Bones by the Wood

by Johnson, Catherine

Thea nodded and picked the pan back up to finish her task. Dizzy left her to it and headed to his dorm room, intending to collect his shoulder holster and his Sig, his knife and the two spare guns that he kept in the desk. The Rojas might be providing extra weapons, but he wanted to take a few of his own, it would be foolish not to. He was double checking the chamber on his Beretta when the door opened. He turned, expecting to see Thea and Samuel, and was surprised that it was just Thea who stepped through the door, especially when she closed it behind her.

  “Everythin’ alright, sweetheart?”

  “Yeah. I... just...”

  She was crossing the room, with purpose. Dizzy had enough time to register that he needed to lay the gun down on the desk before she was on him. She reached up and fed her hands into his hair, knocking his Stetson off, as she kissed him. He was shocked senseless, for a moment, but the stupor didn’t last. He took her ass in a firm grip and lifted. She did a little jump and wrapped her legs around his hips. Damn that felt good. He turned and set her on the edge of the desk, mindlessly feeling for the guns and pushing them out of the way to make room.

  It was every bit as electrifying as their kiss that morning had been. The desk was too low to get the contact he wanted, needed, to soothe the ache in his suddenly solid shaft. He pulled her up hard against his body. Thea gripped him more tightly between her thighs, and flexed, wringing a groan from deep in his throat. Dizzy broke the frantic kiss, intending to continue where he’d been forced to stop earlier.

  It pained him to do so, but he set her ass back on the edge of the desk so that he could free his hands. The disappointed whimper that Thea gave would have made him laugh if he hadn’t been intent on pulling the strap of her beater and that enticing red bra out of the way so that he could press an open-mouthed kiss to her shoulder. He wrapped his other hand around her neck so that he could tilt her chin up with his thumb.

  He bit gently, then harder, then set his teeth into the delicate, sweetly salty skin of her neck. That made her moan, long and deep. He wanted more of that. More of that taste, more of that sound. There was a decision to be made here, whether he should fuck her or not. He wanted to, god did he want to. His cock was about ready to burn a hole through his jeans to get to her pussy, but he wanted to savor her. It wouldn’t be the end of the dance, but he still wanted to take his leisure, especially for the first time.

  He kissed his way along her jaw, intending to make his way back to her lips. He still cradled her neck with one hand, rubbing his thumb up and down over the smooth skin. He slipped his other hand under her beater until he could cup her breast over the lace of the bra. He might not be willing to fuck her here on the desk, but he damn sure wasn’t ready to be done with her. Thea drew back, just a little, when he sought her mouth.

  “Come home to us.” She mumbled against his lips.

  “You’d be sorry if I didn’t?” Her breath was hot and distracting, but not more so than her words.

  “Yeah.”

  Dizzy drew back, just a little more, so that he could look into those blue windows to her soul. “That mean somethin’?”

  “It means if you come back we can find out. It’ll be a moot point if you don’t.”

  Dizzy paused, but only for a heartbeat, then he kissed her again, hard. It was a promise that he would return. He couldn’t put it into words, he didn’t have the language, and he would have been superstitious even if he had, but he promised her with lips and tongue until they both needed to draw in gasping lungfuls of air.

  Although his blood was still pounding, Dizzy realized Thea’s lips were curled into a small smile. “What’re you s’posed to be takin’ me to Louisiana for?” She asked.

  “Samuel’s girl’s marryin’ Shark, the big fella that came with ‘em.”

  “So, what, I’d be like your date?”

  “You and Josh. That a problem?”

  At the mention of including Josh Thea’s attitude changed from teasing defensiveness to pliant enthusiasm. “Not sure my car can make it that far.”

  “Problem for another time, sweetheart. Will you come with me?”

  “Yes. If you’re still around to take us.”

  Dizzy rested his forehead against hers. “Then as much as it pains me to say, sweetheart, you need to leave. I’m gonna need everythin’ I’ve got for tonight.”

