by Nicole Fox
Whoomph! We hit the ground. Dominic had shielded me from the impact with his body, so I was––apart from my bruised hip and twisted ankle––okay.
For the first time, as I climbed off him, I heard Dominic moan.
“Dominic!” I hissed, seizing him by the shoulders. All of a sudden, now that the attackers were out of reach, I suddenly realized how crazy all of this was. “Dominic!” I managed to get him into a sitting position. “What the hell happened back there?”
Wincing and swearing under his breath, Dominic managed to return to his feet. Rather than answering me, however, he once again seized me by the hand and dragged me forward.
“No, Dominic! No!” I insisted, planting my feet. “I demand to know what’s going on!”
“I’ll...tell you...” He grunted, still obviously winded from his fall. “Once...we are safe...but for now, we need to run!”
I was about to open my mouth to retort when I heard, quite distinctly, a man on the other side of the wall cry, “Circle round! That road has limited exits! Block them all!”
“Jesus Christ,” I swore, this time taking Dominic’s hand. We looked at each other, nodded, and then––despite my throbbing ankle, despite my aching hip, even despite the sour liquor, churning in my stomach and threatening to rise––we began to run.
Chapter Six
Dominic
“You let your guard down, Dominic,” I told myself as we ran. “You were paying too much attention to this pretty woman, and you let your guard down.”
Another man might have continued to berate himself, to call himself “stupid” over and over, but I had learned a long time ago that such relentless self-admonishments were not helpful. Instead, I made myself this promise: “You will not do it again.”
In spite of this, it was very hard not gaze too long at Erica. She ran ahead of me. Though I was obviously faster, I made sure to stay behind her. Part of that was for the delicious view of her butt, bouncing beneath the sheer red fabric of her dress, and the other part was far more gentlemanly: if the Jaws scaled the wall, their bullets would find me first.
I would not usually consider myself a self-sacrificing sort of guy, but Erica didn’t ask for any of this. It was my fault that she was caught up in all this violence.
As we sprinted, the swelling in her ankle was visible, and I could tell by the ragged way she was breathing that something in her core was paining her. Still, she ran on. She was tougher than she looked.
“Which way?” She gasped, as we neared a connecting road.
“Left!” I cried. “Left! We’ll lose ourselves in the crowds!”
I glanced at my watch. A little past midnight. And yet, I know that Main Street would be teeming with drunk bikers, tourists, and partiers. Thank Christ we’d been caught in a thriving town.
At last, we emerged into the main road. Bright lights scalded our eyes, and music thumped so loudly it nearly tuned out the pounding of our hearts.
“That’s it,” gasped Erica, collapsing against a wall and clutching her chest. “I can’t run any further. Are we safe?”
I glanced around. I was in pain, too, but, if the Jaws still hunted us, we could not stop running. Fortunately, I could see none of them. Instead, all I saw was drunk and grinning wanderers––groups of teenagers dressed like bikers, but their mothers would drive them home, kissing couples, and parents with sleeping children slung across their shoulders, attempting to relive the single life.
“I think we’re okay,” I sighed, likewise leaning against the wall. The minute I said this, I noticed a great pain emerging in my side, that I suppose the adrenaline had kept at bay until then. Scowling, I reached around to investigate, but then Erica was upon me.
“Now, Dominic, I expect you to tell me what the hell is going on,” she demanded, recovered enough from our flight to put her hands on her hips. “If you weren’t spewing bullshit all night, then I deserve an answer.”
I gazed at her, her glare as fiery as her ruby-red lips. I noticed streaks of mascara down her cheeks. Tears from before, or tears as we had been running? I wasn’t sure.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. So, here’s the deal: I am part of a motorcycle club.”
She looked at me, completely unimpressed. “So?” She asked after a minute.
“So...I am part of the club that is an enemy to the Crooked Jaws––that lovely little gang that has been shooting at us all night.”
She scowled, and inhaled sharply. “But I thought...”
