Ultio Dulcis

Chapter 2 - The Fight

Chapter 2 - The Fight



The room fell silent as Scar slowly examined the letter, his face drained of any colour. It was instantly clear to all the gang members that for this letter to scare scar it must be extremely serious.

 “They have the twins,” Scar declared tonelessly. Holding the thick paper in his hands, he studied the demands for the twins to return to safety, and pressing his lips together in a thin line as he did so. Gasps and intense muttering erupted from several members, with frown's covering most faces.

“What do they want?” Daniel asked grinding his teeth.

“Ten thousand pounds...a group of six to meet them at Cornfield at six tomorrow, which they will do also, and” Scar raised his eyebrows at the last demand. “And they want an alliance.”

“Why would we want an alliance with them?” Knuckles burst with fury at the very idea.

“Because they have the twins,” Scars voice was emotionless as he looked up from the note. “And we need to get them out of there quickly. It doesn’t look like they’ll last much longer…we’ll need Doctor Reynolds to be here for when we get back. Tell him to bring the usual.”

Knuckles frowned at the need for Doctor Reynolds assistance. “Is there something else Scar? How do you know we will need Reynolds?”

“They sent some pictures with the note.” Ten glossy images were fished from the envelope by Scar and passed to Knuckles. Everyone waited tensely, anticipating Knuckle's reaction and wanting to see the pictures themselves. His face turned darker than a thundercloud.

“THEY WANT AN ALLIANCE AFTER THIS!” he roared.

“It’s their anchor.” Scar muttered tonelessly, “They seem to think that if they have the twins, we’ll agree to an alliance, or at the very least, declare a truce.”

“Why would they want that? We’ve always been rivals, why stop now?” someone called.

“Because,” Sarah, one of the few girls in the cobras, spoke loudly, “They’ve finally seen that we’re the better gang, and that they can’t beat us. We’re growing more powerful by the day and taking their suppliers and dealers from them, as well as the territory. They’ve been trying to take over our streets for years, and we may have lost a few members along the way, but we’ve always come out fighting and hitting harder than ever before.” Her voice was passionate as she addressed the group, their morale kicking up a notch as she continued. “They want to make sure that they have the security of an alliance to make sure they don’t get killed. They’ve lost more members than we have and can’t risk losing anyone else. If they do, then other gangs will take advantage of their weakness and could take over what little they have left.” Looks of understanding and surprise crossed the faces of the gang members.

The girls that were full members in the Cobras - Georgia and Sarah - were the only two who made it in.

Girls were usually seen as good for certain tasks: cleaning, cooking and making babies. The general feeling about female gang members was that they had to prove that exercises were worthy of being in a gang, and usually had to endure much harder initiation exercises than the boys.

As Rico listened, he couldn’t help but feel their demands were a little too…fair.

Georgia nudged him in the ribs, jostling him out of his thoughts. “What do you think?” she whispered as Scar, Knuckles and the other members talked among themselves, “I don’t like it. The last demand, it, seems a bit strange to me. The Eastern Saints have always been so aggressive. Do you remember that time when they kidnapped Louis from the Grey Jackets? They sent the note with one of his fingers, and said that until they paid, they would keep chopping bits of him off! Of course, they got him back in the end, but he couldn’t hold a gun anymore.”