About two hours later, I woke in my bed. With Jagger spooned up against me. Gently, he turned me to my side, his mouth on mine. The rest of him began doing wonderful things to me again.
???
I woke the next morning before five a.m. Jagger was gone. As always. Tuffs was curled asleep on the Bug command chair and opened one eye, glared at me, and closed it.
I crawled from my bed naked and drank two liters of water. Hit the coffee maker on as I headed to my PTC—my personal toilet compartment, which was about the size of a matchbook. Glanced at my face in the small mirror. Even with my nanos healing me, I had bags under my orange eyes and pillow lines on my left cheek. My hair was flat on one side and standing up on the other as if a stiff wind was blowing it. I looked like I’d had a night on the town, been rode hard, and put up wet.
I blew a snort through my nose. In a lot of ways, I guessed that fit.
Using the wand over my face and body, I removed dead skin cells, hair, sweat, and dried blood, yanked off the blood-damp burn-style bandages and dropped them in the recycler, vacuumed up the mess, and slathered myself in sunscreen. That was a necessity year-round, since the WIMP bomb had exploded over Germany during the war. Skin cancers from the sun’s radiation were a primary cause of death, right behind starvation and violence.
I still looked crappy, and now that I was a businesswoman, that wouldn’t do. I striped on Kajal kohl eyeliner and added orange lipstick. Smeared some goo in my hair to make it stand up in spikes. I didn’t look at my body. Delayed gratification and all that.
In the main room of the alien Bug ship that once served as my office and was now my private apartment, I turned on the lights and cameras. Shoved the oversized command chair out of the way, under the devices built-in overhead and to the sides. I aimed all the internal cams toward me and observed my naked body in the screens. Dozens of emotions ricocheted inside me. Shock. Bewilderment. Amazement. Joy rose to the top.
“Bloody hell. Lookit me.”
Across my back, were the roadhouse’s colors, with the top rocker and bottom rocker just as they would appear on my kutte. Junkyard was the official name of the indie motorcycle club, and it was prominent across my shoulders in a jarring blue-green and near-black. My lower spine displayed the territory the club claimed,Raleigh Co, WV, and beneath it in much smaller print, the words Neutral Ground. The club colors were in between the top and bottom rockers, and they brought tears to my eyes.
The club’s colors looked like an old motorbike wheel. The fender was a blue green bright enough to sear my eyeballs. The tire was dark blue, close enough to be black, while the rim and five sturdy spokes were blood red. The hub of the axle was a cat eye, the same color as the fender, with a slit blackish pupil. From the eye was a drop of red. Beneath, as if the wheel hovered above the horizontal knife, was a sheathed blade, the haft crosshatched, with two tiny drops of blood hidden in the crosshatching, the blade sheath as dark as the tire, to show it was not going to be used. On the right side of the colors were the initials, MC, RH, TP, and CH, to show what we offered here, onthe neutral territory. Motorcycle club, roadhouse, trading post, and clearing house.
Every part of the rockers and the colors had been discussed and argued over. Every element, every color, had symbolism. And the fact that the clubs had inked me, meant that they had approved of everything. The Junkyard Motorcycle Club colors had five spokes to the wheel, showing we had the approval of the Hells Angels, the Outlaw Motorcycle Warriors, The Boozefighters, and the Black Sabbath. The OMW had released me—the sacrifice of blood had been paid, as in the drop of blood in the cat’s eye—my blood with its nanobots. The drops of blood in the haft of the blade were Harlan, my best friend, and Pops, who had given me the Junkyard and inadvertently set me on this path.
The Junkyard had official colors. The charter would be approved today. In only hours.
From the amount of dried blood on the sheets and in the PTC, I’d bled. A lot. But my guess that using my blood would allow me to be tattooed, had worked. I hoped it had worked with Cupcake. And Amos if he’d gone through the process too. I’d been drunk, but I remembered blood on three tables.
Below my left shoulder blade was a healing burn that wouldn’t scar, the brand applied by Jagger.
I turned around. Above my left breast were just the colors in that stunning blue green. I looked amazing. I pulled on panties, a halter style shirt so I didn’t need a bra that might touch the tats, and jeans. Over it all I added an oversized super soft sweater that had been here for years.
The door opened, and Cupcake stumbled in, carrying my breakfast. She looked like something the cats had dragged in and, as if to prove that, a dozen cats raced in at her feet and scattered around the office. Tuffs hissed when one tried to leap onto her queen chair.
“Good morning?” I asked as Cupcake wavered to the table, leaving the hatch open. “Cupcake?”
“Uhhh. Ooo oorrnn.”
Her eyes were puffy, her blonde hair in wild snarls, and her shirt was sticking to her back, blood leaking through the bandages. I might have to shove some of my nanos into her to help her heal.
I reached to close the door, and as I did I heard cats hissing, the “Sisssss,” that meant anger. Slowy I turned my head, to see all the cats, fifteen of them, staring at me, showing their fangs. Spy, their war-cat leader was sitting on the Bug alien chair back staring at my back.Ah. And smelling my blood. I swiveled my body to face them, letting them see the colors on my chest.
The hissing quieted. Spy, still showing her teeth, said, “Mrow. Siss.”Invaders. Dangerous. “Baaaahr.”This place is ours.
I flapped a hand to them, trying to figure out what had them riled.
Cupcake fell into the dinette bench seat and held her head in her hands. I got her a liter of water and said, “Drink.”
“Uhhh,” she said.
The cats were still showing teeth. I vaguely remembered hearing that the cats were in the roadhouse while I was being inked, and the clubs were drinking all my liquor and playing cards and putting things in the trading post for barter or cash. The cats had seen us being inked. Through Spy’s link to them, I sensed that they didn’t like what they had seen, and they were thinking the riders were dangerous. And then there had been the dog that attacked me.
I said, “The people here were, and are, our . . . allies.” Not friends. Couldn’t go that far. “This is what human bikers do when we claim territory. You remember the people we saw in Charleston on our big trip? All the riders were inked. All theriders who were here yesterday were inked. Yesterday we got inked.”
They hissed again.
It hit me. “You and the other cats, however, can ride with us and not be inked.”
Spy closed her mouth, covering her fangs, tilted her head. “Hhhhah mmm,” she said. It was cat for,Yes, this is so, and this is good.Then she said again. “Baaaahr.”
