Edge of Instinct: Rabids Book 1

by Amy Cook

  “Fine! I’m doing it.” She bent over, grabbing the gloves from the ground. They swallowed her hands, looking almost comical. He’d have to get her gloves that fit better, but for now it didn’t matter. She just needed some form of protection. He grabbed her hands gruffly, tightening the straps around her wrists. She glowered malignantly at him the whole time, jerking her hands back when he was done. Very good.

  “Now hit it.”

  “I don’t know how,” she replied defiantly.

  “It ain’t rocket science, kid.” He pulled her toward the bag, stood behind her and lifted her arms, forcing them to shoot forward and hit the bag over and over. “Easy. Think y’all can handle that?”

  “Maybe. If I wanted to.”

  “Hit the damned bag, kid, or I’m gonna toss ya over my knee and swat ya til ya cry!” Her eyes shot daggers at him, but she finally threw a fist out to hit the black bag. It barely moved under her punch.

  “My granny hits harder than you,” he quipped, intentionally barbing her.

  “Then make her come hit the dumb bag!” she shouted back at him, though she hit the bag again, harder this time.

  “That was a little better. Maybe you coulda stunned a fly with that hit.” She scowled at him.

  “I don’t want to do this! I’m hurting right now, can’t you understand that! Or do your screwed up genes keep you from feeling anything?” Ouch. He ignored his Hybrid’s flinch and pressed onward.

  “Good, get mad! Whine at me like a little wuss. Go ahead, do it some more!”

  “I hate you so much right now!” she screamed, eyes watering.

  “Fine! Hate me! But all I hear is jabberin’, mincin’, and moanin’! Y’all wanna show me how much ya hate me, hit the damned bag!” She turned toward the bag with a scream and started slamming into it. “Good! Get that hate out, pull it up outta your gut and rain it down on that bag, Thumbelina!” The bag started swinging back slightly as her punches gained more strength and force behind them.

  “Now admit it. You’re pissed at me, you’re pissed at yourself, and y’all are pissed at your brother.”

  “No I’m not! I’m not mad at him! It was my fault!” She turned toward him, but he shoved her back at the bag.

  “Let it out on the bag, sweet cheeks! Talk’s just talk, it don’t prove nothin’ to me without the force behind your fists!” She clenched her teeth, hitting the bag harder still. “You’re mad at me, cause I’m pushin’ ya, makin’ ya look at what ya don’t wanna see right now. You’re mad at yourself because ya think you’re the reason for his death.”

  “I am the reason for his death! If I hadn’t taken those tags, he could have survived!”

  “You don’t know that, kid! He was losin’ a slow battle. Maybe he hoped he could win it out, maybe he understood enough about them tags to know what they could or couldn’t do for him. But in the end, he was just too damned tired.”

  “No! He was strong, he could have made it!”

  “He was tired! And he was losin’ that battle. And that’s why you’re mad at him. You’re mad because ya know he was tired, mad because ya had faith in him to always be strong no matter what, and he didn’t do it for ya this time. You’re mad because ya know he knew what would happen when he took them tags off, and you’re mad at him for doin’ it anyways.” She let out a pained whimper, tears streaming down her face.

  “He shouldn’t have taken them off! He should have kept them, he should have kept fighting! But he left me! He left me and he didn’t even tell me!” The bag was flopping back and forth; moving farther than it would have for any other Clean just learning the ropes. She really did have a lot of strength hidden in there. It would be a hell of a ride teaching her to bring it out and control it. But for now, this was enough. She’d gotten to where he needed her to go, and now it was time to pull back before she hurt herself.

  He stepped forward grabbing her shoulders, pulling her away. She fought him, kept swinging at the bag, and even took a swing at him when he turned her around to grab her up in a bear hug. He easily dodged the punch, wrapping one arm around her back, pinning her arms to her sides. The other hand pressed the side of her face to his chest, right over his heart. He held her there as she struggled, shushing her gently as her tears soaked his shirt.

  Eventually she stopped fighting him. The arms she’d been using to punch her way free, now lifting to wrap around him and pull him closer. He loosened his hold just enough that she could comfortably cling to him. She buried her face deeper into his chest, arms gripping him to her in a way that silently begged him to not let go. He wouldn’t have dreamed of it.

