Rage's Story (Vanish Book 1) (5 page)

Her pitch soars, her body perspires, wet olive skin salty where I suckle her neck, nibble. I thrust, hard, and she in turn pushes back, pressing her pussy up against me, grinding, circular. My abs press against her soft tummy, sticking, sweaty while we press ourselves harder into one another. I don’t feel my side any more, all I feel are her sensations, the smooth flesh, the soft hair, tossed, the warmth of her breath as she races towards climax, the wet, warmth of her pussy engorged, squeezing, stomach quivering, eyes wavering, but focused, locked with mine.

She slams her face into mine biting my lip with desperation as she cums, and I hold her with every ounce of strength left in my arms, pulling her body into mine, us both refusing to let go as we climax. I cum so hard it feels like I’m emptying, giving her everything inside me, spilling out. Her wetness gushes around me, spilling onto soft thighs and the carpet. Our bodies quiver against one another as we share the same breath between our lips. Her brow furrows, she’s afraid to let go.

I won’t let go.

I can’t let go.

But when I blink, I see the red hand reaching and Mike’s dead eyes staring again.

Auna...

Damnit.

7.

The morning chills, the storm isn’t quite passed, the clouds overhead loom darkly, but the rain has left for now. Auna’s apartment was conveniently near to the same street as the motel, though not so near to the motel itself. I’m still walking, trudging again through the mud, shirt now dry, but all my clothes feel stale. My wound feels mostly numb, with an occasional ache and tingle. I’m back in the thick of things.

I left Auna before she woke, laid her head against her pillow to replace my arm, kissed her forehead and slipped out. I couldn’t stay, couldn’t do that to her. With all what’s barreling down on me, I couldn’t put her in that path beside me. I have to take it on, the loneliness, and relish in the moment we had, to save from the inevitable tragedy if I kept her.

I near the motel, and I see whirling reds and blues.

Fuck.

I hadn’t forgotten, I guess I just stopped thinking about it. Richie, laid out with the bullet in his head, that I put there. I keep close to the treeline, in the ditch alongside the road, creeping just close enough to make out the scene without being seen. Several cars descended on the parking lot, they block off the road in and out of town. There seem to be about only ten cops, gathered around, a pair in suits at the body, rubbing chins and speaking quietly to one another. Probably trying to conspire on how to keep this quiet. Westwood Valley’s first murder in a long while, no doubt. One of the cops looks dopey, a tall and gangly young man, his uniform ruffles along his frame, and he looks nervous, talking into a cell phone. I wonder for a moment, why. Then I remember I’ve got more to be nervous about.

I eye the spot across the street where I stashed my bike. It’s still there, I can see the black through the greenery, it’s untouched. I can’t reach it, though. They’ll spot me, question me. Drifter trying to sneak his hidden bike out to drive off, number one suspect. I’ll have to leave it, hope they don’t find it, and take off in the night.

That leaves the day. A good twelve hours to kill before it gets dark. I turn around and march back towards the center of town, deeper into the valley, but not so far I reach its affluent core. I know better than to show myself there, scruffy stranger among legging joggers, lawn mowing fathers, and noisy playgrounds. It’s a life I never knew, not that I came up poor white. Father and father’s father, all from the outskirts of society. Going back to the first generation in America, we’ve all been outlaws, it’s in my blood. I’ve seen poor days and rich ones, so I don’t pity and and I don’t pine, money was always a fluid thing. It’s freedom we sought to idolize, and made perverse. What a transient thing, certainty. It provides faith and belief, lasting long after the creed grows meaningless. The MC is a story of disillusionment, beginning to end, but trading one fool’s assumption for another, like federalism for anarchy, presumptive structures collapsing beneath the weight of the real people they forget. Leaving open vacuums of power for the opportunists of the world to fill and crown themselves. Mike. Mike was nothing but that, a drug running, violent thug of a pimp who led with fear instead of respect.

I’ll admit, I don’t have the answers, I don’t know the right way to live. Maybe Auna was right, maybe I need to run. Motion might be the only sensible way to survive.