“You thought motorcycle gangs were just in movies, right?” I interrupted coldly. “Or were just fun hang-outs for fat, middle-aged men going through midlife crises?”
She had the decency to look embarrassed. “Well, yes,” she said, shrugging.
“Well, they’re not, and tonight’s events should prove it to you,” I snapped harshly. Only after I saw her wince at my words that I realized that I was perhaps being unfair. I continued more softly. “Look, I am only spelling this out for you, because I want you to take what I am about to say seriously: you are in danger. I was in Crooked Jaw territory at that bar, and they will do whatever they can to kill me.”
“Well, then, the solution is simple,” she said, so clinically that I caught a glimpse, very strongly, of what she would be like as a lawyer. Empowered, intelligent, and determined.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I can never see you again,” she said, slamming her clutch purse under her arm, (how she had managed to hang onto it throughout all of this, I would never understand) and stomping away.
I seized her shoulder to stop her. “No!” I insisted. “You don’t understand. They have seen you with me. Now, that means you could be a target.”
She paled, but her lips remained set. “So what do I do?”
“You lay low. You don’t go out for a few days. And though I hate to suggest it––maybe get rid of that dress.”
She chuckled. “Ha. My fiancé has been trying to get me to donate it for years. Funny now that the same thing is happening, but for very different reasons.”
I pressed onward. “Give me your phone number,” I demanded. “That way, when I sense things are safe, I can contact you.”
She cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Is this how you get all the girls’ numbers––look out!”
She pointed behind me, and I whirled just in time to see a group of Crooked Jaws, shoving their way angrily through the crowd. My mind raced. We could not outrun them. They were young and fit, and both of us were worn and injured. I glanced around, looking for something, anything to help us escape.
“Nothing!” I growled. “Nothing! Just stupid kids and stupid fucking couples––!”
I trailed off, suddenly inspired. In a single movement, I swept Erica into my arms, pressed her against the wall, and kissed her.
“What are you...” She tried to say, pushing me off her, but I kept up my pressure. Dimly, I was aware of the Jaws approaching. I could tell by the heavy, clanging footfalls of their iron-tipped shoes, and the affronted squawks of the pedestrians they pushed aside.
Erica’s mouth opened. She let my tongue enter her. She relaxed her body, so that my embrace could envelop her completely and that her breasts could swell right against my chest. Had she realized what was going on? Was this an act, designed to fool the approaching Jaws? Or was she simply responding to my touch, like a sheltered flower to sunlight?
I could not be sure. Part of me did not want to know.
The Jaws were right behind us. “Where’d those fuckers go?” One growled angrily at his cohort. “They can’t have gone far!”
Heart pounding, I kissed Erica harder. I felt her hands looping around my waist and heard a sharp intake of breath as she pressed against me, as if she’d cut herself. I did not have time to wonder at her actions, however, because every granule of my awareness was focused on the bikers behind me, willing them to go away.
“Aw, come on,” one said. “They’re obviously not here. B
esides, if they were, that Molina prick would be leaving a blood trail a mile long.
“What are they talking about?” I thought, but I continued kissing. At last, they turned and stomped away. The very next instant, Erica shoved me off of her.
“I’m sorry!” I snapped, insulted that she would take to kissing me so poorly. “I thought that––”
“No, Dominic, look,” she interrupted. Slowly, and with trembling fingers, she raised her hand up to my eyes––the hand that had been looped around my waist.
It was covered in blood, so much that she seemed to be wearing a dripping, bright red glove.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, the pain that I’d noticed in my side doubling. “One of the knives must have got me when I was climbing up the fence...how did we not notice?”
Erica spun me around and squeezed the hem of my jacket. There was a sound like twisting a sodden sponge.
“Oh, God,” she murmured, stepping away from the blood that spattered onto the ground. Now that the adventure was over, I could feel myself growing dizzy. The pain in my side grew.
“Hey,” I chuckled, feeling giddy. “Thank God for black leather, huh?”
And with that, my vision dimmed.
