Lamp Riders: A Jinn Motorcycle Gang Novella (3 page)

“Wait a minute,” Celia slowly hissed, almost falling off her stool as she leaned forward to get a better look.

As she teetered on her stool, one of the men turned around and locked eyes with her. His intense gaze shot across the room like lightning and made her cheeks blush in surprise. The handsome biker from earlier that day was staring straight at her! His face was unreadable in the gloom. However his eyes seemed to shine unnaturally in the light, and Celia shivered as she felt him look her over slowly.

She quickly turned towards Phil to make small talk, leaving the biker staring at nothing but her thin back.  When she had decided to come have fun that night, she hadn’t meant the type of dangerous fun that came with dark-eyed bikers in tight shirts. No, she wanted a quiet evening of booze and boring stories from Phil. It would be just enough excitement to get her parents off her back, but lame enough to make sure she was in bed by ten for a nice long night’s sleep.

“How is it going tonight?” she asked the bartender, spinning her empty shot glass on the bar top idly.

Phil was a paunchy forty-five-year-old who looked seventy thanks to the blistering desert winds. His face was flabby from years of greasy food and copious amounts of alcohol, and his blue eyes were always slightly glazed. He was a good man, though, and ran the bar with as much love and tenderness as some guys gave their children.  There were rumors he even slept on top of the bar at night in order to keep a watch on things.

“Slow night. Surprised to see the only pretty girl in town here,” he drawled, wiping down his workstation with a rag that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks.

“Had to get out of the house.”

Phil looked at her with paternal concern and smiled slightly. “I remember being your age. Getting out of the house is a good idea. And as sad as I’d be to see you go, I think getting out of this town might also do you some good.”

“Don’t you start too,” Celia said, rolling her eyes. “I came out to forget the Dad speeches. I want to have some
actual
fun tonight.”

Phil nodded and then looked over her shoulder, back towards the gloomy corner where the hot biker gang sat huddled by the jukebox. “Well, stay away from the fun in the back. I don’t like the look of those guys.”

“Do you know them? They came into the shop earlier. I’d have thought they’d have already left town.”

“Never heard of them. I thought they might be just some pretty Silicon Valley boys trying to act tough with fancy bikes, but I dunno, Girl. There is something spooky about them.”

“You don’t think they are government spooks, do you?” Celia asked, trying to suppress the smile that threatened to come out and make Phil very offended.

Phil was obsessed with the idea of the government spying on him. It was the reason he had come out to the middle of nowhere to run a mostly-empty bar. He believed in Area 51 having aliens, Russia making clones of US presidents, and other tabloid headlines. Perhaps he even slept on the bar in order to be prepared for a quick escape if any government tanks rolled into town.

“No, not that type of spook! I’ve told you; the government types always come in suits. Those bikers aren’t like that. Something about them though that I can’t put my finger on. Something different.”

Celia shrugged and pushed her shot glass across the bar to be topped off. She wasn’t a fan of conspiracy theories of any sort and honestly didn’t care why the new bikers were sticking around. She just wished the leader would stop staring at her, because it kept making the skin on the back of her neck prickle with an unavoidable heat.

As soon as she had finished her wish, she felt a presence behind her. She turned slowly to find Abdul standing behind her. He had his hands stuffed in his jeans and looked at her with a sexy, confident grin. She sincerely hoped he had not heard the conversation she had just had with the bartender.

“I told you that we would see you around,” Abdul said in his deep voice, clearly enjoying the surprise on her face.

“Wonders never cease,” she said carefully, looking him up and down for any sign of bad intent. He seemed harmless, just cocky and arrogant.

“Do you need another drink, Sir?” Phil broke in, clearly wanting to protect Celia from whatever conspiracy theory he thought Abdul might be linked with. Phil reserved the word ‘sir’ for people he didn’t like.

“No, I just need a dance with the lady, if she’d be so kind.”

“The jukebox is broken,” she said, shrugging with feigned sadness.

“Hey, Dahir. Fix the music, will ya?” Abdul called over his shoulder without turning around.

