Monarch Falls (The Four Quarters of Imagination Book 1)

by Lumen Reese

  “I can do it myself.”

  “You can’t see your own forehead,” he said.

  I tried, looking up and squinting, and he sighed around a tiny smile.

  “That was scary, huh?” he said after a moment of silence.

  I tried to stay still as he wiped away the blood, flinching away a few times from the pain. My throat clenched up. “You were so fast,” I murmured, because it was the closest thing I could manage to a ‘thank you’ without starting a flood of tears. I was right on the edge of them, though I felt numb. The only thing swelling up in my chest was energy, a tense, electric energy in all of my limbs that made me keep twitching in the stillness as Henry kept wiping the side of my head, dabbing at my hair.

  But as soon as he had wiped it away I felt a new trickle of it begin to pulse out.

  “You need a doctor. I don’t know if we can move you, it’s a long way back, out in the open. But you’re losing blood… Should we send for a doctor, and wait?”

  “You decide,” I offered, “I just got shot in the head.”

  I was trying for another smile but this time he didn’t give it. He placed a pad against the side of my head and started wrapping a bandage all the way around to hold it in place. The door banged open and we both jumped, but it was only Kim with a stout, muscular black man in tow.

  “You’re the sheriff?” Henry demanded, standing and striding to meet him. “You allowed a town to be built without informing the company?”

  “There are only a hundred and twelve people here. The doctor is only an hour’s ride away, and they knew the risk they took, moving here. We all wanted to be out of the company’s control.”

  “That’s your excuse? My partner could have died, and your reasons for breaking the law and endangering all these people was that you want to be away from the people paying your salaries and keeping you fed!?”

  Henry was furious, I turned what he said over. My mind was sluggish, focusing only on one thing at a time. He called me his partner. We were pretty much partners, I realized. The same as Corso and Joey, the same as Joey and my father had once been.

  The sheriff had nothing to say in response, and Henry lowered his voice. “She needs a doctor, send your fastest rider. And the company needs to know about the crime scene outside.”

  “They’ll send us back to the city.”

  “Where you should be,” Henry hissed.

  Emanuel’s lip curled up in distaste, but he deflated a moment later. “I’ll go to the city myself.”

  He stepped out and slammed the door. I stood on stiff legs, and Henry was right there with me, not touching me but ready to catch me if I fell. I said a quick ‘thank you’ to Kim, then stepped back outside. The man who had shot me was only a few houses down, laying in a pool of blood. I headed over and stood nearby, looking at what I could see of the black rifle underneath him. He was a white man in his thirties whom I had never seen before. He had an unremarkable face.

  “Let’s go to the way-house and wait for the doctor. There’s nothing you can do here, you should be resting.” He guided me around the body, to the other end of town just a few more buildings down.

  The building was rundown, with a crumbling roof. We knocked, and were let in by a wrinkled old man with wispy white hair around the crown of his head. The woman who ran the house with him, probably his daughter, came over and introduced herself as Jasmine. “Pick a cot, whichever you’d like. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, thinking of it only after she had turned away. “Do you have a mirror?”

  She went and found one in a trunk by her own bed, and brought it back to me. I accepted the silver handle and Henry watched me as I lifted it to my face. Blood was already blooming through the bandage, so I could see the trail the bullet had blazed, a few inches long above my eyebrow, going back along my scalp.

  There were a half-dozen cots laid out on the floor, all squeezed together. A stall with a bathroom in the back, primitive like most in the quarters. I dropped to my knees, crawling onto one. Henry sat on one cot, leaning against the wall and keeping his eyes on the door.

  “You should lay down,” he said. “You look exhausted.”

  I was exhausted, suddenly. All the nervous energy had been sapped out of me and I felt like I was dragging around weights hanging off of my body. “You’re not going to?”

  He shook his head.

  I closed my eyes, and almost immediately I was drifting away .

  Chapter Sixteen

  I woke some time later, to Henry shaking me. I sat up and nearly chok ed myself on the awkwardly twisted strap of my satchel, which I had forgotten to take off.

  “The doctor is here. Have some bread.”

  I accepted, and looked at the man standing a bit further away in the room. He was fit for a man of maybe sixty, and had a black leather bag. He gestured to the table. “I’m Dr. Graham, can you join me at the table, Stella?”

  I tore off a chunk of bread and popped it into my mouth. Outside the sun was setting. I’d slept maybe two hours. My head ached and my neck was sore. I stood and crossed the room, taking the seat beside where he stood.

  Jasmine and her father were watching silently from their corner.

  “What did the company have to say?” I asked Henry while the doctor was unwrapping my head.

  “They’re sending a team out, they’ll be here by morning. I had the villagers move the body inside like they asked. To keep it from exposure, scavengers…”

  “Follow my finger?” The doctor requested, shining a light in my eyes. “You’re very lucky.”

  “I’ve got a good bodyguard,” I said, purposefully not looking at Henry but still hearing him shuffle awkwardly.

  “This needs stitching. I want you to have a CT scan done as soon as possible.”

  “We’re staying here tonight. It will have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Don’t dally,” he said. “But for now stitches will have to do. I can give you a sedative.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You must be in pain?”

