Half My Blood

by Lauren Gilley

  He turned back to Colin, more composed, but no less incensed. “You need to get out. If Merc isn’t here–”

  “He’s here,” Mercy’s voice announced behind them, and they both spun to face him, shoulders banging together in their surprise.

  Mercy stood backlit by the waning afternoon sun, and as tall as Colin was, Mercy looked mammoth in height. His leanness made him look mean, rather than less capable. As he stepped toward them, and the light fell away, his face became visible – the fury lodged the breath in Ava’s throat.

  “Baby,” she said, reaching for him. “Everything’s fine.”

  His eyes slid over, but he didn’t move toward her. Then he looked at Aidan. “You two go to the kitchen.”

  Ava felt her brother’s hand go around her wrist, the rough callused skin of his fingers covering her pulse. At another time, she would have marveled at the way he took orders from Mercy. But now, she was worried about blood spilling on her couch.

  “Mercy.” She kept her tone easy. “Colin was just waiting for you to get home. He’s been behaving himself.”

  He didn’t look at her, gaze trained on his half-brother. “Go with Aidan.”

  “Oh, shit,” she muttered as her brother led her out of the room. “Shit.” She leaned a hip against the counter, standing so she had a view of what went on in the next room.

  “What?” Aidan asked as he opened the fridge and rummaged. All the urgency had abandoned him. Now that Mercy was home, and he wasn’t in charge, he didn’t care what happened.

  “If they get into it, Merc will kill him.”

  In the living room, Colin was still sitting, head tilted back at a defiant angle, and Mercy had closed the gap between them, was looming over the other man with his shoulders set at an angle Ava recognized all too well.

  “So?”

  “So…I probably shouldn’t condone that.”

  Aidan snorted. “Hey, have you guys got ice cream?”

  Tango had been strung-out with nerves when Mercy returned to the shop. “Now, don’t freak out,” had been his opening line, and then he’d told him about Colin coming – and then leaving. And that Aidan was on the way to the house to make sure Ava was alright. Tango had still been talking when Mercy turned away, strode to his bike.

  Calm certainty descended. He was going to kill the man. If one hair was out of place on his Ava’s head, Colin was a dead man, plain and simple.

  Seeing Ava unharmed didn’t do much to soothe him.

  Seeing Aidan was some help. At least the guy was ready to ride to his sister’s defense.

  But Colin…sitting there, again, on his goddamn couch like he belonged there…he was done with this shit.

  “Get up.” It was a snarl, his voice. Nothing human about it.

  Colin’s dark eyes flashed, and he slowly pulled his feet down off the coffee table, one and then the other, sitting forward like he had all the time in the world. But when he spoke, he was fighting for patience. Maybe even politeness. “I just came here to talk. To you…and to her.” He gestured toward the kitchen. “Thought maybe she could talk some sense into you – since she’s the ‘only good part of you’ or whatever the hell.”

  “You thought” – his jaw was clenched so tight it was difficult to get the words out – “you’d get her to turn on me?”

  “Whatever works.”

  Among his brothers, Mercy was the one lauded for his patience and restraint. Ironically. He, Walsh, and Michael had an oligarchy going when it came to thinking things through. Because torture, Mercy always argued, was a very well-thought-out endeavor, not to be rushed. Hotheaded fistfights – he’d leave those to Aidan and the prospects, and Dublin if he’d had a few too many.

  But in this moment, he was not the trusted MC extractor. He wasn’t Mercy; wasn’t the thoughtful brother.

  He was Felix, the kid Colin had tried to leave behind during those boyhood adventures through the tangled cypress roots in their swamp playground. And Felix wanted to punch this fucker in the face.

  So that’s what he did.

  His fist drew back and it snapped faster than Colin had expected. Faster than he’d expected himself. One second Colin was opening his mouth to say something else, and the next he was toppling off the couch onto the floor. Mercy was eighty percent sure his right hand would never be the same again after the impact with the asshole’s jaw bone.

  “Fuuuuuck,” Colin hissed into the carpet as he struggled to get his hands braced beneath him. He was too unsteady, and only managed to flop around a little.

