Four Crows

by Lily White

  Releasing the curtain, I ran through the living room in route to the bathroom. Several prayers left my lips as I swung open the door of the medicine cabinet and reached inside in search of the only thing I knew I could use to stop Elliot without outright killing him.

  Thanking God and the baby Jesus for big favors, I pulled the black leather pouch out of the cabinet and opened it to find a small vial of clear liquid, together with three unused syringes. I had no clue how I would get close enough to Elliot to inject him with the drug, or how much I was supposed to use, but it was the only plan I had.

  While running back to the window, I attempted to talk myself down from the ledge of panic where I was currently perched. Perhaps there was a way to convince Elliot to leave well enough alone. I didn’t know why he was here or what he planned to do with my family.

  Glancing at the clock on the wall, I discovered it was only an hour past nine. That wasn’t much later than when I’d agreed to meet Elliot at the farm, so it didn’t make sense that he’d come here looking for me when I hadn’t showed.

  But maybe he had?

  Or maybe he was here for an entirely different reason.

  Swallowing down the lump of questions in my throat, I continued watching the scene playing out by the bonfire. With my dad safely constrained in his seat, Elliot made quick work of tying Brody and Jack to their individual chairs, each man glaring at Elliot as he turned his attention to the woman on the ground.

  Crouching down, he gently turned her onto her back before lifting her body up into a sitting position. Her head fell back, her long dark hair hanging limply over his arm in a mess of dirt, twigs and tangles. Holding my breath, I watched as he checked her pulse and lightly tapped her cheek to see if she would respond. She coughed when he brought her back to consciousness and I released the breath I’d been holding. Relieved that they hadn’t killed her, I continued watching as he stripped off his shirt and pulled it over her body. The dance of shadow and light from the bonfire played over his chest and arms, and I lost the ability to breathe all over again.

  He stole my breath by how beautiful he was, inside and out.

  He also stole my heart by how gentle he’d been with the woman my family had stolen just so they could use her before tossing her away like garbage.

  Lowering her back down to the ground, Elliot reached out to brush the hair away from her face, his lips moving as he asked her a question I couldn’t hear from where I was standing. She nodded her head in response to whatever he’d asked and his eyes tipped up to narrow on Jack. Afraid he’d look in the direction of the house, I stepped back into the room to hide behind the curtain.

  There was no doubt about it…I was in one hell of a sticky situation. I didn’t know how much time I had. I didn’t know why Elliot was even here. And I sure as hell didn’t know if I’d be able to convince him to leave. Maybe if he hadn’t seen what they were doing to that woman he might have agreed to leave if I promised to leave with him. But now? I highly doubted there was any possible way he’d willingly step foot off this property.

  Damn it! I didn’t know what to do.

  Taking a few steadying breaths, I attempted to calm the shaking of my body. My heart threatened to tear through my chest. My mouth was as dry as the Sahara. And my thoughts were racing so fast that I felt dizzy from the effort of standing.

  Reaching up, I rubbed at my temples to relieve the headache that was quickly adding to the seriously fucked up time I was having.

  “Okay,” I muttered to myself. “There has to be a way to deal with this. There has to be a way to make this right. Elliot’s a reasonable man. He loves me. He wants to marry me. That has to be enough to convince him to leave.”

  I was lying to myself, and I knew it. Saying the words out loud didn’t make them any more believable. The only thing that was a definite in my mind at the moment was the fact that I was running out of time.

  Pulling out one of the syringes and the vial from the black pouch, I wasn’t exactly sure I knew what the hell I was doing. I’d seen plenty of television shows and movies that included scenes in hospitals, and I attempted to mimic what I could remember.

  I knew air bubbles were bad, and I knew to stick the needle in the top and pull down on the plunger to create suction. But how far should the liquid go down? There were numbers on the sides of the syringe, but that was about as useful to me as a foreign language. I checked the vial, but again, I was met with gibberish.

