“Not usually, no.” Her voice shuddered slightly as she spoke. Her knees were shaking.
Victor reached his free arm across her shoulders.
She pulled back and glared at him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Look,” he said, a touch defensively, “you’re cold, I’m cold. It’s not a romantic gesture. We just need to keep warm.”
“I’ll pass.” She shifted a few inches farther away, crossing her arms and rubbing her shoulders.
Victor snorted. “Fine. Be stubborn and freeze to death.”
A silence descended between them. It was like the Cold War. Victor took the Colt in his left hand and shoved his right hand into his coat, trying to warm his fingers. What time was it now? Seven-thirty, eight o’clock? That left them with ten or eleven hours of waiting—stubborn, silent waiting.
Scarlett broke the silence first. “I was hunting for supplies,” she said in a soft voice. “Mostly batteries. They’re easy to trade, so long as they work. Even car batteries have their price, if you know someone who can charge them.”
She shivered again, but her voice remained steady. “I was careful—didn’t take unnecessary risks, didn’t gamble. Waited five, ten minutes before stepping out into the open.”
“You were traveling alone,” Victor answered. “I’d call that an unnecessary risk.” Then he paused. “You were traveling alone, weren’t you?”
He didn’t know she was crying until he heard the tears in her voice. Her face looked as fragile as glass.
“No,” she whispered. “His name was Calvin. Just a kid. They took him last night.”
He wanted to try placing his arm around her shoulders again, wanted to ask what she meant by “took,” wanted to know how a night spent handcuffed to that desk hadn’t broken her spirit. But none of these things seemed right. When he glanced over again, she was holding a pair of gold-rimmed glasses in her lap. The frames were bent, the glass marred by spider-web cracks.
He waited for a further explanation, maybe a tear-jerking story about feeling Calvin’s fingers slip from her hand as he was dragged away. But Scarlett only sniffed and said nothing.
“I’m sorry about Calvin,” he said. “I know it must be hard—”
He stopped because Scarlett had risen to her feet. She started unwinding the scarf from around her neck.
“What are you doing?” Victor asked.
“I’m not interested in being the cat in the tree,” she answered. Her voice was firm, as if she had swept her grief aside and replaced it with steely resolve. She walked around to where the ladder ought to have led them to the ground, then knelt and began tying the scarf.
“You really think that will hold us?” Victor asked.
“It will hold me. You? I’m not so sure.” She smiled briefly, letting him know she was only joking.
He stood, walked over to her, and kept his gun trained on the factory while he spoke. “Before we entrust our lives to your scarf, we should probably talk about what happens when we hit the ground. My brother’s waiting for me not far away—just past the lot and into the trees on the other side.” He pointed in that general direction.
“Are you inviting me to join you?” she asked.
“Do you have anywhere else to go?”
“Not nearby,” she answered quietly, and he suspected she was thinking about how far she would have to travel in the darkness, ducking from cover to cover, hoping the worshipers of the Beast were not on her trail. It was a lonely, perilous world to travel with his brother, never mind on his own.
“Then come with us,” Victor said. “We’ll find shelter for the night, and then in the morning you can decide what you want to do. I promise we won’t try anything.”
She bit her lip and stared off into the darkness. He thought he glimpsed how vulnerable she was—how tired she was of being hounded by fear, the constant worries about what she would eat or drink or where she would find shelter for the night. He was asking her to trust a man she had known for about an hour. He knew he needed more than words to convince her, so he offered the only gesture that would have convinced him.
“You’d better go down first,” he said, “since you’re lighter. And since we don’t know if anyone is waiting down below, you should take this.” He held the Colt toward her. She stared at him for a few moments before finally accepting the weapon.
“If you fall and break something, I’m not waiting for you,” she warned.
He nodded. “I know.”
“And if you fall behind, you’re on your own—gun or no gun.”
“I know,” he repeated.
She took a deep, steadying breath, the kind a person takes before plunging from a cliff into a lake hundreds of feet below. There was no going back, not once they reached the ground.
“Ready?” Scarlett asked.
“You sure that knot will hold?”
“Guess we’ll find out.” That smile again. She slipped the Colt into her pocket and gripped the scarf with both hands.
“Then I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Victor answered.
As Scarlett dropped from the fire escape, glass crunched just inside the broken factory window.
Chapter 15
He watched her disappear like a fish sinking down into murky water. She was only gone a few seconds when the top half of the broken window exploded in a shower of glass and chunks of wood trim. The metal pipe appeared, followed by a hulking man with lank hair that hung down to his shoulders. He was wearing a large robe that only added to his bulk. It could have been a carpet or the pelt of a large animal.
