Savage Mercy (Savage Saviors MC #1) Page 5

  But the thought was gone as quickly as he was, just another man among hundreds who drive by in some fashion, a figure to occupy my life for a few seconds before disappearing among the anonymous droves of the crowd.

  “It’s what?”

  My attention snapped back to Crystal. I hadn’t realized how much of a fog I’d fallen into and defaulted to the answer—the lie—I’d used before.

  “Just a vampire novel.”

  She clucked her tongue at that and gave a knowing chuckle. I thought she had picked up on the lie, but she did that a lot—she was pretty good, I had to admit, at hiding her true feelings when she wanted to.

  “Like them Twilight books, you mean?” she asked.

  Well, might as well continue with the lie. Innocent, and not like Crystal would want to know what I’m really reading.

  “No, this one’s more scary than romantic, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say there was romance, too.

  Actually, as I thought about this, I really did think about a vampire novel I’d read about six months ago, just before all of this shit went down. It wasn’t a particularly memorable novel, but how it made me feel and what it was about had some rather disturbing parallels to my life.

  “Not just scary, though; it’s sad, too. It might have vampires and werewolves and all that stuff, but there’s all this real stuff—ugly stuff like abuse and pain and struggles with suicide and such—that make it feel like… I don’t know, like something more.”

  Damn. Didn’t think it would come out so… truthfully.

  “So why read it if it’s so sad?” Crystal asked, seeming upset at the idea of me upsetting myself.

  I smiled at that, more at her genuine concern than the challenging tone of the question. It helped alleviate some of the pain that I’d begun to feel—although it was like Tylenol more than surgery, in so far as that it would only provide temporary relief before it came rushing back.

  “Same reason you care enough to ask me that,” I explained. “There’s something about connecting with a person’s pain, making it your own—caring about them and their journey—and seeing them come out of it okay that makes you feel better to have been a part of it.”

  “So everyone comes out of it okay in the end?” she asked.

  I wanted to answer yes. I wanted to say life was a Disney movie. I wanted to say that all would be fine, and everyone came out fine in the end. I wanted to…

  But…

  “Not all of them, no,” I admitted. “But I’m hoping the two love interests come out of it, at least. There needs to be some sort of happiness in the world.”

  “Damn, girl, now you’re getting all into serious business,” she said. “Don’t be bringing any of that grief to the Johns, now. Nothing gets a dicker softer than pity.”

  I sighed. This was what I meant. Crystal could be so smart about the very specific job we had, but outside of that…

  I miss my old life.

  “I’ll take that into consideration,” I said, sighing heavily and moving my finger across the screen in a cheap pantomime motion.

  3

  Derek

  As I slipped out of my air conditioned fortress of solitude and into a concrete street that felt like a tunnel heading right into the sweltering pits of hell, I discovered that any lingering strands of irony or regret had burned away. In a world like mine, as far removed from the normal life I had once led as the Sahara was from Antarctica, as heaven was from hell, I didn’t get the chance to think about nebulous concepts like irony or regret.

  I’d almost miss them if it weren’t for all the brain cells that I was sure had burst into flames over the years from my own actions and from my own bad luck.

  Because, Jesus fucking Christ, I thought it was hot when I walked outside, but the hell in which people burned didn’t match the fires of the day.

  Or the fires of my life. Or the fires of my past. Or the fires of hell that seemed to encompass not just my own life, but everyone I had ever loved or even thought of loving.

  I rarely said this, let alone thought it, but seeing the sight of my V8 chopper, and knowing how hot that girl would be to ride, almost made me resent the sight of her.

  Almost.

  Because let’s face it, in my world, I could never resent her. No matter what else went down around me, no matter how much shit got thrown my way, no matter how many reasons I had to resist, I never could. Like a sex-crazed girlfriend who you know is on drugs, a thrill ride to prison, and a short leash with life… but one who also has your legs numb from great sex and your heart captivated with her libido, I could never turn away from my bike.

  Not that I know what that’s like. At least not in the last few years. At least…

  Goddamnit, Derek, would you just not think about her for once?

  The sharp contrast of the smoldering flame decals against the navy blue body rippled with the heat waves swirling off the concrete of the parking lot. In the reflection of that blue body, I could see my warped body, my face dragged down into a sneer. I might have been the only person in the world who thought I looked better in one of these images, in which my beard gained six feet and my forehead narrowed to a two-dimensional line.

  I slipped on my black helmet, grabbing it from the handlebar, and placed it down on the concrete. Yeah, I knew what I’d told Roost. But I also knew I wasn’t likely to go where Dustin and…

  Stop.

  I keyed the bike to life and welcome the wakening roar. Hallelujah! Something in my life hadn’t died without me noticing. The old faithful had come through once again.

  The only faithful.

  “Good girl,” I said, slipping into gear and moving out of my parking spot as the engine cranked and spat its mighty bellow through the garage. “At least I got one dependable gal.”

  My grip slipped on the clutch, causing a momentary sputter. Panic twisted my throat as I imagined I had jinxed myself. It sure would have seemed like my fucking luck to have made that statement, only for my bike and my stereo to go to electronic heaven all on the same day.

