The Witching Hour: 11 Enchanting Novels Featuring Witches, Wizards, Vampires, Shifters, Ghosts, Fae, and More!, page 202
But Cooper was only watching me.
He didn’t even glance at the cage beyond the curtains. He didn’t care who was signing up to fight. His golden eyes pierced the gloom of the bar, and even though I had a spotlight on me to make sure that everyone could see my swaying tits, I felt like he was the only one in the room. Definitely the only one that mattered.
The way I danced—it was all for him. Every roll of my hips, every pop of my ribcage, the serpentine undulations of my spine. I was fucking Trouble with my eyes and with my body and we weren’t even on the same side of the room. I wanted him to imagine being between my legs as I slithered down the pole to kneel at its base. I needed him to desire me as badly as I desired him.
I didn’t want him to sign up for the cage match.
The song ended, and I realized that I’d been dancing for a half an hour without a break. I swung off the bar and landed easily on my cowboy boots by Gloria.
She was counting twenties and hundreds, licking her thumb, fanning through the bills.
“Looking good tonight,” I said, pulling a couple singles out of my bra. Tips hadn’t been good for that set. The men were too distracted. The money would come after, when they were so drunk on liquor and adrenaline that they wouldn’t realize they’d emptied their bankrolls on a woman that wasn’t even going to suck them off.
Gloria shot me a look. Her eyelids were painted smoky blue up to her eyebrows. “If I didn’t need your help, you wouldn’t be here,” she said in her musical, fluid Spanish. “Remember that.”
It had been a long time since Gloria threatened to get rid of me. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
Weird for her to be in such a bad mood when we had such an unusually big crowd. Big crowd meant lots of money. “Quite a few unfamiliar faces here, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Gloria said curtly. “They want to be Fangs. It’s a big night.” That was news to me. I’d never seen the gangs try to swap members with each other before. They were usually at odds, working out their frustrations and territory battles within my cage. “Where’s Bo Peep?”
I brushed my fingers over the stock of the shotgun. She was under the bar, where I always kept her when I was working.
“Think it’ll get bad?” I asked.
“Yes,” Gloria said. “It’ll get bad.”
A man elbowed up to the bar, planting both hands on it, leaning all his six and a half feet of height over Gloria. “Cancel the fight,” he growled.
She spat a curse at him in Spanish, so colorful that even I wasn’t quite sure what she’d said. Apparently, he understood. He slammed his fist into the bar. “Don’t you fucking talk to me like that, woman. You heard what I said! Cancel the fucking fight!”
I pushed up beside Gloria and caught this guy’s eye. Showed no fear. “That’s not how it works. We fight every two weeks, whether or not anyone’s here. It’s the law in Lobo Norte. It’s how we’ve always done it.”
“You can’t do the Fang initiation fight until the Needles get here,” he said.
My blood ran cold. “The Needles? What do you mean, the Needles?”
Gloria elbowed me aside. “Get your skinny ass back there,” she barked, aiming a kick at my shins. I leaped out of the way. By the time I was free of her reach, her attention was back on Dickwad across the bar. “She’s right. The fight goes. We don’t wait for anyone.”
“You’ll regret it,” he said. “I’ll make you regret it.”
She was unimpressed. “Sign up or fuck off.”
My hand slipped under the bar, caressing Bo Peep. Give me a reason. Just give me a reason to shoot you, asshole.
But he backed away with a final warning look at Gloria.
At the same time, a hush fell over the bar.
Mad Dog had approached the chalkboard. The other gangs stepped back. Even the Hag’s Boys dipped their heads and looked at their feet.
The display reminded me of submissive dogs. When you’d kicked a mutt enough that it rolled over and pissed itself every time you walked past.
Chuck had the chalk. He offered it to Mad Dog.
The biker’s eyes cut through the crowd and fell on me. The corner of his mouth lifted in a knowing smirk. Then he slashed the chalk over the board four times, writing four different names to fill the final four lines for tonight’s fights.
