A Brother At My Back

by A. J. Downey

  She had these walls up, so impossibly high and hiding behind them, but at the same time, she was in there screaming for someone to see her. I did, I could hear her, but I didn’t think I could do anything about it except what Dragon had asked me to do. I could keep her alive and her ex-man’s damn hands off of her.

  I sighed and set aside the book by Thompson I had laying on my chest. I tore my gaze from the rumpled twenty I’d done my best to smooth flat and stared at the cracked and water stained ceiling of my flat instead.

  She was too primo for the likes of me, anyway. She’d probably get the idea I fancied her and tell me to fuck off. I couldn’t say I would blame her. My eyes drifted back to the lippy stained money on the wall. I didn’t think I would be sleeping anytime soon, so I sat up and pressed fingertips into my eyes, trying to rub the tired out.

  Ever been that way? Tired, but can’t sleep, too much on the mind to make drifting off happen. Even if it was something you desperately wanted?

  Her friend was supposed to bring her in just a few hours. I wanted to begin training her on how to defend herself if it should come up with her. I was fair certain it wouldn’t, but it was better safe than sorry, yeah? I liked the girl, and not just because she was pretty. I’d made a few observations about her in the short time we’d known each other.

  She was smart, for one. The textbooks on her table were pretty heavy reading. If I had to guess, she was getting closer to her degree. Maybe the final year of Uni for her. That wasn’t what stood out to me the most, though. What stood out to me, what called out the most was her warrior’s spirit. She was a fierce one, that girl. I could see it. Wanted to see more of it.

  I reached up to my jacket, hanging on the back of a chair by the bed and fished in the pocket for the mint tin in it. I opened it up and fished out a rolling paper, taking a pinch of the weed in it and crumbling along the paper I had folded with my other hand to hold it. I rolled myself a joint and stuck it between my lips, closing up the tin and putting it back, then fishing for my lighter in the same pocket.

  I sucked the herb smoke into my lungs and flopped back onto the bed, staring at the rumpled, crimson-stained American money. I exhaled and watched the smoke plume and roil, perfuming the air with its earthy notes. I took another hit and held it, felt muscles start to loosen and my mind begin to slow its roll. I didn’t smoke weed often, but I had to admit, it was the best remedy when my nerves started to jangle for whatever reason so I always kept some on me.

  I finished the joint and put it out in an empty lemonade can by the bed before flopping back into the mattress. I turned my head and stared at that crimson mark until the drug kicked in and mellowed me out enough to sleep. Still, pretty sure my dreams were haunted by a sinuous dancer with the saddest brown eyes that at the same time, were as empty as a doll’s.

  9

  Tiffany…

  “Make a fist,” he ordered and I did. He shook his head slightly and stepped forward, taking my hand in his gently and untucking my thumb from inside my fingers.

  “That’s how you get a broken thumb, always keep it on the outside, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He put up a hand, flat and said, “Punch it and I mean really punch it.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said and kind of cringed at the thought of full-out hitting his hand.

  He smiled at me, a broad grin, and said, “That’s the whole point. If you throw a punch, you have to mean it, eh.”

  He took a stance and held up his hand and I took a deep breath and swung. My fist slapped into the center of his palm and I swear I squeaked. He laughed, shook it out and a female voice called across the empty gym, “Not bad, first things first, though. We need to work on her stance.”

  I took a step back from Nik and turned my head, looking down. He’d managed to convince me to pull my long hair into a ponytail and keep it out of my face for this but he hadn’t said anything about anyone else being here. Just when I was warming up to him, too, despite Lia’s worried nagging the whole way here.

  “Ah, yeah, Tiff I’d like y’t’ meet Mali, she’s my bro’s woman and knows a thing or two about a good street fight.”