  But, fortunately, nah. I regained control quickly, gave the bike some gas, and gasped at the gust of the toaster-hot heat waves frying my face like a flamethrower.

  Finally, I was in my element. Finally, on my bike, approaching traffic, I was in my comfort zone. Finally, I had survived the morning and emerged victorious over another shitty start.

  I just couldn’t help the feeling that just once, I would have liked a cooler day.

  Whenever I ride, whenever I hit my bike, whenever I feel the rush of the air run through my hair and across my face, whenever I get those rare moments of levity, joy, and adrenaline in my life, I fall completely out of the danger of the dark thoughts. I am truly free, not so much from the troubles of the world but from my own mind. I am a free man in every sense of the word, free to control what I think and without the danger of those thoughts circling back to a bad topic.

  But as soon as my bike comes to a stop, be it at a stop sign, a red light, or when I get to my destination, the wicked flashbacks come.

  And they’re fucking horrible.

  I can’t control them. Do you think I’d fucking see the same scene over and over again if I could help it? Do you think I want to revisit that goddamn day?

  But inevitably, I can’t help it. As soon as the bike stops moving, I don’t see the road anymore. I don’t see the lights. I don’t see other drivers.

  I see my hallway, with debris and wood chips and broken glass littering it.

  I see blood on my door, foreshadowing a terrible fate.

  And,, mostly, I see her.

  Except in these visions, she’s not always dead. Sometimes, she is. Sometimes those visions show me exactly what I saw that day, that ugly scene that I will never forget.

  But other times, it gets weird.

  Sometimes, she’ll sit up on the bed, looking at me with soulless eyes.

  Sometimes, she’ll float in the room, like a goddamn possessed demon, looking down on
me.

  Sometimes, she’ll just smile at me.

  And sometimes, weirdly enough, the door doesn’t open to my bedroom. It opens to the middle of an open desert highway, as if I was driving in the heart of Nevada, as far removed from Vegas and Reno as possible.

  In these visions, she’s always dead-center in the road, perhaps the most dangerous place a person can be, and yet one she always looks so comfortable in.

  She has the same round belly as I last saw her, one hand hooked around the bottom of it, her eyes alternating between lovingly gazing at the bump and at me. When she sees me, she’s waving, but her arm is still.

  She’s smiling. She’s wearing a genuine, pearly white smile. She’s smiling so much, I can’t help but want to smile. She’s the only person I know who could—and can—make me smile as if I was posing for a cheesy social media photo. Roost, members of the Savage Saviors, naked girls… none of them can make me smile like Maggie can.

  At least…

  I think she’s smiling.

  I know that desire could be altering my view. I know I could be seeing what I want to see. I know that my mind could be playing tricks on me…

  But I also know that she always smiles. It’s who she is.

  Was.

  I know the reality. I know that this is a dream, and even if I’m awake when I’m riding, I am not truly “awake.” I know that she isn’t there. To think that she’s there… even if she were there…

  Why would she be standing in the middle of the road?

  Why would she be waiting for me in a spot that’s always, always, always just out of reach?

  I did not know the answers to these questions. But I knew that, tragically, they did not matter, because I knew the answer to one question that eliminated the need to ask those questions.

  Why would she be anywhere but six-feet under where you last saw her?

  Every single time, the other parts soak in the logic of this question and produce the same inescapable, unchanging answer.

  She wouldn’t be.

  And that’s never going to change, no matter how many times you get on the bike. No matter how many times you wish it. No matter how desperately you want to be wrong. No matter how much you want to believe that experience with Rock and the Black Falcons was your worst dream but just a dream.

  No matter.

  But no matter how much I knew these were just traumatic flashbacks, no matter how much I prepared for it whenever I had to slow down the bike, I could not prevent them from feeling real. I could not prevent myself from possibly grasping the fact that she might be alive.

  Regardless of the setting, though, her actions would be the same, save for those visions when she was fully dead.

  Her arm would start to move. I could feel my hand come off of the handlebar, reaching out for her. Just to touch her… just one more time… to hold her cheek… to—

  And then she would ask in such a sweet voice that it felt like a taunt from Satan himself.

  “Why couldn’t you save me?”

  In that moment, screams of the damned would fill my ears. That fucking Falcon’s gun would press against my temple, and he would laugh. I would beat his ass to a pulp, but he’d laugh at me like the Joker, telling me that violence could never kill him. He taunted me.

  Invariably, only the honking of other cars around me would get me out of my fucking trance. Whenever that happened—as it had at one such red light leading to the store—I just shook my head and told myself two words.

  Not real.

  I sighed, shook my head, and told myself that the moisture—yes, it was fucking moisture—peeling back from my eyes and sliding to my earlobes came from the hot, stinging gusts of air striking my face. It wasn’t…

  It definitely wasn’t that. I could bullshit people, but I could never bullshit myself, even though I practiced it an awful lot.

  Fully realizing it, I ran a red and had to lean hard—too hard—into the turn I nearly missed.

