Four Crows

by Lily White

  Maggie…

  …kill the fucker who she ran off with…

  At the sound of my daughter’s name, I struggled harder, dizziness knocking me sideways while recognition came in to steady me long enough to understand it was the sound of my sons’ voices I was hearing.

  …untie…

  Lifting my hands to my face, I pried my eyelids apart and the voices became louder and more demanding.

  Nobody demanded anything from me. I’d taught everybody that lesson. What made these fucks think they had the right now?

  Yeah, I was old. And I may have been dying. But that didn’t mean I’d put up with anybody’s shit. I was a Crow male. I gave orders. I didn’t follow them.

  “Dad! Wake the fuck up!”

  I guess Finn had finally walked out of whatever tunnel he’d been in. His voice was closer now. It didn’t echo in my head, didn’t sound like he spoke around rocks that had been shoved in his mouth to muffle him.

  “He’s got Maggie. Wake up!”

  Hearing her name for the second time caused my heart to beat harder beneath my ribs, it woke something in my brain. It caused panic to come in and rip me away from whatever warm blanket had kept me under.

  Amber waves danced in front of me, the night sky coming into focus where flames had once been. Shaking away the exhaustion, I craned my head to look at my son.

  “Fucking finally. Maggie drugged you, dad. She freed you afterward, but we’re still tied up. You need to do something. We need to go after her.”

  No. Not my little girl. She wouldn’t have betrayed me like that. Not Maggie.

  “I’m going to kill that little bitch when I get my hands on her.”

  “No, you won’t,” I growled out.

  Finn’s eyes widened, his body jerking wildly in his chair with anger bunching his muscles beneath his skin. “She left us here. She left us for that son of a bitch who thought he could come here and –“

  “I don’t care what she did,” my voice boomed. The boy had enough sense to shut his trap as soon as the anger rolled out of me in waves. “I’m still the father in this family. And I’ll decide what happens to my children, including you. Do you understand me, son?”

  Damn, if my lungs didn’t protest just then, my words broken apart by the blood and mucus that forced its way up my throat. Coughing only caused more pain in my back, but I was used to it. These damn fits were going to kill me eventually, but not before I made sure my daughter was safe.

  “Where’d she go?” I managed to croak out the question after spitting blood onto the dirt beneath me. “Did she say where she was going?”

  “No,” Brody answered. “She shot you up, cut your ties and left us here to die. Jack still ain’t dead yet, and we’ve got a half naked bitch still lying by the fire. If the cops had shown up –“

  “Well, if you two fucks are still sitting here tied to plastic chairs, I assume they didn’t.”

  Wrenching my head to the side, I glared at my youngest son. He was a piss poor example of a man despite the many times I’d tried to beat some sense into him.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Couple hours. Hell if I know. The damn sun ain’t up yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Shaking away the fog that still held me, I blinked my eyes to bring the scene around me into focus. On the far left, the fucker I’d allowed to marry my daughter lay passed out. Didn’t know if it was from blood loss or extreme pain, but he lay motionless except for the shallow movement of his chest. The sledgehammer that had been used on his legs and crotch sat just where our attacker had left it, and I thought hard to remember what caused him to walk away and abandon his weapon.

  “Maggie,” I groaned. “Where is she?”

  My gaze slid along the ground to find the woman we’d stolen for our entertainment passed out beside the dying fire. I couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead, and I didn’t much care.

  “After drugging you, she climbed in that bastard’s truck and drove off with him. She said she was saving the family. It’s a crock of shit if you ask me. I think she’s been fucking that guy behind our backs for a while. Jack told me the bitch was loose as fuck on their wedding night.”

  My fingers gripped the armrests of the chair, my teeth gnashing together to hear Jack’s name spoken aloud. “He still alive?”

  Finn looked over at me, his expression twisted into something revolted and unsure. “Can’t tell from where I’m still tied up, dad. You think you might want to do something about it now that you’re done getting your beauty sleep?”

