by K. Z. Snow
Jackson felt Adin’s hand rest on the top slope of his ass. Aside from being casually intimate, the contact carried no message. Adin wasn’t trying to spur him on or hold him back, wasn’t seeking or imparting reassurance. The gesture was just another unconscious demonstration of…
His love.
Jackson glanced over his shoulder. Adin’s small lift of the eyebrows seemed to ask, Well, what are you waiting for?
After flicking a glance at M, Jackson extended an arm and forefinger and touched the facet to which his finger seemed drawn.
Chapter Thirteen
They seemed to be in a bubble. Its walls shimmered with iridescence, like a tracery of moving frost. Trying to peer through the crawling, rainbow-colored lines, Jackson glimpsed indistinct hints of what lay beyond them. The interior of the bubble was suffused with a whiteness so pure it was disorienting. Jackson saw no floor beneath their feet, yet they obviously stood on something. Two cloudy gray indentations puckered the bleached atmosphere like faded stains. Although perfectly breathable, the air had no odor whatsoever.
“Sit,” M said, pointing at the concave blots.
Jackson turned…or thought he did. Maybe the whole environment turned while the people within it remained still. He couldn’t tell; he had no reference point. The engulfing albescence bothered his eyes, making them jittery. He felt a flood of relief to see Adin standing beside him.
“Strangest lobby I’ve ever seen,” Adin muttered. He looked and sounded like his old self.
It was the only thing that made Jackson glad to be in this hollow cotton-ball. “You mean,” he said to M, “we’re just supposed to sink into those smudges?”
“They’ll support your weight,” M assured him.
Even their voices sounded odd—flat as rolled tin, with no resonance.
He and Adin settled into the shallow gray wells.
M stood before them. “To battle what others fear, Spey-Taliesin, you must first face and overcome what you fear.”
Hearing his adopted magical name was a shock to Jackson. No living creature knew that name. He had to remind himself the Shebra’felim was a being unlike any he’d ever encountered.
“And what might that be?” Jackson asked.
“Only you can answer your question.”
It made sense, of course, but Jackson had no clear notion of what he feared. He had a dim notion, but he preferred it stayed that way.
“Whether you speak this confession aloud or to yourself,” M said, “do not equivocate. The baggage you carry with you on this journey cannot contain lies. Even lies of omission.”
Jackson stared at the faux man. “What if…what if I’m not aware of my worst fears?”
“I realize this is a possibility. The human mind is never fully open to itself. It has many dark corners and sealed chambers. However, I will detect what you fail to detect. What’s most important is the sincerity of your attempt.”
These conditions made Jackson simmer. How the hell much was expected of him? And why? “But if I’m only here to close some damned gap—”
“That’s not the only reason you’re here.”
Open-mouthed, he met the statement with a deep dip of his brows. He was on the verge of saying, “I don’t understand,” but that would’ve been disingenuous. Esme had already explained the other reason, but Jackson had shoved it aside.
“You’ve simply chosen not to take the explanation to heart,” M said, reading him. “That’s because here, in the Prism, you’re far less in control than in your familiar world. And you know it. Therefore, you keep searching for reasons to minimize the extent of this mission.”
“I just don’t think it’s fair, that’s all.” Jackson nearly winced at the statement. It made him sound petulant.
“You know that spiritual advancement requires ongoing effort,” M said, chiding him. “Achieving unflinching self-awareness is part and parcel of that effort.” Only now did M move. He brought his hands forward and clasped them. “Close your eyes. Plunge into yourself. I know you’re capable of intensive searching.”
Plunge Jackson could, but not into the mysteries of his own heart. Striking into other realms was far less daunting. Even mining a vein of demons didn’t make him quail like this exercise.
M had begun to frown. He was obviously getting impatient. “Shatter the walls and shed your armor, Jackson.”
Adin gripped his hand. “I have faith in you.”
He knew that. It, too, made him uneasy. After giving Adin a quick glance and uncertain smile, Jackson lowered his eyelids.
