Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series

by Richard Denoncourt

  “Bad dream?” he asked.

  Suddenly, she frowned. “Why would you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  She slapped him across the face.

  Stunned, Keagan reached up to rub his stinging left cheek. They had never hit each other, not even close. But more disturbing was the way his heart had leapt, like it wanted to blow straight through his chest, attach itself to Andrea, and never let go, like some parasitic creature that always shivered maliciously beneath his skin.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “For what?”

  Simon found himself deeply confused. Andrea’s expression had changed yet again. Whereas a moment earlier, she’d gone from terror to anger—in a flash, intensely enough to strike him—now she seemed utterly surprised.

  “It was just a dream,” she said. “I’m sorry I hit you, my love. I think I was still asleep.”

  She reached for his face, brought him closer, kissed him gently on the lips.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again.

  “What was the dream about?” Keagan asked, feeling better. The slap hadn’t been very hard. Already, the skin on his cheek had ceased to sting. His heart took a little longer to quiet down.

  “It was so strange,” Andrea said. “There was this girl named Arianna, or…or Ariella. Something like that. She introduced herself to me, then said she was going to show me Camp Brazen.”

  Keagan’s chest tightened. A feeling of cold dread he hadn’t expected. He swallowed and cleared his throat. Tried to play it cool.

  She won’t know—can’t know—about the camp, he tried to reassure himself. Not what goes on in there.

  As Andrea continued her description of the dream, the icy grip tightened its hold around his chest.

  “She took me by the hand, Simon, and…and she showed me horrible things. You were there. You and your men were…doing terrible things to the prisoners. I saw a man crying—he was wailing like I’ve never heard a person do before—and…and he was clutching a bloody stump where his hand had been. You were standing over him, holding a machete. He was on his knees, and there was blood everywhere.”

  “Just a dream,” Keagan said, rubbing a hand over his face and sighing.

  “But there was more,” Andrea persisted. “There were men dying inside these tiny shacks with no windows. Men fighting with each other over bits of corn that had spilled on the ground. And the guards…they were laughing. They were laughing until you walked by, and then they were saluting you, and you were nodding…” Her face took on an expression of pure disgust. “Nodding in approval, like they were doing a good job by torturing those helpless men.

  “They’re not criminals, right? Those prisoners? You told me once they were enemy soldiers. Spies. That your men captured and put them in Camp Brazen because they were part of the enemy. But that doesn’t make them criminals. It just makes them soldiers—just men following orders, like you follow orders. Right?”

  “That’s exactly what they are,” Keagan said. “The enemy. If we don’t capture them, they’ll find out how we operate, where we live, and they’ll shoot us and bomb us, like they’ve always done. Not just soldiers, but women and children like you and Sarah.”

  Furiously, Andrea shook her head, as if his words made no logical sense whatsoever. “But this is their country. Ours is on the other side of the wall, back in the Republic. Why are we even out here?

  “And it’s not just that,” she continued. “It wasn’t only men—soldiers—who were being tortured. Some of them were young, just teenagers. And they were being whipped, and one was forced to…” Closing her eyes, she shuddered. “One of the guards forced a boy to bend down and eat…dog feces. He cried, begging them to stop, but the guard kept pushing a gun against the boy’s head and screaming at him. And you were always there, nodding that stupid, approving nod I see you do sometimes, when Sarah eats her food without spitting it up, or when I make your favorite dish…”

  She covered her face and began to cry softly. Keagan went to put a hand on her shoulder, but Andrea pushed him away with a shudder of some emotion he couldn’t name. One that terrified him, nevertheless.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “None of that happens there.”

  “I can tell when you’re lying,” she sobbed. “You’re terrible at it. It’s the reason I agreed to marry you. Not just because I loved you, but because I knew you were an honest man. I knew you were a good man who would never lie to me. Not ever.”

