Bernie is right. If we all just left, what then? She can’t go out in public, not as she is. She’d be alone. She’d be desperate.
But that was the thing about abuse, wasn’t it? It was so insidious, because the obvious answer is to get away, but you give yourself a thousand reasons why that’s the worst idea in the world. That all of those reasons boiled down to fear was secondary to the survival instinct.
Fuck you, Lamia.
Enough is enough.
“Go,” Tanis said, climbing off of Rhea. “Get out of here before the police come. Get her to a hospital. Go. And whatever you do, don’t go back to the Den. The Gorgons are coming. Will be coming. I... go.”
Rhea said nothing as she climbed from the floor, crossing the room in three strides to pick up Priska, disregarding the blood, disregarding Bernie and Tanis both. Priska’s head rolled back against her shoulder, her eyes big, her panicked gaze swinging from Rhea to Tanis.
“Zoe!” she whispered, the sound wet and raspy. “Zoe.”
Right, the kid.
Tanis looked her dead in the eye, reaching out to clasp her hand, Priska’s fingers slick with warm, wet blood. “I’ll get her out. I promise. You have my word.” She squeezed Priska’s fingers. “Just go and whatever you two do, don’t go home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TANIS LEFT FIVE hundred on the bureau before they screwed out of the boarding house. It wasn’t enough to cover all the damages, but it at least took care of the decimated TV. She didn’t like leaving it in such disarray, but every cop in the world would be looking for them soon and her family’s safety came first.
She piled the four of them into the Caddy and took off, not toward the highways and main routes, but to the hot, dusty back roads of Louisiana. Naree’s Google Mapping kept them off the radar. At one point, about twenty minutes from the boarding house, they pulled into an empty driveway with a four-door white Honda parked on the side lawn, a For Sale signed wedged beneath its windshield wiper. She cased the house and, finding no one home, told Naree to drive the Caddy into the woods a ways up the road, to go as far as she could and to wait for her there. Naree did as she was told while Tanis broke into the house through a screened back window. A quick sweep and she found the Honda’s keys dangling from one of those pegboard things near the side door.
She could have hotwired it if she had to, but this was infinitely more convenient.
Tanis drove up the street in her new wheels, joining Naree on an overgrown hunter’s trail that looked like something from Apocalypse Now. Seeing the Caddy nestled among all the greenery, her grille gleaming, her rusty fender pert despite all the miles, Tanis felt heavy all over.
All things had to end. Gods. Monsters. People. Even Cadillacs with mighty hearts for engines.
She patted the trunk fondly before unpacking their weird miscellanea from the trunk, a cigarette hanging from her mouth all the while. Bernie sat shotgun in the Honda while Naree and Bee nestled into the back. It wasn’t a bad car; only fifty-thousand miles, though the upholstery was dingy and the radio didn’t work. Those were minor faults, though, and they drove out of the woods and onward, as fast as Tanis dared, stopping fifteen minutes later at yet another empty-looking house so she could pry a licence plate off of a pickup truck and slap it on the Honda.
It wasn’t much protection; it wasn’t enough. But it was better than nothing. They couldn’t avoid the highway forever, and she didn’t try to. As she hopped onto I-10 to leave New Orleans, she realized she knew what she had to do, despite the tightness in her chest and the awful, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. This was no life for her or Bernie or their sisters, and it most certainly wasn’t a life for Naree or little Bee.
It took her an hour to get to the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport in Mississippi. Naree was in the back seat, asleep. Her color was good despite the chaos of the morning, despite being moved during her recovery. Bee was against her chest, face tucked against her breast, little eyes closed, rosebud mouth open with milk crusting her bottom lip.
I don’t want to do this.
I can’t do this.
I haveto do this.
Tanis parked the car and, with girlfriend and daughter still asleep, took the guns out of the duffel bags. The black bag she stuffed full of money, snacks and Bee’s baby supplies. The pink one already had Naree’s clothes. She heard a car door open and prepared herself for a squabble, but it was Bernie, dragging her left leg, her gait stiff. Every time she stepped, Tanis could hear the clunk of stone meeting pavement.
