Chapter 7
The bar was mostly silent, except for the gentle droning of some blues song on the juke box. Aaron had already set most of the chairs up on the tables in preparation for closing shop.
David's cigar was burnt down to a short stub which he finally mashed out. A resigned sigh escaped his lips.
Of the holdouts that remained, only Dusty and Tommy were familiar to him.
Aaron was busy guiding the last several patrons to the door.
Jerry was wiping down the bottles and sliding them back into their place with a rhythmic thud.
He paused when he
found the bottle of scotch that David enjoyed and he quickly stepped
forward to refill the half empty tumbler.
David held up his
hand, stopping him.
"Don't worry about it," He said solemnly. Then he looked over at Dusty. His friends expression was somber, almost regretful. He reached over and took the top twenty dollar bill from their wager, but left the bottom one on the bar.
David smiled grimly. "Take it."
"Nah," Dusty forced a smile, trying to remain upbeat.
"You won the bet, bro," David said, a little more sharply tan he meant to. He shook his head. "Just take it."
Reluctantly, Dusty took the second bill from the counter top, and shoved it into his pocket.
Then he swallowed down the last of his drink and set his hand on David's shoulder.
"I really was hoping I'd lose," he offered.
David nodded and pushed his unfinished drink closer to the spill rail.
"Thanks Jerry," he said to the bartender.
"Any time, Shakes," Jerry's narrow face crinkled into a smile.
David shook hands with Aaron and departed.
Outside, the mist was beginning to rise in the lower places around him. The air was cool and moist, scented with the fragrances, if you could call some of them that, of springtime in a city.
"Maybe it was all in my head," He finally admitted, though the words pained him.
He saw Dusty pause for a split second as he reached for the ignition switch.
"You really believe that?" Dusty asked cautiously.
David looked up and saw Gabby, standing between them, eyeing him intently. She subtly shook her head.
"They were real, baby," she said quietly. "And you know it."
David considered the specter before him and the best friend beside him. The two worlds of his existence were beginning another of their collisions.
He turned the ignition and the lights on the motorcycle came to life.
"I don't know," he finally admitted. He pressed the start button and the Valkyrie purred to life. "I don't know."
Dusty started his own bike and looked expectantly at David.
"Where too?"
David smiled. "I'm gonna fly solo for a while, if you don't mind. I need to think."
"Okay," Dusty nodded, feeling the torment within his friend as if it were his own. "Just be safe."
David began duck walking his bike back out of the spot, but Dusty's hand shot out the grasp his forearm.
"If it means anything," he offered with a smile. "I believe you."
David's eyebrow rose. "You do?"
Dusty suddenly looked a bit sheepish, an expression that David could never remember seeing before.
He nodded. "Yup."
Time for the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
"Why?" David asked.
To his surprise, Dusty needed no time to consider an answer.
"I saw you when you woke up, remember?" he said. "You didn't just wake up from a nap. You had been somewhere. And it was a place that was more important to you than anything in this shit hole." He looked around. "You didn't care about yourself, you had someone and you wanted to get back to them. That kind of thing doesn't happen overnight, Shakes."
He paused for a moment, and then he looked at David with eyes that were almost too thoughtful for Dusty.
"There's only one thing I've heard that keeps me from believing every word of it." He continued.
"And that is?" David asked.
Dusty's characteristic smile reappeared with all its usual mischief.
"There's not a snowballs chance in hell that I'd let you beat me in a fifteen point bout." He grinned, recalling the portion of his tale when Gabrielle was watching the two of them fencing in the shop and discussing the appeal of a strange young woman that they had found on the side of the road.
The laughter burst from David and a sense of relief soothed the ache in his chest a little.
Dusty rolled his bike forward. "Ride safe," he teased. "Later."
His machine coasted out of the lot and headed off into the thickening mist.
David listened to the sound of Dusty's motorcycle as it faded into the distance.