  Not wanting to run the risk of killing him, I only drew enough liquid into the syringe to hit the large, black number one on the side. I hoped it would be enough, but then wondered where I was supposed to stick it. Brody or Finn would know, but they weren’t in position at the moment to be giving me any advice.

  The only thing I could do was wing it, so I decided that if push came to shove, I’d jab him in the neck and hope for the best.

  Carefully, depressing the plunger, I forced all the air out of the tube until a small squirt of liquid shot out from the needle. I tapped my finger on the syringe for good measure, and only because I’d seen them do it on television. Once that was accomplished, I shoved the black pouch with the other two syringes into my pocket.

  Now that my preparations were made, I took another round of steadying breaths – which didn’t help in the slightest – and on shaky legs, I walked towards the door that led outside. It was now or never as I forced myself out into the night, my lungs dragging in the smoke from the bonfire that was thick in the breeze that blew by.

  Creeping around the house, I pushed my body flat to the wall and peered around the corner to look at the scene around the bonfire. Elliot was nowhere to be seen, but my entire family was still tied to their chairs, anger obvious in the expressions on their faces. They stared out into the distant field and I followed the direction of their eyes to see a large figure making his way back to the house with two large duffel bags in his hands.

  When he neared the bonfire, he glared at my family before turning around once again to walk back out across the field. From the easy pace he took, you wouldn’t assume he was a man in a hurry – and definitely not one who’d just beat the shit out of four men and left them strapped to plastic chairs around a fire.

  Guessing this might be the only opportunity I had to help my dad, I darted around the side of the house and ran out to the bonfire. Finn saw me first and shouted my name. Glaring over at him, I stuck my finger to my lips to remind the idiot to shut his damn mouth. I didn’t know how far Elliot had gone and I didn’t need him running back to prevent me from freeing my dad.

  Notice I only mentioned saving my father. It didn’t occur to me that Finn, Brody or Jack were worth saving. On some deep-seated level, I had no problem leaving them there to suffer whatever carnage Elliot decided they deserved. But I knew better than to think my father would leave them to die once he was free of his binds. It was a damn shame, too. The world would have been a better place if the three of them were no longer walking around in it.

  “Daddy,” I whispered loud enough for him to hear, but soft enough that it wouldn’t carry across the fields, “Are you okay?”

  “Untie me right fucking now, Maggie, and then get your ass back inside the house.”

  Unlike me, he didn’t seem to care whether Elliot could hear or not, his words were spoken with enough volume to alert everybody in a two mile radius.

  Inching forward, I glanced down at the half naked woman on the ground and cringed to see the developing bruises on her skin. Her eyes were closed, but her chest was moving up and down with breath. I sincerely hoped she wouldn’t die, but I wasn’t sure what would happen to my family if she didn’t. Come to think of it, there wasn’t much we could do at this moment without Daddy and my brothers going to jail. Elliot had seen what they’d done to that poor woman and the realization made me pause.

  My eyes dragged from the woman back to my father. “What are we going to do, Daddy? Ell –“ I stopped mid sentence. If I mentioned Elliot’s name, my entire family w
ould know I’d been sneaking off to meet him. There was no other way I could know who he was. “That man saw what you all were doing to her. How are we going to get away?”

  Unfortunately, I knew exactly what my father would do, and that made this situation even more dire.

  “Maggie. Untie me now, or I’ll –“

  The roar of an engine was louder than my father’s words, dust flying up following the screech of tires that blended with the bonfire smoke in the air.

  I turned around to see Elliot’s black truck parked only a few feet away from where we were all gathered and the image was something straight out of a dystopian novel. The dirt, smoke and debris in the air masked everything in the distance, turning the house and trees into shapeless shadows cast red by the flames that roared up into the sky.

  “Maggie! Untie me now, God damn it!”

