by Warren, Rie
I smothered a smile, taking another long drink of my beer. “Well, I don’t think he’s a saint or you’re an angel. Not by the way those pretty ladies looked like they were competing for your company earlier.”
“You saw that?” Groaning, he rubbed a hand down his cheek. Then his face lit up from the inside. “So you were watching me just as much as I was watching you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as he gloated.
Then I pressed my palm against his chest and lifted up to the toes of my boots to whisper against his jaw, “I was waiting to see if you’d get your eyes gouged out.”
He laughed loudly, tipping his head back so his gold curls shimmered.
I snickered, draining the rest of my beer.
“Buy you another?” His arm ringed around my waist.
And alarm bells went off.
I wrestled free, quickly checking the time on my watch.
Almost midnight.
“I have to go.” I slammed my bottle onto the nearest table.
“Didn’t mean to scare you off, Mercy.” Angel stepped in front of me as I waded to the door.
He held his hands raised in front of him.
I dodged around him, fleeing like I should have done an hour ago.
Running down the sidewalk, I tripped on the uneven pavement in my over-sized boots.
A strong arm banded around my waist, drawing me up and steadying me.
“Got you, beb.”
Puffs of breath pelted against my ear, and then Angel released me from his grasp.
He spun me gently around, his hair like a halo lit by the streetlight. “At least let me give you a ride. Where you headed?”
I shook my head. “I just need to go. Please.”
I got the feeling Angel L’Esperance didn’t chase just anyone. But I couldn’t let him get close to me. I didn’t want him knowing where I lived.
Shame and embarrassment bled into one big ball of regret.
His fingers came up to tenderly caress my cheek.
The first touch on my skin from a male that didn’t make me flinch or quake or want to crawl away in fear.
“Can I at least get a kiss?”
My heart leaped.
Angel didn’t pose a threat. How could he, with a name like that and sincerity shining in his clear blue eyes?
Even more, he’d easily tunneled beneath years of distrust and hurt . . . in mere minutes.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He closed his eyes. He hummed a deep rumbling sound. He bent his burnished head over mine, and seconds later the softest, most pleasurable sensation melted against my mouth. His tongue took a trip across the seam of my lips, sailing to a stop before he plucked my bottom lip between both of his.
When he drew back, I swore I could read dreams in his eyes.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a promise. It tasted like hope.
Hope I couldn’t afford.
Oh lord.
“How about your number, Miss Mercy?”
Hope became cinders in my mouth. “I don’t think so.”
Threading his fingers through his hair, he tousled the strands even more. “At least let me put my number in your phone.”
“I don’t have a cell phone.” Another thing I wasn’t allowed.
He frowned heavily at me before grasping my hand and squeezing it. “Wait here.”
He raced back to the bar, and I knew I should leave while I could.
But my lips tingled. I pressed my fingers against my mouth, remembering the firm warm pressure.
I wasn’t going to make it back to the Lair in time.
Half a minute later, Angel ran back to me. His grin didn’t make it to his eyes that time. He stuffed a napkin in my pocket.
“My number. Call me.”
“Why?”
He laughed curtly. “Whaddya mean why? I wanna see you again, Mercy.” Gathering my hands in his, he asked, “You sure I can’t give you a ride?”
“I have to go. I have to go now.”
“Okay.” He released me. “Okay.”
I turned away from him, pulling the napkin out to crush it in my hand. To hold it in my hand.
Dashing away tears that came from the deep hidden well within, I sprinted. I looked back once, and Angel still watched. He watched until I was out of sight.
I tried to keep my bearings. I hoped I got home before my kinfolk. Because something bad would happen if they found me missing.
* * *
Near Esplanade, I scurried down a back alley. My damn laces had come untied, and I was tempted to step right out of my ugly boots just to be done with them.
I used to roam the hills of Tennessee in my bare feet.
I used to have a home where I wasn’t browbeaten.