The next few seconds lasted longer than they had any right to last. It always came down to one question: Fight or flight? Victor’s father had taught him that problems were like wild dogs—they weren’t interested in chasing until you started running.
This particular situation, however, might be an exception, since Scarlett had made it clear she wouldn’t wait for him if he took too long. And Scarlett had his gun.
So he bent and grabbed the scarf. It was slack—Scarlett had already reached the ground. The man with the pipe (whom Victor was starting to think of as a strange cultish priest) bellowed and charged toward Victor, shaking the metal platform with every step.
“Next time,” Victor promised, and dropped into darkness.
Moments later, his hands reached the end of the scarf and he tumbled through the air—eight feet, ten feet, he wasn’t sure. He landed on something hard (it might have been broken concrete) and rolled forward, stopping his momentum just as Scarlett appeared beside him.
“Let’s go!” she shouted.
They plunged into the brush growing around the side of the factory—Victor in front, Scarlett just a few paces behind. He was dimly aware of the cult priest shouting from his ersatz balcony, but that was behind him now, swallowed by the darkness, and he concentrated all his attention on not getting lost.
Was Dante still by the brook? Would he have assumed the worst by now?
They burst into the open just as a figure emerged from the shadows, racing toward them with a knife held upside-down like a giant canine. The fifth one, Victor thought, and he opened his mouth to warn Scarlett but she had already turned, cupping the gun in both hands, and then the gun bucked and the figure with the knife - a woman with wild, streaming hair - fell backward to the ground.
Scarlett turned the gun and began firing at the figures who had emerged from the first-floor factory door.
“Keep moving!” Victor shouted, taking her arm and pulling her across the broken parking lot.
___
Dante heard the gunshots, followed by the sound of his brother’s voice. He was close, but who was he shouting to? The woman he had gone to help?
The Winchester was shaking in his hands as he propped it against the trunk of a fallen tree. Lumpkin was tied to a tree behind him. He tried to ignore the nagging voice that kept reminding him he didn’t know what he was doing, he had only fired the Winchester a few times since leaving t
he cabin.
It was a moonless night and the trees were as pale and slim as threads of spider silk. He could hear the figures crashing through the brush now like bear cubs. He wiped his hands on his pants, sank down into the leaves, and nestled the stock of the rifle against his shoulder.
A few more gunshots went off in the woods ahead of him, followed by a woman’s screams. A man was bellowing like a wild boar. The sound raised gooseflesh on Dante’s arms.
Two shadows materialized from the trees. They were heading past Dante, twenty or thirty feet to his right.
“Victor!” he shouted.
The shadows turned, started toward him.
“Where are you?” Victor called.
“Here!”
A woman was running beside Victor. The two of them splashed across the brook and climbed the fallen tree Dante was using for cover.
“Let’s get going,” Victor said, breathing heavily. “He’s right behind us.”
Dante studied their pale, sweat-slick faces as a strange feeling came over him. He turned his attention back to the forest and lowered his face to the rifle.
“Stop messing around, Dante!” Victor warned. “We have to go!”
The bellowing man emerged from the trees. He looked like a bear on its hind legs. He covered the ground in long strides, his hands clutching a length of pipe. The man intended to beat them all to death.
What was it Victor had said that other morning, back at the cabin?
It’s just you and him out here.
Dante took a breath…let it out…took another half breath…paused…
And fired.
___
The forest was littered with deadwood. They banked the fire high, leaving a large pile of sticks with which to feed the fire during the long night, and cleared the leaves back in a wide circle.
Dante sat at the edge of the firelight, staring out into the darkness. For a while he had listened to the man’s moans, a sharp wheezing noise that suggested his lung had been punctured. He had considered putting the man out of his misery, if only so they wouldn’t have to hear his labored breathing any longer, but the man had fallen down into the leaves and Dante could not get a clear shot without venturing away from the fire—a dangerous proposition, considering the man’s friends might still be out there.
He heard footsteps behind him.
“Why don’t you take a rest?” Victor suggested. “I’ll keep watch for a while.”
“I got this,” Dante replied.
Victor sat on the log beside him. “You know you don’t have anything to prove, don’t you?”
Dante did not answer. He had nothing to prove to Victor, maybe, but he had plenty of things to prove to himself.
He glanced back toward the fire. Scarlett was sitting on the ground, hugging her knees as she stared into the flames. He could not read her face.
