Caged Wolf (Tarot Witches Book 1)

by SM Reine

  Cheers. Screams.

  Gloria announced the next fight, and the next. One by one, the men fell to pain and blood.

  Then she called, “Red Eagle! Trouble!”

  Trouble. My heart flipped as I swung around to look at the Fang Brothers in the corner. Cooper.

  He stood, stripping off his leather vest and dropping it on the table. His muscles bulged against his shirt. It looked so tight on him that I thought it might tear. There was no way to tell that he had just been shredded by Big Papa the night before, that he had spent that morning bleeding in my bed—he looked hale and ready to fight. But I knew the truth.

  I vaulted over the bar as he cut a path through the crowd, moving to meet Red Eagle in the cage.

  “Ofelia!” Gloria snapped.

  I didn’t acknowledge her. I couldn’t stand by while Cooper was in the cage. I couldn’t.

  Seizing his arm, I dragged him away from the door. “You’re still injured,” I whispered urgently, trying to haul him toward the bar’s back room.

  He dug his heels in. Shoved me off of him.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked, fury flaming within his golden eyes.

  What was I doing? He looked so angry at me. “I thought I was helping you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” he spat. “Don’t make that mistake again.” He might as well have slapped me, his tone was so vicious. A cold ache flooded my heart. Then he lowered his voice and said, “Not where Big Papa can see.”

  I didn’t have the strength to try to stop him again.

  He mounted the stairs, throwing his leg over the bars to slip inside. He stripped his shirt off over his head. The lights reflected on his bare, sweaty muscles. He wasn’t the most ripped of the bikers that had been in the cage tonight, but there was something breathtaking about the sight of him, all broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted with the wolf curved over his chest.

  The injuries weren’t completely healed. The tooth and claw marks still crisscrossed his shoulders.

  Red Eagle was a behemoth of a man, so broad that I doubted he’d be able to walk through a doorway without turning sideways. Cooper wasn’t short, but Red Eagle was a full head taller.

  When Gloria closed the door, it sounded like a coffin getting slammed shut.

  I pushed my way to the front of the crowd.

  Cooper circled Red Eagle, arms at his sides. He wasn’t guarding himself. His hands were curled as though they might grow claws at any moment. And his eyes—he looked so hungry. More like the wolf that had bitten me the night before than the man who had let me see into his heart that morning.

  Through the bars, I saw the man who had demanded that we delay the fight. I hadn’t caught his name, but his face was memorable—that ugly, twisted scowl, those piercing black eyes. His skin was unnaturally pale for a biker. Usually, they were browned from the sun. This guy looked like he had never been outside in his life. And his hair was glossy black.

  Why did he look familiar?

  He slipped out the back door, and a sense of unease that had nothing to do with Cooper’s state of injury settled over me.

  That biker was up to something.

  Of course, when you confined multiple gangs to a single town that was nothing more than a handful of trailers collected in the middle of a perpetual dust storm, it would have been much stranger if the bikers didn’t get up to shit.

  A gasp rippled through the crowd, drawing my attention back to Cooper and away from the pale-skinned biker.

  Red Eagle had aimed a kick at Cooper’s head. He was fast—his leg was a blur as it lashed out—but I could see that there were studs on the toe of his boot. Big silver spikes.

  Cooper ducked under it. The boot whistled over his head.

  He lunged, swiping at Red Eagle. His hand cuffed the side of the man’s head. Boxed his ear.

  And then all of the lights in the bar died and pitch darkness fell over the room.

  If you’ve never been a stripper trying to fight your way out of a room filled with ruffians in the dark—and, I mean, who hasn’t?—then let me tell you this: If you think bikers are handsy when they’re drunk, just wait until you can’t see who’s fondling you.

  I managed to get out of the bar with most of my clothes and my pride intact. As soon as the door swung shut behind me, I buttoned my shorts up and stuffed my tits into my bra. Someone had even managed to slip a couple of singles into my cleavage. At least they’d paid for the honor of feeling me up. Could have been worse.