Quiet as a mouse, I slipped through the cut in the chain-link fence I’d made earlier. I guessed being skinny—and hungry—came in handy sometimes. Sidling to the first squat concrete house—more a hut than anything resembling a home—I edged around the corner.
I stepped across cement littered with broken beer bottles. Guessed the boots came in handy sometimes too. Peering through the grimy window into the White Lair, I saw my brother Vernon and my cousin Ricky. Several others paraded around the dirty space of a bar that definitely wasn’t open to the public. No place any hipster or fully functioning person would ever want to visit.
They drank oily moonshine from tin cups and were busy shouting about their prowess on the bayou. Shame none of ’em had become gator bait.
Hunching down, I hoped I still had time to make it to my room before Uncle Ned came back for lockdown.
The compound held the White Lair and the cement boxes that comprised the whorehouse.
And Pit and Bull, the dogs. My kin were all kinds of creative when it came to naming things.
I’d tamed Pit and Bull years ago, hand feeding them prime beef back when Ned gave them the worst table scraps. The two canines yelped a little when they saw me, but I rubbed their muzzles and whispered next to their ears.
At least they had someone to soothe them.
The White Lair compound was a dark, dirty, unhappy place.
I lived in squalor, harassed by my folk.
With one last pat to Pit and Bull, I squeaked open the door to my concrete hovel.
I barely shut that door behind me before I was slammed up against it.
Uncle Ned’s forearm braced against my throat, threatening to crush my windpipe.
His eyes blazed in anger, and veins pulsed all across his shaved head. The ugly swastika tattooed on his neck a brand of evil hatred.
Hatred he spilled onto me, spitting in my face, “Where were you at, girl?”
The dizzies began spinning right before my eyes. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t speak.
I squeaked, hands coming up to claw at his crushing arm.
“Say please, prissy little bitch,” he muttered.
“Pl . . . pl . . . s,” I gasped, close to blacking out.
Uncle Ned let me go just long enough to slam his sharp elbow into my diaphragm.
Doubled over, I choked for breath again.
On my knees, tears creased my eyes.
He kicked me lightly in the ribs—just a tease of the brutal pain he could still inflict. “Get the fuck up.”
I inhaled deeply . . . once, twice. I rubbed my eyes on my shirt.
I wouldn’t whimper.
And I wouldn’t beg.
Not again.
I stood up, locking my knees so I didn’t shake or tremble.
“Told you not to leave the other women alone. Those cunts are almost as much trouble as you,” Ned rambled, pacing back and forth in front of me.
“I’m not their madam!” I notched my chin up.
He raised an arm covered in white supremacist ink, curling his fingers into a fist. “That’s right. You ain’t.”
He stepped closer, a nasty smile spreading his lips. “Don’t need no women doing the pimping.”
I churned a wad
of spit in my mouth—prepared to let fly with the gob—but Uncle Ned backhanded me so fast I spun into the wall and collapsed to my knees again.
Stinging pain rattled my brain, but I rose up once more. I swiped my mouth, turning my T-shirt bloody.
I raised my chin. Again.
His sneer grew to malicious proportions. “You better damn mind your place or you’ll be doped up to the eyeballs and spreading those slut thighs next to the rest of them whores. Liked you better when you were on the smack anyhow.”
A chill ran through me like someone walking over my grave. The White Lair was now trafficking homegrown heroin from our Tennessee poppy fields to the southern delta and beyond.
Uncle Ned’s hand rose to my throat. “Where the fuck were you?”
My teeth ground together. I could have at least one secret. One good secret.
One good man.
“Ain’t gonna talk?” Ned rummaged through my pockets with harsh jerking motions.
He emptied out a book of matches. He tossed away the few coins I had left in my possession.
He pulled out the napkin.
Oh, god.
“Well, well. What the fuck we got here?” He let me loose long enough to very carefully unfold the crumpled thing emblazoned with the name of the bar. “Blood Legion MC? Thunder Road Bar? Do you even know who the fuck this Angel asshole is?”