  “Oh damn,” Ava said from the kitchen.

  “Hey!” Aidan called.

  But hitting Colin had felt good. It had felt almost cosmic. Destined. Fated. Like forces beyond his ken had brought him together with this brother wannabe so he could complete the cycle. First father, and now son, completely at his – how perfect – mercy.

  “Bro,” Aidan said, and there were footfalls coming toward them.

  “Wait,” Ava said, her voice smooth, totally unruffled. His little murderer, bless her precious heart. “Maybe he needs this.”

  “What?” Aidan asked.

  Mercy wasn’t listening closely. He reached down and took a firm hold on the back of Colin’s shirt, dragging up and away from the couch, out into the center of the room where he had more room to work. The guy was heavy, and Mercy saw the leap of the muscles in his arm, grunted through his teeth as he put his weight behind the pulling.

  “He’s going to kill him,” Aidan said.

  Ava was silent.

  “Get the fuck off of me,” Colin growled, trying to wrench free. He dug his fingers into the rug and kicked at Mercy’s shin. Moving him was like hauling a mature bull gator up into a boat. Remy had always been so good at that – getting the flopping dead gators into the boat. All by himself, without benefit of a wench, he could drag those big ones up over the side, sweat pouring down his dark, smiling face, scarred arms bulging with the effort.

  Good ol’ Daddy. The best daddy there ever could have been. Doting on little Felix and taking good care of his mama.

  And fucking Evie O’Donnell.

  Making a second son he kept secret.

  A terrible sound swelled in the room as Mercy fell on the man his father had sired in secret. Colin was scrambling onto his back and swinging fists and presenting a picture of a big man ready to inflict violence. His face twisted up in a snarl and he came up off the carpet at Mercy with the kind of menace that sent men to their knees.

  For Mercy it was nothing. He wasn’t seeing Colin, the room, the logic behind any of it. All he could see was his father’s dazzling white smile as he sat back in the boat and said, “Whew! Lord, that was a big one. Good shootin’, Felix. That’s my boy!”

  A lie – such a big lie – and how many other lies had he missed? How much had Remy hidden from him?

  His father! He’d named his son for him. He’d buried the man with his own two hands in the shade of the oak trees beyond the house.

  And this living, breathing lie, accusing him of murder, coming into his house, talking to his wife.

  Mercy hit him again, and again, straddling him when he fell, driving his fist into his all-too-familiar face over and over.

  Blood on the carpet.

  Blood on his knuckles.

  Those dark Remy eyes swollen and bloodied, so they didn’t look so much like Remy anymore.

  At some point, Mercy realized the noise in the room was his own incoherent screaming. An awful wordless growling that he couldn’t seem to hold inside his chest.

  How do you like that, Colin? I turned out bigger than you. I turned out better than you. Daddy loved me, and he died at the hands of a man I cut the tattoos off of to prove how much I loved him back.

  He couldn’t breathe. The scream was strangling him. And Colin wasn’t moving much anymore.

  Then there was a hand. A single, cool hand against the back of his neck, curled lightly, echoing the shape of his throat. He would know those skinny white fi
ngers anywhere, just by feel.

  He sat back suddenly, drawing in a huge breath that burned his lungs.

  Ava’s hand went down to his shoulder. He felt her hair brush the side of his face as she leaned toward him, kissed his temple, let her lips skim his ear.

  “Baby, stop,” she said quietly. “You don’t want to kill him.”

  “I do.” His own voice was raw and strained.

  Colin’s chest lifting beneath him was the only evidence of life.

  “No,” Ava murmured. She petted his hair, ran her hand along the crown of his head. “Come on. Let’s clean you up. Aidan can take care of him.”

  He wanted to finish it. He did. He wanted to end this family that had tried to end his. The family that had sent gunmen through the swamp to get to his wife and the child she carried.

  But when Ava’s skinny-fingered hand slid around his bicep, he stood at her slightest urging, and he let her draw him back.

  “Aidan,” she said in that composed, businesslike voice she’d inherited from her mother. “Can you do something about this?”

