Bladestay, p.15
Bladestay, page 15
The sharp angles of Billy’s jaw flared and tightened as his chest decompressed, as if all the air was vacuumed from his lungs. “That’s—” He cleared his throat. “That’s a cruel thing to ask.”
“I know.”
His eyes traveled along the walls of the cave as if searching for his answer. There was a hatred burning through the tension of his body.
She decided to bail him from his hatred. He deserved that.
“One time,” she said, “Elliot and I and a few other kids were out playing. Patrick was with us, and he was in a really bad mood. We were all playing tag or hide-and-seek, but Patrick was throwing rocks at anything that moved. He was having no luck, and he got angrier every time he missed a target. Well, there were these crows circling.” She twirled a finger upward. “They weren’t even doing ordinary crow antics, just . . .” She put her hand out dreamily. “Riding the wind.”
Billy rubbed his knee, watching her.
“Patrick throws a stone straight into the flock and—just . . . nails one of them. You could hear the thud of that rock hitting its little body. Patrick shouts, points, laughs, and starts dancing around like you’d imagine an idiot might. That bird falls through the air in a flutter of feathers, lands in the grass. Patrick goes running over to it, and pretty soon we’re all standing around the thing. It was so . . . sad. That helpless little crow, trying to walk, trying to fly, trying like hell to just get away, but all it can do is spin in circles. And Patrick, he’s just laughing. He picks up a stick and is going to mess with it more. I remember so clearly this look on Elliot’s face. He was looking at me, and I didn’t realize how angry I was about it until I saw it mirrored on his face.” Theo touched her cheek absently. “Elliot snatches that stick out of Patrick’s hand so fast that Patrick yanks his hand back to find he’d drawn blood. Elliot yells, ‘What is wrong with you?’ I mean, Elliot yelled so loud that it even made me take a step back from him. Elliot’s younger than me. By a few years, and Patrick? He was always a bit big for his age, but at that time, the age gap made their size difference laughable. But Elliot’s never been afraid of this boy three years older and twice his size. They’ve gotten into it before and Patrick knows that’s a losing battle, and soon it’s just me and Elliot with this poor crow. There’s no way it’ll make it on its own. Elliot takes my hand, squeezes it, and says, ‘We have to help him.’ So we take it to my dad and he makes us this enclosure for it—he’s good at that.”
Billy smiled softly. “Creed Carpentry?”
“One and only.”
“Did he survive? The crow?”
Theo nodded. “Three weeks it took. Nursed him back to health. By the end of those weeks, that crow was eating out of our hand. We named him Aardvark. I can’t remember who came up with it or why. It just fit him.”
Billy added a light frown to his smile.
“At the end of three weeks, we go out to the field where Aardvark fell from the sky. Bring him out in the box my dad made. We let him go. That bird hopped out of the box, and I swear he looks at us like he knows what we did. Elliot and I look at each other in disbelief, wondering if the other saw what we’d each seen. Aardvark hops a few more times, spreading his wings, then . . .” Theo paused for a second. “Liftoff.”
“That must’ve felt good.”
“It did.” Theo nodded. “Until that pack of crows comes out of the trees like a wild gang and attacks Aardvark back to the ground. Elliot and I sprint over, waving our arms like madmen, chasing the crows off. But we were too late.” Theo shrugged again. “They’d killed him. Pecked him to death.”
“Goddamn,” Billy said, alarmed.
“Elliot was crushed. He was on his knees. Scooped Aardvark into his arms and just looked up at me so helplessly. That was the first time I saw him cry. We buried that poor bird in the same box we healed him in.”
“I’m sure there’s something poetic there.”
“Yeah, I reckon,” Theo said. “But you know what I think? I think there are two different kinds of men. The kind that breaks things, and the kind that fix things. I think the most special kind of person is the man who doesn’t want to break things, but I think the most noble is the one who wants to break things but chooses to fix them instead. Elliot was the special kind.” She paused, gathered all her courage, and said to Billy, “I think you’re the noble kind.”
Billy went very still when she said that, chose to study the inside of the cave, and Theo could tell from the way he made his face turn into a stone that he didn’t believe what she said, didn’t accept it, and was trying very hard to not let her see the way that comment made him feel. He shook his head, his lips pressed together. Finally, he turned his eyes back to her.
“You don’t know the things I’ve done, Theo.”
“Maybe it’s not too late to stop doing them. At least, I hope so, for my sake too.”
“That’s not the same. You got caught up in a fight that ain’t yours and you’ve only done what you had to do to survive.”
She smiled kindly at him, gave him a soft look that suggested that’s exactly what she’d been trying to say all along.
He nodded. “That’s—” He shook his head. “It’s not the same thing.”
“If you say so.”
Billy was looking at her with such a beautiful intensity that Theo had to look away. Like he just couldn’t believe that anyone could possibly see anything in him that wasn’t reprehensible.
“So what I can’t figure out,” Theo said, shifting the conversation a little, “is how does a boy like Elliot come from a man like Haas? August said Lucas murdered an infant. I can’t wrap my mind around that, Billy. I mean, I saw how Blacksmith was the other night. What he did to John. What he—” Her breath caught a little when she looked into his eyes. “What he was about to do to you. I can’t stop thinking about it. And I’m not even talking about what he did—” She broke off.