  Thea quickly kissed the corner of his mouth before sliding off the desk. Not that it helped much since that put her body flush against his. Dizzy pressed forward, knowing that the edge of the desk must be digging into her uncomfortably and caring only that it meant there was nothing between them except their clothing.

  Her voice was almost as hoarse as his own. “You’re gonna have to step back there if you want me to go. Else I’m gonna think you want me to stay.”

  “Oh, don’t doubt, sweetheart, that I want you to stay.” It went against everything in him, but he took two steps back. He watched avidly as she pulled her clothing back into place. “But if I get you anythin’ near naked, it ain’t gonna be over in an hour.”

  “That’s another promise I’m gonna hold you to, cowboy.”

  He watched as she untied her ponytail, which was now thoroughly disheveled, and retied it and ran her fingers through her bangs to sweep them out of her eyes. She paused, as if she’d say something more, but she didn’t. Instead she bent down, picked his Stetson up from the floor, brushed it off and handed it to him. She left without saying another word, although from the way that her mouth had been twisting there at the last, Dizzy suspected she was struggling to keep some emotion at bay.

  As frustrating and as disappointing as it was, Dizzy put Thea to the back of his mind. He quickly finished up checking his guns and headed back to the main room, intending to try and find some rest in the quiet of the Chapel. He hadn’t been exaggerating; he needed everything he had, every ounce of will and strength. He fully intended to come back in one piece. He had more now to return for than he’d ever thought he would.

  Dizzy had never wanted to be a drone in society. He’d never cared much for authority. He’d often wondered, when he was younger, what made certain people so special that they got to lord it out over everyone else, and he’d never been able to figure it out. It was only as he’d gotten older that he’d realized that oftentimes it was down to money and connections, but that most often, it was down to sheer force of will.

  He wanted to be in command of his own life, not beholden to some dick with a penis complex on a power trip. The price he paid for that freedom, for that self-assertion, was that he had to take the rough with the smooth. This right here was some of the rough, having to go up against such a dedicated and heartless foe. Being out on the open road when he wanted, the feeling of grabbing life by the scruff of the neck, that was the smooth. Even when he was being shot at and his heart was pounding and his blood was so full of adrenaline he thought he’d burst, that was part of the smooth too, because that meant he was alive, doing what he wanted to be doing, not what someone else wanted him to do. And that was what he lived for.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A little over an hour later, as the light of the day was turning into the deep gold that heralded the departure of the day and the imminent arrival of the oncoming sunset, the band of fourteen riders sped away from the clubhouse. They had a couple of hours riding ahead of them, and that was before things even got interesting.

  It was dark by the time they reached the pre-arranged meeting place, which was still some distance from the border. Eduardo’s men were waiting for them outside a small diner on the edge of a town that was about as prosperous as Ravensbridge, maybe less so. The Spanish-influenced architecture was elegant, but not one building seemed to have a full coat of paint that wasn’t peeling, and the overall air was of a place forgotten and ignored.

  As they pulled up alongside two nondescript, dark-colored vans, a short, swarthy man slid out of the passenger door of one and approached Samuel. Dizzy couldn’t tell much about him. The light from the large windows of
the diner barely penetrated this gloomy corner of the lot.

  “Buenas noches, ese. I am Carlos. You are Samuel, yes?”

  “I am. Eduardo told me you’d help us across the border.”

  “Si, that is correct.” Samuel and Carlos clasped hands by way of a greeting. “We’re looking forward to finishing those Perdidos putas for once and all. You must leave your motorcycles here. They will be watched carefully. The owner of the diner is a friend. I am afraid it will attract too much attention where we are going to have you follow us on such loud machines.”

  Samuel nodded and tilted his head towards the vans. “You have room for us.”

  “Yes we do, ese. More of my men will meet us at the crossing.”

  Samuel turned back to Dizzy and the rest of the Priests. “Come on, boys. Time to get these wagons rollin’.”

