by Sarah Fine
“We could have sex first if you want,” he offered. “It would be quick. I’m pretty turned on.”
I smacked him in the face. “Wake up,” I shrieked, fighting his one-handed grip. “Think about what you’re doing.”
He glanced at the belt. “I don’t think it’s all that complicated. A simple loop should do. Like a noose.”
“Asa,” I screamed, but the only sounds from outside were the grunts and thuds of a fierce struggle.
“Stop calling his name,” Ben yelled. As he sat up and reached for my wrists, I slammed my palm against his bruised, tender nose. He fell back with a shout, and I dove over the bench seat, landing on a bunch of toolboxes. As Ben shouted obscenities at me, I wrenched open the first box I could reach and found a rainbow array of water pistols like the one I’d seen Asa pull in Union Station. I had no idea what was in them, but as Ben lunged over the bench seat, I grabbed a red one and squirted him in the face with it.
Unfortunately, he was so close to me that some of it splattered on me. It felt like my face had been set on fire. As Ben started to howl, so did I, fumbling blindly for the handle to open the back doors so I could escape. With tears and snot streaming down my face, I fell out of the van and nearly landed on Arkady and Asa. The older man was on top of him, and Asa was gasping, his eyes bright as Arkady murmured to him. But as I landed in an awkward sprawl, Asa turned his head, and our eyes met. His flared with defiance as he faced Arkady again. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled.
He yanked his arm out of the Russian assassin’s grip and jabbed his fist into Arkady’s throat. The Russian’s eyes bulged as he choked. My own eyes still burning, I scrambled to my feet and squirted Arkady in the face with Asa’s water pistol. He had the same reaction Ben did.
Asa looped his arm around my waist and dragged me back to the van, closing the rear doors as he passed. Briskly, steady despite the blood smeared all over the side of his face and down his left arm, he yanked the side door shut and dumped me in the front passenger seat. He stripped the pistol from my grasp as Ben, growling with rage, lunged up from the back. Asa squirted his brother in the face, causing Ben to fall backward yet again. Then Asa calmly went to the driver’s seat and twisted the keys that were in the ignition.
Gravel flew as the wheels spun, but then we shot forward.
“You’re just going to leave him there?” I asked, stunned. One glance in the side mirror showed Arkady rising from the ground, the knife in his hand, his face a mask of pain and fury.
“Yep,” said Asa. He swung a wide turn at the edge of the parking lot and shot around the front, picking up speed. But instead of pulling onto the road, he zoomed past the bar and turned when he reached the other side of the building. “I am.”
Arkady took a few unsteady steps back when he saw the van barrel into the parking lot again. He started shouting something, but Asa switched the radio on, cranking up the white noise, blood dripping lazily down his neck and onto his shirt. Arkady took off running, heading for the woods behind the bar.
He didn’t make it. I closed my eyes as I heard a scream and a few heavy thumps. When I opened them, Asa was pulling onto the road. He turned off the radio and took a deep breath.
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I think he mighta had that coming.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Are you okay?” I looked Asa over as he sped down the road. He had a deep cut along his forearm and a gash above his cheekbone, and he was sweating like crazy.
“Fine. But Arkady was laying down some serious shit out there.” Asa waggled his arm at me. “I had to do a number on myself to break free of it.”
“You did that yourself?” Ben asked.
“I couldn’t shake it off otherwise. It was like a heavy weight, just keeping me where I was. Watching everything that was happening.”
Including me and Ben and our “passionate reunion,” as Arkady had called it. I swallowed the hard lump of freak-out that had lodged in my throat. “Like the people in the bar tonight,” I said. “They sat back as this waitress hit herself in the face with a meat tenderizer. No one looked at us sideways.”
“We thought you were coming with Headsmen,” Asa said. “I was hiding in the woods until Ben handed over the relic, just to make sure they respected the bargain they’d made.”
“Wait, what?”
“He found me, Mattie,” Ben said. “He was with me when you called earlier.”
