The Found: A Crow City Novel

by Cole McCade

  “Sir,” the officer said shakily, “I’m going to need you to back up.” Yet he was the one backing up, as Priest advanced a step forward, leaning heavily with one leg shaking, yet unstoppable. “Back up!”

  “Or what?” Priest asked, soft, lilting. “You’ll cut me down? Why are you hesitating? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Kill people. Kill the wrong people. Because you do not understand. Because I had to do your job for you, because you were busy cutting down the people you should have protected. And now you intend to end that.” He tilted his head, cold judgment in that accented, fluid voice. “Will you tell them, because my skin is dark, that I am hinóno’éí and it’s safe to sweep me under the rug as if I do not matter?” Another step closer, and Willow’s heart seized up like a broken gear. “Shoot me. Shoot me, and feel righteous.”

  “Step. Back.” The cop’s face was red, his shoulders up around his ears. “Step back!” he screamed.

  And pulled the trigger.

  The shot rang out like a cannon, the sound bouncing off the walls and amplifying into a roar. Willow whimpered, covering her ears. Priest tumbled back as if he’d been punched in the chest, a rag doll flung back by a terrible force and tumbled to the ground. He fell in the pool of crimson, and was still. Willow wasn’t sure he was breathing, could hardly even see him, didn’t know when she’d started crying, but Priest was nothing but colors, gold and bronze and black and a million shades of red.

  The black and peach blur of the police officer moved, circling Priest, blocking her view of him. She didn’t know what to do. If she came out, the cop might just shoot her; she didn’t trust him, with his shaky hands and something about his eyes and how quick he’d been to pull the trigger when Priest had dared him, challenged him, mocked him. And now Priest was dead, and that relief she’d been waiting for with every minute in this trap didn’t come, replaced by a cold and ferocious grief that would swallow her and rip her apart with its jagged teeth.

  She could run. The cop was distracted, babbling something into his radio, taking deep, gulping breaths and still staring at Priest, still keeping his gun on him even though he wasn’t moving, all that vibrant power and lethal, compact potential just…gone. But with the officer’s focus entirely on what he’d done, Willow could slip out, limp her way somewhere safe, get home and try not to look back and think about how she’d left Priest in a puddle of his own blood. She couldn’t do anything for him. Not now. Not anymore.

  When had the lines gotten so blurred, that she even cared?

  She choked down her fear, her nausea, and slowly pushed the cabinet door open further, fingers pinched against the hinges to keep them from squeaking. Rolling forward, she pushed onto her hands and knees; she’d move faster that way, without trying to drag on her sprained ankle. Her nerves were keen and breathless as a winter wind as she crawled forward, keeping her eyes on the police officer, silently praying he wouldn’t turn around, silently begging she wouldn’t slip and make a single sound.

  “What do I do?” the cop babbled into the radio. “What do I do?”

  Just stay right there, Willow begged.

  Until Priest moved.

  Slowly, hissing through his teeth, he moved, starting to sit up with a creaking groan and pressing one hand over his chest.

  “Fuck!” the cop barked, stumbling back, and Willow almost echoed him, her heart leaping as she scrambled back, backing herself up against the wall next to the crucifix. How? How? Priest had been shot point blank in the chest, the bullet had punched into him and—

  The Kevlar.

  With a low snarl, Priest bared his teeth at the cop. “Bad move,” he bit off, murder in those flashing golden eyes. He started to lunge. The officer shouted and jammed his service revolver between Priest’s eyes.

  “Don’t move! I—I’m warning you!”

  Priest stilled, violence brimming in every tense line of his body, in the intense, burning acid of his gaze. “Make it good this time,” he whispered.

  The cop’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  Willow’s blood boiled.

  And before she knew what she was doing, she lunged.

