“I
'll take that shirt too.” I peeled off another fifty from the wad of cash and dropped it on the counter.
“Somewhere between where you are and where you're going, there's a SUPER 8!” quietly hummed the digital display above the dark-skinned man's shiny head as he regarded me nervously.
Hades
, I mused, this is exactly the motel that would be on the way there. Cerberus probably shits out back.
“You want my shirt?” The dark-skinned man across from me smiled nervously as he tentatively handed me the room key.
My eyes burned from the road and the night. On the best of days, my patience was extremely limited. I grabbed him by the throat and the shirt and jerked him onto the long check-In desk that was between us. The paperwork I wasn't going to sign scattered across the floor. This wasn't the best of days.
“I hate to repeat myself.” He could feel my acrid breath on his face as I looked down at him with
last chance
eyes.
“OK! OK! Take it!” he squealed.
I did.
I took the long way around. The building looked like an L, with the main office at the end of the bent shorter arm. An awning stretched out another twenty feet to allow for bus pickups and drop offs. My bike was parked between the employee dumpster and the cement wall, opposite the back of whatever passed for the motel's kitchen. You could see my Kawasaki but you'd have to be looking for it. I took out and folded my vest so that none of the patches were easily visible, then I headed up to my room. I didn't want to fly the colors here. This was Los Lobos territory.
Whores and dealers littered the stairs and hallway with their battered flesh and cheap words. Carrion glances flitted to the gun-butt that popped out of the waist of my blood stained jeans then darted away. They parted as I neared.
“Two-ten,” I growled, turning back at them once I reached my door. Curiosity etched across their dull forms. “Come. Fuck with me.” Their idle chatter petered into uncomfortable silence as their eyes abruptly found other things to look at. The door slammed behind me, shattering that stifled absence of deals and coos like a gunshot. No one would bother me tonight.
The room was clean enough. Queen bed. Tube TV in an outdated wooden hutch. The sink and mirror were on the back wall to the right of the small bathroom that only had a toilet and shower. I tossed the vest on a chair near the door, took a piss, a shower and sat naked at the end of the bed.
I'd been pushing it all away. Burying my feelings of what happened to Bren under layers of distraction, violence and sex. He was my brother after all. Half-brother really, but we never gave a fuck. Same thing with Top. Bren was a likable kid, not brilliant but he was sharp as a motherfucker.
Occasionally, I'd bounce a problem off him just to see how he'd deal with it once he was a full member. He was clever, sometimes he'd even surprise me with an idea so good that I actually used it. He just saw through the bullshit to the simplest answer. He used to say “Cut off their feet and see how well they stand.”
He would've done really well in the ranks eventually. He might've even made Vice faster than me, and I made Vice under Top faster than anyone in Veins' history. I didn't ascend that fast because Top was my half brother but because I was
that fucking good.
I had a knack for retaliation. Not just the beatings. I knew the science behind sending a message.
Rival gangs running guns in our town? We'd broken into their houses at night and made their families watch as we cut of the offenders' trigger finger. Some dumb fuck turned tail on a Veins loan expecting to never pay it back? We'd pick him up, give the guy a gun and force him to rob a convenience store to pay off his debt. Always in another county. We'd film the robbery as insurance for his silence and take our cut off his take. Plus an additional fee, of course.
It used to be fun. I loved it. Even met a girl that...
I shook my head. I didn't want to dig up that old hurt.
Maria's death drove a wedge between me and the MC world. I started getting jaded. Nihilistic. Had I been more vigilant and done my fucking job, I would've seen that
war hero
fuck before Bren even turned the corner. I might as well have given my brother the steaming chest wound myself.
When my hands fell away from my face, I was greeted with the black reflection staring back at me through the glass on the dark TV. The one shitty lamp I had on cast me in a truly evil light. The truth of the image was so starkly apparent. I didn't recognize it as me right away. My face tightened. My mouth filled with saliva and my eyes began to gloss over with water. The reflection looked through me. It captured me, I couldn't look away.