  “Why? Why didn’t he fight for me?” she begged him for answers, hiccupping on her tears.

  “He did fight for ya, darlin’. Fought for a long hard time I’d wager.”

  “He could have made it. I just know it. But he quit fighting. He just gave up and left me alone,” she whimpered wretchedly, her tears soaking through to cling to his skin.

  “Sometimes, kid,” he sighed, “sometimes you just get used up too much. Killin’ all the time, it takes a toll on ya. This whole war takes its toll. Some days, you just don’t got no more fight left in ya.”

  “I could have helped him through it.”

  “There’s some things a person can’t fix, no matter how much ya love ‘em. Even if he got better he woulda gone right back to what he was doin’ before. Once you’re enlisted in this war, ya don’t get out ‘cept in a coffin, darlin’. I think y’all know that as well as I do.” She shuddered, another round of tears pouring fresh from her eyes. He steeled his resolved. It was now or never.

  “I’m about to tell y’all somethin’ I ain’t never talked about with no one else. Ain’t somethin’ I’m gonna repeat neither, so listen good, yeah?” He fought to push down his gruff tone. It wasn’t easy to talk about, but making her think he was mad at her wasn’t going to help. “Sorry, kid, I didn’t mean to grump at ya. It’s a sensitive subject.” He took a deep breath and plunged in.

  “Cajun’s my step brother, did ya know that?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “His old man left him and his mama when he was just five. His mama met my pops a year later. Pop fell in love with her charisma; she fell in love with his stability.” He laughed humorlessly. “Pop knew why she was marryin’ him, but he loved her anyways. Thought she’d learn to love him with time. He says she did.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t around her long enough to see it myself.” He realized he was rocking them both side to side slightly, but it was just as much to comfort himself as it was to comfort her.

  “She was Australian. That explains Cajun’s accent. They moved here with Cajun’s old man just a few months before the loser ditched ‘em. Brought ‘em to a new country and ditched ‘em, just like that. Pops said he’d heard the guy went back to Australia after that. That he had a mistress and a whole other family waitin’ for him there.” Harley shook his head, still not understanding the mentality of a guy being able to pull something so underhanded.

  “So, I suppose y’all can see why pops never blamed her for wantin’ to marry him for the stability he offered. Anyways, when I was born, she decided she wanted to name me after her brother, her twin. Said I looked just like him. See, my mama was dark haired, brown-eyed. She and her twin looked nothin’ alike. He was her exact opposite, blond haired and blue-eyed. Pops said they were somethin’ like royalty back home, simply for the way that people loved ‘em so much over there. They were perfect at everythin’ they did, two sides of a single coin. They were joined at the hip, did everythin’ together. Until he died.” Amiel sniffed.

  “What happened to him?” Her voice was rough and slightly stuffy from the crying, but it only made him want to hold her tighter, protect her more.

  “He got chewed up by a shark one day while surfin’ where he wasn’t supposed to be. Couple of friends dared him, and bein’ the spunky guy he was, he couldn’t back down. The friends saw him go down and called it in to the emergency patrols. When they finally found him, the
re wasn’t much left of him. My mama had a job as one of the patrollers. She was on the boat that got to him first, though there wasn’t much of him left by then. I guess it messed her up real bad.”

  “Wow. That’s horrible,” Amiel replied, sympathy momentarily rising above her own sorrow.

  “So when I was born, she named me Dante Reed Coaver, to honor his memory. Only, the older I got, the more I looked like Dante. And the more I looked like Dante, the more of a problem it became. The thing she’d wanted to do to honor her brother became somethin’ that haunted her every time she looked at me. I remember the day everythin’ changed. She woke up one mornin’, walked into the room and saw me. I was so excited to see her; I jumped up and ran to her, gigglin’ like crazy. Her smile suddenly turned horrified, and she held out her hands. Not to hug me, but to keep me away. I didn’t understand why she avoided me after that, why she cried and left the room whenever she looked at me. Then one time I woke up in the middle of the night and heard her talkin’ to my pops.

  ‘I just can’t stay here anymore. I can’t stand looking at him. I can’t stand seeing Dante staring back at me, every time the boy looks at me with that spark in his eye. Even his voice, Tandy, the way he talks, the way he laughs! Every time that boy opens his mouth, it reminds me of Dante! It’s like Dante’s come back to haunt me, through him! I just can’t do it anymore.’ She left that night, takin’ Cajun with her. That explains my lack of an Aussie accent.” He smiled sadly.