  Scrabbling out blindly at the rack of weapons mounted to the wall, she closed her fingers around the hilt of something and flung herself across the warehouse with adrenaline and terror the fuel pumping through her veins like hydraulics and moving her without thought, without reason, without intent, until she didn’t even feel the pain in her ankle. Just like with Erin. Just like with Erin the world was red, and she didn’t know what she was doing until she was doing it, didn’t know how she got there until she was crashing into the cop from behind with a scream that sounded less like a woman and more like an animal, a battle cry howled into the rafters.

  The revolver went off. The officer tumbled, his body crumpling underneath her. Willow spilled atop him, shoving against him, fighting him like riding a bucking bronco when he tried to push himself up and she wanted him down, down, fucking down. She smashed into the back of his head over and over again with the hilt of the weapon she’d grabbed, the rounded base clumsily slipping off the back of his skull but raising cries of pain that sounded far away, so far away. He was still moving. He was still moving, and she wanted him to hold still.

  The weapon. The knife. It was a knife she had in her hand, that wickedly hooked, gleaming hunting knife that she’d stared at before, that she’d imagined cutting her throat open like she was soft as cream, slicing through her so easily. She stilled, straddling the cop’s back, staring at the keen, winking edge, the diamond sharpness of the point.

  Pretty, she thought.

  Then she reversed the hilt in her palm, curled her fingers around the grip, and plunged the blade straight down.

  The cop had one chance to struggle underneath her. One chance to scream. Then the knife drove into the nape of his neck; it jammed in hard then stuck, the resistance under her hands meaty and gristly and grinding like she was rolling the bones inside his neck, but she grit her teeth and pushed down harder, harder, harder harder harder into all that red that bubbled out like a geyser from the gaping hole in his neck, twisting and twisting and twisting until with a meaty viscous pop the blade sank through.

  The officer made a strange, gurgling sound, disappointingly quiet. She tilted her head, watching him. Watching as that crimson fountain poured over her fingers, cooling and drying into filmed gloves. He wasn’t breathing anymore, she observed with a kind of quiet, numb interest. He wasn’t breathing anymore, and he was so pale, all that ruddy flush gone from his face until he looked like wet white plastic strewn with peppery bits of stubble, dirty and ugly and strange when all the red that belonged inside was on the outside and spilling all over the floor. And when she jerked the knife back, wrestling it from the grip his body had on it, he flopped like he was alive before he went still and oozed and oozed and oozed.

  “Firefly…?” Priest rasped.

  He sounded like he was talking through a filter. A thick woolly filter that shrouded the world around her and made the colors cloudy and strange and not quite real, until the only things that stood out stark were her blood-gloved hands and the red red sound of her pulse pounding against her throat, her heart beating against her chest.

  “Firefly. Willow. Willow, look at me.”

  She lifted her head, blinking at him. He was alive. Bleeding from a small gash on the side of his neck, trickling down over his shirt, but alive. That was good. Yes. That was why she’d killed the police officer, because she wanted Priest to be alive.

  Oh.

  Oh, God.

  She’d killed the police officer.

  That cloudy filter between her and the world broke apart like a crash of glass. The color rushed back in, the color and the awful copper-salt scent of blood and the knife in her hand, and with a tiny little scream she let it go. It clattered to the floor and bounced away to settle in a pool of spreading blood. She scrambled back, flinging herself from the lifeless body between her thighs, throwing herself away f
rom the blood but it was all over her and she couldn’t scrub it off even when she raked and scratched and clawed in lines of fire down her skin—

  “Willow!”

  Priest caught her from behind, gripped her wrists, pulled them hard away from her and held them firm while she struggled and screamed, sobbing, retching, choking on spit and tears and sickness and horror. She’d—she’d—

  “It’s all right,” he soothed, rumbling against her back, holding her in an iron grip. “Breathe. Breathe. Everything is fine.”

  “It’s not fine!” she cried, gulping out the words, broken and thick and filling her throat like bile. “I…I k-killed…I killed…he…I…oh God oh God oh God…”

  “Shh. Zutti.” His arms enveloped her, and he pulled her into his lap. “Let it out, Willow. Let it all out.”