  I was confused as all hell, but with each passing minute I regained my ability to think clearly. Fighting against the sluggishness of my body, it took three attempts to push up and out of my chair, the useless plastic tipping over in the dirt behind me as I stumbled forward, past Finn, past the sleeping bitch in the dirt, and rested my hand on the handle of the sledgehammer.

  “Dad? What are you doing?”

  It took another minute or two for the world to stop spinning around me. Using the handle of the sledgehammer, I stood in place, balancing myself until I felt strength return to my arms and legs – until I felt anger sweep in on a wave of adrenaline that chased away the pain.

  “Dad?”

  All I wanted was to finish what that jackass who’d stolen my daughter had started. I needed to get even with the bastard lying beneath me, needed to show him what happened when you dared leave a mark on my little girl.

  His eyes cracked open as my shadow loomed over him. But despite the fact he was awake enough to look up at me, I didn’t think he was conscious enough to understand the danger that was staring him in the face.

  I spit in his eye before my hand wrapped around the handle of the hammer.

  “You think to lie to me in my own house? You think you had any right to harm what was mine?”

  “Dad! What are you doing?”

  The sack of shit didn’t even have enough sense to attempt to roll away or shield himself from what was coming. With the last bit of strength I had left in me, I lifted the hammer into the air, and brought it down on his head. Brain matter, blood and bone burst over the ground. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his arms and legs twitched as his body lay there dying.

  Dropping the hammer to the ground, I turned around to look at my good for nothing sons. “And you two. What gave you any right to leave those marks on your sister?”

  Finn’s expression wrinkled the skin of his face, anger a purple cast across his cheeks and beneath his narrowed eyes. The moment his nostrils flared open, I chased the anger right out of him with my fist. Blood sprayed from his mouth and his head twisted awkwardly to the side.

  “Consider that repayment for what you did to her.”

  Turning my glare on Brody, I was satisfied to discover that he had no complaints or arguments to give regarding what just happened to his brother.

  “We’ll settle this later,” I warned him, my legs shaking beneath my body from the amount of time I’d slept in that damn chair. “But for now, we need to go find your sister.”

  A flash of silver caught my eye – a kitchen knife stuck in the dirt close to where my chair had been. Picking it up, I freed Brody first, disgust settling in my stomach over the way he complained that he couldn’t feel his fingers. I thought I’d raised them to be stronger than that, yet both of them had been caught off guard by the prick that stole my daughter. They were two healthy, strong, grown men, and not one of them had enough sense to realize they were being ambushed.

  After releasing Finn, I took a few steps towards the house, but turned again to bark out instructions. “Set that fire ablaze again. I want what’s left of your friend tossed inside, along with the woman. We don’t need bodies lying around to alert anybody to what happened here.”

  I didn’t wait for them to answer before closing the distance between the field and the house with a few determined strides.

  There was no man in this world that would take my daughter
away from me without permission. There was no man that would sneak around with her and steal her purity from her without getting my approval first. Yet that dumb fuck had done all of those things while I hadn’t been aware. He’d snuck under my nose, confused my girl with whatever empty promises he’d said to her, and he’d used her to get to my family in order to take her away for good.

  My thoughts raced back to the bullshit he’d said to me. Some irrational crap about how I’d taken his wife and son from him over a decade ago. While he rattled off questions, I’d smiled to inform him that there was a damn good chance I’d fucked his wife and sold her off to die. I didn’t give a shit about it neither. But if he wanted me to remember one woman among dozens…well…I didn’t have any interest in sorting out their useless faces.

  Those women were nothing but money. And their kids? They weren’t worth much to me either, except for the money that sick in the head pig farmer paid me to drop them off to him. Every dollar bill looks the same once it’s resting in the palm of my hand, and I’d told him that just as soon as he started demanding answers to his questions.

