Sons of Mayhem 3: The Full Force (4 page)

I
leaned
against the now closed fire exit door and let my back slowly slide down until I hit the floor, legs pushed up against my chest. I rested my head on my knees. My legs were
killing
me. Hours of standing in line, jumping and dancing to the music and climbing up to the tenth floor had really done a number on my thighs and calves.

I was going to kill that girl. Why did she have to do this? I drove us all the way out here to see the show at the last minute and she disappears off like a groupie slut with the band.

Was that really the girl I’d been raising the last six years? Could it be? Or did they do something to her, coerce her? That didn’t make any sense though. They were rockstars who had chicks throwing themselves at them all the time. They didn’t need to coerce anyone, let alone kidnap them.

Plenty of girls would throw themselves at them. Girls like my sister, I guessed, given the chance.

Shit.

Was I being a dweeb? Maybe I should be cheering on her ‘success’ instead of freaking out. She was an adult and could make her own decisions.

As I pondered my attitude and my sister’s behavior and waited for the return of the annoyingly attractive biker the elevator at the end of the hallway dinged and the doors slid open to a surprising sight.

The guitarist from the band earlier walked out, and behind him came two dark haired Asian girls and a hotel employee in a suit. The odd thing was that the first three appeared to be dressed as ghosts.

I blinked as they walked down the hallway toward me. Not ghosts. They were wrapped in large white sheets. KKK fancy dress party? I gave a tired quiet laugh to myself.

It was obvious they were all naked under their sheets and had been forced to cover their modesty. Probably by that dude who looked like a manager. The silent procession reached the door opposite the one the biker had gone into. The three dressed in sheets looked at each other, then as one they discarded the sheets and tossed them at the man in the suit.

They disappeared into the room and the manager just let the sheets fall to the floor. He looked dejected, broken even. His eyes ran wearily over me, sitting on the floor of the most expensive floor of his hotel.

It looked as if he was about to ask me something, perhaps ask if I was okay. But then he thought better of it, closed his slightly parted lips, turned on his shiny black heels and headed back to the elevator, leaving the white sheets where they’d fallen.

There was a gnawing ball of worry in my stomach as I wondered whether my sister was engaged in similar antics to those two girls. God, I hoped not. God, I knew she must be. As the elevator closed on the despondent manager the suite door the biker-bouncer had entered swung open.

The first thing I saw was his face as it peeked out into the hallway. The cocky, arrogant face from before was gone. I felt my breath quicken. I hadn’t been able to wipe that look off his face earlier. What had happened?

A moment later I found out as the rest of him came into view and I let out a scream. Adrenaline poured through my body and I began to shake. This couldn’t be happening.

He was carrying my sister’s unmoving body over his shoulder.

“
L
ily
!” I screamed as I flew to my feet.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said.

I held her face in my hands. She was breathing but there was something seriously wrong with her. She was like a zombie.

“What happened? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know. They said she just did a line of coke. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“You gave her cocaine?” I asked incredulously.

“I didn’t give her shit! I was out here listening to you yapping away as you well know.”

“We have to get her to a hospital,” I said

The biker nodded in agreement.

“Your car downstairs?” he asked.

He was already moving toward the elevator. I followed, my quick steps following his longer strides as he stalked away carrying my glassy eyed sister on his shoulder.

“Shit. It’s parked pretty far away. I don’t want to wait for an ambulance.”

He nodded as he jabbed the button for the elevator a half dozen times.

“Lily!” I yelled at her. Nothing.

“We’ll get her to the hospital, she’ll be fine.”

His confident speech didn’t match his face. His earlier arrogance was completely gone and worry was etched in tired lines across his face.

The doors dinged as they opened and we hurried inside the elevator. It took us down far too slowly. Finally we reached the lobby and hurried across. I barely noticed its opulence as we hurried toward the large glass doors at the front.

“Oh my God!” said the manager from earlier as he saw us run across the polished marble floor.

The biker’s heavy boots thumped down on the floor with each jarring step as my sister bounced up and down on his shoulder. The manager made a start like he was going to follow us but then quit as he saw we were heading for the front doors, probably glad that whatever disaster had befallen Lily was being taken outside.

We hurried outside to be greeted by a thousand screams and flashes. The fans. The goddam fans. Didn’t they have homes to go to? It was near midnight.

“Clear a path!”

I didn’t know where we were going until we got there. I should have known the biker didn’t have a car.