“We could tell you were scared, but after what you saw them do to the carnies . . .” Asa shook his head. “I knew you would be upset.”
My chest had started to ache again. “But how did you find Ben?”
“That part wasn’t hard,” said Asa, rolling his eyes. “He had my van and he had the Sensilo relic with him. Unpackaged. Lucky someone else didn’t find him first.”
“Oh no! We left the relic behind with Arkady,” I said.
“Nope.” He pulled it from his pocket and handed it back to Ben. “There are lead wrappers in the back in a gray toolbox. Cover it up and then get it into one of the thicker metal boxes on the floor under the seat.”
Ben took the relic and did as Asa said. “I had already called the Headsmen to offer them the relic when Asa tracked me down. And they had already raided the camp. So we decided to play it out, hoping they would keep their word.”
Having packaged the relic, Ben dropped heavily onto the bench, staring down at his belt, which lay on the floor. “I remember everything that happened just now, but . . . Oh, Mattie.” He looked up at me with black despair in his eyes.
I shuddered. “It wasn’t your fault. I was out of control for a while there as well.”
“I was so happy that you wanted me,” he whispered.
Asa kept his gaze anchored out the front window. “Arkady is one of the most powerful Knedas naturals in the world. If he wants you to do something, chances are you’re gonna do it.”
“Mattie fought back,” Ben said. “She hit him.”
“Mattie is in constant pain. It lets her shake off the influence.”
“He dosed me up with Ekstazo juice.” My fingers dug into my arms as I watched the black woods go by. “It’s wearing off now, but—”
“Fuck,” Asa whispered, rubbing his chest. “You’re right. How the hell did you manage to defy him?”
“I didn’t do it fast enough. For a while I was completely caught. I said, ‘Let’s blow this joint’ before we walked out of a bar, and I guess Arkady took what I said literally and made the bartender—” I stifled a sob. “I saw the fire. I know people died.”
“Stop that,” Asa snapped. “It wasn’t your fault, and whatever happened in here before I managed to get Arkady wasn’t either of your faults. This is what he’s known for. He gets off on it.” Asa looked over at me. “He made sure to tell me as much.”
I remembered how Arkady was whispering to him while they struggled. “Was he trying to get you to hurt yourself?”
“No. He was trying to get me to hurt you.”
And then we were all quiet. Asa drove briefly on a state road and then turned off, finally following a series of signs for Lake Doherty’s Family Cabins and Campgrounds. As we bumped down the road, any remaining effects of the Ekstazo juice peeled off in strips, my pain rising with every second. By the time Asa pulled into a gravel parking lot at the front of a set of lighted trails with signs that indicated the lake was straight ahead, I had my knees to my chest and my head bowed.
“Ben, help her out.”
Ben opened my passenger door a minute later. “Can I carry you, or do you want to walk?”
“I’m not sure I can.”
His arms slid behind my back and under my knees, and he pulled me snug to his chest. I tucked my head into the crook of his neck. “I’ve got you.”
He carried me along a trail, up an incline, and then up a set of steps, his shoes clunking on wood as he carried me to the door.
“Got her,” Asa said to someone as a screen door screeched open and
a light switched on.
“He got her!” said a familiar voice, and the announcement was followed by excited exclamations from others. I opened my eyes to see Vernon’s snaggletoothed smile, with Betsy standing just behind him. Jimmy stood near the window, looking out on the path as if he expected someone to be following us, and Letisha sat in the corner, her lap covered in an elaborate knitting project.
“Knew he would,” she said casually.
“Do you have somewhere she can rest?” Asa asked.
“Right back here,” called a voice I recognized as Roberta’s. “She can have my bed.”
Ben carried me down a hall as I blinked at my new surroundings. It was a rustic cabin, very plain, a few pictures of fishing scenes on the walls but little else. Ben laid me down on a bed with clean sheets and a crocheted afghan, and I immediately curled onto my side. It felt safer and better to be huddled in a ball instead of stretched out and vulnerable.
