The shouts faded behind us when we took the first corner. A few minutes later, the eloquent biker pulled over to the side of the road to make a call.
“Got ’er on my bike,” he said into the phone.
I tried to listen to the other end of the conversation but couldn’t hear anything because I’d released him from my tight hold as soon as we pulled over. I was used to an aversion to touch because a lot of kids I worked with at the Autism Centre were touch sensitive. I didn’t want to cause my hero any further discomfort than absolutely necessary.
“Yeah. Yeah. Back at Lotus. Yeah. Yeah,” he responded. “I’ll bring ’er.”
Bring her?
Bring her where?
He hung up the phone and immediately started the bike again so I didn’t have time to question as he swung back onto the street into the dark. I’d lived in Entrance my whole life so I knew immediately where he was taking us when he veered away from the ritzy coastal neighborhoods and into the east side of town.
We were going to The Fallen Compound.
I’d only seen it from outside the huge chain-link fence encircling the industrial lot. I’d been sixteen, just after Zeus had ended our correspondence and I wanted to catch a glimpse of him. I’d waited for three hours across the street in a small strip complex before one of the brothers, a non-descript until you looked at him kind of man with white skin and copper hair, had noticed me. He’d approached me and told me gently to get lost.
I’d obeyed.
And I’d never gone back because I was still living scared and obedient back then.
Now, I watched with my heart in my throat as the metal gates to Hephaestus Auto and Mechanics groaned open and we swung up a slight incline on to the lot.
Zeus’s inner sanctuary.
He was waiting for us at the door to a long, low brick building slightly behind the main garage complex and as soon as my silent companion killed the engine, Zeus was coming at us.
Before I could speak, he plucked me from the back of the bike and plastered me to his side with a heavy arm belted around my hips. Then he promptly ignored me.
“Mute, brother, you did good tonight,” he told the silent man who’d helped me.
Under the huge industrial lights of the complex, I could make him out better and was surprised to find he couldn’t have been much older than me. Mute, appropriately named, was over six feet tall but stocky, so wide with muscle with a face so craggy under his severely buzzed hair that he looked almost like a cartoon drawing of a thug. Then I noticed the way his fingers thrummed against his left thigh in a staccato rhythm, the way his face was blank and absent as he nodded at his Prez.
He was busy with a ritual.
I frowned as I recognized the trait from Sammy, my best bud at the Autism centre who had similar rituals, having to stomp his feet five times whenever he put on his shoes, eat his dessert first thing in the morning before he’d ever have anything savory… I frowned at my hero and wondered if a biker could be autistic.
“Sent Bat, Priest and Axe-Man,” Zeus was growling, his fury a cloak I pulled tight around myself because I found it, strangely, comforting. “They’ll pick ’em up and bring ’em back. Get me when it’s done.”
Mute nodded then turned to walk into the clubhouse but stopped just as abruptly and walked over to me in the circle of Zeus’s arm. He stared hard into my face with an inscrutable expression before he reached out to tug a little too hard on a lock of my pale hair.
“Stay safe,” he ordered with a solemnity I felt in my chest.
I nodded slowly, a gesture he echoed before he turned to go into the brick building.
“Got shit to do so let’s get this over with, yeah?” Zeus finally said, though not to my face because he was already walking us inside.
“I need to go home or like, call the police,” I said, so discombobulated by the turn of events that I didn’t know which way was up or down.
As always in those moments of panic and pain, all I knew was Zeus. So, even though I knew I had to return to Louise’s life in less than six hours, I leaned into Zeus as he propelled me forward and enjoyed his proximity. I took the opportunity to learn his scent, something I’d wondered at for years.
Dark forest; pine and cedar, fresh air bitten with the slight tang of tobacco. I dragged the heady mixture into my lungs, closed my eyes and committed it to memory.
“No police,” Zeus growled as he propelled me through the dark interior and then lifted me up as if I weighed nothing to plunk me on a tall stool beside a bar. “Wait here.”