But as I sit in a shitty diner for six hours, buying round after round of coffee and fries, motion is barred from me. Waiting, still, is my only option. The manager doesn’t seem to mind. Another old man minding his own, like the motel owner, keeping their heads down. He’s probably afraid of me. I don’t want to scare anyone anymore, but I don’t reach out to change his mind, either. It serves me to let him keep quiet.

In the silence of the diner, I hear a rumble growing outside. Devil’s Right Hands. They’re on the move again. How long are they going to stay here? If they’ve seen Richie, they have to assume I’ve run off. It can’t be for me.

I slink down into the linoleum booth as they pass. Just two, they race by, black bikes burning rubber across the asphalt in front of the little diner on their way into town. The old man shakes his head watching them pass. They’re not in my line of sight for long, but long enough to recognize the rider in the lead.

He’s here. Evin. The VP of Devil’s Right Hands. Mike’s son. In the flash of a second that I see him, I make out a scowling expression, greeting the rushing air with a fiery aggression that holds his arms up and out, flexing. Loss has made him furious. I’d hoped it would cripple.

I can’t stay here any longer. Leaving is now imperative. I throw the cash for the bill on the table and head for the door, where I get a whiff of her on the gusting wind, a blast of the cold carrying the memory of the previous night and it all comes rushing back, her touch, her taste, her brown eyes. My heart aches. I wonder what she’s doing now, surely hours after she’s woken to find I’ve left without a word.

I have to see her.

No.

I literally clench my jaw from the chest pain that onsets from the refusal. Jesus, it physically hurts to think of not saying goodbye. Alright. I’ll go to her apartment, catch her before her shift if she works, and say…

...it still doesn’t come to me, the words of finality, when I reach the building, eclipsing the descending sun, outlining the brick structure with a pink hue. I hear the first crickets as I enter the unlocked back door. I plumb the depths of my memory to pull out the room number, I didn’t note it when I left this morning. Six, Seven, or, Three, no, Five.

Three sixty seven. It comes in a flash, I see the golden numbers on the door closing behind me. I step out of the emergency staircase onto the third floor and head down the hallway, reading the numbers as I go. Three fifty nine, three sixty, three sixty one…

Three sixty seven. Auna. I gently knock the sides of my fingers against it and lower my head. What am I going to say when she opens that door? How is she going to look? When I see her eyes, will it be anger or rejoice that fills them?

“Come in.” My head cocks back and my neck stiffens. Blood instinctively floods into my muscles, and my nostrils flare. It’s a man’s voice. Who the fuck is here? I push against the door and it drifts open to a dark room, except for a dim red light emanating from the scarf covered lamp. It casts itself upon the image of a man seated on a folding chair in the center of the living room. I recognize him. The pretty boy in the suit. He wears another, or maybe the same. What sort of prick wears suits every day of the week?

“Who are you?” I stand beside the kitchen, ten or so feet in front of him as he raises his chin to pull his reddened eyes from the carpet to meet mine. He’s got dark hair, a dark complexion similar to Auna’s. I might mistake him for her brother if I didn’t remember how he touched her in the parking lot of the Pussycat Lounge.

“Aston,” he replies. “Who are you?”

“Nobody you need to know.”

One of his hands rests in the grasp of the other, his fingers twisting a class ring. They separate and retrieve a pistol from behind his back. He’s not pointing it at me, just dangling it between his knees as he hunches, swinging it, tauntingly. “I think I do,” he says.

“Rage.”

“Really? Cute.”

“Where is Auna?” I don’t have time for his foolish behavior.

His head raises, his eyes squint. “I could ask you the same, friend.” He shakes his head. “Where the fuck did you come from, bad boy? All jacked and brooding, I should’ve known…” he looks away. He has a thing for Auna. Or maybe with her. And he knows what happened with us. It hurts him. “She’s gone,” he mutters.

I step forward. “What do you mean ‘gone’?” I raise my voice.

“Don’t you know? Stranger from out of town, sweeps stripper off her stilettoed heels, next thing, she’s gone without a trace of where.” He grits his teeth, grips the pistol in his hands, but doesn’t raise it. He hasn’t held one seriously before. “If you’ve done anything with her, harmed a, a goddamn hair on her perfect head, Rage, so help me--”

“What? You’ll shoot me?” I reply. “Lift it. Let me see you aim that at another human being.”

