“Let’s see how repentant you are in the morning,” Khan boomed beside him. “You’ll be on your fucking knees using that mouth on every man here and begging for forgiveness.”
“Go to hell, you piece of shit,” she snarled, clawing at the stone in front of her.
More laughter rang out.
She almost stopped breathing when something was dragged over the top of the hole, entombing her further. Crumpling to the floor, she wrapped her arms around her legs and listened to them leave. The voices ebbed. The roar of engines faded until all that was left was silence.
As her adrenaline rush flattened and the dose that Phantom gave her wore off, she became aware of the aches and cuts she’d sustained in her failed escape attempt. She’d been so close.
Tears stinging her eyes, she dropped her head on her knees and wallowed in self-pity and misery, letting the sobs come and the tears stream down her face.
Magenta didn’t know how long she sat there before she felt a small flame of determination relight.
Scrambling to her feet, she held out her palms, testing the wall and feeling its roughness. If she could find handholds, she could use them to climb out. Fingers seeking out a groove, she reached as high as her cracked ribs would let her, testing for a second one. When she found what she was looking for, Magenta gritted her teeth against the pain and pulled herself upward. Bare toes scrabbling, they scraped the rock, trying to find purchase. She clenched her jaw and exhaled sharply, relieved when she discovered a footing. Reaching with her left arm, she repeated the process, inching her way toward the top.
She wasn’t even halfway up when her foot slipped. Panic erupting, she dug her fingers into the wall only to have the chunk she was gripping break away. Losing her hold, Magenta plunged downward, throwing out her arms and legs in a desperate attempt to slow her descent. Agony jolted through her body as she collided with the ground before everything slid blessedly into nothingness.
When she came to, the metallic taste of blood was in her mouth and the throbbing from her right ankle was killing her. Raising a hand to her forehead, it came away wet just above her left eye. She felt the puffiness of the bruise around the cut. Stretching gingerly, she checked for other injuries, but her cracked ribs were screaming the loudest.
Releasing a pained breath, she sat up with a wince and carefully probed her ankle. It didn’t feel broken. More than likely, it was sprained from her fall. She was lucky it wasn’t worse. The walls weren’t as stable as she hoped. It was little wonder no one had ever climbed out of Khan’s pit.
Lying back down, she focused on breathing through the pain. She wasn’t in any shape to attempt an escape now. Not until she healed.
Instead of letting herself be sucked back into a pity party, she focused on the future. What she would do when she escaped. The business she hoped to start with a goal of becoming a self-made businesswoman and eventually a millionaire. Her mother had always encouraged her to dream big. She refused to let the Death’s Head MC kill it. Whatever happened, while there was breath in her body, she’d cling to her conviction that the best was yet to be. As long as there was life, there was hope. They could drug her, cage her, sell her, but somehow, someway, she’d find a way out.
And when she did, she was coming back with a vengeance.
Cold, calculating, and ruthless.
She planned to give them exactly what they deserved, beginning with Phantom and Khan.
9
The four Dragons pulled into yet another biker bar, hoping that someone here had seen the Death’s Head cage and its passengers. They’d searched all day for the van, looked everywhere they could for Magenta before pushing north, as relentless as the tide.
Quake killed his engine, popped the kickstand, and pulled off his helmet, glad to give his ass a rest from riding. They’d left mid-morning, trusting their brothers to handle the unfinished business they’d left. By the time their clean-up crew finished, the jackal would have permanently disappeared without a trace, never to be found.
It was supper time at the Hell’s Fury MC clubhouse. With luck, this dive would serve decent food. He was hungry enough to eat the cardboard from a frozen pizza.
He’d settle for a burger and a beer.
Locking their guns in their saddlebags, the four Dragons went inside. There were thirteen Dragons in the Hell’s Fury MC, gargoyle shifters whose true voices affected those around them. The search party was selected based on the qualities and fighting abilities of their brothers. Quake’s voice triggered movement in surroundings and people. Ryder’s voice was like a shot of nitro, supercharging them for increased speed. Inferno’s gift was clarity, fostering the ability to analyze and act. Stone was their President but his voice was a battle cry, making them as fearful and unstoppable as Berserkers, which Ryder already was. One rallying cry from Stone and Ryder became their most lethal weapon. It was like releasing the Kraken only bloodier.