“She looks like she needs someone to talk to,” he said.
“She’s tougher than she looks,” Victor answered. “Believe me.”
Dante nodded. She had to be tough, he supposed, to stay alive out here.
“I’m not a victim,” he said after a few moments.
“What?”
“That’s the first thing everyone thinks when the world starts coming apart at the seams—they think, “Why me? What did I ever do to deserve this?”” He shook his head ruefully. “I played that card already, and I’m not playing it again.”
Victor was frowning at him. “Did something happen while I was gone?”
“No. Why?”
“You seem different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Pensive, maybe.”
“Pensive.” Dante smiled. “That’s a fancy word.”
Victor sighed and stared off into the trees. “I’ve never been a smoker, but I wouldn’t pass up a cigarette right about now.”
“I wouldn’t pass up a joint,” Dante replied, studying his brother with a sly look.
Victor laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”
“That’s two fancy words. Three strikes and you’re out.” He smiled again, but after a while it faded and neither of them seemed interested in disturbing the silence. The nights were getting colder. It seemed to settle in Dante’s bones, weighing him down, but he felt no desire to go back to the fire.
“I don’t think Walker panicked,” Dante finally said. “I think he kidnapped me because he didn’t think you would go willingly—or maybe he just felt like turning me into a punching bag. I don’t know. But either way, the whole point was to get to you.” He glanced at Victor. “Am I off the mark?”
“Why would the horsemen want me?” Victor asked quietly.
“Because the Baron needs you. Because it’s not just you and Khan who go way back—the Baron’s there, too, somewhere in your past. The three amigos. And now they want to bring the band back together, only they weren’t sure you’d go along. How close am I now?”
“Why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind?” There was a slight edge to Victor’s voice.
“Okay, I’ll tell you. What’s really on my mind is that my own brother is somehow mixed up with someone whose cronies ride around murdering people and stealing children. What’s really on my mind is that, no matter how much you nod and smile when I talk about starting over somewhere, I have this sneaking suspicion that you already have plans of your own.” He paused and studied his brother again. “I want to be wrong, Vic. I really do. But am I? Are we in this together, or have you already made your own decision?”
“Do you think I’d do that to you?” Victor asked. “After all we’ve been through?”
Dante rubbed his face, tormented by a mixture of guilt and suspicion. “I don’t know. I hope not. But the more I hear about the man you used to be, the less confident I am about the man you are.”
“Do you want to know?” Victor asked in the same quiet, ominous voice. “Do you really want to know who your brother is?”
“I’m not sure…but I think I need to know, whether I want to or not.”
Victor nodded. He didn’t say anything for a while. Then, halting at first but gaining confidence as he went along, he picked up the thread of his story.
Part 2: The Domino Effect
I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.
Raymond Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely
“Why do we fight?" he asked.
"Because we were born.”
Bernard Cornwell
The Burning Land
Chapter 16
BEFORE
Victor slept little that night. The bed was too soft, the air too dry, the wind too loud, the precipitous white cliffs too close. He dozed at times, but most of the night he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, sorting through formless feelings he could not quite make sense of.
He was up as soon as the first blush of sunlight was seeping through the window. He dressed, checked the battery on his phone (36%), and wandered out into the hall.
He found a bathroom one door down, a bit of modern convenience interrupting the rigid historicity of the rest of the castle. He splashed water on his face and rubbed the crust from the corners of his eyes. He would have liked to take a shower, but he had no fresh clothes to change into—and besides that, he had too much on his mind just then, too many things to do.
He stepped back into the hall.
How to get back to the dining room?
He tried to recall where Peter had led him the night before. He remembered climbing a flight of stairs, passing through several halls, listening as Peter remarked on the historical significance of the different rooms and the hours spent restoring them.
Should he just start walking and hope he found his way? What alternative was there, to shout and hope someone heard?
The hallway eventually led him to a spiral staircase that corkscrewed up i
nto one of the turrets. Instead of climbing into the turret, he descended the stone steps, passing shafts of sunlight cutting through the narrow windows. The air was cool and damp with the scent of rain. He stopped at the first landing, staring out along the carpeted hall.
Had he walked with Peter down that hall?
He thought he had, but so much of the castle looked the same. It was a maze, like that Dutch lithograph with the staircases going every which way, impossible to know what was up and what was down. A profound sense of loneliness seemed to ooze out from the stones. A building so large was meant to house dozens, even hundreds of people. It was like a ghost town, empty except for a few shattered souls drifting through the wreckage.
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