Vulnerable (Barons of Sodom) (5 page)

Athena Sark pushed the heavy quilt off her small frame, and
lurched out of the small-but-cozy cot she kept in the corner of the garage. Her
bedroom was Spartan, but it suited her. She liked being close to her workplace
at all times—the Barons' banged-up bikes curiously felt the most like home.

She took survey of the other little objects that constituted
her kingdom: the cracked vanity, with its pictures of old muscle cars edged
along the mirror's frame; photo booth shots of herself and Tuck taken in bars
along the French quarter; a mason jar full of dried bluebonnets that she'd
plucked from the countryside as the troupe had moved across Louisiana and into
Texas. Athena, tomboyish as she was, normally didn't fall for girly nonsense
like
flowers—
but something about those frail stems reminded her of the
person she'd used to be. The wide-eyed lady of the bayous, the one always game
for an adventure. An optimist, somehow. These days, more often than not, Athena
just felt jaded about the cards the world had dealt her. Playing mother hen to
a bunch of ne'er do-wells hadn't exactly been a part of her young runaway's
grand plan.

Yet she'd found a kind of balance. As irritating as the Barons
could be, through it all there was still Tuck. They'd met when they were little
more than children, both little derelict shitheads roving the city like
pioneers. She'd left a stepfather who'd crawled into her teenage bed one night,
and he'd left a Pops who liked to use him as a punching bag. They used to
huddle together in the alleys and plot their eventual world domination. Tuck
didn't have a particular career in mind, but he knew he wanted to be a rich
man. The kind of man who could make someone like his father work, or better yet
pay, for all his sins. Athena, on the other hand, had always wanted to make and
fix things. She'd always been attracted to the idea of restoring beauty and
order to the world of objects—especially when the world of men seemed so
perpetually unable to grasp this conceit.

Oh, Tuck. Tuck, who towered above his best friend like an
unreachable statue, but held her gaze like she was the most important woman in
the world. That boy respected everything she said and did. He took her words,
her creature comforts, as law. But he didn't love her.
Not like that.
They'd
established this once and for all during that miserable last night in the city.
She'd had two Jim Beams over the limit and then told him, point-blank: “I've
always loved you. I love you now.” It was stupidly cliché, which made it all
the worse—Athena was in deep, serious love with her oldest and dearest friend,
who himself wasn't capable of reciprocating. “You're my sister,” he'd said.
“And you're drunk.” These days, they pretended the confession had never
happened—but Athena woke up every morning to the knowledge of this curse. It
hit her afresh in the daylight, like a ton of bricks. Just a few floors above
her head, Tuck was sprawled in the throes of some wonderful dream. He was
completely unaware of the woman who longed for him below, who lived a waking
nightmare because of it.

Because she didn't like to waste daylight, Athena rose. A
single, half-hearted rooster crowed the hour in the distance. The garage
smelled of its usual cocktail: gasoline and Old Spice. As she looked around to
make certain that everything was as she'd left it, Athena's eyes stuttered on a
small ball in the corner, huddled by the toppled tires. Right. The Barons'
ward.

The little girl was just that—petite and child-like. Her
raven black hair had wrapped around her face and elbows in the night,
indicating that Baby had been flailing as she slept. Her breath rattled harshly
in her throat—it seemed likely that she hadn't gotten any decent shuteye in
quite some time. Her eyelids flickered and she squirmed. She really did look
like a baby, Athena thought.

Returning from her own cot with the blocky pillow and quilt,
Athena swaddled the sleeping kid. Then she meandered out into the world,
careful to close the garage side door behind her. As expected, this Waco
morning was hot and bright and already humid. A fearless lizard scurried
through the dirt at Athena's feet.

She made for the wellspring in the center of camp—a funky
little fixture of the property. Most of the Barons retrieved their drinking
water from the spring, which one used a foot-pedal to operate. Athena liked to
drink her first glass of water in a day at the site, as it allowed her to
stroll the perimeter and see what had transpired in the night. In this case,
the bacchanalian remains of the Barons shindig were littered everywhere. Cigarette
butts every few steps, distressing piles of spilled liquids and (she hoped)
food.
Like I'm the fucking maid around here,
she thought. Great. Six
a.m. and already angry.