  The driver side door of the truck flew open and Elliott jumped down. His chest was still bare from having given the woman his shirt. The contrast of his skin against the black cargo pants he wore only made him look more feral and dangerous.

  “Maggie…”

  I couldn’t hear my name fall from his lips but I knew just by the shape his mouth had taken, the wide set of his eyes, and the way his gaze was locked tight to me, it was, in fact, my name he’d spoken.

  “Maggie…”

  My father’s voice roared behind me, but I was frozen in place, unable to make a move towards the man who raised me or the one who now had me locked in his stare.

  Elliot’s mouth moved again, the words lost on the smoke-filled breeze that tore across the field. Twisting to grab something out of his truck, he moved slowly to pull on another shirt before making his way towards me. My father continued yelling at me to untie him, Finn’s voice now joining in. But nothing they said mattered at that point, nothing could break through the spell in which I’d been caught.

  I was a woman torn between the loyalty for family and the reckless love I held for a man I never should have known.

  Finally reaching me, Elliot wrapped his hand around my bicep, pulling me close to him. Angling his head down, his mouth brushed my ear, his voice far angrier and alien than I’d ever heard it before.

  “What the fuck are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the other farm waiting for me.”

  For a moment, his voice scared me. I doubted myself right along with feeling that fear, doubted I truly knew Elliot as well as I’d allowed myself to believe. And right behind that doubt crept in the barest hint of rebellion.

  Tilting my chin up into the night, I waited for his eyes to meet mine. My feet were planted beneath me with my refusal to give him an inch of space.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you the same question?” I dared to ask, a fierce tone to my voice that surprised me.

  We were locked together, neither one of us willing to bend when it came to the situation in which we’d found ourselves.

  “What are you doing here, Elliot? Why have you come to my home and hurt my family? What right do you have –“

  His hand wrapped over my mouth, his grey eyes staring down at me with malicious intent, the retinas so large they’d become mirrors reflecting my image back at me. I didn’t want to admit there was fear in my expression – even while it was staring me so unapologetically in the face.

  This wasn’t right.

  In fact, this was all incredibly wrong.

  With my hand over Maggie’s mouth, I looked down into a face that stared back at me with a mix of fear, anger and confusion behind eyes of jade green. She fought against my hold when I didn’t immediately speak, but I held onto her, refusing to give her any leeway while I was desperate to decide what I would do.

  The last thing I wanted was for Maggie to witness her family die. She didn’t need that memory following her through life like a thousand pound weight slung over her shoulders. I didn’t want her waking up screaming in the middle of the night, or being stalked by the guilt of being unable to save them while she tried to pick the pieces up and put them back together for her own life.

  The road to Hell truly is paved with good intentions, it seemed.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Maggie. I told you to stay at that farm until I came to you. I told you to wait for me where you’d be safe.”

  Pain shot along my hand, Maggie’s teeth firmly planted in the skin of my palm. Ripping my hand free, I glared down at her, anger swelling inside me and the first trace of concern. In this moment, she was making a choice, and what side she chose would decide whether she lived or died. I never wanted to hurt her, but I remembered my promise to myself that I would if she tried to get in my way.

  “Tell me why, Elliot? I went to the damn farm like you asked, but…”

  “But?”

  When she stopped talking, I knew there was more to the story she was telling me. Behind her, Jonah and his boys were shouting her name, however she didn’t blink an eye in response. Her focus was entirely on me, her eyes asking a million questions that she hadn’t yet voiced.

  “Come with me, Elliot. Let’s get in your truck and leave right now. I’ll marry you. I’ll run away with you and never look back. Just let my family go and –“

  “And what? Allow them to kill the woman they were busy raping when I ran up here? Have you not seen her yet?”

  My fist wrapped into her hair, and I twisted her head down to look at the poor woman who lay unconscious in the dirt. I’d reacted before realizing that the force I used on Maggie would hurt her, but I’d lost all sense of control the minute I’d crossed the fields to play out the vengeance I’d sought against the Crows.

