A Mutual Friend

by Layla Wolfe

  Book 6 - The Bent Zealots Mc

  A mutual friend

  Copyright 2019 © Layla Wolfe

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Cover art by Layla Wolfe

  Edited by Crissy Sutcliffe

  Formatted by Genevieve Scholl

  “We know very little about this whole unhappy drama before the world began.” –Pope Paul VI, 1972

  “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as we form a clear and precise picture of it.” –Spinoza, Ethics

  Darkness darkness, be my pillow

  Take my head and let me sleep

  In the coolness of your shadow

  In the silence of your dream

  Darkness darkness, hide my yearning

  For the things that cannot be

  Keep my mind from constant turning

  Towards the things I cannot see now

  Towards the things I cannot see now

  The things I cannot see now

  Darkness darkness, long and lonesome

  Is the day brings me here

  I have found the edge of sadness

  I have known the depths of fear

  Darkness darkness, be my blanket

  Cover my with the endless night

  Take away the pain of knowing

  Fill the emptiness of right now

  The emptiness of right now

  Fill the emptiness of right now

  --The Youngbloods

  Courageous lives forever.

  King: I’m just a mild-mannered truck driver trying to do right and make it through each day.

  When my rig was held up by neo-Nazi thugs, they stole a shipment intended for the Bent

  Zealots MC. I need to make it right by the bikers. During a rumble at the clubhouse, I found myself brutally dry-humping a dark, smoky biker. Appalled by my behavior, I slunk off with the racists, squatting in an empty office building. Talk about hitting rock bottom.

  Anton: Stinging from the most savage breakup of my life, I took to the road in my new

  occupation: demonologist. The Zealots have just the job for me—figuring out what the fuck is

  eating Barclay Samples, a Prospect who’s been slicing and dicing small animals to drink their

  healing blood. I found a new partner in my quest to exorcise Barclay’s demon—the studly trucker who manhandled me in the brawl. Our attraction is one for the ages, made in heaven. We can bring each other out of our shells in the accepting environment of the gay MC, but the dark forces of the white power men and the devil controlling poor Barclay have taken the upper hand.

  King: Body parts began appearing, both in town and in our kitchen. We have a mind-blowing choice: admit defeat or return fire with every tool in our arsenal.

  If you have ghosts, then you have everything.

  Publisher’s Note: This book is not for the faint of heart. It contains scenes of graphic gay sex, illegal doings, consensual bondage and discipline, cannibalism, graphic depictions of the dark arts, and violence in general. It’s a full-length novel of 65,000 words rated 18+ due to possible triggers. There are no cheating or cliffhangers, and HEAs for all.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MORE BOOKS FROM LAYLA WOLFE

  I

  drove the truck despondently.

  With my arms slung over the steering wheel as though it were a life preserver, my jaw hanging low, I chugged quietly toward Lake Havasu City. My mind was numb. I wondered what awaited me.

  The neo-Nazis had jacked me about three miles southeast of Needles. They didn’t bother pulling the usual stunt of standing in the middle of the road and waving their arms, pretending someone was injured. No. They just parked their asshole pickup perpendicular to the flow of traffic.

  I could see it a mile away, of course. But the rocky land on each side of 95 was peppered with saguaro and creosote bushes that would get tangled in my undercarriage, and boulders that would destroy my front end. Besides, the gullies were deep enough to tip over my cab. That had happened to me before. Luckily, I had landed on the driver’s side window, along with assorted coffee cups, trinkets from truck stops, a pair of steel-toed boots, a fire extinguisher in my noggin, a copy of Forever Butt magazine, and my fucking toothbrush.

  As I slowed to a stop, I tried to reach beside my seat for my sawed-off shotgun. What the hell, I was already transporting a kilo missile of Mexican Black Tar heroin, hidden intelligently among the pallets of canned tomatoes and olives. But my L1 through L5 lumbar vertebrae, fucked and compressed after a decade of driving cross-country on the LA to Nashville run, suddenly seized up on me. I nearly did drive off the highway, fishtailing it so my cab came to rest with the right tire on the dirt shoulder.

  I was stabbed in the back by my own fucking spine. I didn’t even get a chance to swipe up the weapon in my hand.

  Three skinheads stood commandingly in front of their pickup truck, semiautos cupped in their palms. Although they wore corny black scarves covering their mouths like bandits in a western, I noted tattoos on their necks and arms such as a Nazi storm trooper, the usual swastikas, and on one guy, the word RaHoWa. I knew from my travels this meant a racial holy war. Since I was a white, ginger-haired guy, I doubted this had anything to do with the jacking. But how did they know I had the missile among the vegetables?