  It was much brighter outside under the waning moon than it had been inside; I didn’t even need a flashlight to find my way to Johnny, who was inspecting our breaker panel with the help of his Bic lighter. His figure had a lot in common with a wire coat hanger that had been bent into the shape of a man—impossibly skinny and sharp-edged. He had more sores on his face than teeth in his skull.

  “You do this?” he asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I broke our electricity from inside the bar. Danced so hard that the breakers blew. Sorry. Can’t help being so sexy.”

  Johnny snorted. A line of snot slipped down his lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Not a breaker.” He moved to the generator, where there was already a much more curvaceous figure inspecting the machinery. Whenever I saw Johnny and Gloria together, all I could think of was that old nursery rhyme: Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean. And so betwixt the two of them, they licked the platter clean. If Gloria had been hollow, Johnny could have easily fit inside of her three times.

  “It was one of the bikers,” I said. “The one who told us to postpone the fight.”

  Gloria didn’t doubt me for a second. “I’ll feed the fucker’s balls to the coyotes. But first you bring the power back, Johnny.”

  “I’ll see about that.”

  He worked in silence for a few minutes while Gloria and I waited. The men were pouring out the front doors of the bar now, filling the night with shouts and the sound of shattering glass. Heading back to their bikes. I took that to mean that the fights were over.

  That biker had gotten what he wanted.

  “Yup, it’s bad,” Johnny said, wiping his hands with a rag. It didn’t clean his skin off so much as redistribute the oil. “Looks like it’s one of the belts. Think we’re missing a couple of bolts, too—gotta replace those, or it’ll shake itself apart next time we turn it on.”

  “We can fix all that.” I glanced at Gloria. “Right?”

  Her expression spoke of bad things. Very bad things. Her penciled eyebrows were drawn low. “We’ll have to go into town to buy a replacement.”

  The words settled into me with a prickly frisson. “Go into town” were three small words that meant one very big deal. It meant pulling out our old pickup, which ran on prayers and spitballs and gas fumes. It had a manual transmission that only Gloria knew how to drive and only Johnny knew how to repair—and it frequently needed repairs. Which meant that both of them would need to take it “into town.” Either across the border to the United States or Mexico. Into the real world.

  Either way, they’d be leaving Lobo Norte.

  “No,” I said. Not because I thought I could change anyone’s mind, or even the situation, but just because denying it made me feel better for a brief, shining moment. “We can’t leave the fight unfinished. All that money…”

  “No refunds,” Gloria said. “I’ve already paid out the money. Besides, the men won’t go anywhere until the initiation’s over.”

  That news surprised me. “You paid out? But there was no winner.”

  “This is a special fight. The entry fees went elsewhere. Winners get a different prize.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Gloria pinched me. “Don’t ask questions.”

  “We’ll leave tonight,” Johnny said, slamming the panel on the side shut. “Depending on how long it takes the part to come in, and how the pickup handles the drive, we might be back in a week. No more than two. Ofel
ia, you can handle the girls for a couple weeks, can’t you?”

  It was a taunt. He knew I didn’t want to have jack shit to do with the girls, and he didn’t want me to go anywhere near them anyway. His whores, as much as they irked me, wouldn’t be the problem. It would be the bikers. The Fang Brothers weren’t going anywhere for the rest of the month. I’d be stranded with them.

  Nothing could make me show weakness in front of Johnny—not even the threat of dealing with the Fangs alone.

  “I can handle Lobo Norte,” I said, lifting my chin.

  “No, you can’t,” Gloria snapped. “Not by yourself.”

  She was probably right. Those bikers were coyotes that would eat me alive the instant they caught me alone and vulnerable. I’d gotten pretty good at taking wild dogs down in Lobo Norte, but I didn’t have enough buckshot to take so many men all at once.

  How could I run a bar, a motel, and a whorehouse if I was constantly watching my back, too?

  “I’ll help her.”

