Blood Gang Quotes

Water is to India as blood is to the body, with the many rivers functioning as arteries – the Ganges being the aorta – and the monsoon timelessly arriving as a much-needed annual blood transfusion.

Jason decided there was nothing in the world scarier than a gang of bat-wielding grannies.

The Amoeba?" she asked Aiden. "The gang," he said, tossing his hand to indicate all around. "My people. A large amorphous mass that keeps on changing size, hasn't much apparent use, sometimes makes you sick, and occasionally breaks off into smaller parts that act exactly like the parent.

The strangest sight was the old giant Thoon, who was getting bludgeoned to death by three old ladies with brass clubs—the Fates, armed for war. Jason decided there was nothing in the world scarier than a gang of bat-wielding grannies.

She said no, okay?" All the eyes that had been on me suddenly jerked toward Adrian. He leaned forward, fixing his gaze on Sonya and Dimitri, and I saw something in those pretty eyes I'd never seen before: anger. They were like emerald fire. "How many times does she have to refuse?" Adrian demanded. "If she doesn't want to, then that's all there's to it. This has nothing to do with her. This is our science project. She's here to protect Jill and has plenty to do there. So stop harassing her already!"" "Harassing is kind of a strong word," Dimitri said, calm in the face of Adrian's outburst. "Not when you keep pushing someone who wants to be left alone," countered Adrian. He shot me a concerned look before fixing his anger back on Sonya and Dimitri. "Stop ganging up on her." Sonya glanced uncertainly between us. She looked legitimately hurt. As astute as she was, I don't think she'd realized how much this bothered me. "Adrian... Sydney... we aren't trying to upset anyone. We just really want to get to the bottom of this. I thought all of you did too. Sydney's always been so supportive. "It doesn't matter," growled Adrian. "Take Eddie's blood. Take Belikov's blood. Take your own for all I care. But if she doesn't want to give hers, then that's all there is to it. She said no. This conversation is done.

Before Kanin Turned me, death was something I faced every day. People died, often; it was just how the world worked. I thought that, after the deaths of my old gang and Stick’s betrayal, I wouldn’t worry about anyone else. And yet, here I was, a vampire, wishing I could have saved the very person who hated me most.

Juliette swallowed hard. She could not. She would not. She was the heir to the Scarlet Gang. Heir of mobsters and merchants and monsters, each and every one of them, blood frothing at the mouth. She kneeled to no one.

Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.

I couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d seen a different Grizz. A sympathetic Grizz who rescued kittens and listened to my kind of music. Someone who made sure his young wife went to church every Sunday.       I couldn’t believe how naïve I was. He was all of those things, but I kept forgetting that he didn’t get to be the leader of this gang by being soft. He was hard. He was cold-blooded. He was ruthless in his pursuit of what he wanted.

You’re inviting us to the rooftop populated with the people the gangs are after?” Deret hollered. “Given that we’re planning ways to collapse your rooftop onto the makarovi milling in the factory, we thought you’d find it a more appealing perch.

It is too late now.” The messenger tried to writhe about. “Lord Cai wanted confirmation and confession, but Tyler will have you answer for your insolence. You dare threaten the Scarlet Gang, you pay with blood and fire.

If you would just listen to me . . . if you would just look at the pictures I took—” “We’ve seen them, Miss Maxwell. Several times already. Frankly, nothing you’ve said tonight checks out—not your statement, and not these grainy, unreadable images from your cell phone.” “I’m sorry if the quality is lacking,” Gabrielle replied, acidly. “The next time I’m witnessing a blood slaughter by a gang of psychos, I’ll have to remember to bring my Leica and a few extra lenses.

She felt the State of Rock was symbolised by the stadium-type concerts given earlier that summer by the likes of the Who the Stones and Elton John, causing her to opine, 'The time is right for an aggressive infusion of life blood.' She also claimed the new London punk scene had not been inspired by the New York new wave, but was instead developing parallel to it.

Many weeks of street fighting ensued. In his defense of Sestius against charges of violence in 56, Cicero described in graphic terms the effects of this gang warfare: “The Tiber was full of citizens’ corpses, the public sewers were choked with them and the blood that streamed from the Forum had to be mopped up with sponges.” To begin with, the cure was worse than the disease and public business once more came to a standstill. However, by the summer Clodius, while by no means defeated, was at least being contained.

The Lover Reconsiders Wait... You. Come hither come closer come here, shrug and wriggle your way out of those clothes, shed them like baby teeth, like snakeskin, like feathers from the molt of a phoenix come here let me hold you let my arms draw you closer come hither let me be suffused with your scent come here now. I want to kiss you, I want to kiss you, I want to kiss my way down your body and back up again give me your guided tour, teach me of your landmarks those hips of yours are strangers to my touch but I mean to make their acquaintance so yes there here I want to kiss you I want to learn what you whisper when you kiss with your heart’s shutters open I want to nip at your lower lip I want the rush of blood to make that mouth tingle I want to talk in quiet tones to all of you come hither come closer come here Now, bolt the door, now, unplug the phone, now warn the neighbors to ignore the racket I do not want fifteen minutes of your time I want the whole fucking night. Now let me see the smile you save for special occasions Now don’t pick a favorite position pick five Now I want to bathe myself in you Now now now like the Ganges, like the Red Sea, like the Amazon I want to follow you down to your ocean Now I want to savor you, lover, come to me make time and I will make you breakfast I want to become overfamiliar with your tastes come hither come closer come here come now you.

Her father was and had always been the leader of a ruthless gang, the head of a criminal empire. He had never hesitated to give punishment where punishment was deserved, and Juliette had never blinked until now—now, when punishment was still fair, but fair brought the blood of one of her best friends.

to my room.   Sheriff John Moultrie blew through his teeth and pursed lips, making a sound more akin to a steaming teapot than a whistle. The tune was “On the Road to Alabam’,” a melody he’d picked up from watching gangs of gandy dancers as a child; he’d forgotten the words, but the ditty remained part of his grain.

ladies with brass clubs – the Fates, armed for war. Jason decided there was nothing in the world scarier than a gang of bat-wielding grannies.

Resetting the password only further frustrated her because the password had to include an uppercase letter, a number, a haiku, a gang sign, and the blood of a virgin.

There's blood on every piece of here.

Tyler would do all in his power to ensure the survival of the Scarlet Gang, while Juliette no longer had a single desire to be fighting the blood feud, not when it was so damn pointless.

You wish that a gang of unwashed hippies would break into your house and murder your family and write death to pigs in human blood on your walls because you don’t want to pack bag lunches anymore?

the soldier-police were predictably increasing their presence around all Chain-Gang All-Stars events and many politicians had already appeared before holostreams to implore nonviolence. An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,” was “law and order,” and resistance to perpetual violence was an act of terror. It would have been funny if there weren’t so much blood everywhere.

We're like the Scooby gang or something.' 'Or something,' I replied drily. But my heart gave a stupid little flip. Other than group therapy at Bell Hill, I'd never been part of anything before. Ever. I really hoped I didn't get any of them killed.

She said no, okay? How many times does she have to refuse?” Adrian demanded. “If she doesn’t want to, then that’s all there is to it. This has nothing to do with her. This is our science project. She’s here to protect Jill and has plenty to do there. So stop harassing her already!” “‘Harassing’ is kind of a strong word,” Dimitri said, calm in the face of Adrian’s outburst. “Not when you keep pushing someone who wants to be left alone,” countered Adrian. He shot me a concerned look before fixing his anger back on Sonya and Dimitri. “Stop ganging up on her.” “Take Eddie’s blood. Take Belikov’s blood. Take your own for all I care. But if she doesn’t want to give hers, then that’s all there is to it. She said no. This conversation is done.

The river, the canyon, the desert world was always changing, from moment to moment, from miracle to miracle, within the firm reality of mother earth. River, rock, sun, blood, hunger, wings, joy—this is the real, Smith would have said, if he’d wanted to. If he felt like it. All the rest is androgynous theosophy.

Protection For gangs, clubs, and nations Causing grief in human relations It's a turf war on a global scale I'd rather hear both sides of the tale See, it's not about races Just places, faces Where your blood comes from Is where your space is I've seen the bright get duller I'm not going to spend my life being a color.

Those men and women were not press-ganged into service. It was not just a choice for them. It was and remains a calling. And sir, no nation on earth can hope to survive long without people who will answer that call. No nation can hope to survive if it does not respect what they have offered and do the hard things that history sometimes asks of us. Sometimes, Mister President, there is no answer but blood.

— Aye, Charlene's fucked off. She's goat this boyfriend. He's just gittin back oot the jail. Renton taps up a vein in his wrist. — Well that ain't gonna help. — It isnae aboot helping, it's aboot being. If being Scottish is about one thing, it's aboot gittin fucked up, Renton explains, working the needle slowly into his flesh. — Tae us intoxication isnae just a huge laugh, or even a basic human right. It's a way ay life, a political philosophy. Rabbie burns said it: whisky and freedom gang thegither. Whatever happens in the future tae the economy, whatever fucking government's in power, rest assured we'll still be pissin it up and shootin shit intae ourselves, he announces, pulsing with glorious anticipation as he sucks his dark blood back into the barrel, then lets his ravenous veins drink the concoction.