“But how he did it,” Billy said.
“Like he’d been waiting a long time to do something like that,” she agreed. “I’m fairly confident there’s something wrong with me, Billy. But Blacksmith?” She shook her head. “I think there might be something broken with him.”
“Theo,” Billy said. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Theo looked at the small fire sitting at the mouth of the cave, then looked upward at the glow it cast on the smooth stone, refusing to let a single tear escape. “I have to tell you something.”
Billy waited a moment, then said, “Okay.”
But she still didn’t say anything. And when she kept saying nothing, Billy reached over and placed his hand on hers.
She looked down at his hand, tightening her fingers over his. “You’re not the only one,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes down, watching his thumb follow the grooves of her knuckles.
“The only one what?”
“I had my razor to August’s throat.”
Billy’s hand went still.
“And I couldn’t do it.” She finally looked up at him. “I asked you how you could love August after he killed your brother. I wouldn’t ask you something so cruel if I weren’t asking myself the same question.”
Billy’s nostrils flared. “How?” he said. Then a little softer: “Tell me how you had a blade to August’s throat and lived to tell the tale.”
“I gave him a shave.”
Billy snorted something like a laugh. “You’re foolin’?”
She shook her head. “He also told me about the diamond.”
“What?”
She nodded.
“Theo,” Billy said. But then he stopped, stayed in a surprised state of contemplation as if still trying to wrap his mind around what Theo had just told him. “You need to understand something . . .” He stopped again. Finally, he continued. “August, he don’t love. When he lost his daughter, something inside him broke and since, I don’t think he’s ever been . . . capable.”
Theo gave him a puzzled look, recalling warm nights of sitting fireside with August, remembering especially the moment when August placed his hands on Pathfinder’s face and leaned his forehead against his. If that wasn’t a gesture of love, of deep connection, Theo couldn’t be sure what was. “But you?” she asked. “His crew?”
“No.” Billy stared at a place in the cave for a long time, taking his time with that truth as if having to face it for the first time. “He don’t care about us.”
Theo didn’t try to fill the silent pain this time.
“It feels like he does.” He nodded. “And he’s real good at making us believe that. And you know what? He might even believe he does. But he don’t. Because it wasn’t just the loss of his daughter, it was the way she was taken.” There was another pause, like the words themselves were heavy, and to hold them in his mouth made him weary. “Lucas didn’t just break the part of August that loves, but the part that trusts. I once saw August sacrifice a man he called a brother in hopes of gettin’ the upper hand with Lucas. August had a family once. He hasn’t had one since, no matter what he says. August is broken, Theo. August would never trust a person to hold a knife to his throat. Never.”
“What are you saying, Billy?”
“I’m saying—” He broke off, but instead of saying the obvious, that Theo had somehow found a way past the ice surrounding August’s heart, Billy slid closer to her and held her hand in his lap with both of his and said, “I’m saying that there’s something wrong with August, not you.”
She looked him in the eyes for as long as she dared, then she closed the inches of space that remained between them and leaned her head on his shoulder. He responded by gently placing his chin on the top of her head, pressing his lips into her hair for just a moment.
“You know what this means, right?” she said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“That if there’s nothing wrong with me, then there’s nothing wrong with you.”
He exhaled a soft, warm breath of laughter into her hair. “Your logic is undeniable.”
Theo smiled, then winced at the searing pain. She held on to it once more, made a small adjustment, but didn’t let go of Billy’s hand.
“How are we going to get out of this?” Theo wondered aloud, not expecting an answer or a solution.
But Billy just held her hand a little tighter and said, “Together.”
CHAPTER 27
A gunshot in the distance yanked Theo and Billy from a state that wasn’t quite sleep, not quite wakefulness. Billy quickly but gently untangled his limbs from Theo’s and scrambled to his feet. He let out a surprised cry of pain and buckled under his swollen knee, grabbing at it. He cursed his way through it, yanked his revolver free with an air of frustration, and caught the edge of the cave with his shoulder, keeping the gun close to his chest as he peered into the forest.
“Are you ready?” Billy asked as he scanned the downward slope of the woods, pale in the morning light.
Theo took a moment after he asked that. In it, she discovered how much she admired Billy for knowing her enough to understand that she wasn’t going to stop.
Theo stood and pressed her hand against the cave, doubling over the curve of her waist. It still felt like it was on fire. “I don’t know if I can . . .” Theo winced and refused to finish that sentence. Can was a matter that was neither here nor there when can’t meant death.
“Yes,” she said. While there was still a threat to her town—yes. While her family was still in danger—yes. While she was still breathing. Yes.
Billy grabbed Theo’s straight razor and slipped it into the pocket at her hip. He returned his weapons to his body. Their height difference was too disparate for him to duck under her arm, so she snaked her hand up his back and clutched his shoulder.