  I was a man possessed. Possessed with rage, with indignity, with hatred and pain. There was nothing that could stand in my way tonight, not even the beautiful girl who hadn’t asked to be abused her entire life. I couldn’t feel sorry for her, not now that she’d threatened to prevent everything I’d waited to do to the bastards who’d stolen my heart away from me fourteen long years before this moment.

  Screaming in pain from the way her hair was being ripped from her head, Maggie cried out at the sight of the woman on the ground. Her knees gave out beneath her and she sagged, her body barely able to crouch because the hair I still held was holding up all her weight. Releasing her, I watched as she fell over, her arms bracing her body from falling completely over. Wide eyes were locked to the woman her family had tortured, those same eyes searching that poor woman’s body to see what indignities had left their permanent mark.

  Kneeling down, I continued ignoring her family screaming at her to do something. They had to know she was powerless to fight against me. Yet, in their desperation to be free, they were willing to walk Maggie into danger, to beg her to give up her life on the off chance she would be successful in saving theirs. It was another mark against them that I ticked off on the score sheet I had yet to settle.

  “Why?” she cried, her tears mixing with the dust and soot that was a thin blanket across her cheeks. Tiny rivulets ran down in streams as she stared at the teeth marks on the woman’s skin, as she reached out towards the hair that had been ripped from the woman’s head during her family’s attack. Blood caked the woman’s scalp where that hair had been torn away, but I doubted Maggie had seen it until she took an up close and personal look.

  “I can’t tell you why they did the things they did to that woman, Maggie. But what I can tell you is that it’s the reason I can’t just walk away with you now. I need you to leave on your own. I’m begging you to walk away while you still have the chance. Take my keys, take my truck, take this woman and drive as fast as you can without looking back. It’s the only way you’ll survive.”

  My voice was soft despite the rage that still boiled beneath my skin. I wanted her to go…she HAD to go. Forcing myself to remain still while she made her decision, I held my breath, my teeth grinding together each time her father or brother screamed out her name. Time wasn’t ticking by fast enough and each second was adding oxygen to the flames of hatred that burned
inside me. I was a ticking bomb, the pressure becoming so intense that there were only a few minutes left before I exploded and took out every living thing that existed around me.

  Reality was melting into something unrecognizable, as if the flames of the bonfire were hot enough to fragment and distort truth and consequence, compassion and hope, until there was nothing left but primal instincts and pain.

  What small amount of compassion I had left was balanced on a thin precipice, and one wrong move on Maggie’s part would be enough to push me over the edge.

  Her tears wouldn’t stop flowing down her dirty cheeks, her lips held in a tight line that betrayed nothing of what she was thinking. Pushing herself up from the ground, she brushed her hands down the skirt of the dress she wore, her hand disappearing into the folds as her eyes held tight to the woman who remained motionless beneath us.

  Twisting her head to the left, she looked at her family where they were tied to the plastic chairs that weren’t heavy enough to hold them in place. Twisting back to the right, she stared up at me, the flames of the bonfire reflecting in her eyes, the haze of fire coloring her skin in shades of orange and crimson.

  For a single second, I believed she’d make the right choice. But she fooled me in that one second, and unleashed the killer inside me in the next.

  Her hand swung out towards me; her speed and strength unable to match the keen reflexes I’d hidden from her in all the time that I’d known her. Before her hand could make contact with my body, I’d wrapped my fingers around her wrist, the strong grip causing her to cry out as the fragile bones beneath her skin threatened to shatter.

  Why she believed she’d stood a chance against me, I’d never know. And my heart broke apart in my chest to realize she’d drawn her line, she’d made her decision, and that she chosen her family over me.

  Staring into her face for several seconds more, I matched her expression of fury with my own.

  My gaze flicked down to the hand I held, to the syringe that sat lodged in her fist, the needle aimed directly at my body.