The girls lived in a mansion on the beach. It was worth a few million bucks, sitting on the sands of South Carolina, and as far as biker gang clubhouses go, it had to be the most expensive in the world.

Royalty had bought it for the club. She wasn't an ordinary con-man, or con-woman, to be specific. She was an expert. The kind that could fake emails to bank presidents or company comptrollers, and fool them into wiring money. Royalty didn't like to be called a hacker, though much of the information she needed to pull a scam was achieved through hacking, it was her ability to craft a clever story that allowed her to trick rich people into sending money to what they thought was their bank or relative. Royalty didn't have to steal anymore, because she started young, when she was barely a teenager. Royalty hadn't even stolen that much, but since the price of bitcoin had gone up about a 10,000% percent, and she was smart enough to put most of her money into it ten years ago, she was now worth millions of dollars. If there's a life lesson that can be handed down to anyone from Royalty's life, it's hustle when you're young and invest your money.

Royalty always liked to say money was both a blessing and a curse. Mostly a blessing. Life is much, much, easier with money, and anyone who tells you otherwise is justifying staying poor or born so rich they don't know otherwise. Royalty knew the one thing that money didn't get you was true friends. If your friends weren't rich like you, there was always a question if they liked you because you were rich, and you'd hate them for it. And if you only hung out with other rich people, you hated yourself for it. So when Royalty met these girls, it was like a dream come true. They didn't give a shit if Royalty had money. This gang lived for the excitement of killing monsters, and if they needed money, they'd take it from someone they felt didn't deserve it. Sure, they liked the mansion that Royalty bought, but they seemed just as happy to camp out under the stars when they were on the road, on a mission.

Royalty had a motorcycle worth three hundred grand. Bikers loved their bikes, and they loved talking about their bikes. Unless you loved the specifics of parts and performance, it would bore you. Motorcyclists yapped about their motorcycles the way people who did crossfit wouldn't shut the fuck up about crossfit. And to people who didn't follow it, crossfit looked like grown adults doing the same bullshit we did in elementary school gym class. Sort of the same with motorcycles. If you didn't know about them, you'd resond to shiny chrome or a cool airbrush paint job. If you know bikes, you know an old one, or a shit one, or a hidden gem, and you'd have all sorts of opinions and experiences that only other bikers would give a shit about. Not only would they give a shit, they would sit with you for hours and talk about the handlebars on a bike they had five years ago. But even amongst those people, few knew what a Ecosse ES1 Superbike was. At first glance, most assumed it was a Ducati, the Ferrari of bikes, and it looked like one, but this was a handcrafted piece of machinery cast entirely from titanium. It was made in America, for those that preferred American bikes, though that usually meant Harley Davidson. The Ecosse ES1 was in a class all its own. Royalty liked the best of everything. She would wear her biker vest over a Dior gown, and go riding in it. Riding in a gown was dangerous and stupid, because if it got caught in your rear wheel or the chain, it would yank you right off the fucking bike. Royalty would ball up the gown and tie it in a knot at her waist. She cold shift gears in high heels, and those heels were a few thousand bucks a pair.

When Jessie first met Royalty, she wouldn't have guessed she rode. But that was the wonderful thing about bikes. They appealed to all types. Young, Old, Black, White, Asian, Rich, Poor. Motorcycles were fucking cool. If you ride, you know. If you don't, it can only be explained like this: You feel alive every moment you're on it.

Last year, during bike week in Florida, Jessie was down there for the same reason as everyone else. To party and show off their bike. One of the ongoing events was trick shows. People who could stand on their handle bars, or hop the bike on its back wheel, or spin it in a way that defied gravity.

Royalty was hopping the bike on its nose, and letting the rear end spin around, without a worry that she may scratch the piece of art worth millions. The crowd was roaring. Royalty liked attention. It was strange that she was insecure, given she was attractive, smart, and had a shitload of money. People assumed she had a rich boyfriend or a rich dad, because for some fucked up reason, the first thing people thought wasn't that a woman had earned it in some way. When society sees an attractive young woman with money, most assume she was born with it or fucked someone for it. Not Royalty. She earned money the way most of the wealthy got it throughout history: She stole it. Royalty was born poor, in Thailand, and liked to say she was the bastard daughter of the royal family. Nobody knew who her real father was, so it couldn't really be disputed.