  “Gosh,” Amiel whispered, pulling back and looking into his eyes, emeralds sparkling with her tears. “How old were you.”

  “Six.” She didn’t say a word, simply placed her head back on his chest, hugging him tighter to her. He smiled softly, holding her a little closer too, fingers running lightly over her hair.

  “Pop tried to explain it to me, but I never understood. I stopped talkin’ altogether, ‘cept to demand pop choose a different name for me. He didn’t know what to do, so he stuck with what he did know. He started callin’ me Harley from that day on. I became as independent as I could; I did everythin’ I needed done, by myself. I thought, if I was a good little boy that didn’t laugh or talk much, a boy with a different name, that she’d come back. She’d come back and not see the ghost in my eyes anymore. She’d just see her son.” He shrugged.

  “She came back four years later. Walked in the door, and at first I thought she was infected. She was still beautiful, but her face was pale, her hair all straggly and dull. Pops was shocked to see her, but grabbed her up in a hug right away. Just like that, he forgave her for walkin’ out on us. I wanted to be able to do that, too.” His muscles tensed with the memories that flooded his mind.

  “I walked up to stand by pops, practicin’ what I’d been preparin’ to do for years. I didn’t smile cause I remembered she didn’t like that. I didn’t talk neither. I just looked at her. She gasped, pressin’ up against the wall. ‘Strewth! It’s even worse now!’ she said. And that was it; that’s all she said to me. She hid herself up in her room every day, refusin’ to come out if I was there. So I spent most of my time hidin’ in the garage. Pop would bring me food in there. I even slept on a cot. There was a bathroom and everythin’ so I really never came out.”

  “How horrid that must have been for a little boy! Why did Tandy allow her to be so cruel to you? To come back after what she’d done?” Amiel asked, frustrated accusation in her tone. It warmed his heart a little, knowing she cared. But he didn’t want her to be angry with his pops either.

  “He loved her. Besides blood related or not, Cajun was his son in the ways it counted. He knew if she left, she’d take Caj with her again too.” His eyes grew distant as he talked. “He didn’t like the way she treated me, though. He and I got pretty close in the time that we were alone.” He paused. “I think a lot of his patience toward her behavior was due to the reason that she came back. She only came back because she found out that she had brain cancer. She needed somewhere safe for Caj to stay when she died.”

  “Brain cancer?” Amiel gasped, looking at him in shock.

  “Yeah, I know. Just like Caj. Talk about ironic, eh?” He pressed her back to his chest, not trusting himself to be able to finish the story if she was looking at him. “Pops didn’t feel that he could turn her out into the cold. He didn’t like the way she treated me, but he didn’t have the heart to upset her in her state of health neither. She’d flip out every time someone said my name, every time she saw me.” Harley shrugged. “He’s apologized a hundred times to me since then, about the way she treated me. But I was never overly mad at him for it. I blamed her. Pop had always been good to me, and I had nothin’ but good memories of him. He was stern, but he was good. The clearest memories I had involvin’ my mama were just filled with torment.” Harley drew a deep breath, nearing a painful part of his history.

  “That’s why eventually I stopped hidin’ in the garage. I came inside, ate dinner at the table, slept in my old room- the one I shared with Cajun. He and I ignored each other mostly. It was awkward bein’ near each other and he couldn’t seem to get past callin’ me Dante. Sometimes it felt like he was purposely tryin’ to sabotage me in front of our mama, bringin’ my name to her attention. Livin’ with her, he’d grown up with a sort of built in dislike for my very appearance. Ignorin’ turned into hatin’ soon enough, though.” He cleared his throat.

  “My act of defiance was out of an effort to force her to see me for who I was, mind you. It was meant to force her to realize I wasn’t a ghost sent to haunt her; I was her son, a son she couldn’t simply ignore and make disappear. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel an amount of resentment toward her, too, though. I felt like she’d doomed me to be who I was. And so it was only fair that she have to face me and deal with it, too.”

  “That was very brave of you. I never would have dreamed of standing up to my mother that way,” Amiel whispered, lips moving against his chest. He pressed his chin against her head, drawing on her presence for strength.