I catch sight of Luis with one of my bandannas on his head and my gut tightens. I yank it off him. "Don't ever touch this, Luis." "Why not?" he asks, his deep brown eyes all innocent. To Luis, it's a bandanna. To me, it's a symbol of what is and will never be. How the hell am I supposed to explain it to an eleven-year-old kid? He knows what I am. It's no secret the bandanna has the Latino Blood colors on it. Payback and revenge got me in and now there's no way out. But I'll die before I let one of my brothers get sucked in. I ball the bandanna in my fist. "Luis, don't touch my shit. Especially my Blood stuff." "I like red and black." That's the last thing I need to hear. "If I ever catch you wearin' it again, you'll be sportin' black and blue," I tell him. "Got it, little brother?" He shrugs. "Yeah. I got it.

He has spent weeks on the pristine, frosty shore of Lake Baikal in Siberia. He has drunk himself stupid in the fairy-tale blood brothels of old Dubrovnik, lounged in red-smoke dens in Laos, enjoyed the New York blackout of 1977, and more recently, feasted on Vegas showgirls in the Dean Martin suite at the Bellagio. He has watched Hindu abstainers wash away their sins in the Ganges, danced a midnight tango on a boulevard in Buenos Aires, and bitten into a faux geisha under the shade of a shogun pavilion in Kyoto.

I wanted to come back the minute I’d Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn’t go anywhere!” “A gang of what?” asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years. “Snatchers,” said Ron. “They’re everywhere--gangs trying to earn gold by rounding up Muggle-borns and blood traitors, there’s a reward from the Ministry for everyone captured. I was on my own and I look like I might be school age; they got really excited, thought I was a Muggle-born in hiding. I had to talk fast to get out of being dragged to the Ministry.” “What did you say to them?” “Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of.” “And they believed that?” “They weren’t the brightest. One of them was definitely part troll, the smell off him…” Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at this small instance of humor, but her expression remained stony above her tightly knotted limbs.

And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but still he knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the Moth had breathed that air so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and marrow.

The story of Kelly is easily told. He was a murderous thug who deserved to be hanged and was. He came from a family of rough Irish settlers, who made their living by stealing livestock and waylaying innocent passers-by. Like most bushrangers he was at pains to present himself as a champion of the oppressed, though in fact there wasn’t a shred of nobility in his character or his deeds. He killed several people, often in cold blood, sometimes for no very good reason. In 1880, after years on the run, Kelly was reported to be holed up with his modest gang (a brother and two friends) in Glenrowan, a hamlet in the foothills of the Warby Range in north-eastern Victoria. Learning of this, the police assembled a large posse and set off to get him. As surprise attacks go, it wasn’t terribly impressive. When the police arrived (on an afternoon train) they found that word of their coming had preceded them and that a thousand people were lined up along the streets and sitting on every rooftop eagerly awaiting the spectacle of gunfire. The police took up positions and at once began peppering the Kelly hideout with bullets. The Kellys returned the fire and so it went throughout the night. The next dawn during a lull Kelly stepped from the dwelling, dressed unexpectedly, not to say bizarrely, in a suit of home-made armour – a heavy cylindrical helmet that brought to mind an inverted bucket, and a breastplate that covered his torso and crotch. He wore no armour on his lower body, so one of the policemen shot him in the leg. Aggrieved, Kelly staggered off into some nearby woods, fell over and was captured. He was taken to Melbourne, tried and swiftly executed. His last words were: ‘Such is life.

Samsa looked down in dismay at his naked body. How ill-formed it was! Worse than ill-formed. It possessed no means of self-defense. Smooth white skin (covered by only a perfunctory amount of hair) with fragile blue blood vessels visible through it; a soft, unprotected belly; ludicrous, impossibly shaped genitals; gangly arms and legs (just two of each!); a scrawny, breakable neck; an enormous, misshapen head with a tangle of stiff hair on its crown; two absurd ears, jutting out like a pair of seashells. Was this thing really him? Could a body so preposterous, so easy to destroy (no shell for protection, no weapons for attack), survive in the world?

These fervent Lambs of God, as they called themselves, were largely drawn from among Ervil’s fifty-four children—progeny who remained fanatically devoted to their father long after his death. Led by a son named Aaron LeBaron who was just thirteen when Ervil died, this gang of boys, girls, and young adults—most of whom had been physically and/or sexually abused by older members of the sect and then abandoned—resolved to avenge Ervil’s death by systematically spilling the blood of the persons listed in The Book of the New Covenants. A prosecutor assigned to the case referred to this pack of parentless kids as the LeBaron clan’s “Lord of the Flies generation.

Yes, God saved us because He loved us. But He is God. He has infinite imagination. Couldn’t He have dreamed up a different redemption? Couldn’t He have saved us with a smile, a pang of hunger, a word of forgiveness, a single drop of blood? And if He had to die, then for God’s sake—for Christ’s sake—couldn’t He have died in bed, died with dignity? Why was He condemned like a criminal? Why was His back flayed with whips? Why was His head crowned with thorns? Why was He nailed to wood and allowed to die in frightful, lonely agony? Why was the last breath drawn in bloody disgrace, while the world for which He lay dying egged on His executioners with savage fury like some kind of gang rape by uncivilized brutes in Central Park?

You’ve read the story of Jesse James— Of how he lived and died; If you’re still in need Of something to read, Here’s the story of Bonnie and Clyde. Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang. I’m sure you all have read How they rob and steal And those who squeal Are usually found dying or dead. There’s lots of untruths to these write-ups; They’re not so ruthless as that; Their nature is raw; They hate all the law— The stool pigeons, spotters, and rats. They call them cold-blooded killers; They say they are heartless and mean; But I say this with pride, That I once knew Clyde When he was honest and upright and clean. But the laws fooled around, Kept taking him down And locking him up in a cell, Till he said to me, “I’ll never be free, So I’ll meet a few of them in hell.

Fresno Bulldogs: This gang is one of the few California Hispanic gangs not to claim allegiance to the Surenos or Nortenos. Latin Kings: This Chicago-based group consists of more than 160 cliques in 30 states and has as many as 35,000 members. Mara Salvatrucha (or M.S. 13): This violent Hispanic organization has origins in El Salvador. It has roughly 8,000 members in the United States and another 20,000 outside the United States. Bloods: With its roots in Los Angeles, this African American street gang exists in 123 cities and 33 states. Crips: Also founded in Los Angeles, this African American gang exists in 40 states and has 30,000 to 35,000 members. Gangster Disciples: This Chicago-based African American gang is active in at least 31 states and has more than 25,000 members. Vice Lord Nation: This Chicago-based African American gang has around 30,000 members in 28 states.

It was about a year ago when I first made contact with members of the British Foreign Office. I volunteered my services and privileged information to a foreign power. Which is effectively treason, or would be, except that I regard it as pure patriotism. You see, Clara, I no longer recognize the Germany I love. I see these brutes strong-arming a small nation like Austria, and now threatening Czechoslovakia, because they can and because no one will stop them. I see them running riot with the rule of law - Germany, whose legal system is the greatest in the world, which has always stood for justice and right. And when I see this gang of thugs flooding the streets of my beloved country with tides of blood, I feel hatred swelling inside me. Damn Himmler and Heydrich and all the other sadists. I hate this false Germany, as much as I love the real Germany. And I intend to do something about it.

Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They knew that if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I couldn't understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under. She sucked ice through threadbare white terry. If my mother were here, she'd have made Melinda meek cough up the drugs, sure enough. "Mamacita, ay," Yvonne wailed. I didn't know why she would call her mother. She hated her mother. She hadn't seen her in six years, since the day she locked Yvonne and her brother and sisters in their apartment in Burbank to go out and party, and never came back. Yvonne said she let her boyfriends run a train on her when she was eleven. I didn't even know what that meant. Gang bang, she said. And still she called out, Mama. It wasn't just Yvonne. All down the ward, they called for their mothers. ... I held onto Yvonne's hands, and I imagined my mother, seventeen years ago, giving birth to me. Did she call for her mother?...I thought of her mother, the one picture I had, the little I knew. Karin Thorvald, who may or may not have been a distant relation of King Olaf of Norway, classical actress and drunk, who could recite Shakespeare by heart while feeding the chickens and who drowned in the cow pond when my mother was thirteen. I couldn't imagine her calling out for anyone. But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers and purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women in barstools. Not those women with their complaints and their magazines, controlling women, women who asked, what's in it for me? Not the women who watched TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition, get used to it. They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for is when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us. Yvonne was sitting up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do. "Breathe," I said in her ear. "Please, Yvonne, try." She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back on the narrow bed, too tired to go on. All she could do was grip my hand and cry. And I thought of the way the baby was linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother, all the way back, insider and inside, knit into a chain of disaster that brought her to this bed, this day. And not only her. I wondered what my own inheritance was going to be. "I wish I was dead," Yvonne said into the pillowcase with the flowers I'd brought from home. The baby came four hours later. A girl, born 5:32 PM.

