He turns in to her. “No, I…I mean, yeah, but I thought…you know—”
“I don’t know.”
He stares at her ear, mesmerized by the infinite detail of the structure. A perfection of intricate curves and silky skin.
“It’s just that I thought…you and Kane…”
Sadie turns her neck and looks over her shoulder. “You thought Kane and I?”
“I guess…Yeah. I guess maybe I did.”
She smiles and her cheeks dimple. Then she shakes her head. “You don’t get close to a person like Kane.” Sadie rolls and looks Adam in the eye. “How long have I known you?”
“A long time, I guess.”
“But not properly.”
“Nope.” He grins at her. “Until now.”
“I could never figure you. Always coming round to the shop, looking at the gear as if you wanted to buy. But whenever I came near, you’d disappear. You were like a shadow.”
Adam stares into her eyes and says nothing.
“I watched you ride once,” she says. “It was just some stupid street race. I was getting supplies over at Grover’s when I saw them setting it up. Then you came. There was something about you. You weren’t like the others, I could see that. They laughed at you, at your torn clothes and your scuffed byke. You just looked at them. And when you rode it was like nothin I’d ever seen. You led most of the way. But you didn’t win. Remember why?”
“I remember.”
“You went back. You went back to help that kid who’d fallen and broken his arm.”
“We should go look for Kane,” Adam whispers, fighting a surge of hormones.
Sadie’s eyes laugh at him. She bites her lip. “Kane can wait.”
—
They find him where they left him—in the table section of the foul-smelling saloon. He sits in the booth with his head slumped on crossed arms. A bottle stands before him, down to a third of its amber contents. A thin line of spittle connects the corner of his mouth to the table.
Sadie kicks a table leg. The bottle rattles, topples, falls with a bang and rolls to the table edge. It drops, smashes on the floor. The sound is startling and the stink is wretched.
Kane stirs and gives a muffled grumble. He drags his head from the cradle of his arms and looks up. His eyes are slits and his mouth a grimace.
“You broke my bottle,” he rasps. He clears his throat and swallows and pushes the table away. He leans back against the booth and looks at them, bleary-eyed.
“That stuff will kill you,” Sadie says.
Kane smirks. “Let it try.”
—
They emerge, all three, from the lit saloon into the black night. The cold grips them and they shiver in their suits. They don’t speak as they make their way through the swirling dust to their tents. The rank smell of sulfur is thick on the air.
Kane stumbles as he walks. Sadie, on the other side of him, says nothing.
Adam squints through the dust and takes shallow breaths. His head spins with what happened. Her lips, hot against his. Her body pressed up to him. Every fiber in him, fit to burst. He’s lost in the sensation of skin on skin, when three ghost figures materialize from the dust.
Adam feels a hot spurt of fear through his gut.
This isn’t good. Not good at all.
A throwing grip wire whips out from the shadows. It whines through the air and entangles Kane’s ankles. Locks them together with the momentum of its weights. He falls, face-first, in the dirt.
Sadie lets out a strangled cry. Hands wrap themselves round her waist and jerk her up and backwards. In the same instant, a massive blow lands on Adam’s shoulders and he flies forward. He goes down. Flat on his stomach. Feels a flash of pain. Something hard, maybe a knee, jammed into the small of his back. A hand slams down on his head and shoves his cheek into the grit.
He blinks and tries to speak and he feels himself whipped up to his feet, as though his weight is insignificant. His arms are twisted and jerked up behind his back. He struggles and kicks, but the grip is violent. His wounded hand is on fire.
A low voice snarls behind him. “You ain’t goin anywhere.” Adam smells stale breath and recognizes the voice. Red. “You brought this on,” he growls.
Now a specter emerges from the darkness.
Levi Blood.
Levi looks at Adam with a steady gaze. He glances at Sadie. Then he looks down at Kane, who has crawled up onto his knees.
“Well, well. Look see what fate has bestowed on us.”
He kicks Kane—in the jaw—a crunching blow that drives Kane backwards. Kane grunts and rolls, clutching his face. He moans and draws his knees to his chest.
“LEAVE HIM!” Sadie shouts. She is across from Adam, on the other side of Kane. Behind her stands Wyatt, gripping her tight, his arms across her breasts.
“Shut her the hell up,” Levi barks at Wyatt.