Old Yeller. Pit Bull. Smoky.
Trouble.
My stomach flipped. Cooper was going to fight. He was still healing from the night before, and he was going into the cage.
Mad Dog was watching me to see if I’d react, but I didn’t let my fear show on my face. I made myself smile and bat my eyelashes. Push my cleavage together with my arms. Make a kissy face at him. Let him think I was some dumb whore, just like any of the Coyote Ranch girls.
He didn’t look fooled. He tipped his head at me and headed back to the table.
Gloria took down the chalkboard. Counted the names.
“We’re on,” she said.
6
Nobody cares about seeing a pair of tits once the men have taken the cage, so I didn’t bother stripping during the fights. I stayed behind the bar. It gave me a prime view through the doorway to the crowd around the raised platform, the iron bars, the flickering lights overhead.
There was magic in that cage. Not exactly the kind of magic that Abuelita had taught me to cast, but the natural allure of violence and pain.
A current rippled through the crowd as the first pair climbed in.
“Bloody Pete and Ezio!” Gloria had said, selecting two entries off of the chalkboard. She could always read the names, even when the one signing had only left a scribble. She simply knew.
Bloody Pete was a diminutive man missing his left ear. It was a wound he’d always had, as long as I’d been in Lobo Norte, but it still oozed pus and blood down his jaw—hence the name. His face looked like cauliflower. I could still tell he was excited as he hauled himself over the bars.
Ezio wasn’t much bigger than him, and was nearly as ugly. A good match, probably by accident. Gloria liked the mismatched fights better.
When they were both inside, Gloria climbed up to slam the door shut and padlock it.
The watchers hooted. Hollered. A hand slipped up the inside of Gloria’s thigh and she caught the thumb in her hand, twisting it hard enough that I heard the pop from the bar. That only made the shouts louder.
She hopped down, grabbed a mallet, swung it at the bell. It rang with a clear chime that resonated over all the shouting.
The men were silent fighters, circling each other with their fists lifted, watching each other through the guards of their forearms.
The crowd was not so quiet. The gangs roared, shaking the bars, slamming their fists against the cage. They shrieked suggestions. Stomped their feet. Made the whole bar shake with their fervor. It was a frightening sound, not unlike what I thought it might sound like to stand on the brink of Hell.
My hands moved as though with consciousness of their own, pouring beers, sliding them across the bar, flipping fresh steins into place under the taps. Foam dribbled over my wrists. Even as I sucked the moisture off my skin, I couldn’t tear my eyes from Bloody Pete and Ezio.
Pete took the first real swing.
He lunged forward and to the side, bringing a right hook around Ezio’s guard. Knuckles slapped against the meat of his shoulder. Ezio took the chance to make an uppercut.
Bloody Pete’s head snapped backward. He stumbled into the bars.
It was a short fight. Short and bloody. Once they got a measure of each other, they were beating hard, digging into their weaknesses. Ezio boxed Pete’s bleeding ear and made the man howl. The two tumbled to the ground in a writhing mass of limbs, kicking, kneeing, elbowing.
Bloody Pete ended up on top of Ezio, screaming wordlessly as he wailed on the other man. Blood splattered over the floor. The crowd grew feverish, banging against the outside of the cage, sending spittle and sweat flying.
And then Pete stood, and there was nothing under him but the bloody pulp of what had been a man.
Ezio had refused to tap out. Now he would be lucky to wake up ever again.
That was the nature of the cage.
Gloria opened the door. Took Pete’s wrist and shook his fist. “Victory!” she crowed. “Victoria!”
Everyone seemed like they turned to Big Papa all at once. He was sitting in the corner of the room on a stool, no taller than anyone else, yet undeniably kingly. He nodded his approval.
Cheers. Screams.
Gloria announced the next fight, and the next. One by one, the men fell to pain and blood.
Then she called, “Red Eagle! Trouble!”