The redheaded biker got up from the back booth and went over to the jukebox. He slapped it once, hard, on the top, causing it to jolt and spark in a terrifying way. It wobbled for a second and then burst into life. Music began to pour from the long-silent machine, as crisp and loud as the day it was bought thirty years ago.

Everyone in the bar turned towards the back in surprise as Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl began to play. The old miners even stopped bickering about the pool game, and stared silently at the burly group of bikers with suspicion. The air was tense in the room and seemed so at odds with the upbeat song playing.

“Celia, you don-“ Phil started to say, but couldn’t finish before Celia broke in.

“One dance.”

She shocked herself by agreeing. Maybe it was because Phil was acting too much like her father right then, and she was tired of being told what to do. Maybe it was because, arrogant or not, Abdul was so handsome it made her face feel like it would melt off by staring at him too much. Either way, she found herself sticking out her hand for Abdul to take.

Abdul took her gently by the arm and led her into the middle of the room. Once there, he pulled her close and slowly began to sway. He led Celia around in a circle with swaying hips, one hand grasping hers and the other wrapped tightly around her waist. They danced too slowly for the music, but Celia didn’t notice. All she could concentrate on was how good this guy smelled. It was like lemon meringue pie. The smell combined with how handsome he was made it a little hard not to drool.

“You grew up here?” he asked her softly, leaning down his large frame, so his mouth was close enough to whisper in her ear.

“Unfortunately. I grew up battling scorpions and snakes and have been drinking whiskey in this bar since I could see over the counter.”

He chuckled softly and gave her waist a small squeeze. “I don’t doubt that at all, Firecracker. Not at all. I grew up in an area like this, on the outskirts.”

“Yeah? And look how good you turned out.”

Abdul snorted loudly and pulled back to look into her face. He had another one of his sexy grins on. “We are quite a pair, aren’t we?”

Celia rolled her eyes a little about being called a ‘pair,’ but allowed the dance to continue. She wouldn’t admit it, but she liked that he could relate to a childhood on the fringes of humanity. Celia wondered if he was a stranger who felt he was always looking into the bright lights of the city, but could never get in. She put her head on his shoulder and relaxed into his arms a little.
If he hadn’t been so arrogant, perhaps we could have been friends
, she mused silently.
Not that guys like him would have many girls who are merely friends.

The quiet reflections on friendship were short-lived, however. As soon as the song finished, the jukebox went off with a pop, which left the room ringing with silence. She suddenly felt how exposed she was, standing wrapped up in the arms of this tattooed stranger. Stepping back, she tried to disentangle herself from his body, but found he had locked himself to her. She looked up into his face with uncertainty, wondering why he hadn’t dropped his arms from her waist.

She stopped squirming when she saw his expression. Abdul wasn’t looking at her at all. He was looking over her head, staring at the bar’s doorway. Whoever was standing there must have angered him immensely, because Celia could swear that she saw actual flames flickering in his eyes. The dark pools were lit with an angry red glow that made her breath catch painfully against her ribs.

“Juan,” Abdul growled out, every letter of the name making his face contort into further fury.

“Abdul. I see you are here to welcome me to town,” came a man’s icy reply from the doorway behind Celia.

The voice dripped with a nastiness that Celia had never heard before. It belonged to a man who had done terrible things, and had enjoyed them.  Celia didn’t believe in a hell, but the voice was enough to almost change her mind. A fiery pit must surely have birthed whatever was standing behind her.

She swallowed hard and briefly considered keeping her back turned and her face buried in Abdul’s muscled chest. Then she steeled her courage and turned her head to face whoever was behind her.

S
tanding in the doorway was a short, squat middle-aged man dressed in an exorbitantly expensive-looking teal suit. He had closely cropped black hair, and big bushy eyebrows that were pulled down into a menacing glower. His dark, beady eyes never stopped moving, taking in the entire room and every occupant like he was observing bugs under a magnifying class. Celia had a feeling that, as a kid, this man liked to light poor bugs on fire with said magnifying glass.

“I knew we’d find you eventually,” Abdul said at last, letting go of Celia and stepping in front of her to create a sort of shield.

“I think it is I who found you,” Juan said, wagging a thick finger, adorned with a large gold ring, at Abdul like he was a school child who had missed an important lesson.

