Preamble:
Hello, reader! 'Tis me, after almost five years of silence. Life has not been kind to my muse. Sigh.

The following fanfiction belongs in Tillie Cole's "Hades Hangmen MC" universe which I adore to an unhealthy degree.

WARNING: If you haven't read any of those books, do not start with this story. Seriously, you won't understand what's going on unless you have read at least books 1 to 5 of that series! I ain't kiddin'!

Also: If you read the Hades Hangmen series, you know the type of language and themes that will be happening in this story. Both are mature. (So mature, in fact, that I believe I will get my ff dot net account suspended for this... cough.)
If you aren't old enough or are easily triggered by descriptions of violence and sex or by liberal, creative use of the f-word, the b-word and/or the c-word, please don't read this story. I mean it.

If you're still here: Hi! I'm Aristide. This fanfic has roughly 110.000 words and is divided into 25 chapters (including pro- end epilogue). The story itself is a teeeensy bit AU - I changed one key scene from book 4 (Rider/Bella's story "Deep Redemption"), as you will see in the prologue. Apart from that, the story will explain itself. Please enjoy and leave a review if you want to make me cry ugly, happy tears. Thank you!

Prologue

"The joker is a mighty card," the father explained as he went through the deck of cards, laid them out on the floor in front of him for his small but attentive audience to see and put them in some sort of order. "For quite some time, a man - or a woman," he nodded toward the daughter who was sitting cross-legged to his left, "who could tell jokes and make people laugh was the most powerful person in the whole world. Why do you think that was?"
"Be-because..." The boy who sat to his right started even before he had a proper answer, just to get a head-start on his sister.
"Because the joker was invited by everyone," his sister nearly yelled to drown the younger boy's voice out. She looked smugly at him, then her face turned hopeful as she looked at her dad. "Right, daddy?" she asked. "Like, he would go to all the dances and meet all the people and hear all the secrets."
"Half-true. Not bad," the father conceded. His hands swished around as he shuffled the deck.
The boy frowned. What did dances and knowing secrets have to do with power? It didn't make any sense to him. But he kept his mouth shut. His sister would destroy his toys again if he made her angry, and she always got angry when he contradicted her.
"Who was the most powerful person in the kingdom?" the father asked.
"The queen!" the girl shouted, sure of herself.
"The king," the boy said decisively, still a little annoyed with his sister and how she was always right. "It's called a 'kingdom', not 'queendom'"," he insisted and earned a cold, cold stare from his right that made him shiver with a sense of foreboding.
"The king indeed," the father agreed and quickly continued before the stare could evolve into a hard slap against tender ears. "But where did he get his power?"
"From his army," the boy replied. This was something he understood. "His soldiers and their horses and weapons."
The girl scoffed.
"True," the father said. "But who paid for that? For the soldiers and weapons and horses? When there's no war on at the moment, and the kingdom can't just take another kingdom's gold and money...?"
"The... The king paid for it...?" The girl's answer sounded like a question.
"Yes and no," the father answered. "The king gives the money away, but it's not really his. He was just a normal man, really. He is not magic. He didn't produce anything so he didn't get money for goods or services. Of course, it would look like the money in the kingdom's cellars was his, but someone else put it there."
"The joker?" the boy asked, thinking about how jokers sometimes did magic. Maybe he had plucked a lot of gold coins from behind people's ears?
The girl laughed shrilly. "The joker! That's stupid! If he had so much money, he would not run around in ugly patchwork clothes and made people laugh at him!" She laughed some more.
The boy bit his lip. He didn't think patchwork clothes were so bad. Especially not in comparison with silk pantyhose and frilly skirts, like the king was wearing. And being laughed at – that was a sort of payment for him. It meant that he was good at his job! But his sister would never understand. She was always the one doing the laughing, never the one to receive it.
"It is not wrong, actually." The father's words killed the girl's laughter and had the boy sitting up straighter. "The joker did put a little money in the vaults. Who else?"
"The... The soldiers?" the boy asked carefully, thinking about a story where the soldiers had gone to some evil farmer's house and taken all of his hidden gold.
"Yes. Who else?" The father looked to the girl.
"The courtesans," the girl said, smirking at the boy because she knew he didn't know what that word meant.
The father didn't linger. "Who else?"
"The generals."They had been at the farmer's house, too. The father nodded.
"The ladies-in-waiting." Another nod.
The boy didn't know what those ladies would have been waiting for, and he didn't care. They were ladies, so whatever it was, it was probably boring.
"The smiths." They made and sold swords, so they would have had a lot of money because everybody needed a sword. Another nod.
"The servants!" The girl was screaming now to one-up the boy.
"The- everyone!" The boy shouted as the correct answer came to him. It made sense. "Everyone!"
"Aha! Exactly!" The father smiled broadly. The skin around his eyes crinkled and his bushy beard moved. "Everyone would give a little of their money to the king."
"And the joker- the joker tells jokes to everyone," the boy recalled. He saw that the overlap but didn't get why that meant that the joker was suddenly more powerful than the king.
"Yes, he did. And maybe, if he told a very clever joke, about...the king and what he does with all that money... for example, if he builds a new castle only for himself..."
"Everyone will be angry at the king!" The boy understood now. "And they will not give the king any more money!"
"But everyone knows that kings build castles!" The sister shrilled. She didn't get it and it irritated her. The boy suppressed a grin. "Why would they need a stupid joker to tell a joke about it before they stop giving the king their money? Someone would have complained!"
"Ah, but not for long, I'm afraid," the father smiled indulgently. "You see, the king really wants that nice new castle. And he has a lot of soldiers and assassins-"
"So he can just kill the complainers!" The boy laughed. Oh, what he wouldn't give to be King in a long ago country. It made so much sense!
"Or lock them and their families up. Take their money and lands. Destroy their reputation and make them into an enemy of the people. Anything." The father seemed a little sad about that, then perked up and his hands gathered speed while they shuffled and shuffled. "But if you're a joker, you don't have family, or a lot of money, or lands, or reputation. You have stories and jokes and you're the life of every party! You know everyone and everyone knows you-"
"The joker is protected!" The boy sat in wonder. The jokes, the stories, the stupid-looking clothes… they were his super power that made him practically invincible. "The king can't kill the joker."
"Not without admitting the truth about the joke, anyway," the father added.
"And making all the joker's fans really angry," the girl said, finally catching on but not happy about it. "And soon, everyone complains about the king and his castle and the lack of jokes at their parties, but he can't kill them all."
"And that's why the joker is more powerful than the king. Than all the kings. If the king decides to kill him, the king will fall. Right along with him. Every. Single. Time." The father laid out the playing cards before him, one for each sentence and word: The King of Spades, the King of Clubs, the King of Diamonds, the King of Hearts, and the Joker in the middle between them.
The boy only ever played three rounds of this game with the father. It was late and he and his sister were both sent to bed.
The next day, the father's living body came home from his work in the woods, but his mind was gone, and he never shuffled a deck and never told another story again.

