BABY BLUES_Satan Seed MC

by Naomi West

  Once she had gotten used to the feel of a machine in her hand instead of a pencil, it had become such a deep passion that she could completely lose herself in it. Blue was just another color in the mix. She was addicted to the way the pigments welled on the skin around the needle, and the crisp lines that were left when she wiped the extra ink away. More than once, she had finished a tattoo and sat back as though coming out of a daze.

  This experience wasn’t like that. The commotion in the room kept her from immersing herself unconditionally. Flame and Stubble were yelling unintelligibly at Spencer, waving their beer bottles and sloshing the cheap liquid on the floor. They kept her in the moment, reminding her that life wasn’t really art like someone famous had once said. Art was an escape from life, and one that she needed far too often.

  “This doesn’t have to be difficult,” Spencer insisted. He wasn’t giving up this time. “But I do have rules here, and this is my shop. Now you can get out and go peacefully, or I’ll be forced to call the cops.”

  Blue lifted her foot from the machine’s control switch and closed her eyes. That was the wrong thing to say. These men weren’t intimidated by the idea of the law showing up, and Spencer should have known that. Rat growled at her once again, and she continued the tattoo. She just had to keep her head down and wait for this all to be over with. Spencer was the boss, and if he told her to stop then she would. Until then, Blue would just keep on doing what she did best.

  “Oh, yeah? You want to threaten me, motherfucker? Maybe you ought to have something to back it up with, first.” Stubble stepped forward and pounded the flats of his hands into Spencer’s chest.

  The motion caught the shop owner off-guard, and he tumbled across the room. Right into Blue.

  She lifted her foot, but it was too late. She watched in horror as her needle made a swipe across the skin of Rat’s arm, jetting down from the line of the skull and inking a thick black line deep into his skin. It happened in slow motion, and yet there was nothing she could do to stop it. Just by the way it felt, she knew the needle had gone too deep. Not only was there a line where there shouldn’t have been, but it would blow out. Rat’s body would carry the ink away from the original line, causing it to smudge and look blurry. This wasn’t good.

  The biker stared at his arm for a moment before jumping out of the chair. He knocked Blue aside as he snatched the beer bottle out of Stubble’s hand and smashed it against the wall, breaking the bottom half off and sending froth and pisswater all over the room. He brandished his new weapon at Blue.

  “You leave her alone!” Spencer shouted, but his efforts were useless. The other two bikers had him by the arms and held him back easily, laughing.

  Rat stepped forward slowly, the sharp edges of the bottle glinting in the bright light of the shop. He was a big man, making the bottle look small in his hands, but it was more than capable of injuring or even killing whoever he decided to use it on. “You just fucked me up,” he snarled. “I pay you good money, tell everyone I know to come here and see you, and this is the kind of shit you do to me?” There was genuine offense in his eyes as he advanced.

  “It was an accident,” she protested, hating herself for sounding so weak. She could hear the shaking of her voice, and that was just the sort of thing that would keep Rat going. But her heart thundered so loudly in her ears that it stopped her from thinking. There had to be a good way out of this. Why, of all the things that could have happened, did it have to be that? “Just let it heal, and I’ll cover it up. No charge.” Blue would give him that much, but she wouldn’t go so far as to offer him a tattoo of her own naked body.

  But the biker slowly shook his head, coming closer. “You think you can just pout at me and I’ll be dumb enough to fall for it, but I know better. You can’t fix this, not the way it’s supposed to be done. No, little girl. You mess me up, and I’ll mess you up right back. An eye for an eye. It’s a shame, too, because you had such a pretty face.” He pinned her to the chair by her shoulder, raising the bottle and aiming right for her face.

  Blue saw the shop in sharp relief. The rack of flash on the wall, each holding artwork she had come to know so well. She didn’t even like working from flash, having done those same tattoos over and over again, but the thought of never seeing them again was more than she could bear. The painting she had done of a blue fairy, just for fun, that a client had asked her to copy onto her back. A photo of her with a young man who had been her very first customer when she had finished her internship under Spencer and was ready to wield a needle on her own. She hadn’t paid much attention to her booth and everything in it for a while, taking for granted that it would always be there. But everything was about to end, and she wished she had taken more time to enjoy it all. Even the storage cabinets, the sterilization equipment, and the stainless steel sink in the corner were precious at that moment.

  Her remorse was so deep that she almost didn’t see the massive hand that wrapped around Rat’s fingers and twisted the bottle out of his grip. The newcomer shoved the biker backwards, roaring with rage and turning the weapon on its original owner. He slammed the broken bottle into Rat’s face. It encircled his eye, the shards sinking into the flesh. For a split-second, nothing happened. The entire scene seemed to freeze, with the strange man holding the neck of the bottle, Rat’s fingers spread wide, Flame and Stubble staring in disbelief, and Spencer’s face a display of horror.

