The Mortal Sleep (Hollow Folk Book 4)

by Gregory Ashe

  What we want, though—that’s never what we get.

  So I closed my eyes and slipped back into my dying body, pulling Hannah with me across the barrier between worlds. There was tension, resistance. Then I felt my big brother give a very gentle push. And then we were across.

  FIRST WAS THE PAIN. All the cuts and aches that had followed me up the mountain, plus some new ones. In my face. On the right side of my face. And a ringing in my ears that washed out all other sound. But it didn’t hurt as bad as I’d thought. Maybe he’d shot me in my head. That’s why my face hurt. That’s why the pain wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be; he’d blown out some crucial center of my brain, and I was in shock, and in a few minutes, I’d be gone.

  Except no wave of blackness crashed over me. And the pain didn’t get any better. If anything, it got worse, and I groaned as the ringing in my ears seemed to double, and the side of my face throbbed in a dozen different places. I’d only been out of my body for a few minutes—had he cut me? Was my face in ribbons?

  The part of my brain that was still working disassembled that idea rather quickly. I could feel my face, and although it hurt, it was more like a series of sharp pinpricks than long, sustained cuts. I blinked, forced my eyes to stay open, and a migraine rushed down my optic nerve. It was so goddamn bright. Not the steady yellow of electric bulbs; flickering, and I remembered the candles, and the spatter of dried wax. But this light was much brighter than candles. And there was heat, too—pressing against me, walling one side of my body.

  “Vie?” That was Hannah’s voice, and it pierced my head like a steam whistle. I groaned and tried not to throw up. “Vie? Are you—oh.”

  Then the steel-capped toe of a boot dug into my back, low, just above the kidney. “Up, boy-o.” Then harder, and this time, I had to flop onto my stomach, gagging against the pain. “Up, right fucking now.”

  Something pricked my nose. I forced myself to concentrate, to pay attention. With my forehead resting on the boards, I was nuzzled up to a bullet hole in the floor. Splinters poked and prodded my nose. I ran fingers over the side of my face and found more slivers. I jerked one loose, and it felt like my head was a balloon and I’d just popped it. The world went white.

  I didn’t even realize my dad was dragging me upright until my soles scuffed the floor. He had a good grip on my collar, twisting it until it choked me—not enough to make me black out, but enough that it was about all I could do to stay on my feet and suck air. Black pinwheeled across my vision, and I tried to pick out details.

  Fire. Fire licked up the wall opposite me. The cedar log siding spat and popped, and the smoke whirled on thermals toward the high ceiling. From the hearth, a trail of still burning logs and embers ran to the base of the wall. Someone had spread the fire. Someone had intended for it to catch.

  The Lady stood still as the blaze crept along her hem. The ancient black skirt burned easily, the flames twisting around her like crepe paper. From this distance, I was close enough to see the wrinkled flesh of her hands blister in the heat. I could see the first black fissure open where the heat ate at the fat in her arm, and the skin split and yawned open.

  But she didn’t move. Her hands were still in that posy knot at her waist. Only her face showed any flicker of life, and it was horrible. Her jaw sagged. Drool glistened and dripped off her chin. Firelight spun yellow yarn in that drool. Her cheeks quivered, spasmed, clenched. Her eyes spun. Black drifted over the orange like ink in clear water, and then the orange would burn off the black again. The battle was still going on.

  Hauling me up another inch, Dad walked me backward until I was pressed against his chest, and he leaned over my shoulder, eyes intent on the nightmare struggle in the Lady’s eyes.

  “You did that, did you? You’re one lucky son of a bitch. Guess I was right not to put all my chips on that old bitch.” He watched another moment. “Aw, fuck, that fire isn’t fast enough.”

  The pistol glided up. He aimed for the length of one slow, steady breath, and then his index finger crooked hard, and the pistol kicked. The sound of the gunshot that close to my head left my ears ringing again, but I didn’t care about my ears.

  Dad’s shot had taken the Lady in the throat, and what spilled out of her didn’t look like blood. It was black and thick and textured. At first, it reminded me of the oldest, wettest leaves at the end of autumn, the ones at the bottom of the mulch pile that have gone dark with rot. But this was blood, I realized. Old, yes. And thick, yes. Clotted, ancient blood.