The cane is just not going to cut it. I shared with some of my colleagues that these brothers live in neighborhoods where they are getting whapped with a piece of stick all night, stabbed with knives, and pegged with screwdrivers that have been sharpened down, and they are leaking blood. When you come to a fella without even interviewing him, without sitting him down to find out why you did what you did, your only interest is caning him, because you are burned out and frustrated yourself. You say to him, ‘Bend over, you are getting six.’ And the boy grits his teeth, skin up his face, takes those six cuts, and he is gone. But have you really been effective? Caning him is no big deal, because he’s probably ducking bullets at night. He has a lot more things on his mind than that. On the other hand, we can further send our delinquent students into damnation by telling them they are no body and all we want to do is punish, punish, punish. Here at R.M. Bailey, we have been trying a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, nothing that we do is better than the voice itself. Nothing is better than talking to the child, listening, developing trust, developing a friendship. Feel free to come to me anytime if something is bothering you, because I was your age once before. Charles chuck Mackey, former vice principal and coach of the R. M. Bailey Pacers school.

Chinese companies have been smuggling pill presses illegally into the United States, mislabeling them as machine tools or other items or sending them disassembled to avoid detection.69 The destination is drug dealers and criminal gangs70 for the “mass production” of street drugs.71 Now Chinese companies send large quantities of pill presses to Mexico, too, including the metal cast dies to imprint pills with counterfeit numbers such as “M523” and “10/352,” which are the markings of real oxycodone pills. In other words, these Chinese companies are helping dealers produce counterfeit and illegal street drugs.72 In April 2020, the DOJ sent out an alert to law enforcement agencies with a blunt headline: “Chinese Pill Presses Are Key Components for Illegally Manufactured Fentanyl.” In the document, which was obtained by the author, the DOJ noted the “relatively moderate pricing” of $1,000 per pill press—essentially at cost. Why are Chinese companies not charging a huge markup to sell the pill presses to the drug cartels? The DOJ also noted that the “ambiguous export regulations in China allow traffickers to use vague manifest descriptions to describe pill press machines to avoid scrutiny from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel.”73 Chinese pill press manufacturers are required by US law to alert the DEA when they ship pill presses to the United States so federal authorities can track those who might be illegally producing drugs.

Christianity was the vampire of the imperium Romanum, — overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture that could await its time. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The imperium Romanum that we know, and that the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know better and better, — this most admirable of all works of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the structure to follow was not to prove its worth for thousands of years. To this day, nothing on a like scale sub specie aeterni has been brought into being, or even dreamed of! — This organization was strong enough to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do with such things — the first principle of all genuinely great architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption — against Christians .... These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality — this cowardly, effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all “souls,” step by step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause, their own serious purpose, their own pride. The sneakishness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge — all that sort of thing became master of Rome...

This book consists not only of my stories of mistakes, rather it’s all our stories of mistakes and heart aches. It’s the plight of all of us who were rebelling, and kicking against the social messes we found ourselves in. Yet there are so many others who are not alive today, and I feel obligated in not allowing the lessons of their mistakes to lie in the grave with them. It was the United States Senator, Al Franken, who stated, “Mistakes are a part of being human. Precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.” I’m revealing all of those mistakes and more, sadly a lot of them are fatal. In an attempt to have these real life lessons obtained in blood, prevent the blood-shedding of so many others. These stories are ones that young people can understand and identify with. While at the same time empowering them, to make better decisions about their choice of friends, the proper use of their time and how one wrong move can be fatal. I guess the major question that we all have to ask ourselves at the end of the day would be: how could I and so many others have been prevented from becoming monsters? You be the judge. I now extend my hand to you, and personally invite you to take a journey with me into the heartlands of innocence to menacing, from a youngster to a monster, and the making of a predator. I will safely walk you down the deserted and darkened street corners which were once my world of crime, gang violence and senseless murders. It’s a different world unto itself, one which could only be observed up close by invitation only. Together we will learn the motivation behind hard-core gangsters, and explore the minds of cold-blooded murderers. You will discover the way they think about their own lives, and why they are so remorseless about the taking of another’s life. So, if you will, please journey with me as we discover together how the fight of our lives were wrapped up in our fathers.

My mum once told me that the bravest sailors weren’t the ones who sailed through the storm, but the ones who remained in port whilst it raged out at sea. I never really understood what she meant by that, until now. For seventeen years I succeeded in standing back and watching that storm wreak havoc, never once venturing into the expanse of the ocean like a large proportion of kids on my estate had done. Unlike me, they were drawn into the glamour and the notoriety of joining a gang. Some did it for the promise of a family unit that they didn’t have at home. Some did it because they were too weak or too vulnerable to say no, while others did it because they were bored. And some, like Eastern, joined out of sheer desperation. I chose to stay away. It’s true, I might’ve been the delinquent kid that everyone saw when they looked at me. I might’ve gotten into trouble with the law, but I refused to set sail into a storm that wasn’t of my own making. I refused to join a gang. The way I saw it, whatever trouble I got into was on my terms and not for some self-proclaimed gang leader with a skewed view of the world and their own set of rules. I never wanted to be beholden to anyone but myself, and above all else, I always wanted more out of life than the hand I’ve been dealt. Maybe it was my mother’s fault for filling my head with far-fetched stories, but I wanted what was on the other side of the storm. I wanted what lay far, far beyond the horizon. Deep down I’d craved the life my mum used to tell me about in her stories. It gave me something to focus on, to dream about, even if it wasn’t real. Ironic then, that I’m now a part of the life I worked so hard to avoid, trying to protect the people I love from falling victim to it. And all because my love for a makeshift family meant I couldn’t stand back and watch the storm anymore. I must set sail right into the heart of it because I love Eastern, Tracy and Braydon enough to do something about their situation. They might not be my blood, but they are my family and I won’t abandon them in a time of need. Pity the same couldn’t be said for my own parents.

we neared Liverpool’s Lime Street station, we passed through a culvert with walls that appeared to rise up at least thirty feet, high enough to block out the sun. They were as smooth as Navajo sandstone. This had been bored out in 1836 and had been in continuous use ever since, the conductor told me. “All the more impressive,” he said, “when you consider it was all done by Irish navvies working with wheelbarrows and picks.” I couldn’t place his accent and asked if he himself was Irish, but he gave me a disapproving look and told me he was a native of Liverpool. He had been talking about the ragged class of nineteenth-century laborers, usually illiterate farmhands, known as “navvies”—hard-drinking and risk-taking men who were hired in gangs to smash the right-of-way in a direct line from station to station. Many of them had experienced digging canals and were known by the euphemism “navigators.” They wore the diminutive “navvy” as a term of pride. Polite society shunned them, but these magnificent railways would have been impossible without their contributions of sweat and blood. Their primary task was cleaving the hillsides so that tracks could be laid on a level plain for the weak locomotive engines of the day. Teams of navvies known as “butty gangs” blasted a route with gunpowder and then hauled the dirt out with the same kind of harness that so many children were then using in the coal mines: a man at the back of a full wheelbarrow would buckle a thick belt around his waist, then attach that to a rope dangling from the top of the slope and allow himself to be pulled up by a horse. This was how the Lime Street approach had been dug out, and it was dangerous. One 1827 fatality happened as “the poor fellow was in the act of undermining a heavy head of clay, fourteen or fifteen feet high, when the mass fell upon him and literally crushed his bowels out of his body,” as a Liverpool paper told it. The navvies wrecked old England along with themselves, erecting a bizarre new kingdom of tracks. In a passage from his 1848 novel Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens gives a snapshot of the scene outside London: Everywhere

INTERNATIONAL LAW WAS CREATED DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION BECAUSE a group of Mexicans—and one African American—gang-raped and murdered two teenaged girls in Houston, Texas.1 The crime made history in another way: It led to the most death sentences handed out for a single crime in Texas since 1949.2 Do you even know about this case? The only reason the media eventually admitted that the lead rapist, Jose Ernesto Medellin, was an illegal alien from Mexico was to try to overturn his conviction on the grounds that he had not been informed of his right, as a Mexican citizen, to confer with the Mexican consulate. Journalists have an irritating tendency to skimp on detail when reporting crimes by immigrants, a practice that will not be followed here. One summer night in June 1993, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, who had just turned sixteen, were returning from a pool party, and decided to take a shortcut through a park to make their 11:30 p.m. curfew. They encountered a group of Hispanic men, who were in the process of discussing “gang etiquette,” such as not complaining if other members talked about having sex with your mother.3 The girls ran away, but Medellin grabbed Jennifer and began ripping her clothes off. Hearing her screams, Elizabeth came back to help her friend. For more than an hour, the five Hispanics and one black man raped the teens, vaginally, anally, and orally—“every way you can assault a human being,” as the prosecutor put it.4 The girls were beaten, kicked, and stomped, their teeth knocked out and their ribs broken. One of the Hispanic men told Medellin’s fourteen-year-old brother to “get some,” so he raped one of the girls, too. But when it was time to kill the girls, Medellin said his brother was “too small to watch” and dragged the girls into the woods.5 There, the girls were forced to kneel on the ground and a belt or shoelace was looped around their necks. Then a man on each side pulled on the cord as hard as he could. The men strangling Jennifer pulled so hard they broke the belt. Medellin later complained that “the bitch wouldn’t die.” When it was done, he repeatedly stomped on the girls’ necks, to make sure they were dead.6 At trial, Medellin’s sister-in-law testified that shortly after the gruesome murders, Medellin was laughing about it, saying they’d “had some fun with some girls” and boasting that he had “virgin blood” on his underpants.7 It’s difficult to understand a culture where such an orgy of cruelty is bragged about at all, but especially in front of women.