“You ready to go, old woman?” Tanis whispered.
“Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking.” Bernie opened up one of her own bags. She pawed through her shotguns and a few pairs of underwear to pull out a gray metal box the size of a shoebox. She handed it to Tanis. “Put that in there for Naree. There’s about forty or fifty grand. Let me... got a pen?”
Tanis didn’t answer her, opening the box and peering inside at perfect rows of hundred- and fifty-dollar bills. Banker stacks, where the money was real flat and pristine. “Cocaine stacks” Naree would say, because she always pointed out, whenever they watched movies together, that the only people to have money sorted that way were drug dealers and bank robbers.
Tanis’s shoulders tensed.
I won’t cry.
I will not fucking cry. She’s going to cry, you don’t cry.
“What’s this?” she warbled instead.
“Can’t take it with me.” Bernie had found a pen in her bag and tried to scrawl something onto the corner of a pizza menu, but her fingers were too stiff, and she handed both pen and menu to Tanis. “Four-six-six-two. That’s the pin. Write it down for her.” The pin to what became evident when Bernie produced a debit card from a wallet. That she’d secured a bank account, a real license, and a few credit cards over her years spoke to an interesting life Tanis knew next to nothing about.
Visas, Mastercards, debit all went into the metal box, along with the money.
“Aren’t you going with her?” Tanis clasped the treasure box in her hands, peering at her friend. Bernie wouldn’t look her in her eye when she shook her head and headed back to the front seat, climbing into the Honda without another word. The slam of her door woke Bee, which woke Naree. Tanis braced herself for the inevitable. She hated it; she wanted nothing more than to climb in next to her girls and hold them until her arms couldn’t hold anymore.
But that wasn’t keeping them safe.
“Babe?” Naree sounded tired.
“Come on out, Naree.”
Tanis closed the trunk, the two duffel bags by her feet, Bernie’s box in her hand. Naree opened her door and stepped outside, the sun bright against her glossy hair. She twitched the nursing cloth over Bee’s head so she wouldn’t get burned, adjusted her glasses on her nose. The moment she realized where she was, took in the terminal, the tower, and the line of silver planes, she started arguing.
“No. I won’t. Come on, Tanis. We’ve been over this.”
“Yes.” Tanis motioned her close.
Naree scowled. “I can’t. We just had her. No! We’re in this together, remember?”
“Listen to m—”
Naree stomped her foot. “No, I’m not leaving you!”
“You have to or you’re both going to die!” Never in all of their time together had Tanis raised her voice to her. Never had she felt the need to, but with her family on the line, with Gorgon priests and two of her sisters already come a-calling, she needed Naree to hear her. “Listen to me, sweetheart, okay? Listen. I don’t like it. I hate it. I hate losing you, and her, when I just got her, but this is never going to stop.”
“We could go north,” Naree protested. “You said snakes hate the cold.”
“We could, but we’d still have to move around. Always. And I can’t let either of you live like that, always running. I can’t let our daughter live like that. She can go to school. She can have a life. She can maybe go to college one day, if she’s sm
art like you. And hey, maybe she’ll like video games like both of us, huh? She should get to play them without always worrying if someone’s going to come steal her or her mothers away at night. She’s... normal, Naree. Normal-looking. Normal everything. She’s got ten fingers and toes and no scales and no nothing that speaks to her snake. She’s got a chance at a real life. With me around, unless I can fix this, there’s no normal. None. And I think, deep down, you know it.”
The baby started fussing and whimpering against Naree’s shoulder, and Naree bounced her gently, her hand stroking along her back. “I can’t, Tanis. I can’t. Okay? Not yet. Maybe just another day or two and we can—”
“We don’t have another day or two.” Tanis opened the top of the box and showed Naree the money, the credit cards, the debit. “The pin’s on the pizza menu. Use the money first, then the credit cards. It’s from Bernie. She wants you to have them.”
“Doesn’t she need them?”