I was only distantly aware of her settling me down against the wall and ripping out her cell phone to call a cab. Passerbys did not spare me a second glance. They assumed I was drunk, and the gleaming puddle that was pooling beneath me was so dark in the moonlight that it could have been water. I felt myself veering in and out of consciousness, until, at last, the taxi arrived.
“To 16 Parry Drive,” she ordered smoothly, leaning me against her chest like a sleeping child. The taxi accelerated, and I felt new pain shoot up my core as if a savage hand had gripped my insides and yanked.
“Thanks,” I murmured. Then, I buried my head in her breast, and all went black.
I WAS A MAN OF VIOLENCE. That means, like any man of violence, I was plagued by dreams.
Dreams? Images? Memories? They were too fragmented, too disordered, and yet too real to truly tell. In these dreams, I saw blood flowing. My first fight. Young and naïve, I was, still drunk on the idea that being the leader of a motorcycle club meant fun and glory, not the endless cycle of violence that it turned out to be. A punch in the face. A broken jaw. An old man, a bystander in this conflict, piercing his hands on glass broken by my own fist. His look of terror. Erica’s look of terror, when the stupid Crooked Jaw drew his knife. All of these images swirled around in my head, a nauseous cocktail flaring in rhythm with the jolts of pain leaking their way through my unconsciousness.
“Don’t worry, Dominic. You’ll be okay. I’ve got you.”
A voice. A distant voice. “Don’t be stupid,” I wanted to tell it. “I’ve got me. I’m the only one who can handle this. Me!”
And yet, the sound of it was so comforting.
But then, the worst of it, that old, familiar nightmare. The sound of bones being crushed into powder. Have you ever heard bones ground like that? Maybe you’ve heard bones break––a dry snap, like a seasoned block of wood popping in a fire. But to be crushed? It’s like a thousand eggshells, smothered in a giant’s fist. It’s the sound of scraping fingernails across rough surfaces. Car paint. Chalkboards. It’s a sound that starts out solid, then turns to liquid as the shards of bone are pulverized into a pulp.
That was the sound that haunted me––that has haunted me since the first days of my leadership of the Broken Spires.
I knew that one day, I would pay for that sound. If it did not demand my life, it would demand my sanity.
“Shhh...It’s okay. I’m taking care of you. Don’t you worry. It’ll be okay.”
There! That stupid voice again! How dare it try to take care of me? I, who did not deserve to be taken care of...who only traded in violence, never in comfort.
“No!” I cried, aloud or in my head, I would never know. “Let it end! I want it to end.”
Silence. The images faded. The sounds grew muffled until they were nothing more than a rumble, like a distant rain on the other side of a mountain.
Peace filled me. It was so strange at first, that I barely recognized it. Distantly, I could feel gentle hands touching me, soothing my pain away.
“Erica?” I murmured. Then: “Don’t be silly. She was just some chick at the bar. Some dumb floozy who...”
I could not finish the thought. All I could do was focus on those tender hands, and the face, outlined in light, attached to them.
Chapter Seven
Erica
By the time we arrived at my apartment, Dominic was nearly unconscious. He’d explained enough to me before he passed out for me to know that I couldn’t call the police. The Crooked Jaws would be waiting, and besides, the cops would ask too many questions.
My fingers sticky with blood, I threw Dominic’s arm around my shoulder and pulled him from the cab, tossing the driver a fifty on my way out and not waiting for the change. The guy must have taken that as a hint, for a moment later he was gone, asking no questions about the red fingerprints on the bill.
I gazed at the house before me, and its long, meandering driveway.
“Come on, Erica,” I said aloud. “You spent five years carrying Brian’s lazy ass. You can certainly manage this.”
I took a deep breath and heaved Dominic inside. His leather outfit and ten-ton boots looked huge and ridiculous on my soft, white carpets, and yet I thought the place improved. Sweating, and puffing my hair away from my lips, I set him on a kitchen chair.