* * * *
Seven of the ten Black Saints sat on abused, third-hand furniture, drinking Pabst and Old Style out of cans and whiskey out of bottles. Jersey, Swill, Brushy, Toot, Sticky, Hemp, and Supe. Pud, not present, was relaxing in the county motel at taxpayers’ expense. Doca was in the back room, meting out one-eighth of Cutter’s punishment for fucking Jersey’s old lady. Behind the small, nondescript building on Water Street, the dark river rolled and reeked.
In one corner a greasy fan, furred with dust, oscillated spasmodically. Someone hawked and spat. The gob hit the inner wall of a sand-filled coffee can, its intended target, with a muted splat.
Jackson glanced up from the piece of pine he’d been whittling. He was sunk up to his pelvic bones in a chair with shot-to-hell springs, his right ankle resting on his left knee while his elbows rested on the chair’s threadbare arms. At least his leathers protected him from the scratch of its tightly looped nylon upholstery. A few feet away, Brushy drew on a joint. Its glowing cherry was, for a moment, the brightest light in the room.
Stop! Alert! Danger!
Brushy got up to pass the doob. Jackson didn’t move from his comfortable slump. He transferred the pocket knife to his left hand and lazily extended his right arm.
“What’re you working on now, Supe? A fork for gnomes?” Brushy cackled.
Jackson sucked in and held the skunky smoke. He wasn’t crazy about his nickname, but he’d had it for three or four years now. Protesting would’ve been pointless. Shit, it was a club. Everybody got hung with dumbass nicknames.
They’d started out calling him JC because of his first and middle names, which he’d told them were Jackson and Carl. But his middle name was actually Charlemagne. JC soon morphed into Superstar, which in turn was shortened to Supe. Moreover, Jackson performed well in fights, so the men found the name especially appropriate in a mock-reverential sort of way.
“A whistle,” he croaked, trying to squeeze his voice through the trapdoor in his throat that kept the THC contained in his lungs.
“Don’t look like a fuckin’ whistle,” Brushy informed him. “Looks like a fish spear.”
A trident, Jackson thought, silently correcting him.
“Why the crazy-ass shape?”
Jackson released the smoke with his answer. “Why not?” Weed exhaust plumed into the stuffy room and added to the existing layer that hung above the men’s heads. All hail the communal buzz.
Why the whistle was turning out that way was a mystery to Jackson. The shape had simply begun to form beneath his hands. He thought it might even make for a wicked tattoo. To this day, he didn’t have a single tat—practically a cardinal sin for a biker.
Doca sashayed out of the backroom, zipping his fly. “He ain’t bad. I think he’s done it before.” He adjusted his chaps and grabbed a pack of Marlboro reds from an empty beer case turned on end. “Your turn, Supe. But I s’pose you got laid before you came here.”
“Nope.” Jackson pushed up from the chair’s baby-shit-green embrace. “Not since this morning.”
Sticky held up a hand as he grinned and uttered, “Heh.”
Jackson slapped it.
“Who was she?” asked Hemp.
“I don’t know. Somebody I met at the R and R last night.”
“Good?”
“Good enough.” Jackson paused for a drink. “I had to kick her out, though, so I could get to work.”
Jackson m
ade a damned nice living at his uncle’s cabinet shop, where he’d started serving as an unofficial apprentice when he was old enough to wield tools and operate machinery. Now he shared the workspace as an independent subcontractor, specializing in the fussier, high-end products Ambrose didn’t want to dick with. Actually, it was the clientele he didn’t want to dick with. But Jackson didn’t mind. He’d even bedded a few of those upscale housewives. Laurel, in particular, had proved the right kind of woman to please. She was a lawyer.
Jackson opened the door to the backroom, chips of cracked paint snowing onto his knuckles. The door had to be shoved to overcome the resistance of its rusty hinges.
Seeing Cutter made him pause as he pushed the door closed behind him.
Facing away from the entry, Cutter knelt on his haunches, handcuffed to two obsolete radiators that sat on either side of him. A mass of tangled mahogany curls ornamented his bare back down to the base of his shoulder blades. Why he’d been stripped to the waist and why his jeans were down to his crack, Jackson had no idea; he’d gotten there late.