  The weird thing was, the white power guys only took the heroin. I was supposed to deliver it to some motorcycle club in Lake Havasu called The Bent Zealots. “You drive this to their clubhouse, The Happy Hour,” said the Mexican at the Bakersfield truck stop, before proceeding to pay me five thousand dollars for my services. True, the kilo could fetch two hundred thousand on the street. Then the contrabandista added, “Me da los mismos problemas que el viento le dio a Juárez.” Which means something like “gives me the same trouble the wind gave to Juarez.” Old-timey Mexican president Benito Juarez had amazing helmet hair that was never a strand out of place. This meant the heroin was A1 quality. I replied, “Hasta luego.” I knew the Rosario cartel would behead me with a chainsaw if I didn’t deliver, but the five large automatically convinced me to do it. Truck drivers don’t make a fortune and requiring more painkillers than my union doctor could prescribe made it practically a break-even occupation.

  I’d thought of moving onto heroin from my current OxyContin preference. Mainly, it was a shit ton cheaper. One Oxy could run you eighty bucks at a pill mill, for the powerful milligrams I required. But we were randomly drug tested by our company. Being unemployed would really eat into my nonexistent fortune. It was a major Catch-22 that the job had caused the back problems that seemed to have no cure.

  The white power guys peeled out of there in pickups once they had their stuff. There were alrea
dy four or five cars on 95 backed up waiting to go the opposite direction. Normally it would’ve been a pisser how complacent they were, la de da, waiting for these obvious criminals to finish ripping off an upstanding truck driver. Not one of them seemed to be grabbing their phone to call the cops.

  The cops were the last thing I wanted.

  “So, Mr. Statesboro, it appears that everything on your bill of lading is still here in your container. If the thieves didn’t want your olives and green beans, what did they take? Your virginity? Your copy of Forever Butt?”

  Yeah. Right.

  I thought of driving back to find that Rosario cartel guy in Bakersfield. One or two of them could always be found hanging around the Bear Mountain truck stop. That thought only lasted a split second. All my naïve honesty would get me was my face peeled off and glued to a soccer ball. The Bent Zealots MC seemed like a way less lethal option. No doubt they knew the Aryan guys, knew how to track them down. I’d throw myself at their mercy, hand them back the five large. Yeah. That was the ticket.

  The closer I got to Havasu City, the more that idea seemed lame, too. Teamsters were supposed to protect their load no matter what. It was a given that we all carried weapons. We should not hesitate to use them. It was the rule of the road. I, however, had such a big disconnect between my vertebrae, I couldn’t even grab my shotgun. Blaming my failure on my physical ailments wasn’t in the Statesboro cards. It was no small wonder I hadn’t had a girlfriend in five years. Forever Butt was about it for me. At truck stops, I occasionally allowed lot lizards to come into my sleeper cab and blow me. The women were toothless and meth-spotted—or victims of human trafficking—so I even stopped that. Once, I let a young guy into my cab because he looked clean and drug-free. He was a runaway, hitchhiking around the country, the spirit of youth guiding him. He reminded me of myself at that age, idealistic and eager for tomorrow, so I let him smoke my cock and gave him twenty dollars.

  I tried never to think about how rapaciously he’d gulped me. Maybe I flattered myself, but he seemed enthusiastic, and not just about the money. Was it because men had bigger mouths, could swallow more meat? I was a mouthful, I knew. This boy hoovered me down to my pubic bone and back again, loving on the mushroom glans. Embarrassingly, I’d shot almost immediately. Mind. Blown.

  It was a mortifying experience I could admit to no one.

  I returned to the massage parlors nestled in most truck stop compounds for “stress therapy,” but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept fantasizing about the kid with the talented mouth, wondering what was wrong with me, if my sexual nature wasn’t as twisted as my physical.

  I made my delivery to Food City in the northern part of Havasu. Next up was Albertson’s. That was the first time I’d ever seen the London Bridge. I hadn’t come through Havasu before, and the sight of the beautiful brick span made me nostalgic. For what, I didn’t know, since I was Scots-Irish and not British. On this glittering day in March, when I was so depressed I wore my darkest pair of Oakleys, the sight of the venerated old bridge cheered me. It prickled with vintage gaslights, and the gorgeous granite brickwork in shades of gold and mustard formed elliptical arches through which sailboats could navigate.

  I had to concentrate on the road, but the warm feeling the bridge gave me stayed with me for a long time. I saw it again when I made my last drop-off at Safeway. It was mesmerizing, this arched span from England in the middle of the Arizona desert. The piers had immense plinths with pointed gothic designs. I could easily see dozens of women crossing it daily with headloads of umbrellas to be fixed, sacks of hats, baskets of fruits and vegetables. I had wanted to be an architect, making it through two years of UCLA before being forced to become a truck driver to help my dad.

  I sighed deeply and checked my phone for directions to The Happy Hour, clubhouse of The Bent Zealots motorcycle club. This was going to be a joy, telling some tattooed thug that I lost their kilo of heroin, and was only giving them five grand in compensation. Not to mention, I needed the five large to purchase more Oxy, once I found the pill mill that was supposed to be somewhere in town.

