Zephyr
Everlyn and I agreed not to tell the club anything until after we were through with Olav and Ducky.
It was hard not to blurt it out when we rejoined everyone in the clubhouse.
Not long after getting there, we were sent off with the promise that there would be food waiting for us when we were through.
Standing back in the Thrall Hut, I saw that Ducky looked like someone had sucked all the blood from him.
He was white and shaky. I wondered what Olav had been saying to him for hours, as if he had to worry about it.
Olav looked more pissed than when we put him in his cell.
He stood and walked to the door, wrapping his hands around the bars.
He shook the bars, but they remained immovable.
“You’re crazy if you think you’ll hold me forever. I’ll find a way to escape. And if I don’t, Aksel will know you took me. He’ll come for all of you. He’ll take me back.”
“You sure assume you’re really important to him, don’t you? But see, I don’t think you are. Why don’t we find out?” Raider said.
“How the hell do you propose we do that, other than wait for him to show up?” Olav snapped.
“Why, we’ll call him, of course. Thank you for providing us with his number,” Fenrir stated, holding up a cell phone.
I watched some of the color drain from Olav’s face. He tried to mask his uncertainty with a brash smile, but we saw it.
“I think that’s a great idea, but first, we want to make sure that we set the mood for the call,” Invader said, smirking.
“Oh yeah, for sure,” Harbinger added.
“Pres, wanna bring him out and set him up in the chair again?” Pirate asked.
“Yeah, I think that’s best. And maybe we should make it a video call when the time comes. If it’s just audio, Aksel might mistake what he’s hearing. We don’t want that,” Raider said in a silky, terrifying tone.
“What does that mean?” Olav asked as Berserker and Barbarian went to the cell door and unlocked it.
“Come on with us, sweetheart. We’re going to have fun,” Berserker cackled.
They dragged Olav’s fighting ass to the chair, where Plunderer joined them. He pressed down on Olav’s shoulders while the other two secured his wrists and ankles. Once he was in position, they backed off.
“You call this fair! You tied me down, and then you’re going to hurt me. At least make it fair! Let me up. I’ll take every one of you on, just make it fair, one at a time!” He shouted.
“Oh, like you and your buddy Aksel and the rest of that vermin make it fair? You’ve spent centuries oppressing, terrorizing, and killing, and fairness was never part of your vocabulary,” Spoiler sneered.
“The whole lot of you are lower than snakes,” Slayer hissed.
“Ah, did you miss me? I bet you can’t wait to be back with Aksel and the others, having our special time together,” Olav said to Spoiler and Slayer, leering at them.
While we’d been denied freedom and outnumbered, when there weren’t enough people willing to defy Aksel, he and his men had abused their lesser followers as they saw us.
That included the women. Rape had been a part of it.
And both Slayer and Spoiler had fought them every time.
If it happened when any of us were around, we fought them and usually won.
However, the fuckers learned to wait until they caught the women alone.
Admittedly, it wasn’t often, but even happening once was too much in our book.
“Special time? Does he mean what I think he does?” Everlyn’s voice came from behind us. I whirled around.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, hurrying over to her.
“I came to see if I could join you. I did it with Caves, and I’m feeling better. Does he mean what I think he does?” Her voice grew colder as she stared at Olav.
“It does,” Slayer admitted.
“Aren’t you a tasty little thing? You’re the piece Zephyr has been hoarding. Baby, after being with him, let me show you what a real man is like,” Olav said, flicking his tongue at her.
Rage struck me. I went to lunge at him, but Everlyn’s hand on my arm stopped me. She shook her head.
“Don’t. I have a much better idea. You want to make him hurt, don’t you? He might not be able to die, but he feels pain.”
“He does. What kind of idea?” Raider asked.
“Remember how Caves was introduced to my ancestors’ tribal initiation? How about I introduce another one? It’ll be far better than what happened with Caves.”
There was a gleam in her eyes. Everlyn wanted to hurt Olav herself. Harbinger came over and leaned close.
“Whisper in my ear and tell me what you have in mind,” he coaxed.
I watched as my woman did it, and my brother threw back his head and roared with glee.
“Hot damn, we need to do it, Pres. She’s a firecracker, and Zephyr had to be the one to find her. I guess I’ll have to love you from afar,” he clutched his heart and groaned.
Everlyn smiled, playfully pushed him away, and then came to put her arm around me. Harbinger was whispering in Raider’s ear. When he finished, Raider gave my woman an approving smile.
“Zephyr, you’re one lucky bastard. Everlyn, I think we should do what you suggest. Why don’t you share what you have in mind with everyone?”
“Certainly. Well, you know about the gauntlet. That was a tame one. For someone like this one, since he’s part of the main group you told me about, I thought of several more.
At first I thought of cutting him and then beating him, but that didn’t seem enough.
I was wavering, but now that I know what he and others did to my friends, he deserves more. Too bad he can’t die.
“I suggest you shoot him full of holes. God knows I can attest to how badly one bullet hurts. And then to add to it, when he’s really hurting, you burn him.
Too bad there’s no way to build a bonfire and tie him to a stake to burn, but I bet you can improvise something.
If you cut something off, does it grow back?
” she asked, lowering her gaze to his crotch.