The bar was dimly lit and fairly busy for a Sunday night. Ignoring the curious looks at their cuts, they found a quiet booth in the back and took a load off, settling onto the cracked vinyl seats. Eventually, a waitress came over with laminated menus and an order pad.
The curvy redhead thrust out her chest and smiled like a prom queen. “My name’s Roxy,” she chirped, “and I’ll be taking care of you tonight.”
She paused for dramatic effect. When they didn’t pick up on her unspoken solicitation, she did the job she was hired to do. Take care of customers above the table, not on it.
Stone knew what they liked and ordered for the group. “This will be one check,” he began. “Give us an order of nachos and a basket of wings with hot sauce to start. We’ll have five burgers loaded. Two orders of fries. Two onion rings. One jalapeno popper. One fried pickle. Eight beers in bottles—and we’ll need them to be opened here.”
Quake was grateful for their President’s clear thinking. Tap beer could be drugged. By ordering unopened bottles, he minimized their risk in case someone here wished them ill. They hadn’t seen any Death’s Head MCs for a while, but the jackal shifters could still have friends in low places.
On cue, Garth Brooks started playing on the jukebox. Two couples wove their way onto the dance floor and started line dancing.
“Fuck,” Quake muttered under his breath. AC/DC he could handle. Country Western music made him want to smash his guitar. Inferno, on the other hand, was fucking singing along. He might look big and tough but the man loved karaoke.
Inferno’s voice grew in volume, garnering looks from the other tables.
Quake stomped his boot down on his brother’s foot.
“Ouch,” he snapped, throwing him a glare. “What the fuck, man?”
“Keep the Country confined to your room. No one else wants to hear you breaking glass attempting to sing it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it!”
Stone grunted. “Raise your hand if you want him to keep going.”
Inferno’s shot up but his was the only one to do so around the table. “Christ, you have no taste.”
“I’d rather rinse my ears out with bleach than hear you sing,” Ryder muttered from his seat.
Quake slid him a glance, noting that he had his hand under the table at his hip. His fingers were caressing the head of his axe with smooth, rhythmic strokes. He loved his weapon a little too much. Ryder never went anywhere without it. Quake was sure that the Viking slept with it under his pillow or at least within easy reach. It was almost as if it was an extension of himself he couldn’t bear to be without.
Roxy reappeared with their drinks. Placing her tray on the table, she used the bottle opener she carried in the pocket of her apron to open them one by one, each lid making a telltale pop.
“Thanks,” Quake smiled, wrapping his fingers around the chilled glass bottle.
“Your appetizers will be out shortly. Your food shouldn’t be too long,” she told him, giving him a wink.
“So what now?” Inferno questioned once she’d left. “S
o far we’ve found nothing. No hint or sign of where Phantom might have taken Magenta.”
Stone took a swig from his beer and scanned the crowd before turning back to the table. “Asking around is taking too long. We need to take different measures.”
Quake caught his gaze. “Like?”
Roxy appeared, preventing any more conversation. She deftly unloaded her tray, placing the big baskets of nachos and wings on the surface in front of them. Adding a stack of small melamine plates, she plunked down four poly soufflé cups of condiments and identified them. “Ranch dip, buffalo, honey barbeque, and firestarter. Can I get you fellas anything else?”
Stone shook his head. “More firestarter and our food when it’s ready. Thanks.”
Ryder growled to see her ass jiggle, watching her strut back to the bar. “I think she’d take us,” he murmured. “She seems to want it.”
“She’s human,” Inferno pointed out. “There’s no way she could handle you, let alone the four of us. You’d break her.”
“What do you have in mind?” Quake asked their leader, reaching over to grab a wing and dip it in the hottest sauce to achieve perfection.