I knew that if I cried, the man in the TV mirror would not. Could not. He had no eyes. The light behind me highlighted only my most protruding features. Brow, nose, chin, cheekbones and the edges of my hair. Everything else was a diminished shade of gray or outright black. Was that what I've finally become? A hollow darkness, thinly veiled in a human suit.
“Fuck you!” I couldn't contain it any longer. Alternating knuckles struck the curved black screen like an old stream engine laying track spikes at full kilt. The TV exploded. Jagged cuts ran up both arms but I couldn't stop the blows from landing until I had blown out the back of the console.
Tears streamed down my face. I wiped them away with my bloody arm and stumbled back a step. My bare foot crushed some of the many glass shards on the floor. My reflection retreated into the mirror over the sink on the far wall. His face was covered in blood, he looked like a rabid animal in need of putting down.
“Fuck off and die!” The reflection mirrored my scream. The image of me was as honest as I was angry. I needed to kill it. To kill myself. I reached into the wooden cabinet and tore the TV off the wall. The flimsy screws that attached it there, along with discolored chunks of drywall, snapped and battered against me as I hurled the TV across the room. There was a beauty in the way the sad light caught the raining glass fragments from the mirror as they tumbled down into the sink and onto the seventy’s-brown carpeting.
There was no stopping it now, my mind was redder than the blood smeared across my face, arms and chest. I tore that room apart.
The wooden desk was in ruin. The couch and bed overturned. The TV stand toppled. Finally, all the lights gone. My limbs and core pulsed with spent rage as I collapsed along the back wall. I could hear my blood pumping through my ears. The adrenaline high made me strong, it numbed the pain. And then like a flash in the pan, it was gone. Alone, exhausted and covered in my own blood, I laid there on the floor. Just another pain junkie. Except, my drug of choice wasn't for sale.
The red behind my eyes faded to black. I knew what this was. I was so weak that instead of facing my problems head on, I cowered behind a wall of brutality. I hated this life. I hated Bren for dying. I hated Top for accepting him into the club so early but most of all, I hated myself.
I hated leaving Star.
She was beautiful and innocent and courageous and... she had a strength about her that was unmistakable. Most women would've folded up and disconnected when faced with that much horror. Not Star, she looked at it right in the fucking eye.
I took Star because I needed to save at least something that night after Bren died, and she did look a little like Maria. Same build, same cute ass. Shoulder-length, light brown hair, large almond eyes, button nose. Star was a little prettier. The glasses and slightly chubby cheeks really did it for me.
I couldn't stand by and watch Top or Tee or anyone put slugs into her. And I sure as fuck, wasn't about to let Top or even worse— that piece-of-shit Rio, put anything else into her. I rarely play things by ear. I was methodical in keeping her from danger. The distraction in the bar, the power-play on Muse, everything had at least some measure of planning.
Everything except vouching for her in the bar and killing Rio. I never expected to let myself be pushed that far. I don't know what I wanted initially but I knew that if I didn't act in anyway necessary to keep her alive, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself. I think I would've left her at Muse's when we all rode out, but standing over Rio, I knew that option was removed from the table.
I hadn't just chose her because of who she was. A pretty girl, in way over her head that needed a hero. I chose her because, in her, I saw that one last piece of my soul that hadn't been reduced to ash. That final spark of goodness that would have died along with her.
I screamed again. This time just noise. Exterior light filtered in through the dirty windows. I missed her. I didn't know what could've been between us but I was so scared to lose her— to lose that part of myself, that I went and threw her away.
Right before I walked into that convenience store earlier tonight, my imagination filled to the brim with dread. I saw Star, caught in some crossfire, laying on the road, that shining spark fading from those beautiful auburn eyes. I've never scared easy but that image terrified me.
I knew she'd be safe and I guessed that's all that mattered. I could die knowing I’d done at least one worthwhile thing, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. I would do horrible things to keep her with me, just to see if there was hope for us. That's why I needed to give her up. Hope was far more dangerous than men with guns. Men only took your life.
Hope could ground out your fucking soul.