He stopped at a big motorcycle. All black paint and shiny chrome. The iconic words,
Harley Davidson,
on the side.

“Maybe we
should
wait for an ambulance?” I asked. I’d never been on a motorcycle before.

He frowned at me. I looked into my sister’s glassy eyes. Screw it. It was a shame my first motorcycle ride would have to be like this but what choice did we have?

He dropped her onto the motorcycle and she was like a ragdoll. If it wasn’t for one hand gripping her tightly by the shoulder she would have dropped flat out across the bike, cheek resting on the handles. Her body was completely unresponsive.

“Hold her a sec.”

I nodded, wrapping two arms around her to hold her up straight as the biker climbed on in front of her.

He reached two hands behind his back to hold Lily against him.

“Get on.”

So I did. I climbed up behind Lily, sandwiching her between us, a ragdoll between two nervous bodies. My nose pressed into her hair and I could smell the strawberry-scented shampoo we both shared.

“Grab on to me tight, keep her upright. As long as she stays sitting up she can’t fall off.”

“Ok.” I said as I latched onto him tight, pressing Lily between us.

The biker’s strong London accent was all professional now. Earlier he’d been teasing, mocking, assholeish. Now he was stern and controlling, exercising authority. When he spoke he expected to be obeyed, and of course I did exactly what he said. My sister’s life was on the line. I was so glad he was there to take control and tell me what to do. Usually I’m the tough independent one, telling my little sister what to do and managing everything. But this situation wasn’t one I felt equipped to manage and it felt good that, for once in my life, someone
else
was taking control and making sure everything went okay. I needed that.

He pushed the bike fully upright with his right boot and rested the weight on his left as he raised the kickstand.

The whole time lights shone on us from fans snapping pictures and shooting video with their smartphones, the bright LED flashes like searchlights as they flew back and forth over us.

“Who is she?... What happened? … is Neal okay…?” and a thousand other questions were yelled at us.

A path had been cleared through them by the towering giant and another biker. Lonnie pushed the starter button on the bike and gave a little twist of his wrist, and faster than a hummingbird’s flap of a wing the noise of the crowd was drowned out by the deep thumping of the motorcycle engine.

I almost smiled when I saw a bunch of them jump back at the noise. Then we were off, flying down the road as I dug my fingers in tight to the English bastard in front of me. I held myself tight against my sister keeping her upright. I could still sense that if I let go she’d simply slump like a boneless sack of jelly.

Have you ever felt feelings of anger, almost hate, switch in just a moment? It’s confusing, it’s stupid, it’s annoying. But that’s what happened. One minute I was hating the arrogant English asshole who’d snatched my sister from me, the next I was clutching on to him as he rode to save my sister’s life and I was full of so much gratitude it made me sick.

Tears welled in my eyes as he drove us to the hospital in record time, the wind whipping only my ponytail as the rest of me sheltered pressed up against my innocent unconscious responsibility in front.

I
figured
out what was wrong with her as we flew down the highway. I let my right hand release the throttle a touch, dropping us back down to the speed limit. We didn’t have to set any land speed records getting there. She hadn’t had a drug overdose - not as such - she’d just taken the
wrong
drug.

When I found her she was lying on the floor and Si was standing over her with a panicked look on his face.

“What the fuck did you do to her? Her sister’s going mental out there.” I jerked my head toward the door.

“I don’t know mate! I racked up a couple of lines - one for me, one for her - but she just said
yolo
and hoovered them both up!”

“And she just collapsed?”

“Not right away. She had a few little sip of this,” he waved a two-thirds empty bottle of Jack Daniels at me, “and she just… keeled over.”

I checked and luckily she was still breathing as she lay on the thickly carpeted floor of the luxury hotel suite. I had to check one more thing.

“Si, did you give her any heavy?” I hoped like hell it wasn’t a heroin overdose. That’d be very bad on the first day of a tour. And the girl outside? Fuck. She’d probably rip my balls off.

He gulped. “No, no way. Of course not. Just a bit of charlie!” he waved a small bag of white powder in front me. “I don’t do that shit!”

“Don’t fuck around with me, I saw your arm, Si.”

He looked down, his brown hair drooping into his confused eyes as he inspected his arm as if seeing it for the first time. It was like he hadn’t even realized the telltale marks were visible up and down his left arm.

“I didn’t give her any fucking heroin!”