Tanis gave her a hard look. Naree immediately caught on, flushing pink and looking away. “Oh.”
“So, listen. Get a flight to Atlanta and then you can go anywhere, yeah? Go to Connecticut maybe, with your parents for a little while. I know you hate them, but they’ll take you in until you figure out where you want to go next. You can get Bee a birth certificate. Get her a real identity. With the Gorgons in the picture, I don’t think my mother’s going to spend the resources to hunt you two down. I’m the much bigger prize, so you should be fine, but... get a gun. In case. Keep your eyes peeled. Just—” Tanis’s voice broke, and she swung her eyes up at the sky, at the puffy clouds above that looked so goddamned cheerful when she felt so goddamned terrible. “Take care of yourself. And her. If I can, I’ll come back. But I can’t do that until I know you’re safe.”
“You have a plan,” Naree whispered. “Don’t you?”
Tanis swallowed past the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. It might be a bad one, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“Are you going to die?”
Tanis closed the distance between them, wrapping her tattooed arms around Naree and Bee, holding them to her chest. She inhaled Naree’s scent, sucking it in and trying to keep it with her always. She kissed her daughter’s fat cheek. She waited while Naree said a tearful goodbye to Bernie, and she carried Naree’s bags up to the United ticket counter so Naree could purchase her flight to Atlanta. She kissed her stupid, right up until Naree had to go to the security line practically bawling the entire time. Bee was crying, too, because that’s what babies did. She watched them walk from sight, and she stood in the airport until they were too far away for her to smell them anymore.
And she never, in all of that time, answered Naree’s question, because she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
SHE DIDN’T CRY, she sobbed. Ten full minutes, non-stop, until her head hurt and her hands were covered in snot and she couldn’t see. She blew her broken nose on some McDonalds napkins Bernie found in the glovebox, blasting it with blood, and then, when she was through or at least clotted, she guzzled two bottles of water, ate a Twinkie, and got back on the road, driving silently from Mississippi to Alabama. When night fell, they crossed into Florida. Bernie rested beside her, silent, chest barely rising and falling. Tanis eyed her here and there, to see if she was still breathing. She was, but it was a struggle. There was an echoing rattle and a whistle with every breath.
She stopped by a drive-through for dinner. Bernie declined; Tanis gobbled a couple of cheeseburgers, doing her best not to think about her girls. She’d gotten a text when they’d landed in Atlanta, saying Bee had been good on the flight and slept through most of it, and when she did cry, the other passengers were nice about it. Tanis expected another message when they got to New York, but that wasn’t for hours yet.
Safe. Safe and away.
It hurt, but it was right. There was some consolation knowing that.
She’d just gotten back onto the highway, ready to squeeze another few hours of driving time in before a motel stop, when Bernie grunted beside her. “The ocean.”
“Eh?”
“Let’s go to the ocean. I like it. Always did. Don’t even mind the sky-rats so much...” It sounded like there was something else she wanted to say, but the sentiment faded to a weary sigh.
Tanis eyed her in the passenger seat. Bernie was so still, so gray. Another person might have mistaken her for dead or truly a statue, but there were signs. The veins all over that pulsed, not often, but often enough. Her tics, like when her finger tapped against her thigh. The subtle swell of her nostrils when she breathed.
She’s fading.
A beach stop would delay her return to the Den, but Bernie had been a good friend. She’d done so much, sacrificed so much, that granting her something so simple was a no-brainer. Tanis veered off the highway and drove toward the coast. The Pensacola night was warm and humid, but there was a Gulf wind coming in that made it more bearable. Past picturesque manicured lawns and vague Spanish architecture, and homes worth more money than Tanis would ever see, in this life or next. Past hotels and restaurants and bars playing Latin music and other bars playing contemporary country. She drove to a public beach closed hours ago, a sign threatening fines for anyone caught after sunset.