  Had Roost seen it, he would have called it a suicidal move. He would have sat me down and asked me if the pressure was getting to me. He would have asked if I wanted some company, though he never would have phrased it quite so… delicately.

  But he didn’t see it, so instead, it was just an awesome dramatic move that would make for a great story later.

  And if it hadn’t?

  Guess who’d be collecting on his bet that you’d smash your brain into the curb? Guess who would’ve said, “I told yer so?” Guess who would’ve been right?

  Guess who would finally get to run the Savage Saviors?

  Someone much more competent and focused than I ever could be.

  I had no time to contemplate, though, because the new street, absent obnoxious, loud delivery trucks—but with pickup trucks at the intersection, demanding I stop lest I die—brought me a new vision of her. Just like the previous street, she sported that round belly and alternated her hypnotic, lovely green eyes between what would have emerged from that belly just mere months later and me. This time, she had the courtesy to be in my room.

  And just like before, just like always, just like it would be in the future, she wasn’t really there.

  Even as I heard her voice say, “Why couldn’t you save me?”

  “Fuck…”

  Was it any wonder that the best dream I ever had was the one where my bike never stopped and I eluded every red light and stop sign?

  En route to the shop, I was about five blocks away when I saw a light turn red about six seconds from the time I would hit it. Once again, as usual, the image of Maggie began to form. At least now, I’d been driving too long for me to fall for the trick again, and so I turned my attention to the light. Could I run it?

  Given the truck inching forward, I decided against it. I may have been insane, but I wasn’t quite suicidal yet. Check back in six months.

  Knowing what stopping would do to my mind, I instead turned my eyes to the street corner, looking for any distraction I could get as I tried to keep the bike going—even just five or six miles per hour of motion would prevent it from coming on.

  Per usual, for this part of town, two prostitutes stood there. I saw them, but I didn’t really look at them. One was wearing far too much makeup, looked far too whorish for me to ever consider her, and far too plastic for me to ever think anything of her other than a sex doll I would never use.

  But…

  That other one…

  Now she was way too pretty to be a hooker. I didn’t mean she wasn’t a hooker, she clearly was by the way she wore a short skirt and nothing but a bikini. But her eyes and her face suggested someone who had once lived a put-together life… someone who had fallen either on the hardest of hard times or a trap of some kind, one which she could not escape. She was looking at her phone in almost intense concentration.

  For just a few seconds, I felt an odd sort of pity. I wasn’t someone who rescued stray cats or volunteered at a shelter, but the “rescue her” thought did cross my mind, if only on a superficial level. There was no way that was ever going to fucking work—for all I knew, I was projecting, she may have been a filthier gal than Miss Plastic to her right—but still…

  I couldn’t help but eye her up. She was young, that was for certain. She wasn’t so young as to be, say, 18, but I could easily see her being in her early 20’s. And such… like…

  Move ahead! Clear road! Go! Now!

  Without letting myself linger, I turned my eyes away from her and back on the cross streets, making sure I had a clear shot. I took it, hearing a car honk but not giving a shit given I didn’t even feel its breeze after. No more pity parties, Derek.

  A couple of blocks later, I pulled up to the back of our shop. Outside, Matty “Rooster” Rose awaited me, arms crossed and a slightly nervous expression apparent even behind his sunglasses. It didn’t help his cause that I knew him too well to be fooled by some small black shades. Too many years together had allowed me to see too many of his tics that went beyond his eyes.
>
  “Got some good news an’ some bad news fer ya, Derek,” Matty drawled.

  I kicked the stand and hopped off the bike, taking a quick glance at my store, my base of operations, my pride and what life had now more or less reduced to my everything. If I put my stereo and my bike in here, I could have moved in here and never needed to go anywhere else.

  Out front, “KNIGHT’S MOTORS & MECHANICS” appeared in massive, professional letters. To our customers, to the police, to anyone who drove by on their way to some shitty fast food or their meaningless job, we looked like just another mechanic shop. To the people that walked in and dealt with our front desk, we still looked that way, and when we had a legitimate customer, we acted that way too. From Monday to Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., we were like any other place you’d find on Yelp.

  In the rear of the building, though, the real work went down.

  Cracked-open crates of everything but motorcycle parts littered the floor. Plastic-wrapped bricks of marijuana, fireworks, bootlegged DVDs, and stacks upon stacks of counterfeit everything—starting with thousand-dollar handbags and ranging all the way to molded porn star body parts that weren’t molded from the actual porn stars—filled those crates. It looked like a certifiable house of horrors to a good, civilized man or woman.

  To me, it just looked like business. Profitable business—assuming we weren’t short as much as I feared.

  I walked with Roost into the shop, passing a life-like replica of a woman’s no-no zone. The packaging stated it had the name Bonnie Rotten, but I suspected from the looks of it Granny Smith was more apt. Either way, I pitied the man who used such a device—there was something spectacularly sexy about a beautiful woman but spectacularly unsexy about this toy.

  “Give me the bad news first,” I said. Might as well continue the trend of today. “If I’m gonna start my day like shit, I at least want to set up to end it on a good note.”

  “Fair ‘nuff,” Matty said with a shrug. “The bad news is ya look like shit.”