  Keagan got out of bed. He stared at her, his heart thumping in his chest. That damned parasite that craved her presence. Without her, the vile thing might just kill him, consume him from the inside out.

  Would Andrea leave him if she knew the truth?

  “I don’t know what to say, Andrea. You had a nightmare. I get them, too. It’s this place, this…wasteland we have to call home. It does that to people.”

  She tossed the covers aside, got out of bed, and went to stand by the window. From this angle, she wouldn’t be able to see Camp Brazen, but Keagan sensed she was seeing it all the same. Seeing it and feeling the same kind of disgust Keagan felt when he saw guards tormenting prisoners as a way of letting off steam.

  How had she known about the machete?

  Keagan wasn’t the one who had cut off the prisoner’s hand that day, spilling blood everywhere, but it had happened only months ago. Just as she had described it.

  And the dog shit incident—what about that? How had she known?

  Keagan always tried his best to instill a sense of pride in his men. A sense of—maybe not compassion, but at least a minimal amount of respect for human dignity. The prisoners were part of the enemy, but they weren’t animals. This mode of thinking placed Keagan into a shrinking minority among the guards and officers at Camp Brazen, but he tried all the same.

  It wasn’t his fault those things happened. What else could be expected from a prison camp run by men who revered Harris Kole like a god?

  “Tell me,” Andrea said, walking over to him, hands clasped together in a pleading gesture. “Promise me that it was just a dream, that those things aren’t happening on your watch. Because if they are, then I don’t want to take part in it. I don’t want to be the one who feeds you dinner every night, who raises a daughter to love you, who might someday give you a son to follow in your footsteps—not if you’re the kind of man who stands by, nodding in approval, while the men who follow and salute you each day are forcing teenage boys to eat dog shit and cutting off peoples’ hands with machetes, and…and…oh God, it was horrible. It felt so real.”

  Keagan took his wife into his arms. The way she was shaking, the musky scent of her hair, the warmth radiating from her body—it all made him too dizzy to stand, so he leaned against her. She supported his weight until their faces met. They began to kiss desperately, clinging to each other as they stumbled back into bed.

  “It was just a nightmare,” he said. “Bad things have happened in that camp. That’s why they sent me. To clean it up. It’s different now. I promise.”

  “Swear it,” she said, her eyes gleaming with fresh tears. “Swear it on my life. On Sarah’s life.”

  “I swear it,” Keagan said—and this time, he knew the lie was convincing, because he wanted it to be true, wanted it so badly his mind made it so. Things could be different. “I swear it on the lives of the only two people I love in this world. You and Sarah. Take my word for it, Andrea. It’s a prison, not a torture chamber.”

  Andrea was able to sleep that night. Simon could tell by her gentle, rhythmic breaths she’d finally found peace—temporary though it might have been. He stayed awake, watching her at times, but mostly just staring up at the ceiling, imagining a life without her and Sarah in it. A life in which he was alone with the ghosts. With the parasite.

  The next morning, he walked past headquarters and went straight to the hospital. He encountered Dr. Sampson in the hallway.

  “How’s the boy doing?” Keagan asked.

  Keagan norm
ally avoided the eccentric old man. Somewhere between a prisoner and a camp official, Sampson’s ambiguous stature made him prone to annoying small talk that otherwise would have been illegal. But on this morning, Keagan had questions he could barely contain.

  “Excuse me?” Sampson said.

  Keagan almost shouted at the man. “The boy. What’s his status, damn it?”

  If what Keagan suspected were true, they were wasting precious time. A strange thought had occurred to him overnight. A nagging feeling that something had gone terribly wrong, and it might be too late to undo his mistake.

  Sampson gave him a strange look that was both confused and surprised.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Keagan almost grabbed him by the shirt to throttle him. What the hell was going on? “That boy is a telepath, right? Can he get into people’s dreams?”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Sampson said with a shrug of his bony shoulders. “But with the drugs in his system…”

  “Has he ever mentioned anyone else? Co-conspirators? Maybe a girl named Ariella, or any girl, for that matter?”