  Aidan was staring at Colin slack-jawed. “Um…yeah.”

  It always worked this way, didn’t it? He carved them up and his brothers took care of disposal. He thought of Ronnie Archer and Mason Stephens, their limp dead bodies sagging against the duct tape, the prospects coming in with gloves and bleach and plastic bags, Walsh taking notes off to the side. He was not the disposer – he was the punisher. Pain was his trade. Torture was his value.

  And so he let Ava steer him down the hall to the bathroom.

  She was probably a bad hostess, and Aidan was probably making a mess of things, but Ava refused to be a part of whatever shuffling and grunting and cussing was going on out in the living room. She’d heard several bikes and a truck pull up, and overlapping male voices talked about what they should do before it sounded like the lot of them left, and all the engines fired up again.

  Thank God Colin was out of the house finally.

  Mercy sat on the side of the tub in the master bathroom, so still he didn’t seem to be breathing. His knuckles were a bloody mess and she knelt before him, cleaning them gently with a damp washcloth, trying to get beneath Colin’s blood to see how bad the damage was to the hand.

  “Does that hurt?” she asked, dabbing the splits in the skin.

  “No.”

  She reached back onto the counter for the alcohol. “This is going to, though. Sorry.”

  “S’alright.”

  She winced in anticipation as she flooded a clean square of the cloth with alcohol and started dabbing again.

  Mercy, as expected, took it stoically, a sharp inhale through his nostrils the only sign of discomfort. He kept his hands very still in her grasp, letting her clean each abrasion thoroughly.

  She smeared a thin layer of triple antibiotic ointment across the marks and stood, wiping her hands off on her jeans. “That should do it.”

  He curled his hands into fists and his brows crimped as the split skin pulled tight over the knuckles. “Thanks, baby.”

  “You hungry?” she asked as she put the first aid supplies under the sink. “We’ve got leftover Alfredo bake if you want some. I can heat it up.”

  She detected the energy rolling off him in the moment of stillness before he spoke. She felt the shift in his tightly-reined anger, the way it turned to something else, tangible as the low vibration of a TV in another room.

  “You’re not gonna say anything?” he asked.

  Ava glanced at him over her shoulder and saw coiled tension in his large body, as he leaned forward and braced his forearms on his thighs, gaze trained on her. “Why? You don’t want to hear anything.”

  A thin smile touched one corner of his mouth. “You’re not gonna guilt-trip me about putting my brother in a coma?”

  Finished, she set the washcloth on the counter and leaned a hip against it. “Are we admitting that’s who he is now?” she asked softly.

  His face tightened, throat jumping as he swallowed.

  “I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”

  “I know.”

  “I want–”

  “I know what you want.” The same thing he always wanted after he’d been violent: her.

  She didn’t brace herself against him. Even though he came up off the tub like a shot and closed the gap between them like a damn Mack truck, she knew he’d be gentle with her, and he was. His hands were soft manacles around her wrists, and she fell into the dance as if they’d rehearsed the steps. Around, putting her back to the wall, hands going to his shoulders as his head ducked and his mouth crashed down onto hers.

  A feral, feverish kiss. His hands at the button of her jeans, the zipper.

  When he hoisted her up against the wall, she wrapped her bare legs tight around his hips and dug her nails into the rigid muscles beneath his shirt. It was deep, insistent penetration, and his breath was loud and coarse against her neck as he channeled the blood lust into this sweeping need to be inside her.

  Like a child seeking comfort, she thought. That bit of shame and confusion and self-hatred over what he’d done. And the life-affirming succor he wanted afterward, needed by the broken child in him, taken by the virile man.

  He cursed, and then tensed, and then stilled, the orgasm locking him up tight, a full-body spasm.

  Ava pushed her hands through his hair, kissed his throat and said, “Take me to bed. Do me right.”

  “I will.”

  And then she was going to talk to him about his brother.

  Ten

  Dear Brother

  After two days of putting it off, it was time to go see Colin.

  Mercy was far from flush in the cash department, but he probably could have swung a brief stay at the Holiday Inn.