  “Brave. Selfish. Stupid.” He sighed. “My presence made her withdraw into herself more. Cajun told me once, when he was fightin’ the cancer, that he could feel it pressin’ on his brain. He said it made him half crazy, just from that alone. I think that’s a lot of what our mama’s problem was. She got this crazed look in her eyes as time passed. The slightest thing would set her off. She was paranoid and angry all the time. Headaches plagued her constantly, and sometimes her arms and legs would twitch uncontrollably. She complained all day and night of the pain in her head, cryin’ and sometimes screamin’.” His eyes took on a distant expression as he continued.

  “One day pop was in the garage, Cajun and I were eatin’ snacks at the table, and ma was just starin’ at the wall. She did that a lot, especially when I was around. We heard screams outside, someone bein’ attacked. The Rabid war was in full swing, but we had rarely seen infected where we lived. Cajun and I ran to the window, peekin’ out, eager in our youth to see what was happenin’. Ma drifted over to the door, throwin’ the locks open. Caj and I looked at her in shock, tried to stop her, begged her to stop. She shoved us off, knocking us both to the ground. It was like her frail body had suddenly gained strength from nowhere.” Harley’s jaw tightened, the muscles in it flinching.

  “She smiled at me and said, ‘I’ll finally be free of the pain…free of you, Dante’. She yanked open the door and ran out into the road before we could stop her. My mama chose to be ripped apart by three Rabids, rather than live with the pain of cancer; rather than having to live with seeing my face every day.”

  “Harley, I’m so sorry,” Amiel whispered, hugging him tighter. He could feel her tears soaking his shirt again.

  “I didn’t tell you this to make ya feel sorry for me, Thumbelina. I told ya because you needed to know. Right now, ya feel like someone’s death hangs round your neck like a sign shoutin’ Murderer. The guilt weighs down your soul until you feel like you’re gonna suffocate on it. I know how that feels. But I ain’t gonna tell y
a to not feel guilty about it, cause you always will. You’ll always wonder if ya coulda done somethin’ different to change the way it happened. And I ain’t gonna tell ya that the pain’s gonna go away. Cause it ain’t. It’ll be with you til the day ya die. Stains on the soul don’t go away, kid. The past is what makes ya who you are.” He leaned back slightly, lifting her chin to meet her eyes. “But, darlin’, just because the past made ya who you are now, don’t mean it’s got the right to dictate the rest of your life.” Her bottom lip trembled and he gently ran his thumb across it.

  “My ma chose her path. She didn’t choose her cancer, but she did choose the way she lived the rest of the time she had left. Cajun coulda given up like that, coulda hated the world and everyone around him. He didn’t. He fought and he overcame it. Eventually he overcame his hate for me, too. I did everythin’ I could after mama died to make up for my rebellions that I felt cost her her life. I threw my life into protectin’ what family I had left. When Caj got cancer I did everythin’ in my power to protect him and make him better. It’s the only life I know now. But that’s the choice I made. I coulda turned into a real bad case, but I didn’t. Sure, I got issues from it still, I always will. I gotta work on some things still, trustin’ bein’ one of ‘em. But I don’t let the past lead me ‘round by the nose no more. I control my life to the best of my abilities, and I let the rest go.” She blinked up at him with wet lashes and his thumb shifted from her lip to carefully wipe away the tears.

  “I didn’t know your brother, Amiel. But I know he musta been a helluva guy. No one can have the love and pain in their eyes that you hold when ya talk about him, and not have been a great guy. He was a fighter, and he loved ya. I know that because he fought to hold on for as long as he could for you, even though he was in a lotta pain. He fought to live, but I think he knew he wasn’t gonna make it, even with them tags on. He held on for as long as he could, but when the pain got to be too much he gave you the thing that brought him strength and safety. He gave them to ya knowin’ that they’d protect ya when he couldn’t no more. I’m sure he knew about the dangers, but I recon he knew y’all were strong and brave enough to handle ‘em.” Harley could see the doubt in her eyes, but that was something that would have to be mended with time. “It’s okay to be mad at him, kid. It’s okay to miss him. But it ain’t okay to pull into yourself and destroy the girl he loved. Buck up, make your brother proud, make his sacrifice worth it. Cause you better believe he had no doubt that you were worth it to him.” Fresh tears coursed from her eyes, slipping over his thumbs and trickling down his arms.