Chapter One
Hoodoo swung a ham-sized fist and his opponent spun and went down. One of his opponents went down anyway. That left three. The one he hit shook his head and slowly climbed to his feet. Two others moved in, coordinating their attacks with a gesture and a nod that looked like they intended to come at him from two sides. Hoodoo shook his head and side-stepped one, grabbing his arm and throwing him at the other. They tangled arms and legs and fell, while the fourth grinned up at Hoodoo and went for a kick to the balls.
Hoodoo slapped the foot out of the way so hard the man spun and crashed into him. Crashing into Hoodoo while in mid-air was very much like flying into a tree. At over seven-foot high and somewhere around 300 pounds of mixed muscle and beer, Hoodoo didn’t so much as stagger under the impact.
The first man had gotten to his feet and swiped at a small cut on his lip, smearing blood on his cheek. He looked pissed.
“GO HOODOO! GO HOODOO!” Val and Mad-dog were both screaming. Others picked up the chant, but most of the swelling crowd were still placing bets with the Welsh brothers. It was four against one, so Hoodoo was going at four-to-one. When they saw the size of him, the odds dropped down to three-to-one, but that was all Loki’s problem. Loki, John was his birth name, was the gambler, the inveterate money man. Loki was the kind of man who could walk into a restaurant with a quarter and walk out with a full stomach, carrying a take-out bag and change.
Unfortunately, he was also the one who would spend his last dime on a gag. Thus he’d earned the name “Loki,” trickster of the gods. He was also the one who’d been responsible for this little demonstration.
Not that he minded. Hoodoo was just having a little exercise. It had been a long damn ride from Phoenix to Sturgis and he’d stiffened up.
A sharp pain spread over his shoulders and down his back, and he took an involuntary step forward. Hoodoo turned to see one of his opponents still holding the top piece of a wooden chair. He looked down at his feet and saw the rest of the chair, now reduced to kindling.
The crowd hushed. Hoodoo grabbed the man’s shirt and threw him out of the makeshift ring and over two people’s heads. His fall was broken by the crowd who dodged out of the way laughing, slapping the man good-naturedly as he came up real slow, shaking his head.
“OUT!” A self-proclaimed referee called needlessly.
The other three gathered on the far side of the ring. They took a moment to whisper, some sort of grand plan, and approached Hoodoo from all three sides, creeping in low. Hoodoo crouched, spread his arms and fingers, and got ready for their attack.
The one in front dove to the ground just as Hoodoo swept his massive arms in a clench. The man reached out and grabbed Hoodoo’s ankles. A second man body-slammed him behind the knees and the third knocked him backward as the first stood, lifting Hoodoo’s feet, the three of them somehow heaving Hoodoo’s considerable mass over the foul line.
Hoodoo was no longer able to defend himself, even if he hadn’t gone out of the circle, he was laughing too hard. He lay on his back while the crowd cheered and booed and applauded the contestants. It had been a damn good fight.
Then he looked up.
There were a pair of boots, one on either side of his head and jeans that went up, beautifully, sensually to a tucked-in t-shirt. And above that, a familiar face stared down at him with a half-smile.
“Tracy?!” he yelped, too shocked to rise.
“I’m getting to the point where I don’t remember how tall you are, Hoodoo. Seems like you’re sprawled out like this more often than not.”
“Nice to see you, too!” A dopey grin spread across his face. He knew it was dopey, but couldn’t seem to stop it. Not where Tracy was concerned. “I missed you!”
Tracy snorted and shook her head.
“Fighting or drinking.” She sighed. “Well, far be it from me to keep you from your true loves.” She looked at him a long moment, then stepped back, one slender foot taking a step backward and away, followed by the other.
And just like that, Tracy was gone. Hoodoo shot to his feet, as much as a man his size could shoot to his feet, but in a crowd of almost 600,000 people, there was no way to find her. There were just too many people, crowding in too close. He craned his neck over them all, trying to see past cowboy hats and helmets, seeking out that one bright head that should have been easy to spot. But she had simply vanished as if she’d never been there at all.
“TRACY!” he bellowed knowing it was pointless. Even if she’d heard him, she wouldn’t have answered.
