Blood Echo

by Rice, Christopher

If memory serves, the limekilns are actually four structures, one main kiln with a large brick base and a metal chimney about as thick and tall as a Mack truck turned on one end, and then three smaller outbuildings, all with tall metal chimneys, but none of them as big as the main structure. Now, she wishes she’d paid more attention to Marty’s lecture about the place when they hiked here years ago. But she’s got eyes on the entire site and can make out the structures she remembers. That’ll have to do.

  The lantern on the ground was in front of the largest structure, the one with the fattest chimney and the giant crumbling brick base. She can’t be entirely sure, but she’s willing to bet it’s also the one putting out the smell of fire. It’s too dark to see smoke, and the steel chimney’s relatively intact, so there aren’t a lot of holes that could give off light within.

  Priority one is not alerting anyone who’s close to Luke to her presence before she’s got eyes on them. All the strength in the world won’t allow her to stop what she can’t see.

  As quietly as possible, she snaps off a nearby branch in one hand. Then she turns to her right and throws the branch with all the force she can. It spears a tree trunk with a loud thwack. A shadow lurches forward from the spot where the lantern just went out. Just one.

  She had plans. Plans to crush the guy’s windpipe or try to knock him unconscious without breaking his skull, but as soon as they both hit the dirt, she realizes the sheer force of her impact was enough to knock him out cold. But he’ll be a problem if he wakes up, so she rolls him onto his back. He’s not wheezing, or coughing, or groaning.

  She places her fingers to his throat and feels what must be the last beats of his pulse.

  The impact killed him.

  Once she sees what he’s been guarding, maybe she’ll feel guilty. But she doubts it.

  She crawls up onto the main kiln’s brick base, going for speed over silence, reminding herself of her main priority: eyes on Luke; eyes on this Milo fucker. Then unleash whatever hell necessary. The base has got one ruined entrance, but it’s filled with piles of bricks she’d have to crawl over, and the remaining frame of the entrance is too narrow for her to leap through without making a noisy impact.

  One thing she can remember about that long-ago hike is that the main kiln’s chimney has the metal rungs of an old access ladder running up the side. Marty had yelled at some random kid who’d been about to climb the thing, and the kid’s parents had thanked him profusely.

  The chimney’s steel wall is warm. The fire smells stronger now, which says the top of the chimney’s still open. Even better, the fire brings no strange or putrid smells; just woodsmoke, and some chemical smells that suggest accelerant. Nothing on the order of the stench that used to come from the Bannings’ incinerator when she was a little girl.

  Nothing that might be the smell of burning flesh.

  Milo’s sick, she hears that kid Tommy saying. You better hurry.

  She climbs. A rung snaps off under her foot. She pushed too hard. She places the center of her palm flat against the rung overhead and pulls slightly. It does the work of a solid strong-armed grip.

  She’s halfway up the chimney when the rungs suddenly stop altogether.

  A few of them must have broken off over time. She places one hand against the steel and squeezes gently. There’s a low metallic whine, but nothing as loud as the noises she accidentally made in the culvert earlier that night. Within a few seconds, she’s made a handgrip in the steel, which she uses to throw her other arm up over her head. She repeats the process with her other hand. If whoever’s inside can hear her, maybe they’ll assume it’s just the metal responding to the heat from the fire inside. The kiln hasn’t been used in God knows how long.

  When the rungs start to appear again, she’s relieved.

  She grips the next one gently, tugs lightly, and swings her arm up to the one after. She keeps climbing until she’s got her feet lightly resting on the first rungs that showed up after the gap. The edge of the chimney’s roof is within reach, but if she tries to pull herself up the old-fashioned way, she could end up tearing a section of the roof away. So she balances her feet gently on the rungs, imagines that she’s floating underwater as she rests both palms delicately on top of the roof’s edge.

  Heat blasting her face, she peers down the chimney’s opening.

