That was uncomfortably close to my own analysis. “I’m primarily talking about the dead people in your larder,” I said, projecting extra loudly for Luc’s sake. “I suppose that was their idea too. I’m sure they came to you and begged you to saw off their limbs and tear out their hearts.”
That got her. Theodora, I mean; I don’t think anything could’ve gotten Deals & Bargains. She tossed her hair and shook her arms irritably, like a woman who has to kill yet another pesky spider. White petals fluttered from her hair into the dark water. “You think I like that?” she cried. “I can’t stop them! ‘I’d trade my eyes to be able to sing like that.’ ‘I’d give an arm and a leg for a decent sandwich.’ ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ They insist on making ridiculous, thoughtless deals and are satisfied by what I provide for my part, but the racket they make when I come to collect! As if it were my fault!”
“And so you kill them.”
She scoffed. “Some of them die in the process, of course, as if they didn’t know what would happen when they gave their hearts or minds away. Some insist on it. ‘You can take my life, but you’ll never take my freedom!’ Sounds heroic, but they’re not the ones who have to clean blood out of the carpet. And even that’s not as bad as the ones who bring me sacrifices. What am I supposed to do with twenty goats? Or the heads of their enemies on plates? Fortunately, people will buy practically anything, under the name of ‘art,’ if the starting bid is high enough.”
She fixed a glare on me. “And then you come and make more of a mess than the rest combined.”
“You kidnapped Sr. Nordfeld!”
“He would have been fine. My night guard, on the other hand, will not.”
“Then he shouldn’t have attacked me.”
“No: then you shouldn’t have disobeyed my instructions.”
“You’re telling me that you were justified in attacking me with a half-human monstrosity for looking backward? That wasn’t part of our deal. Nor was you holding on to my boss when you had no right to him.”
“Jon is an adult. He can make his own decisions.”
“While unconscious?”
She smiled and inclined her head.
So there we had it: an admission of guilt. Even Luc could not deny it.
I took a deep breath. “I guess we won’t be making a deal. We clearly can’t agree on anything.”
Her eyes tightened inquiringly, as if I’d said something peculiar. “Didn’t Jon warn you? You summoned me here. You must make a deal. If not willingly now, then unwillingly later.”
I didn’t answer. Blood rushed in my ears. No benefit—
Theodora clucked in disgust. “Later it is. Until then, Mercedes.” She turned to go.
She must not leave.
I cleared my throat and heard myself say, as if from a great distance, “There is one thing Sr. Nordfeld told me.”
“And what’s—” Her eyes caught the glint of metal in my hand.
“He told me you were human.”
I shot her three times: twice through the chest, once through the head. I couldn’t have missed, she was so close. She fell before I could fire the last round, but I followed her. Standing over her face, I aimed between her eyes and pulled the trigger.
Chapter 11:
Battery
My arms hurt. The gun was heavy. How long had I been standing here?
Blood swirled black in the moonlight.
Rocks bounced and crumbled down the hill and gravel skittered as Luc scrambled out of his hiding place. I turned my face his way and waited for him to—what? Come down and tell me off? Try to resuscitate her? Tell me he had heard everything, and that we’d better get her body into the river?
None of the above: he went up the trail, not down. The truck was unlocked, but he wouldn’t get far without a key.
I had put a lot of thought into what would come next, in a cold, distant way. I had everything I needed in the back of that truck, wrapped inside plastic garbage bags. There wouldn’t be much cleanup to do here: Luc was right about the rain; it was expected in torrents before dawn broke. That would take care of the blood, and I’d used a revolver so I wouldn’t have to worry about tracking down spent brass. By the time Francis awoke, the evidence of our presence would be washed clean.
But I’d get Francis’s high-powered flashlight from the truck to check anyway. It wouldn’t do to overlook a dropped phone, a scrap of cloth, or some other sliver of evidence.
I touched my face. My skin felt disgustingly rubbery, and my mouth was stretched side to side in something like a grin. There hadn’t been a joke, so I pushed my lips back to where they belonged. There also seemed to be something wrong with my thinking.
