Kill the Devil
1348 Words
The first thing my father taught me was how to ride a bicycle.
The second...
Was how to shoot.
I was nine years old when I learned that monsters didn't always have horns.
Sometimes they wore leather.
Sometimes they rode motorcycles.
Sometimes they smiled before they pulled the trigger.
My father used to tell me that fear wasn't always loud.
Sometimes it arrived quietly.
In the wrong handshake.
In a smile that lasted a second too long.
In the stranger who already knew your name.
Back then, I thought he was trying to scare me.
I didn't understand he was trying to keep me alive.
The rain hadn't stopped that night.
It pounded against the windows of our house so hard that I thought the sky was breaking apart.
Ours wasn't a big house.
It didn't need to be.
Every room carried something of us.
My mother's laughter drifted through the kitchen almost every evening.
My father's boots always rested beside the front door, polished before sunrise and muddy again before dinner.
It wasn't perfect.
It was home.
I didn't know I was looking at it for the last time.
Mom was humming in the kitchen.
Dad was on the phone in his study.
I was hiding beneath the dining table, drawing a little girl riding a motorcycle with wings.
I remember thinking it looked silly.
Motorcycles couldn't fly.
Dad always laughed at my drawings.
He said I never colored inside the lines because I believed the world wasn't supposed to have any.
Mom insisted every picture belonged on the refrigerator anyway.
"One day," she'd tease,
"people will pay money for those masterpieces."
I believed her.
Children believe the people who love them.
Then the lights went out.
A loud crash shattered the silence.
Mom screamed.
Dad shouted my name.
"Seraphina!"
His voice wasn't angry.
It was afraid.
I'd never heard my father sound afraid before.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the hallway.
More than one pair.
Men.
The front door exploded inward.
Cold wind rushed inside with them.
Rainwater spread across the hardwood floor.
Muddy footprints followed.
Even now, after fifteen years, the smell of wet leather can still pull me back to that night.
Black boots.
Leather jackets soaked by the rain.
Silver skull patches stitched across their backs.
I couldn't breathe.
Someone grabbed my mother's arm.
She fought.
She always fought.
A gunshot cracked through the house.
The humming stopped.
Forever.
I wanted to run to her.
Instead, a pair of trembling hands pulled me beneath the floorboards hidden inside Dad's study.
His face was streaked with blood.
His badge lay broken on the floor.
His wedding ring was gone.
"Listen to me, Little Flame."
He'd called me that for as long as I could remember.
Mom used to joke that I inherited his temper and her stubbornness.
Dad said neither.
"Fire isn't stubborn," he'd tell her.
"It just refuses to stop burning."
His voice shook.
"Whatever happens... don't come out."
"Daddy..."
His fingers cupped my face.
There were tears in his eyes.
Real tears.
"I love you more than my own life."
"I know."
"If I don't come back..."
"No!"
"You must promise me."
I shook my head so hard my curls slapped against my cheeks.
"I don't want to."
His smile broke my heart.
"You've always been brave."
He pressed something cold into my tiny hand.
A silver pendant.
A phoenix rising from flames.
"Our family doesn't survive because we're strong."
He swallowed.
"We survive because we never stop getting back up."
The footsteps grew louder.
Someone kicked the study door.
Again.
Again.
Wood splintered.
Dad kissed my forehead.
"Promise me."
"I promise."
The words barely left my mouth before I wanted to take them back.
Promises felt forever.
I was only nine.
I still believed fathers always came home.
His eyes closed for just a second.
"When you grow up..."
His jaw tightened.
"...kill the Devil."
The door burst open.
I never saw who fired first.
Only flashes.
Shouting.
Blood.
Dad standing between me and the gunfire.
Someone yelled—
"Move!"
Another voice answered.
"No! There's a child—"
A deafening explosion shook the room.
Then...
Silence.
I stayed hidden until the fire reached the floorboards.
Smoke clawed at my lungs.
I couldn't breathe.
Couldn't scream.
Couldn't move.
The last thing I remember was a pair of strong arms lifting me through the flames.
A deep voice whispered against my ear.
"You're safe now."
Then darkness.
Fifteen Years Later
The engine beneath me roared like an animal finally set free.
The highway stretched endlessly ahead, cutting through the mountains under a sky painted with dying sunlight.
My black helmet reflected the sign waiting at the edge of town.
WELCOME TO BLACKRIDGE.
Population: 18,403.
Home of the Iron Reapers.
I slowed the motorcycle and killed the engine.
Silence settled around me.
Fifteen years.
Five thousand four hundred seventy-eight days.
That was how long I'd waited.
How long I'd trained.
How long I'd replayed my father's final words every night before I fell asleep.
Kill the Devil.
I'd repeated those three words so many times they had stopped feeling like revenge.
They had become routine.
Like breathing.
Like loading a magazine.
Like checking the safety before every ride.
Hatred, practiced long enough, starts to resemble faith.
I reached inside my leather jacket and pulled out a faded photograph.
The corners were burned.
Half the image was missing.
Only one face remained untouched.
A man standing beside a black motorcycle.
Tall.
Broad shoulders.
Tattoos climbing his neck.
Dark eyes colder than winter.
The words scribbled on the back had faded with time.
Damien Cross.
President.
Iron Reapers MC.
I stared at his face.
"You don't remember me."
My voice disappeared into the wind.
"But I've remembered you every single day."
I folded the photograph and slipped it back into my pocket.
The gun hidden beneath my jacket rested comfortably against my ribs.
Fully loaded.
One bullet had been engraved years ago.
Not with a number.
With a name.
Damien.
I kicked the motorcycle back to life.
The clubhouse came into view fifteen minutes later.
It looked less like a home and more like a fortress.
Brick walls.
Rusted gates.
Motorcycles lined up like soldiers preparing for war.
Music thundered from inside.
Laughter.
Glass breaking.
Engines revving.
Men covered in tattoos.
Every instinct screamed at me to turn around.
Instead...
I parked.
Removed my helmet.
Stepped through the gate.
Conversations died instantly.
Thirty pairs of eyes locked onto me.
Some looked amused.
Others looked annoyed.
A few looked hungry.
None of them looked surprised.
Men like these expected violence.
They just weren't expecting it to arrive wearing a leather jacket and a black helmet.
A woman alone.
Walking into the Devil's den.
One biker whistled.
Another laughed.
"Lost, sweetheart?"
"I don't think she knows where she is."
I smiled politely.
"Oh, I know exactly where I am."
A heavy silence followed.
Then the clubhouse door opened.
Everything changed.
The men stepped aside.
No one spoke.
No one breathed.
He walked out wearing black jeans, heavy boots, and a leather cut with a single patch stitched across the back.
PRESIDENT
His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing tattoos that disappeared beneath the leather. A thin scar cut through one eyebrow. His expression was unreadable, but there was nothing empty about him.
He carried himself like a man who had buried too many people and survived too many wars.
His gaze landed on me.
Time stopped.
I expected anger.
Curiosity.
Suspicion.
Instead...
His eyes softened.
Just for a heartbeat.
As if he'd found something he'd been searching for.
Then he smiled.
Not warmly.
Not cruelly.
Almost...
Sadly.
When he spoke, his voice was low enough that only I could hear.
"You're late."
My pulse stumbled.
"What?"
He took one slow step toward me.
Close enough for me to smell cedarwood, rain, and motor oil.
Close enough that I could have reached for the gun beneath my jacket.
Instead, he leaned down slightly.
His next words shattered the world I'd spent fifteen years building.
"Welcome home, Little Flame."
- Writer
