Shadow & Soul (17 page)

“Beer is good.” He needed a beer. Just one. It was more than the drink. It was sitting here with his brothers.

Bart looked at Fargo, the Prospect behind the bar, and the kid nodded and reached into the cooler. When Demon had his bottle, his brothers lifted theirs at him, and they all drank.

That was all.

Hoosier walked up behind him and dropped a hand on his shoulder. “How you doin’, brother?”

He turned and faced him. “I don’t know, Prez. Where’s Faith?”

“I had Peaches take her to Bibi. She needed a woman’s touch. She’ll be glad to see you, I can tell you that.”

He nodded. “What Kota said—”

His President cut him off. “No need. You got no troubles here. You understand? It’s all good here.”

“Thank you.”

“Nothing to thank, son. Finish your beer. Then go see to your lady.” With a wry smile, nodded at Demon’s hands. “Might wash up first, though.”

Demon examined his hands. They were still crusty with Kota’s blood.

Weary from the way his emotions had been buffeting his head for hours, Demon thought he might break down. It was Hoosier who’d broken the news to him of his sentence ten years ago, sitting him down and easing him into it. It was Hoosier who’d then led him to the shop to face Blue, giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze before he let go.

It was Hoosier who’d brought Muse in to teach Demon the Nomad ropes when he was healed enough to ride out.

It was Hoosier who’d welcomed him home after Blue was dead.

He trusted his President implicitly. He understood in this moment something he didn’t think he’d ever fully realized. Hoosier was more than a man who was like a father to him. He
was
a father. The only one Demon had ever had.

And Muse was a brother in ways that transcended the patch they both shared.

Tipping back his beer, Demon swallowed down the rocks that seemed to have filled his throat, and he remembered.

memory

They hadn’t taken his patch, so he was still their brother. They set him up in his room in the clubhouse and put the P.O.T.s on nursing him back to health. Some of his brothers even stopped by to check in on him. Not many, and not for long. Blue was still on a rampage, so for the most part, they left Demon on his own. Only Hoosier made a regular appearance.

It was a week before he was strong enough to ride—
and then only just
.
But he was ready to go. Knowing that the family he’d lost was everywhere around him had been hard to bear. Knowing that the love he’d lost was close but not allowed anywhere near him, knowing that he had fucked up her family and the way her father saw her, remembering the fear and sadness in her eyes in the shop, the pity and guilt—that was just too much. He had to get away. Maybe when he was away, he’d be able to lock it all up with the rest of his horrors.

So he was sitting on the edge of the bed, lacing up his military-surplus combat boots, the pack holding everything he owned but the bike he’d ride out on leaning against the wall near the door.

After two sharp raps on the door, it opened, and Hoosier came in. He was holding a kutte. Demon assumed it was his own. They’d taken it in the shop, when they’d stripped him to his skin from the waist up, and they’d torn the
Los Angeles
patch off the front and the
California
bottom rocker off the back right there. Now, Hoosier set it on the bed at Demon’s side, showing a new patch that read
Nomads
. He knew the bottom rocker would read the same. They were brand new, but they wouldn’t stand out much; he’d hadn’t even had his patch two months.

He was damn lucky he still had it. He hoped he’d feel that luck someday.

“Muse is ready to ride. How ‘bout you?” Hoosier closed the door and took a couple of steps to lean against the cheap bureau. “You good?”

Demon had met Muse a couple of times, but he’d been a Prospect, and Muse had paid him no mind at all. He didn’t have a read on the man who was going to ride with him, and he had no idea what he knew about why Demon was joining the Nomad charter, or what he thought about what he knew.

Nomads didn’t always ride with a partner, but it wasn’t unheard of. Demon was glad that he would, even if his partner was a stranger. He thought he’d just spin out into space if he were left completely on his own.

“Yeah, Prez. I’m ready.” He dropped his head and swallowed hard, and then he looked Hoosier in the eye. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you’ve said. At some point, Deme, that’s just words.” Hoosier considered him a moment before he spoke again. “There’s no send-off out there. You understand? You’re still one of us, but you fucked up. Right now, you need to get some distance and give your brothers time to remember that patch on your back. When Blue settles down, everything will. Meantime, you get some miles on your tires and some grit in your teeth. You learn to be a brother. Let it show that you deserve that patch. Look to Muse. He’s steady.”

