dat is how it works, and it ain’t, mon amie. Being the only man here with the power of sight, it ain’t easy. Everyone expects it to work every second of every day. Some are skeptical. Some live and breathe for it, waitin’ to see if I know what the winnin’ lottery numbers are. It’s annoyin.’ I cannot see when there are selfish motives.”
I can’t imagine feeling like an outcast like that. I thought him and his MC brothers shared similarities, but if it’s just him, then that must be lonely.
Seer slaps a hand on my shoulder and inhales a gust of sharp air. I stand as fast as I can and see a distant expression on his face, his eyes are vacant, and a gust of wind blows as thunderclouds fill the air.
Seer lets go of my shoulder with a huge gasp and doubles over, holding his stomach, gagging.
“Pocus!” I yell for the Prez of the NOLA chapter and kneel on the ground to see if Seer is okay.
His dreads hang in his face, and his mixed skin tone seems paler than usual.
“Are ye okay, Seer?”
“We need to go,” Seer pants, reaching out for the column to brace himself. “We need to go now.”
Pocus runs out the front door with a few other guys behind him. Seer is the VP, and the big guy named Bones must be the Sargent at Arms. Makes sense since he’s the biggest motherfucker I’ve ever seen.
“What is it, Seer? What did ya see?” I reach out to stabilize Seer when Pocus slaps my hands away. “Whatever happened has to do with ya. Don’t go touchin’ him. We don’t know all he can handle.”
“The girl. Dawn?”
“Ye saw her?” My stomach drops when sweat drips off him like a leaky faucet.
He nods, and Bones hands Seer a bottle of water. Seer pours it all over his face, cooling himself off. “She’s safe. She’s in a cage with a boy, but not for much longer. They already took one kid. They are getting a boat ready. We only have an hour.”
Reaper storms out the door and mounts his bike, my brothers following suit. I run down the steps and jump on my own hog, not wanting to wait any longer. “You coming or am I leaving your ass here, Pocus?”
“We have ya back. Hex, Shadow, drive the truck since we don’t know how many survivors there will be. Sage, Hemlock, ya in the water. Take the boat. Everyone else, we ride in front of Ruthless. Seer, ya take the lead.”
“I know where we need to go.”
“No, ya don’t. They changed location. If it weren’t for me, ya’d be fucked.” Seer hops on his deep purple custom bike and cranks it.
Reaper curls his top lip in, but stays silent, which isn’t like him. Once he starts his engine, the rest of us do the same, and dozens of growls rumble through the air. We sound like a feral pack of wolves circling the last prey on earth.
NOLA’s clubhouse isn’t guarded like ours. The driveway is worn grass and dirt, wide from all the bikes coming and going. We speed down the backroads of New Orleans, following Seer as we make our way deeper into swamplands.
The further we ride into the darkness and evil the swamp holds, the tighter I clutch the handlebars. The trees even have a gloomier appearance. There are weeping willows, the long branches piercing the flesh of the water like a knife to skin. A murder of crows fly above us, hundreds of them, and Seers swerves off the road when he sees them.
I’m not really a superstitious kind of guy, but that shit is questionable. I know Seer is analyzing what it means and believes that a group of crows are called murder for a reason.
About twenty minutes later, Seer pulls off into the woods. There isn’t a road or a path, and as we turn in, the bikes scratched, branches slap me in the face, and my suspension isn’t really helping with the shaking and bouncing.
One by one, the motorcycles turn off, and here’s a moment of quiet eerie, and the hair stands on the back of my neck. Shit is creepy. We park our bikes and hop off. Everyone’s boots snap against the twigs on the leaf-covered ground. Everything is covered in mud, and the mosquitoes are a real fucking bitch.
I slap my hand against my neck and pull my palm away to see a giant dead insect twitching, then wipe