  Sampson thought for a moment, then suddenly lifted his hand, extending a knobby finger. He thrust it upward in a strangely victorious manner.

  “That’s her! The special someone. Arielle.”

  Losing all restraint, Keagan grabbed the man’s shoulders, practically barking his next words. “Who is she? What did the kid say?”

  “He kept apologizing to her,” Sampson said dreamily. “Over and over. While he was asleep. Then something peculiar happened. This morning, before they took him away, he said ‘Thank you, Arielle,” again while he was still out of it. I suppose he made peace with things. At least, that’s what I hope. Why do you ask?”

  Keagan let go off the man, then took a step back, horrified. “What do you mean ‘before they took him away’? Who took him away?”

  Adjusting his cracked glasses, Sampson frowned, as if he weren’t quite sure if Keagan were being serious, or if maybe this was some kind of test or cruel joke.

  “You did, sir. You came down here an hour ago with a pair of guards, and you personally had them remove the boy from his bed. You said he was headed West, where he belonged.”

  Keagan pushed past the doctor, running now, sprinting as if his life depended on it. He threw open a pair of double doors, emerging into the tiny, foul-smelling room they called a hospital.

  The beds were empty. The boy was gone.

  Keagan raised the alarm.

  Episode V

  Age of Ascendance

  “Parting is all we know of heaven,

  And all we need of hell.”

  Emily Dickinson

  1

  Twenty-two days had passed since Michael left. Reggie had counted in the guard tower at the edge of town, perched behind his scoped rifle. And almost as many days since Dominic and the rest had taken off after him.

  Almost a whole month. What if they were dead?

  The wait was grinding on everyone’s nerves. Reggie dealt with it by obsessively cleaning his guns and his clothing store. What made it worse was Dominic’s reluctance to share where they were going. It was too risky. The information had to be kept a secret from the town.

  He didn’t explain why, but Reggie understood. There were people who would pay good money to know that information. People who would kill for it.

  Yet, his feelings of worry were good for one thing—Reggie had never been this alert in the guard towers. That day, he immediately caught movement beyond the fences and unlit floodlights, at the far end of the canyon’s mouth.

  Holding his breath, he stared through the scope, ready to shoot.

  Could it be raiders?

  Or was it them? Had they come back?

  Six men stood on the old road, the one at the forefront waving a white scrap of clothing, the universal gesture which said, I surrender and mean no harm. They looked dirty. Escaped slaves, maybe, seeking safe haven. They were unarmed, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t stashed their guns nearby.

  Reggie studied them more closely, trying to make sense of what his gut was telling him. There was something about the way the men stood, spines perfectly erect, chins raised, that reminded him of soldiers.

  Especially the one waving the flag. Easily six foot and in his early forties, he appeared healthy, stronger than the others, and carried himself with utmost confident. He was also one of the most handsome men Reggie had ever seen, with thick hair as black as an oil slick. Clumps of it hung over his tanned forehead, and his eyes were narrow, determined slits.

  “Do you see ‘em?” Reggie shouted.

  No answer from the neighboring tower. Quentin, the other guard on shift, must have fallen asleep again.

  Reggie sighed. “Quentin, you awake?”

  Quentin’s voice came out reed thin. He’d been napping, for sure. Reggie would have to chew him out later.

  “Yeah, I see ‘em, Reg,” he said after a moment of fumbling. “Don’t look like raiders to me, though.”

  Reggie scanned the area beyond the fences, searching for signs of men in hiding and preparing to attack.

  Nothing. They seemed to be alone.

  When his view swept back over the six men, he noticed something strange. The one in the forefront had put away the flag, then stepped forward. With both hands, index fingers extended, he repeated a movement Reggie had never seen before—a gesture that sent a chill trickling through him.

