Big Dog (3 page)

His companions were used to this type of behavior when Charlie got a sugar rush. He’d already emptied the little square holder of sugar packets and demanded more from the girl who snatched the used dishes off the table and almost ran to the kitchen. Some men smoked, Charlie ate sugar straight from the package. While he waited for her to get the courage to come back, he reached behind him to the holder on the table there and emptied that one too. He must have taken a liking to the waitress, because when she came back with a cereal bowl full of sugar packets, and sat them down in front of him, he wiped the grease of his face and hands, and told her to wait a minute. He reached for his wallet on the thick chain and pulled out a fifty and handed it to her. “This is for you, don’t go sharing it with those pansy assed motherfuckers in the back either.” He nodded at her and she smiled nervously, and nodded back.

The fifty slid into her pocket, not the apron and she came back with coffee refills. When they left she was still smiling and gave them a little finger wave goodbye. “I bet she’s already at the table grabbing that twenty you left as a tip.” Knight was cynical, but probably right in his assessment.

Charlie opened two sugar packets and emptied them on his tongue, before kicking his hog into a rumbling growl. The other’s followed suit, they were ready to get the hunt for this Oracle over with, and be on their way back to the crib.

*****

They were back, she felt them come in before she saw them. It was early in the afternoon, and she wanted to get things organized with Clementine before she went with the bikers. She knew they would find out she was the Oracle they were looking for and if she fought them, she might not get the chance to come back and resume her life here. If she went willingly, then they had to allow her to leave the club when she wished. Whatever they wanted from her, she wasn’t playing party tricks anymore, and she planned to tell them that too. The fact Crazy Charlie hadn’t recognized her yet was no surprise.

He never spoke to her back in the day, back when he was one of the hardcore biker life type of men, he still wore his old-school colors over his leather too. The denim vest with its cut off sleeves flying his patches and designation in the club, was now replaced with the leather vest newer clubs called their cut. Her father had been one like Charlie, old school and ready to ride. No matter how fucked up they were at the time.

She ignored them until she finished with Clem, and told her to give the rough looking sexy bastards at the end of the bar a message from her in five minutes. “Tell them to be ready to ride, I’ll be waiting in the parking lot.”

She hated the idea of going back, but every time she’d tried to fight her visions, or ignored their warnings, she had paid dearly. This time she planned to embrace them. The plus side to all this was she could finally put paid to the old nightmares and hopefully some of the pain of her past. She was twenty-seven years old now, and felt as if she’d lived a lifetime already, and was working on life number two. Her sleepless night proved to her that she had no other options but to deal with it now.

She went into the back room and hefted her kit onto her Heritage. The one thing she’d taken with her when she left the hospital, and she would not give it up to ride bitch on another bike for the long trek home. She opened the double doors that faced the parking lot and rolled the bike out before closing the doors and listening for them to lock. She patted the tank and didn’t feel in the least bit silly talking to it. “Hey, baby, are you ready to go home? Don’t get too happy on the road, we will be back here soon and you will still be as beautiful as the day I bought you.” She kicked the starter and revved the motor for a few moments making sure she was firing right, and drove around the backside of her building. The men were just coming out of the door and saw her waiting by their bikes.

Crazy Charlie saw her, stopped in his tracks for a moment, and started laughing. He held his sides, and finally sobered up enough to walk over to her, with the others a few steps behind him.

“I got it now, that black and pussy pink Hog, I remember when you got that one. We thought someone stole it or sold it when you didn’t come back with the others. Old Merlin was a fucking wreck, and Muffy refused to believe you were dead. I just figured it out, Future, Oracle, and even the name of this place.” He leaned in and clasped his hand onto her shoulder. “Well met, little witch. I can just see old Dorsey’s face when he finds out you lived. He’s gonna be lucky if someone don’t kill him. He came back looking like he’d been slapped by his bitch, when the rest of us looked like we’d been beaten by the schoolyard bully. He told us that you died when one of Lucifer’s Breed ran you over. He saw it happen. I got my head scrambled and we lost four people that night. You were one of them. You and Frenchy were the only ones we couldn’t account for.”