  “Don’t fight her on it,” Henry said. “I watched her get that broken arm set without taking anything.”

  “I can numb the skin around where I’m working with no effects to the rest of your body. Would that be alright?”

  After a second, I nodded.

  He had a little bottle of spray that he misted the cut with, then produced a curved needle. Henry stepped up to my side and offered his hand, which I accepted, squeezing as the doctor first slid the needle under my skin.

  The doctor bid us goodnight and went riding back toward Wraith, apparently preferring to ride at night than to stay in Tweed. I was wide awake, and had a small patch over the stitches. Henry got me a bowl of soup from the fireplace and sat across from me, propping his head up on his hand.

  “You should get some sleep,” I said.

  “Might not be safe…”

  “It’s been a few days since the last time someone tried to kill me, and the time before that, too. I should be good for a couple days before the next one comes around. And besides we’ve got two people sleeping over there, and I’ll be up a while.”

  After a minute, he nodded, then went and laid on the cot next to the one I had slept on earlier. At the other end of the long hut, Jasmine and her father turned in slowly, turned out the lamps, and soon the sounds of breathing were filling the darkness. When I heard Henry’s faint snoring, I slipped out.

  As soon as the door had clicked shut behind me, Corso was coming from across the street and his voice made me jump.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Jesus…”

  “I’m sorry, but are you alright?”

  “Yeah, couple of stitches, I’m fine. Thanks…”

  He looked away, as uncomfortable as I was. “You’re welcome. Are you really okay? Are you fit to be out tonight? Cause I can do it on my own.”

  “I’m good. Let’s go.”

  “Alright there’s
just one place we can make tonight. It’s a prison camp ten miles from here. Let’s get our horses.”

  Corso had his own horse in the stables at the other end of town. When we mounted up and started out of town, heading south, and once we were over the crest of the first hill, I spoke.

  “What kind of prison camp is this?”

  “It’s a rarely used storyline. The place is miserable, the people there are isolated, and so they give those rolls to people with actual criminal records. Occasionally someone goes through to rescue their wrongly imprisoned love interest, or some such.”

  We rode the rest of the way in silence, coming up on a river on our right which made Corso stop to check his map before directing us to a bridge to cross and continue on. We met no one along the way. The round camp appeared in the distance and filled me with unease. Long tree trunks were bound together, sharpened to points at the tops, and more sharpened spears jutted out in all directions like a pincushion. Only the gate was unadorned.

  “Should we knock?” I asked, but was cut off by the gate beginning to swing open. It scraped along the weeds on the ground, all dead in the circle around the fence.

  The man who stood before us had a sword in his hand, pointed at the ground.

  “What business do you have here?”

  Inside, past the guard was a group of men gathered around a low-burning fire. Even from a distance, I could see they were all ragged, hard-looking men, and they were all staring at us.

  Corso answered, “We’re looking for a group of men who might have come through here. Either with cargo or hostages.”

  “There hasn’t been anybody through here like that. Nobody has come in or gone out but buyers and their love interests and Bailey….”

  “Who’s Bailey?”

  The man said bluntly, “He died. I’m Franklin. They call me Frankie. You can come in and check things out for yourselves if you’re feeling brave.” Frankie was a short man, not in very good shape, and not very handsome. He had creases all over his face, and sighed as they moved forward, but sheathed his sword. Corso kept close to me, hand brushing over the side of his jacket where I knew he had a gun.

  “Got any bullets left after the shootout today?” I murmured.

  “Two.”

  “Oh, good. One for you, one for each of us, if things go bad.”

  “If?” He smirked softly in the dark. “You’re here. I guarantee they will.”

  Along the sides of the walls there were solid stone structures, all perfect squares with iron bars in the front. Peeking inside the first, I saw a cot laid on the ground, a tin cup and plate. So late at night, with nothing happening in the story lines of the prison camp, they were all free to wander in the confines of the fence. One or two remained in their cells, but most were gathered by the fire.

  Corso and I checked the first few cells with Frankie following at a distance. When, together, we approached the fire, one of the criminals said, with a voice like aural sandpaper, “You from the company?”

  “No,” Corso answered.

  “You look like you’re from the company.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Who else but a company man would have a gun? Why else would you be here, looking for people? Company men aren’t welcome here. This may be a Hell-hole, but we keep it. It’s ours.”

  “I’m not with the company,” Corso said. “In fact, they’d like very much to find me.”

  The man looked him over a moment. “Find who?”

  Corso reached out to shake the guy’s hand, and he introduced himself. “Thomas. You sound like a creole to me.”

  A tiny smile tugged at Corso’s lips. “I worked on a plantation in New Orleans from the time I was six to the time I was sixteen, but I’m not native to that region.”

  “Thirteen to eighteen.”

  He gave a respectful nod, murmured to me, “Go check the rest of the cells,” and sat at the place they cleared by the fire for him.

  “Got a name, New Orleans?”

