Surprised, because Fury had been Diamante, Bones asked, “Him? A known club hopper?”
“He’s found a home finally that feels worthy of his time, worth any sacrifice he needs to make. Show him what he wants like that? Fuck, that man ain’t goin’ anywhere. Hell, every decision he made the last year he was Diamante held Rebel interests at heart anyway, so I ain’t worried about him at all.” Mason shook his head. “I have enough to deal with on the corp side. Gonna give up the city seat this year. We’ve eked all the good we can outta that, and it’s a distraction I can’t afford.”
“I sometimes forget how many hats you balance.” City councilman for a ward in Chicago; CEO of Mason Corp., the business which held all the Rebel interests; CEO of a private record label he ran with his sister, Bethany; and national president of a club with fifteen chapters, a club most felt was poised to go international, rumors of a Down Under chapter flowing like water through the rumor mill. “How does Willa feel about sharing you with so many?”
“She gets pissed and then pissy.” Mason shrugged, the motion easy and relaxed. His smile was sly when he continued, “Bad moods can be fixed by being bad, that’s what I tell her, and we eventually find ourselves back on track.” They shared a chuckle, and Bones felt the bounce and bump as the plane’s wheels left the runway, airborne finally.
“So Fury, and who else?” Curiosity drove the question from his lips, but Bones wasn’t ready for Mason’s response.
“You and Opie.”
“Fuck you.” His response was immediate and loud, pulling attention back to their conversation. Softening his voice, he repeated his words, knowing the sentiment would still be heard and understood. “Fuck you, Davis Mason. That is not a role I would seek.”
“Neither would Fury or Opie, which is exactly why any of you’d be perfect. We got folks who stretch for influence, and those aren’t the ones we need. Not that you’re shy about talking your own virtues.” Mason chuckled. “But you will never believe it your due. That’s what we need. Someone who sees their own flaws and faults before they look elsewhere to find blame. Like with your Ester. You never consider there are a thousand people who could help you with her. Social workers, brothers, fuck…anybody. She’s your responsibility, and you are tryin’ to balance that with everything else. That’s how we wear the hats, brother. We just keep tippin’ things ‘til we find a balance for a moment, take a breath, then find the next.”
“That is a joyless life.”
“No, brother. Fulla the joy. Seein’ you find a woman who can bewitch you? Joy. Seein’ Bella with Tater? Joy.” Mason’s attention was pulled back to his phone, and he scowled, features losing all the quiet pleasure he had held a moment ago. “No news on Mela. Fuck. Where the hell is she? Where the fuck’s Hurley?”
***
“Myron?” Mason’s voice held surprise as he greeted the man waiting for them inside Bones’ home. “What the hell you doin’ here? What’s wrong?”
Bones held the thin man’s stare as he followed Mason through the door. “I find myself wondering the same thing.” He glanced pointedly at the door which had not been locked, and at the alarm system beside the door, currently reflecting an unarmed state.
“I set it up. I know the codes. How I got in here isn’t important.” Myron shook his head. “We gotta find Ester, Bones.”
“Tell me what you know,” Bones demanded, wondering what had changed.
“Lady at the deli said Ester’s been coming in like clockwork for nearly three years. Never misses a Wednesday, until this week. Told me she looked sick last week, but laughed it off. The guy at the pizza place has the same story, said she’s dependable with her rounds. I found six people who are used to seeing her, and haven’t, and half of them remember her not feeling well. That crawling you said you had in your gut? I’ve got that a dozen times over. Something isn’t right, Bones.” Jaw tight, Myron stared at him, repeating his words in a way that sent a chill up Bones’ spine. “Something isn’t right, man.”
Mason broke in, asking, “Where are these places? Where’s the deli?” Myron rattled off addresses, and Mason didn’t hesitate. “There’s a bridge near there where you’re protected from the wind in the winter. Folks huddle.”
There would be time enough to explore the motivation behind this urgency. Hand to the doorknob, Bones looked back as he swung it open, already walking through. “Show me.”