He eyes the pistol, then looks back at me. “You think it’s hard for me? Think I can’t?” His arm begins to raise, but his hand is wavering. Aston’s drunk. I see the bottle now, resting behind him, tipped over and spilled out into the carpet. He shuts one eye as he very poorly steadies his aim. “I got you in my sights, Rage.” He suddenly drops his arm. “What kind of name is that, anyway? Rage? Seems ridiculous to me.”

“What sort of a name is Aston? Seems pompous to me.”

A single laugh bursts from his wet lips. He nods. “You’re probably right.”

He doesn’t know where she is. He’s just another boy following after a pretty girl without an understanding thought in his head as to her nature. A fool. No question. More a pity than a concern to waste time with. I turn my back and head for the door, thinking of Auna. She’s missing. She might be in trouble. I can’t leave now. Not like this.

“I’m watching you, big boy.”

I pause at the door. I think to tell him he’s got his eye on the wrong man, but instead, “Watch closely,” comes out of my mouth in a defiant, fuck you attitude. Sometimes I can’t keep the high road.

The door slams shut behind me. I think of the possibilities and the first that strikes me hits me hard in the chest. The MC. Evin.

8.

I’ve been tracking them now, scouting their movements in Westwood Valley. They’re still here, which makes me all the more suspicious of their possible involvement in Auna’s disappearance. They could’ve seen me with her and decided to torture me by stealing her, doing God knows what. Or maybe she’s involved in something else, maybe they’re pushing out in prostitution as well as drugs. I swig from a pint of whiskey to keep my thoughts grounded, but it’s hard, they’re trying to get away from me into the darkest scenarios. The bikes keep mostly to the edge of town, occasionally driving through, where I usually lose them. I can’t risk being seen and called on by one of these nice families. They’d pin me with Richie’s murder and I’d be done. The MC would get to me in jail, and that would be the end. I don’t know what they’re up to still, but I have a feeling tonight I’ll find out.

I’ve followed the rumbling engines to a warehouse not far from the motel. I’ve been sleeping in the bushes beside my bike, a makeshift bed made of brush and my leather jacket. They woke me and I gave chase, running through the forest for a shortcut, ears perked to the sound of their direction. I came upon the structure, a vast and seemingly abandoned metal warehouse that I scope now, bikes and cars parked just outside. It sits alongside the tracks, rusted and broken apart, no longer used. This might have been a railroad storage facility at one point in its history, a lighter period compared to its present company. I have to get closer, have to hear them. I crouch as I run from cover to cover, until it’s one long stretch and I go for it, hoping there isn’t anyone keeping watch. I reach the side of the warehouse apparently without being seen and I can hear murmuring voices through jagged holes in the wall. They pause and my heart stops. I clutch the butt of the pistol I killed Richie with, holding it out in front of me with both hands. I found it along the side of the road. I assume I dropped it when I was wounded running to the strip club. A good bit of luck finding it, but it won’t win against what they have. One, three, six…

There’s eight men standing inside the warehouse, I can see them through a tiny slit in the side of the metal paneling. The pause ends, their chatting resumes, and my heart starts up again. I release a slow, quiet breath and lean my ear in.

“...if that two timing fuck Al tries selling that brick back to you--”

Laughter interrupts the voice. It’s one I recognize, and recently. I peek through the hole again to examine.

Motherfucker. It’s Aston, and he’s in a suit again, standing before Devil’s Right Hands brothers as they chuckle. He can’t be taken seriously for the life of him. But I’m still left wondering what the hell put him in a room with the likes of us.

Them. It’s oddly difficult for me to separate, I’ve felt so singular since arriving in Westwood Valley, but seeing so many of my brothers at once stirs conflicting emotions. But I’m not one of them, not any more. Not after what I did. And what they’re doing. I can see Evin at the head, see his distinctly scarred face. It was torn in an accident when he was racing motocross as a teen, caught a rock when another racer threw him from his bike. Evin walked away with a changed appearance, and a new outlook once his father introduced him to the MC for the purpose of revenge. It always starts there, at our worst. Nothing birthed from our worst selves can truly transcend.

“There’s another matter,” the rich prick forces his voice over their collective laughter. “A man, a stranger from out of town. He might be involved in a disappearance.”