He looked back at the two men he was with and back to her. “After that night we patched over the Chiefs. That’s how we got these two and about fifty others. Things have changed since then. You’re going to be real surprised when you see what’s happened.”

She couldn’t talk, if she tried, she knew she would bawl like a baby after its momma’s teat. She locked arms with Charlie and nodded. She knew the two handsome men wanted an explanation, but she didn’t owe them one fucking thing, and until she wanted to talk about it, they could get their information from Charlie. She didn’t wait for them, they knew which way home was, and she left them standing on the blacktop as she drove away. It felt good to be going on a run again after the past years of only taking the bike out at night to blow the carbon out of her pipes. The Heritage had rear suspension and it rode like a dream. As soon as she hit the highway, she opened her up and stayed on it until she had to find an exit to get gas and use the bathroom. After filling the tank and grabbing a candy bar and a slushie, she strolled around the parking lot while she finished her snack, and it was back on the road for her.

Demon and Knight were both pissed when they heard Charlie’s explanation. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Why didn’t they say this Oracle was a woman? And what does she have to do with that asshole Dorsey?”

“Dorsey swore to the whole club that she was dead. He saw her buy it. You two know we don’t leave our dead if we can get them out. He made some big story about trying to get to her but there were too many of them for him to try, and she was dead anyway, so he couldn’t save her, he saved himself. I hope Big Dog hasn’t told anybody that you found her yet, ‘cause if he has, Dorsey will be looking to get to her before she shows up at the crib.

“As for the bike, that flashy bitch sat outside the clubhouse for almost a month. It was gone one night and no one knew what happened to it the next day. I should have recognized her when we walked into this place, but you know my wings are not as strong as they used to be, especially after that night she went missing. She warned us, but that fucker Dorsey cut through what she was saying and challenged us all, calling us pussies and shit.” He kept talking while Knight called Big Dog.

“It’s too late, Dorsey is nowhere to be found, and he was at the club when you called in earlier, so he knows we found her. Dog has Poppa and Butch looking for him. I’m no Oracle, but my money says he’ll either try to discredit her to the club as a rabbit. Or do his damndest to make sure she doesn’t get there to talk. He’s got a lot to lose if she can prove he lied. Hell, her being alive is proof that he lied.”

Chapter Three

They caught up with her just before dark. Knight saw a lone bike taking the next off-ramp and was certain it had to be hers. This woman knew how to ride, that much was certain. Of course with that softtail of hers, the ride was more comfortable than his was. They’d played merry hell finding her ass, but once he heard Charlie telling them her history, he could understand her not trusting anyone, even a veteran member like Charlie. He still wanted to ride her hard and put her up wet, but the question was how to get her from point A to B.

Future knew they would catch up to her. They were hardened bikers and used to road work as far as she could tell. Charlie, if she remembered right, was a mean son-of-a-bitch on any given day. If the fight had scrambled his brains, it must have mellowed him. He was one of the men who refused to have her touch him one time, and she’d never approached him again. The way he clasped her shoulder today, it choked her up. It was a sign of respect, something that had never happened before with any of the men.

She stopped at the small diner sandwiched between two chain fast food joints. The place was clean and bright, and the waitress was prompt and minded her own business, even though it was plain to see that she was curious about a woman wearing leather chaps and a leather bandana on her head. Future wondered what the girl would do if the three men from the club came in and sat in her section.
She’d probably pee her
pants
. The thought made her smile. It wasn’t very charitable of her to have mean thoughts about someone she didn’t know, but something about the woman’s perkiness drove her into remembering cheerleaders and high school pep rallies.

She glanced up when the front door opened and the three bikers walked inside. They looked around the place, spied her sitting in the back corner, and headed her way.
So
much for her relaxing dinner
. She sat straighter and gave Charlie a small smile as they pulled out chairs and sat down, surrounding her with a wall of beefy tattooed muscles and scruffy beards. “”Glad you could make it. We were lucky the rain held off most of the day. I sure didn’t want to get caught in it.”

