Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  The boys stared up at him, obviously terrified.

  That made him laugh even more.

  “Who’s crippled now?” he shouted, as if he expected the entire town to hear him. “Huh? Who’s crippled now, you spiteful jerks?”

  2

  Midas Ford tried to listen patiently, but it was difficult to avoid his latest conviction that the world was going to hell and there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

  “He broke Aidan’s jaw, Doc,” Archibald Frugin shouted across the table. One of the town’s richest farmers, as well as Aidan’s uncle and guardian, Archibald leaned his bony torso inward to seem more intimidating. “Even you can’t fix his face right. You don’t have the wires you need. Isn’t that what you said? We’ll have to get someone to drive down to Lansing and trade for a whole bunch of medical supplies, just for this one incident.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Midas said, sitting at the other end of the table with his fingers forming a steeple in front of his mouth. “Young boys get into fights all the time. Injuries are bound to happen. Might as well be prepared.”

  “The boys ganged up on William,” Dominic said. “He was defending himself.”

  Archibald’s jaw visibly clenched, a sign he was about to lose his temper. “You listen to me, now. That crippled boy is a certified psycho just like his daddy was before him. I saw it in his eyes. After what his mother did, I see no reason to let either stay.”

  “I didn’t know you were a psychologist, Frugin,” Dominic said.

  Archibald glared hotly at Dominic like he wanted to kill him.

  “Eli, Peter, and Ian have volunteered to head down to Lansing to trade for the necessary supplies,” Midas said. “We’ll fix Aidan up in the clinic so he can be taken care of properly, then we’ll have the town’s children take a class on bullying. Arielle has already volunteered to teach it.”

  Archibald gave Midas a disbelieving look. “You made all these decisions without even consulting us?”

  “Us?” Dominic said, cutting off Midas, who’d been about to speak. “Who’s us? The farmers?”

  “Don’t bullshit me. I’m the richest man in this town. I got money tied up in practically everything you lay eyes on. So don’t think you can just—”

  “Archibald, that’s enough,” Midas said. He shot out of his chair, his hands balled into fists. “You ain’t on the council, and you won’t be so long as I’m mayor.” Glancing over his shoulder, he practically growled at Dominic. “And neither are you, so you shut up, too.”

  Clearly stunned, Archibald retreated a step, gave Midas a sideways look, and held up both hands like he wanted everyone to just slow down.

  “I didn’t mean no offense,” he said, almost bowing a little. “I just feel it’s my right to express my opinion.”

  “And you’ve done it,” Midas said, crossing the room and opening the door. “Now let me take care of things my way. I’ll call if I need you.”

  Dominic raised an eyebrow at Archibald, who responded with an angry huff before storming out of the room. When he was gone, Dominic took a seat on the couch against the wall and visibly relaxed.

  Midas shook his head. He felt a migraine coming on. God, he needed a drink. At least two, maybe three. But Aidan needed to be tended. He would be spending much of his time on the boy’s condition. For now, he tried to relax.

  “Where’s Blake?” he asked.

  Dominic shrugged. “Home. Old man has locked himself in his house for the past two days.”

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” Midas said. “Go get him. Tell him I need to speak with him.”

  With a sigh, Dominic pushed himself off the couch.

  “You got it, Mayor. Sir.”

  He even saluted.

  Midas wagged a finger at him. “Don’t make me beat the white off yo’ ass, boy,” he said, cracking a smile.

  Dominic grinned, then shut the door in a dramatically silent way, leaving Midas alone with his thoughts. Lately, Midas hated being alone. He did the only thing he could think of to find some semblance of comfort in what had become a cold, cruel, and confusing bitch of a world.

  He opened the drawer in his desk, pulled out a plastic bottle of vodka, and poured himself a glass. Just one. That was all he needed.

  Or two, he thought as he finished the first in a single gulp and poured a second.

  William walked into the living room to find his mother sitting on the couch with her head in her hands. Lifting her face to reveal pink, swollen eyes, she motioned for him to sit on her lap. He complied, even though he knew boys his age were too old for that sort of thing. He was her shield. She needed him, which made him feel better and stronger, almost like a grown boy, a teenager. Maybe even a man.

  “My little blocker,” she said. “My Type I.”

  “What does that mean?” William asked, perking up a little. Wasn’t a Type I better than a Type II? Didn’t being a Type I mean…

  “It means you have the same abilities as Michael,” she said. “I think so, anyway. Aren’t you excited?”

  William frowned. Now she was trying to make him feel better out of pity. No one was like Michael. Even William’s friends knew that. Why would she lie to him?

  “How do you know that?” he said.

  “Because I heard what happened when you fought Aidan. I know what you did. It felt good, didn’t it?”

  Cautiously, William nodded. He was glad to admit the truth. It had felt so good to make those boys cry and run off to their mothers. Finally, they knew how it felt. They understood his pain.

  “I’ll protect you, Mama,” he said. “Forever. Even when you’re old.”

  His mother smiled. “I’m not the only one you’ll be protecting.”