  He was touching the tips of his fingers to his eyes and sliding them down, mimicking the path tears traveled as they slid down faces.

  The tears of a Bloodcrier.

  2

  Dietrich Werner was a patient guy.

  Another man might have gone out of his mind. Since Michael’s departure, he’d been spending the days—weeks, almost a month, though it felt like years—sneaking around the outskirts of Gulch with and without Warren, gathering intel and avoiding sentries, but mostly just biding his time and cursing his luck.

  There had been small successes to keep him hopeful. From a supply shed, he was able to steal four plastic flashlights, a case of batteries, and a set of binoculars—he had his own, but now Warren had a pair, too. Hopefully, that would shut him up. They also took food from the farms just outside of Gulch, but not enough to raise suspicions. The occasional misplaced toy or carefully laid footprint from a boy’s shoe was enough to make it look like a pack of kids had been stealing for the thrill of it.

  Most importantly, they managed to recruit another member to their cause during those weeks.

  Warren had managed it. Somehow.

  “When is your whore coming back?” Dietrich asked Warren upon arriving back to their makeshift camp in the mountains.

  Warren’s face twisted into a scowl. The punch he tried to throw wasn’t quick enough to catch Dietrich off his guard. Clearly, he was in love with her.

  “Argh, damn it,” Warren said through clenched teeth when Dietrich caught him in a hold that involved twisting his arm behind his back. “Let go of me, you ment son of a bitch!”

  Dietrich released him. In his rage, Warren kicked the pyramid of twigs and sticks he’d been about to light on fire.

  “Go ahead,” Dietrich said. “Ruin our camp by acting like a child.”

  Clicking his tongue in frustration, Warren went to sit on a log. He dug through his pack, then came up with a vial of Selarix.

  “We don’t have much left,” Dietrich said, stomping over to snatch it out of Warren’s hand.

  “Shit don’t work, anyway,” he said, uncapping a water pouch. “How come she can always find us? Huh? Even when we’re loaded on the stuff.”

  Warren was right. Charlotte always seemed to know where they were set up, even though their camp changed location every two days. It was unnerving.

  “She’s different,” Dietrich said, tucking the vial of Selarix into his pocket. He had a sizable batch buried nearby just in case Warren got too greedy.

  “That’s all you got?�
� Warren said. “She’s different? The hell does that even mean?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Well, hell, if she’s so special, she’d know where Michael went. Or where Blake and the others headed off to. You know what I think?”

  “Enlighten me,” Dietrich said, only half listening as he went about prepping another fire.

  “I don’t think she wants us to find out. She knows we’d take off after them. Which would beat sitting around here with our dicks in our hands.”

  “Your dick wouldn’t reach all the way into your hand,” Dietrich said.

  Warren made a snorting sound that turned into a chuckle. Soon, he and Dietrich were both laughing. They had rare moments when they got along—moments which kept them from killing each other.

  Something shifted inside Dietrich. He stiffened slightly as if a switch had gone off inside his mind. A very particular switch he’d built himself.

  “Speak of the devil,” he said with a smile.

  A woman melted out of the forest, then took form next to them. Warren startled so fiercely that his hands tightened around the water pouch, sending a spurt of liquid splashing against his face. Dietrich chuckled.

  “Beautiful,” he said. “Almost as beautiful as you, my dear.”

  Charlotte studied them, a hint of a smile turning up one corner of those luscious lips. On long trips alone in the woods, Dietrich often engaged in fantasies involving this young woman. The fact he didn’t trust her, combined with the knowledge the girl would have no problem killing him—and would feel not an ounce of remorse afterward—only added spice to the imagined trysts.

  “You look like shit,” she said. “Both of you.”

  It was an understatement; Dietrich and Warren looked even worse than that. Dressed in filthy brown outfits made for the mountains, they had leaves in their beards, their skin was covered in dirt, and they smelled like they’d been bathing in animal carcasses.