"So it's bikes, brawls, booze and bitches?"
Ulfr took a sip from his bottle even though it made his busted lip sting like a motherfucker, trying to look unimpressed and unconcerned. Under the table his right leg was bouncing like crazy, though.
"Pretty much sums it up, son," Shade confirmed. When his lip curled up into a grin, his nicotine-yellow teeth gleamed alongside an artificial incisor crowned with gold. That smile made the 'don't fucking call me 'son'' die in Ulfr's throat.
"Big boy like you, you'll be passing through the prospect stage in a blink. You'll bulk up, learn your way around a fuckin' bike, get to know some people, do some shit for the club… someone's bound to sponsor you in a heartbeat. Other brothers will wanna patch you in properly in no time."
The muscle on the right, who hadn't introduced himself by name but was referred to as 'my sergeant' by Shade, wheezed a smoker's laugh. "All in a hurry to have a tank-sized murder puppy like you to cover their asses during a club run."
Ulfr didn't even try to hide his grin at the label. True on all counts, after all. He was pushing six foot two, almost one-hundred ninety pounds already, and he was barely seventeen years old. With proper food for a change and some exercise, he didn't doubt that he would be a fucking unit in no time.
And the murder was a double-check as well. They didn't know, not with any certainty because he sure as shit hadn't told them. But Ulfr could tell that they knew in their guts. Birds of a feather. Takes one to know one. It's in the eyes. All that crap.
And the 'puppy'...well, nothing wrong with a good laugh at the expense of a too-eager teenager.
"And you're a proper club, right? Outlaw, one percent?" He paused. "Brothers only?"
"'course," Shade scoffed. "Doesn't make sense to half-ass that shit. Hangmen deal with whatever the fuck they want, they do whatever the fuck they want, and they fuck whatever the fuck they want. Live free, ride free, die free. Pussy don't interfere with Hangmen business. Common law and whiny cunts ain't part of this operation, if you get what I mean."
"I think I do." Ulfr smiled into his beer, pleased about this entire coincidence. He hadn't meant to come to this bar, or to get into a fight, or to win that fight, or to be invited for a beer by some guy in a cut who had eyes like the fucking antichrist himself, but here he was. "So. How do I get started, again?"
"So eager. I like that." The gold tooth flashed once more. "Nothing complicated. For tonight, we just drink up, wind down and enjoy the view for a bit." He nodded toward the bartender. Long legs, short skirt, lots of boob, not a lot of bra. Perfect combination.
"Eventually, we'll introduce you to the brothers properly, and then you'll just do exactly the same thing you've always done."
Ulfr really didn't care too much who he fucked up with his fists, or his gun, or his knife, or his bat, or any other type of blunt, pointy, stabby or shooty object, so it was all the same to him. He nodded slowly. "Sounds like this whole thing is right in my fuckin' wheelhouse."
Sergeant chuckled again and muttered, "Doghouse." Then, he tipped the lip of his own beer bottle at him in greeting, officially welcoming him to his new home – the Hades Hangmen Motorcycle Club, Austin, Texas, USA.

