find an alchemist, not some associate you used to fuck back in the day.”

Dakota could almost see heat coils rising like pillars off Callum’s rigid body. She turned a bored look to Ace, huffing a humorless laugh. “I see you haven’t learned a thing in twelve years. Still speaking before you think. And putting your foot in your mouth in the process.”

Ace was off the couch faster than Dakota could blink, his snarl within inches of hers. Hair-raising fear gripped her chest, but she withstood him. The Ace she once knew wouldn’t have hurt her, but this one… “You don’t know a fucking thing. You don’t get to come here and act like—“

Callum wedged between them and shoved Ace away. “Go. Take a breath. Kane and I got this.”

Ace pressed his lips so tightly together that a muscle feathered in his jaw. He didn’t say another word as he stormed from the club, slamming the front door with enough force to rattle the fluorescent lights in the drop ceiling.

“Sorry about him,” someone called blandly. Dakota peered past Callum, palpable fury still rolling off him in waves, to find Kane with loose papers spread across the wooden table before him. “He hasn’t been the same since Raven.”

The recognizable pain inside Ace was twisting him into a creature of immeasurable darkness. She could see it in the promise of violence flashing in his intense stare. Not even a shred of the clown he had once been remained. She was sure they knew that already.

“I didn’t know,” Dakota said softly as she walked to the chair beside Kane, dropping her canvas bag on the floor. “About Raven, I mean. Lyra, she didn’t—“

“We know,” Kane replied. “She told us.”

A stiff silence fell over the room, punctuated by the ticking clock and the low hum of the refrigerator. Behind Dakota, Callum blew out a long, slow breath that she was sure she wasn’t meant to hear. Her determination waned, teetering on a precipice she wasn’t sure she could escape.

“I’m guessing I’m here for those,” Dakota finally said, gesturing for the papers. Though the tensity fractured when she spoke, it didn’t go away entirely. Instead, it ghosted along her skin, a cobra readying to strike. She sank into the seat, angling her head toward the nearest pile. “What do you need me to do?”

Kane brushed a hand through his short brown hair. “My process is self-taught, and my technique is formative at best now that my equipment is gone. I don’t think I could get enough oil pressed to put in a distill the Syndicate could use.”

Dakota’s eyes flashed wide as she twisted in her seat to level her stare on Callum, who had taken over Ace’s spot on the couch. “The Syndicate ? The Vanguard Syndicate?”

“The very same,” Callum retorted with ease as he raised a hand to brace the back of his head. That movement elongated the stretch of his torso, pulling the hem of his shirt up enough that a sliver of ink peeked out along the muscled v-line between his hips. A smug, knowing grin played in the corners of his mouth.

“You want me to help you create distillations for the Vanguard Syndicate ?” Her voice was sharp and shrill, scraping against her throat. She looked desperately at Kane, who was conveniently too interested in shuffling around the papers to notice. She returned her attention to Callum.

Dakota was more familiar with the Vanguard Syndicate than she ever wanted to be, thanks to the battles they waged on the city of Blackdon. They started as a movement against the Iron Guard, forming a militia of nearly limitless resources. Unrest evolved into riots that reached levels resembling a civil war that she never thought she would see in her lifetime. Bullets and bombs rained down on the civilians, both from the Governor’s Army and the Syndicate, and Dakota had treated enough of them to intimately know what each kind did to the human body.

“What the fuck , Callum?”

Callum leaned forward to place his elbows on his thighs, pinning her with a glare that made her uneasy. “This isn’t about them. It’s about Lyra.”

Dakota gave an incredulous laugh. “Are you asking me to arm the Vanguard Syndicate with illegal distills in exchange for finding my best friend?”

Callum didn’t flinch. “I’m not asking you to arm anyone. I’m asking you to teach my brother how to fix his process so he can arm them.”

“That’s not—that isn’t—“ Dakota trailed off to collect her thoughts, but the only ones that came to mind were the shell-shocked, blood-covered faces of the civilians she had treated in the Guildhall. “It doesn't matter how they're being armed, just that they’re still armed!" She met him with a frankness that surprised her. "What did you get into?”

Callum’s gaze searched hers, the steel wall behind his eyes snapping closed in the next blink. “What I needed to.” End of conversation .

Ace was right in one regard: at the end of the day, it wasn’t any of her godsdamned business. She was here for one thing and one thing only.