  But it all came to life again instantly, with blood gushing forth and streaming down Rat’s cheek. The sound of his scream filled the room. Flame and Stubble flung Spencer aside and went for their leader. The nameless man dropped the bottle, and it fell to the floor and smashed into a hundred little brown pieces.

  Blue stayed glued to the chair, watching the scene unfold before her. The new man, whom she hadn’t seen before, stood over her with his fists raised and his chin tipped up, daring the bikers to come back for more. His dark hair matched the solid black tattoos that traced down his arms from the tight sleeves of his t-shirt. From her vantage point, his head seemed to brush the ceiling, even though she knew that couldn’t be true.

  Rat screamed again from the floor while the smaller men tried to get him to his feet. “Get me the fuck out of here!” he yelled, keeping one hand pressed to his eye. His feet scrambled underneath him but refused to work. Blood oozed out from between his fingers and ran down his arm. They did as they were told, scrabbling to get him on his feet and out of the building.

  Spencer immediately ran after them and locked the door, ensuring they wouldn’t be able to come back in should they decide to continue the fight. He looked pale and drawn, his fingers shaking, but his face grew a shade lighter when he looked at Blue. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

  Slowly, as though her body wasn’t quite willing to cooperate, Blue stood from the chair. The dark-haired man held out his hand to help her up. She almost batted it away, but as soon as she was sitting up straight she knew she couldn’t. Her head reeled from the close call. The big man’s fingers closed around hers, injecting a warmth she hadn’t expected. She grabbed the paper towels and the trash can and immediately began mopping up the mess.

  “You don’t have to worry about that right now,” Spencer protested as he hovered uselessly in the doorway. “We can get that later. Besides, the police will want to see the evidence of what happened.”

  She glared at him out of self-defense. It was either be angry or cry, and she was damned if she was going to cry here. “Don’t call the fucking cops, Spence. They don’t care. Rat and his goons are long gone by now, and they would only play innocent.” She felt her stomach lurch as she tossed a blood-soaked towel in the trash. It was different dealing with blood when it was heavily colored with ink. The puddle on the floor was a deep red that made her think of her own mortality. It could have been her. It almost had been.

  “Okay, but are you sure you should be doing that?” The shop owner sank into one of the chairs near the wall, the ones that were meant for those who
came to support their friends while they got inked. “I mean, I don’t think I feel well enough to do anything.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she grumbled.

  Blue changed out her gloves and reached for the disinfectant. She was adamant about keeping her booth clean and sterile, and these stupid bikers had screwed all that up. Blue would need to clean for days to get it back up to standard, and even then she wasn’t sure she would stop seeing and smelling the blood and beer. Besides, she couldn’t stand to just sit around and feel sorry for herself. She had learned a long time ago that it didn’t help matters, and it was much better to do something about the situation. Even if cleaning up the blood wouldn’t erase the memory of Rat standing over her with that broken bottle, she could still get rid of the evidence.

  She could feel the newcomer looming over her, watching her, but he said nothing. She glanced up at him and quickly turned her face away, not wanting him to see all the pain that was written on her face. “Thanks, by the way.”

  “I should have come in sooner.” His voice was a deep and pleasant rumble, one that resembled the crunch of a long gravel road that led to nowhere. “Maybe you need to hire a bouncer for this place.”

  Blue laughed in spite of herself. None of this was a laughing matter. “Maybe so. But I don’t think it would stop guys like that. They want their ink, and they think they deserve it.” She turned to Spencer as she began wiping down the chair. “The other shops have switched to daylight hours. Think it’s time we should do the same?”

  Spencer had folded himself over in the chair so that his face was in his hands. He shook his head and sat back, resting his head against the wall and rolling his dark eyes toward the ceiling. “I don’t know. I’m not sure how well it would work. Guys like Rat don’t exactly keep office hours, you know? Besides, if we’re not open in the evenings, we’ll lose all our clients that come by after work. We might as well close the whole damn place if we’re going to do that.”

  “I guess you’re right. We’d have to rearrange all the appointments we have on the books right now, too.” Blue straightened, reaching out to catch herself on the counter as another wave of dizziness took over her. Her vision darkened around the edges, tunneling to one bright spot of color at the center before it slowly began righting itself again. What was the matter with her?

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” the strange man asked. He stepped up behind her.

  But his words echoed in her ears without reaching all the way to her brain. The room went dark completely this time and she fell, down and down and down without stopping.

  Chapter Two

  Torque

  Torque caught the woman easily, her firm body falling into his hands as though she was doing it on purpose. He lifted her like a ragdoll and laid the tattoo artist in the freshly cleaned chair and leaned over her. “Does she do this often?”

  Spencer scrambled to his feet to dampen a paper towel and press it to her forehead. “No, at least not that I’ve seen. But she’s had quite a shock. We both have. I’m surprised I’m still conscious, to be honest. Those guys have been giving us a run for our money for a long time.”