The sound of the river grew louder as they followed their path back down the hillside. At an approachable intersection, they sank down next to the roiling water. They cupped mouthfuls of bitingly cold water until their thirst was quenched. Theo unwrapped the chemise from her stomach.
“How’s it look?” she asked.
Billy took the rust-stained binding from her. “Like it hurts like hell. But clean.” He balled it up and plunged it into the river that tried to yank it from his hands, then brought it back to Theo to let the icy water wash over the angry flesh of the cauterized wound.
“Oh,” she said in surprised relief.
He soaked more water and washed her wound again.
“Good?” he said.
“One more time.”
He plunged for more water and wrung it out over her bruised, burned, and puckered skin. “Better?”
She nodded.
Billy redressed the wound, winding the chemise back around her waist as she held her torn and bloodied shirt out of the way. He hopped to his feet and offered his hand to her. She took it and he hauled her up. The cold had felt good, but already the relief was fading.
“Hold up,” Billy said. He climbed up a steep hillside to a blanket of snow under a large patch of perpetual shadow and cupped a handful, packing the ice between his hands as he stepped and slid carefully back down to her. Briefly making eye contact with her when he lifted her shirt for her to again hold it up out of his way, he pulled back the chemise and slipped the packed layer of compacted snow against the cauterization. Then he laid his hand over the layer of ice and chemise and gently molded it to the curve of her waist.
“Thank you,” Theo said.
He nodded. “I got you.”
They continued to follow their own path back down the hillside until they came to the spot where they’d left Jester’s body. It was gone.
Billy checked his guns before they continued on through their final stretch back to the last place they held camp.
“What’s our play?” Billy asked.
“Stay hidden. Figure out what happened, who survived, who won. Then we come back into the woods and make a plan.”
He holstered his guns. “Agreed.”
Billy’s limp eased the more he moved it and Theo felt more clearheaded than she thought possible. The mechanisms in her mind were cranking again, and she began to shroud her mind in character, trying to pull the wool back up between her and the world, starting to anticipate what she was about to discover. There were so many options, her head was swimming in them.
If he survived, August would have learned that she lied to him about cutting Lucas’s throat.
She knew he no longer had a reasonable incentive to keep her alive.
She also knew she had to confront the reality that her father, her brothers, Elliot—any one of them may not have survived. She tried to tell herself she’d find a way to move on, to keep fighting for her mother and her sister and the boys. She really did. But the thing was, it didn’t really matter if Theo had an hour or a week or a year, nothing could rightly prepare her for what she saw when they came into view of the clearing.
CHAPTER 28
Theo was sprinting with no regard to the pain in her side.
Her father’s legs were still kicking.
In a single moment, she forgot it all. When she saw her father hanging by his neck from a tree, she forgot everything about who she was and who she was supposed to be.
Theo was screaming something.
August was scowling.
Pathfinder and Flea looked to August, their weapons drawn but low, unsure.
Billy caught Theo around her ribs, high up her waist to avoid her injury, and wrangled her in a tangle of aggressively thrashing limbs.
August, slowly, turned and looked up at the face of the man strangling at the end of a rope, then back to Theo, once more to Harrison Creed—his face twisted into something that nobody, not even those who knew August best, could read or understand. Bewilderment. Shock. Malice. Devastation. Glee. Frustration.
August gave a loud, two-whistle chirp, running his hand perpendicular across his throat in the elimination gesture.
Without hesitation, Flea raised his revolver and aimed it the tangle of knots tied to a branch, and pulled the trigger. The boom of the gunshot jolted and froze Theo, who was still in a subdued cage of Billy’s arms.
The rope frayed and snapped, and Harrison Creed landed on the ground below.
Theo fell to her knees, the pain in her side screaming.
A great shadow fell upon Theo, and a moment later, August was kneeling in her line of sight. The cold metal of the end of a revolver touched the underside of her chin and forced her to upturn her face.
August’s eyes bounced across her features, desperately searching for something.
“Goddamn it, Youngblood,” he growled. He dropped his head, a temporary mourning. “Go ensure that man don’t die just yet, Sixer.”
As Billy stepped past them to his task, August dropped the gun from her chin and instead pressed it into the grass, his other arm draped across a knee.
Theo held his gaze angrily, her lips pressed together so they wouldn’t tremble, her eyes glaringly motionless to keep the tears from escaping.
August’s eyes trickled down her body. He reached out and took the unbuttoned hem of her open vest between his fingers and peeled it from her torso.
“Goddamn it, Youngblood,” August said again, and this time Theo didn’t know if he was referring to the unbound swell of her chest or the massacre a little farther down. He pulled the mouth of the vest back over her torso and stroked his eyebrow. He put his hand on the side of her head, leaned over her, and kissed the top of her head.
Theo began to tremble.
“I wish you hadn’t deceived me.” He stood. “But I need you to know that what comes next is about the blood in your veins, not what you claimed was between your legs.” He patted the side of her head, his large palm briefly gentle as if in apology for when his fingers turned hostile, clutching a fistful of hair from the top of her head. Stepping behind her, he yanked her head back, exposing her jugular as he reached down and slipped the straight razor from her front pocket.