  Dumb shit wasn’t even man enough to finish killing off Jack for what he’d done to Maggie. I wasn’t surprised. I knew my daughter meant nothing to him. He’d made her a pawn in his stupid game, and I’d make him pay for that mistake when I saw him again.

  Throwing open a cabinet door, I grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the shelf and practically ripped the wrapping and cap off the top. Bringing the bottle to my lips, I swigged down several swallows, my eyes closing as the burn chased down my throat to settle in my empty stomach. Numbness raced through my veins and rushed to all the painful places in my body.

  When a good third of the bottle was gone, I slammed it on the counter and took a deep breath. Damn if that didn’t start another coughing fit – this one worse than the last.

  I didn’t know how many days I had left, and only God knew my final hour. But I wouldn’t let that stop me from freeing my girl from the clutches of a madman.

  Out the window I saw the bonfire roar to life once more, the smell of burning flesh seeping in through the crevices of the house as they tossed their buddy in the fire. The bitch followed shortly after, her screams piercing the night until it fell silent once again.

  A few minutes later, the door behind me slammed open, the walls of the kitchen shaking from how violently it struck against the frame. Heavy footsteps clamored over the floor as my pathetic sons stumbled in. I turned to tell them exactly what I thought about the mistakes they’d made tonight.

  The pain didn’t register in my gut immediately, but the smirk pulling at Finn’s lips sure did. Reaching down, I felt blood seeping out from around the knife he’d stabbed into my body. My eyes remained locked on his insolent expression, on the look of betrayal and triumph that lingered behind his eyes.

  “Sorry, old man,” he said. “But you ain’t worth shit to us anymore.”

  “Where the hell are we, Maggie? What roads did you take to get us out in the middle of nowhere?”

  A beautiful girl sat shivering in her seat beside me. She hadn’t looked at me since I’d shoved her in the truck, and she’d barely said a damn word since I’d peeled away from the gas station parking lot in search of a single landmark that might tell me where the hell we were.

  Several times now, I’d threatened to pull over and ask directions, but each time she swore she’d run screaming from the truck claiming it was me that kidnapped her. I had to admit she was smart about that threat. When I’d first laughed at the suggestion, she reminded me about the bruises on her body coupled with the carvings in her ass that proved she’d been abused.

  The damn girl was a Crow, through and through, and my disgust with her was battling everything inside that reminded me I’d cared for her not even twenty-four hours before.

  “Maggie,” I growled. “I know what you’re doing. I know you’re trying to keep me away from your father and brothers, but I will find them sooner or later. You’re only stalling the inevitable with this game, and you’re seriously pissing me off in the meantime.”

  Why couldn’t I have been an abusive man? One good slap might knock some sense into her, but no matter how many times my hand clenched into a fist, I couldn’t bring myself to hit her.

  Regardless of the arguments I made, she wouldn’t respond, and I was stuck driving around in the pitch black of night trying to make heads or tails of the vast amounts of forest on either side of us.

  The silence was like sandpaper against sunburned skin, every second of it that passed leaching me of the ability to give much of a fuck about anything. I’d had those bastards in the palm of my hand, but made the mistake of worrying about the woman seated next to me. I should have let her shove her foot through the window. I shouldn’t have cared about the amount of damage she would done to her body in the process.

  Had I not cared, I would have had my answers about my family. I could have slaughtered each and every one of those bastards and saved the woman they’d attacked.

  I could have been dead by now and had one last moment of seeing my wife and son before God himself tossed me in the pits of Hell.

  Tick, tick, tick – the silence kept building its pressure inside the truck until I thought I’d explode.

  “That’s it…”

  Maggie let out a shocked scream when I veered wildly off the road, the back tires fishtailing behind us as dust was kicked up into a large cloud. I almost lost control of the vehicle as it dipped down into the dirt, the back end rising up from the sudden stop. Thankfully, I didn’t hit any trees on my way into a clearing that had been hidden from the road for the most part. I’d seen it for just a second before making the split decision to ram my vehicle through whatever small saplings were in the way. Maggie was going to talk one way or the other, and I couldn’t make that happen while we were on the road.