  Torque tightened his lips and glanced toward the front door. It was still safely locked, and there was no sign through the front glass of the miscreants returning. He wouldn’t have minded if they did. He could still feel the crunch of Rat’s face under his fist, and it wouldn’t have been so bad to finish the job. “I’m not surprised. They ride with a gang called the Dirty Bastards.” He had easily recognized the badging on their vests, and he hadn’t been surprised.

  The slim man barked a laugh. “That suits them well.”

  “Why do you still let them come here?” Torque had heard the way the Bastards had been talking to Blue while he had been in the next booth getting a consultation from Spencer. He would have preferred to talk to Blue, since her reputation as an artist was well-known throughout all of southern California, but he hadn’t been able to get an appointment. If he had known how beautiful she was, he might have been trying even harder. He glanced at the figure on the chair, trying not to stare.

  “What else can I do?” Spencer threw his skinny arms in the air. “They pay, and that’s what this business—any business—is all about. It never used to be a problem. In fact, it was guys like Rat that kept this place going when I first started. I didn’t make my money on professionals and people wanting to imitate the guys on TV. But things have just been getting steadily worse over the last year or so. They aren’t satisfied with the work, no matter how good it is, or they want to get something for free, or they want to drink and fight. I can’t win.”

  Nodding, Torque pulled in a deep breath and let it go slowly. “I knew I recognized them. I ride with Satan Seed, and the Dirty Bastards are our rivals. I’ll be sure to mention this to my boss.” Acer wouldn’t be pleased to know that Torque had gotten into it with some of the DBs without any backup, but he would forgive him instantly once he knew that Torque had won. The tension between the two clubs had been building for a long time. This incident didn’t really have anything to do that, but Torque wouldn’t have been surprised if Rat and his men had felt the need for a fight just to ease some of that tension.

  “Oh, no.” The shop owner waved open hands in front of him in negation. “I don’t need a gang war taking place here. My shop feeds my family, and I’ve kept it running for over ten years. I don’t want it all busted up.”

  Looking down at the broken glass that hadn’t yet been swept up and the beer on the floor, Torque raised a thick eyebrow. “Yeah, because things are so safe right now.” He studied the inert form on the tattoo chair. Her hair was dyed a shade of powder blue that flattered the porcelain tones of her skin. She had kept the theme that went with her name, and the tats he could see had all been done in different hues of blue. There were whirling galaxies on her shoulders, visible outside the straps of her black tank top, and roses climbing up her arms.

  Her shirt had ridden up a little as he had laid her down, revealing the tips of tattoos that touched her hips as well as a diamond crystal in her navel that matched the one in her nose. She looked the part of a tattoo artist, but in a delicate way that made him wonder. How had she managed to live in this kind of world? Tattoo shops were no place for lightweights.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know what else to do.” Spencer’s words brought him back to the present moment. “If we move the shop to the other side of town, the rent will be twice as high.”

  Blue roused on the chair, her head rolling on her shoulders and her eyelids fluttering. The paper towel Spencer had pressed to her forehead slipped to the floor. “What happened?”

  Spencer was at her side in a moment. “You passed out, honey. Everything’s all right.”

  “Oh, crap.” She blinked her eyes hard, trying to wake herself up. “I’ve got to finish getting this all cleaned. I have more appointments tomorrow.” Blue tried to sit up but she instantly fell back against the upholstery, still too weak to hold herself up.

  “No, you’ve got to go home.” Spencer’s thick eyebrows bunched together. “Everything’s done for tonight.

  “But …”

  “No, really. Just stop.” He looked up at Torque. “I don’t suppose you could take her back to her place, could you? I do need to get this mess cleaned up, and I don’t want to risk running into those bikers. I know Blue can’t drive right now.”

  Torque had been watching the scene with interest. He hadn’t expected such a gentle response from Spencer when Blue awoke, making him question their relationship. Were they lovers? Had he swooped in and saved another guy’s woman? But if that was the case, then would Spencer really trust a man like him to take her home? Of course, Spencer had already made it quite obvious that he couldn’t protect Blue from the likes of the Dirty Bastards. He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m on my bike …”

  “Take her car.” Spencer gestured toward a set of keys on the corner of the counter. “She’s just over on Willow Lane, so it isn
’t far.” He looked down into Blue’s face. “Is that okay with you, if Torque takes you home?”

  The artist turned crystalline eyes to Torque, shaded heavily by her eyelids. She was still fighting for consciousness. “Okay,” she whispered.

  With little choice but to do as he was asked, Torque leaned forward and scooped Blue into his arms. She barely weighed a thing, and the way she turned toward his chest sent a shot of fire through his system. She was so vulnerable, and he could do anything he wanted to with her, but he had been trusted to get her home safely. He nodded to Spencer, who got the door for him and ran out into the parking lot to help him get Blue into the passenger seat of a little blue coupe. She fumbled with the seatbelt, and he reached in and buckled it just to get it over with.