Trouble. My heart flipped as I swung around to look at the Fang Brothers in the corner. Cooper.
He stood, stripping off his leather vest and dropping it on the table. His muscles bulged against his shirt. It looked so tight on him that I thought it might tear. There was no way to tell that he had just been shredded by Big Papa the night before, that he had spent that morning bleeding in my bed—he looked hale and ready to fight. But I knew the truth.
I vaulted over the bar as he cut a path through the crowd, moving to meet Red Eagle in the cage.
“Ofelia!” Gloria snapped.
I didn’t acknowledge her. I couldn’t stand by while Cooper was in the cage. I couldn’t.
Seizing his arm, I dragged him away from the door. “You’re still injured,” I whispered urgently, trying to haul him toward the bar’s back room.
He dug his heels in. Shoved me off of him.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asked, fury flaming within his golden eyes.
What was I doing? He looked so angry at me. “I thought I was helping you.”
“I don’t need your help,” he spat. “Don’t make that mistake again.” He might as well have slapped me, his tone was so vicious. A cold ache flooded my heart. Then he lowered his voice and said, “Not where Big Papa can see.”
I didn’t have the strength to try to stop him again.
He mounted the stairs, throwing his leg over the bars to slip inside. He stripped his shirt off over his head. The lights reflected on his bare, sweaty muscles. He wasn’t the most ripped of the bikers that had been in the cage tonight, but there was something breathtaking about the sight of him, all broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted with the wolf curved over his chest.
The injuries weren’t completely healed. The tooth and claw marks still crisscrossed his shoulders.
Red Eagle was a behemoth of a man, so broad that I doubted he’d be able to walk through a doorway without turning sideways. Cooper wasn’t short, but Red Eagle was a full head taller.
When Gloria closed the door, it sounded like a coffin getting slammed shut.
I pushed my way to the front of the crowd.
Cooper circled Red Eagle, arms at his sides. He wasn’t guarding himself. His hands were curled as though they might grow claws at any moment. And his eyes—he looked so hungry. More like the wolf that had bitten me the night before than the man who had let me see into his heart that morning.
Through the bars, I saw the man who had demanded that we delay the fight. I hadn’t caught his name, but his face was memorable—that ugly, twisted scowl, those piercing black eyes. His skin was unnaturally pale for a biker. Usually, they were browned from the sun. This guy looked like he had never been outside in his life. And his hair was glossy black.
Why did he look familiar?
He slipped out the back door, and a sense of unease that had nothing to do with Cooper’s state of injury settled over me.
That biker was up to something.
Of course, when you confined multiple gangs to a single town that was nothing more than a handful of trailers collected in the middle of a perpetual dust storm, it would have been much stranger if the bikers didn’t get up to shit.
A gasp rippled through the crowd, drawing my attention back to Cooper and away from the pale-skinned biker.
Red Eagle had aimed a kick at Cooper’s head. He was fast—his leg was a blur as it lashed out—but I could see that there were studs on the toe of his boot. Big silver spikes.
Cooper ducked under it. The boot whistled over his head.
He lunged, swiping at Red Eagle. His hand cuffed the side of the man’s head. Boxed his ear.
And then all of the lights in the bar died and pitch darkness fell over the room.
If you’ve never been a stripper trying to fight your way out of a room filled with ruffians in the dark—and, I mean, who hasn’t?—then let me tell you this: If you think bikers are handsy when they’re drunk, just wait until you can’t see who’s fondling you.
I managed to get out of the bar with most of my clothes and my pride intact. As soon as the door swung shut behind me, I buttoned my shorts up and stuffed my tits into my bra. Someone had even managed to slip a couple of singles into my cleavage. At least they’d paid for the honor of feeling me up. Could have been worse.
It was much brighter outside under the waning moon than it had been inside; I didn’t even need a flashlight to find my way to Johnny, who was inspecting our breaker panel with the help of his Bic lighter. His figure had a lot in common with a wire coat hanger that had been bent into the shape of a man—impossibly skinny and sharp-edged. He had more sores on his face than teeth in his skull.
