Junkyard Riders #6
Her smile was instantaneous. “No. Alex and I are ready.” She pointed to her chest where she wore a roadhouse T-shirt, which was different from her kutte.
The long-sleeved shirt showed a pic of the roadhouse on the back and a list of the Rules on the front.
Less than half of our customers bothered to read the rules printed on the front doors and then bitched when they got ungently thrown out, fined, or otherwise penalized for breaking them.
This way, when someone came close to breaking the rules, or The Rules, as there were no deviations allowed, my people could point to a rule on their shirt and simply said, “Rule number . . .” whatever it was.
“I wiped all the counters down everywhere you’ve been today,” she said. “No accidental transitions.”
“Thanks.” Yeah. No accidental transitions. Not since I sent Wanda home, where she hugged her kid before she climbing into a medbay for the transition I forced on her. And accidently shared my nanobots with Alex.
I sucked.
Hence the gloves. Forever.
I looked into the kitchen and spotted Evelyn, one of my newest thralls, staring out the back door, arms braced on the door jambs, letting in the cold. Like so many others, I had transitioned her to save her. Hadn’t worked. Her brain was still gone.
I went to the office HQ’s personal toilet facility where I wanded off again and put on vibrant makeup with heavy Kohl eyeliner and orange lipstick, to match my orange, nanobot-altered irises.
I gelled my hair into spikes and changed into work clothes—all black—shirt and heavy canvas pants, butt stomper riding boots made (cobbled?) by the new cobbler in Naoma, and soft leather gloves this time, black and badass.
I added my kutte and looked myself over in the lone long mirror.
Not bad. I turned to see my reflection from the back.
The new kutte still brought funky tears to my eyes, which is why I never looked in mirrors when anyone could see me. Weepy eyes did not a baddass motorcycle chick make.
Junkyard was the official name of the indie motorcycle club, and it was prominent in the top rocker, the upper banner across my shoulders, a jarring blue-green and near-black.
My lower spine displayed the territory Junkyard claimed, which was Raleigh Co, WV.
Beneath it, in much smaller print, were the words Neutral Ground, proclaiming Junkyard Roadhouse had no affiliations, and all clubs were welcome as long they were peaceful.
The club colors were in between the top and bottom rockers, and they looked like an old motorbike wheel.
The fender was a blue green, bright enough to sear eyeballs.
The tire was dark blue, close enough to be black, while the rim and its five rugged spokes were blood red.
The hub of the axle was a cat eye, the same color as the fender, with a slit blackish pupil.
From the eye depended a drop of red. Beneath, as if the wheel hovered above it, was a horizontal sheathed blade, the haft crosshatched, with two tiny drops of blood hidden in the crosshatching, the blade sheath as dark as the tire, to show it was not going to be used.
On the right side of the colors were the initials, MC, RH, TP, and CH, to show what Junkyard offered at the roadhouse’s neutral territory.
Motorcycle club, roadhouse, trading post, and clearing house.
Every element, every color, had symbolism.
The wheel’s five spokes represented the five other motorcycle clubs that, more or less, sponsored me.
The cat eye denoted Tuffs’ destruction of cats.
The drops of blood in the haft of the blade were Harlan, my best friend, and Pops, who had given me the Junkyard and inadvertently set me on this path.
The other blood drop was me. I had paid a blood sacrifice to be set free from the OMW and start my roadhouse.
And the fact that the five sponsoring clubs had inked me, my body, meant that they had approved of everything.
As president of an indie motorcycle club, I was safe, protected, supported, and could make a damn good living. But I still missed the OMW kutte I had outgrown, and the Outlaw Militia Warrior life I had lived until my nanos made that impossible.
I was strapping on my side piece weapon when I felt the gut punch.
Longing hit me, a wrenching hunger, a twisting, snaking, contorting, writhing need. “Bloody sodding hell,” I whispered, bending over to support myself, hands on my knees, until the worst of the body shot eased. It wasn’t usually this bad.
Is Devil’s Milk addiction like this? Bloody hell.
I breathed steadily until the pain became controllable. Knowing what it meant.
He was headed toward me. Jagger. Slowly standing upright, I rolled my shoulders and started coffee, not because I wanted it, but because I needed something to do or I might walk out, grab him by the collar, rip off his clothes, and have my way with him.
I might not even make it back to the office first.