Shredding the napkin, Ned gripped my upper arms, his thin grim face snapping right in front of mine.
“Do you know you’ve been to the Devil’s lair, girl?”
“It’s just a bar.”
“Those biker fuckers . . . Those biker motherfuckers killed Dewayne and Miller!” Ned screamed, his spittle hitting me right in the face.
Shock rocked through me. Shock and surprise. I couldn’t imagine any of those men I’d seen at the bar tonight being cold-blooded killers.
But I knew better than to talk back when my uncle was so mad he foamed at the mouth. I did know my two middle brothers and the rest of the White Lair group who’d originally relocated to New Orleans had been murdered. Probably not without some serious provocation.
Dewayne and Miller were abusive racist assholes, just like the rest of them.
“Guess it’s time to take you down a peg or two, Mercy.” Ned dragged me after him, out into the yard. “Cain’t have no traitors in our midst.”
“I didn’t know!” I battled against him, but exhaustion had set in.
Exhaustion and terror.
Terror and horror when my uncle shoved me down to the ground and planted his boot on the back of my neck. He whipped off his belt and knotted my wrists together at my spine.
“Ricky! Vernon,” he hollered. “Get on out here. And bring the brand!”
Muffling my cries, I craned at my shoulders, trying to get up off the ground. All I got for my efforts was a sharp kick to my kidneys then Ned’s boot was back on my neck and my mouth was full of grit.
Shards of glass dug into my knees through my ripped jeans.
My cousin Ricky and my only surviving brother Vernon came running up.
But not to rescue me.
No, never that.
“What’s she gone and done now?” Vernon asked, and I turned my head enough to see his cold sneer.
His cold sneer, and the long-handled brand he carried over his shoulder.
“Your sister been laying with the enemy.”
“She fuck ’em?” Eyes alight with craziness, my brother tipped the brand off his shoulder to cock the iron prod at me like a gun.
“Don’t know. Did you screw ’em, Mercy. I remember how’s you like a good gangbang.” Ned grabbed his crotch in a disgusting display.
I shook my head. “No. No! I didn’t even know who they were!”
“Yeah well. This’ll stop you from escaping again.” Ricky hauled over a metal barrel, squirted the contents with kerosene, and tossed in a match.
The bright flare of fire swallowed the night and any hope of ever fleeing this hurtful life.
“No. No. Please!” I begged.
“Now you learn your manners.”
“And your place, Sis.” Vernon held the brand over the barrel.
One of them wrangled my shirt up to my neck.
One of them flipped me to my back and planted a boot on my belly. My fingers crushed beneath me painfully. I shut my eyes to everything when my dingy bra was snapped off, my breasts laid bare as I was forcibly held down.
“Bring out the bitches,” Ned ordered in an ugly tone. “Show them what happens when they misbehave. Hell, maybe we should oughtta brand ’em all.”
My eyes flipped open. “No one else. Promise me. Just me.”
Have Mercy.
All the other women were herded into the yard. Some not even legal, girls forced into prostitution. Hollow-eyed with the vacant stares of abused whores and drug addicts.
I’d been there. Pimped out and drugged up against my will.
My memaw would never have let this happen to me.
She was gone now.
Pit and Bull whined, nosing too close and getting mercilessly kicked away from where I lay at Ned’s mercy.
The brand came out of the fire, blazing white-hot.
I whimpered.
I struggled.
I couldn’t escape.
The smell of burning flesh. My skin. The singeing twisting agony that went straight to my soul and doused the final light out.
Ned pulled the brand off me. I heard the hiss and splash when the hot iron got tossed into a bucket of water.
“Ain’t no one gonna fuck her now. Not unless they pay for a lay and they’re our own kind.”
I cried.
Not from pain.
From the symbolism.
He’d branded me with a swastika on the upper crest of my left breast, right over the place where my heart was supposed to be.
