After storming out of dinner, Celia went to her room and stared at the ceiling for an hour letting rage boil through her. She ignored a gentle knock on her door, no doubt from her mother, and pretended to be busy. Busy doing what she couldn’t have said, but she wanted to appear like she did have hobbies and friends that absorbed her time.

After a while, however, staring at the ceiling began to make her neck hurt, and she flopped over onto her stomach dramatically. She peered intently at the 1970’s orange shag carpet that covered her bedroom floor and listened to her parents murmuring in their bedroom. She had no doubt they were talking about her, but she couldn’t understand their exact words.

The trailer was actually a nice size, being a singlewide with three bedrooms. There was a surprising amount of privacy. One entered through the living room and kitchen, and then the first bedroom on the left was Celia’s. Next door was the bedroom-turned-art-room of her mother, and finally at the very end of the trailer sat the master bedroom. The layout gave Celia some measure of peace on nights when she wanted to hide.

Currently, Celia wanted to hide because she knew her parents were right. As angry as the talk with them had made her, she did see their point. She had no real friends and no ambitions. She had just curled up inside and decided that she was only a Viento Frio Dust Bunny, and there was no escape for her. She knew she’d end up shriveled and dried out like everyone else there because no one ever made it out. The only way out was to be buried in the rocky cemetery behind what used to be the church, before the preacher had gotten hooked on crystal meth and started trying to track UFOs. Who could believe in happy endings in a place like that?

However, after flopping around on the bed for quite some time, Celia couldn’t let herself mope any longer. The itch to escape was too strong. So, to escape her feelings of confusion and despair, Celia decided to dress up and head to the town’s one and only source of nightlife: The Rusty Jug. The run-in with the fabulously hot (and slightly weird) biker gang that day had left her feeling restless and bored, and the awkward chat with her parents had not helped. She wanted to get out and forget herself for a little while, to feel twenty instead of forty.

The Rusty Jug wasn’t a glamorous hotspot. It wasn’t even a mediocre hotspot, no matter how liberally one used the word ‘mediocre’. It was a dilapidated tin structure with a creaking roof that violated every building and fire code known to the state. It also had cheap whiskey and pool tables, which to Celia outweighed the risk of death. As a bonus, the pool tables were populated by a wide variety of desert-hardened old men who had leathery skin and bristling white beards. They enjoyed outrageously flirting with Celia, buying her drinks, and then respectfully sending her safely home. It was a good ego boost for all concerned.

Those old timers weren’t serious in their flirtations, and they didn’t count as a romantic interaction. But they were pretty much all the town offered. Celia hadn’t been on an actual date in months, unless she counted the time an old prospector had come into the convenience store and given her a wilted rose. The heat had apparently gotten to the old guy and fried his mind a little bit as he had repeatedly called her by the name ‘Abigail’.

“At the current rate, I’ll be dead before I manage to lose my V-Card,” Celia groaned, as she started to get ready for her night out.

The handsome biker leaning all over her counter that morning was the closest she had come to a potential young, sexy guy in a long time. She vowed not to think about him though. The sooner she forgot that smile that led to trouble, the better. The guy just dripped with danger.

Celia picked out skintight jeans and a low cut red shirt for the night’s attire. If nothing else, it made her feel pretty and feminine, which she didn’t often. For shoes, she stuck with her trusty sneakers. The Rusty Jug was a ten-minute walk down a dusty back street, and the last thing she wanted was to step on a snake or scorpion in the darkness. She wanted to make an impression that night, but not that type of impression.

* * *

From the way the bartender, Phil, dropped a shot glass when she finally entered the door of the Rusty Jug, she knew she had managed to make her impression. Being the only female under forty-five in this dusty hole had its advantages – she always looked fabulous no matter what. She slid onto a stool and took the double shot of whiskey Phil silently handed her. Phil tried not to look down her shirt while he did so. He failed, but Celia appreciated the effort.

She gulped down the liquid fire and then took a look around the room. A group of dusty miners were huddled around the pool tables gesturing wildly. No doubt all of them were trying to cheat one way or another. The old woman who ran the post office, Phyllis, sat at the other end of the bar. She was drinking more than the average pirate, a pyramid of empty shot glasses stacked in front of her. Between gulps of a pint of beer, she mumbled wildly to herself, making the pyramid sway in an unnerving way. Phil would have more than the usual number of broken glasses to clean up that night.