  “Yeah, I think the reason he called me down here has more to do with the fact that I’m a woman and most of the fighting I’ve done my whole life has been against dudes that are usually easily twice my size when it comes to muscle mass.” She held out her hand to me and her arms were covered in flower tattoos. I blinked and shook it, still unwilling to meet her eyes, feeling awfully exposed. I recognized her tattoos, though.

  “Weren’t you serving drinks a few of nights ago at the MC?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that would be me. Full-time ink-slinger and part-time drink-slinger. The bartending is a hobby while my man Data is balls deep in his computer systems rather than me.” Her voice held the edge of a smile and I glanced up. She leaned around and nodded.

  “Zeb.”

  “Ah, yeah?”

  “Please tell me I’m teaching her how to whoop ass so that if whatever douchebag did that to her decides to come around, she has the potential to cave his nuts in.”

  “Ah, yeah, that would be why, Mali. Just in case whatever reason I’m not there.”

  “Excellent. Okay, first thing’s first, you need to widen your stance; we need to work on your balance and center of gravity.” She redirected her attention back to Nik and asked, “You teaching her to shoot?”

  “Thought Trigger would be better suited to do that, eh?”

  “You’re not wrong and good deal. Should get Reaver involved with his knives, later down the line, but a knife is going to be pretty useless if you don’t have the basics down.”

  Finally, she decided to address me, just as I was starting to get irritated about being talked around. Still, annoyance aside, I was rapt on her every word. I shifted and took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “This is a lot,” I said with a nervous laugh. It was a lot, and I wasn’t exactly sure I could do what she was expecting of me. I mean, I’d never really been good at the whole hitting another person even if it was in self-defense. My personal superpower had always sort of been that I could take a beating until help arrived. Which, sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t. At least not always on time.

  I swallowed hard, mouth suddenly dry and watched the other woman move. Mali pulled her messenger bag off over her head and dropped it over by the wrestling ring. She pulled down the sleeves of her leather jacket from where they were rucked up around her elbows and shrugged out of it completely, hanging it off the corner post.

  “It is a lot, but honey, you want to be a victim forever?”

  “No,” I said quickly. No, I did not. I wanted to have a life. I’d worked too hard to give myself one after Silas, and I didn’t want to let him have what I’d managed to build without a fight. I wanted out of this town and I wanted to help people. That was the goal, by any means necessary. Never give up, never surrender…

  “Cool,” she said. “Now that’s out of the way, watch me…”

  She and Nik went through the proper way to stand, the proper way to punch and then the real work began. She would have Nik go at her, would evade with expert moves and twists and would use his own weight against him. It was fascinating watching Mali, who wasn’t built much differently than me, actually throw Nik around.

  They would then break apart and run me through exercises and drills of the same thing over and over until we were all panting and sweating. My body was not going to like me, and I worried about it possibly affecting my work, but the sensations wrought by the workout and drills weren’t unfamiliar ones. I’d felt the same sort of aches, pains, and fatigue to get where I was when it came to pole dancing.

  “Okay, I think that’s enough for today,” Mali said after what felt like three or four hours of the torturous exercises. I looked across to Nik who was sweating and panting right along with me.

  “I don’t feel like I am going to make it in time…” I said.

 
; “How d’you mean?” Nik asked.

  “Learn all this before he finds me; before he gets to me.”

  Nik opened his mouth to speak, a frightening scowl on his tattooed face, but Mali beat him to it saying, “That’s not the point, honey. You aren’t going to learn this shit overnight. That’s impossible. All we can do with this is keep at it and give you an inside edge on staying alive if it comes to it.” She gave Nik a meaningful look and whatever he was going to say a moment before was gone.

  Instead, he gave me a reassuring grin saying, “One step at a time, eh?” He put his hands on his knees, breathing heavy and gave me a nod that I think was meant to be encouraging.

  I was beginning to honestly feel like I was right. That the only superpower I possessed, masked or otherwise, was that I really could just take whatever beating I had coming my way until help arrived. Mali laughed and I blinked at her. Had I said that out loud?