Some kids from her village would walk for miles into the big city and beg, and young men and women turned to prostitution. Royalty had bigger plans. Why let the tourists fuck you for money, when you could take their money from them when they weren't looking? She could pick pockets as a child. And soon started working scams. Royalty stole a school uniform from where the wealthy sent their kids to high school. Car dealerships knew the school crest on the jacket. Royalty would walk in, say her father was going to buy her a new BMW, and would like to test drive it. She drove it all the way to the people in the shady part of town who bought stolen cars. Car dealers were often lowlifes themselves, so fuck them.

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As she grew, she got more clever with her scams. Identity theft was easy if you were good with computers and confident in person. Royalty would take the identity of another young woman her age, duplicate identifications, and charge all sorts of clothes to the rich family. She was so good at what she did, she had never been arrested. Police weren't even close to her. But the local crime bosses caught up with very quickly. They wanted her to work for them, and at a very steep cut of her money. Or they could kill her. Royalty was brave, but she wasn't stupid. She had to leave Thailand. It had always been a dream of hers to live in America, and she had been teaching herself English since she was a child. By the time she arrived in the USA with fake papers, she was fluent. She dashed her English with a bit of a posh British accent, which added to her mystique. Royalty would vaguely say she was part of the royal family, but never get too specific. She told people that her title had a dozen names in it, which was true of Thai people, so she simply said her nickname was 'Royalty'. She had given the name to herself. Since she carried herself with such an upper class air, it fit. To her credit, she never looked down on anyone. She was wonderfully polite and sophisticated. But the confidence was all a bizarre compensation, because as soon as she met a group she wanted to belong to, she begged for their approval. It made no sense to Jessie, who never gave a shit what anyone thought. The only organization she ever belonged to was the club she invented, with herself as club president.

Jessie and Royalty got to talking, and when Royalty saw the outlaw vest, she challenged Jessie on whether she was truly an outlaw or not. Jessie laughed it off, but Royalty kept pressing her.

"Look," Jesse started, "I don't deal drugs, and I don't turn tricks. But believe me when i tell you, I live outside the law."

Royalty, eager for Jessie's approval, went on to talk about all her schemes and scams. Most outlaws were impressed by Royalty's obvious success. She wore a watch that you could hock for half a mill, and a bike worth three times that. But Jessie didn't care about money, earned, stolen, or hustled.

Jessie liked Royalty, despite how hard she was working for a friendship.

"Listen," Jesse said, hoping to shut Princess up, "If you're looking for some partner in crime, I don't do what I do for money. So let's go back to talking about motorcycles and stop reading me your resume."

Royalty never knew when to let things go. If she wanted to make a point, she kept poking you with it, and got even more aggressive if you didn't respond.

"What, you're better than me? I only rip off rich assholes. I'm like Robin Jood. I give to the poor. And I was born in a mud hut, so that means I give it to me."

Jessie laughed. She wasn't quick to laugh, so to get a chuckle out of her meant she liked you.

"Royalty. Sounds like you're looking for a club of women to join, that will indulge your love of money. Plenty of groups in America do that. Not us."

"Precisely. And as I believe you inferred, those other groups, their illegal income is from drugs or hookers. Neither interest me."

Jessie shook her head. This girl was fucking persistent.

"What do you want? You just need to know what I do that's outside of society? Alright. Would you believe I battle people who use arcane rituals and perversions of science control the minds of mankind?"

Jessie hoped that Royalty would leave her alone after that, assuming Jessie was crazy or being shitty. But Royalty just nodded real slow, taking it in. She dropped her fake upper-crust personae into the peasant she was in an instant.

"Fuuuuuck you, I'm Asian, our people have witnessed other realms when your people were stumbling through the snow on the Bering Strait trying to find warmer climates."

Jessie laughed even more. She didn't keep people close, but you were invited to be close if you could make her laugh.

Not long after joining their gang, Royalty bought them a clubhouse at the beach.

They loved it the second they saw it. Except Silencia. She was suspicious of everything.

"You stole enough to buy this place. People you robbed, they ever gonna come after you?"

Silencia wasn't scared, she just wanted a proper security evaluation as she surveyed the house. There were lots of woods around it, it sat in a rich part of town, and their neighbors were far enough away that nobody would complain about four Harleys being loud coming and going. In fact, nearly all the people who owned the homes on this beach, this was a second getaway home for them, and were rarely there, just every few weekends n the summer.

Royalty never answered Silencia's question. Truth was, she had ripped off some dangerous people, in this country, and the previous one she lived in. And yes, they were going to come after her when they found her. They were currently looking.

But a year had gone by, and nobody had come knocking on the door. Royalty didn't worry about it. They had bigger worries. The Bleeding Ladies Motorcycle Club needed to find the idol, because cultists were going to do something really dangerous with it.

They didn't know what or when, but it was coming.