  I checked inside the remaining cells, walking around the perimeter and casting glances back toward the fire in center. For a second, I felt guilty again for deceiving Henry. I wish I knew what Joey would say. Would he tell me to trust in Corso the way that he surely had to, or would he tell me to forget the alliance, that the children were the most important thing? Somehow Joey would do the right thing on all fronts, I thought. He would find the girls, get Corso exonerated, get a reward, and do it without betraying anyone’s trust.

  I thought of Elena, weaving around the back of the cells. But along the wall, in the corners, there was only emptiness. I ducked back out around one building to steal another glimpse of Corso talking with the men at the fire, and that was when hands grabbed me and yanked me into the open mouth of the nearest cell. I had gotten out half a yelp when the hand closed over my mouth hard enough to send pain echoing down my neck.

  I was thrown up against the wall with a man’s body pinning me and his other hand squeezing my arm so tightly my fingers went numb, his arm flat across my chest.

  “Don’t scream and I won’t hurt you,” he grumbled, his beard scraped the side of my face as he pulled back a bit, and the sensation woke me up. When his hand left my mouth to fumble with his pants, my throat was still locked up, but my free hand I shoved down into my bag.

  He caught it a second later, having to release my left arm to do so. S winging as hard as I could I clubbed him across the head with my cast. It knocked him off of me for a second and I bolted for the door, but my knees had gone soft and I almost went down, catching myself on the doorway.

  I lurched out another step and then I was crashing into someone, and I cried out again, but it was Corso who had barreled into me, and caught me before I could go tumbling away.

  “You okay?” he rushed, even as he was pushing me behind him and advancing into the dark hovel, meeting with a man several inches taller than him. Corso had his gun in one hand and the prisoner backed off, raising his hands in surrender.

  Corso had that cold look in his eyes, but I had sailed past fear and straight into a bottomless pit of sadness. I was only watching him and pushing on the aching spot of my arm to send little jolts to my mind, keeping me from slipping further away.

  Corso stole a glance back at me, “Are you okay?”

  I didn’t answer, just rubbed my arm and looked down at the ground.

  The gun cracked so piercingly loud that I had to look up again. The prisoner’s head snapped backward and he hit the ground all in one motion from the force of it. Blood splattered out and he didn’t move again. Corso turned on me and swept me into the dark around the back of the cells, and I moved where he wanted though I was shrinking away from his hand on me. He stopped touching me and just hovered at my side, indicated the entrance.

  “We’ve gotta go.”

  “You just executed him.” I was surprised by my own voice.

  There were footsteps heading back the way we had come. We hurried around the perimeter of the camp, moving by Franklin who tried to ask what had happened. We made our horses and mounted before the other men stationed at the camp made the halfway point and watched us turn and begin to ride away.

  It was half an hour before we slowed to a trot and I finally spoke again. There was still a heavy coldness in my gut.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Maybe. But I wasn’t gonna let him go, and we couldn’t turn him in.”

  “If any one of them talks about what happened, -and they’ll have to tell the company something-it will lead back to both of us.”

  Corso glanced over at me. “I wasn’t gonna let him go.”

  “You might have blown our shot, do you understand that?”

  “Yes!” he shouted finally. “I understand that, Stella! What do you want me to do? I didn’t realize killing that rapist could mean blowing our shot, until after I’d done it. So I’m sorry. So when they send you back, tell Joey I’m sorry.”

  His face was tight with grief i
n a way I had never seen before.

  “There’s a way we can save this,” I said, figuring it out as I spoke. “You can come with me, now. We’ll say I went off investigating on my own, you saved me, I caught you. They’ll still put the pieces together about how we know each other, but it won’t matter, I will have fulfilled my contract.”

  “We’d never make New York for you to collect your reward, Stella.”

  “It’s not Jericho,” I said through clenched teeth. “Even if it is, I’ll keep us safe until we reach New York. You, me, and Henry, we can make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  For a moment I swear he considered it. But then he was shaking his head. “I can’t do it, Stella. My sister…”

  “Anna and Josie,” I shot back. “They have no chance if I get sent back, now.”

  “-That’s not true,” he started.

  “-Alex at least has a chance.”

  “-It’s not true, Stella. I’m sorry, this is the way it has to go. You can find your way back, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re going our separate ways then. There’s always a chance,” he said, after a moment, “the men in that prison camp will cover for us. There’s a kind of bond between criminals, which I’ve never understood as a cop, but maybe it will do us some good this time. If you get to keep going, head to the Fourth Quarter as soon as you can. This place is cashed.”

  He turned and headed back toward the big city. I went on over the empty plains in the direction of Tweed, finally reaching Henry and my cot, thankful for them both even with only a few hours before dawn. As I laid there by his steady breathing I thought of how the emptiness and coldness in me was so similar to what I had felt in the aftermath of that night when I was sixteen. That the circumstances were so different on the outside but so similar at their core.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I woke again at dawn, and waited for Henry to wake for only another hour. Then came the investigators and coroners. A team of six on horseback, with a wagon hitched behind them. Henry waved off a sketch artist, saying the gunman had been too far away, and I counted that a stroke of luck. The lead investigator was a man of about fifty with a kind of aged class about him, he introduced himself as Nathan Epsworth and had us each recount the shooting from the beginning.