  “Well, you’re ahead of most then. Most bitches crumble into dust and blow away in the face of this shit. You’re fighting back, and pretty hardcore at that. It’s always better to be proactive rather than reactive.”

  “Wish I had been from the get-go.”

  She gave a shrug.

  “Meh, we all do stupid shit when we’re young, and trust me, you’re still young.”

  I frowned and asked Nik, “The showers work here?”

  “Ah, yeah, nah.” I was about to ask which it was but Mali interrupted.

  “I’ve gotta go. You’re a quick learner, Tiff. I think your dancing is giving you an inside edge on this. I’ll do some thinking on how to make it work even further to our advantage.”

  I nodded and tried valiantly to not feel completely discouraged. I really hadn’t thought I’d done well at all. I also didn’t know how I was going to fit this in around coming up with and practicing new routines on the regular. Winging it didn’t pay out as well as having a set idea of what to do on stage once the music started.

  Mali shrugged back into her jacket over her workout clothes and lifted her messenger bag back over her chest crossways.

  “Same bat time, same bat channel,” she called over her shoulder.

  “See yah, Mali. Thanks again,” Nik called. I worried my bottom lip between my teeth for a moment, watching her go and turned back to him. He was watching me intently and I sighed.

  “Wasn’t what I had in mind,” I said honestly and he nodded, dragging down a towel from where he’d hung it over the middle rope on the ring. Watching him toss it over his shoulders was a bit of a treat to watch, the muscles moving beneath his skin in his arms and chest as he wiped the sweat he’d worked up away. I swallowed hard, wondering where that had come from, trying to decide if it was getting around to that time of the month and I was just doing my regular hormonal thing or if the sudden appreciation of his physique was a real attraction trying to sneak in the back door. To help me make my decision, I took him in a little more thoroughly.

  He wore a pair of cut-off sweatpants and a loose tank top and it gave him a rugged, no-fucks-were-given, look-at-me-wrong-and-I’ll-beat-a-man’s-ass sort of vibe that was appealing.

  I wore my typical dance practice attire of athletic leggings and a sports bra. The only concessions from my usual practice attire were a comfortable pair of socks and sneakers. I tended to practice on the pole with a pair of heels, or if I was just playing around, barefoot.

  The gym had working heat, but that didn’t stop the cold from outside from swirling in at Mali’s departure, gelling the sweat in place on my skin and causing me to start to itch. It didn’t help that the cold wanted to linger and I hated being cold for too long. Sometimes it was like the cold wanted to set in and I couldn’t stand that. It looked like this was going to be one of those times. Usually, the only cure was a hot shower or a lot of layers and some time by the heater or a fire.

  “So, do the showers here work or not?” I asked again.

  “Eh, yeah, they work, but nah, we aren’t supposed to use ‘em. Wasn’t part of the deal with me getting us in here after-hours.”

  “Fair enough. I’m starting to freeze, though, so can we get me home so I can deal?”

  “C’mon with me,” he said.

  I nodded and we gathered our things. He put the hooded sweatshirt he’d had on when he’d let us in here around my shoulders and I followed him out onto the frozen, night-dark street. After locking up the front door of the gym, he waved me after him. I followed him half a block down to the front of this dive bar. He unlocked a door next to it and waved me through into a narrow stairwell. He threw the deadbolt into the locked position behind us and climbed the stairs ahead of me, two at a time. I lightly stepped after him, climbing them deftly without so much as getting even slightly out of breath.

  At least the stripping had kicked up my endurance for this new sort of training. If anything, I had cardio covered in this whole endeavor. Though, I figured, I could stand to spend a little more time on a treadmill. I never knew if it would come down to me legit or straight up running in an encounter with Silas.

  Nik stopped at a door at the end of the short hall at the top of the stairs and fished through his keys on the ring, selecting one and sticking it in the top lock. I shivered involuntarily and hated it. Cursing winter out silently inside my head, I followed him into the space beyond the doorway and blinked at the enormity of it.