Stone didn’t speak for a moment. Finishing his beer, he helped himself to a loaded nacho chip. “Grey Smoke.”
Quake frowned. “The Indian who poses for pictures and sells trinkets to tourists? Not to mention the hocus pocus he dabbles in.”
“Show some respect,” Stone scolded. “He’s a veteran. A warrior and a shaman.”
“A two-bit actor and a source for magic mushrooms, you mean.”
“Trust me, Grey Smoke is far more than what he seems. He’s powerful. A pure spirit and a clear channel. Seeking his guidance could set us on the right path. Ryder? You take that last wing, and you’ll be on my shit list.”
Hearing the warning in Stone’s voice, the Viking froze with his hand over the basket before retracting it. He looked at the pile of bones on his plate. “We could order more.”
“Yeah,” Inferno snickered. “And it’s always the same. You have no control and end up eating them all.”
They finished the appetizers and were ready for their main courses when Roxy appeared with them. Everyone grabbed for the poppers. Living with the other gargoyles for so long, Quake knew to get in fast or risk missing out.
Stone reminded them that they still had things to do and he wanted them to hurry and finish. The four of them focused on eating, devouring their food, and downing their beers.
“So . . . ,” Quake drawled, “we’re headed for Grey Smoke next?”
Stone shook his head. “You don’t ask a shaman for help without bringing a gift. It’s an energy exchange. A show of respect. There’s a truck stop about five miles from here. They should have everything we need.”
The four of them pissed at the edge of the parking lot rather than use the facilities inside. Mounting their bikes, they headed out, following Stone’s lead. They topped off their tanks at the truck stop and washed their hands while their President was inside the gift shop. He came out with a large sack and a smaller one that he stuffed in his saddlebags.
“You ready?” he asked them.
The three of them nodded.
“Let’s ride.”
Quake hated that they headed south, backtracking to where Grey Smoke lived. His underground house was dug into the side of a hill. The windmill that pumped water for his horses was the landmark everyone looked for to find him. The strikingly handsome Indian was essentially a hermit, preferring the company of animals to people and being surrounded by nature to concrete and steel. But he was a Ute holy man—as well as a source for magic mushrooms. He didn’t sell to just anyone, though. If you didn’t pass the test, he’d throw you off the bridge quicker than a coconut-laden swallow.
He was sitting in the dark, wrapped in a blanket in a rocking chair when they pulled in. “Maiku!” he greeted Stone warmly. “Mother Earth heard the rumble of your machines, but the wind had already whispered you were coming. The sweat lodge is nearly ready. You have questions. Let us seek the answers together.”
Following Grey Smoke’s lead, the men stripped down outside the sweat lodge and ducked into it, sitting their naked asses on towels that they spread on the ground. The shaman had built a fire in the center that had heated it like a sauna.
Ryder beamed, feeling right at home.
“Empty your minds,” Grey Smoke instructed. “Still your bodies and quiet your thoughts. Open yourselves to the messages that come, but remember, dreams and visions are not always what they seem. Hold onto them. Keep them with you. Once we are done, we will share what we have seen and seek to understand.”
Quake did as he was told, trying to emulate the empty-mind meditation that Stone practiced. Their President could put himself in an altered state in a heartbeat given the right circumstances, and tonight certainly qualified. The energy inside the sweat lodge was at once exciting and calming, a feeling of being embraced by Mother Earth while the smoke was drawn through a hole in the roof by Father Sky. Anchor and reach up, Stone had once told him, stressing the need to ground yourself before you went flying off onto the astral plane.
Feeling the tail that was hidden in this form, Quake burrowed it energetically into the ground beneath him, hooked himself in place, and sent his thoughts spiraling out, focused on one thing. Finding Magenta.
At first, there was only darkness. The feelings of hopelessness and fear. He saw a maned wolf running, looking more fox than wolf while being neither. Jackals surrounded it, emanating evil. The maned wolf fell, plunging into an abyss.
He came out of his trance to find his face wet with tears.
Fuck.