But despite her habit of heading straight for the wellspring,
Athena found her feet moving in a different direction: back toward the lodge.
The lodge was the main house (though “house” was a generous name, for any
property of the Barons'), central hub for God and his closest minions. While
Tuck oversaw the second-tier in the rooms above the garage, the lodge was
situated about fifty feet further up the hill. It came equipped with a kitchen,
a bathroom, a porch, and all the creature comforts that the Barons were
supposed to eschew—cable, electricity, etc. Yet none of the men questioned this
discrepancy. They were loyal to their leader.

Before she quite understood what she was doing, Athena found
herself rapping on the lodge door. She knew her face was still puffy with sleep
and her hair likely looked wild, but this was the funny thing about courage: it
arrived in spurts, and you couldn't well ignore it when it came. After what
felt like a few full minutes, a noise came from beyond the threshold. Athena
leaned close.

“Who is it?” croaked someone. A woman.

“I need to speak with the man upstairs.”

“You crazy, A? It's fucking sunrise. Not even.”

“I need to speak with the man upstairs. It's important.”

Another few heartbeats ticked by, but then the door creaked
on its hinges. Athena beheld Zuzu—God's personal favorite concubine. Z was a
big-boned, dark-skinned woman with piles and piles of kinky hair always resting
in some elaborate beehive formation atop her head. Her eyebrows were drawn into
thin, perpetually surprised lines, and her lips were full and wide. These
features alone gave the otherwise imposing woman an air of innocence.

“He's not gonna like this,” Z said, feebly clutching her
silk robe tighter about her well-apportioned chest. “Follow me.”

The stairs were ancient, and made loud protest as the pair
ascended. Athena tried not to focus on Z's enormous ass, which was another of
her calling cards—the woman had drawn in many a Rider with the heart-shaped
swell in her jeans. Z functioned as a kind of Madame for most of the other
concubines (that was God's classy term for his hookers) who hung around the
camp at all times, like so many gadflies. Athena didn't like to associate with
the mistresses, who only served to remind her that she was different from both
the men she called her friends and the women who traded on their sex appeal.

Finally, the pair reached the heavy oak door that demarcated
God's quarters. Athena had never seen the room up close, but it felt very
old-timey Southern in here—very
Gone With the Wind.
She thought she
could hear a man's rattling breath, but just as soon as this thought occurred
to her, she wondered if she'd imagined it.

“Honey bear. Sark has something to say to you,” cooed Zuzu,
through the door. From the folds of her enormous bosom, she extracted a
damp-looking, flat cigarette. With a goading glance, she offered some of this
to Athena—who declined, as politely as she could.

As Zuzu was lighting the spliff with a lighter she'd
likewise removed from some improbable place on her body, the door swung open.
God stood there, entirely dressed and sour-looking. He wasn't an unattractive
man for being in his mid-fifties, but he sure did wear
mean
like no one
else. His lip was curled into a perpetual sneer, and his eyebrows arched
towards the center of his face as if making a mad dash for his nose. Yet his
cheekbones were severe. Below leathery skin and long, thick, grey curls, there
was the ghost of a handsome man.

“And what the fuck do you think you're doing at my door so
early in the morning?” he drawled slowly. Without looking over to Z, he reached
out for the weed and pinched the glowing tip of her joint between his thumb and
forefinger. Athena wasn't sure, but she thought she might have heard a little
sizzle between the thick pads of his fingers as he did so.

“It's about the girl. Baby.”

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” Zuzu laughed languidly, as
she collapsed into a nearby chair. She didn't seem affected by her lover's
removing the spliff. Likely, Athena immediately gathered, because she was
already high on something else.

“What about her?” God said, through gritted teeth.

“If you really want to keep her protected, I don't think you
should just let her run wild around the camp. Assign someone to her. Make her
somebody's ward.”

“Is this you interfering in my business affairs, Sark?
Because I hope you know exactly how important you are to this organization.”

“Yes, sir.”

“
Not
, is the answer. You are
not
important.”

Athena swallowed. She hadn't expected quite this level of
cruelty, as every other Rider seemed to operate under the pleasant assumption
that the MC bound folks together for life. They were all supposed to be a
family, and she was merely the pesky little sister. God, however, didn't appear
to agree.