  Dizzy did a quick check from habit to make sure that his guns and knives were where they were supposed to be on his person. They split into two groups as Carlos opened the rear doors to the vans. Samuel led the men from Louisiana into one, and Dizzy led his charter to the other. Inside they found benches lining the walls of the van and a couple of men already occupying seats. Once they were all as comfortable as they were going to get, Carlos slammed the doors shut, plunging them into total darkness.

  “Next time you want a burrito, boss. One of us’ll go to Taco Bell, yeah?” Scooby’s disembodied voice came out of the dark.

  “It’s an extreme way to satisfy your munchies, that is true,” Ferret chimed in.

  “Talkin’ about food, I’m starvin’ now,” Shaggy complained.

  “Starvin’? I saw how much chili you put away. I thought the girls were gonna havta start cookin’ again,” Fitz laughed.

  “You’ve bagged yourself a good cook there, boss. Gonna havta watch for puttin’ the pounds on.” Dizzy didn’t have to be able to see Cage to know that he was looking a little smug.

  “Yeah. It’s gonna be real tough, but I think we can all help you with that.” Easy added.

  “Oh yeah, sure we can. She gets the urge to cook you bring her around to the clubhouse. We’ll make sure you don’t end up needin’ one of those gasping bands.” Shaggy offered.

  “That’s gastric band, bro.” Ferret corrected him.

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.” Shaggy’s tone was indignant.

  Dizzy shook his head and smiled even knowing that the others couldn’t see. No one was under any illusions about the dangerous situation they were heading into. The gallows humor was welcome; Dizzy knew well that if someone was too tense to see the amusement in the situation, that they would struggle in the fight.

  After a short, but incredibly bumpy ride, the doors were thrown open and fourteen very relieved bikers and four equally relieved Colombians stepped out into the early night, stretching the kinks out of their bodies. They seemed to be on the edge of some farmland or scrubland. There were no streetlights close by, and only the thinnest sliver of moon, but even in the inky dark, Dizzy could tell that the ground was a vast, wide, flat expanse. It had a feeling of unobserved openness. The only structure Dizzy could see was the ramshackle old farmhouse that the vans had stopped in front of. In the feeble illumination of the vans’ headlights Dizzy could see the fields of dry dirt and the weather-beaten, grey boards of the house.

  Carlos, holding an industrial-sized flashlight, waved them to follow him into the house. Dizzy locked eyes with Samuel, and without speaking they followed. In the abandoned dining room, on the dusty table, was a stack of bulletproof vests. As the members of the MC shrugged out of their kuttes and into the Kevlar, Carlos dragged the lid off a large wooden packing crate that was sitting in a corner of the room. Once they all had body armor in place, Carlos handed them an AK47 each and extra clips of ammunition.

  “As Eduardo promised you. He sent the vests with a message: that your friendship has lasted many years, it would be a shame to lose it to carelessness now.”

  Samuel smiled wryly. “That’s mighty sentimental of him. You tell him thank you when you see him.”

  “The idea, ese, is that you can thank him yourself when you next see him.”

  “Noted.”

  “Nothin’ like a classic, huh?” Fitz commented as he unclipped and re-clipped the magazine in his gun and checked it over, in the same way that the rest of the men were doing. Fitz looks disturbingly comfortable all got up like Rambo. He’d brought along a fucking huge knife the length of his thigh. Dizzy didn’t know what the fuck he was going to do with what amounted to a goddamn sword.

  “You know what’s a shame? No one ever uses those Tommy guns like they had in the twenties no more. They’d add some class to the whole show.” Ferret muttered as he checked his own gun.

  “You wanna do this in a suit and tie and fuckin’ fedora or some shit? Brother, you are in the wrong movie.” Easy threw Ferret another spare clip as he spoke, and Ferret tucked it into one of the pockets of his kutte.

  “Fuck that. I’d rather have one of those fuckin’ shoulder-cannon-pulse-laser-doodads that the Predator has.” Sinatra reached for his kutte having finished fastening the straps of his vest.