It’s true I sometimes imagine my life is different. That I’m somebody else. Maybe more than sometimes. But I’m not the only one around who makes stuff up. Adults are always telling you you can be whatever you want when you grow up, but they don’t mean it. They don’t believe it. They just want you to believe it. It’s a fairy tale. Like the tooth fairy. Something they tell you that gets you excited about something not so fantastic. If you think about it, it’s pretty gross—your teeth just falling out of your head, leaving bloody sockets for your tongue to poke through. But the story makes it better and the dollar makes it worth it. Then one afternoon you sneak into their bedroom and open the drawer of their nightstand, looking for the DS that they confiscated as punishment for your jumping on the roof of the car again, and you find the little Tupperware full of a dozen jagged pearls, caked brown with your own dried blood, your name written in black Sharpie across a piece of Scotch tape, and you stare at them for a moment in disbelief, wondering if maybe they aren’t what you think they are. Maybe they are somebody else’s teeth. They can’t be yours, because your teeth are in Neverland. Or Toothtopia. Or outer space. Or wherever kleptomaniac fairies live. So you confront them, your lying, scheming parents. Over breakfast, you ask your mom about the tooth fairy: where she lives, what she does during the day, how she manages to collect so many teeth each night, and how come some kids’ teeth (like Robbie Dinkler’s) are worth five bucks when yours only fetch a dollar apiece. And you see her search for some explanation that is at once both magical and believable, but you know she’s just making it up as she goes. It’s the same with all grown-ups. They tell you what they think you want to hear and let life tell you the truth later. You can be an astronaut or the president of the United States or second baseman for the White Sox, but you can’t really because you hate math, aren’t rich, and can’t even hit the ball. It’s just another fairy tale. So when your next tooth falls out, you figure you’ll just ask them if they’d like to keep it or throw it away, because you’re not buying it anymore. Or maybe not. Maybe you won’t tell them. Maybe you’ll still put your teeth under your pillow. Because sometimes it’s better to believe in the impossible. To believe you are a secret agent or a private detective or a superhero and not just a kid with freckled cheeks and gangly arms who is too clumsy to leap a tipped-over garbage can in a single bound. Until you are lying in the middle of the sidewalk, with a throbbing ankle and bloody chin, wishing you hadn’t even tried.

Real Quick" [Intro:] Valuable lesson, man I had to grow up That's why I never ask for help I'll do it for you niggaz and do it for myself [Chorus:] I go 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga! [50 Cent:] I'll run my blade 'cross a nigga ass {"real quick"} I'm so for real I'm on some real real nigga shit You playin boy I'll get you hit {"real quick"} You better hope the parademics come {"real quick"} Got me fucked up you think it's different now a nigga rich Before I get to cuttin know you niggaz better cut the shit Boy, you gon' have ya head popped, pull a trigger for me And my lil' niggaz trigger op' like it's legal homie No game when I bang, boy I empty the clip You run like a bitch, you ain't 'bout that shit Hey hey hey hey, I'll catch you another day day day day It's the Unit back to the bullshit [Tony Yayo:] Yeah! Nothin in life is out of bounds AK hold about a hundred rounds 60 shots like K.D. at the Rucker's Okay! When I see you on respirators Southside nigga 'til the day I'm gone Indulge in the violence when the drama on Yeah, these rap niggaz lukewarm I'm two sleeves of dope, when the mic on [Chorus] [Kidd Kidd:] Real quick, Rida Gang fuck nigga, huh! Don't Tweet me, see me when you see me Down to make the news just to say that I'm on TV (Kidd Kidd) This clip rated R, niggaz PG Them shells burn like a bootleg CD (huh?) Fuck love, I want the money When you get too much of it they gon' say you actin funny "Kidd, how you feel now that the Unit's back?" Like a million bucks, muh'fucker do the math! [Young Buck:] Cold-blooded, boy my heart don't feel shit Get with me, ask 50, I'll take the hit {"real quick"} Balenciagas, you can still get ya ass kicked Take a rapper nigga bitch and make a real flick I know I'm different from what you usually be dealin with Don't need a mic, give me some white to make a million with Single borough, six shots on the Brooklyn Bridge I'll let the nigga Drake tell you what I just did (yeah) [Chorus] [Lloyd Banks:] Nigga gettin money new to you (uh) I give a fuck if shit get ugly, there'll be a beautiful funeral You fit the script I'm gon' assume it's true Can't manuever through the street without a strategy, ain't nobody to tutor you And man was lucky Unit's through, you know why he flows 15 years, switchin dealers like casinos And my goon'll clip you on the arm (uhh) I'm out the country every week and dumpin ash out on the Autobahn Auto-pilot's always on Rather better livin, I've been [?] green bills callin me all day long This is homicide, more tears in your mama eyes More reason to wake up, real niggaz arrive [Chorus]

The Old Issue October 9, 1899 “HERE is nothing new nor aught unproven,” say the Trumpets, “Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed. “It is the King—the King we schooled aforetime !” (Trumpets in the marshes—in the eyot at Runnymede!) “Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger,” peal the Trumpets, “Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall. “It is the King!”—inexorable Trumpets— (Trumpets round the scaffold at the dawning by Whitehall!) “He hath veiled the Crown and hid the Sceptre,” warn the Trumpets, “He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will. “Hard die the Kings—ah hard—dooms hard!” declare the Trumpets, Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill! Ancient and Unteachable, abide—abide the Trumpets! Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets— Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings! All we have of freedom, all we use or know— This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law. Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King. Till our fathers ’stablished, after bloody years, How our King is one with us, first among his peers. So they bought us freedom—not at little cost Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost, Over all things certain, this is sure indeed, Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed. Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure. Whining “He is weak and far”; crying “Time shall cure.”, (Time himself is witness, till the battle joins, Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people’s loins.) Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace. Suffer not the old King here or overseas. They that beg us barter—wait his yielding mood— Pledge the years we hold in trust—pawn our brother’s blood— Howso’ great their clamour, whatsoe’er their claim, Suffer not the old King under any name! Here is naught unproven—here is naught to learn. It is written what shall fall if the King return. He shall mark our goings, question whence we came, Set his guards about us, as in Freedom’s name. He shall take a tribute, toll of all our ware; He shall change our gold for arms—arms we may not bear. He shall break his judges if they cross his word; He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord. He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring Watchers ’neath our window, lest we mock the King— Hate and all division; hosts of hurrying spies; Money poured in secret, carrion breeding flies. Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay, These shall deal our Justice: sell—deny—delay. We shall drink dishonour, we shall eat abuse For the Land we look to—for the Tongue we use. We shall take our station, dirt beneath his feet, While his hired captains jeer us in the street. Cruel in the shadow, crafty in the sun, Far beyond his borders shall his teachings run. Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled, Laying on a new land evil of the old— Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain— All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again. Here is naught at venture, random nor untrue— Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew. Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid: Step for step and word for word—so the old Kings did! Step by step, and word by word: who is ruled may read. Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed— All the right they promise—all the wrong they bring. Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King!

At the same time, Beausoleil got into trouble with a biker gang who hung out at Spahn Ranch. Beausoleil had sold mescaline manufactured by Gary Hinman to the bikers, who reported that the drugs were actually poison. They wanted their money back. Manson convinced Beausoleil to confront Hinman and demand from him not only the drug money but anything else of value he possessed. Beausoleil drove with Bruce Davis, Susan Atkins, and Mary Brunner to Hinman’s house on July 25, 1969. At the house, Beausoleil pulled a gun on Hinman when he refused to give back the money. There was nothing wrong with the mescaline, Hinman said. Susan kept the gun on Hinman while Beausoleil searched the house, but Hinman managed to overpower her, causing Beausoleil to beat him. Eventually, Davis drove back to Spahn Ranch to pick up Manson, who wanted to take part in what was to follow. Manson brought a sword and used it to slash Hinman’s face and cut off part of his ear. After Manson left, Beausoleil continued to beat Hinman over the course of the night and into the next day, with Susan and Mary still present. Hinman maintained that he had no money and threatened to call the police as soon as they left. Beausoleil called Manson to tell him about Hinman’s threat, and Manson ordered him to kill Hinman, making the murder look as though the Black Panthers did it in retaliation for the murder of Lotsa Poppa. Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death and used his blood to write the phrase “political piggy” on the wall. Beausoleil, Susan, and Mary tried to remove their fingerprints from Hinman’s home before they drove away in his cars. It took two weeks before anyone found Hinman’s body.