He felt Gabby's chin on his shoulder.
"I like him," she said in a voice filled with humor.
The engine purred contentedly as David coasted through the misty darkness. He had no particular destination in mind. He just rode, letting his mind move from one thought to the next.
He started with several self admonishing thoughts about chasing down two women in a parking lot outside the bar. He smiled now, as he replayed the childish event through his mind and chuckled under his breath. He must have appeared like some over enthusiastic idiot. Still, he had been so shocked to see the two of them in that place that, once the realization had struck him, he had only acted without considering what those actions should have been or how they would be perceived.
Still, the sense of deja-vu that had been so nebulous at first had troubled him. And the sudden clarity of that moment had frightened him in more ways than one.
However, like many plans realized and hastily put into action, he had probably conveyed the wrong impression.
Add to that the fact that one of them, Gina, who was probably a descendant of his own daughter, was a cop. She would have cautioned her friend not to return to see this strange, wild man at a dingy bar.
"Um, David?" Gabby's voice interrupted his thoughts. He blinked, and suddenly saw, for the first time, the flashing red and blue lights of the unmarked police car behind him.
He went tense for a moment when he saw the dark colored sedan and had to force himself to not try and run. His memory flashed back to a night when two such vehicles had attempted to run him down, driven by men employed by Gabrielle's old enemy, Alti.
He eased Gabby onto the shoulder and lowered the kickstand, reaching for his wallet to procure his drivers license and insurance information.
He was confused. He didn't think he had been doing anything unsafe. Still, sometimes a newer police officer might pick nits, just to make a quota.
David glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that it was half past four in the morning.
"Good morning," a soft, husky, feminine voice greeted him.
The blinding flashlight was lowered and David saw Gina Foster, now dressed in a standard blue police officers uniform, eyeing him closely.
She smiled, but David saw her blue eyes narrow as they pierced his.
David extended the license and insurance card, but Gina waved them away.
"That isn't why I pulled you over," she said. She went back to the car and shut the MARS lights off, returning to sit on the hood of the vehicle.
"I already pulled up your record on the computer," she continued with a smile. "You must have really been lost in thought. I had the lights on for about a mile before you noticed them. Not very safe to ride as distracted as that."
"I got a lot on my mind," David replied easily. Then he fixed her with a knowing look. "Your friend never showed back up at the bar. Cost me twenty bucks, too."
Gina nodded. "Good. I told her not to."
She might have expected him to be offended by that statement. It had been delivered with just enough edge to foster that belief.
Instead, David recognizing the protective nature of that eternal friendship, and he chuckled, nodding his head in agreement.
"Some things never change," he replied. Then he looked back at Gina and nodded again. "Smart move. I tend to look a little bit like a rogue." He gestured to his clothing. Jeans, boots, tee shirt, vest, and leather jacket.
"Not exactly the ideal image of your usual gentleman caller."
Gina smiled. "You could say that."
Gabby, standing just behind David's left shoulder leaned next to his ear.
"She's sizing you up," she whispered.
"It was smooth," David said. "The way you put me off earlier. If I had been thinking straighter, I would have seen it."
Gina shrugged. "Angie's my best friend. I didn't think it would be a good idea if she went back there all alone."
There was something in the way she made that statement that ruffled David's feathers a bit and his gaze darkened from curiosity to one of mild annoyance.
"Look," he replied sharply. "I invited her back for a drink, and I invited the two of you to come out and go on a ride with us some weekend. I didn't ask her to come home and fuck me, okay."
He put his identification back in his wallet and fixed her with another dark stare.
"Are you planning on writing me a ticket?" he continued.
Gina was a bit taken aback by the straightforwardness of his statement. "No."
"Then have a nice day," David said, turning and restarting the motorcycle. He didn't even wait to see if she would do anything. He simply eased on down the shoulder, back up on to the highway and vanished.
