by Jadyn Chase
I got on my bike and rode to the railyard. The Boss and Kane waited for me at the shipping container, but I didn’t see anybody else. They must already be in position.
I parked and joined them inside. “All set?”
I nodded but said nothing. Ruby’s aura still clung to my skin. I smelled her hair and tasted her mouth even now. Her high noises echoed in my ear in glorious ecstasy cascading through my being.
What did it mean? It didn’t mean anything. I had to remind myself of that. She said so, and that made it true. She said she wasn’t doing it and then she did it. So what?
I didn’t have time to think about it before The Boss’s phone chirped. He checked the screen. “That’s the signal. They’re coming in.”
Kane picked up a remote-control device from the table and held it out to me. “Do you want to do the honors?”
I blinked at him. Then I glanced at The Boss. He nodded. “You do it, man. You took their fire last time. You earned this.”
“All right.” I took the device and just in time. A heavy truck rumbled down the street and stopped outside the gate with its turn signal flashing.
The three of us marched outside, and I pushed the device into my pocket. My heart skipped a beat. I didn’t expect an honor like this. The Boss must really want to reward me for dealing with these bitches last time.
I kept my hands shoved in my pockets. My thumb caressed the orange button on the detonator’s tip. One tiny press and the yard would go up in smoke.
Kane and I flanked The Boss waiting for the truck to turn into the yard. When it did, it drove at least fifty feet to straighten out before it stopped with its rear trailer inside the fence.
I calculated the distance down to the micron. That was perfect. The driver sat there with the motor running for a second. I looked toward the street. Sure enough, a big silver limo turned the corner, hesitated, and swerved through the gate. It pulled up next to the truck and parked level with it.
My senses strained to the breaking point for the slightest clue. The limo’s engine slotted to a higher note that told me the driver shifted into Park. That was my cue. Without taking my hands out of my pockets, I depressed the button.
A massive boom rocked the ground, and a volcanic plume of fire rocketed out of the concrete. It billowed around the undercarriage of the tractor portion of the truck. It jolted the cab off the ground and all ten wheels bounced.
A catastrophic concussion hit me in the face. My ears whined. Then came the sickening thump of the cab hitting the ground. The wheels popped and it smashed into the concrete.
At the same moment, a whistling tracer screamed through the air. It left a vapor trail in its wake spiraling toward the limo. It struck the rear passenger door, punched a hole through the window, and another explosion tore the limo in half.
Flame erupted through the vehicle and blew out all the windows. For a second, I couldn’t hear anything over the din. In a second, though, the door nearest us creaked open and a lone figure stumbled out engulfed in flames.
I could make out the vestige of a business suit and not much else. The victim flapped his arms trying to extinguish the flames, but they consumed him in a matter of seconds. He wheeled this way and that before he collapsed onto his knees and fell over.
Kane, The Boss, and I stared at the scene in silence. The truck burned for a few minutes before the flames reached the gas tank. Another calamitous boom echoed through town. The driver’s dead body slumped over the steering wheel.
A good ten minutes passed before The Boss turned to me. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Good work tonight.” He raised his voice to thunder. “Get that truck in here. Get ‘er hitched up and pulled out for LA. Leave the wrecks for the Police to find.”
I turned away and went back to the container. I took out the device and stared at it. It didn’t look any different, now that we’d blown the charges. I pulled my red bandana out of my pocket and wiped down the detonator.
I made sure to hold it with the bandana when I put it down on the table. It still looked the same. It didn’t look powerful enough to kill all those people.
A yell outside drew me to the yard. Rico waved his arms to direct another truck into position. The boys hitched a cable to the burning derelict and hauled it out of the way. They left the trailers where they were and Miguel reversed the new truck to hitch up. In a few minutes, the shipment of guns drove out of the yard as innocently as it drove in.
The Boss materialized at my side. “Get out of here. Go back to the Motel and make out like nothing happened. We’ll leave tonight. You’ll be the only one left keeping tabs on Logan. If you need me, send me a text.”
He walked away and left me to follow my orders. I was alone again. The feeling of being on my own in Barstow sank even further into my bones. If it wasn’t for my colors and my regular visits to Logan, I would lose all recognition of my membership in this club.
Maybe I wasn’t really part of it. Maybe I only dreamed that. Maybe I never left Barstow. Maybe I married Ruby and now I would go home to find her sleeping naked in my bed.
I would slip inside and take my clothes off. I would glide between the sheets. She would roll over in her sleep and slither her immaculate arms around my waist. She would moan ever so softly without fully waking up. Maybe she would whisper my name before she drifted off again.
I would scoot down next to her in that bubble of warmth next to her skin. I would tilt her head back and kiss her. She would soften under my hands and that delicious wave of acceptance and desire would welcome me to her.
I got on my bike and drove back to the Motel lost in this dream, but it all shattered when I opened the door. The streetlight cast into the room and fell across the bed. The sheets and quilt scrunched at an unnatural angle. No one slept on the pillows. Ruby was gone.
8
Ruby
Christopher snatched his baseball mitt and dove out of the car. “See ya, Mom!” He bolted across the field before I could get my seatbelt unfastened.