Manson robbed the LaBiancas first, taking Rosemary’s purse from her. Next, he collected Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten from the car and brought them into the house, giving Tex the horrifying instruction to “make sure everybody does something.” Then Manson got back in the car and drove away from the LaBianca home with Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Clem Grogan inside. Inside the house, Tex Watson killed Leno LaBianca by stabbing him in the throat multiple times with a bayonet. He then used his bayonet on Rosemary who was trying to fight off Patricia and Lesley. Patricia stabbed Rosemary again when Tex, heeding Manson’s instruction that everyone should take part in the murders, told Leslie to take over. Leslie stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 16 times. Tex carved the word “WAR” into Leno’s stomach before all three murderers wrote the words “Rise,” “Death to pigs,” and “Healter Skelter (sic)” on the walls in blood. As a parting gesture, Patricia stabbed Leno’s corpse with a carving fork, which she left jutting out of his stomach alongside the steak knife she left in his neck. While all of this had been going on, Manson was driving the other family members around Los Angeles. Manson bought them chocolate milkshakes with Rosemary LaBianca’s money then had Linda ditch Rosemary’s wallet in the hope that a black person would find it and incriminate themselves in the LaBianca murders. But the killing still wasn’t over. Manson pressed the others to find out if they knew anyone in the Venice Beach area they were driving through. Linda Kasabian admitted to knowing an actor who lived nearby. Manson handed Linda a knife and told her to knock on this actor’s door and stab him. Manson also gave his gun to Clem, instructing him to shoot the actor if Linda was unable to stab him to death. Faced with the task of murdering an innocent man, Linda balked and told the others that she couldn’t remember where the actor lived. Manson drove back to Spahn Ranch, and the rest of the gang hitchhiked back.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily—whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence—whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

DURING THE RIDE back up to Telluride, among tablelands and cañons and red-rock debris, past the stone farmhouses and fruit orchards and Mormon spreads of the McElmo, below ruins haunted by an ancient people whose name no one knew, circular towers and cliffside towns abandoned centuries ago for reasons no one would speak of, Reef was able finally to think it through. If Webb had always been the Kieselguhr Kid, well, shouldn’t somebody ought to carry on the family business—you might say, become the Kid? It might’ve been the lack of sleep, the sheer relief of getting clear of Jeshimon, but Reef began to feel some new presence inside him, growing, inflating—gravid with what it seemed he must become, he found excuses to leave the trail now and then and set off a stick or two from the case of dynamite he had stolen from the stone powder-house at some mine. Each explosion was like the text of another sermon, preached in the voice of the thunder by some faceless but unrelenting desert prophesier who was coming more and more to ride herd on his thoughts. Now and then he creaked around in the saddle, as if seeking agreement or clarification from Webb’s blank eyes or the rictus of what would soon be a skull’s mouth. “Just getting cranked up,” he told Webb. “Expressing myself.” Back in Jeshimon he had thought that he could not bear this, but with each explosion, each night in his bedroll with the damaged and redolent corpse carefully unroped and laid on the ground beside him, he found it was easier, something he looked forward to all the alkaline day, more talk than he’d ever had with Webb alive, whistled over by the ghosts of Aztlán, entering a passage of austerity and discipline, as if undergoing down here in the world Webb’s change of status wherever he was now. . . . He had brought with him a dime novel, one of the Chums of Chance series, The Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth, and for a while each night he sat in the firelight and read to himself but soon found he was reading out loud to his father’s corpse, like a bedtime story, something to ease Webb’s passage into the dreamland of his death. Reef had had the book for years. He’d come across it, already dog-eared, scribbled in, torn and stained from a number of sources, including blood, while languishing in the county lockup at Socorro, New Mexico, on a charge of running a game of chance without a license. The cover showed an athletic young man (it seemed to be the fearless Lindsay Noseworth) hanging off a ballast line of an ascending airship of futuristic design, trading shots with a bestially rendered gang of Eskimos below. Reef began to read, and soon, whatever “soon” meant, became aware that he was reading in the dark, lights-out having occurred sometime, near as he could tell, between the North Cape and Franz Josef Land. As soon as he noticed the absence of light, of course, he could no longer see to read and, reluctantly, having marked his place, turned in for the night without considering any of this too odd. For the next couple of days he enjoyed a sort of dual existence, both in Socorro and at the Pole. Cellmates came and went, the Sheriff looked in from time to time, perplexed.

The topic of US-bought weapons is beyond the scope of this book. Luckily, British journalist Ioan Grillo, based in Mexico, recently published Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels, which documents all the ways easily purchased guns in the United States are smuggled south to arm drug gangs of our Latin American neighbors. In 2018, according to Grillo, the Mexican military submitted records of sixteen thousand firearms it seized—70 percent were found to have been made or bought in the United States. Another study by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced 150,000 guns seized in Mexico between 2007 and 2018 to US vendors and factories.

gangs of L.A. Crenshaw was run by the Crips, though at the time, you still had a few Brims—that’s the original name for the Bloods gang. Time magazine called it Fort Crenshaw—it was one of the most violent schools in the U.S. It was a closed campus—once the bells rang, they locked the school down and you couldn’t leave.

A lot of the people who joined ISIS were the same mercenaries who were in al-Qaeda fighting with bin Laden. And guess where they came from? Most of them were soldiers in the Iraqi army, who had to throw away their uniforms when they lost to the Americans and our military was abolished; what do you expect to happen when you destroy a country and you don’t let them have an army?’ He went on, ‘If you try and dismantle the military, then all you’re left with are a lot of hot-blooded young men with nothing to do. Of course they’re going to fight. Most of the time they don’t even know who or what they’re fighting for, but sooner or later they’ll get their hands on a gun and join a cause. Call them gangsters, mafia, criminals, tribes, ISIS or whatever, they’re all the same. They’re just gangs of young men looking for a fight.

We rule over gangs—Crips and Bloods and Trinitarios and Latin Lords. Dominicans Don’t Play, Broad Day Shooters, Gun Clappin’ Goonies, Goons on Deck (seems to be a theme), From Da Zoo, Money Stackin’ High, Mac Baller Brims. Folk Nation, Insane Gangster Crips, Addicted to Cash, Hot Boys, Get Money Boys.

My blood turned to ice. He was talking about Dallas. My father was responsible for Dallas going to jail? How? Why? Dallas had been arrested in a stupid gang crime and taken the fall for whoever he was with at the time. His whole involvement in the Shadow Grove Wraiths was a major reason we'd fallen out in the first place... but could my father have had a hand in all of that?

I’d found four Alphas who matched me in every way and showed me that it didn’t matter what your Order was, whose blood ran in your veins, or even your gang affiliation. In the end, family was anyone you loved. And the five of us were anime gemelle. Soul mates. But better than that, we were mated souls.

The gang leader was the only one of the group of five—Cass was slouched against his motorbike with his hand loosely resting on a gun of his own—meeting my eyes. On the white marble steps of the house, just two steps lower than where I stood, a bloody lump of meat sat. It took me a hot second to recognize it for what it was... A heart. Probably human. "What... the fuck... is going on?" I repeated, staring at the blood-covered organ in horror. "A gift," Zane replied when my boys all remained silent and stoic. "From your stalker. One of Charon's boys was found last night dumped outside the Laughing Clown and missing his heart... but I guess now we know where that went.

Mombasa, too, furnished with such Palaces and sumptuous houses, Will be laid waste with iron and fire In payment for its former treachery. Along the Indian coast, swarming With enemy ships plotting Portugal's Downfall, Lourenço with sail and with oar Will give his uttermost, and then give more. Though the powerful Samorin's giant ships Choke the entire sea, his cannon-shot Thundering from hot brass Will pulverize rudder, mast, and sail; Then, daring to grapple the enemy Flagship, watch him leap On deck, armed only with lance and sword, To drive four hundred Muslims overboard. But God's inscrutable wisdom (He knows Best what is best for his servants) Will place him where neither strength nor wisdom Can avail in preserving his life. In Chaul, the very seas will churn With blood, fire, and iron resistance, As the combined fleets of Egypt and Cambay Confront him with his destiny that day. The united power of many enemies (Might was defeated only by might), Faltering winds and a swelling sea Will all be ranged against him. Here, let ancient heroes rise To learn from this scion of courage This second Scaeva who, however maimed, Knows no surrender and will not be tamed. With one thighbone completely shattered By a wayward cannon-ball, still He battles on with his forearms alone And a heart not to be daunted, Until another ball snaps the ties Binding flesh and spirit together: The leaping soul slips its body's prison To claim the greater prize of the arisen. Go in peace, O soul! After war's Turbulence, you have earned supreme peace! As for that scattered, broken body, He who fathered it plans vengeance. Already, I hear their hot perdition Looming in a thunderous barrage On Mameluke and cruel Cambayan From catapult, from ordnance and cannon. Here comes the father, magnified By his anger and grief, his heart On fire, his eyes swimming, his soul Transfixed by paternal love. He has taken an oath his noble rage Will make blood run knee-high In the enemy ships; the Nile will mourn, The Indus witness, the Ganges be forlorn.

Further interrogation revealed that the Pires were a gang of Goths who only came out at night and liked to wear fake fangs and drink each other’s blood. I could relate; there wasn’t much good on TV anymore, and kids can get bored in the ‘burbs.

In some areas of London and Manchester the gangs were becoming more of a cultural transmission of America’s Crips and Bloods.