  William frowned. He pictured Aunt Arielle. Maybe that was what his mother meant—he would have to protect her and his aunt. But Aunt Arielle had been fighting against his mother. She wasn’t a good person anymore. So who exactly—

  “Come here,” his mother said, motioning for him to extend his right hand. He limped over, and his mother placed his hand on her belly.

  He cocked his head. “Mom?”

  “You’re going to have a baby sister or brother,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes. “Someone to look after and protect. Aren’t you happy?”

  William pulled away as he thought he felt something move inside his mother’s belly. Maybe it was his imagination, maybe not. He envisioned a tiny pink foot kicking at him.

  A brother or sister. Finally, William would have a friend, someone who would look up to him and never make fun of his devil’s foot.

  Grinning, he said, “I’m happy, Mama. And I’ll always protect both of you, I promise.”

  His mother took his hand. She led him into the kitchen, where she cooked his favorite meal—a pile of French fries with honey drizzled all over them. Things were going to be better from now on.

  Two weeks later, there was still no word of Michael’s whereabouts, but Arielle knew not to expect any. The next few months would be torture.

  To make things worse, she found herself overcome by random waves of nausea—usually early in the day, as if her stomach were a bucket filled with dirty, putrid water that sloshed over the edges whenever she moved, occasionally flipping over when she least expected it.

  She told herself it was a sudden, temporary illness—or maybe a stomach upset by the anxiety that had fallen upon her like a plague.

  On the eleventh day after Michael’s exile, while in the grip of the worst vomiting spell so far, she understood that the illness was not an illness at all, but something else—something she had to keep secret until she was sure.

  She ran to the bathroom of the Cold War Café, clutching her belly with one hand and sealing her mouth with the other. As soon as she was on her knees in front of the toilet, she released what was in her stomach with a loud cough.

  The vomit was acidic and grainy, the result of a hastily eaten meal of whole-grain bread and slic
ed tomato. Pain seized her belly, and tears leaked down her face. When she was finished, she slumped against the wall and gazed up at the dead electric bulb in the ceiling. She really had to get that fixed. There were so many things that needed fixing in her life, and more often than not, she felt there was no point in fixing anything, because eventually everything broke down beyond repair. Those thoughts frightened her.

  She put a hand over her belly and groaned. Under her skin was a firmness she hadn’t noticed before. Her period hadn’t arrived in over a month. Before then, the stupid thing had been like clockwork—every twenty-eight days. Was this what she had wanted that night with him at the pond? What if he never came back at all?

  “Oh, boy,” she said, another wave of nausea forcing her to scramble up to her knees.

  3

  After riding out of Gulch, Michael had wasted no time in approaching his destination.

  An eight-hour ride west of the mountains, there was a small town with a barely thriving populace, ruled by the tattooed bikers who made a show of riding their growling motorcycles up and down its main street. Michael rode in the cover of night, arriving at daybreak. He fueled up at a gas station on the outskirts, keeping silent as two old men in folding chairs watched him pay. They each had AK-47s within arm’s reach, the weapons propped against the building.

  “Let me get you a receipt,” one man said, pushing out of the chair.

  Michael replaced the nozzle. He watched the old man go for the automatic rifle situated conveniently beneath a cast-iron farm bell that could probably wake the entire town.

  “I’ll save you the trouble,” Michael said. Sit back down.

  The man’s eyes shot all the way open. He stared at Michael for a moment, then folded his body into the chair, his partner looking on in confusion.

  Michael sat on his motorcycle. This was practice, nothing more. He let out a curt sigh as the second man darted for his AK-47. He was quick for his age. These men might not be particularly strong of mind, but they were ready to defend themselves.

  Freeze. Michael blasted the command into the man’s mind.

  He toppled out of his chair, then landed on his side, one arm outstretched, yellow-brown teeth bared in a silent effort to resist whatever had seized his body. The first man continued to stare at Michael in shock, as if Jesus Christ Himself had just finished fueling up at his tiny, dusty station.

  “You may not like me very much,” Michael said, “but that’s okay…” Inside the old-timer’s head, Michael finished his sentence with an extra dose of power. Because I was never here…

  The memory wipe took care of everything. Next time he came in to buy fuel—assuming he eventually made it back here—the old men wouldn’t remember a thing about this encounter. Michael roared away on his motorcycle. Within minutes, the two geezers were making small talk about the weather, and boy oh boy, was it gonna be a hot one today.

  Stopping a mile outside the labor camp, Michael studied it through a pair of binoculars from where he was safely hidden behind an old farmhouse with a caved-in roof.

  It had been a cluster of warehouses once, located just outside a small abandoned city. Michael watched guards patrol outside metal fences at least twelve feet tall with boughs of razor wire running along the top. Two guard towers had been erected at the southernmost corners of the fenced-in area, with probably more along the sides and back. Michael saw the shadowy shapes of snipers in the towers, caught glints from the lenses in their rifle scopes.

  A tractor truck—larger than any vehicle Michael had ever seen—made its way along the road toward the main gate. Michael watched it stop, picturing the gate opening to allow it inside. From this angle, he saw little of the process. The delay told him the truck was being checked first. Eventually, it entered the camp, disappearing behind one of the warehouses, then appearing again in the distance. Prisoners got to work unloading whatever was inside.