“Hey, big guy!” Val said, appearing next to him, bouncing on the balls of her feet, trying to see what he was looking at and failing miserably, being a full two feet shorter than Hoodoo. “What’s wrong?”
“Saw an old friend.” Hoodoo said, turning away like it didn’t matter, that he hadn’t just found – and lost – the only woman that had ever made him think of…home. “Someone I haven’t seen in a while.”
“Oh?” Mad-dog said, one eyebrow crawling up his shaved head as he sidled up next to Val, earning him a push away the moment he invaded her space. Right now that space was approximately the size of South Dakota. “Where?”
Hoodoo shrugged, like it was nothing, although already his memory was running a replay in the back of his mind, lingering on her eyes. And the way her mouth had curved up in that so-not-amused smile. “Gone, I guess.”
“Come on, you deserve a beer.” Val grabbed his arm, steering him away from the makeshift ring that was already setting up for the next idiots to try their hand at earning drinking money through volunteering for a concussion.
“You sure do!” Loki cried, jumping into the group like he’d been there all along and he hadn’t just been wheeling and dealing a good ten feet away. He slapped Hoodoo’s back good-naturedly, his palm leaving a stinging mark where there would be bruises tomorrow. “And I’ll buy. You just made me a ton of money!”
Hoodoo looked down at him. In all senses of the word. “I lost.”
Loki nodded, grinning from ear to ear, “I know!” He started toward the nearest bar. “Come on! First round is on me!”
“I’m sorry you lost your friend,” Val said, falling into step beside him. She was a tiny thing, barely coming past Hoodoo’s stomach, but she was a better fighter than any two of the men he’d just faced. And in a group where women were generally regulated to the back of the bike behind their man, she rode her own chopped Harley with a skill and expertise that few could surpass. And left the few idiots that tried to make her take her “proper place” unable to ride anything for a month.
“That’s ok,” Hoodoo said, ducking his head to walk into the bar that probably saw less business in the rest of the year combined than what it made in the week of Sturgis. Inside, servers dashed, pushing endurance to the max as they shunted drinks to the handful of tables so crowded with people that it was a wonder that they hadn’t been closed for violating the fire code. Hoodoo paused, glancing from face to face, unconsciously looking for the only one that would matter in a crowd of what had to easily be a couple hundred. “She should be easy enough to find again.”
“Dude,” Mad-dog said, pushing his way to the only table that had less than ten people gathered around it. “There’s like a half-million bikers out here! People are stepping over each other! How you gonna find her again?”
“She got a Crocker.” Hoodoo said with a shrug, taking the lead and watching the crowd melt from his path, giving them a clear shot to the table, and instant service from the servers whose eyes went wide when he gestured with one hand for them to bring a round of beers and to keep them coming. Mad-dog stopped dead where he’d been walking and whistled while Hoodoo ran to embrace the first man he’d thrown from the ring, drawing him to the table and offering to buy him a beer to soothe his injuries.
“Crocker?” Val asked, settling on the only bar stool that hadn’t been stolen to be used at other tables. Oddly enough the three people that had been gathered around the table had disappeared when Hoodoo returned with his new best friend.
“Rare bike,” Mad-dog leaned in so she could hear him over the babble of voices. “Only 60 or so ever made, worth a fucking fortune.”
“It’s not that bad,” Hoodoo said uneasily, sweeping his arm across the table to clear off the peanut shells that were everywhere.
“How much?” Val directed the question at Mad-dog, when it seemed that Hoodoo was going to be less than forthcoming.
“Quarter mil.”
“FUCK ME!” She yelled. In the prevailing silence of the bar, she faced the concentrated looks of nearly a dozen bikers in close proximity who were studying her with an entirely different kind of interest than they’d had only a moment before.
“What? That wasn’t an invitation, just… shocked… it’s an expression.” Hoodoo stifled a snicker as the color rose to her cheeks, giving her rather the look of an outraged tomato.
Val put her hands on her hips and stared them down. Every last one of them. “Like ‘go to hell’. Or ‘go fuck yourself’, or…”
Loki stared down at his hands, trying not to laugh. Mad-dog didn’t even try to hold back his opinion on the matter. “You tell ‘em, Val!”
Val gave him a look that would have curdled milk, and turned without another word, fleeing the bar. She made to the street before the laughter nearly blew out the windows.