The view—probably not intended to be sexy, but sexy nonetheless—immediately touched off an unsettling sensation in Jackson’s lower abdomen. His reaction startled him, although it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Cutter was twenty-three and had a nice body. Spring-loaded muscles, taut and solid. Wasn’t bad looking, either, although his temperament left a lot to be desired. He was a cocky shit. Jackson had never before seen him thus displayed. A t-shirt with cut-off sleeves had always been his most extreme state of undress.
Jackson sauntered forward and stood in front of him.
Cutter turned up his large brown eyes. “Why am I here, Supe?”
“You know why.”
“But you’re always fucking somebody else’s old lady. What the hell did I do that was so different?”
Jackson dropped to a squat, the better to face him. “What you did, cowboy, was fuck Moira in the ass while she was passed out, and you did it without Jersey’s permission. You know how he is.” Jersey was also the club’s president. Cutter didn’t need to be reminded of that.
“But he’s the one who showed me her ass while she was passed out! I figured—”
“You figured wrong, my man.” Jackson rose. The whole situation made him uncomfortable.
Cutter’s face twisted. “How do you get away with so much crap? Jesus, you split up Hemp and Anna. Pud even broke Pauline’s jaw because of you, and now he’s sitting—”
“Shut up.” Jackson didn’t appreciate being reminded. At twenty-five, he already felt too old for this shit. “You’re supposed to suck me off, not recite a list of my conquests.”
Jackson eyed Cutter’s smooth chest. There was nary a hair in sight. He had a carefully executed if garish tat right over his sternum—some goat-headed demon, its horns spreading out over a well defined pair of pecs. A rivulet of sweat trickled down the goat’s leering face. Higher up Cutter’s torso, the puckered, pale thread of a scar ran at an angle just below one shoulder.
Balance began deserting Jackson. The effects of weed and whiskey, he told himself. The explanation didn’t quite stick. Maybe something else had upset his equilibrium. Maybe a desire to run his hands over that chest and feel the nubs of those nipples had given him a tilt. Curbing the urge, he looked for something to sit on, saw a folding chair off to his right, and went to get it. He felt Cutter’s gaze on him.
“Supe, I got a confession to make.”
Jackson stationed the chair in front of the prisoner. “Save it. I’m not a priest.” After taking off his jacket, he sat, forearms on parted thighs, in front of Cutter’s damp face. He hoped his loosely linked hands and the room’s dimness concealed his crotch, for his cock had become restless.
Cutter rotated his wrists within the cuffs. His muscles delicately flexed. The chains rattled, making Jackson think of Marley’s ghost. “You gonna take it out?”
“Take what out?”
“Your dick. I gotta tell ya, man”—Cutter laughed tightly—“yours is the only one I actually kind of…looked forward to.”
Jackson gaped at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I ain’t.” Cutter’s eyes shone like round and gleaming pools within the rough terrain of his face. He had acne scars, other scars. More scars than a guy his age should carry. They lent his once-cute face a roguish maturity he certainly didn’t deserve. He also had lips more full than thin. When he licked them, they glistened faintly.
Jackson’s cock nudged its tight casing of denim. An urge to press the heel of one hand against his incipient hard-on made him shift in the chair. Its metal frame creaked.
As if that were a cue, Cutter inched forward. The chains to which his wrist restraints were attached gave him some room to move. “Take my hands out of the cuffs, man. I want to grab you while I do you. I want to pump it while I suck it.”
Jackson flopped against the chair back. “Oh, come on. I can’t believe I’m hearing this.” His little soldier, however, could believe it.
“Hey, whose old lady gives the best head? Toot’s, right? Shelley does it best. Didn’t Toot let you have her on your birthday?”
“Yeah, all day. She’s good. So what are you getting at?” Jackson hadn’t had a superior blowjob in a while. At the moment, he was all too aware of it.
“I’m better,” Cutter declared. “I shit you not, Supe, I’m way better. I been wanting to do you for three years. You’re hung, man. Makes my mouth water.” Again, his tongue came out and skated over his lips.
“Oh, Christ,” Jackson groaned. Curling forward, he dropped his forehead to his hand and scratched at it. “Why are you talking like that? I know you’re not queer.”
“I just think you got a great cock. Nothing wrong with that. I wanna feel it. I wanna taste it. Just once. That don’t make me a closet fag.” Cutter seemed to smile, or try to.