  With thick dust still polluting the air in an impermeable cloud, I threw my door open and stepped out of the driver’s seat. Four long legged strides had me rounding the front before my hand ripped the passenger door open. She tried to crawl away from me, but I was faster than she could ever hope to be.

  When I’d first woken up in the truck while she’d been inside the gas station, I’d searched the inside of the vehicle for any surprises she might have stashed. I didn’t find anything of any concern, and I’d hidden behind the bushes that lined the street in wait of the little traitor to come walking along. She’d been easy enough to take control of when she walked by unprepared, and after shoving her inside, I’d searched her entire body to make sure she didn’t have another needle on her that she could use to knock me out again. She’d complained when my hands touched her breasts and between her legs, but I wasn’t feeling like much a gentleman at that moment.

  Unfortunately for Maggie, I wasn’t feeling much like a gentleman at this moment either.

  Another frightened cry left her lips when I pulled her out of the vehicle, dragged her around to where the headlights still beamed brightly and dumped her on the ground in a crying heap. The dirt in the air mixed with the tears streaming down her cheeks creating little muddy streams trickling down her skin.

  On her hands and knees, she attempted to crawl away from me, but I grabbed her by the hair to drag her back into place. Crouching down, I made sure to lock my eyes to her before opening my mouth to scream out my demands.

  “Tell me where the fuck we are! I’m not fucking playing with you, Maggie. If I have to kill you now and leave your body to rot in this fucking forest, I’ll do it. I will find my way back to your place and I will kill every member of your family as slowly as fucking possible until I get the answers I want. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you just fine,” she cried. “You’re screaming loud enough to wake the dead, Elliot. You’re scaring me.”

  “Do you think I give a shit that I’m scaring you? You can’t possibly think that, Maggie. I know you’re smarter than that. Quite frankly, you should be pissing yourself with th
e fear that I might not let you live past tonight.”

  “Why?” She cried, her voice straining to formulate words through her sobbing. “Because of my family? I’m not one of them, Elliot. I didn’t –“

  “You can stop right fucking there, you lying bitch. Don’t even try telling me you’re not one of them. You made it readily apparent that, not only are you one of them, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to cover up their crimes and save them from suffering the same fate as their victims. Don’t you have a moral bone in your body? How can you not know it’s wrong to stay silent while they’re raping and killing women and children?”

  “They didn’t rape the children!” she screamed, her eyes rounding into impossibly large orbs as she glared up at me from the dirt where she was kneeling.

  Laughter bubbled from my chest – the insane kind that only served the purpose of expending a small enough amount of pressure inside me so that I didn’t reach out to choke the life right out of her.

  “They didn’t? They didn’t rape them? Tell me what they did to them, Maggie. Specifically, what did they do to a four year old boy who had nothing to defend himself besides a stuffed rabbit?”

  Spittle was flying from my lips, my voice so loud it boomed across the clearing and frightened away whatever creatures were out foraging for their meal. I was face to face with the woman who had lied to me the entire time she’d known me, the one who’d looked me in the face – who’d kissed me – while knowing what happened to my family.

  “Elliot, please stop,” she pled, but her begging was falling on deaf ears. I didn’t give a damn how scared she was. I didn’t care one bit if I was the monster in her life now. Nothing would stop me from discovering the truth of what happened to Katelyn and Michael and if I had to torture her to get it, I would.

  “Tell me,” I demanded.

  “They – “ she choked over her own words, barely able to speak past the sobs and shaking of her body. “I don’t know what happened in the end, but I know my family didn’t rape or kill your son.”

  Taking a deep breath to calm down the violence that was threatening to burst from my skin, I counted to ten while I brought myself under control. Deceptively soft, my voice was a bare whisper when I reached out to grip her chin, force her eyes to mine, and ask, “And how could you know that?”