“Understood.” He stood, picked up his kutte, and slid it over his shoulders. Hoosier handed him his pack, and Demon took it, staving off a grimace at the way the weight pulled his mending ribs. Then he followed his former President out into the main room of the clubhouse.

No one was there. None of the men who sat at the table he’d patched in with, none of the brothers he’d lived with, worked with, partied with. Only Muse, leaning on the bar. As Hoosier and Demon came into the room, he stood up straight and took a step toward them, his hand coming out.

“Demon. Hey, brother.”

Demon clasped hands with his new partner. “Hey.”

“Ready to ride?”

“Always.” Demon turned and held out his hand to Hoosier. “Thank you, Prez. For everything.”

Hoosier grabbed his hand and gave it a shake hard enough to make his body ache. “Good luck, brother.”

~oOo~

Muse slid into the booth. “I’m guessing the redhead has our table?”

“What?” Demon looked up from the menu. He didn’t even know why he checked the menu. They were at yet another location of a big chain of truck stops, and he got the Hot-n-Spicy Burger at every one.

“Passed her up by the register when I came in. She’s got the big googly eyes for you, brother. I figure she’d ice anybody got in her way between here and there.”

Demon looked over and scanned for a redheaded waitress. Yep. Behind the counter, near the register, staring at him. When their eyes met, she grinned, blushed and turned away. She was cute, but no.

He looked back at his brother and shrugged. “I guess so. Didn’t pay that much attention.”

“Shame.” Muse dumped a creamer into his coffee. “Got a ten-spot says she’d blow you in the john before we ride out.” His grin was ironic. After six months on the road together, he knew Demon wouldn’t take that bet.

Demon suppressed a shudder. “We’re three hours out of Corpus Christi. I’ll take my pussy on tap, thanks.” P.O.T.s were all he’d touch—and not always even that. Some of the charters they’d worked at, or just rested their heads at, were rougher than others. He’d gotten to the point where he thought he could tell if the passarounds were there because they wanted to be. Those girls, he’d spend some time with. In a couple of the clubhouses, though, the girls looked used up and jumpy. They had marks on them—bruising and tracks. He could barely stand to stay there and pretend to drink.

He’d known even before he’d started hanging around the L.A. clubhouse that the club as a whole was into some dark shit. They had a fearsome reputation. Yet L.A. had been fairly mainstream outlaw, and they’d been working with the public, too. Demon had pulled his gun only twice since he’d had a kutte, Prospect or otherwise. Club life had been pretty calm. Now, though, he was getting an advanced education in how dark the club could get.

And how the Nomads were expected to be the darkest of all.

The redhead came over and took their order. When she left, lingering as she took the menu from Demon’s hand, Muse chuckled. “Damn shame.”

He rubbed his hands over his newly-cropped head and changed the subject. “You reach Carrie? She good?”

Muse had stayed out by the bikes to call his sister, who’d left a couple of messages. “Yeah. I just pissed her off, but she’s good. I’m gonna need a swing through L.A. again soon, though.” He gave Demon a long look. “You think you’re up for that?”

Demon was shaking his head before Muse had finished the question. He wasn’t sure he’d ever go back to L.A., unless he was ordered there. It was only in the past month or so that he’d stopped waking up every night in a cold sweat, hard and afraid, feeling Faith under him and her mother behind him. “No. But it’s cool. I’ll call Zed and see if anybody’s got a quick job somewhere. We can hook up again after.”

“You know, you could take some time. We been riding hard more than six months now. You could sit your ass in Vegas or something.”

“I’m good. I’ll call Zed. Just let me know when you want to take off.”

“Okay, brother. Let’s finish this job, and then I’ll go.” He squirted ketchup onto his fries. “This intel better be good. I want this motherfucker. Sick to shit of chasing him around.”