Jackson’s fingertips pressed, cool and dry, against his forehead. “Fuck.” Doca’s assessment echoed in his mind. He ain’t bad. I think he’s done it before.
Against his better judgment, Jackson got up, walked around the shackled man, and pulled a key ring off a nail in the wall. As he leaned over to unlock the cuffs, he heard Cutter’s coarse breathing abrade the air beside his face. The words pump and suck, feel and taste seemed to ride each exhalation. Jackson was well on his way to a boner, and he wanted a strong hand to throttle it and firm, succulent lips to slide up and down its length.
Makes my mouth water…
A broad bolt of pain made his stomach curl in on itself. Another cracked into the ledge of his cheek. Stunned, Jackson crumpled.
“I think you’re the closet fag, Superstar. Fucking hotshot ho-dog chump.”
Rolling up his eyes, all Jackson could see through his lashes was a tense-muscled predator within star-studded darkness. He knew he had to fight off both. Teetering, he suppressed his pain and summoned his fury, something he’d done often enough before, and cannon-balled into the predator’s midsection.
The impact emptied Cutter’s lungs with a cough of surprise as much as expelled air. Jackson fell on top of him and held him down. He knew the punk had a glass jaw. Clamping a hand around Cutter’s neck, Jackson snarled, “Fuck you, asshole,” and delivered a swift, jabbing punch to the weak spot. The blow immediately put Cutter out. As soon as he went slack, Jackson got to his feet and kicked Cutter in the nuts. Not hard enough to bring him around, just hard enough to give him something to think about when he revived.
Jackson leaned over, hands braced on knees. “Think you can turn on me, motherfucker? Huh? You’re not good enough to suck my dick, you ignorant pants-pisser.”
With no forewarning, his stomach clenched. An upsurge of vomit scalded his throat. He let it splash onto Cutter’s chest. Drawing back one booted foot, he kicked the inert body again. He didn’t know where, and where didn’t matter. Because in this ugly room with its bug-spotted, low-watt bulb and its shabby, cast-off furniture and its dank odor of new sweat and old piss and urba
n river, a man he’d considered a comrade had rubbed his nose in multiple piles of his own shit.
Jackson didn’t need it. Those poorly buried memories, like a corpse whose fingers poke out of a shallow grave, were reminders enough. Of broken bones and broken hearts, broken promises and broken friendships. All that ego-and hormone-driven destruction. And now, on top of it all, a humiliating revelation of secret desires, used against him.
Reaching down, he grabbed Cutter’s ankles, dragged him back to the radiators, and resecured the handcuffs. The volume of music, laughter, and profanity-laced drunktalk ramped up in the adjacent room. Two women shrieked in laughter. They must have just arrived. The clinking roll of an empty bottle stopped at the backroom’s door. Jackson stared at its form, a hollow ghost in a slice of jaundiced light.
He couldn’t bring himself to go in there. He decided to exit through the backdoor, descend the concrete steps to the narrow walkway along the river, ascend to street level at the next building, and then head for the lot where his bike was parked.
He lifted his jacket off the back of the chair. It felt slick and heavy. Humidity greased the leather. Heat coaxed out the smell of the animal from which the hide had been peeled. Jackson didn’t want to put it on, but he slipped into it out of habit and necessity.
Feeling a little weak but considerably more sober, he slipped out the building’s rear door. The dark river, licking along its channel, had a sinister, opaque sheen. Occasional wafers of light floated and fragmented on it surface. Somewhere in the near distance, the water made lewd lapping sounds, soft and sly. Jackson imagined a wet tongue slithering up from the depths, wrapping around his ankle, and pulling him under.
Despite the night’s sticky warmth, he shivered inside his jacket. The river gave him the terrors. He knew he’d freak out if he fell into it, like Pip in Moby-Dick after he’d tumbled into the ocean.
Still, Jackson continued to stride along the narrow strip, boot heels clacking on the pavement. Cutter’s words kept up their relentless taunt in his mind. Jackson wondered if he was tempting fate, maybe asking for some penance or punishment for every ugly thing he’d ever done or wanted to do. But no monstrous hand swept him into the sluggish water. No liquid tongue twined around his leg.