Page 23 of Bones and Ashes

I look at his hands again. The maggots. The peelin' flesh. The exposed bone rendered in white ink so clean it almost glows against the rot surroundin' it.

That's what he's wearin'. Not death. The aftermath of death. The part that comes after, where you're alive again but the decay followed you out of the grave and now it lives on your skin forever.

A resurrection that didn't wash the rot off—just animated it.

And I think about my own ink. The angels fallin' from heaven with their swords drawn. The demons screamin' in chains. The war across my back and chest and ribs, the battle between good and evil carved into me like a testimony I can't take back and never wanted to.

If my tats are the war between good and evil, his are the distance between life and death.

That thin, sick, maggot-ridden space where a man exists in both states at once and don't belong fully to either.

I sit with that for a second.

All the while, through all my silence, he waits.

Of course, he does. He not only wants me to see him, he wants me to start.

All right then, I'll start. "You know why they call this place badlands?"

His eyebrow goes up. Smile stays put. "This place? Like… your club?"

"Nah. This area here around Glendive."

Laz leans back, kickin' his legs the same way June did, but somehow he manages to not bump mine under the table. "Well, if it's anything like the badlands where I come from, then it's Lakota for bad spirits. And they meant that literally."

"Bad spirits," I echo back. "We got a park here called Makoshika. Comes from Lakota. Mako sika. But obviously, you already know that."

"I do," he says plainly. "Something you might not know about the Sons is that we're not like you."

"Like me? Or like us?" I don't explain who 'us' is. He knows.

"This club. That decided to become the bad spirits instead of just exist alongside them."

"Is that what we've done here?"

"I don't know, Legion. Is it?"

Hearin' him say my name evokes a strange feeling inside me. A sense of true familiarity that doesn't quite belong. Doesn't quite not either, though.

I lean back in my seat too. "I can't say that I've imagined this moment," I tell him. "I literally learned about you less than two hours ago. But if I had known, Lazarus, this would not be the conversation I'd have planned."

His smile lifts a little. His blue eyes brighten. "Well, I've imagined you a hundred million different ways. And I'll be honest as well, this wasn't how I saw it goin' either."

"How did you see it goin'?"

"Fightin'."

I laugh. "Fightin' over what?"

"Who you are. Who you aren't."

I press my lips together and nod. "That's fair, I guess. So who was I? I mean, before you came into my club and sat down at my table?"

He leans forward now. Eyes still bright, smile still there. "Brick's piece of shit."

We lock eyes. Hold. Then he leans back again.

"And now?" I ask.