I draped my handbag over my shoulder and locked the car. I shielded my eyes to peer at the youngsters racing around and throwing balls. Their coach called instructions to them. Whether the boys heard or not, I couldn’t tell—not that anybody cared.
The boys always had a good time. They never seemed to fuss too much about whether they won. The coach didn’t make a big deal about it, either. All the parents loved him for that. He made sure the boys had a good time. Nothing else really mattered.
A few other parents milled around, but I didn’t feel like socializing right now. I just wanted to stay quiet, but not to think. If I thought too much, I would remember too much from last night.
I sauntered around the field not really paying attention to the baseball practice. At this distance, I couldn’t even be sure which boy was mine. I strolled toward the soccer goals on the far side when I stopped dead in my tracks.
Eli worked his way toward me from the other end of the field. He surveyed the surroundings before he noticed me. When he did, he halted, too. He regarded me with…. well, I couldn’t really make out what kind of expression it was.
He stood there so long I started to wonder if he didn’t plan to turn around and walk away. Did I want him to? Coming face to face with him confronted me with everything I did with him last night.
It wasn’t just the sex. That was better than it ever was in our misguided youth. I saw something in him and let him see something in me I never thought possible, but it went beyond that.
I let myself need him. I let myself lean on him for something that I needed, something I couldn’t live without. If he walked away right now, I would never get that back. I would go back to lurching through my hollow days with no end in sight.
He saved me yet again my strutting up to me. “What are you doing here?”
I waved toward the field. “Christopher has baseball practice. This is his elementary school. What are you doing here?”
He cast a grim frown toward the railroad tracks beyond t
he fence. “Nothing. I’m just walking around and seeing the old stomping ground.”
I nodded. What else was there to say? I shaded my eyes and gazed over the field at nothing.
“He’s a good-looking boy,” Eli remarked.
Aw, what the hell. Who was I kidding? I came this far. Why not go the whole hog? I took a deep breath and spoke the words I resolved never to utter as long as I lived. “He’s yours.”
Eli didn’t move. He stayed exactly where he was with his flinty eyes trained on…..He didn’t look at the field. He didn’t even look at Christopher or the tracks or the highway beyond. He looked at nothing.
My heart sank. I knew this would be hard. That must be why I decided never to bother. I never dreamed it would be this hard.
I threw all caution to the wind and blurted out every dirty little secret I kept tucked in my heart all these years. “I found out I was pregnant about two months before graduation. I kept trying to find a way to tell you, but it never seemed the right time. Then you said you were moving to LA to join Los Diablos.” I spun toward him. All of a sudden, I needed to tell him. I needed to make him understand. “I couldn’t be around you when you belonged to a gang, Eli. You have to understand that. I didn’t want my child growing up with it and you were already so far gone I decided not to tell you. I figured you would never know the difference and what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you.”
“Couldn’t hurt me!” He exploded bellowing in my face. “Is that what you thought when you left last night—that you couldn’t hurt me? How could you keep this from me? Jesus fucking Christ, Ruby! I sat across the dinner table from you last night and asked you point blank who his father was. Why didn’t you tell me? Holy shit! What’s the point in even talking to you?” He threw up his hands and whirled away only to come flying at me roaring louder than ever. “Do you know what this means? Do you have a fucking clue in your head what this means?”
“Yes.” I tried to stand up to him but wound up whimpering instead. “I know what it means and I still say I don’t want him anywhere near Los Diablos.”
“What the fuck difference does it make what you want, Ruby?” he thundered. “He’s a part of Los Diablos whether you want him to be or not. When are you gonna wake up and realize that?”
I gaped at him with my mouth open. “What do you mean?”
“He’s a dragon, Ruby. Don’t you get it? We’re all dragons and he is one, too.”
My mouth said, What? but no sound came out.
He smacked his lips in annoyance. He spun away again and came back again jabbing his finger in my face. “Los Diablos are dragon shifters. Don’t you know that? I’m one. My whole family are dragons, too. All of them are. Why the fucking hell do you think I went to LA in the first place?”
I stared at him in shock. My mind told me to swallow, but I couldn’t move. A sickening ache burned my insides. I couldn’t be hearing this.
He barged off with his hands propped on his hips. He stopped a few paces away and shook his head muttering to himself. With no warning, he wilted. His chin sank onto his chest and the words grated in his throat.
“My father was a patched member of the club. They sent him out here to manage all their shipping concerns into and out of San Bernardino County. He stopped wearing his colors to blend in with the local community and to avoid drawing unwanted attention to his true affiliations. You never knew. No one ever knew, not even me.”
He kept his back to me. The words tore out of him in a painful rush. “He was a dragon. Our kind doesn’t come into their true form until they hit puberty. He never told me anything about it until I was sixteen. Then he showed himself to me. He was the one who got me involved in Los Diablos. That’s how I got into the club. That was why I went to LA, so I could see how our people really live and so I could grow up around them. You think I went so I could run guns and deal drugs to children and get in fights?” He snorted under his breath. “That’s just rich.”