This is what shock feels like, I thought dully. What was I meant to be doing? Ah, yes.
Swapping my gun to my left hand, I crouched by Theodora’s body and reached for her neck. I don’t know why I felt the need to check for a pulse before I dragged her into the river, but I did. Maybe it was part of the strangeness in my brain, which felt like a swirl of treacle bogged it down.
Her silver eyes were open, but the only light that shone off them was reflected from the stars above. Powder burns blackened her pale skin. I couldn’t see the details in the dark, but I didn’t need to. I could’ve told you she was dead even if I were blind. If I live to be ninety-nine, I shall never forget that smell.
Her neck beneath my fingers was warm and smooth. No pulse. I waited, to make sure. Felt nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
And that was when Theodora woke up and started trying to kill me.
I was armed, held the high ground, and had years of scrapping experience with my brothers—and none of that did me a lick of good.
Theodora’s leg scythed around as I cried out in surprise. She whacked my ankle, and I sloshed forward, turning my body at the last moment so I didn’t land on her. One hand grabbed onto encrusted river rocks. The other held the gun, and metal banged against stone.
Thin, chilly fingers wrapped around my supporting wrist and squeezed. I remembered the gun in my left hand and swung it at her, but Theodora was ready for me. She twisted my wrist hard, stabbing lightning bolts up my arm. My body flipped after my wrist, and I sprawled on top of her—except that she wasn’t there anymore. She’d let go of me to spring to her feet. Her boots were too soft to kick properly, but she sure tried, aiming for my face and belly.
I instinctively curled up to protect myself, and heard the gun skitter away. I didn’t remember letting go of it. Oh no, you don’t, I snarled in my mind. I rolled for it, over pointed rocks and smooth, slapping the ground and grabbing at air, hunting for cold metal. There—a glint. I lunged for it.
A booted sole contacted my head. The world blinked out, and then I returned. My lungs took a couple of seconds longer to come back online. Rocks dug into my back. The night sky disappeared beyond a dark shadow with two bright silver eyes.
That was her knee, on which she rested her entire weight over my sternum. I thrashed, but she caught my wrists and pressed them to the ground next to my head. She leaned in, digging that knee deeper, teeth bared.
I bared my teeth right back, and abruptly relaxed. As she fell forward, I snapped at her face and neck. My teeth caught the skin of her cheek before she howled and whipped back. I pushed further up, snapping, but her hands slapped down over my throat. Two thick bolts ground into my windpipe, squeezing out hacking coughs.
I ripped at her face with my fingernails, but Theodora only squeezed harder, leaning her weight into her thumbs. Weak slaps pattered her wrists and shoulders, but she ignored them.
The bones seemed to have vanished from my arms. The moon and stars fuzzed and faded. Hot coals filled my brain.
“Do you think,” Theodora demanded thickly, her voice wrapped in the cotton balls plugging my ears, “that I was not protected? Did you think you were the first person to attack me? I’ve been doing this for years.”
Think? How did she expect me to think while she was choking the
life out of me? Adrenaline exploded over my thoughts while my body turned to jelly. My only thought, if you could call it that, was getting rid of the terrible pressure on my neck, the terrible searing in my head. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Theodora had apparently chosen the sharpest rock in Carina to choke me on top of, so I was getting impaled at the same time. What a way to die.
Not that I was prepared to make that trip quite yet. My hands groped for the award-winning rock and smashed it down on Theodora’s pretty little head.
The pressure released. Her weight rocked backward, and I followed her momentum, toppling her.
That’d have been a great opportunity to keep pummeling her, but I was a bit busy hacking and gasping and coughing on cool, damp air. I swallowed it down and vomited it up, and it hurt, and the hurt didn’t matter. I could breathe. I was alive. I’d be bruised black and blacker come morning, but I could breathe and nothing felt broken.
An expert would’ve been able to kill me in the time she’d had her hands around my neck. Maybe Theodora had never tried to strangle anyone before. Maybe it was harder than it looked.
