Wylder didn’t speak. Instead, he nodded to Kaige, who punched the nearest man so hard he went sprawling on the grass.
“What the fuck?” someone shouted. The men leapt in, but in their semi-inebriated state, their reflexes let them down. We tore through them like a bowling ball through a set of pins.
Wylder held one of them by the back of his collar and slammed his face against the makeshift grill with a sizzle of burning flesh. As that guy screamed, a man to my side smashed his beer bottle and lunged at Mercy. I caught his arm first.
With muscle memory trained by years of martial arts classes, I used his own momentum to swing her attacker around and jab the jagged glass right back at him. The shards sank right into his chest through his shirt, blood welling around the spot. He stumbled away, swearing, and ran.
But we still had more to deal with. Kaige was throwing his fists every which way, and Wylder was slamming one guy’s head into his knee, breaking his nose. I wasn’t as wild as one or as vicious as the other, but I held my own.
I ducked as one of the men swung a plank they’d been using for firewood at me. I gripped the edge of the board and heaved it back at the perp. It hit him square on his forehead and nose, drawing blood. But he came at me again. I pummeled him from one direction and another, dodging around him, until he buckled over, and then I kicked him in the side of the head so hard he slumped on the ground unconscious.
Somewhere to my left, Mercy was ramming her elbow into another guy’s temple. I was vaguely aware of her glancing my way, and my stomach balled tighter, but I couldn’t let any thought of her judgment distract me.
This was the new Rowan Finlay. I was in control, and I wasn’t going to let anybody fuck with my crew.
Kaige sent one more guy reeling to the ground. The only ones left were the two Steel Knights Mercy had pointed out.
The blond man tried to make a break for it, but I snatched the back of his shirt and clocked him in the throat hard enough that he gagged. As I pinned him to the ground, Kaige dropped the guy with the snake tattoo. He hunkered down on the guy’s back, and his prisoner groaned.
A couple of their associates lay bleeding and unconscious. The others had taken off. Wylder stalked over, cracking his knuckles, which were flecked with blood. Now that the worst was over, Gideon emerged from the car, carrying his tablet and watching the scene with an analytical glint in his eyes.
“Let’s get this over with quickly,” Wylder said to our captives. “I’m sure you’d like to go back to your partying and not, say, have your ribs crushed and your skulls bashed in. Answer our questions, and you’re free to go.”
The guy I was holding swore and tried to squirm out of my grasp, but I gripped him firmly and smacked him across the temple. Mercy knelt by his head with her knife drawn.
“I remember you from the last big fight,” she said with a sharp note in her voice that made my pulse skip a beat. “You have no idea how much I’d like to use this. But if you play nice with the Nobles, I’ll play nice with you.”
She wasn’t the same Mercy Katz I’d known either. But I’d always been aware there was a fierceness inside her, always liked it. I just hadn’t realized how deep it ran.
Wylder crouched next to the tattooed guy, cocking his gun. “What the lady said goes for me too. The Nobles can show mercy.” He winked at her. “We’ve just run out of patience for upstarts who think they can take over our territory. What’s this I hear about someone named the Storm? Is that your new boss?”
“What are you talking about?” the guy under me sputtered. “We don’t know anything about him.”
Mercy arched an eyebrow. “Who said it’s a him?”
He winced, knowing his lie was exposed. Wylder shifted his attention. “We know a lot more than you seem to realize. You were already working with Xavier alongside Colt, weren’t you?”
When both men remained silent, he jabbed his pistol against the tattooed guy’s temple.
“I don’t know,” the blond guy said in a panicked tone. “My loyalty was to the Steel Knights. Some other pricks showed up and started talking to Colt like they had an equal say in things, and then after he died that Xavier fuck showed up and said we were his now. He claims Colt made an agreement with him and he’s holding us to it.”
“And you just went along with that?” Mercy asked, her lip curling with a sneer.
“He shot anyone who argued about it. He’s a fucking psycho. I wanted to stay alive… and hell, why wouldn’t I want to be on the winning side? It was pretty much the same guys we were working with under Colt.”
We’d guessed right about Xavier’s involvement with Colt, then. But there was still a lot I didn’t understand. “And does Xavier want people to call him the Storm?”
The guy I was holding let out a ragged laugh. “No, he talks about ‘the Storm’ like it’s someone even bigger than him. All I know is, I don’t want to ever meet the asshole who’s keeping that menace on a leash.”
I exchanged a glance with the others, a chill tickling down my spine. Xavier wasn’t the leader—he was working for someone even more powerful than him? That wasn’t a good sign.
Wylder tapped his gun against the tattooed guy’s head again. “What else do you know about the Storm? Has he come into town?”
“Not as far as I know. It’s Xavier we’ve dealt with. I don’t think anyone except Xavier’s guys has any clue, and maybe not even all of them.”
Gideon frowned. “You’ve got to have at least some idea what Xavier and the Storm want, don’t you?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” the guy said. “Look around. He wants all of Paradise Bend. Now that Colt’s gone, he’s going to take everything for himself.”