They made their way through the cluttered back alleys that Edna knew so well. They avoided the central bonfire. They were almost to her parents’ street, when curiosity got the better of them. They decided to turn back and take a look. A gap in the wreckage gave them a better look at the open space. The debris in the town square had been cleared away and piled up with wood from the marauding. Nearly a hundred of the giants stood around like a gang of miscreants. Vomit arose in Edna’s throat. They could see a crude line of cages full of weeping, pleading humans. Other humans were strung up from poles, and still others were encircled and taunted by groups of Nephilim. But the ultimate atrocity playing out before their eyes was not one of torture and rape, but cannibalism. The Nephilim were eating their captives one by one. Some took the time to impale the victims and roast them over the flames. Others had no such civility, eating the poor humans alive and drinking their blood. The hostages were not being held for ransom at all. They were being held for food.

There’s not a lot to say. I feel bad for him, but know there’s nothing I can do. If anyone in that house was tortured, it was him. He hated who he was, and what he had become; he honestly didn’t see a way to get out of it, though. He has very dark eyes, but they’re really descriptive. It wasn’t hard to see how the years in the gang tormented him every day. All I’ve wanted for him was for that torture to go away.” “Like he said in the letter, sometimes they don’t have a choice, Rachel. I don’t know why he was in it in the first place, but sometimes you’re recruited whether you want to be or not. Sometimes it’s about your blood family, and sometimes it’s because of a crime you’ve done. But to get out, Rach, it’s practically impossible to get out.” I stilled against his chest, and he hurried to continue. “I’m not telling you to upset you more. I’m just letting you know he was probably living the way he was in order to stay alive. From what you’ve told me, and from his letter, I’m sure you’re right, sweetheart. I’m sure he’s not a bad person deep down.” “He really isn’t,” I unnecessarily argued in Trent’s defense. Kash’s lips pressed down against my head, and he kept them there as he said, “I know. How could he be? He kept you safe and was trying to bring you back to me.” I

After parking in the west lot, far from a certain gang member with a reputation that could scare off even the toughest Fairfield football players, Sierra and I walk up the front steps of Fairfield High. Unfortunately, Alex Fuentes and the rest of his gang friends are hanging by the front doors. “Walk right past them,” Sierra mutters. “Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.” It’s pretty hard not to when Alex Fuentes steps right in front of me and blocks my path. What’s that prayer you’re supposed to say right before you know you’re going to die? “You’re a lousy driver,” Alex says with his slight Latino accent and full-blown-I-AM-THE-MAN stance. The guy might look like an Abercrombie mode with his ripped bod and flawless face, but his picture is more likely to be taken for a mug shot. The kids from the north side don’t really mix with kids from the south side. It’s not that we think we’re better than them, we’re just different. We’ve grown up in the same town, but on totally opposite sides. We live in big houses on Lake Michigan and they live next to the train tracks. We look, talk, act, and dress different. I’m not saying it’s good or bad; it’s just the way it is in Fairfield. And, to be honest, most of the south side girls treat me like Carmen Sanchez does…they hate me because of who I am. Or, rather, who they think I am. Alex’s gaze slowly moves down my body, traveling the length of me before moving back up. It’s not the first time a guy has checked me out, it’s just that I never had a guy like Alex do it so blatantly…and so up-close. I can feel my face getting hot. “Next time, watch where you’re goin’,” he says, his voice cool and controlled. He’s trying to bully me. He’s a pro at this. I won’t let him get to me and win his little game of intimidation, even if my stomach feels like I’m doing one hundred cartwheels in a row. I square my shoulders and sneer at him, the same sneer I use to push people away. “Thanks for the tip.” “If you ever need a real man to teach you how to drive, I can give you lessons.” Catcalls and whistles from his buddies set my blood boiling. “If you were a real man, you’d open the door for me instead of blocking my way,” I say, admiring my own comeback even as my knees threaten to buckle. Alex steps back, pulls the door open, and bows like he’s my butler. He’s totally mocking me, he knows it and I know it. Everyone knows it. I catch a glimpse of Sierra, still desperately searching for nothing in her purse. She’s clueless. “Get a life,” I tell him. “Like yours? Cabróna, let me tell you somethin’,” Alex says harshly. “Your life isn’t reality, it’s fake. Just like you.” “It’s better than living my life as a loser,” I lash out, hoping my words sting as much as his words did. “Just like you.” Grabbing Sierra’s arm, I pull her toward the open door. Catcalls and comments follow us as we walk into the school. I finally let out the breath I must have been holding, then turn to Sierra. My best friend is staring at me, all bug-eyed. “Holy shit, Brit! You got a death wish or something?” “What gives Alex Fuentes the right to bully everyone in his path?” “Uh, maybe the gun he has hidden in his pants or the gang colors he wears,” Sierra says, sarcasm dripping from every word. “He’s not stupid enough to carry a gun to school,” I reason. “And I refuse to be bullied, by him or anyone else.

If the mobs were not made up of masked Klansmen, just well-known local men 'with their horrible faces,' it is natural to wonder how those ordinary people first coalesced into gangs of night riders. How, that is, did a bunch of farmers decide to set fire to churches led by respected men like Levi Greenlee Jr. and Boyd Oliver, and to train the beads of their shotguns on the houses of peaceful landowners like Joseph and Eliza Kellogg? How did they summon the nerve to threaten the cooks and maids of even the wealthiest, most powerful whites in Cumming? Given that it required an organized efforts, kept up not just over months but years, and given just how much will it took to sustain the racial ban generations - from what source did all that energy come, and in what epic drama did these people think they were at last taking part?

The strangest sight was the old giant Thoon, who was getting bludgeoned to death by three old ladies with brass clubs—the Fates, armed for war. Jason decided there was nothing in the world scarier than a gang of bat-wielding grannies. He

Real Quick [Intro:] Valuable lesson, man I had to grow up That's why I never ask for help I'll do it for you niggaz and do it for myself [Chorus:] I go 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, whole squad on that real shit 0 to 100 nigga, real quick Real quick, real fuckin quick nigga! [50 Cent:] I'll run my blade 'cross a nigga ass {"real quick"} I'm so for real I'm on some real real nigga shit You playin boy I'll get you hit {"real quick"} You better hope the parademics come {"real quick"} Got me fucked up you think it's different now a nigga rich Before I get to cuttin know you niggaz better cut the shit Boy, you gon' have ya head popped, pull a trigger for me And my lil' niggaz trigger op' like it's legal homie No game when I bang, boy I empty the clip You run like a bitch, you ain't 'bout that shit Hey hey hey hey, I'll catch you another day day day day It's the Unit back to the bullshit [Tony Yayo:] Yeah! Nothin in life is out of bounds AK hold about a hundred rounds 60 shots like K.D. at the Rucker's Okay! When I see you on respirators Southside nigga 'til the day I'm gone Indulge in the violence when the drama on Yeah, these rap niggaz lukewarm I'm two sleeves of dope, when the mic on [Chorus] [Kidd Kidd:] Real quick, Rida Gang fuck nigga, huh! Don't Tweet me, see me when you see me Down to make the news just to say that I'm on TV (Kidd Kidd) This clip rated R, niggaz PG Them shells burn like a bootleg CD (huh?) Fuck love, I want the money When you get too much of it they gon' say you actin funny "Kidd, how you feel now that the Unit's back?" Like a million bucks, muh'fucker do the math! [Young Buck:] Cold-blooded, boy my heart don't feel shit Get with me, ask 50, I'll take the hit {"real quick"} Balenciagas, you can still get ya ass kicked Take a rapper nigga bitch and make a real flick I know I'm different from what you usually be dealin with Don't need a mic, give me some white to make a million with Single borough, six shots on the Brooklyn Bridge I'll let the nigga Drake tell you what I just did (yeah) [Chorus] [Lloyd Banks:] Nigga gettin money new to you (uh) I give a fuck if shit get ugly, there'll be a beautiful funeral You fit the script I'm gon' assume it's true Can't manuever through the street without a strategy, ain't nobody to tutor you And man was lucky Unit's through, you know why he flows 15 years, switchin dealers like casinos And my goon'll clip you on the arm (uhh) I'm out the country every week and dumpin ash out on the Autobahn Auto-pilot's always on Rather better livin, I've been [?] green bills callin me all day long This is homicide, more tears in your mama eyes More reason to wake up, real niggaz arrive [Chorus]

The children and young people upon whom came this outpouring of the Holy Spirit and through whom came these visions and revelations were members of the Adullam Rescue Mission in Yunnanfu, Yunnan Province, China. For the most part, these children had been beggars in the streets of the city. In some cases they were poor children with one or both parents dead and had been brought to the Home. There were also some prodigals who had run away from their homes in more distant parts of this or adjoining provinces. But from whatever source they came, these children, mostly boys ranging in ages from six to eighteen, had come to us without previous training in morals and without education. Begging is a sort of "gang" system in which stealing is a profitable part. The morals are what would be expected of a "gang" in a godless land. The Bible is carefully and daily taught in the Adullam Home, and the gospel is constantly preached. Since the children coming into the home have always been open to the teachings given, before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit recorded below, some of them were doubtless converted, while many had a very good knowledge of the main themes of the Bible. All who received the Holy Spirit knew enough to believe in one God and to trust in the blood of Christ for salvation. They also prayed for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. They sought Christ. We did not see any one seeking visions or any of the manifestations that were received day by day as all single heartedly prayed and praised the Lord Jesus. He alone was sought and magnified throughout all the weeks of the Spirit's outpouring. In this visitation from the Lord all were treated impartially. The oldest and the youngest, the first arrivals and the latest comers, the best and the worst, all sitting together around their common Father's table were alike treated to His heavenly bounties. This giving of the Promised Spirit was clearly a love gift of grace "apart from works" or personal merit. It was not something that was worked

They’d tried automatically generating the stories in response to the figures but had ended up with nonsense—one scenario suggested by the computer was that a gang of toddlers had terrorised a war veteran with a syringe full of HIV positive blood.

