Riding with the Beast (an MC Fairy Tale)

3 - Beast

Beast

“That window doesn’t work,” I told her after watching her struggle for about ten seconds.

“Oh.” She turned on the AC, then grimaced as lukewarm, moldy-smellin’ air blasted her face.

“AC doesn’t work too well, either.”

“I noticed,” she coughed, turning it off. “You’re not going to fix it?”

“Doubt it’s worked for a long time.”

“I’m not talking about the AC. I’m talking about the car.”

I grinned. “This thing needs a lot of fixing, darlin’. Better to just dump it and get something else.”

The gears started grinding again. I tapped my pointer finger on the steering wheel to the beat.

“You sure you have time to get something else? It sounds like it’s dying,” she yelled so I could hear her.

“Oh, it’s not dyin’,” I yelled back. “Just lettin’ us know it’s not happy ‘bout somethin’. Why, you worried?”

“It’s not gonna blow up, is it?”

I nodded at the lonely sign to our left. “Charity’s only twenty miles. I think we’ll make it.”

“I hope so.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I shoulda known that smile wouldn’t last long. She was too beautiful. Beautiful, even, as she stabbed her wet fingers into the chip bag and licked them off, getting orange artificial flavor crap all over her cheeks and chin. Pretty things generally didn’t last long around me. Especially ones picked up on the side of the road, wanderin’ around as if they were lookin’ for trouble.

“So, where did you say you were headed?” I asked.

“I didn’t.”

I shrugged. She didn’t want to talk, I wouldn’t ask her.

“But I’m…uh…” she gulped.

What he hell? Glancing over, I noticed she’d developed a sudden interest in my knuckles.

“Seattle,” she whispered. “I’m going to Seattle.”

Instinctively, my grip on the wheel tightened. “Seattle, huh?”

She said nothing.

I mulled that over for about a minute.

She might be going to Seattle. Lots of grungy, artsy types seemed to make that their destination. She had the grungy thing down. From the looks of it she hadn’t showered in…well, let’s just say it had been a long time. But those tattoos on my knuckles she kept ogling weren’t really something you noticed unless you were lookin’ for ‘em.

Cain’s Legacy, written in neat, small, Gothic font. Grams always told me they looked like scabs. Said it always looked like I was goin’ around with my hands unwashed.

Thanks Grams, I’d say, and she’d kiss my fucked-up cheek. Grams was the only woman who didn’t cower from me. Couldn’t help it. It was in her genes to love me no matter what I became. Still couldn’t tolerate the tattoos, though. Guess everyone had their limit.

My limit was Seattle.

“Seattle. That so?” I muttered.

She must have noticed the change in my demeanor because she seized up again and got real quiet real fast.

“Seattle’s nice this time of year. Not a whole lotta rain, though from the looks of it you wouldn’t mind a little rain. How long have you been out here?”

She pressed her knees together and looked at the floor.

I bit back a curse.

Maybe she was goin’ to Seattle, but that was a pretty big fucking coincidence. If there was anything I’d learned on my years on the road, it was that the simplest explanation was often the right one. More likely the bitch was full of shit, this was a set-up, and if I kept her I was a dead man.

Girls didn’t get into cars with guys like me. Even desperate, lonely ones. No one was that desperate or lonely. It was a good set-up. Maybe a bit too good. They’d tried to make her look as ugly as possible, but of course it wasn’t too ugly. She was still beautiful—the kind of beautiful that makes a guy forget about everything else.

Pull over and throw her ass out. I could almost hear Doc’s voice in my head. You don’t put your brothers in danger. You don’t bring trouble into the club. Who knew what kind of time bomb I’d picked up?

The engine started ticking. I glanced at the dash. We had probably fifteen miles before Charity, and suddenly I wasn’t feelin’ too charitable.

Or at least I wasn’t until I saw her face again.

Her hands were shaking. She was trying to hide it by sandwiching them between her thighs, but I could still tell. Anyone would have been able to. You can’t fake that kind of fear, just like you couldn’t fake that kind of exhaustion.

Her nose, cheeks and chapped lips were peeling. Her stomach still hadn’t stopped rumbling, but she’d stopped eating, almost like she’d been hungry for so long she’d puke if she ate too much to fast.

The women organizations used were usually bigger victims than the men they’d been sent to ruin. I wondered what they had on her—what they’d to do her if she failed. I felt sick as I wondered what I’d have to do to her to find out.

I grit my teeth and stared at the open stretch of highway before us. Maybe she was just lookin’ for a ride to Seattle. Or maybe she’d been sent to spy on or ruin me. Either way, I’d already let her into the fucking car. If someone was after me, they probably already knew where I was. The car probably needed a tune-up if I was gonna make it to the next state. There was a good chance I’d be stuck in Charity for at least a few hours, and she and whoever sent her probably knew it.

So I just kept driving. I’d give her a couple hundred bucks when we got to town. If she was smart, she’d get her ass on the next bus and disappear.