Maybe less time had passed than it had felt like.
I hacked harder, and the air tasted of blood and bile. Hers—mine—who knew?
Where was she?
I raised my head and spotted her not far away, crouched over her own knees, head cradled in her hands. I scrabbled upright, swaying, and my feet stumbled and staggered crabwise—away, away. She made no move to attack. She looked like she was hurting. Was she faking or genuine?
I put ten feet between us, twenty. That rock seemed to be bothering her more than getting her brains blown out. She was getting up, but slowly, rubbing her head and moaning.
I didn’t understand, but I wasn’t about to stick around and ask. I hightailed it up the cliff, only pausing to gulp down yet more precious air. Dirt slipped and slid under my sturdy boots. I must’ve made it up in record time, the way I was going, but it seemed to take forever. When I reached the ridge and looked back, I was amazed to see that Theodora still stood on the river rocks, though her face was turned my way.
I couldn’t make out her expression.
The truck cab light was on, covering Luc in its warm glow. He sat in the driver’s seat, forehead leaning on the steering wheel. For one horrified moment, I thought he was dead, but his shoulders were quivering, and I smelled sick on him as I ripped open the door.
“Move over!” I shouted, shoving his shoulder. “Luc, move!”
He rolled his head on the wheel, so I could see his blank, unfocused eyes and tear-stained face. What a lump he was! What a useless sack of amaranth! Had he always been this slothful, or was my sense of time skewed? “Move!” I screamed at him.
Had Theodora reached the ridge yet? No—she’d be silhouetted plainly. We could get away.
“Hurry! Luc, move over! We have to go!”
“You killed her.” The tone was dull, hollow.
I slapped him. “Just move!”
He took the blow without flinching—without reacting at all. I swear, there might as well have been nothing but Play-Doh behind his eyes.
Had she reached the ridge? Not yet. What was taking her so long?
I shoved the keys at my brother. “You drive, then. Here, take them. Luc, we need to go!”
He didn’t take the keys, didn’t move his eyes even when I jingled them against his cheek. I shrieked in frustration and ran at him, shoved him, tried to force him into the passenger’s seat.
He took the shove with all the resistance of a 130-pound sack of sand. “You murdered her,” he said.
“This isn’t the time—”
Instinct screamed at me, and I swung around as Theodora crested the hill. Blood streamed from the scratches on her face and stained the pristine white of her robe, but she moved easily. The powder burns had vanished, returning her skin to its former glory.
And oh, she was beautiful. She was so beautiful it whipped my breath away and staggered my mind. I could hardly rip my eyes from her.
Especially from the revolver in her hands. That had my full attention. It wasn’t pointed at me, though. She wasn’t even holding it correctly. Did she think she didn’t need it, that I would be bamboozled by her bedazzling beauty? I’m not Francis. “Mercedes,” she fluted, in her voice like the tinkling of silver bells. The name was a command. It weakened my knees and ordered me to bow before her, to grovel, to accept her punishment and thank her for it.
But I’m just not into that sort of thing. I dove into the trees before she could repeat the command, crushing ferns and bushes beneath my feet. Spider webs wrapped around my face, and branches snagged at my coat. I’d never before realized how unbelievably noisy forests were. Every move was a crash, crackle, and crunch. I broke twigs and strewed leaves behind me, but the forest closed right in as soon as I’d gone. Within ten feet, I was moving nearly blindly. Within thirty, I couldn’t see the truck light when I looked back, and the moonlight had shrunk to nearly nothing.
The forest didn’t cut out sound the same way; I heard Luc say something amazed, rejoicing.
Theodora didn’t respond, but a second later, I heard her moving behind me: she made just as many crashes, crackles, and crunches.
I looked for her, but couldn’t see a thing. If she hadn’t been so loud, if I hadn’t been able to hear the river, I could easily have gotten completely turned around in there.
I began to move again, but stopped almost instantly. If I could hear her, she could hear me. But I couldn’t stay here.