  “I can’t…I c-can’t…” But she could. She could and she did, trembling in his arms, screaming, screaming until her throat was raw, screaming until she’d hollowed herself out and nothing remained but soft, broken cries and tears that washed down her face to cut trails in the sticky smears of blood on her skin, leaving cleanliness in their wake. She didn’t understand. She didn’t understand and yet she understood everything. Understood that moment when she’d snapped and nearly broken Erin; understood that everything she’d bottled up inside, every failure and disappointment and hurt and moment when she’d turned away, passive and quiet, had been sleeping somewhere deep and growing, growing, turning into a dragon not of fire but of blood, one with horrible teeth that would eat her soul if she let it—and turn her into something as broken and damaged as Priest.

  If she let it.

  “Breathe,” Priest repeated, and yet his voice was weak, tired, as weak and tired as her weary bones. “I am sorry, firefly. I am sorry that I brought you to this.”

  She only shook her head and curled up, burying her face in his chest. “I…I’m scared, Priest…”

  “That’s all right. It is. Being afraid means you still have a heart, Willow.”

  “How? How could I? I killed him…he was just doing his job and I killed him…”

  “You did,” Priest agreed with a bluntness that wouldn’t let her hide from the horror of what she’d done. “To save me.”

  She stared up at him. She…she’d killed a police officer. Killed a man with a life and a family to save this monster who’d been ready to die, out of some…oh God, some sick attachment to him, an attachment that ran deeper than the things he did to her body, yet that was never enough to justify this. How could it be as simple as that? How could she simply wash it away as if it hadn’t happened, just because there was a reason? She was dirty. Tainted. Stained. Guilty. There was no going back, and by all rights he should be passing his judgment and preparing to kill her for her sin.

  She would deserve it.

  He searched her eyes, something troubled crossing his face. Rough fingers curled against her cheek. “Firefly…” he began, but never finished. His eyes rolled back. His grip on her loosened, his entire body going lax.

  And he slumped to the floor, tumbling down and bringing her with him.

  “Priest!”

  She spilled to her knees next to him, breathing in frantic little whistles. His skin was ashen, clammy; he groaned. She dragged his heavy weight across her lap, limp against her thighs, and pressed her fingers to his pulse; it was weak, slow, but she didn’t think he was dying. Not yet.

  He stirred, and dragged a hand over his eyes clumsily. “Blood loss,” he rasped. “I’ll survive. Not the first time.”

  She bit down on the inside of her cheek, looking at him, resting her hand to his chest. “I can bandage you u—”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish. Not when the sound of sirens cut the night, far over Crow City, but there was only one place they could be going. The officer had been radioing for backup. They’d be coming. And then, this would truly be all over.

  For both of them.

  She fretted her hands together. “Priest—Priest, we have to—”

  “We?” He let his hand fall, looking up at her with dulled, weary eyes. “You are free, Willow. Go.”

  “No!” She shook her head. “You’ll never make it out of here alone.”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Then maybe I should simply…let go.” He sighed heavily, eyes closing. “Let you go.”

  “I can’t leave you here like this! I can’t—I can’t be responsible for two deaths in one day, I can’t—”

  His fingers pressed to her lips, and she could only imagine the strength, the pain it had taken to reach for her. To touch her. And to say, “Then come with me.” His voice was steady for all that it was so quiet, so weak, that soft accent dark with an ache that reflected in amber depths when he opened his eyes, taking her in with a searching gaze that threatened to swallow her into that hypnotic magnetism that not even blood loss could erase. “Do something that isn’t safe for once, Willow. Take a risk on something you want.”

  “You think I want you? Want this? You can’t expect me to just…throw everything away…my father…”

  “Never needed you as much as you needed to be needed.”

  “That doesn’t mean I should run off with a murderer after you fucking kidnapped me and spent three days fucking me!”