  Would the same thing come out of my mom’s throat?

  My knees went out at the thought, and the twisted collar of my shirt bit into my throat, and blackness snowed across my vision.

  Dad shook me. “Walk, boy. Right fucking now.”

  Hannah peered over the sofa. My Hannah. In her body, all of her. She stared at each of us. The pistol dug into my back, in the same spot where the boot had kicked me. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes flicked to the right.

  Then I saw Tyler. He was kneeling on the floor, his face vacant, his little hands hanging at his side like he’d just fumbled his first pass or biffed it at t-ball or caught nothing but air when he ran up for a kick in soccer: a boyish disbelief mixed with total disappointment.

  “Tyler?” I struggled against Dad’s grip, never mind the gun jabbing me in the kidney. “Tyler, wake up!”

  Fire snaked along the chandelier’s rope, gobbled the wood, blackened the tips of elk antlers. As the fire grew, wax rained down in huge fat drops. One struck Tyler’s cheek and hung there like bird shit. Even though it must have hurt—the wax was hot, and when a gobbet smacked my hand, right between my fingers, I yelped and tried to shake it off—Tyler didn’t move.

  “Leave him. He’s fucking retarded anyway.” Twisting tighter on my shirt, Dad dragged me, and my heels slipped and skipped along the polished boards as I tried to get purchase and pull myself free. I spun, slapping at the gun at my back, raking my nails along Dad’s hand, grabbing his belt and yanking on it as though I could somehow reverse his momentum.

  We made it about five yards like that, two cats scratching in a burlap sack, when dad gave me another shake and shoved me away from him. I hit the floor on my knees. Air rushed into my lungs; everything brightened and pressed closer as oxygen rushed to my brain. I closed my eyes to keep from falling over. I breathed cedar smoke and tasted blood and the raw, lingering bile in my throat.

  “You can fucking burn with them, then,” Dad said, and I glanced back and saw him at the doorway. “You ever come looking for me, or you tell your bitch mother about any of this, and I’ll personally cut off your balls and—”

  His jaw sagged. His eyes went wide. For a moment, he looked like a man in an ecstasy, like a saint or martyr about to be hauled up on some sort of divine fly-line. Then he dropped, his knees folding, his face planting hard on the boards.

  Behind him, Austin drew back the butt of his rifle and aimed the weapon into the cabin.

  Our eyes met.

  “Are you—” He shouted hoarsely over the crackle of the flames. “Are you you?”

  Slowly, I got to my feet. The rifle followed me. Flames danced in the green-blue mirrors of Austin’s eyes.

  “What the hell do you think I’d say even if it weren’t really me?”

  “Vie?” Hannah shouted. “Vie, the fire’s getting really hot. Vie!”

  Austin’s mouth hardened and thinned. The friction burn on his neck from Krystal’s vine was ugly in the firelight, and his voice rasped as he said, “Tell me something so I know it’s you.”

  I didn’t even think. The words just came out. “I know we broke up. I know I don’t have any right to say this. But you deserve better than Kaden. You deserve someone who loves you totally, completely, for the amazing person you are, not somebody who will sleep with you because he wants to save you. I don’t care if you fuck every other guy in town, I don’t care if we’re broken up and it’s none of my business, I’m telling y
ou that he’s going to be the biggest fucking mistake of your life if you let him.”

  Austin’s head lowered infinitesimally as he sighted down the barrel. His finger was tight around the trigger. Then he fired.

  It took me a moment to realize I hadn’t been hit, and I shot a look over my shoulder. Lawayne Karkkanew took a stumbling step back, his hand over his chest where a rose blossomed wetly across a canvas shirt. Then Lawayne sat down hard. Blood bubbled pinkly at his mouth; he was breathing like he’d climbed a mountain, which I guess he had. And then he sagged against the corner of the fireplace and died. A pistol clattered onto the floor.

  Lowering the rifle, Austin cast another cold look across the cabin before his gaze settled on me. “You are possibly the most jealous person I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m not jealous. I’m telling you he’s bad for you.”

  With a shake of his head, Austin stepped over my dad’s body and limped toward the sofa. He encircled Hannah with one arm and lifted her onto his hip; he was breathing funny.