Days blended into weeks, and those blended into months. Spring had gone, summer was passing, and the first leaves of fall had begun to show the first edges of fire and gold.
David was kneeling beneath his lift, fiddling with the front brake caliper of Gabby's brakes.
He snapped the new brake pad into place and slid the device over the rotor when he heard the sound of a vehicle crunching down the packed earth drive.
The clubhouse and shop were deserted, which was the way David still preferred.
Several bikes had already been set aside for storage, and the usual traffic had begun to dwindle.
David saw the low black shape of Aaron's El Camino rolling towards the open doors. It turned to the side and vanished from sight, its engine rumbling. Then he heard the engine die and silence fell again, aside from the occasional metallic clang of his tools.
He heard a door open and close and then footsteps.
Sighing, he tightened the front caliper in place and move back to the rear one.
Footsteps paused at the entrance.
"Don't just sit there, big guy," David said without looking up. "Come on in. This is as much your place as it is mine."
Gabby, seated on the lift next to him suddenly kicked him in the shin.
The wrench slipped and his knuckles slammed into the frame of the bike.
He cursed and put one torn knuckle into his mouth, sucking at the wound as he turned around.
She stood in the entrance, framed by the light of the sun, and seemed to glow with an internal fire. Her hair was the color of gold, and a little longer than the last time he had seen her, and her green eyes studied him with curious amusement.
She was dressed in a pair of faded jeans, sneakers, a pale green button down shirt and a tan leather jacket. One hand concealed in the pocket of the coat, fidgeting nervously.
"Angelica!" David exclaimed, once he had extracted his knuckle. "Hi."
He heard Aarons El Camino rumble to life and it backed into view, turning and rumbling back the way it had come.
"Hi," Angelica replied with a nervous smile. "You haven't been back up to Jerry's place since that one night." She stopped. Then she shrugged. "Gina and I have been by a few times to see you. She wanted to apologize for giving you a hard time, and, well." She stopped again.
"I was wondering if that offer was still good?"
David was enchanted by the sight of her. It was as if his brain had shut down and his body refused to listen to his mind.
"Offer?" he asked, and received another soft kick in the rear by Gabby, still sitting on the lift behind him.
"Oh! That!" David smiled as his brain kicked back into gear. "Yeah, sure. Well, not right this moment." He turned and gestured to Gabby, waiting patiently on the lift. "Got a few more things to do here before we could go."
"Dinner," Gabby whispered in his ear. His eyes flicked in the spirit's direction.
"It's past six in the evening, you lug," Gabby continued. "Offer her dinner."
"You hungry?" David asked quickly.
She nodded. "A little."
David smiled. "Come on up. I'll throw us together something to eat, then I'll finish up this brake job and we can go, sound good?"
She smiled. "Fine with me."
The black El Camino sat on the shoulder, just out of sight of the clubhouse and Aaron watched as Angelica, after several minutes, finally vanished inside.
He smiled and nodded.
"Bout damn time," he said to himself. "I must be getting old, because I'm starting to get impatient."
He put the vehicle in gear and rolled back up onto the road. "Still, the ball's finally rolling again, and that's all I need."
The El Camino rumbled down the road a bit, and then with a flash of light and a puff of smoke, Aaron and the El Camino vanished.
"Yes," Ares thought. "The ball is finally rolling again."
END
A/N: The latter two chapters of this story were inspired by the song 'May It Be', from the Fellowship of the Ring Soundtrack. In that one song was captured the essence of what I wished to convey in this final chapter of the Ancient Scrolls series.
Thanks to all who have gone on this journey with me. There's nothing more encouraging than to receive feedback from others who enjoy reading these stories as much as I have enjoyed telling them.
I want to extend a special thank you to TPolTucker, Evil But Friendly Rival, JESSEK, gabxena21, and all the others who have contributed reviews as this series has progressed. Your comments have been the fuel that kept this flame burning all the way through to this final end.
Respectfully Yours,
Mike Taurguss