  His hand fell—heavy, so heavy, uncontrolled and hitting the concrete with a jarring thud. His gaze went flat. “Is that all you see in me? Then go.” And as the sirens grew louder, he turned his face away. “La polizia come. Go. I will not have you implicated.”

  She stared down at her hands. At her bloody hands, covered in stains of red that dried to her skin as if sinking in, tattooing under the skin. “It’s not implication when I’m guilty,” she whispered. “I’m just as guilty as you. I’m no better than you.”

  “I told you,” he said. “We are all monsters to some degree.”

  Willow curled her fingers. Blood crackled against her skin like a film of dried glue, her heart at once wild and heavy, torn into so many pieces and each flying on the wind to somewhere unknown, somewhere terrifying. If the police came, if she threw herself on their mercy, would they believe her? Believe that she’d cracked for a moment, temporary insanity, and while she’d be prosecuted and judged one day she’d be free to have a normal life, to pick up again and start over?

  Or would they see right through her, and know that in that moment she had made a choice—and that choice had raised Priest’s life above one of their own?

  “Choose,” Priest said, as if she hadn’t already chosen. “We don’t have much time.”

  No. She shook her head mutely, pressing her trembling lips together on a whimper. Yes. No. I won’t, I can’t, I need…I need…

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly be that sick, that broken, that he’d gotten so deep under her skin.

  I…I need…

  But it wouldn’t be denied. This sleeping thing inside her had come alive, and would not be laid to rest again.

  I need you.

  And that terrifies me.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t, I don’t know what you want, please—”

  “Tell me,” he growled, and struggled up, pushing himself up on one shaking arm. “I need you to say it. I cannot do it for you. For once in your life…”

  She buried her face in blood-stained hands, turned away, but she couldn’t turn away from what she’d done. From that voice that needled into her, found all her secret places, turned them out to expose everything that hurt and screamed and bled inside her.

  “For once in your life, Willow,” he said, “choose for yourself.”

  “I already did!” she cried, and dug her fingers into her hair. “You…you fucking asshole. You’ve fucked everything up. I don’t even know myself anymore, I…I don’t think my own father would recognize me, and it’s all because of you. Because of you! You broke me, you had to make me as sick as you are…” Her throat closed, strangling her. She
curled in on herself. “I’m sick, I’m sick, I’m sick…”

  “You are human,” Priest said softly, and caught the firefly pendant dangling from her throat, turning it in shaking fingers. “And you are the one who told me humans make mistakes…and it’s what we do about it after that matters. So what will you do, firefly?”

  She uncurled herself. Spread her fingers, even the fine hairs on her knuckles crusted with so much terrible, hateful red. Could she start over, after what she’d done?

  Could she start over, when there was no going back?

  Could he?

  As the sirens wailed louder and louder, she searched his face. She saw nothing but quiet acceptance—acceptance, and a brokenness that laid him vulnerable. He was weak in this moment. Weak and exposed, and yet in that weakness was the strength to accept his fate, whether it was punishment for his crimes or a chance to atone. Whatever would happen to him would be her choice, and he was putting his trust in her by giving her his life, his weakness…and letting her do what she would.

  And if she ever wanted a chance to start again, she would have to be the one in control.

  “No more threats,” she said shakily, then took a deep breath and forced her voice to steady. “No rules. No open-ended deals. No ultimatums. I’m a free woman, and I’m here of my own free will. And if you ever threaten me again, I’m leaving of that free will.”

  “Fireflies burn out that much more quickly in cages.” He brushed trembling fingers through her hair, gently peeling free several strands stuck to her cheeks by blood and tears. “My life is in your hands, lucciola. Do with it what you will.”

  Hope was a fragile thing, trembling in her hands like ephemeral stardust, iridescent and bright. “You…you mean that?”

  “You were right. This has to end,” he said, as the flash of strobing police lights fell through the windows, burning blue and red against the golden backdrop of exhausted, hazed eyes. “I simply could never conceive of it ending in anything but my death, before.”

  “And you can now?”