If there had been a fly on the wall, watching us, it probably would have written a description much like this one. “Late afternoon, garage wall: gang of two-legged giant mammals making noise and nodding in unison like trained meerkats. Smaller mammal kneeling before a black box with bright colors. Perhaps this one is the Shaman and this is a religious ritual of some kind?

After I finished Forged in Blood I & II, I wasn't sure if I would revisit these characters, but I polled you guys, and you said you wanted to see more stories with the Emperor's Edge gang. Amaranthe and Sicarius were the most popular request, and I've taken note of that, but I decided the transition from empire to republic probably wouldn't go too smoothly and that we might have to have some adventures back in the city before sending our heroes globe-trotting. Thus... Republic. Amaranthe, Sicarius, Maldynado, Sespian, Tikaya, and her daughter Mahliki are all point-of-view characters in what turned out to be quite a big adventure. I hope you'll enjoy spending time with all of them. I

Snatchers,” said Ron. “They’re everywhere—gangs trying to earn gold by rounding up Muggle-borns and blood traitors, there’s a reward from the Ministry for everyone captured. I was on my own and I look like I might be school age; they got really excited, thought I was a Muggle-born in hiding. I had to talk fast to get out of being dragged to the Ministry.” “What did you say to them?” “Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of.” “And they believed that?” “They weren’t the brightest. One of them was definitely part troll, the smell off him. . . .” Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at this small instance of humor, but her expression remained stony above her tightly knotted limbs. “Anyway, they had a row about whether I was Stan or not. It was a bit pathetic to be honest, but there were still five of them and only one of me and they’d taken my wand. Then two of them got into a fight and while the others were distracted I managed to hit the one holding me in the stomach, grabbed his wand, Disarmed the bloke holding mine, and Disapparated. I didn’t do it so well, Splinched myself again”—Ron held up his right hand to show two missing fingernails; Hermione raised her eyebrows coldly—“and I came out miles from where you were. By the time I got back to that bit of riverbank where we’d been . . . you’d gone.” “Gosh, what a gripping story,” Hermione said in the lofty voice she adopted when wishing to wound. “You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile we went to Godric’s Hollow and, let’s think, what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who’s snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and missed us by about a second.” “What?” Ron said, gaping from her to Harry, but Hermione ignored him. “Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn’t it?” “Hermione,” Harry said quietly, “Ron just saved my life.” She appeared not to have heard him. “One thing I would like to know, though,” she said, fixing her eyes on a spot a foot over Ron’s head. “How exactly did you find us tonight? That’s important. Once we know, we’ll be able to make sure we’re not visited by anyone else we don’t want to see.

I drive into the high school parking lot with my mind more on my sister than on the road. My wheels screech to a stop when I almost hit a guy and girl on a motorcycle. I thought it was an empty parking space. “Watch it, bitch,” Carmen Sanchez, the girl on the back of the motorcycle, says as she flips me the finger. She obviously missed the Road Rage lecture in Driver’s Ed. “Sorry,” I say loudly so I can be heard over the roar of the motorcycle. “It didn’t look like anyone was in this spot.” Then I realize whose motorcycle I almost hit. The driver turns around. Angry dark eyes. Red and black bandana. I sink down into the driver’s seat as far as I can. “Oh, shit. It’s Alex Fuentes,” I say, wincing. “Jesus, Brit,” Sierra says, her voice low. “I’d like to live to see graduation. Get outta here before he decides to kill us both.” Alex is staring at me with his devil eyes while putting the kickstand down on his motorcycle. Is he going to confront me? I search for reverse, frantically moving the stick back and forth. Or course it’s no surprise my dad bought me a car with a stick shift without taking the time to teach me how to master driving the thing. Alex takes a step toward my car. My instincts tell me to abandon the car and flee, as if I was stuck on railroad tracks with a train heading straight for me. I glance at Sierra, who’s desperately searching through her purse for something. Is she kidding me? “I can’t get this damn car in reverse. I need help. What are you looking for?” I ask. “Like…nothing. I’m trying not to make eye contact with those Latino Bloods. Get a move on, will ya?” Sierra responds through gritted teeth. “Besides, I only know how to drive an automatic.” Finally grinding into reverse, my wheels screech loud and hard as I maneuver backward and search for another parking spot. After parking in the west lot, far from a certain gang member with a reputation that could scare off even the toughest Fairfield football players, Sierra and I walk up the front steps of Fairfield High. Unfortunately, Alex Fuentes and the rest of his gang friends are hanging by the front doors. “Walk right past them,” Sierra mutters. “Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.” It’s pretty hard not to when Alex Fuentes steps right in front of me and blocks my path. What’s that prayer you’re supposed to say right before you know you’re going to die?

The Gulabi Gang in Uttar Pradesh is a female vigilante group dedicated to protecting women of all castes from domestic abuse, sexual violence and oppression.

No one now will ever fuck with me! I’m the ghost-friended badass who snuck into Mombie’s dressing room, I’m a preteen hellion who emits her own scent : the awesome stink of a girl who bites, the blood-muddied funk of the bramble cats! In Grandpa Hack’s Horror Mirrors each mirror shows you killed a different way, but no matter the mirror, no matter the wound, no matter stabbed all over, tractor-crushed, or drowned, I look wild and dirty always, a dirt bike gang’s kitten. Someone waiting to sink rabies into the steak of your neck.

In 493 BCE Ajatashatru became king of Magadha; it was said that, impatient for the throne, he had murdered his father, King Bimbisara, the Buddha’s friend. Ajatashatru continued his father’s policy of military conquest and built a small fort on the Ganges, which the Buddha visited shortly before his death; it later became the famous metropolis of Pataliputra. Ajatashatru also annexed Koshala and Kashi and defeated a confederacy of tribal republics, so that when he died in 461, the Kingdom of Magadha dominated

He hadn’t had a chance to move, hardly had a chance to take the slightest step back, before Juliette had pulled forth a knife from her pocket. She pressed it right to his cut and hissed, “We are not kids anymore, Tyler. And if you are to threaten me with outrageous accusations, then you will answer for them.” A soft laugh. “How so?” Tyler rasped. “Will you kill me right here in the hallway? Ten paces away from the breakfast table?” Juliette pressed the knife in deeper. A stream of blood started down her cousin’s cheek, trailed into the lines of her palm, dripped along her arm. Tyler had stopped laughing. “I am the heir of the Scarlet Gang,” Juliette said. Her voice had grown just as sharp as her weapon. “And believe me, tángdì, I will kill you before I let you take it from me.

An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,” was “law and order,” and resistance to perpetual violence was an act of terror. It would have been funny if there weren’t so much blood everywhere.

Jackson knew life was changing and if he had to choose between his sister and a gang of morons it had to be his sister, even if he’d rather be with the morons, because no matter how you felt, blood always came first, and that wasn’t even something you learned, it was just something that was.

TROPHY HUNTERS, by eliminating the most magnificent specimens of a species, enact reverse selection. It’s the opposite of natural selection. The hunters remove the healthiest and fittest males from the gene pool by targeting the largest bears or the lions with the darkest manes. The same sort of reverse selection has had disastrous consequences for elephants, in which it combines with ivory poaching. In many populations, bulls with large tusks have gone virtually extinct. One of the devastating side-effects has been that young bulls have become unruly and dangerous. In Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa, marauding gangs of juvenile elephant bulls went berserk. Like a blood sport, they began to chase down white rhinoceroses, stomping them with their feet and goring them to death with their tusks. They harassed other animals as well. The park resolved this problem by setting up a Big Brother program. Park staff flew in six full-grown bull elephants from Kruger National Park. Bulls keep growing larger throughout their lives, and the oldest ones often roam with younger bulls in tow. Like warriors in training, the latter follow and watch their mentors. The hyperaggressive state of musth—when testosterone levels increase fifty-fold—is curbed when young bulls are exposed to dominant males. A young bull may lose the physical signs of musth within minutes of being put in his place by a bigger one. At Pilanesberg, hormonal suppression and reduced risk-taking in the presence of intimidating adults made all the difference. After the Big Brother program, signs of random violence disappeared. In previous years, elephants had killed over forty endangered white rhinos. The civilizing influence of older bulls stopped the carnage.

Omar explained that Crips was anacronym for Community Revolution in Progress (...) They were first meant to offer guardianship and community to counter crime and violence. (...) Incidentally, the Bloods rose up for the same reason in 1972, except they were meant to provide protection from the Crips. So it was a self-perpetuating cycle of attack and defense.