He thought she was dead, but he could still feel her fear. He prayed to God it wasn’t an echo, something left behind when she passed on.
He wouldn’t know until they found her.
If they found her.
“You will.” Grey Smoke’s voice reached across to him as if he’d read his mind, offering comfort and inspiring new hope.
One by one, his brothers came back from wherever the hell they’d been. Quake couldn’t wait to hear what the rest of them had to say.
The temperature had dropped outside but they were still superheated from the sweat lodge. Throwing on their clothes, they stood waiting for the shaman to speak.
“Do you have someplace to stay?” he asked.
What the fuck?
Quake wanted to shake him, demand that he tell them what he’d seen.
“No,” Stone answered. “We’ve been searching for a kidnap victim all day. The signs pointed north.”
Grey Smoke nodded. “Come, then. We’ll put up the teepee. Talk. Rest. You will need it tomorrow. I can use a hand . . . .”
They followed the Ute shaman to a corrugated metal storage shed and walked away with a large teepee, lodge poles, stakes, and a mallet to hammer them into the ground. Working together, they had the traditional shelter up in a matter of minutes.
The Indian disappeared while they were finishing up, returning with a frame drum and a leather-headed beater.
Quake’s fingers itched, missing his guitar.
Stone excused himself and went back to his bike, returning with the two bags from the truck stop.
“Come,” Grey Smoke called to him, shooing the rest of them inside. “We sit. Talk. Listen. Learn.”
Once they were seated, Grey Smoke asked Quake to speak first.
“I saw a maned wolf,” he told them. “In darkness and surrounded by jackals before it was swallowed into nothingness.”
Ryder and Inferno shared a worried look.
He could see they were interpreting it the same way he had. That something had happened to Magenta and she was dead.
“Visions do not always mean what you think,” the shaman explained quietly. “The darkness could be the situation the wolf has found itself in. Falling does not always mean death. A fall from grace or hope . . . Descent can indicate a return to the past or a past life.”
“She’s in danger,” Quake muttered, clenching his jaw. “I can feel it.”
The shaman tilted his head, casting him a shrewd look. “Hold onto that connection and remember how it feels. You will need it in the future.”
“I saw a jackal, too,” Inferno spoke up. “One was circling me.”
Ryder made a sound in his throat. “I think my vision was broken. All I saw was one of those tigers from the show we went to in Vegas.”
Quake rolled his eyes. “Did you even empty your mind?”
“I know how to meditate,” the Viking grumbled. “It’s not my fault it didn’t work right.”
“I saw my old Remington rifle,” Stone murmured. “God, I loved that gun.”
“So we have jackals, a maned wolf, a tiger, and a rifle,” Quake recounted. “Does any of this make sense to anyone?”
“The answers will come in time,” Grey Smoke told him solemnly. “In the sweat lodge, I saw Spider Woman but she said nothing. She lives in a kiva under the ground. Her home is a hole in the earth like the pit you described. I need to drum,” he told them. “If I put myself into a trance state, I can search the upper, middle, and lower realms for her. Hopefully, she will tell me what you need to know.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small aspirin tin, opened it up, and put a pinch of something in his mouth. Picking up the drum, he struck the leather head with the beater, quickly finding his rhythm and maintaining it. The Dragons watched him in the darkness, sheltered by the skins of deer that he’d harvested, watching as the mushrooms he grew took effect and his shamanic journey started.
Eventually, he returned.
“I found Spider Woman,” he rasped, sounding like he wasn’t fully back in his body. “She refused to talk to me.”
Quake felt his shoulders drop. They’d been so close to learning something. Now they were back where they’d been.
Grey Smoke angled his head. “To me,” he repeated. “But White Buffalo Calf Woman knew my heart was pure. She deemed me worthy and offered to help me and intercede with Spider Woman. And now I wait for White Buffalo Calf Woman to come to me in my dreams,” he told them. “Sleep. She said you’ll have an answer at dawn. That’s all I know. That’s all I know.”
Twisted Steel: An MC Anthology: Second Edition Page 92