  We turned. Cooper stood behind us. There was no way to tell how long he had been listening. At our attention he rubbed a hand over his jaw, along the stubble on his scalp, down the back of his neck. Like he was trying to wipe our gazes away. All his earlier animosity was gone.

  “What’s that you said?” Johnny asked, eyes narrowing to slits, until I could barely see his pupils sunken into his face.

  “I’ll help Ofelia run Lobo Norte,” Cooper said. “The gangs won’t go anywhere until we do. You can’t run a bar alone. I used to work at my family’s restaurant, so I can help.”

  Gloria rolled up to him, ready to argue. But before she could speak, I said, “Thank you.”

  Cooper and me, alone in Lobo Norte.

  What could go wrong?

  VII

  When I returned to my trailer, I found that The Devil card hadn’t burned. It sat in a bowl of cold ashes, totally undamaged.

  Something strange was happening at Lobo Norte. Stranger than usual, anyway, which said a lot. This card was the crux of it. The card, the Fang Brothers, the pale-skinned biker that wanted us to delay the so-called “initiation”—it was all The Devil’s fault.

  Setting the card on my windowsill, I watched Gloria and Johnny head out in the pickup, carving a path through the night with the flickering headlights. As they trundled along the busted asphalt, their lights shined on glistening chrome, catching all the bikers hunkering down for the night with blow and bitches.

  I glimpsed Kelsie, one of the whores, naked on her knees in front of Red Eagle. And then the lights had moved on to a pair of men with needles in their arms. And then the pickup was turned away and I couldn’t see anything but retreating taillights.

  They blinked out halfway up the hill. Back to the real world. Away from the surreal, gritty oasis of Lobo Norte.

  It had been a long time since I tried to cast magic, but that night I knew I was going to need my trailer warded—protected by powerful spells. I went through the effort of sprinkling salt at all of my windows and doors, burning a lotus smudge, filling my single-wide with purifying energy. I built an invisible wall of magic that nobody would be able to pass without my permission.

  I prayed to Hecate. I prayed to the Horned God.

  A feeling of safety crept over me, and I wasn’t sure if it was imagined or if the gods really could see me in that forsaken nowhere-place. I would find out if the bikers tried to raid my trailer that night. Hopefully, the hookers would keep them busy enough that nobody would come for the stripper.

  Just in case, I slept cuddled up with Bo Peep that night, watching The Devil watching me from the windowsill.

  It seemed counterproductive to ward my home with that thing still inside.

  I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things, but in the half-light of the moon, I thought that The Devil’s leering face looked very much like Big Papa.

  The fact that I woke up in the morning unmolested was a pleasant surprise. Sunshine poured through my window, warming Bo Peep’s metal to body temperature. She was a better bed companion than any of the bikers I had ever allowed to join me before. She felt solid and comforting against my chest. I slept better with the scent of her lubricant lingering in my sinuses than the musk of a man’s sweat.

  The fact I’d slept so well was no small feat, considering that the bikers’ carousing had kept me awake until the brink of dawn. They always got into fights after a cage match. Gunfire and screams were a Lobo Norte fixture on those kinds of nights. But last night, most of the men hadn’t gotten to work out their frustrations in the cage, and all that bloodlust had to go somewhere.

  They had fought for hours. I’d be surprised if there weren’t a couple dozen dead bodies waiting for Johnny’s oven.

  But they hadn’t come to bother me, which meant I didn’t care, and it wasn’t my problem.

  I whispered thanks to Hecate, released my wards, and headed out with Bo Peep broken over my arm, loading her as I walked across the sun-baked soil toward The Lodge.

  The generator looked forlorn when I passed it, standing silently behind my bar, all its mechanical parts unmoving. The perpetually illuminated “OPEN” sign on the bar’s front window was, for the first time, lightless.

  Between the bar and The Lodge, the bikers’ encampment sprawled over the dusty earth. Some men slept in the shadow of their bikes. Others hid underneath tarps and blankets. Tents were a rare sight—camping out in Lobo Norte seemed to be a dick-measuring contest of who could be most rugged. If they were happy to get sunburned in the pursuit of looking tough, then far be it from me to judge. I would have taken a tent, though.