Ben sat down at the foot of the bed, and Asa knelt next to me. “We’re gonna pull that splinter now, Mattie.”
“What? No!” I said.
Asa sat back. “No? I’ve got Vernon here, and we’ve got something strong enough—”
“No. Asa, they tried to pull it when I was at the sheriff’s station.” I told him everything that had happened, that Daeng was there, who Jack was, and how the whole thing had ended with me coughing up blood. “I can’t do that again. I think it would kill me.”
Asa ran his hands through his hair. “We can’t leave it in there. That’ll kill you, too.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” asked Ben. “Should we take her to a hospital?”
“Won’t help,” said Jimmy. “Maybe I could give her some of my juice, and then you could try.”
“I said no,” I shouted, but the effort made me cough. I got my arm up to cover my mouth, but it came away speckled with blood. Roberta made a distressed noise and disappeared down the hall. I avoided everyone’s gazes as my head sank to the pillow. My skin felt clammy and chilled, and I shivered. Asa pulled the afghan up over my shoulders.
“Arkady told me how Volodya realized that his Sensilo relic was a fake,” I said weakly. I let out a raspy cough and opened my eyes as Roberta set a glass of water on the bedside table. Asa moved out of the way as she gently used a warm, wet cloth to clean my bloody arm. “You should take care of Asa, too.”
He waved her off. “I want to hear what Arkady said.”
“He said they knew it was fake when the magic in what they thought was the original could be transferred into another relic.”
“Did he say what kind of relic?”
“No. And he wouldn’t tell me more. He just said original magic isn’t like other magic.”
“I believe we knew that already,” said Jimmy.
“Original magic isn’t like other magic,” Asa said slowly. “And we know it’s a fake if we can transfer it into another relic.” He stood up. “I have to go make some calls.”
“So we’re not doing this tonight?” asked Vernon.
“We’re not making another move until we know what the fuck we’re actually doing.” Asa turned and walked down the hall without a backward glance.
Ben gave me a sad, guilty look. “I’m going to go get cleaned up,” he mumbled. “I’ll call your parents and let them know you’re okay.”
He left, too, and Jimmy, Vernon, and Betsy followed him out.
Roberta sat down on the floor next to my bed, pulling her extraordinarily long hair out from under her bottom, twisting it around, and laying it in her lap like a pet. “They’re all feeling helpless and scared to death.”
“I am, too.”
“Yes, but you can’t run from it.”
“You could.”
She gave me a kindly smile. “But then you’d be in here all by yourself, and that just seems unfair.” She patted my hand. “What a crazy few days, huh? I thought I’d be in some underground cell the rest of my life. I thought those Headsmen were going to disappear us all.”
“Why didn’t they?”
She grunted out a laugh. “Things started exploding.”
“The Headsmen had defenses against Knedas magic.”
“Oh, this wasn’t magic. Asa rigged a few of our generators to blow. Fire shooting into the sky, smoke, boom. Ooh, boy, those Headsmen were running around like headless chickens. They thought the only thing they had to worry about was magic. And then, just as the fires got bad and the agents had scattered to figure out what was going on, Asa comes roaring up in Jimmy’s RV, jumps out, and tackles the head agent lady. Shot her with her own Taser. He cut a few of us free, and then it was pretty chaotic there for a while. I think we got everyone out, but only a few of us wanted to stick together.” She shrugged. “That’s probably good, since the Headsmen might still be looking for us.”
“I think they’ve been kinda busy.” My guess was that a bunch of small-time carnies was on the bottom of their list of priorities right now after the wide swath of murder and mayhem Arkady had left in his wake.
“Well, either way, it’s just a few of us now. We haven’t decided what to do, but we figured we owed Asa for what he did for us. And the one thing he asked for in return was help in getting you whole again.”
“Thanks for agreeing to his terms.”
She smiled, then helped me sit up and sip some more water. “It was a pleasure, sweetheart. Can I get you anything else?” She turned as Asa appeared in the doorway, his bruised face pale, a butterfly bandage over the cut on his cheek and another wrapped over the gash on his arm. “What’s wrong?”