  I followed his example, jogging back to where Tyler knelt and raising him in my arms. His skin was hot; blisters welled on his neck, and he flinched when I pressed him to me. But he didn’t speak, and after that initial reaction, he didn’t shift or struggle. I brushed his mind with mine and found those same lines of broken glass and barbed wire, and I hissed and swallowed a swear.

  When I rejoined Austin, he was pressing Hannah’s head into his shoulder, whispering into her ear, “Don’t look. I’ll tell you when you can look, ok?”

  She nodded once, her small frame molding itself around Austin, her back trembling as she sucked in air and cried. Austin dragged the rifle’s strap over his shoulder and then stroked her back once with his free hand. Then again. And he whispered something else in her ear, and her whole body jerked once, and then, after a few more moments, once more, and then she lay quietly against him. He wiped her cheeks and patted her back one more time.

  “How’d you do that?” I asked as I followed him to the door.

  Under the starlight, everything was pale about him except the abraded skin of his neck, which looked black and rough in comparison. He led us out into the snow, which sloughed off my fevered cheeks, melted, dripped off my jaw.

  Austin fumbled something out of his back pocket and spoke into it: a walkie-talkie. Jake’s voice crackled back, and off in the distance, headlights bored holes into the night. They rocked and bounced toward us. A way out of here. A way home.

  We stood there together, waiting.

  As the headlights came closer, Austin broke the silence between us. “You don’t care if I fuck every other guy in town, huh?”

  My hand trembled on Tyler’s back, trying to massage the tension out of the child’s body, and in spite of my best effort my voice came out with a million little shakes in it. “Just not Kaden.”

  “Every other guy?”

  “Everybody’s allowed one slutty phase.”

  His wheeze of laughter sounded grotesque but honest, and Hannah jolted upright in his arms. He had to soothe her against him, still laughing, pausing as he stroked her back to wipe his eyes and keep laughing. And the headlights bounced through the snowscape.

  When he’d stopped laughing, he looked at me, and his eyes shone with firelight and with the refracted gleam off the snow and with something else, with something that came from deep inside him and burned like the last star before morning.

  “There’s really only one guy.” He shifted Hannah to his other shoulder, and he could have looked away then, but he didn’t. He’d always been the brave one. He’d always been much braver than I. “For me, you know. Just one. And I know I messed up, but—”

  The Charger roared out of the darkness, a cobalt streak like electricity in a blackout, and as it spun hard on the soft prairie soil, the passenger door flew open, and Emmett stumbled out. He hit me at a full run, clutching me to him, his hands turning my head, pulling out my arms, spinning me, checking every inch of me like he wanted to make sure every piece was still in place, and then he clutched me again, his mouth on my mouth, his mouth on my cheek, his mouth on my jaw, his mouth on my ear, his mouth whispering. “I love you, Jesus Christ, you’re ok, oh my God, I fucking love you, oh Christ, oh Christ, you’re ok, Jesus Christ, you’re here, you’re ok, right, you’re ok? Right, Vie, right? Tell me you’re ok.”

  When he pulled back to study my eyes, I looked past him. Just for a second. For one single instant. And I saw Austin, soot blackening the bridge of his nose, blood staining his coat where a knife had parted fabric and flesh. In spite of the wound, he was still standing, and his hand moved slowly down Hannah’s back, and he whispered softly in her ear, and she raised her head slightly and looked around, and then she laughed, just a soft little laugh, but it was the first pure sound that pocket of hell had ever heard, and then she shivered and snuggled back against Austin, and his eyes never left mine, never flicked away, never wavered, because he’d always been the bravest one.

  “I’m fine,” I said, my eyes going back to Emmett, and then Em kissed me, dragging me against him, trying to squeeze me even with Tyler’s body between us.

  One last, treacherous, traitorous glance. Just one. And I saw Austin smile, and maybe it was just a trick of the snow and the shadows, maybe it was just my imagination, but he nodded his head, and I thought I saw the starlight wink out in his eyes.