Needings
Ester
I coughed again, the sound tearing through the enclosed space around me, and struggled to lift my arm. Tired, so tired, I was too late to effectively block the expelling air, but just in time to capture the spray of red that accompanied it. This was nothing new. I’d been leaking like this for at least two days. I thought it was two days. It got hard to remember when it started, because I didn’t know when it was now. So I held onto that idea. The one where it had only been two days since I had found myself unable to crawl out of my cardboard place. No pumpkins here.
“Shaddup you. Shaddup.”
That order came from down the way, an older woman who was tender and horrifying by turns. Today would be the angrier end of the spectrum it seemed. Witching hour, I used to call it, when I had the energy to call anything by name.
I idly realized the sound I’d been listening to had stopped, so I breathed in, just to make sure I hadn’t been listening to the rattle in my own chest, but that still existed so it wasn’t that. The rattle and weight like an elephant, and the pain, still there. There another sound that quickly stopped, rumbling and grumbling through the underpass where we’d set up camp for the season.
Come spring, the authorities would sprint to shuffle us along, wanting the walking and biking paths to be free of any thought-provoking or uncomfortable-feeling bodies. Making sure the housed folks were free of the hidden people who looked like us, but for now, we were safe.
The grumbling sound died away, gentle at the end, like it had needed more to keep going but found itself with a dearth of whatever it was it needed. Like me, I thought, and needed on the wind. Needing was like wishing, but it wasn’t for things that couldn’t happen like crystal shoes and ball gowns and pumpkins grown into castles. Needing was for dire wishes. Needs before wants. Needing was what my mind did when it was dark out, and I was frightened. Needing was for now.
Voices, soft and quiet, respectful in their gentle approach, moving closer and closer. Not like when the police came to shift us out and away. Those were times full of loud, embarrassed voices uncaring where we went as long as we weren’t here when they got back. These voices murmured, asked questions, didn’t order and shout. They came closer, and closer again, and then I realized I was dreaming.
“Ester.”
The dream me tried to lift her head, but it didn’t move, so she tried to roll to face the tiny opening carved from the cardboard with fingernails and teeth, wedged into place to stop the wind from howling through and blowing the shelter over. The dynamics of construction at work, learned from a free workshop at the co-op on the north side of town. Two trains to get there, one train back, because later routes were different. Would I be routed from this dream? Rousted from slumber and back to pain and drowning?
The cardboard bowed in, and the witch shouted, “Leave her alone. She ain’t done nothing to you.”
“Ester. Are you in there?” The dream me shut her eyes in relief, rescues might be on tap for today after all. No prince in satin, but an inked man in a leather vest, riding an iron steed.
“Bones.” I tried to shout this, or at least my dream self did, thinking the moment needed a profound statement of affirmation. Instead, the whisper was enough, pronouncing the rightness of his assumption.
Found
Bones
“Jesus.” Bones grunted, struggling to rip the thick cardboard apart without tumbling the entire structure down the steeply sloping cement surface. Hands appeared, slapping his away, fingerless gloves not hiding the fact they belonged to a woman. Even knowing that, with her between him and Ester,
he wanted this woman gone, any way he could make it happen. Frustrated, he gripped a wrist and pulled, taking her off balance, still trying to reach for the cardboard with his other hand.
“I said, leave her be. She ain’t done nothing. Never does anything wrong.” Pushing him, her strength was a surprise and Bones had to go to one knee to avoid falling, releasing her. She’d moved to slapping at his head now, and he put up an arm to hold her off. “She’s.” A swing that ended with a thump against his shoulder. “Good.”
“Stop, please.” He took another painless blow to the bicep, her limp-wristed attempts not hurting him, but her fierce defense of Ester stung his heart. “I know she is good. She’s my Ester.” Tipping his head sideways, he looked up at her, seeing wild eyes staring down at him.
“Bones.” She named him, and that was chilling, knowing Ester spoke of him to this woman. “You’re Bones, the famous Bones, who can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Such a good guy.” He didn’t try to hide his fear for Ester, and counted it a win when the woman gave it back. “Pretty Ester’s Bones.” A series of wet-sounding coughs came from inside the cardboard construct and the woman twisted to look at it, brows snapping down into a scowl.