An Aryan. Neo-Nazi.
That wasn’t me.
“Least we know the white cunts are still in town.” Ned yanked me upright on my knees, jerking my face to his. “And you been marked as our property.”
Ricky whistled between his teeth, flicking dirty fingers at my nipple.
I huddled in on myself as soon as Ned freed my wrists of his belt and let me go.
He turned to the other women as tears streamed down my face. “Any one of you gashes help her, and it’s your turn to get marked next.”
My three relatives left the yard, and the women slowly disbanded.
Left alone—Pit and Bull chained up like I probably would be next—I rolled to my side and puked immediately.
I crawled through my own mess to my small concrete hut. I made it all the way to the tiny little bathroom I kept meticulously clean before puking again.
Hands—warm worn hands—fell onto my shoulders.
Startled, I scurried around the side of the toilet. I looked up . . . expecting more terror.
It was Grace. She kneeled in front of me and held her hands out to me.
“You shouldn’t be here.” I shook my head, cradling my sore breast in my hand. “Get out. Oh, god, just get out.”
“I’m not going anywhere, sugar.” Grace laid her palm on my arm. “Not anywhere at all.”
I batted at her, willing her away. “Go, go, go.” Sobbing and finally breaking down, I staggered into her arms like a baby. “Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
* * *
For two days, I drifted in and out of pain. In and out of dreams.
Memaw and the cabin in the hills, and all the softness of her hugs.
The mountains at dawn, a field of poppies nodding in bright reds and oranges, which should’ve been too beautiful to be used for drugs.
Angel and the Thunder Road Bar—men laughing, women welcome, no one barred from entry.
My first real kiss.
The fiery pain of the brand marking me as someone I didn’t want to be.
During that forty-eight hours, Grace stood up to the menfolk and she just plain wouldn’
t back down. I heard her off and on through the miasma of sickness and sleep, saying if they wanted their best cook and housekeeper back to work anytime soon they’d stay the hell out of her way and let me heal. Telling them that killing off their employees was the best way to ruin business.
Women who left here didn’t even have the honor of being identified or placed in a body bag. There were no funerals at which to mourn or gravesites to visit. Women left the White Lair dead, rolled in plastic, and dumped in one abandoned area or other.
But Grace didn’t leave me, no matter the threat.
And I had the horrible feeling she’d be pawned off on the most despicable johns as soon as I got better.
On the third day, my fever had passed. The brand had stopped oozing. My bruises faded into ugly green-yellow blots.
I dressed in my T-shirt and jeans Grace had washed. I couldn’t bear a bra, so I walked hunched over to keep the fabric off the brand and away from my breasts. Two hours before dinnertime, I’d reacquainted myself with the makeshift kitchen at the back of the Lair so I could have some vittles ready in time.
I cooked and I cleaned and I took care of the girls they prostituted out, using Memaw’s homemade poultices and handed-down remedies because Uncle Ned didn’t believe in health care or doctors or anyone with a degree.
By the time Ned, Ricky, and the others stomped through the front door of the Lair, I’d scraped together what I could for an evening meal.
I hurried from the kitchen and plopped a kettle of rabbit stew and a platter of hushpuppies at the head of the table.
“I see we didn’t cripple you.” Ned gave me the side-eye. “Where’s the beer?”
“I tapped a new keg this afternoon.”
“Ain’t gonna serve itself, is it?” My brother waved a fork at me, his mouth already full.
I’d like to serve a shotgun barrel to his mouth and down his throat.
Pushing down my hate, I brought the beer.
I delivered more food in big portions.
I listened in as soon as I heard Ricky muttering, “Blood Legion tonight?”
“Gotta pick up the new guns first.”
“I fuckin’ hate buying from those darkies.”
My skin crawled. I grabbed my carving knife, so very tempted to drill the blade into every one of their temples, ridding the world of their pestilence forever.