Olav hadn’t looked too happy about the shooting and burning, but when she asked about things growing back, he turned a sickly shade of green and began shaking his head vigorously.
“No! No, you can’t do that. Don’t listen to her. That’s inhumane!” He shouted.
“No, what’s inhumane is befriending a group of people and then turning on them.
Inhumane is keeping people who want nothing to do with you or your ways at your mercy for decades.
What’s inhumane is raping and killing and thinking there are no repercussions for it.
You don’t know how badly I wish you could be burned at the stake and then scalped,” Everlyn hissed.
Harbinger and Invader were across the room, rummaging through drawers and cabinets, where they kept a variety of tools. I saw Invader hold up a small torch and a lighter. Harbinger whooped.
“Please, you can’t. Tell me what I can do to stop this?” Olav pleaded.
We remained silent. It was Raider who answered him.
“If you answer questions for us, and you’re truthful, we’ll see about not cutting anything off. If it’s good enough, we’ll consider not burning you.”
Our enforcer and sergeant-at-arms groaned in disappointment.
“Ask me anything,” Olav hastily said.
“First, how many chapters are there of the Wayward Wanderers besides the one you’re in? And how many people still follow Aksel at the main one?” Raider asked.
“There are a dozen—well—eleven, now that you took out Albany. We’ve been trying to recruit more, but you can’t just force your way in. And it takes the right kind of club to patch over. They can’t have a bunch of chapters. Standalones are best.”
“Where are they? We want to know states and towns,” Pirate stated.
“Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Missouri. I can’t recall the town names. I don’t usually visit them.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Norse asked.
“It’s true. Usually, it’s Aksel and a few others who do the cultivating. The rest stay back and run the businesses. We have to maintain our cash flow.”
“And what are those businesses?” Barbarian asked.
“Come on, you’re an MC, you’re one percenters, you know what kind. We make and sell drugs, smuggle in anything our customers require, and prostitution are the three big ones. Pussy always sells.” Olav smirked as he said it, shifting his gaze to the women and then back. None of them reacted.
“Tell us about the meeting Aksel had with Gunther. We want to hear every word that was said,” I interjected.
Olav grimaced. “Listen, I do what I’m told, but this guy Gunther, he was a crackpot. I told Aksel not to believe him. Some guy we don’t know waltzes into town one day, starts asking for Aksel by name. Finally, after a week of it, we paid him a visit. When we did, he told his story.
“According to him, he had an ancestor who knew about the night we killed that village of Indians. It had been passed down from that ancestor that after we were cursed by the old man, there was something we didn’t know. How could we? No one understood what the old fuck said.
“Gunther claimed the old man gave us a way to redeem ourselves, as if we wanted to do that. Who wants to be mortal? It was something to do with falling in love, the partner gaining immortality too, and blah, blah. However, when that began to happen, Gunther swore that the curse’s bonds would weaken in the enemy, and if we were to strike, they could be killed.
“Aksel believed his nonsense. Ever since, he’s been searching for anyone who left us.
He wanted to see if they were settling down and, if so, could they be killed?
After our Georgia chapter ran into you guys, Aksel was determined to verify it.
He sent Caves first, and when he didn’t return, he had Ducky send out four more.
Clearly, you’re all alive, and they aren’t.
He’s home waiting to hear the outcome. He gave them twenty-four hours to get the job done. ”
“So you don’t believe in it. That through true remorse, true love, and self-forgiveness, you don’t believe someone can become immortal,” Everlyn said quietly.
“Hell no, it’s utter crap. The guy was nuts.” Olav said immediately.
“Well, I don’t know about the weakening of bonds and making anyone killable.
That part wasn’t passed down through my family.
But the other part about love and all that, yeah, it was said.
What I know is that my ancestor was saved by Zephyr and stayed in the woods to watch.
She saw what the shaman did and heard what he said.
And there was no mention of the part Gunther told you.
But I can attest that the first part is true. ”
She turned, hiked up the back of her shirt, baring where the bullet wound had been, where the scar remained.
My club’s response was loud and incredulous.
There were all kinds of questions, and people came closer to see it.
Not the way I thought we would reveal it, but it worked.
As the excitement died down, Olav sneered.
“You think I believe you were recently shot and it healed? Try again.”
“Your four buddies opened fire on us yesterday. They only shot Everlyn. I’m a doctor, and I treated her. I have another doctor who can swear to its truth. Her lung was hit. And now that,” I informed him.
I saw he didn’t want to believe it, so we left it be. I knew the club would have questions after we were through. Instead, we moved on, asking him more questions, but Olav either denied knowledge or what he told us wasn’t earth-shattering. Finally, Pres called a stop to it.
“I think it’s time we get down to real business. I want him to scream and bleed.”
“Wait, I thought if I told you what you wanted to know, you wouldn’t,” Olav protested.
“We said we’d think about it. I’ve thought about it, and what you gave us isn’t that helpful. Besides, you gloated over what you did to Slayer and Spoiler. You threatened to do the same to Everlyn. That’s enough reason for us to do things the ugly way,” Pres said, smiling.
Olav’s shouts were ignored as we got ready to make him suffer. And it seemed that my shieldmaiden would remain to watch and possibly participate.