  The chimney’s about eight feet across, but most of what she can see below is fire. It fills what looks like a portable metal firepit. The pit looks too new to be part of the ruined kiln. They probably brought it in for just this purpose. An impossibly tall man in a black stocking cap feeds more fuel into it. One Duraflame log, followed by another, followed by another. Then he steps back, moving out of the frame offered by the chimney.

  Luke’s been stripped down to his underwear and lassoed to some sort of hollow metal platform that’s raised off the ground vertically. It looks like a bed frame. The best she can see, it’s been upended, elevated, and attached to some wooden contraption that looks vaguely like the base you’d see on a catapult in a medieval fantasy epic.

  The fact that she can see this much of Luke is a really bad sign; he’s as close to the fire as possible without being in the flames themselves. His wrists are tied to the top corners of the bed frame, his ankles to the bottom, and the frame’s got long struts running down its length that are probably being heated by the nearby fire.

  She forces herself to breathe deeply. Panic isn’t likely in her given state, but rage is. And the real gift of Zypraxon isn’t just strength, it’s the clear focus that comes from knowing you have it. She can’t waste that gift. Not right now.

  She tries to adjust so she can get a better look at the wooden platform. There’s a winch on one side, and with churning in her gut, she realizes what it’s for. It’s attached to a wheel hidden inside the wood that can lower the metal frame, and Luke, across a ninety-degree axis until he’s facedown, right over the fire. Or in the fire, depending on how far it goes.

  She knows it’s a bad idea, knows it won’t help her swiftly end this, but she can’t help it. She looks at Luke’s face.

  His face and chest are bruising in an orderly pattern that suggests his beating was methodical and precise, and his eyes are slits. Is he actually crying, or is it just the heat making his eyes tear up? His expression makes him look like he’s trying to retrieve a lost thought or he just took a bite of something strange that fell into his food by mistake. Pained, but distant. Like his mind’s left his body. Or it’s trying to.

  Standing on the other side of the firepit, Luke’s captor holds up a photograph in one hand and lifts a hot poker in the other. He slams the side of the pit with the poker to get Luke’s attention. Then he drops the poker, holds up the photograph even higher, and mimes the universal signal for talk with his other hand.

  Luke just stares at him. It’s a picture of Lacey Shannon.

  His captor repeats the signal.

  Slowly, in a halting voice, Luke says, “Is th-that the girl that broke your . . . your heart?”

  The captor lowers the photograph slowly, shakes his head in a dramatic fashion to let Luke know he’s not happy with this response. And she’s terrified by the thought that he’s been reacting to his captors with too much swagger because he’s got no idea how bad their security situation is and he’s sure Cole’s sent a small army of Navy SEALs to his location.

  She knows what’s coming, knows the guy’s about to walk over to the winch and lower Luke closer to the flames. And she knows if she hesitates, she’ll overthink what she needs to do next, and nobody ever improved their aim through overthinking.

  She holds the edges of the chimney on either side of her waist, then she tucks her feet up onto the rim.

  Should she try to stand before she leaps?

  She tries it, but at the last second, she loses her balance. Still, she manages to pitch herself forward headfirst, which was the objective. As she falls, she extends her arms in front of her like an imitation Olympian and drives straight for
the kettle drum’s bed of flame.

  When her hands strike the firepit’s metal instead of the dirt floor, she feels a surge of relief. Bull’s-eye. Then, just as she’d hoped, her impact flips the firepit up over her back, dumping burning logs and branches down onto her body. There’s no pain at first, but her vision’s spotting madly. The surfaces of her eyes are being burned. The sensations all along her back, arms, and hands are like stinging needles, enough to make her cry out if she weren’t triggered. When she is triggered, that’s a sign she’s actually on fire.

  But she’s got one freshly warped edge of the firepit in her left hand, while she braces the empty bottom against her right. Blinking madly, hoping her eyes will heal quickly enough for her to get her vision back, she stands, holding the upturned firepit over her head now like a giant helmet.

