A long silence falls.
“You know Shadow will probably not be okay with Aila leaving Landslide, Hunter.Not now that she knows our secret.Maybe you should sort that out first.”
We stare at one another in the darkness.
“I can never sleep in the hidden room in the basement again, Luna.I’ll always be a Rider.I’m Original Seven, a Midnight Son.But Aila has lit a fire inside me.I have to stand by her until the fire burns out.”
“You’ll burn with it, Hunter.Guaranteed.”
Grinning my lopsided smile, I move to the back door to put on my boots.
“Hey, you can always use my ashes to make a nice ceramic.”
Shadow guns his motorcycle up the driveway as I straddle my bike.Pulling up beside me, he flicks the long strands of his dark blond hair back.To others, such an action might seem arrogant, but I remember Shadow making the same motion as a young boy whenever the hair got in his eyes.
We speak the language of our tribe to one another.The Fell-Sapmi people still herd reindeer and harvest cloud berries in the Arctic woods, but our families are long gone.
“I guess you already told Luna about the reason for your visit, Hunter?”
As the MC’s president, Shadow is our acknowledged leader, but only in the sense of being first among equals.
“You got that right.Where have you been, brother?”
Taking his hands off the handlebars, Shadow flexes his fingers.It’s another one of those gestures we have retained from our human life.
“Vince got a radio call from Monty.Asked me to go down to the marina with him to read the note because he needed me to make a ruling on what the reply should be.Fucked if I know, so I came back here to discuss it with Luna.”
“Who’s looking after the bar?”
Shadow gives me one of those looks.“Didn’t your obsession tell you about the deal she made with Luna?Aila’s serving drinks at the bar tonight in exchange for free bed and board.You should go have a drink.Artim and Jaecar are back.She’s got a real hootenanny going in there, playing downloaded tunes through the Bluetooth speakers.”
He leaves the statement hanging, maybe hoping that I will get a serious case of the gabs and start confessing shit to him.
Heh.I am not so easily distracted.
“What was Monty’s message about?”
Monty usually radios Vince once the passengers have been loaded and cleared.As the official Landslide ferryman, making sure the names on the booking match the ones on the IDs is a fairly important job.The cloak of mystery around Landslide is only possible because of the careful way we pick and choose those permitted to visit here.
As the only Landslider who lives on his boat, Vince is always on hand to answer any VHF radio calls when the Wi-Fi is down.
“Fuck it, Hunter, I’m bored of discussing all this human bullshit.You know how fatiguing it is to appear normal in the confined space of a boat cabin?Can this please wait until we all meet at the clubhouse?I’ll update everyone at church.We good?”
Turning the ignition and pushing the starter button is the only answer I give him.
“See you at the clubhouse tomorrow evening then, brother.”In this summer weather, Shadow doesn’t bother parking his bike under shelter.After giving the leather seat of his Harley one long, loving stroke with his hand, he heads inside.
Luna will have told Shadow about Aila’s revelation by the time we meet again.
I guess it’s going to be one hell of a sermon at church tomorrow.
Am I thinking about a nice way to say I’m either leaving or domesticating myself by building a house?No.I ain’t going anywhere until I know a bit more about Aila’s thought process.
Only a pussy would go chasing after a woman who didn’t love him back.And that little mind exercise Luna showed me—the one about Aila dumping me for some human—was enough to make me want to tread carefully.
When the bike wheels connect with the cracked tarmac of the road, I open up the throttle.No matter how fast I know I can move, it never fails to satisfy me when I ride my Harley.
It’s more than a feeling.The throb of the engine underneath me, the glitter of chrome in the moonlight, and the wind rushing through my hair; these are the closest we can get to galloping a horse through the prairie grass.