“Okay,” I told myself. “The first thing I need to do is clean him.” Gazing down at his tattooed, leather-armored body, I thought, Good grief.
I started by wrestling off his jacket. It was so sodden with blood and naturally heavy that it felt like it weighed fifty pounds. At last, after pushing his massive, muscular arms through the sleeves, I was able to wrench it off him.
Beneath that he was wearing a white t-shirt, now splattered with as much crimson as a Halloween costume. For this, I simply grabbed a kitchen knife and cut it away. It was cheap, and––after everything we’d been through tonight––I could imagine that he could afford a new one. The sticky, stiffening fabric hurled in the trash, I finally saw the wound.
“Good God,” I mumbled. There it was, a divot deep in his hipbone, a little valley of blood and gore amid blood-speckled skin. As I bent to examine it, I realized that while it was not wide, it was very, very deep, and that I needed to close it up immediately.
I threw a sheet on the ground, lowered him onto it, and then with a wet towel, I began to sponge bathe the wound site clean. Every once and awhile, Dominic’s eyelids would flicker, and he’d mumble something incoherent. When he did this, I simply stroked his long, rich brown hair and muttered comforting nonsense. “Don’t worry, Dominic. You’ll be okay. I’ve got you.” I whispered, time and time again. I am not sure if it helped. Perhaps I was saying it to comfort me as much as him.
At last, the spot was clean, except for the rivulets of blood that flowed from it every time I removed the pressure from my hand. Nervously, I pushed a towel down upon it then rushed to my cabinet, where the first-aid kit was waiting. From it, I yanked a series of gauzes, and, after desperate searching, several butterfly bandages. I unpeeled these and, as quickly as I could, used them to seal the wound shut.
Then came the gauze, then the bandages, and then, at long last, a waterproof plastic seal, covering the entire site. It had been awhile since I had taken first aid in college, but, nonetheless, I was impressed with my handiwork. Sighing deeply, I set the coffee pot to brew and threw Dominic’s jacket in the wash. Was it dry clean only? Probably, but at that point, I’d decided Dominic could suck it.
At long last, he stirred.
“Erica...?” He mumbled, his voice as weak as the hiss of a flame. Immediately, I rushed to his side.
“Thank God, you’re okay,” I said, cupping his head in my hands. I knew I had only just met him, but, for some reason, I felt str
angely protective of him. I guessed that was what happened when two people saved each other’s lives.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered aloud. “I saved your life!” It had never, ever occurred to me that I could do that for someone––for anyone. To save a life. Wow.
Dominic blinked at me, then smiled. “Maybe,” He grunted, straining to sit up. “Maybe not. I’m a tough guy to kill.”
“Apparently,” I said. “And an even harder one to undress. Your jacket’s in the wash. I hope I didn’t stretch it.”
“Trust me, taking off my clothes is not usually a problem,” he replied, “especially with a woman like you around.”
I blushed. I could not help it. Him––a criminal, a bad boy, a man with a gun––complimenting me like that!
He scratched at his chest, which was still caked with dried blood.
“Man,” he moaned. “What I wouldn’t give for a shower.”
I gaze at him. Though his wound was clean, the rest of his skin was caked with drying blood. His hair was stiff and sweaty, and from the way he smelled, he had absorbed a handle’s worth of liquor, gliding across the bar.
An idea––born from pity at first, but then morphing into reckless titillation––burst in my head.
“Here,” I said, leaning down to aid him getting to his feet. “I can help.”
He took my hand and stood. I reached out to hold him up, but he swatted my hand away.
“No,” he said. “I can do it.”
And he marched solidly to my bathroom.
There, with me hovering around uncertainly behind him, he began to unbutton his pants. This he did without a problem. It was bending over, to actually remove his jeans, that was a challenge. I figured he would want to tough it out and do it himself anyway, but as he strained I could see little blossoms of blood forming on the fresh gauze, so I gently took his hands away.
Then, fully aware of what I was doing, I bent down onto my knees.