  She blinks, sees a pair of black boots several feet away. They must be Milo’s, and she’s struggling to her feet.

  She lowers the firepit some, spins in the direction of the boots, and runs at him with all her strength.

  First she hears unfamiliar, piercing screams as the scalding-hot steel meets the body on the other side. Then she hears snapping sounds that are either bones or the bricks in the wall behind him as they crack under her impossible pressure.

  She keeps pressing. She tells herself she’s doing it because she can’t see him and so she has to be sure she’s got him. But really she’s doing it because the man on the other side of the burning-hot steel is a man who loves torture, because he derives pleasure from the agony of those who get in his way, because his way is fire and hate and he tried to defile the only man she’s ever loved. She does it because she wants him to feel pain. Deep, constant pain like the kind he’s caused to who knows how many others. So she keeps pressing until there’s nothing but silence from the other side of the hot steel.

  When she releases the firepit, it doesn’t come free from its fresh crater. The imprint of the man’s body pushes up through the steel, including a lump in front of his chest that suggests he’d crossed his arms in front of him to stop her assault and failed.

  All around her feet are scattered flames, and when she looks down at it, she realizes her jeans are on fire.

  She turns. Luke’s bare, bloody chest rises and falls with labored breaths. His eyes are so wide it’s as if she’s changed size before his eyes and he’s struggling to take in all of her. Either that, or she’s just become an incomprehensible mystery to him.

  The metal frame could still be burning his back. But she can’t untie him while her clothes are burning, so she tears off her jeans and her shirt. The top of the frame’s too high for her to reach without jumping. If she does that and misses, she could knock the whole thing off its platform and break Luke’s neck. Rotating him flat on his back, his face to the ceiling, might press his flesh more tightly to the hot metal. She drags the wooden base away from where the remains of the fire burn like little bright islands on the dirt floor, then she starts turning the winch, lowering Luke face-first to the floor. It makes her stomach knot, turning the winch in the direction meant for torture, but it’s working.

  “Charley.” He sounds like she’s not really there and he’s asking for her.

  Her words pour from her in whispers and coos—any tone she can think of that doesn’t sound like the voice of a human monster.

  Once he’s parallel with the floor, she cuts the flex-cuffs around his wrists by sliding a finger under each one and tugging outward. He braces his hands on the dirt as she does the same thing to his ankles. Once his feet are free, he lowers his knees to the earth. Something about this new posture unleashes a series of phlegm-filled, hacking coughs. On all fours now, he looks at her, eyes bloodshot and watering. For the first time, she sees the grill marks along his back. They’re bright red and blistering.

  “Charley.” There’s no denying the confused, broken tone in his voice. He still sounds like he’s not sure it’s really her.

  He crumples to the floor, curls into the fetal position. One hand’s extended in her direction, but there’s no life in it, so she can’t be sure he’s reaching out to her. She takes it as gently as she can anyway. What she wants to do is take him in her arms, but she can’t; not with the burns on his back so fresh. And in the silence that follows, she’s reminded there’s nothing in Zypraxon that protects her soul from the things she does while she’s on it.

  What she wants to do now is run. Not alone. With him. She wants to take him in her arms and carry him down the mountain, as far as Bayard Rock where she’ll bathe him in the sea. And then they’ll keep running to somewhere isolated and safe, where she’ll never have to be this kind of avenging angel again, a place where they won’t have to rely on anyone rich and powerful and deceitful to keep them safe. Maybe she’ll change her name again. Maybe he’ll change his. And she’ll never let Zypraxon touch her lips again. Never hear the names Dylan Cody or Noah Turlington or Cole Graydon again. Except in her nightmares.

  She’s got a little less than two hours of strength left. The other two pills were destroyed when her jeans caught fire, she’s sure. But why should that stop her?

  And there’s always the culvert, she thinks before she can stop herself. There’s always your secret stash.

  And that’s when she realizes there’s no running. That’s when she realizes they’ve got their hooks in her in more places than she wants to admit, that no matter what comes next, her first thought will always be of Zypraxon and what she might be able to do with it.