A heaviness settled on the tops of Dakota’s shoulders, pressing her deeper into the seat. Lyra. This was about Lyra. There had been no movement on her file. Not a single person had come forward. Dakota didn’t know much about the inner workings of the Iron Guard, but she did know that every passing second was that much closer to finding Lyra dead.

And she surmised enough about the Brotherhood that she didn’t want to know any additional information about their ties with the Syndicate.

Dakota cursed under her breath. Right now, she needed to focus on her best friend. She would find a way to repay the citizens of Blackdon for her sins—even if it killed her. And the guilt of it just might.

“So where did you leave off?” Dakota asked, swiveling toward Kane to gaze over the array of papers on the table. “What distill are you trying to recreate?”

Kane shifted, reaching to his lap to place his other hand on the table. Dakota’s eyes froze on the scarred limb, his raised and rough skin still puckered with old burn markings. The injury extended up to his fingers, where he was missing a few nails, and the lack of muscle mass in the forearm indicated minimal use. It rested next to a stack of papers, unnaturally taut and unmoving.

“What happened?” Dakota looked down at his arm before glancing back up at him. Behind her, the couch groaned as Callum shifted.

“Motorcycle accident,” Kane replied firmly, though not unkindly. “About eleven years ago now. Got struck by a driver and pinned beneath the bike. Gasoline leaked onto the road, and next thing you know…” He trailed off, gesturing at the injured hand. “It doesn’t bother me too much now.”

Dakota frowned, her brow knitting together. “Why didn't they heal it at the Guildhall?”

Kane opened his mouth to speak, hesitated, and then took a deep breath. “The Brotherhood was strapped for cash. My dad had died the year before. All the club funds were going toward Callum’s defense counselor. I got in the accident, and we tried to heal it with what distills we had lying around. By the time we could get our hands on Healing, the injury had already settled into this.”

“Unfortunately, the distills aren’t as miraculous as people think. The effects are temporary. Unless you can catch the injury as close to the moment as possible, the likelihood of the distill helping is slim.”

Kane let out a chuckle so closely resembling Callum’s that Dakota’s heart skipped a beat. “That’s what I read in a book. It’s also why the distills don’t work to cure cancer or any of those other bullshit diseases we have to deal with.” He let out a breath. “Like I said, it doesn’t bother me much these days.”

Dakota nodded and sent him a small smile. “Understood. But if you want to try for some use of your hand back, I know a procedure to release the tendons. It would be minor surgery, and we could do physical therapy afterward to get the fingers moving.”

Kane’s gray eyes flicked hers. “You could do that?”

“It would be no trouble. It’s an antiquated procedure, but it still works. I can't promise how much range you'll recover, though I'm willing to try if you are.”

Kane relaxed, and Dakota didn’t realize how much his shoulders had stiffened until they dropped away from his ears. How much of a weight sat there until it was lifted. “I appreciate that. Thanks, D.”

Dakota swallowed and quickly looked down to slide a set of papers toward her. Kane had been a kid the last time she saw him, and he had been the only one to call her that. No one had called her that since. She cleared her throat, a poor attempt to dislodge the lump that had formed. “Tell me where you’re at with the distills. Where do you need me to jump in?”

“Healing and Euphoric are priorities.” Kane tapped a knuckle on the stack closest to him. Dakota grabbed the top page. “We were growing poppy and cattails in the warehouse but lost our entire stock in the explosion.”

Explosion? What had Callum pulled her into? Out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Lyra.

“I invented a tool to easily extract the gel from the cattail leaves. Since I was the only one doing it and…” Kane trailed off with a light shrug as he tilted his chin toward his injured hand. “That got destroyed, though. It barely helped anyway.”

Dakota leaned back in her seat, scanning the hand-written paper. “This is very thorough,” she noted. “How did you come up with the distill instructions?”

Kane tried not to look pleased. “Self-taught, lots of experimenting with the seeds we collected over the years. Different soils, different light settings. For Euphoric in particular, I used a purification technique for the acid-base extraction to manipulate the freebase into behaving like a pure distillation. That’s what I would soak under the full moon. But…equipment is gone.”

Dakota was more than impressed. Kane had always been brilliant, but this— “You should have been an alchemist,” she said.

Kane chuckled. “Nah, I would get myself in trouble. I like experimenting.”

That she could understand.

“Have you tried a single solvent extraction?” Dakota asked after skimming the paper again. “It’s a crude technique, but if you have a starting weight to ratio it against the isolate, you could calculate the dose.”