“I need a minute with Mattie.”
She left the room, and Asa sank down on the floor to take her place. “Hey,” he said gently. “How are you?”
“Good.”
“Liar.” He touched the center of his chest. “Right here. Like a fucking knife.”
“Then why did you ask me how I am?” I took in the shine of sweat on his brow. “I hate that it hurts you.”
“I can deal with it.”
“How’s Gracie?”
“She’s good. Her leg’s set. Dr. Monahan agreed to keep her a few more days so I could take care of things. I didn’t want her in the line of fire.”
“Does Ben know what he did?”
Asa shook his head, and when he saw my raised eyebrows, he said, “I needed him to focus, Mattie. We can deal with it later.”
“Thank you for coming after me.”
“Did you think I was gonna leave you behind?”
“Not for a minute.”
He gave me a sweet smile that faded almost instantly. “We have to talk. I think I know what Arkady meant about original magic. You’re not gonna like it. I sure as hell don’t.”
“Tell me.”
“I think original magic won’t just flow into any vessel, no matter how strong it is, no matter how good the conduit. I think it’ll only enter the original vessel. The original relic.”
A shiver shook me to the bone. “So this splinter . . . it has to be united with the rest of the magic, in the Strikon bone relic.”
Asa winced as the splinter jabbed at my chest wall. “We could try to get it into another reliquary, but—”
“I’d never ask someone else to take this,” I said through clenched teeth.
“I know.” He looked pained as he reached up to touch a stray curl that had fallen across my face. “I know you wouldn’t. But I was about to say that I didn’t think it would work anyway. It’s pretty likely that the magic will only flow out of the relic and into a reliquary, or out of a reliquary and into the relic, not from person to person. Even if we were willing to try, it might kill you.”
“So we have no choice.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. “No, I don’t think we do,” he finally said.
A drop of sweat trickled down Asa’s cheek as he laced his fingers with mine, and we both hung on tight. I knew I was hurting him, but he’d said he could take it, and I was counting on that.
If we wanted to succeed, if I wanted to have any chance of surviving, we were going to have to seek help from the person who possessed the bone relic—the magic boss of the West Coast, the man who had brutally kidnapped Ben last year just to lure Asa into his web . . . and who had expected Ben to deliver the Sensilo relic to him a few days ago. Frank Brindle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The smell of coffee and bacon pulled me from my cocoon of pain. I hadn’t slept much, just tossed and turned, trying not to scream. What few moments of sleep I did get were full of fire and meat tenderizers and Ben telling me he loved me before pulling his belt tight around my throat.
Not exactly the most restful night.
Needing the bathroom, I braced myself on the bedside table and slowly rose on shaking limbs. The last few days had almost completely sapped my strength, and each step felt like a risk, like my bones might crumble each time I put weight on them. I was halfway down the hall when Letisha came rushing up the hallway toward me, her brown eyes wide. “I could hear you from two rooms away!”
I leaned on her as she put her arm around my waist. “I wasn’t making noise, was I?”
She shook her head. “Your determination—and your fear that you won’t make it. I can hear it, loud and clear.”
She gave me a few minutes of privacy in the bathroom but hovered outside the door. I could hear her talking to someone in low, urgent tones. I grabbed a washcloth and cleaned the tearstains from my face. When I opened the bathroom door again, Quentin had joined Letisha in the hallway.
“I got in late last night,” he said. “It’s all over the news—the New Kent Sheriff’s Office was attacked yesterday, and then there was a major fire in—”
“I know already,” I whispered, holding my hand up to stop him.
“Jimmy told me the rest,” he said, looking somber. “He said you were in bad shape.”
“I’ll be fine.” I leaned against the wall, hoping I wouldn’t slide to the floor. The greasy smells coming from the kitchen turned my stomach upside down.
Asa picked that moment to emerge from the kitchen with a green smoothie in his hand. He looked back and forth from me to Quentin as he sipped his drink.