An Awesome Creature to Behold

 

Is there anything an author hates saying more than "coming soon?" I can't think of it at the moment. I'm so, so, so tired of telling y'all that Lord Have Mercy Part Four is coming soon! It is. Soon is a relative term when it comes to the world of books more than one-thousand pages long. But still. I'm sick of saying it. 

Instead, I'll say look at this cute antique store mug! Ah! It's perfect! Full of assorted zinnias: Oklahomas, Floret originals, and Dawn Creek Pastels. 

I know I've said it before, but LHM is meant to be a bookend for Fearless, which means it's written in the same intentionally unhurried, lush, Southern Epic style. Indulgent, perhaps, but how could I possibly justify book ten being less grand than book one? Impossible. Mercy and Ava have always, in their Southern-ified version of Wuthering Heights, been reminiscent of folk heroes. As much as I'm gnashing my teeth over wanting to be done, there's been a certain writerly delight in bringing the monster - always there, always helping, always bolstering his brothers - back in full Technicolor. 

Soon. I'll keep saying it until it's Now. 

“Right, then,” the Brit said, and gestured to the boy. “Bind his hands.”

“Nah, you don’t need to do that,” a third voice called from the front door.

Felix.

A jolt moved through Harlan, like that time he’d accidentally grabbed an electric fence. A cessation of all feeling, and then painful spikes of it down all his limbs. The sensation of having been struck in the back of the head, and a hard, hitching breath that didn’t provide enough oxygen.

“He’s not gonna jump me,” Felix continued, the floorboards creaking beneath his weight as he approached, and then he finally stepped into view. “He knows that wouldn’t end well for him.”

The man who moved to stand between the two gunmen wasn’t a version of Felix Harlan had ever come face to face with. Not kid-Felix in the clearing; not teenage-Felix standing to his new, full, towering height and intimidating his friends when they went too far; not friendly, newly-patched-Felix, in his uncreased cut, with his encouraging shoulder squeeze. He wasn’t even the grieving, shithead-Felix who’d lashed out at Harlan the night he abandoned the club, though that version, long-reviled, was Harlan’s driving force today.

Nor was it the adult-Felix he’d met, and questioned, and imprisoned in Knoxville just a few months ago. That version of Felix had given Harlan that same electric shock sensation, too, but in a different way. He’d been older, yes, somehow bigger, heavier, grown into himself in full adulthood, his physical presence truly terrifying…but tempered. By contentment. By a stable family life. He’d been the silverback, the alpha, the male lion of a pride, assured of his strength, and of his support, in no hurry to rise to any of Harlan’s bait. He’d been cocky in a way Harlan didn’t remember, and it had set Harlan’s teeth on edge.

How dare he? How dare some lowlife, murdering scum of the earth get to be happy? Get to be so satisfied?

And worst of all…the thing that made Harlan want to scream…was that he hadn’t remembered him. Wantabi = wannabe, a clear message. Remember me? Remember the little wannabe you treated like shit? Look at me now, bitch. How do you like me now?

He’d walked into the interrogation room for the first time, nauseous with anticipation, skin prickling with giddy sweat. And then Felix had lifted his head, and looked at him, and looked right through him, and Harlan had realized with an ugly lurch that Felix didn’t remember him at all.

But the man standing before him now wasn’t that Felix, nor any of the others. This man had stripped off every name but one.

Mercy.

This, Harlan realized, arms bared in a tank top, thick and strong with muscle, inked with tattoos, his hair tied back tight at the nape of his neck, hems of his jeans wet with water, guns and knives hanging off his belt, was the creature that Oliver Landau and Dee Lécuyer had spawned one hot summer in New Orleans. A creature born of rage, and pain, and grief, and then honed, over the years, to an instrument of the Lean Dogs Motorcycle Club capable of dealing rage, pain, and grief back out into the world at twice the measure.

He was an awesome creature to behold. In the moment, it didn’t matter how many pushups Harlan had done, what records he’d broken on the range or the obstacle course, how many arrests he’d made or suspects he’d killed in the line of duty. He felt reduced to a child again. Like Little Red Riding Hood stumbling out of the forest and straight into the jaws of the Big Bad Wolf.