As the two men faced off, Celia flashed a quick look around the bar. The other patrons had all hit the floor, or were cowering behind whatever furniture they could find. Even the grisly old miners had abandoned their game completely in order to duck down under the pool table. She then looked over to the bar, where Phil had completely disappeared. He was no doubt on the ground trying to reach the shotgun he kept in case the government ever came to get him.

A slight movement to her left caught her eye. The mail lady was under a bar stool trying desperately to mouth something to Celia. The woman’s gray hair was in complete disarray, and her blood-shot eyes were bleary with drink. Her message still came across clear, however. Juan. Reyes. The woman mouthed both words carefully, shaking slightly with fear.

Juan Reyes.

I am going to die,
Celia thought with a surprising degree of calmness as she realized what the woman was trying to communicate.
That is Juan Reyes, and I am going to die.

Juan Reyes had been all over the news for months. He ran the meanest drug cartel across the border; he was cruel, brilliant, and had so far completely avoided any interference from either the Mexican or United States governments. That was most likely because he had more money in his organization than most European countries and the thirtieth largest army in the world. Some people said Juan was so wealthy – and so crazy – that he bought priceless paintings from around the world just to burn them in front of art-loving orphans. He got great enjoyment out of destroying beautiful things.

Celia couldn’t believe that Juan would dare to come this far over the border, no matter what connections he had. He tended to let his goons run rampant, doing his dirty work wherever necessary, while he stayed secluded in a fortress somewhere in Baja. Arriving in person that night was a daring move, tempting the US government to come for him. Celia’s body shivered as she realized that something very important must have brought him to Viento Frio. He was not going to leave until he found it, or until he had personally killed every person in the town, or maybe both.

“It’s a pity you were too busy flirting to keep watch. I had hoped for more of a struggle from you,” Juan sneered at Abdul, snapping his fingers once while he talked. “Instead, you are caught like mice.”

Several large, muscled men appeared behind Juan with ski masks on. Some were carrying large guns; the others were carrying gasoline. He nodded his head once, and the men began to come into the room, unscrewing the caps on the gasoline and pouring out the noxious liquid as they walked. Celia realized that they were planning to burn the place to the ground!

Behind her, Celia heard a quiet shuffle as the rest of the motorcycle club got up from their booth and began to file into the center of the room. As far as she had seen, they were all unarmed, so she didn’t hold out much hope for the situation. However, feeling their warm bodies begin to surround her made her feel less alone in the bleakness they were facing.

As one of the masked goons tried to get past Abdul, the biker body-checked the guy and sent him flying back. The hired gun lifted into the air at the impact, his feet leaving the ground as he flew backward towards the bar door. He hit the far wall with a loud
thunk
, and then slid down to the ground dropping his gun.

“You are making a mistake. You need to leave,” Abdul grunted.

The other masked men pulled up their weapons and leveled them at the room, fingers twitching dangerously on the triggers. Juan did not move, however. He didn’t even turn to see where his man had landed (
not that Juan would be one to show concern
, Celia thought upon reflection). Instead, his lips curled into a sickening smile. Smiling came so unnaturally to his face that it was like watching a snake attempt to communicate human emotion. Celia preferred the man when he wore his dour, murderous look instead.

“So. You came to play,
vato
?” Juan whispered softly, his smile widening.

“No, I came to punch your face in,” Abdul replied furiously, clenching his fists.

At Abdul’s threat, all of the townspeople put their heads down and hid their faces, no doubt wanting to avoid witnessing the bloodbath about to occur. Celia thought that they were probably praying to whatever god they could think of for a magic bullet-blocking invisibility blanket. Shit was about to get real, and the whole bar knew it.

Celia knew it too, but she felt compelled to keep facing the danger. She couldn’t look away from the drama unfolding in front of her. The end seemed inevitable, and her knees were threatening to go slightly weak, but she wasn’t going to die with her head down and back turned. Especially not if it’d give a single ounce of pleasure to that bastard Juan Reyes. Perhaps it was courage, perhaps it was the youthful denial of her mortality, but she refused to cower and accept her fate with eyes downcast.