I laughed and the sound was shaky.
Jagger would go along with a sexual assault, sure he would, because I owned him, body and soul. He wouldn’t say no. But he’d never forgive me. Not ever.
And it might scar the eyeballs of anyone watch-ing. My laughter came more easily. I tidied up while the coffee brewed, made from the good grounds conned out of Marconi.
Spy wandered in. She leaped up on the dining table, sat like a lady with her tail curled around her feet, and stared at me.
“Yes. I know I’m sending out signals,” I said. “Jagger’s on the way.”
Spy cocked her head quizzically. Her main potential breeding male, Maul, had been injured not too long ago, and he had never gotten back to a hundred percent. And since Spy hadn’t gotten pregnant . . .
I didn’t know what that meant to Spy.
“You got the hots for anyone? Still with Maul?”
She cocked her head the other way as if thinking, then raised her head, exposing her neck. She started talking, as if to the ceiling. “Mrower. Reeeee, mah mah mah yeroo-oooo. Sssoo-oo.”
I had heard the sounds before but didn’t remember what they meant, and she didn’t offer to show me with her cat ESP stuff, so I nodded and said, “You said it, sister.”
That was all I had time for because . . . Jagger. He was in the roadhouse.
Forgetting the coffee, I walked out the airlock door and into the winding hallway that took me to the roadhouse, getting closer and closer to Jagger. Breathing deep, slow. Controlling myself. Mostly.
Before I got there, I knew he would be sitting at the best seat in the house, his spine against the kitchen wall, across from and slightly down from the front doors, out of the line of direct immediate fire, should anyone come in shooting.
The table was round, standing on a single huge center leg with four, heavy, wood knob-feet keeping it steady on the floor.
It was perfect in case of a firefight. All it needed was to be shoved on its side to take cover behind.
The table top was solid wood, nearly ten centimeters thick, sturdy enough to stop most handheld weapons, even blasters.
Jagger wouldn’t even have thought about which table was the best. He would have simply known, deep down in that part of a warrior’s soul that had kept him alive through the war, through the Battle of Mobile, one of the worst battles of the Last War, World War III.
I entered the room and our eyes met, as if he had known the moment I would walk in.
Alex was standing at Jagger’s table, the kid wearing jeans rolled up at the ankles, red sneakers, and a roadhouse T-shirt.
They (because I had never asked the kid’s gender, and they had never volunteered it, and because my nanobots may have screwed up that gender anyway) were putting two sweet teas and two Velvet Claws on the table, expounding on the dining delicacies available today.
“We have two soft goat cheeses,” they said, “one with garlic, one plain. Salad greens with an actual real cuke and one out-of-season tomato, first come first served. We have three entrées: fried chicken strips or chicken salad with onions and peppers on real wheat flatbread, or, third, fried or scrambled eggs with toast. No bacon today, no ham, but we do have butter.”
Jagger’s mouth moved, giving his order. His eyes never left mine. The National Enforcer of the Outlaw Militia Warriors knew how to hold a stare.
Alex moved away.
“Asshole,” I said, too soft for him to hear.
That smile spread across his face. The one that blistered through me like superheated steam.
Music started, Jolene putting on her namesake song.
I was pretty tired of hearing a woman beg to keep a man, and my lust flatlined.
I wondered if she knew that and had planned the song to help keep me sane.
I tucked my thumbs into my front pockets and wandered across the dance floor.
I was halfway over when I realized Jagger wasn’t alone, and it took a moment to recognize Jacopo, Marconi’s son, and Jagger’s sidekick, part of the child swap that kept the peace between the HA and the OMW.
Jacopo was also Mina’s brother, the one she had thought about killing not so long ago.
It was old-home week at the roadhouse. Or something else was up. I was betting it was something I wouldn’t like.
Picking up a glass of sweet tea from the bar, I looked both bikers over.
The teenager had put on several centimeters and a good nine, maybe ten kilos of pure muscle.
His beard, black as his hair and eyes, had thickened, currently a heavy, two-day scruff that made him look older and far too sexy for his age.
Marconi would be a grandpa in no time if the kid didn’t carry protection.
Not that I’d mention that. Unless the boy needed to be taken down a peg or two.
That made me grin, and caused Jacopo’s eyebrows to draw together in concern.
Yeah. When Little Girl smiled, it often foreshadowed danger and trouble.