Page 39 of Odin
The first one, a guy with a red ballcap on backwards, kneels down on the road right next to my face. “Hey, man, we can lift the bike off you if you want, but I’m not sure that’s the best thing to do. They say to leave people where they are when you don’t know what part of them is hurt.”
“You don’t have to lift the bike off me, but if you could call a number for me, I’d be grateful. I have friends who will come and get me. Don’t heft this thing up. You could wreck yourself trying.”
The guy studies his friends, one blond and giving total quarterback, most popular guy in high school vibes, the other with dark, shaggy hair and thick brows that keep rising up to his hairline and coming back down with every thought.
It’s a neat trick. I like it.
The guy in the ballcap whips out a phone and gets it ready. I rattle off the digits and he dials. Tyrant’s voice comes on the line, and the guy puts the phone right up to my face.
“Tyrant, I- I might have had a bit of an accident. Would you be able to come get me?”
“Are you alright? Where are you? What’s happened?”
I explain everything, even though it makes me cringe to the max cringiness. Thankfully, the guy in the cap lifts the phone up and finds street signs that I can’t see from where I am. He lowers the phone back to me in time for me to hear Tyrant tell me that he’s coming. The guys will be with me in fifteen minutes at most.
“Holy shit,” the blond guy breathes. “You’re a member of Satan’s Angels. Bro! No way!”
“I am, but this isn’t one of my finer moments.”
“I thought bikers in clubs were supposed to know how to ride.” The guy’s massive brows climb up and down with the cadence of that statement.
“You’d think,” I huff. There’s no sense grumbling or getting mad at myself. What’s that going to help? Not when the only thing I can suddenly think about again is Willow, sitting there, waiting for me. “Everyone has their off days, I guess. Tar snakes get the best of us.”
“Those things are no joke,” Ballcap agrees. “I mean, I’ve heard. I don’t have a bike or anything myself. I wish. It’s stillreally cool to meet one of you in person. Everyone talks about the club and all the things they’ve done for the city.”
“Thanks,” I grind out past the sick sensation the pain is causing to swell in my throat. “If I give you another number to call, can you do that for me?”
When he nods emphatically, I list off the first three digits of the phone number, but after that, it’s a jumble that my brain can’t sort out. It probably has something to do with the burn flexing and gnashing its teeth up my shoulder, into my neck, and straight into my head. It’s not black that I see. There’s nothing dancing in front of my eyes. I’m not going to pass out. I just can’t focus enough to recall what order the numbers go in, or even when they are.
My phone is underneath me. There’s no way that I can dig it out. Moving even an inch is agony. I’m hot in my skin. Melting. Hot and wet. The wet is blood, not sweat, I’m certain.
“Thanks anyway,” I offer the kid.
“Are you doing okay?” The busy brows kid asks, as they rise halfway up his forehead again. “I don’t think you should close your eyes.”
Was I closing them?
They’re heavy, but I thought I was with it. Doing just fine. At least until I see Willow’s disappointed, tear-streaked face in the back of my mind.Fuck. Someone has to call her.Immediately.
The three kids stay with me until the sirens get close. Uniformed officers walk over, but just about as soon as I get a decent look at their boots and pant legs, the roar of bikessounds in the distance. There’s no mistaking that growl, or how the pavement rumbles under my pinned body.
Instead of asking me questions, the cops brace to talk to whoever is coming. Satan’s Angels has a good enough relationship with the police. We used to buy it, but we’ve had to do that less and less over the years.
The world gets real loud before it gets quiet. It rushes in and out, like I’m sticking my fingers in my ears and tugging them out. I can hear those three teens talking to the cops. They freeze when the bikes pull up, but I hear their whispered words of admiration for the bikes and the roughhewn men riding them, as they talk amongst themselves.
I gather words like pebbles on a path, but I can’t find my way back to where I was going. The garage. The club. No, Willow. I was going to see her.
“Someone,” I croak, my voice rusty and rasping. “Someone call Willow.”
It says a lot about how well you know a group of men by the fact that you can pick them out by their boots. I recognize Tyrant’s, Raiden’s, Crow’s, and Scythe’s. I think it’s him. It could be Gunner, though. I wish someone would bend the fuck down so I can see their face. I wish my brain would cooperate and remember Willow’s number. I wish that someone would fucking call her. Now. I wish that my brain wasn’t blinking on and off, kicking out and getting back online.
I wish the last thing that my ears take in as one great big burst of sound was Willow’s name, and not Archer’s.
Everything goes black, but a popping sound followed by a loud scuffle brings it back. I peel my eyelids opento Crow’s face. He’s on his hands and knees, staring right at me. I’d jerk back if I could, but motor function and coordination don’t seem to be a thing right now.
“When should we expect the flashy red midlife crisis convertible to appear in the compound?”
“What?” I cough-splutter. My mouth is so dry that it’s a wonder I don’t gag when I try to swallow.