  She doesn’t want to run from what she had to do tonight; she wants to run from what Luke might think of it. And those are very different things.

  Maybe the horrified look in his eyes and the shock in his voice were both responses to watching her kill, and maybe they’re signs he’s never going to come back to her. She won’t know until his shock comes to an end, until he’s back inside his battered body again.

  She tells herself it doesn’t matter.

  What matters is that she saved him.

  What matters is that he was worth saving.

  40

  When one of Graydon’s black Suburbans comes charging up the dirt road toward the Med Ranch, dawn has just started to break over the rolling hills to the east, mingling with their flanks to create a gradually ascending curtain of gold. Charlotte ignores the SUV’s approach. For an hour now, she’s been sitting on the house’s front porch, listening to birdsong and trying to find the space between her breaths. She figures the SUV’s just carrying some of the hired mercenaries Cole scrambled to relocate the night before. At this point, she could not give a damn.

  Too little, too late, she thinks.

  Then the Suburban rolls to a stop a few yards from the front porch, and Marty steps from the back seat, looking tired, but freshly showered.

  Charley shoots to her feet.

  He must have gone to sleep last night with no sense of what was unfolding at their house or in the mountains above town. Now Cole’s brought him here. Maybe it’s a peace offering, or maybe Clements has more men out there and Cole wants to keep Marty safe. There’s no asking Cole. He doesn’t step out of the car after Marty, which means he and whatever cleanup crew he’s managed to put together are probably still up on the mountain, picking through the bloody mess she left behind.

  Whatever Marty sees on her face causes him to rush toward her up the front steps. As soon as she’s in his arms, the entire night before comes rushing out of her in whispers.

  Marty’s never set foot inside the Med Ranch, so he can’t hide his reaction to the stark contrast between the house’s exterior and interior. Outside, it’s a one-story ranch house with solar panels on the roof and a spread of drab-looking trailers in back. Inside, several windowless state-of-the-art treatment rooms run down the center from front to back, their perimeter walls creating two narrow hallways along the sides of the house. Any footprint suggesting the house’s old livable spaces is gone.

  In the trailers behind the house are the implements a
nd laboratories required by a basic trauma center.

  In short, it’s a miniature hospital, built just for her. But the only patient today is Luke. He’s been out cold since they brought him in, thanks to a potent combination of painkillers. He sleeps sitting up in bed, his chest resting on the type of cushion designed to allow pneumonia patients to rest upright so their lungs don’t fill with fluid. In Luke’s case, it’s their best way of keeping him from rolling onto his injured back. For most of the night, she sat vigil next to him. The nurses and doctors, some of whom she recognizes from her last checkup, kept giving her long, frightened looks as they walked past her, fully aware that, for a while at least, she was capable of crushing their skulls in one fist even as she sat there quietly. Of course, they weren’t too scared to take their vials of paradrenaline from her when she first came in.

  Maybe if she had put up a fight . . .

  There’s a bench outside Luke’s room, just beneath a window that was probably once framed by frilly lace curtains. That’s where she leads Marty as she finishes the story.

  “Where is he?” Marty finally asks.

  She had just told him Luke’s on the other side of the nearest door, so he has to mean Cole.

  “Cleaning up, I think. Probably up in the mountains. I figure they’ll want to get as much of it done before sunrise.”

  “Well, time’s almost up.” There’s an angry tremor in his voice.

  “I think . . .” Her breath catches in her throat. She clears it, but that somehow makes her eyes wet and she has to blink a few times. It works. The tears are gone for now. “I think we’re gonna need to change things up a little.”

  “What does that mean, Charley?”

  “I think I’m going to let them put me up somewhere.”

  “Like a hotel?” he asks.

  “No, longer than that. Like . . .”

  “Like what?”

  “I just don’t think I can stay here, Marty.”

  “What, the ranch?”

  “Altamira,” she answers.