I had to say something. I had to do something. I had to be somewhere other than here. I couldn’t be hearing those awful words. I shook my head. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I just kept shaking it.
“No,” I croaked. “No!” The sound came louder and louder until I bellowed it at him with all my might. “No! You can’t! I won’t let you.”
With excruciating slowness, he turned around. He hung off there, several feet away. He looked at me like I was nothing but a speck of dust on the sidewalk.
I pointed at him, but I couldn’t get my brain to function. “You go away. You stay away from him! I won’t let you near him. No! You can’t do this! I’ll…I’ll stop you.”
“You can’t stop this, Ruby,” he murmured. “He’ll become a dragon whether you like it or not. You can’t stop that. He’ll find out, and then he’ll turn against you. Before today, you might have had a chance by telling him you didn’t know, but now you do. You won’t be able to fall back on that excuse anymore.”
“You stay away from my son!” I screeched. “You can’t take him.”
“I don’t want to take him, Ruby,” he breathed, “but you can’t keep him away from Los Diablos. He’s a part of it. He always will be. He’ll always have to come back to it. He won’t be able to stop himself.”
“No!” I screeched. “No!”
He eased closer and put out his hands. “Take it easy. It’s not as bad as all that.”
“Get away from me!” I slapped his hands away. I whirled away, looking everywhere for Christopher. I couldn’t let him near Eli. I couldn’t let Eli near him. I had to stop this from…. from ever being real.
I stumbled back, tripped, and almost tipped over. I spun around. The next thing I knew, I was running, running to break my neck, running back to Christopher, away from Eli, away from all of it.
I ran headlong into the cluster of parents talking about their mortgages and their relatives and their companies and a whole lot of other crap I couldn’t care less about. I stayed with them until the end of baseball practice. I had to seek protection, any kind of protection, from Eli and everything he represented.
For the rest of the hour, the same tortured thoughts kept whirling through my brain. This couldn’t be. Christopher couldn’t be one of those monsters. I wouldn’t let it happen. Holy Christ, how could I let this happen to me, to my son?
Eli couldn’t be one. I couldn’t have slept with him, not just once, but dozens of times. I wanted to scrape my skin off with a sharp blade rather than think about him touching me.
The images from the news and the internet haunted my sight. Those colossal reptilian fiends with their spiked heads and whipping tails—those leathery wings beating the air to thunder—No! I couldn’t think about it. I couldn’t go near them. I wanted to be sick in the grass.
Eli! Not Eli! Not the man I loved! He couldn’t be!
I used to love him back in the day. What about now? That part hurt the worst. I lost him in the blink of an eye. Everything I hoped to gain from having anything to do with him, all that shit about having someone to talk to, someone to care about me and want me to be happy—gone.
I could never get those things from him now. If not from him, who could I get them from? I choked down tears watching Christopher pitching balls across the field. No one would ever make me feel the way Eli did. No one would ever see me the way he did. No one would ever touch me the way he did. I could never go near him again. I grieved for that. I grieved for myself, for the life I thought I had.
He was the only man I ever loved. This was the first time in my life I fully realized that. I loved him in high school. In a way, I never stopped loving him. I had the wrong idea about him then and I had the wrong idea about him now.
Now I knew. Now I knew the whole horrible truth, and I wanted him! I wanted all those things with him, and I would never have them—never!
He broke my heart a second time revealing his secret to me. I lost him once, but this! This destroyed me. I needed him more now than I ever needed him in high school,
and now he was ten times, a thousand times more gone than I ever imagined possible.
I could never touch him again. I could never sit across the table and have dinner with him again. I could never even look at him again.
9
Eli
I stormed into my hotel room and slammed the door extra hard. Fuck, I wanted to smash something. I wanted to take wing and set the whole world ablaze. I wanted all these pathetic fuckers to feel a modicum of the rage and pain I felt.
Ruby lied to me. How could she do this to me? How could she keep this from me? Lying bitch! I hated her. She sat there listening to me go on about how I’d like to have children of my own, and she kept her ever-loving mouth shut knowing the whole time I already had one. She had the nerve to let me fuck her and to fall asleep in my bed, all the time knowing.
I stopped in front of the mirror. My eyes locked on the reflection, but I didn’t see myself. I had a son. I had a son. I had a son.
The minute I started thinking that, my anger died—not completely, but enough to formulate a rational thought. I had a son. He would grow up to be a dragon like me, like all Los Diablos.
I couldn’t ignore that. I couldn’t leave him to grow up alone. I couldn’t allow him to come of age not knowing what he was, not having any connection to his people. That would be the ultimate sin.
I understood why my father kept it from me. I understood because he lived long enough to explain it to me. He initiated me into the club so others of my kind could show me the way.
I owed Christopher that if I owed him nothing else. He needed to understand all the whys and wherefores. He needed The Boss and all the other Diablos to show him what it meant to be a man among our people.
All the fight drained out of me and I flopped onto the bed. I flung my arm over my eyes and observed the parade of images and impressions assaulting me from every angle. Ruby Lewis.
I never really thought of her in the forever-after sense, not even back then. If I ever thought of it in the last few days after hooking up with her in this very hotel room, I threw that out the window now.