“Yes, and she does not sound well. I need to get her out”—he looked at the cardboard, not certain what to call it—“of there, so I can seek help for her.”
“No shit? You think I don’t know that? What are you doin’ out here, then? She’s been coughing and waking me up. Body’s gotta sleep.” The woman leaned past him, and he pulled back, wary of her teeth so near his face. She pushed at a section of the wall, tugging one side in another location and a moment later the entire end of the structure swung out. “Ester learned that. Taught us all.” Scowling at him, she cautioned, “Don’t mean you get to come in and open everyone’s house. Just Ester’s, and only just cause she’s sick as a dog. Don’t piss me off.”
“I will not.” Looking in where Ester lay, he saw she was on her back, hair swirling around her face in a disheveled mass. In spite of the frigid air, sweat caused strands to stick to her cheek. Cautious of startling her, he pitched his voice to carry, calling out, “Mason, I found her.” Without turning around, he heard footsteps approach at a run with his shout.
Ester never moved, not even the merest twitch, and Bones’ blood ran cold.
Flattening the cardboard, careless of anything except his Ester, Bones crouched beside her.
“You got her, brother.” The words were background noise for what he was doing, carefully arranging her limbs, feeling the heat from her cheek on the back of his hand. With two fingers held firmly to her throat, bitter saliva flooded his mouth when he realized how thready her pulse was, how irregular her heartbeat, slow and faint. Frighteningly so. “I’ll get a bus.” That got Bones’ attention, and he looked up.
“No. Mason, she…no. No ambulance. No bus. My home. I need to bring her home. Not a hospital, I pray you do not make that call. Myron,” Bones called, looking past Mason to where the younger man stood, eyes wide as he stared down at the unconscious woman, “where did you park your car?” They had split up to search, Bones and Mason on their bikes regardless of the bitter cold, the better to ease into tight situations. The rest in cars and trucks, which meant he had access to a warm vehicle in which to carry her home.
“I got it,” was all the man said before turning and sprinting away.
“Need help getting her up, brother?” Mason had squatted on the other side of her, flicking the tip of a finger through her things. “Need to bring her stuff. Vultures’ll swoop in soon as we’re gone. They’ll be wind in five minutes.” Mason began to gather things. “Leave the food. Looks like you kept Ester pretty well stocked. They’ll be thankful for that, and it’s some payment for the disruption.” Bones had gathered Ester into his arms and glanced around now, seeing the circle of faces watching them. Curious, angry, and confused expressions, all woken in the middle of the night by his search. “You get Ester out. I’ll deal with this.”
“Thank you.” Such a trite phrase, scarcely encompassing the debt owed Mason, but all Bones had it in him to offer right now. “Thank you.”
Mason told him, “Get her to the car, get her warm. I called Red. He’s on shift, but he’ll be waiting for your word.”
Red was an emergency medical technician who worked for an ambulance service, but the thought of Ester in a hospital made Bones feel ill. They would not see her harmless quirks as charming. They would see them as a sign of mental illness, and they would lock her behind windows threaded with mesh. They would medicate her until the quicksilver of her personality dulled to nothing, and he would lose his Ester.
Mason must have read this on his face, because he was quick to offer an alternative. “Don’t have to take her. Red’ll treat her at your place, brother. Whatever you need, we will move mountains so you have it, hear me? Whatever you need.”
Nodding, Bones turned and walked away, carrying a limp and motionless Ester, heat from her body baking into him even as she shivered in long undulations in his arms.
No doubts
Myron
He stood clutching the bike key Bones had shoved into his hand, watching his car pull away from the curb. Someone walked up behind him, and he felt the grip of a familiar hand on his shoulder, fingers digging in. “You bringin’ Bones’ bike to the house or his place?” Mason asked, knowing it was a foregone conclusion he would be doing as Bones had wordlessly requested.