  “Wow, this place is huge…” I said, and it was. A kitchenette was off to my left, a doorway next to it. The place was a huge open floor plan but empty. Devoid of any real furniture except for a mattress on the floor up against one wall in a corner, and a spindly, old and scarred up dining room chair sitting next to it.

  “Ah, yeah, the owner of the bar can’t rent it. The bar is too loud, comes right through the floor. They used to use it for storage, but the fire department said they couldn’t anymore. Seeing as I work there, I said I’d rent it. I’m working during the hours it would be loud anyhow.”

  “So this is your place?”

  “Ah, yeah. You said you wanted a shower, eh?”

  “Are you serious? You’re cool with me taking one?”

  “Yeah, through there. I’ll get you a towel.” He opened up a closet door on the opposite side of the room and dug through a big, old, green Army duffel bag, pulling a towel free. I blinked and stood still, my own gym bag with clean regular street-clothes dangling off my shoulder and stifled a bit of a laugh when he smelled the towel just to make sure it was a clean one before he brought it to me.

  “There you are, fresh from the wash.”

  “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “Try to save me some hot, eh.”

  “I can try.”

  “One of them wahine, then.”

  I blinked, “Wah-he-nay?” I said the unfamiliar word, dragging it out slowly.

  “Ah, yeah, it means ‘woman’ in my language.”

  I believed him, he looked sincere and didn’t have any of the usual tells that he might be having a laugh at my expense. I’d seen enough of that type of cruelty, both from Silas and his friends, as well as at Sugars, to know what it looked like.

  “I see,” I murmured and rolling my lips together, took a step back toward the door he indicated was the bathroom and shut the door behind me.

  “Hey, I hate to ask, but can you leave it open just a crack?” he called out.

  I opened the door a crack and called back, “Why?”

  “No ventilation, the fan doesn’t work and it likes to grow things in there fast otherwise.”

  “Lovely,” I said under my breath. “Fine,” I said louder, but to make sure that he didn’t get any ideas, I said, “Sit down out there against the wall and talk to me.”

  “Sure thing,” I heard his back thump against the wall beside the door and listened as he slid down it to the floor. “What would you like to talk about?”

  I swallowed hard and got to work undressing and setting the towel within easy reach for when I got out of the shower.

  “How abou
t you tell me what all those markings are on your face?” I said and then grimaced inwardly. “Sorry, I’m just genuinely curious, I didn’t mean for that to come out sounding so rude!”

  “No worries, and they’re specific, you know?”

  I laughed slightly and started up the water getting it as hot as I could stand it. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking now would I?”

  “Ah, well, that would mean I’d have to talk about home, wouldn’t it?”

  His tone gave me pause and made me want to pry, but just a little. I thought carefully for a second on how to approach, and finally asked, “Do you miss it?”

  “New Zealand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I miss it a lot, actually.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  It was a long, pregnant pause before he answered.

  “I did some dumb shit and crossed the wrong gang boss and now I’m here. Could be killed if I ever go back.”

  “Oh… I’m sorry…”

  “Eh, there are worse things. I like it here, too… and I got to meet you.”

  Wow, that was actually a pretty sweet thing to say.

  “Are you flirting with me?” I asked, to make sure. I was almost certain he was, but he laughed, nervously dispelling the notion.

  “Nah, I didn’t mean it like that. I just think you’re interesting, Girl.”

  “Me? Interesting?” I asked over the shower spray. I thrust my face into the water and listened intently for his answer.

  “Yeah, you. I wonder a bit, what’s your story?”

  “You know my story, I told you the other night at the diner.”

  “No, you told me about how you got your warrior’s mark. That’s something that happened to you, not your whole story. That’s just a singular moment in time. A bad one, I reckon, but just a footnote in a chapter. Not the whole book.”