  I wasn’t sure what drew me to The Lodge, yet Cooper was waiting for me, alone behind the row of motel rooms, as if we had prearranged the meeting.

  It was the first time that I had seen his ride. I was inured to motorcycles by now; I’d seen so many skull-shaped decorations and shiny chrome parts that I hadn’t thought anything could impress me anymore. Yet Cooper’s motorcycle was as breathtaking as the sight of his shirtless body. It was a deep cherry-blue, lean and mean, with arching handlebars and fat tires. A cruising machine with a massive fucking engine. I had no doubt that it could shake a man’s teeth out of his head when it was turned on.

  He was crouched beside it with a toolbox, working intently. I thought that he hadn’t noticed my approach until he said, “Morning.”

  I glanced at the sky. Judging by the position of the sun, it was almost midday. But it definitely felt like morning with all the snoring bikers spread around my town. “Good morning. What are you doing?”

  “Something’s off about her timing,” he said. “I’m fixing her.”

  I took a long time to study him as he worked. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. That was good. I was thinking that I needed to write it into Lobo Norte’s charter that he wasn’t allowed to wear shirts within our borders. Not that we had a charter.

  His wounds were already on the brink of healing. It had barely been thirty-six hours since his mauling by Big Papa.

  “The generator was sabotaged,” I said, surprising myself with the pronouncement. “Someone wanted to delay the fight last night.”

  “It worked,” Cooper said. “Big Papa says everyone’s hanging around until the next fight.”

  That meant we’d have a full house, so to speak, for two weeks. That pale-skinned biker would be among them. As if the Fang Brothers alone weren’t bad enough…

  “They want to be initiated into your pack,” I said. It wasn’t really a question.

  Cooper sat back on his heels, a wrench dangling from one hand. He squinted at me through the sunlight. He looked out of place against the desert. He should have been lurking in chilly alpine forests, splashing through rivers, kissed by rain.

  “Some people want to be like me,” he said. “Got a pair of hands? I need help.”

  I set Bo Peep on the ground. “Did you want to be like…this?”

  Cooper returned his attention to the bike. “Lots of men want to be in the pa
ck. Real bad men. It’s an honor. And it’s useful to be able to fight and heal like this. You can get high on any drug, as much as you want, without dying. You can get shot in the gut and live on.”

  That wasn’t an answer. Not really. But his tone was pained, and I didn’t want to push.

  “You said you need help?” I asked.

  “Get on,” Cooper said. “Hold it in place for me.”

  It took a moment for the command to sink in, and once it did, a flush climbed up my cheeks.

  He was telling me to get on the motorcycle.

  That was only a few degrees less filthy than what I had initially thought he meant. There was something intensely personal about a man’s machine. This was something he loved more than life itself, caring for it with obvious adoration. It was his partner on the road. His pride and joy.

  I climbed onto the motorcycle. It felt solid between my legs, and somehow right, like I was meant to clutch something so large and hard between my thighs. The leather was hot from the sunlight. It burned against the tender edge of flesh exposed by my shorts. I lifted myself an inch, shifted, spread my legs a little more. It pressed my core right against the hard leather. Kind of took my breath away.

  Bracing my hands against the seat in front of me, precariously balanced on my toes, it felt like I was sitting on top of a beast that might leap at any moment. It felt dangerous. There was no way I could control such a monster.

  “Think it should work now,” Cooper said.

  He settled behind me with a creak of leather and denim, pressing his chest against my back, his hips sinking in behind mine.

  Now I was trapped between man and machine, engulfed in the sour smell of lubricant and the musky warmth of his sweat. If I’d had any thoughts of escaping, it would have been too late now. But I didn’t want to escape. I wanted to be there, with Cooper’s chaps burning against the backs of my legs and his breath on my braids, the too-hard shape of the motorcycle under me.

  He took my hands in his. “Turn it on,” he whispered into the back of my neck, guiding my fingers to the ignition.