* * * * *
T
he slow, high-pitch creak of the door opening didn't wake me. It was the foot steps crinkling the glass on the carpet that did it. I found my pistol before I could even open my eyes. I heard a woman's self-muffled scream when I pointed it toward the noise.
The morning daylight bitterly flooded the room, blinding me. Once I saw that there was only one figure in front of me, I lowered my gun and I motioned for the girl to shut the door. That sobering light needed to die. The shitty curtains cut the edge but the room was still lit enough that even with the door shut, the aftermath of my tantrum was laid as bare as I was. I hadn't moved from the spot I landed in last night and didn't give a thought to put on clothes yet.
“The fuck are you?” I asked.
She didn't answer. I could see her surprise as she surveyed all the damage. It didn't look like this is what she had prepared herself to walk into. I whistled. It startled her, she was no threat. Deciding I needed a cigarette more than answers at the moment, I tapped my face with a two-finger smoking gesture and pointed to a pack on the ground near her. She carefully picked it up and walked it over to me through all the debris.
I snapped the pack out off her hand and bumped up a cigarette. My body ached something fierce. The dull exertion of muscle pain mixed with the sharp, continuous sting from the multitude of fresh cuts. The sink was completely fucked. I'd have to move the upside down couch-chair to even get to the shower.
Fuck. No lighter. I riffled through the glass and displaced plaster to no avail.
She said something and handed me a lighter. That wasn't English or Spanish. Wonderful.
“Know any English?” She looked at me regretfully. At least she had some comprehension. “Who let you in? Why are you here?”
She started talking. I got about as far as her name “Katya” before I held up a hand to stop her. She was too fast and too foreign for me to understand what she was saying. At this time of the morning, I'd barely understand English, let alone the Russian she was rattling off. She stood there and waited for instructions.
I coated my lungs with breakfast, nicotine and rat poison, while I put on my best Sherlock Holmes. I gathered from her gestures that her name was Katya, not that that mattered, and something about Los Lobos. This was solidly their turf and from the way she was dressed I’d say she came with the room. Similar deal as how Muse ran shit at her place.
I looked her over. Waist-length, cherry cola hair, bright blue eyes, a thicker build but with some banging curves. Here-for-the-fuck strapless red dress over smooth, yellow beige skin. It was a good thing Muse didn't have whores like this, else she'd never be rid of us. Maybe that's why she went with that good-if-you're-drunk quality. She was a savvy business woman after all
OK, that's the
Why
, so now for the
How
. Didn't matter where it was, it'd be too audacious for whores to unlock— Ah. I chuckled weakly. I never locked the fucking door. Any one of the bangers, dealers or junkies outside could've rolled in here while I was passed out, but none did. Lucky for them. The locks were a joke anyways. Management didn't even bother taking the busted ones off the wall, they just bolted on new ones above them. Lazy fucks.
Katya swept off a spot on the bed and put her purse down. Then she started to unzip her dress.
“Seriously?” Yes, I was naked and obviously not bashful and she was pretty enough, but not even my dick was in the mood for this. I cocked an eyebrow and held out my blood stained arms. Undeterred, her dress dropped to the floor, then bra. I had to hand it to the Russian girls, they just didn't give a fuck.
She looked at me and leaned forward. Gravity hung her full tits perfectly. They swayed and giggled as she worked the black cotton panties down over her pale, two-handfuls ass.
Katya stood there and slid her hands between her pillowy mountains, over the slim-enough stomach and down to an appetizing pussy. She had her pubic hair expertly groomed into a landing strip. Didn't take long for what little blood I had left to start flowing to my cock.
Still, as hot as this girl was, thoughts of Star kept seeping in. I felt stupid for even thinking that way. Star was gone. I gave her up, she was outta my fucking life completely. I should fuck this whore because of that fact alone! Star was just another ghost to me. Katya was hot, smooth flesh. All tits, ass and
fuck-me
.
At Katya's grasp my cock hardened fully. She spit on my swollen head to use as lube and slowly brought her hand over top, then back down the shaft to the balls. It felt damn good, the girl knew how to handle a dick.