Wyatt clamps a hand to her mouth. Then shrieks in pain. “Bitch bit me!”
Levi glares at him. “Call her that one more time and see where it gets you.”
Wyatt yanks her by the neck, but Sadie pulls loose and slaps him. A hard, fat slap across the cheek that rocks him back. The sound is bright and sudden. Wyatt grapples with her, bats her arm away. But Sadie is slippery and quick. She spins and knees him in the balls and Wyatt squeals like Old Man Dagg’s hog. He goes crashing to his knees.
Sadie whips round, hunched and snarling like an animal. She doesn’t say anything. She attacks. She launches herself at Levi, leaps up onto his chest, clamps her legs round him, grabs hold of his ears with both her hands and head butts him.
Down they go, brother and sister. A heap of arms and legs.
Adam feels himself jerked about and flung like a rag doll. He crashes into the ground on his shoulder and rolls. He is up and back on his feet in seconds. He whips round and sees Red pull Sadie off Levi. Sadie lashes out and shrieks, smashing Levi in the face with a steel-tipped scissor kick.
“SADIE!” Adam yells, leaping up.
“Stay where you are, Stone.”
Adam spins. Wyatt—shaking, eyes wild with anger—fumbles with his sling. Adam looks at him. Seconds. That’s all he has.
“Adam!” Sadie chokes. “Do something!”
But he can’t move. He wants to. He needs to. But his feet seem stuck in cement. His eyes dart from side to side. Red rips both Sadie’s arms up behind her and he pushes his massive palms together, down flat on the domed curve at the back of her skull.
Wyatt mumbles something inaudible. Something like Go ahead or Try me. His sling is loaded now.
Adam doesn’t try him. He doesn’t move.
Sadie looks up, struggling. Her eyes are wide and furious. There’s something else in them too. Disbelief? Disgust?
Levi wipes a smear of blood from his nose with a greasy smile. He looks at Kane, grappling on all fours. “It’s time to make you ugly, son.”
—
The beating is relentless. Barbaric. Levi rains down blows on Kane. Kicking and punching. His ribs. His head. His stomach.
Adam cries out for them to stop. He begs them. But his shouts are like vapor. He tries not to look, but Wyatt’s sling keeps him pinned to the spot. Then he feels it creep up on him. The rising Blackness. Coming for him. The spots of light. A spike of pain in his head.
The last thing he sees is Kane, on his knees, beaten and bloody. Staring with his wild yellow eyes and his blood-smeared teeth. His mouth open wide. Screaming.
Adam’s vision warps and blurs. He feels the weight on his shoulders. His knees cave. But, before the Blackness takes him down, he realizes something with frightening certainty.
Kane wasn’t screaming. He was laughing.
Adam lies on his back. He blinks. Tries to order his thoughts. He can’t focus. He knows he blacked out. But for how long? He rolls onto his stomach. Sees Kane sprawled out, unmoving.
He remembers the violence of the beating. The look on Kane’s face. The way he goaded them with his eyes.
His fearlessness.
Adam sees Levi, chest heaving, shrouded in rain. Squinting down at him. Red and Wyatt stand next to him, looking drenched and tired. Adam blinks. Glances from side to side. Sadie is gone.
Levi smirks. “Looking for your girlfriend, Stone?” He spits rainwater. “She won’t be riding with you again. Those days have flown.”
Adam staggers to his feet and casts about. “Where is she? What’ve you done with her?”
“She’s a Blood. She’s where she belongs.”
Adam wipes rainwater from his eyes. Looks down at his boots. Follows the channels of red mud to the broken figure on the ground. He can’t think straight. His head throbs and he clenches and unclenches his fists. Feels the absence of his thumb.
And that’s when he notices the rock in his right hand. He looks at it and blinks.
Levi laughs. “You don’t remember, do you, Blackout Boy? Never seen anything like it. You were possessed. Isn’t that right, boys?”
“Sure is, Levi,” the others chorus.
Levi looks up at the sky and the rain sluices down on him. He shakes his head. Wyatt and Red seem uncertain, waiting for his direction. Levi has a deep gash in his forehead, above the eye, and a stream of blood runs down his cheek.
“You don’t remember?” he says. “Picking up that rock?”
Adam stares down at the rock in his fist. It’s covered in blood.
Levi grins. “Never seen someone beat his friend like that.”
