I slid off the barstool to go stop whatever this was. Tuffs licked Mina’s blood away and the two remaining cats did the head touch again. Scrappy turned around twice, as if studying her surroundings. She licked Mina’s wound and lay down in the medbay, at the top of Mina’s head. The ruddy ginger cat stretched her body around Mina’s head, from ear to ear, and snuggled herself down in comfort.
Tuffs leaped down. The lid closed on Scrappy and Mina.
“Marconi,” I said, my bottom lip slightly numb where I’d bitten down on it. “Never mind what I said. I might have an idea. I need to do some research. I’ll stick her in a medbay and see what I can do.”
Lucretia said, “You will call. We will expect to hear from you before sunset. Seventeen hundred, latest.”
The call ended.
“Yeah. Sunset,” I said to the room, drinking Coke, thinking. Was Tuffs transitioning Mina? Did Tuffs think she could control the girl? The cats had ESP, so maybe Tuffs, orScrappy, could control her? The possibility switched my willies into full blown panic. “This is crazy,” I said to myself.
But for all my big talk to the Marconis, most anything was better than having to dispatch the girl for what she would definitely do someday.
I tapped my Berger chip for info. “Female ginger cats,” I said.
“Ginger cats,” the outdated Berger said into my brain, “also known as orange cats or marmalade cats, are not a specific breed, but rather a coloration pattern characterized by a red or orange coat. This coloration is caused by the ginger gene, which is carried on the X chromosome. Most ginger cats are male because they only need one copy of the ginger gene to express the orange color, while females need two ginger genes to achieve complete ginger coloration. Otherwise they are mottled in color with white patches and other coloration. There are some who say ginger cats are friendlier than other cats and comparatively less technically competent, meaning they do not figure out how to open door—”
I shut it off.
“Shining?” Wanda’s voice was timorous.
That meant I was acting in a way she didn’t understand and I was scaring her. Mentally, I shook myself and turned to the kitchen doorway. “Hey, Wanda. All’s good. Lunch crowd will be here soon. Anything I can do to help?”
Her smile was instantaneous. “No. Alex and I are ready.” She pointed to her chest where she wore a roadhouse T-shirt, which was different from her kutte. The long-sleeved shirt showed a pic of the roadhouse on the back and a list of the Rules on the front. Less than half of our customers bothered to read the rules printed on the front doors and then bitched when they got ungently thrown out, fined, or otherwise penalized for breaking them. This way, when someone came close to breakingthe rules, or The Rules, as there were no deviations allowed, my people could point to a rule on their shirt and simply said, “Rule number . . .” whatever it was.
“I wiped all the counters down everywhere you’ve been today,” she said. “No accidental transitions.”
“Thanks.” Yeah. No accidental transitions. Not since I sent Wanda home, where she hugged her kid before she climbing into a medbay for the transition I forced on her. And accidently shared my nanobots with Alex.
I sucked.
Hence the gloves. Forever.
I looked into the kitchen and spotted Evelyn, one of my newest thralls, staring out the back door, arms braced on the door jambs, letting in the cold. Like so many others, I had transitioned her to save her. Hadn’t worked. Her brain was still gone.
I went to the office HQ’s personal toilet facility where I wanded off again and put on vibrant makeup with heavy Kohl eyeliner and orange lipstick, to match my orange, nanobot-altered irises. I gelled my hair into spikes and changed into work clothes—all black—shirt and heavy canvas pants, butt stomper riding boots made (cobbled?) by the new cobbler in Naoma, and soft leather gloves this time, black and badass. I added my kutte and looked myself over in the lone long mirror. Not bad. I turned to see my reflection from the back.
The new kutte still brought funky tears to my eyes, which is why I never looked in mirrors when anyone could see me. Weepy eyes did not a baddass motorcycle chick make.
Junkyard was the official name of the indie motorcycle club, and it was prominent in the top rocker, the upper banner across my shoulders, a jarring blue-green and near-black. My lower spine displayed the territory Junkyard claimed, which was Raleigh Co, WV. Beneath it, in much smaller print, were thewords Neutral Ground, proclaiming Junkyard Roadhouse had no affiliations, and all clubs were welcome as long they were peaceful.
The club colors were in between the top and bottom rockers, and they looked like an old motorbike wheel. The fender was a blue green, bright enough to sear eyeballs. The tire was dark blue, close enough to be black, while the rim and its five rugged 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 depended a drop of red. Beneath, as if the wheel hovered above it, was a horizontal 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 Junkyard offered at the roadhouse’s neutral territory. Motorcycle club, roadhouse, trading post, and clearing house.
Every element, every color, had symbolism. The wheel’s five spokes represented the five other motorcycle clubs that, more or less, sponsored me. The cat eye denoted Tuffs’ destruction of cats. 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 other blood drop was me. I had paid a blood sacrifice to be set free from the OMW and start my roadhouse.
And the fact that the five sponsoring clubs had inked me, my body, meant that they had approved of everything.
As president of an indie motorcycle club, I was safe, protected, supported, and could make a damn good living. But I still missed the OMW kutte I had outgrown, and the Outlaw Militia Warrior life I had lived until my nanos made that impossible.
I was strapping on my side piece weapon when I felt the gut punch.
Longing hit me, a wrenching hunger, a twisting, snaking, contorting,writhingneed.“Bloody sodding hell,”I whispered, bending over to support myself, hands on my knees, until the worst of the body shot eased. It wasn’t usually this bad.
Is Devil’s Milk addiction like this? Bloody hell.
I breathed steadily until the pain became controllable. Knowing what it meant.
He was headed toward me.Jagger. Slowly standing upright, I rolled my shoulders and started coffee, not because I wanted it, but because I needed something to do or I might walk out, grab him by the collar, rip off his clothes, and have my way with him. I might not even make it back to the office first.