“And that’s why the mail gets lost all the time,” Celia muttered to herself as she watched Phyllis hiccup and sway on her stool.

Celia gestured to Phil for another shot and continued to scan the room. Beyond Phyllis, in the far corner of the dimly lit room, sat the old jukebox. Long broken, it was there merely as a weak light fixture. It cast an odd rainbow on the booths next to it, where a group of men sat around a table talking intently. Celia squinted her eyes trying to see through the dust; she didn’t recognize those guys. They all had black vests on and white shirts that seemed to glow under the rainbow glare of the jukebox.

“Wait a minute,” Celia slowly hissed, almost falling off her stool as she leaned forward to get a better look.

As she teetered on her stool, one of the men turned around and locked eyes with her. His intense gaze shot across the room like lightning and made her cheeks blush in surprise. The handsome biker from earlier that day was staring straight at her! His face was unreadable in the gloom. However, his eyes seemed to shine unnaturally in the light, and Celia shivered as she felt him look her over slowly.

She quickly turned towards Phil to make small talk, leaving the biker staring at nothing but her back. When she had decided to come have fun that night, she hadn’t meant the type of dangerous fun that came with dark-eyed bikers in tight shirts. No, she wanted a quiet evening of underage drinking and boring stories from Phil. It would be just enough excitement to get her parents off her back, but lame enough to make sure she was in bed by ten for a nice long night’s sleep.

“How is it going tonight?” she asked the bartender, spinning an empty glass on the bar top idly.

Phil was a paunchy forty-five-year-old who looked seventy thanks to the blistering desert winds. His face was flabby from years of greasy food and copious amounts of alcohol, and his blue eyes were always slightly glazed. He was a good man, though, and ran the bar with as much love and tenderness as some guys gave their children. There were rumors he even slept on top of the bar at night in order to keep a watch on things.

“Slow night. Surprised to see the only pretty girl in town here,” he drawled, wiping down his workstation with a rag that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks.

“Had to get out of the house.”

Phil looked at her with paternal concern and smiled slightly. “I remember being your age. Getting out of the house is a good idea. And as sad as I’d be to see you go, I think getting out of this town might also do you some good.”

“Don’t you start too,” Celia said, rolling her eyes. “I came out to forget the Dad speeches. I want to have some actual fun tonight.”

Phil nodded and then looked over her shoulder, back towards the gloomy corner where the hot biker gang sat huddled by the jukebox. “Well, stay away from the fun in the back. I don’t like the look of those guys.”

“Do you know them? They came into the shop earlier. I thought they’d have already left town.”

“Never heard of them. At first I thought they might be just some pretty Silicon Valley boys trying to act tough with fancy bikes. But now I think they are hiding something. There is a creepiness about them.”

“You don’t think they are government spooks, do you?” Celia asked, trying to suppress the smile that threatened to come out and make Phil very offended.

Phil was obsessed with the idea of the government spying on him. It was the reason he had come out to the middle of nowhere to run a mostly-empty bar. He believed in Area 51 having aliens, Russia making clones of US presidents, and other tabloid headlines. Perhaps he even slept on the bar in order to be prepared for a quick escape if any government tanks rolled into town.

“No, they aren’t like that! I’ve told you; the government types always come in suits. Those bikers aren’t agents. There is something about them, though, that I can’t put my finger on. Something different.”

Celia shrugged and pushed her shot glass across the bar to be topped off. She wasn’t a fan of conspiracy theories of any sort and honestly didn’t care why the new bikers were sticking around. She just wished the leader would stop staring at her, because it kept making the skin on the back of her neck prickle with an unavoidable heat.

As soon as she had finished her thought, she felt a presence close to her. She turned slowly to find Xarax standing behind her. He had his hands stuffed in his jeans and looked at her with a sexy, confident grin. She sincerely hoped he had not heard the conversation she had just had with the bartender.

“I told you that we would see you around,” Xarax said in his deep voice, clearly enjoying the surprise on her face.