  “You mean a Plasma Caster.” Crash had finished donning his body armor and checking his weapons ahead of everybody else.

  “Geek.” Chiz muttered, but Crash only laughed.

  Carlos led them back into the hallway of the house. He crouched down and flipped back a moth-eaten rug. Underneath was a trap door cut into the planks of the flooring. Carlos lifted a brass ring set into one of the planks and pulled the trap door open, revealing steps down into the musty cellar of the building. Dizzy and Samuel followed him down. At the bottom, they realized that the space was not big enough to hold all the men still in the hallway at once, but Carlos was leading them over to another larger, sturdier-looking trapdoor set into the dirt. When Carlo threw it open, it revealed a hole filled with a sickly glow and a ladder attached to the edge.

  “I’ll warn you now. It’s hot in the tunnel. If you should black out we will all struggle. Try not to.”

  “We’ll do our best.” Samuel said dryly.

  “How’s it lookin’, boss?” Chiz shouted from the hallway.

  “Tighter than a nun’s pussy. You boys’ll need to breathe in.” Samuel called back.

  Carlos swung down onto the ladder. Samuel and Dizzy looked at each other, shrugged, and then followed him down. He hadn’t been lying, the heat enveloped them before they’d even hit the bottom. The tunnel that rolled out in front of them was barely high enough for them to walk through in a crouch and only wide enough to admit them in single file. For a moment, Dizzy had serious concerns that Shaggy, Scooby and Shark would fit, but he didn’t particularly want to leave them behind. In order to make way for the men above, there was no other option; they had to set out after Carlos.

  The tunnel was wired with electricity, and every thirty yards or so, a bare bulb provided an anemic circle of light. It was almost completely airless. The aroma of the earthen walls was saturated with the lingering smell of the sweat from all the unwashed bodies that had trod this sweltering path. As he trudged along, Dizzy heard the muffled curses of his brothers as they encountered the tight passageway.

  The tunnel seemed to go on forever. Dizzy’s back was cramping from being stooped, and his knees were aching from the half-crouch. He was glad he’d left his Stetson back at the clubhouse. His hair was wringing wet and perspiration was soaking his clothes and dripping into his eyes. He’d heard plenty of epithets from the three biggest men as they’d repeatedly knocked into the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. A long time after he was ready for the torture to end, the light got a little brighter. Dizzy realized it was because another bulb was close by. He couldn’t see past Samuel and Carlos, but he did feel a whispering tickle of a cool draft of air that brushed against his face, signifying the end of the ordeal.

  The Mexican end of the tunnel was broadly similar to the Texan end. Carlos scrambled up the ladder first, followed by Samuel and a v
ery relieved and now somewhat claustrophobic Dizzy. He emerged right up through a hole cut out in the bottom of a ratty trailer. Carlos had gone directly to open the door of the trailer, and Dizzy followed him and Samuel out into the welcoming freshness of the night air. He looked around. The trailer appeared to be smack in the middle of a regular trailer park. Strings of colored cheap plastic lanterns looped from trailer to trailer in a cursory effort at jolly decoration. Skinny, mangy dogs scampered across the pathways into the shadows.

  As the rest of his brothers emerged into the night, taking audibly deep breaths of the clean night air, doors to the trailers surrounding them opened and men stepped out to join them.

  Carlos had obviously seen Samuel and Dizzy’s shared looks of concern. “Don’t worry amigos. These men will be fighting with us this night.”

  As the last of the Priests stepped out of the trailer, several white vans, mottled with cancerous patches of rust, rumbled along the dirt road that split the rows of trailers. As each set of doors was opened, Dizzy noted that they all had a long, low packing crate in the center of the van bed. The members of the Priests and their new associates piled into the transports. Once he was seated, Dizzy took a good long look at the crate in is truck, but other than a series of numbers and letters spray painted on it in black paint, it was entirely unremarkable.