“You do this?” he asked me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I broke our electricity from inside the bar. Danced so hard that the breakers blew. Sorry. Can’t help being so sexy.”
Johnny snorted. A line of snot slipped down his lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. “Not a breaker.” He moved to the generator, where there was already a much more curvaceous figure inspecting the machinery. Whenever I saw Johnny and Gloria together, all I could think of was that old nursery rhyme: Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean. And so betwixt the two of them, they licked the platter clean. If Gloria had been hollow, Johnny could have easily fit inside of her three times.
“It was one of the bikers,” I said. “The one who told us to postpone the fight.”
Gloria didn’t doubt me for a second. “I’ll feed the fucker’s balls to the coyotes. But first you bring the power back, Johnny.”
“I’ll see about that.”
He worked in silence for a few minutes while Gloria and I waited. The men were pouring out the front doors of the bar now, filling the night with shouts and the sound of shattering glass. Heading back to their bikes. I took that to mean that the fights were over.
That biker had gotten what he wanted.
“Yup, it’s bad,” Johnny said, wiping his hands with a rag. It didn’t clean his skin off so much as redistribute the oil. “Looks like it’s one of the belts. Think we’re missing a couple of bolts, too—gotta replace those, or it’ll shake itself apart next time we turn it on.”
“We can fix all that.” I glanced at Gloria. “Right?”
Her expression spoke of bad things. Very bad things. Her penciled eyebrows were drawn low. “We’ll have to go into town to buy a replacement.”
The words settled into me with a prickly frisson. “Go into town” were three small words that meant one very big deal. It meant pulling out our old pickup, which ran on prayers and spitballs and gas fumes. It had a manual transmission that only Gloria knew how to drive and only Johnny knew how to repair—and it frequently needed repairs. Which meant that both of them would need to take it “into town.” Either across the border to the United States or Mexico. Into the real world.
Either way, they’d be leaving Lobo Norte.
“No,” I said. Not because I thought I could change anyone’s mind, or even the situation, but just because denying it made me feel better for a brief, shining moment. “We can’t leave the fight unfinished. All that money…”
“No refunds,” Gloria said. “I’ve already paid out the money. Besides, the men won’t go anywhere until the initiation’s over.”
“You paid out? But there was no winner.”
“This is a special fight. The entry fees went elsewhere. Winners get a different prize.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Gloria pinched me. “Don’t ask questions.”
“We’ll leave tonight,” Johnny said, slamming the panel on the side shut. “Depending on how long it takes the part to come in, and how the pickup handles the drive, we might be back in a week. No more than two. Ofelia, you can handle the girls for a couple weeks, can’t you?”
It was a taunt. He knew I didn’t want to have jack shit to do with the girls, and he didn’t want me to go anywhere near them anyway. His whores, as much as they irked me, wouldn’t be the problem. It would be the bikers. The Fang Brothers weren’t going anywhere for the rest of the month. I’d be stranded with them.
Nothing could make me show weakness in front of Johnny—not even the threat of dealing with the Fangs alone.
“I can handle Lobo Norte,” I said, lifting my chin.
“No, you can’t,” Gloria snapped. “Not by yourself.”
She was probably right. Those bikers were coyotes that would eat me alive the instant they caught me alone and vulnerable. I’d gotten good at taking wild dogs down in Lobo Norte, but I didn’t have enough buckshot to take so many men all at once.
How could I run a bar, a motel, and a whorehouse if I was constantly watching my back, too?
“I’ll help her.”
We turned. Cooper stood behind us. There was no way to tell how long he had been listening. At our attention he rubbed a hand over his jaw, along the stubble on his scalp, down the back of his neck. Like he was trying to wipe our gazes away. All his earlier animosity was gone.
“What’s that you said?” Johnny asked, eyes narrowing to slits, until I could barely see his pupils sunken into his face.