Charlie looked from one man to the other and then to her. “I forgot to introduce you to these yahoos before, the one with the red hair is Demon, and the one with the brown hair is Knight. They’re a couple of pricks, but they’re alright.” He grinned at the grumpy looking men. “They do double duty as Nomads and enforcers for now. Elections are coming up in a month, and once the dust settles, they will probably be one or the other. Blending the clubs brought its own problems you know.”

Future knew what Charlie was talking about. Nomads were the men who traveled between the club’s chapters. It was unusual to have two or more in a chapter, let alone just hanging out at the clubhouse. Things must really have changed. The Bastards chapter belonged to the mother chapter, and the last she knew an older biker named Georgie was the chapter’s Nomad. At that time they didn’t actually have designated enforcers. Every brother in the club kept the peace and the rules.

The waitress slowed her walk as she came around the corner and saw that she had more customers. She turned back and grabbed menus before approaching the table. Once miss perky tits got their orders on her pad, she laid her hands on the two younger men’s shoulders and leaned down between them. “I’ll be right back with your drinks, boys, not to worry, I know how to take care of thirsty men.”

The looks on their faces made Future laugh out loud. Charlie was pouring sugar into his mouth from the canister, and almost choked. The laughter and subsequent flirting by the waitress with the men broke the ice around the table.

Demon started asking questions, trying to fill in the gaps of the story Charlie had told them, and she explained in short to the point answers.

“So, what happened that night to make Dorsey say you were dead? If he hadn’t been sure you would never be seen again, he would have needed to have a damn good excuse as to why he didn’t help you get away. So what’s your version?”

She wasn’t going to answer them, and told them so. “I will talk to the Prez, I don’t plan on making a circus out of the past.” She looked toward the window into the waning light. “If Dorsey is around, I want a baseball bat.” She tossed a twenty on the table and stood up to leave. “There is a small motel right around the corner, that’s where I’ll be for the night. We’ll catch up in the morning.”

Just for shits and giggles, she had a few words with Miss Perky Tits on her way out the door. “You’re wasting your time on those two, it’s the old guy you should be concentrating your time on, sweetheart. He’s got a bigger dick and is filthy rich. The way to snag his attention is to hand him a baggy full of sugar packets, he eats them like candy.” She leaned closer to the woman who was now concentrating her eyes on Charlie. “I saw him give a waitress fifty bucks for a handful of sugar one time. The next morning I saw her stagger out of his hotel room counting a wad of cash, the poor girl was walking bowlegged.”

Future was forgotten as the girl dropped to her knees behind the counter and dug around for sugar packets. She wanted to laugh, but waited until she left the building and was on her bike. It felt good to play a small prank on the guys and the woman. Hell, Charlie would tip her well for the sugar, and if he was lucky, he might get a bit more than a sugar rush to sweeten his dreams.

She didn’t need to be an Oracle to conjure up their faces when the waitress began ignoring the meatheads, and started working her wiles on Crazy Charlie. She was still grinning as she let herself in the shabby, but clean motel room. She took a long hot bath to melt the kinks out of her ass and thighs. Her shoulders had stopped screaming at her after they went numb several hours ago, but she sank down as low in the deep water as she could to let the heat work its magic in those muscles too. Thankfully the heat did its job and she should be able to finish the ride tomorrow. Knowing she was going back into the world of crazy voluntarily, had to make her as crazy as Charlie.

She wondered what her parents wanted so badly that they got the big guys to track her down. She’d cut all ties and made no effort to contact them after the night she slipped into the compound and rolled the Heritage out through the gate.

The hospital people had been nice, and the cops had done all they could to get information out of her about how she came to be found on the side of that road. She had been consistent with telling them that she had no memory of anything that happened to her before she woke in the hospital. With the extent of her injuries and the burns that had melted the flesh on her back, she’d been in the hospital for almost three weeks. After the first week, the police stopped bugging her every day and only came around twice during the last week she was there.