“House,” Myron muttered, hearing the noise from behind them, knowing it was the local residents picking through the things of Ester’s they’d left behind. He didn’t want to turn and watch, didn’t want to think of how different the scene could have been if they’d been later. If they hadn’t found Ester at all. Couldn’t think of how sick she looked.
Bones had opened the tiny cardboard shelter, and Myron had stood frozen, looking down at the face of a woman he remembered only in dreams. A woman who’d been gone from his life for so long, he couldn’t remember what it was like before. He hadn’t been able to believe it, but he’d known. From the first time he’d seen a picture of Ester snapped on a food kitchen surveillance camera, he had known. Seeing it in the flesh, even ravaged by illness, he had no doubts about who she was.
She was the spitting image of their mother.
Dark angel
Ester
I woke up slowly, finding it in me to try and breathe one more time, surprised when this one breath came without the grinding pain in my chest to which I’d become accustomed. Warm, I was hotter than I’d ever been, yet at the same time, I was freezing. My teeth chattered and clattered in my head, filling my ears with noise that would wake the witch, so I tried to clamp my jaw closed, succeeding only in biting the tip of my tongue.
Voices from far away talked in words and phrases, which should have made sense but held no context for me, and so mapping their meaning was as difficult as surveying the dark side of the moon. That partner to the sun, the balance and fulcrum. Of course, I knew there were other mechanics at play in that balance, but it stretched my lips to think of just the sun and the moon, sharing space without it mattering who was the stronger and the weaker.
The words I could not map were strident in tone, anger and frustration ringing through far more clearly than the words meanings. “Too high. I have never seen the like.”
I twisted to my back, surprised to find underneath me, where I placed all of my clothing, those individual pieces of fabric had conspired to make a far more comfortable bed than ever before, even with the addition of Bones’ blanket. Thick and lush, it cradled my body with a support which, for once, was not painful. There were no angled shoulders or hips pressed into hard pavement, stones and briars carefully removed to make the surface as smooth as possible, if not soft. Not soft like this. And my shoes had surely never been this sweetly cool against my cheek.
I’d spent time in shelters and knew even their offerings didn’t give me this kind of comfort. Scratchy woolen blankets
tossed over bare mattresses, delousing shampoo harsh when used on skin, but at least offering a measure of cleanliness I always longed for.
I swallowed the minuscule pool of saliva that had gathered right behind my teeth, underneath my tongue. Working the thick muscle slowly, carefully, I cleansed my mouth as I wished my body could be clean. I opened my eyes and saw…everything.
Draping fabric overhead, held up by four wooden posts. Sentinels, standing at each corner of the surface like the four angel guardians the church promised would watch me sleep. Angels who, if they did watch, didn’t help, not when the son of the couple crept into my bed. Crying foul when I balked and fought his touch, telling me the worst had already happened and since I was a crying baby, at least I couldn’t get knocked up.
Knocked around, sure, and he proved those words true, imprinting the curvature of his palm on my face. I’d turned away, not looking, needing to be as opposite to what he was doing as the dark side of that glowing curvature in the sky, glimpsed out the window, clouds racing across as if to hide the acts from even the moon.
Angels who didn’t carry me away, didn’t protect me. Angels with porcelain skin, unmarked, smooth and clean and never, ever dirty. Unmarked, and above me, and beyond, so far beyond what I could be, what I could hope to be. Angels away.
“Yes, I will try that. Please, come as soon as you can.” The voice, gruff with worry, rough with concern, wavering with a fear that frightened me, matched the face of my true angel. Dark, and covered by a disguise of his own making, locked inside his own jail, my angel. Bones. His face came in from the side, suspended over me, balancing me. My sun.
“I’m your moon.” My thoughts, spoken in a ragged gasp that sounded like gurgling water in a pipe, half stuffed with rags, barely draining enough air to fill my lungs. Then I was suspended, held up, the comfort and warmth falling away, shivers setting my limbs adrift and making my head swim with pain. “So cold.”
Bones (Rebel Wayfarers MC Book 10) Page 13