  Closing his eyes, Michael slung the binoculars over his shoulder. He sent his telepathic reach into the camp, listening for shreds of conversation among the guards.

  “…parts for automatics,” one said.

  “They’ll have to be trained to make these,” another said.

  Michael alternated between borrowing one set of ears, then another. It wasn’t easy from this far away. He lost parts of the conversation, but he managed to grab a few more vital details.

  “Good thing they’re not making the bullets, too.”

  Michael opened his eyes, processing what he had just heard. It was a labor camp—he was certain of that. But until now, he hadn’t known exactly what the camp’s prisoners were toiling after each day or why. Finally, it made sense.

  “He’s building guns by the truckload,” Michael said, peering through the binoculars again. “Are you going to war with someone, Harris?”

  4

  Blake sat hunched forward in his dusty office, twiddling his thumbs and chewing his lower lip. For the hundredth time that day, he got up, checked his satellite phone’s battery and signal—the former at full capacity, the latter about a quarter that—and sat back down.

  A knock came at his door. Blake shot up from his chair. Used to be the case that no one could sneak up on him, even when he was asleep.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “It’s Arielle. I brought lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Louis,” she said simply. It was all she needed to say.

  Sighing, he went for the door. “At least tell me it’s something you removed from an animal and cooked on a grill, not that bird feed you gave me last time.”

  She entered, annoyance on her face, carrying a ceramic plate with another plate flipped on top of it to preserve the meal’s warmth. Immediately, his office filled with the tangy scent of boiled vegetables—and was that a hint of vinegar?

  Disgusting.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, searching for a place to set the plate down. Grabbing it from her, he placed it atop a pile of old papers, dreading the moment he would have to force the food down his throat. “You’ve been in here for days. Barely anyone has seen you.”

  “I have to stay by the phone,” he said, sitting and avoiding her gaze. “It’s important. An old friend should be calling soon.”

  She closed the door and leaned against it, arms crossed. Despite feeling slightly ashamed of himself beneath that gaze, Blake was thankful for the girl’s efforts to keep him healthy. There weren’t more than a handful of people in this town who cared if he lived or died.

  “Yesterday,” she said, “when I brought you lunch, you told me not to ask questions. When I brought you dinner, you told me you had to stay by the phone. Now, you share the bit about an old friend.” She traced her fingers down an old crack in the door. “I figure by breakfast tomorrow, you’ll spill everything.”

  “I admire your persistence,” Blake said, “but if I’m telling you anything, it’s because you keep torturing me with this diet, hoping I’ll crack.”

  “It’s plant-based,” she said. “It’ll keep you strong.”

  He smiled up at her, despite his sour mood. “You can worry about me, but don’t worry about Michael. He’ll be fine.”

  “I’m not keeping you healthy for him. I’m doing it for you. Not everything is about Michael, you know.”

  Blake pointed at one of many boxes littering his office floor. “Sit,” he said. “I want to ask you something.”

  “Uh-oh,” Arielle said.

  After brushing off a layer of dust, she sat on a low box that appeared sturdy. She watched Blake with a disarmingly open expression that reminded him of when she had been a curious little girl with only two governing pleasures in life—picking flowers and hearing stories about princesses.

  Blake smiled again, only this time he couldn’t help but fidget, revealing his discomfort. “I was thinking about Michael’s future. What kind of man he might be someday… What kind of father, maybe… If it ever came to that.”

  “He’d be a great f
ather,” Arielle said with a light bounce. “You and Dominic might not sense that, because your training isn’t meant to detect or develop empathy.” The jab was accompanied by a slightly judgmental wince, meaning she actually believed that. Blake knew better. Empathy was everything. “But I sense it. He’s devoted, and he cares about all of us more than you think.”

  “How much does he care about Charlotte?” Blake pointedly asked.

  Arielle stared at the wooden floor as if searching for an answer someone might have written for her in the dust.

  “I don’t want to think about that right now.” She lifted her head, eyes narrowing in distrust. “Why do you ask?”

  “Not just Charlotte,” Blake said. “But William, too. And Dominic, Midas, and his friends.”

  “I don’t like where this is going.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It’s just that, if he comes back—when he comes back—”

  Arielle shot to her feet, hands on her hips. He was losing her. This was going nowhere fast.

  “What I mean to say, Arielle…” Blake rose, facing her. “It’s not easy to put into words, but when Michael gets back, I may not be around. And even if I am, it’s possible I won’t be of any use to him anymore. That’s why I’m asking you—do you think he’ll make the right decisions in the end? With the power he has?”

  Arielle let her arms drop to her sides. The icy expression melted away, confidence replacing it.

  “When Michael gets back,” she assured Blake, “I’ll take care of him. I’ll make sure he stays out of trouble. But I won’t do it by trying to control him. He can’t be controlled. He just needs us to love him, because that’s the one thing he’s afraid of. It’s also the one thing he needs.”

  Blake took a step toward her. He grabbed her arms—gently, though not without a sense of urgency—and locked eyes with her as he spoke.

  “If anything can save him, Arielle, it’s you. But you’re going to have to make a sacrifice—one that might be the biggest of your life.”