  WE DROVE OUT OF the mountains: Em and I on the Ducati, Jake and Temple Mae and Austin and Kaden and Becca in the Charger with the kids, and Sharrika driving the Impala with Jim passed out in the seat next to her. When we got off the last service road and turned onto the state highway, Sheriff Hatcher had his cruiser parked across both lanes, and he got out and leaned hard on the hood, like he’d almost fallen over, and stared into the glare of the headlights.

  His breath steamed and spun snowflakes in reverse. “What the hell happened?”

  I shook my head.

  “Damn near felt like the mountains were coming down on us.”

  “It’s over.”

  He breathed out again slowly, his faced washed white and two-dimensional by the halogen bulbs. “Is that a fact?”

  I thought of Kyle Stark-Taylor, whom we had left with a line of electricity running into his body. What would he do when that last charge ran out? Would he come after us? Would he pull down the Bighorns and bury Vehpese? Temple Mae had told me with one single word what had happened to Leo: Dead. And her feline eyes had filled with tears, and she’d slapped me. So Leo wasn’t a problem. But Kyle.

  I shrugged.

  “You need a hospital.”

  “Some of us.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  And our shitty little parade streamed after the blues and reds until we reached the Western Bighorn Hospital, west of Vehpese—the closest medical facility after Kyle had torn down the hospital in town. As we got out of the cars, the sight of my friends hit me like a sucker punch. None of us looked good. I knew that I looked like shit, and a long bloody rash ran down Temple Mae’s forehead, and Sharrika kept looking around and letting off these shrill bursts of laughter. Becca, somehow, had survived with nothing but a palmprint of dirt smeared across one cheek. Jake had a bloody lip—no, scratch that. When I got closer, I saw that a part of his lip had actually been severed and was dangling by a scrap of flesh. And the kid hadn’t complained, hadn’t even made a noise. Emmett looked like he’d been kicked down a few different hills—his leather jacket was scuffed and torn in a dozen places, and the cut on his neck had reopened and soaked his shirt.

  But they were the walking wounded. They were the ones who had come out more or less in one piece.

  Kaden and Jim and Austin hadn’t. Kaden could barely stand, and Jake and Emmett had to lift him out of the car by the elbows, and the granola boy with a hand-stitched peace sign on his Vineyard Vines polo went into some kind of seizure the minute he touched the ground. His back arched, and his head shot from side to sid
e, and for one terrible moment I thought he was trying to bite Emmett and Jake. Then he lurched forward, bending in the opposite direction, and spewed frothy white vomit all over the curb. Jake’s face was grim, but he kept a strong grip. Emmett danced backward. He was trying to save his retro Jordans. A crew of nurses and techs got Kaden onto a stretcher while the rest of us watched.

  Jim, in contrast, was unresponsive, and no amount of calling his name could rouse him. They took him on a stretcher too.

  Austin, though.

  I knew I’d have nightmares about him, about this night, the rest of my life.

  That cut in his coat, the one that had left a bloody oval on the fabric? It was bad. Really bad. A lot worse than Austin had let anyone know. When he tried to stand, still clutching Hannah against him, he wheezed, and pink spume ran around his mouth like coral. I shifted Tyler’s weight and went for Austin, trying to get an arm around him, and Austin slapped my chest with the back of his hand and shook his head and grinned, just this huge motherfucking shit-eating grin, and that pink spume popped around his mouth and surged back with his next breath.

  “Uh uh,” he said, and the words sucked and gasped in his chest, but he was still smiling. “I get to do this. Me.”

  “Austin, you need—Christ, I don’t know what you need, like ten hours of surgery or something, but you can’t—”

  “Vie.” He gave me another soft whap with the back of his hand.

  Pressing Tyler’s head against my shoulder, I stumbled out of Austin’s path. He took a step, and his knee folded, and Becca lunged for him. But Austin didn’t fall. And he shook his head at Becca, and she fell back. He took another step. More nurses and techs were pouring out of the building now, some with stretchers, some with first-aid kits, some just staring. Austin headed to the closest one, a dark-haired woman with pinched eyes, still stroking Hannah’s back. He coughed, and his knee went out again like a trap door, but he caught himself, coughed, and some of that pink coral spattered across the back of his hand. I would dream about this. That was the only thought in my head as I clutched at Tyler. I would dream about this forever.