~oOo~

The intel was good. Muse and Demon sat in a rental van at the back of a motel parking lot in Laredo, Texas, and watched their target, Ernie Jennings, pull bags of takeout from the back seat of mid-range Toyota sedan—also a rental.

“That’s a lot of food for one guy,” Demon observed. “He’s skinny, too. You think he’s got company?”

“Fuck,” Muse grumbled by way of response. “I want this fucker, Deme. Four weeks we’ve been looking. He’s always one step up. I don’t give a fuck if he’s got company. We’ll just dig a bigger hole.”

Muse had been dogged about this job, and Demon understood it. They were after a rat, a guy who’d given up information to enemies of the club’s Billings, Montana charter. Muse was closer to that charter than to any other besides L.A., which had been his home base, just like Demon. The information in question had gotten three brothers killed.

Demon wanted the guy, too, but he didn’t want to take innocents down. Before he’d gone Nomad, he’d killed one man: just before his fifteenth birthday, he’d beaten a man to death. In six months with Muse, he’d killed three more. Between the two of them, that tally more than doubled.

He liked it. Not his first killing; that one had been rage and a mania of years of bottled-up self-defense, and he barely remembered it. But what he’d done with Muse, killing in cold blood, meting out justice or vengeance, he liked that. It made him calm, it made his head quiet, made him feel more in control, and that scared him. Maybe there was a serial killer lurking inside him amongst his demons. Killing innocents was a line he couldn’t cross.

“What if it’s a woman?”

Muse laughed. “You don’t run out and buy takeout for a whore, brother. He’s not married, and he’s been running solo all this time, so I don’t see it being a girlfriend, either. It’s probably a contact. Laredo is a border town. Must be seven, eight major transport companies right here on the Rio Grande, most of ‘em dirty. My money’s on him sitting in there waiting for a contact to bring him papers and a seat in the back of a truck. We get him now, or he crosses the border and is out of our reach.”

“If that’s true, couldn’t K.T. call Sam, ask for the Perros to handle it?” This was a Billings job. Demon thought it made sense for the Billings President to call the President of the mother charter, who had a close relationship with the leader of the cartel most of the club worked with, and seek help on the Mexico side.

Muse shook his head. “This is not a job you subcontract, Deme. This is club payback. I want him. He’s not walking out of that room again.” He pulled out his gun and checked the magazine, then screwed a suppressor into the barrel. “We’ll give him a few minutes, see if he gets company. But we go either way.”

“Okay, Muse. We go.”

~oOo~

It wasn’t a woman. Or a contact. It was a boy.

A small, scared boy about ten years old, wearing nothing but a pair of Fruit of the Looms. He had dark, sticky traces of duct tape on his wrists and ankles, and a rectangle of patchy red skin over his mouth. Jennings must have bound and gagged him so he could go out and run his errands.

Those were details Demon thought about later. In the moment, he barely thought at all. He saw the boy, sitting at the little table in the corner with cartons of Chinese food spread out in front of him. He saw Jennings, also in nothing but his underwear, showing the concave chest and pallid paunch that skinny men sometimes got when their dissolute lives reached the fifty-year mark. Demon saw all that, and he didn’t even bother to think.

When Muse managed to pull him off of Jennings and throw him against a wall, Demon saw the boy, curled up tightly on the chair he’d been on, staring at Demon as though he were, in fact, a demon. It was him the boy was most afraid of.

He scrambled to his feet and tried to get out. He had to get out. But Muse flung himself between Demon and the door. “I need your help here, brother. You can’t run. You have to chill.”

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at that boy. He couldn’t be in this room. Grabbing Muse by the shirt, he tried to pull him away from the door. But Muse was bigger and stronger than he was. Demon had been trying to bulk up, but he was still fairly lean. Muse grabbed his shoulders. “Chill, brother, chill! Take a breath.”

Demon shook his head. He couldn’t breathe.

“Yes. You’re gonna get us both locked up. Texas prison’s no fun. Trust me on that. Take a fucking breath.”

He tried, but his entire body was on lockdown.

“Try this. Listen to your heartbeat. I bet it’s loud. You hear it?”

Demon couldn’t answer, but Muse went on anyway.