“I'm saying this for the club's benefit,” she started again.
“If you don't know about the crime she was involved in, who's to say she
doesn't have something that could compromise everyone? She could be dangerous,
I mean. She should be watched.”

“You think this hasn't crossed my mind, Sark? How stupid a
man do you take me to be?”

“But it works both ways, sir. I'm thinking—I'm thinking
also, what if something bad was to happen to her here? Something with one of
the men, say? You wouldn't want to be held responsible in the eyes of the law,
would you?” Athena fixed G with her fiercest stare. She puffed out her chest for
good measure.

God seemed to think for a moment—or he pretended to. Zuzu
began to sing quietly to herself, as she traced patterns in the decrepit fabric
of her chair. Then, suddenly:

“Take care of the little bitch, then. See if I care.” Before
Athena could huff out a response, the leader slammed his bedroom door an inch
shy of her face. Zuzu shrieked at the noise, then started to laugh madly.

BRIDIE:
I greeted the next day from the ground. Turns
out I'd fallen asleep in a huddled corner of a shelter I found. As soon as I'd
met the bikers in that freaky woodland commune, they'd all scattered to the
four winds. Part of some kind of celebration, I think. I didn't know what to
make of it then—in fact, as I told you, the only things on my mind were my very
basic needs. Shelter, water, food. And everyone at that club seemed like such a
goddamn devil! I was looking for a place to hide once I was released into the
campground, and the first thing I saw was some old lady chucking a tire iron at
her jilted lover or something. Couldn't make out their faces. I just knew these
were rough, serious, miserable people. I didn't think they'd show a little
podunk country girl mercy of any kind.

Though I'd fallen asleep in a bed of tires, someone had snuck
up in the night and put a pillow under my head. There was a blanket over me,
too. I smelled gasoline. I felt grubby, and my body ached all over from resting
on all that rubber.

My eyes adjusted slowly to the light—in fact, it was hard to
say immediately what time it was. I blinked slowly, until these shapes started
to materialize: Harleys. I saw ten or twelve Harleys, pressed up against one
another. All different colors. And something about them looked like skeletons—I
remember I'd just finished this schoolbook about the Parisian catacombs, and
this room reminded me of that. Everything I could touch seemed chilly and dead.

I cleared my throat and sensed then how hoarse my voice was.
I heard my echo and knew that I was alone. You know how sometimes you make a sound
in a room, and you're just certain you're by your lonesome? I felt that.
Feeling slightly braver, I stood up and stretched. Tried to get my eyes
accustomed to this tomb. It was then that it occurred to me, hey—I could run.
Nobody's watching, nobody would chase me down. I could take off into the desert
on one of these big black metal horses, and I could find some way to live free,
by my wits. I was smart, I was pretty—the idea seemed so tantalizing, so
palpable just then. I got up on the nearest motorcycle and put my hands around
the grips. It felt so heavy beneath me, but I wasn't afraid.

Just as logistics started to play out—how was I going to
steal a bike unnoticed, how would I get food and money—a whole wall of the
structure started to lurch. I hadn't realized I was sitting in a garage, but
sure enough a slip of white Texas sun crept up from the ground. I was
temporarily blinded by the glare, and could only determine the outline of a
short, slightly stubby person holding something out to me.

“You hungry?” the stubby person called. Her voice was
scratchy and low, not so unlike my aunt Caroline's after she'd smoke a half
pack of her beloved menthols. But this woman was younger. Probably not too much
older than I was.

I don't remember if I said anything, but I abandoned the
whole escape plan that instant. No one had fed me in two days. I hadn't
realized quite how hungry and weak I was until I saw what the tray contained: a
hefty hunk of bread, a bowl of honey and a stack of bologna. Pretty goofy meal,
in retrospect. But then and there? That was the best Sunday brunch I ever had.

As I gobbled the food right down on the floor of the garage,
the mysterious woman poured me coffee and started to talk. I couldn't follow
everything she said, but I made out her intro: “I'm Athena. I'll be taking care
of you, so none of these louts give you any trouble.” She started to prattle on
about her work in the garage and how and where she could use help, but I swear
I wasn't paying any attention. Tell you one thing, though. Slowly but surely, I
was beginning to see the light.