I dropped to my knees and crawled, feeling my way around sticks and avoiding most of the foliage. I was leaving behind a trail, but less of one—and Theodora didn’t strike me as much of a woodswoman.
Mushy, cool earth gave way beneath my fingertips, and ferns tickled my face. The leaves smelled of incipient rain, and the river rushed off to my right. Hand over hand I went, sliding each carefully over the other. My back creaked, and my own breath sounded loud in my ears.
I was getting farther and farther away from the truck and from Luc. Leading her away was one thing, but what next? I couldn’t keep this up forever. I needed to get back, get away.
Quiet though I was being, I couldn’t be absolutely silent as long as I kept moving, so I stopped. I curled up where I was, slowing my breathing and concentrating on listening. Soon, everything but the sounds of her movements faded away, and I knew exactly where she was relative to me. She was bumbling, stumbling, and I began to hope. A gun wouldn’t do her a spoonful of good without a target.
She must have figured the same thing, because the crashes stopped soon after.
I wished they’d kept on; now I had no idea what she was doing. Creeping closer? It hardly seemed possible; if she could move silently, she would’ve done so from the start. She couldn’t even be sure where I was anymore. No, she was trying to frighten me into giving myself away. I was safe as long as I didn’t let her flush me out.
I didn’t move a muscle.
She was where I thought she was, wasn’t she? And as blind as I was? If she had somehow arranged it that bullets wouldn’t kill her, had she also arranged for night vision or stealth or—
No. She couldn’t have—although she might, after this. In the meantime, I needed to not psych myself out. I needed a plan.
I knew I could disable her, at least temporarily, if I could find a weapon. What was available?
Dirt. Fronds. Keys. A disposable mobile phone with my fingerprints all over it.
A turned-on mobile phone. One that would light up and ring if she called.
I eased it out and pressed its face into the dirt to power it down and wipe it off. Then I had a better thought and threw it away to my left, as hard and far as I could.
It made less of a crunking crickling than I’d expected, but she must’ve heard it fall. I listened, holding my breath, but she didn’t make a sound. Not a sound.
What else? Keys could be a weapon, but the painful and inconvenient sort rather
than the incapacitating sort—and if I lost them in a scrap, I was in real trouble.
Something sturdier, then. A rock, maybe, since rocks were apparently her kryptonite. Or, better yet, a sturdy branch, if I could find one without making noise.
Ferns rustled under my questing hands and I froze, straining for sounds of approach. The muted passage of the river, the gentle sigh of wind, the flutter of bird or whine of insect. No broken twigs. There—that sound of rustling leaves. Was that her passing or only the wind?
Keep your head down. I could outwait her. She didn’t know where I was.
Movement. Definite movement this time: snaps and crackles retreating toward the truck. She was leaving. Had she given up?
Not a chance of it. I bet she was going back to wait next to my only plausible means of escape. As if I wouldn’t rather hitch a ride with a stranger than waltz into that trap. As if I wouldn’t rather walk. I’d go downhill to the river. There must be a place shallow enough to ford. I couldn’t go home, but I could go to my boss. He’d know what to do. He could help me.
Except . . . what about Luc?
What about him? He was nothing to her. She had no reason to focus on him or harm him. Just like she’d had no reason to go after Francis, except to get to me.
I unwound myself, bullying recalcitrant muscles into submission. I used a mossy trunk to pull myself upright.
Light slashed into the forest, the eye-meltingly intense beam of the super flashlight Francis kept in his truck. I melted into the tree. Theodora crunched back into the forest, flashlight swaying to and fro, not hurrying. “Come out, Mercedes,” she called.
Kind offer, but I thought I’d pass.
“I will find you,” she informed me. “I find everyone who tries to hide from me. No one has honor anymore,” she reflected. “They always run. They always tell me I can have my payment over their dead bodies.”
I sure hoped Luc was hearing this, as I clung to my new bestie, the moss-covered tree. Its silhouette melded with mine, camouflaging me. She wouldn’t be able to see me from a distance unless I moved.
Bargaining Power Page 13