The Gang of Four consisted of: Bidyut Sen, the group’s mastermind in New York; Steve Benardete, a politically connected New Yorker and former treasurer of the key derivatives lobbying group, ISDA—the International Swaps Dealers Association; George James, head of the London office; and Paul Daniel, leader of the booming East Asian offices, headquartered in Hong Kong.

Morty: Hey, gang, come on! Look it, just `cause we're losing doesn't mean it's all over. Phil: Cut the crap, Morty. I mean, the Mohawks have beaten us the last twelve years, they're gonna beat us again. Tripper: That's just the attitude we don't need. Sure, Mohawk has beaten us twelve years in a row. Sure, they're terrific athletes. They've got the best equipment that money can buy. Hell, every team they're sending over here has their own personal masseuse, not masseur, masseuse. But it doesn't matter. Do you know that every Mohawk competitor has an electrocardiogram, blood and urine tests every 48 hours to see if there's any change in his physical condition? Do you know that they use the most sophisticated training methods from the Soviet Union, East and West Germany, and the newest Olympic power Trinidad-Tobago? But it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER. I tell you, IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! The group: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER... Tripper: And even, and even if we win, if we win, HAH! Even if we win! Even if we play so far over our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days. Even if God in Heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field. Even if every man, woman and child held hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn't matter, because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk cause they've got all the money! It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!

New York’s attack, dubbed “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” by Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum, was the NBA’s most predictable. “Windshield wipers offer more variety than the Knicks’ offense,” mused New York magazine writer Chris Smith. For many years, their possessions often went something like this: a guard would dribble down to the wing and dump an entry pass into Ewing on the block. The center, forced to deal with the spacing of a crowded Twister mat, would turn and face the basket, deciding instantly whether he had enough time to get off a shot before a second and third defender could swarm. If he didn’t have a good look, he would kick the ball out to reset the offense, or, in what was often a victory for the defense, set up a wide-open perimeter try for a shooting-deficient teammate. “If this were football, every time [his teammates] shoot, they’d be accused of intentional grounding,” New York Post columnist Peter Vecsey wrote. Every now and then, there was a pick-and-roll mixed in, or a cross screen to shake things up. When the universe allowed, a Ewing kick-out would lead to a made jumper by one of the guards. But even when players misfired, Ewing was often there to corral the miss, then gracefully put it back for a score. If his teammates were leaving messes, the 7-footer was the Bounty paper towel cleaning up after them.

Roma Montagov shrugged. “Then there is a solution. Destroy the gangs.” Kathleen lurched, almost colliding with the wall that they stood alongside. “No,” she said, horrified. “That might be worse than having a blood feud.” That would be unending grappling, rulers ousted at every turn or politicians who lied at every moment. No one would be as loyal to this city as gangsters were to it. No one.

US political leaders are more focused on going after American gun manufacturers producing a legal product for millions of Americans than cracking down on Chinese companies catering to and further weaponizing criminal gangs in the United States.

If Memphis were alive, gangs would be both her red and white blood cells—killing and healing and repeating.

Celaena panted through her bared teeth as she yanked the pickax out of the overseer’s stomach. The man gurgled blood, clutching at his gut as he looked to the slaves in supplication. But one glance from Celaena, one flash of eyes that showed she had gone beyond the edge, kept the slaves at bay. She merely smiled down at the overseer as she swung the ax into his face. His blood sprayed her legs. The slaves still stayed far away when she brought down the ax upon the shackles that bound her ankles to the rest of them. She didn’t offer to free them, and they didn’t ask; they knew how useless it would be. The woman at the end of the chain gang was unconscious. Her back poured blood, split open by the iron-tipped whip of the dead overseer. She would die by tomorrow if her wounds were not treated. Even if they were, she’d probably die from infection. Endovier amused itself like that. Celaena turned from the woman. She had work to do, and four overseers had to pay a debt before she was done. She stalked from the mine shaft, pickax dangling from her hand. The two guards at the end of the tunnel were dead before they realized what was happening. Blood soaked her clothes and her bare arms, and Celaena wiped it from her face as she stormed down to the chamber where she knew the four overseers worked. She had marked their faces the day they’d dragged that young Eyllwe woman behind the building, marked every detail about them as they used her, then slit her throat from ear to ear. Celaena could have taken the swords from the fallen guards, but for these four men, it had to be the ax. She wanted them to know what Endovier felt like. She reached the entrance to their section of the mines. The first two overseers died when she heaved the ax into their necks, slashing back and forth between them. Their slaves screamed, backing against the walls as she raged past them. When she reached the other two overseers, she let them see her, let them try to draw their blades. She knew it wasn’t the weapon in her hands that made them stupid with panic, but rather her eyes—eyes that told them they had been tricked these past few months, that cutting her hair and whipping her hadn’t been enough, that she had been baiting them into forgetting that Adarlan’s Assassin was in their midst.

How strong must love be to persist in the face of a powerful evil that has named it hate? How resolute must love be when its enemy uses the mass media to convince the world that it is hate? How courageous must love be to raise its banner and sound its trumpets in an age that would purge it—as hate. Of this we can be sure: at some point in the distant past, Whites were a single tribe, a single people. They were alone against a hostile world, a frosty star in the depths of an ancient darkness, ringed by the ferocity of the natural world, besieged by alien tribes and animal predators. But they were a people, together, united, and possessed by an indomitable spirit. Before us, the world’s darkness receded. Its nightmares withered in the light of our coming. Its monsters fled for the darkling holes that brooded in the shadows. We built civilization and in our victory over that which sought victory over us, we fell from grace. In our triumph, we turned to folly. We renounced our brotherhood and rejected our unity. As ungrateful children of our ancient sires, we turned to separate paths, following petty rulers who put their insignificant lives before the fundamental importance of our people, and in so doing we spilled our brothers’ blood. The darkness that we conquered is once again crawling from its thorny lairs, creeping across the world under many fair-seeming guises, now as cancers upon our civilization, now forming gangs and armies, now devouring us in our disunion. It was a song that called us from the darkness long ago, and once again that mysterious music is beckoning. We will reunite as a single people, a great ring that will circle the globe for our wellbeing, or we will perish, and the Western Light of the world will go with us. These people are my people, my nation, and even as I type, even as I ponder how today decides tomorrow a new spirit rises within us, a spirit that refuses to yield to those who seek our undoing. I have always loved our people, their heroism, their genius, their spirit, and though my heart is filled with concern for them, it sings now, it sings with the coming of the dawn. These are my people, and I love them. I was born for this; it is my destiny.

old giant Thoon, who was getting bludgeoned to death by three old ladies with brass clubs—the Fates, armed for war. Jason decided there was nothing in the world scarier than a gang of bat-wielding grannies.

The elderly occupant was bent almost double in an armchair beside the window. In the minute that had elapsed since the nurse left him, he’d fallen fast asleep. Robin let the door close quietly behind her, crept across to Ricci and sat down on the end of his single bed, facing the one-time pimp, pornographer and orchestrator of gang-rape and murder.

Have I not made it obvious enough? I am in love with you, Delilah Gange. Foolishly, ardently, and madly. I must face the demons I have been running from for years now. And look how well the stars aligned and the planets spun on their axis the other way for us to meet here and make our love known for each other. I am in love you and I have learnt to live with it for a long time like I tolerated and learnt to accept the blood coursing through my veins is not ichor. I cannot imagine living like this anymore, in silent suffering. Waiting for a love to grow without tending to it.

It’s not a gang. It’s an empire.

In the winter of ad 1759 events took a turn for the worse : Nawab Imadul Mulk once again soiled his dirty hands by spilling the blood of Alamgir II. Mirza Abdullah Ali Gauhar, the late emperor’s eldest son, fled to Avadh and proclaimed himself Shah Alam II (he was the seventeenth in the line of Babar). As for me my hardships in Delhi were too much for me to bear. I put my trust in Allah and decided it was safer to be among the Hindu Jats in the countryside than live in a capital that was little better than a wilderness laid waste every six months. I moved to Bharatpur ruled by Suraj Mal Jat. When I was there the Maratha armies marched northwestwards to meet Abdali and his Afghans who had once again descended on Hindustan. On 17 January 1761 we received the news that two days earlier the Marathas had been decimated on the field of Panipat. Those who had managed to escape the Afghans’ swords were set upon by gangs of Gujars and Jats and robbed of everything including their lives. I decided to stay on in Bharatpur until the Afghans departed and peace was restored in Delhi.

The fact that O-type people are more susceptible to cholera was first noticed in 1977. During Peru’s 1991 epidemic, people with O blood were eight times more likely to be hospitalized.20 People from the Ganges delta, where cholera has always been endemic, have the lowest rate of O type anywhere.

So where were we?” He lit a cigarette. A Benson & Hedges man. “You were telling me that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. All I have to do is spy on the villains to prove my good intentions. That’s where this is going, right? I’m presuming you’re part of the gang task force.” “Would you do it?” “Be your fly on the wall in the House of Love?” “Yes.” “I am not interested in becoming an FBI asset. Also known as a dead man walking.