  Not so with Colin, apparently. According to Aidan, the guy had directed them to the old one-story, empty-pool-in-the-parking-lot Road King Motel off the interstate. The place looked even sadder than he remembered. Thick cracks spidering across the pavement, sprouting tufted grass. Kudzu had claimed the south wall. The roofline sagged, missing shingles flashing like gapped teeth. The cars in the parking lot were all two decades old, save Colin’s Jeep.

  The once-brass number for room six was crusty with some sort of corrosion that looked like moss. Mercy knocked hard and waited.

  Knocked again.

  There was shuffling on the other side. Colin’s voice was rough in the way of guys who’d had the shit beat out of them. “What?”

  “It’s Felix. Open up.”

  “I can see it’s you through the damn peephole. Ugly-ass.”

  “Prettier than you.” He pushed his hair back for show. “You gonna open the door or what?”

  “Am I gonna have to defend myself?”

  Mercy sighed. “Just open the door.”

  Sound of the security chain dropping away, deadbolt turning.

  The door swung inward and the evening sunlight slanted in over Mercy’s shoulders, striking Colin’s battered face like a stage spotlight. The swelling was terrible. Left eye swollen shut, the right a mere glittering crescent between the puffy lids. Lots of ugly bruising that would darken to blue and green. Split lip.

  Mercy was used to seeing the damage his fists left behind – but the remorse was a new sensation.

  Colin stepped aside with a mock-gallant sweep of his arm, inviting him into the dim room.

  “All the comforts of home,” Mercy said as he took quick visual stock.

  Color scheme from the seventies: mustard yellow, avocado green, shit brown. The sagging double mattress was draped with a threadbare comforter printed with yellow, green, and brown flowers. Lucite side tables. Boxy console TV with a faded silk flower arrangement on top. The carpet was yellow, and shag, and stained in too many places to mention. Mercy took a deep breath and pulled the dark scent of mildew down into his lungs.

  He turned as Colin shut the door. “There a reason you had to do the whole cliché dive motel thing?”
/>   Colin shrugged and sat down on the foot of the bed. The mattress groaned. “It’s cheap.”

  “You hurting for money?”

  They hadn’t moved beyond the living room beatdown, but they were both, through unspoken agreement, going to put it on the back burner for the moment.

  Colin shrugged again. “I’m between jobs. I’ll find something else. It’s not me I’m worried about.” His voice hardened, eyes lifting to Mercy.

  Shit.

  “Evie’s having a rough time of it?”

  “She’s flat broke.”

  The news landed heavy as a bag of sand across his shoulders. “Damn.” He dropped into the stiff-backed chair closest to the door. “They didn’t have anything stashed away in savings?”

  “Nah. Mom was all about enjoying what they could while they had it.”

  And now she had nothing.

  Mercy massaged the sore knuckles of his right hand. Guilt made the soreness worse.

  “And it’s my fault she’s in bad shape,” he said, and Colin didn’t argue.

  Ava’s words from two days before came back to him. After he’d taken her up against the bathroom wall, and then taken her more thoroughly, in their bed. “If you can’t make peace with him, you can at least say you wish Larry wasn’t dead, because you do wish that.”

  He sighed. She was right. Wasn’t she always? So much for his age giving him an advantage in the wisdom department.

  “I never shoulda called them.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because…” It was easier than he wanted it to be to go back to that headspace. The grating anxiety, the obsessive need to keep his fillette safe. “Because I needed friends,” was the only way he knew how to say it. “And I didn’t trust anyone the way I trusted Larry and Evie.”

  Colin stared at him.

  “I asked them to check and see if Saints Hollow was occupied,” he continued. “And they were the ones who offered to stock the fridge and make up the bed. They went above and beyond – as always.” He swallowed hard. “And then they sold us out. And when it came down to turning myself over, letting Ava fall into enemy hands – I made the only choice I could. It was a shit choice, but so were all the others. We weren’t all going to make it out of that swamp alive. I had to pick who walked away whole – and I picked my woman, and I picked myself, so I could get her home safe. Hate me for it if you want – you’re entitled to it. But all I did was pick. You would have had to, if it’d been you.”