“Wonders never cease,” she said carefully, looking him up and down for any sign of bad intent.

“Do you need another drink, Sir?” Phil broke in, clearly wanting to protect Celia from whatever conspiracy theory he thought Xarax might be linked with. Phil reserved the word ‘sir’ for people he didn’t like.

“No, I just need a dance with the lady, if she’d be so kind.”

“The jukebox is broken,” Celia replied, shrugging with feigned sadness.

“Hey, Daks. Fix the music, will ya?” Xarax called over his shoulder without turning around.

The redheaded biker got up from the back booth and went over to the jukebox. He slapped it once, hard, on the top, causing it to jolt and spark in a terrifying way. It wobbled for a second and then burst into life. Music began to pour from the long-silent machine, as crisp and loud as the day it was bought thirty years ago.

Everyone in the bar turned towards the back in surprise as Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl began to play. The old miners even stopped bickering about the pool game, and stared silently at the burly group of bikers with suspicion. The air was tense in the room and seemed so at odds with the upbeat song playing.

“Celia, you don-“ Phil started to warn, but he couldn’t finish before Celia broke in.

“One dance.” She shocked herself by agreeing. Maybe it was because Phil was acting too much like her father right then, and she was tired of being told what to do. Maybe it was because, arrogant or not, Xarax was so handsome it made her face feel like it would melt off by staring at him too much. Either way, she found herself sticking out her hand for Xarax to take.

Xarax took her gently by the arm and led her into the middle of the room. Once there, he pulled her close and slowly began to sway. He led Celia around in a circle with swaying hips, one hand grasping hers and the other wrapped tightly around her waist. They danced too slowly for the music, but Celia didn’t notice. All she could concentrate on was how good this guy smelled. It was like lemon meringue pie. The smell combined with how handsome he was made it a little hard not to drool.

“You grew up here?” he asked her softly, leaning down his large frame, so his mouth was close enough to whisper in her ear.

“Unfortunately. I grew up battling scorpions and snakes and have been drinking whiskey in this bar since I could see over the counter.”

He chuckled softly and gave her waist a small squeeze. “I don’t doubt that at all, Firecracker. Not at all. I grew up in an area like this, on the outskirts.”

“Yeah? And look how good you turned out.”

Xarax snorted loudly and pulled back to look into her face. He had another one of his sexy grins on. “We are quite a pair, aren’t we?”

Celia rolled her eyes a little about being called a ‘pair,’ but allowed the dance to continue. She wouldn’t admit it, but she liked that he could relate to a childhood on the fringes of humanity. Celia wondered if he was also a stranger who felt like he was always looking into the bright lights of the city, but could never get in. She put her head on his shoulder and relaxed into his arms a little. If he hadn’t been so arrogant, perhaps we could have been friends, she mused silently. Not that guys like him would have many girls who are merely friends. He is definitely a ‘love them and leave them’ type.

The quiet reflections on friendship were short-lived, however. As soon as the song finished, the jukebox went off with a pop, which left the room ringing with silence. She suddenly felt how exposed she was, standing wrapped up in the arms of this tattooed stranger. Stepping back, she tried to disentangle herself from his body, but found he had locked himself to her. She looked up into his face with uncertainty, wondering why he hadn’t dropped his arms from her waist.

She stopped squirming when she saw his expression. Xarax wasn’t looking at her at all. He was looking over her head, staring at the bar’s doorway. Whoever was standing there must have angered him immensely, because Celia could swear that she saw actual flames flickering in his eyes. The dark pools were lit with an angry red glow that made her breath catch painfully against her ribs.

“Juan,” Xarax growled out, every letter of the name making his face contort into further fury.

“Xarax. I see you are here to welcome me to town,” came a man’s icy reply from the doorway behind Celia.

The voice dripped with a nastiness that Celia had never heard before. It belonged to a man who had done terrible things, and had enjoyed them. Celia didn’t believe in a hell, but the voice was enough to almost change her mind. A fiery pit must surely have birthed whatever was standing behind her.

She swallowed hard and briefly considered keeping her back turned and her face buried in Xarax’s muscled chest. But the curiosity got to her. She steeled her courage and turned her head to face whoever was behind her.