“Help me get her up. We’ve gotta get her to hospital.”

With Si’s bungling help I got the girl up on my shoulder in a fireman’s lift and headed out to deal with the raging little hottie outside. She was going to be
pissed,
unfortunately in the American sense of the word, not my native British. I rubbed my face in preparation as I headed back out to the hallway.

This tour was supposed to be a bit of
fun
not fucking
work
.

R
iding
on the motorcycle I had calmed down a bit from the confusion and excitement. Riding will do that for you. If you’ve got stress, you’ve got something to think about, something to sort through, just get on a bike, find a nice empty road and let the wind rip your worries away and fill your mind with fresh ideas.

Speeding down the road with the two sisters on my back I realized what had happened. Si hadn’t given her cocaine - if he had the girl would have been bouncing off the walls, or had a heart attack, instead of being in that woozy unconscious state she was in.

Nope, she hadn’t been on cocaine.

It was Special K. Ketamine

A
fucking horse tranquilizer
. Can you believe it? Apparently my little sister had taken some shit Lonnie called
wonky donkey
, a drug that’s used in the veterinary world to sedate animals, but in the real world by idiots who, for some reason,
want
to get paralyzed.

“I don’t think he knew what he was giving her, he thought it was coke,” said Lonnie, as I now knew his name to be. We were sitting on moulded plastic chairs in a too brightly lit waiting room while they ran a few more tests on her. We had been assured that she was going to be okay and a doctor would be out to see us in a minute.

“Supposed to be coke? As in
cocaine
?” I asked, incredulous.

Lonnie nodded apparently not noticing my horror. “Yeah apparently she hoovered it right up.”

Could it be true, I wondered, would my little sister do that? I couldn’t admit it, not even to myself, not yet.

“No way. That doesn’t sound like her.”

He shrugged. “If you say so. Don’t you think though that, perhaps, she’s not your good little girl anymore?”

“I don’t know what to think now.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. I was exhausted. I’d hit the gym in the morning, worked all day and then driven Lily out here straight after work and it was all catching up on me.

“It’s just you two? No folks?

I nodded. “Yeah. Just us. I’ve been looking after her since I was eighteen - that’s when they passed - she wasn’t yet thirteen then. It was all so sudden. I had to grow up real quick, you know? I’ve been big sister and surrogate-mother ever since.”

He put an arm over my shoulder and squeezed. A strong, tattooed arm that filled me with warmth I didn’t realize I was missing.

“Tough break, love.”

“You’re not entirely a bastard, are you?” I asked as I wiped a small tear away.

His surprised laughter was rich and honest. “Not
entirely
no. I take weekends and holidays off.”

“It’s Wednesday,” I said, laughing softly.

“Thursday actually. Must be a holiday in my country.”

I giggled. “What about you? Why aren’t you in your country?”

“Felt like a change.”

“Felt like a change? That’s it?”

“Isn’t it a good enough reason?”

“I guess. So why’d you want a change all of a sudden? And why’d you never go back.” I ran my fingers over the patch on his leather cut that read Sons of Mayhem. “You must have been here a long time, right?”

“Ten years I guess. I wasn’t planning to stay here that long. Wasn’t planning not to either. But I met some good people. Before I knew it, I was comfortable here. It felt so much less constricting, less depressing, less boxed in than home.”

“Don’t you miss London?”

He was silent a moment. “A bit. Didn’t really think about it until tonight, when I saw the band. I hadn’t seen them in so long I’d forgotten what it was like to banter with other Brits.”

“Wait. You knew the band?”

“Sure. Used to live with most of ‘em. “

Huh. That was a surprise. Then again, they were from the same country.

Our conversation was interrupted by a polite cough and I lifted my head off his shoulder and forced my tired body to sit up straight. The doctor was here.

“We’ve done some tests and she’s going to be fine, though she’ll be groggy for a while. There’s traces of painkillers and ketamine still in her system. We’re going to keep her in overnight for observation but, barring unforeseen changes in her condition, she’ll be released soon after breakfast.”

I smiled tightly. “Thank you, doctor.”

I stood up and shook the doctor’s hand. Lonnie stood beside me.

“Come on,” he said when the doctor had left.

“Where to?” I asked

“I’ll give you a ride. Bring you back in the morning.”

I nodded, unthinking, acting on autopilot. He still had that alpha air of authority about him that had kicked in when he first found my sister. He ordered, I did. It felt right