It was chaos. Chaos in hell.
Dead lay next to dying people. Children, women, men who had never so much as harmed a fly throughout their lives were indistinguishable from the killers, the rapists, the power-hungry sadists and fanatics.
The Hangmen rained down upon them all like aircraft bombs and mowed them down, good and bad alike.
The air was saturated with noise. A siren wailed from speakers, people screamed like animals, bloodthirsty dogs yowled like people, gunfire rent the air, men yelled, women screeched.
One female scream cut off as Ky, vice president of the Hades Hangmen, caught a woman – a girl, really – by the throat with one hand and closed his fingers around it.
He locked eyes with her to make sure she recognized him for what he was. Then, he lifted her up to watch her die. His blood-stained teeth gleamed as he grinned.
Mae and Maddie, and uncounted girls and women just like them had suffered or were still suffering – and this girl had helped the torturers, killed innocent bystanders, prolonged the misery, and gotten into the MC's way.
More than anything, though, she had caused harm to Lilah. His Lilah. For that, she deserved to die, and he deserved to make sure she did.
Sarai, Prophet Judah's beloved fourteen year old head consort, fought to the end. Even as her vision exploded in black and red splotches, her lungs balled into angry fists for want of air and her head felt ready to burst open lengthwise, her fingernails scratched red lines into the skin of the arm that was propping her up, as far as she could reach. Her legs flailed, her feet sometimes catching the devil's man in the side of his torso.
It was useless.
Ky heard his name being called, followed by an angry bellow and a salvo of machine gun fire. He lowered the girl down onto her feet, twisting her around and pinning her back against his body so she wouldn't get away. Too dazed, she gasped and coughed and put up no resistance, didn't even try to run.
His brothers of the MC. They needed him to do his fucking part.
His Lilah's half-sister, Phebe, was still around somewhere. He needed to get her and the other handful of sane people out of here.
There were still some cult assholes running around who had had their dicks in underaged pussies, and Ky needed them to fucking die screaming. Prophet Judah himself, who had Lilah raped, lashed and almost burnt at the stake, was one of them.
This place, this cultist hellhole whose very soil was soaked with the tears and the blood dripping from young girls just like his Lilah, needed to be wiped off the face of the Earth.
In comparison to all that, the brainwashed little bitch in his grip was really unimportant. Not even worth wasting a bullet on.
So he pulled out his knife, gripped it tight and brought the metal butt down on her skull, hard enough to crack it like an egg. Blood spewed out of the wound. It had soaked and turned her dark blond hair red before her body, discarded by Ky, had even fully collapsed to the ground.
Ky forgot all about her as he walked away.