Kane considered her for a moment. “Soaking the ground seed pods in an alcohol base and filtering the liquid? Is that what you mean?”

Dakota nodded. “Like I said—crude. But it doesn’t take more equipment than you have in your kitchen, and you could have the base of the distill done in two days rather than wait for the oil to press.” She sighed and shook her head. “The only issue is that you would need the seeds from the Fieldhouse.”

“That we can do.”

Dakota jumped, having blissfully forgotten that Callum was seated behind her. His voice was an unwelcome reminder.

“How are you going to get the seeds from the Fieldhouse?” Dakota narrowed her eyes on Callum as he pushed himself up from his seat and pocketed his cell phone. A second later, she realized why. A knock sounded on the front door, the bang echoing down the slim hallway.

“Oh, I’m not the one getting the seeds from the Fieldhouse,” Callum said before disappearing around the corner.

“What does he mean by that?” Dakota asked Kane. Once again, he busied himself with the stack of papers closest to him. “Kane?”

“I got your text,” a familiar male voice said. A heavy set of boots clunked against the floor. “Got here as soon as I— are you out of your fucking mind ?”

Dakota’s stomach plummeted to her feet as she stared at the newest man to enter the clubhouse. Dylan Harrison—her father’s second of three deputy rangers. Dylan removed his cap, scraped a hand through his dark hair, and replaced it.

“Brotherhood needed an alchemist,” Callum said. The muscles in his arms flexed as he crossed them over his chest. For better or worse, he seemed mighty pleased with himself. “I found an alchemist.”

“I know what the Brotherhood needed,” Dylan retorted sharply. He tossed a hand Dakota’s way. “But did you need it in the form of my boss’s daughter? This is a real liability.”

“Relax, it’s gonna be fine.”

Dakota stood and pushed the chair away from her, pointing at Dylan. “You’re a member of the Brotherhood? You?” Whatever part Dylan played, he did it well. He had spent countless days at her father’s house, and Dakota knew he would have never stepped foot in the Ranger’s department if her father even sniffed motorcycle exhaust on him. “How long?”

Dylan groaned, tilting his head back and forth to crack his neck. “Not a member. Informant. We have an…understanding.”

“What kind of understanding?”

“The kind that isn’t any of your concern. Dylan is here for a reason,” Callum mused as he leaned a hip against the edge of the table. “Dylan, tell her. She’s with us. You can trust her.” The words skittered over her bones, unexpectedly warming her in ways she wasn’t ready for.

It seemed as though the last thing Dylan wanted to do was tell Dakota anything, but he let out an annoyed sigh and said, “James, the alchemist you work for, has a meeting planned with the Fieldhouse in a few days. It’s my shift for guard duty. I’ll sneak you some seeds. You get them out.”

Dakota blanched, her stare flicking between Dylan and Callum. “That wasn’t—that isn’t—Callum, that’s illegal .” To his credit, Dylan had the decency to appear abashed.

“You want Lyra back, don’t you?”

“Is that what this is about?” Dylan asked as he scratched the underside of his chin. “Because Ethan said—”

Frustration beamed through her, hollowing her out and numbing her to the core. “You haven’t given me a reason to believe you’re doing anything to help Lyra.”

“These things take time,” Callum murmured through gritted teeth. “So have some patience. I have people on the lookout.”

“How much more will you squeeze out of me just to keep Lyra's disappearance dangling over my head?”

This time, Callum’s lips spread into a lazy grin, similar to a cat stretching after a long nap. She recognized his dangerous familiarity, and the enigmatic piece of him she no longer knew threatened to pull her along with it. She could have sworn his gaze dipped to where her tattoo was hidden beneath the band of her shorts. “Not squeezed, princess. Drained. Depleted. Completely and utterly spent.”

Kane made a sound of disgust from the back of his throat.

Her mouth went dry, the breath hitching in her chest. Callum’s grin widened like he could read every thought filtering through her mind. As though he had private film access to her mind, and he rolled the same clip of her memory on the pool table. His hand between her thighs, coaxing her with his fingers while she moaned his name loud enough that it echoed through the dark clubhouse. Something only they shared, something she was desperate to rid herself of.

She wasn’t doing this. He wasn’t going to drag her along.

Dakota kept her mask of bored indifference in place as she leaned down to grab her canvas bag from where she had propped it next to the table. “Dylan, text me the details. I’m late.”

Callum arched a brow. “For what?”

“Being away from you,” Dakota replied, breezing past him.

She wasn’t going to play his games. Not again. Never again.