She parked in the space furthest from the road, turning off the engine and peering out at the gentle, rolling waves. Salt air, the slightly rotten tang of low tide. Bernie’s hand fumbled with the door beside her. It swung open and she heaved herself from the car, using the grip handle to gain her feet. Tanis followed, pausing to grab her cigarettes and the American Eagle, sliding it into her pants just in case. Once the parking lot pavement became sand, Bernie needed help, the uneven surface setting her pained gait off-kilter. Tanis offered her an arm, surprised at how heavy Bernie’s body had become. Her left leg was completely stiff, no longer capable of bending at the knee, but she limped along anyway, undeterred.
The ocean whispered invitation at them, not angry and roaring but whispering sweetly as it lapped at the shore.
Hush.
Hush.
Hushhhh...
Bernie collapsed ten feet from the water, and Tanis sat down beside her. When she lit a cigarette, Bernie grunted, and Tanis plucked the smoke from her lips to place it between Bernie’s. All was silent save for the ocean and Bernie’s labored breathing. The cigarette wasn’t helping any, but there wasn’t any point in bringing it up, not anymore, and when her pillar of ash threatened to break off at the end, Tanis grabbed it, flicked it for her, and put it back.
When she’d smoked it to the filter, Bernie spit it out, her eyes fixed on the smoldering orange stub flaring red with every gust of wind.
“I can sing, you know,” she said.
Tanis turned her head. “Eh?”
“I used to go down to Barbara’s, when all y’all were babies. I’d sing you to sleep. I even joined one of those Baptist revival churches so I could sing in the choir. I was real good, too. Didn’t care much for the Jesus stories, and they were way too hung up on who was fucking who else, but the music was nice. The hymnals are beautiful.”
Tanis gathered her knees to her chest and watched the water. Bernie hummed a little, and then, for the first time that Tanis could remember, she sang. Her voice was probably less perfect than it would have been pre-Gorgons, but it was still lovely. Raspy, throaty, all sweet and grit twisted together to make a honeyed melody.
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see—
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
“Pretty,” Tanis said, because it was. The song, the voice singing it. Bernie smiled, and, as she did, a quarter-sized
flake of gray skin tore away from her face, fluttering away with the wind. Tanis watched it go as Bernie rolled onto her hip to push herself up, struggling in the sand. Tanis immediately went to her side, hefting her, her sneakers digging deep under the burden. They stood together, Bernie’s arm clinging to her waist, her head heavy against Tanis’s shoulder. There were a million stars before them, and a fat white moon that hung so low they could reach up and pluck it from the sky.
“You’re a good kid. Don’t die on that girl of yours, you hear? And that sweet baby? Try not to fuck her up too much,” Bernie rasped, her eyes squinting. Her silver hair whipped around, sometimes smacking Tanis in the face, but she didn’t care. This was Bernie’s moment, not hers.
“I’ll try.”
“Don’t try. Do it. Live. Cheat, lie, steal; do what you gotta do. You only get one shot at this. Don’t blow yours.” Tanis examined Bernie’s profile—the slope of her forehead, the prominent nose, the wide lips. The years had taken their toll long before the venom had, but still she smiled, showing off the gap in her teeth where Lamia had taken her due a few days ago. Particles of dust flaked off her body with the wind, pieces of her rippling across and then lying to rest on the beach forever.
Bernie shrugged Tanis off and started walking.
“Bernie...”
“You ever read Kate Chopin?” Bernie shouted over her shoulder, dragging her petrified leg as she hobbled along.
“No. What are you doing?”
“They say if you don’t fight it, it’s the most peaceful way to go. Well, I ain’t fighting anymore.”
“Bernie!”
“You got this, doll. Now watch this stone do what stone does best.”
And what stone did best was walk into the water, and keep walking, despite the incessant tide pummeling her shins. Stone took her time and let her weight anchor her as she pressed forward. To her knees. To her waist. The water fought her, shoved her away, but she plowed on, pushing, pushing, pushing. Up to her chest and then to her chin. There was a momentary pause when it crested her mouth and a half-turn, one hand rising from the water to wave at Tanis one last time, before stone sank deep beneath the black, rippling surface, never to be seen again.
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