  So, yeah, I drove even more despondently up McCullough to the small hamlet of Rough and Ready. The clubhouse was on Surprise Street. Yeah, surprise to me. I’ll be hanging from London Bridge an hour from now. I’d googled the Bent Zealots, of course. Not much came up other than their charity work for Bikers Against Child Abuse. MCs flew under the radar and didn’t exactly have websites. There was one mention that people speculated whether a body hanging from a bridge down south was their work. Just speculation, of course. Carved into the body was the phrase “this is what happens to grasshoppers.” Grasshoppers—chapulines—were narks or turncoats who sold to the wrong dealer. The carver ran out of room, and only “grassho” was chiseled into the guy’s foot. But people took the meaning.

  Surprise Street wasn’t very wide, and I wound up pulling my rig into an alley behind the line of shops that included a pot dispensary, Herbal Legends. I was thirty-eight and hadn’t smoked since I was eighteen, giving up the mellowness that accompanied weed for the hallowed halls of UCLA. I’d been considering it lately, hearing endlessly about the painkilling properties of CBD. Again, my company would drug test us, and pot stayed in your system longer than any meth or coke. It was still illegal on a federal level, a huge and confusing quirk of our legal system.

  Steeling myself for the brutal encounter, I took several deep breaths. I’d learned some meditation in my time, and I used it now. I gasped when the back door of The Happy Hour opened, and an Indian kid came out with a bag of garbage. Here was my opportunity at a smooth introduction. I climbed down from my rig as she tossed the trash into the garbage bin.

  This was my chance to redeem myself. This was my chance to show these greaseballs I had a higher moral authority than them.

  This was my chance to look good, for once.

  “Hey,” I said cheerfully, raising a friendly hand. The girl peered right through me with sharp, almost terrified blue eyes. Navajo. “I’m supposed to be making a delivery here to the clubhouse. Who would I talk—”

  “Shit!” she spat, whipping her head toward the back door. She’d obviously heard something I didn’t. She leaped to the door and tore it open, disappearing inside.

  Huh. I followed.

  Immediately there rose the tumult of a rumble. No one was in the back hallway by the bathrooms, but up front, bodies thudded into walls, glasses crashed, pool cues slammed. I smiled. Now was my real chance to redeem myself.

  Peering around the corner, I got the lay of the land. The Navajo girl was actually engaging with the enemy, smashing some guy in a black leather vest over the head with a pool ball rack. His eyes crossed like a proverbial cartoon victim, and he slumped on the ground. I thought I caught her eye as I grinned and jumped into action.

  The first guy in a black leather vest I punched in the jaw, and my back started seizing up. I would Zen my way out of this one, it was that important. The guy was devilishly handsome, impish, and blond, and he didn’t go down easy. He slugged me back right in the jaw, and we engaged in a bit of shadowboxing for a few seconds. Finally, a brute of a man, shirtless with Nordic rune tattoos, kneed the devilish guy from behind as he got him in a chokehold, snapping his neck as I’d never seen outside of TV. The guy went down for the count.

  I definitely shared a look of triumph with this shirtless guy as we dove into other activities. I chose another leather-vested guy, tall and ginger like me. He was whaling on a weedy guy who resembled a dodo, again with Nordic runes on his neck and arms. Maybe “Bent Zealots” meant something in Norway. I’m pretty sure I impressed this Zealot by getting the ginger in a headlock, bending him over, and pummeling him in the skull. The Zealot scampered away like a spider.

  Although I battered the ginger head with all my might, and my spine screwed itself up into a DNA helix, the guy just would not go down. It took the shirtless Zealot to come to my aid, punching him in the stomach until he had no more air in his lungs, and
had no choice but to sag to the floor.

  This time we both cackled evilly, thrilled with our victory. It was exhilarating to act like a high schooler again!

  In my euphoria, I tacked a swarthy guy, pinning him to the floor with my entire body. While he didn’t wear a black leather vest, I knew he was a bad guy because he’d escaped the clutches of one of “us” and was racing like a chickenshit toward the back hallway. What an absolute chickenshit. He deserved to be tackled and pinned.

  Once I had him under me, squirming like the dark-haired fish he was, I didn’t fucking know what to do. Was it ethical to punch a pinned guy in the back of the head? I lunged up my knee to press his pelvis to the tiles. I could’ve wrestled him into a figure four, but whoever wins in those positions? It’s always a standoff.

  One hand gripped both his wrists, the other the back of his neck. I found myself talking to the guy, oddly enough. “You think you can just raid our clubhouse,” I snarled. That’s when it struck me. I was getting horny, pressing my crotch into his ass crack. He had one of those glorious, well-rounded butts such as depicted in my favorite magazine, the sort with the dimpled slope that stood out like a sand dune even when flat on his face like he was. And maybe it was my dominant position that thrilled me to the core. To cover up the fact that my cock was swelling, I snarled some more. “You’ll never get the best of the Bent Zealots.”

  “You stupid asshole,” the guy said in a strangled voice, his lips wiping the grimy linoleum. “I’m on your fucking side.”

  I was actually considering flipping him over so I could grind my full crotch against him. I was familiar with the joy that ensued when two clothed cocks rubbed against each other, the sheer pleasure of two full horse penises thrusting erotically. I knew logically this was not the place and time, but the thrill was so all-encompassing, dry humping this stud’s ass like this, it took awhile for his words to register.