Adam looks at Kane. “What are you saying? I—”
“You were jealous. He was the one my sister liked. I could see it in her eyes. You knew that. Maybe you wanted him out the way. For the girl?”
“I didn’t…I couldn’t—”
“You did,” Levi cuts in. “You picked up that rock and you attacked your friend.”
Adam takes a shuddering breath and squeezes the rock in his fist. “It’s not true,” he says, but he remembers the wolves and the primitive feeling in him. The rock in his hand. The sound of bone crunching.
“Looks like we have ourselves a situation,” Levi says. “What do you say we do, Red?”
“I say we take that rock and give him the same treatment, Levi.”
“Figured on you saying something like that. But look at him. What do you see?”
“I see a damn coward,” Wyatt barks.
“Well,” Levi says, “that’s why I’m leading this Tribe and you’re nothing but a muttonhead. Thing is, he’s neither coward nor fool.”
“How you figure, Levi?”
“Well. It isn’t rocket science. If this Blackout Boy were a coward or a fool, he wouldn’t have got this far in the Race, would he?”
Adam feels the rock in this right hand. It’s as heavy as lead.
Levi looks at him, shifts his weight from one leg to the other. “Something eating you, Stone? Is there vengeance boiling up inside you?”
Adam says nothing.
Levi turns his head to the side and spits. His dark eyes never leave Adam.
“So…what do we do, Levi?” Red asks.
“We leave him.”
“What?” Wyatt cries, starting forward.
Levi nods. “We leave him.”
Adam begins to shake. He can’t control it. His whole body goes into a violent tremble.
Work for me, hand. Throw the rock, dammit.
His traitorous hand does nothing but shake.
“It’s over,” Levi says. “Anyone can see there’s nothing left in him. He’s broken.”
“Then why don’t we just kill him?” Red asks.
“You don’t kill something that’s already dead.”
Levi smiles and steps backwards, into the shadows and the rain. On either side of him, Wyatt and Red do the same; their eyes remain fixed on Adam. Then all three turn their back on him—like he doesn’t matter, like he’s dirt—and they vanish from sight.
A cold, wet wind stirs and a sound comes from Adam’s throat. A growl. He tilts back his head and releases a torrent of guttural howls, more animal than human. He lifts Kane and hauls his human cargo through the mud. He stumbles. Falls. Rises again.
People come through the rain. They shout at him over the storm, but he doesn’t hear them. All he hears is Sadie’s voice.
Adam! Do something!
The bad weather keeps Riders another day in the muddied camp, holed up in their drenched tents, waiting and watching. Adam lies in the infirmary with his spirits withered. He looked for her. Scoured the camp, one end to the other. But he couldn’t find a trace. Not of her. Not of them.
Levi and the Scorpions—what’s left of them, Red and Wyatt as far as he can reckon—have hightailed it into the desert. Flouting the rules. Leaving before the rest. Anyone else would land in trouble for that. Anyone but Levi Blood.
Adam sits on his bed and holds his head in his hands. He thinks about the Race.
Six days. Six days of hell. He tries to chart them in his head.
Day one…the start, churning through the canyon. Then blasting out onto the plain. The first obstacle course. Huge jumps. Nate next to him, going strong. Then the bandits. Everything flipped upside down. And Kane comes. He buries Nate in the ground. Leaves him behind and goes. Day two…in the desert with Kane, riding hard. Day three…Sadie appears and then the wolves. After that a blur…another obstacle course…the ravine…the Nakoda.
He shakes his head. He’s tired of thinking.
In the bed next to him, surrounded by a wall of white curtain, lies Kane, fed by an array of tubes and pipes and ticking machines that hum and blink and bring disinfectant-smelling medical bots jerking into the room, brandishing weird-looking implements.
Adam has no injury, besides fatigue. The swelling on his ankle is almost gone and the throb of his missing thumb is faint.
A woman referee stands beside his bed and taps a stylus pen against a digital tablet device. She looks down on Adam and her glasses reflect Adam’s rumpled shape in the bed.
“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” she says. “You say you were attacked by none other than Levi Blood. Correct?”
Adam turns away from the woman. Nothing will come of this.
He hears the woman sniff and the tapping continues unabated. “I take your insolent non-response as an affirmative, then. That’d be a yes in plain speak.”
“Take it any way you please,” Adam says. He looks at the door. A silent GRUB stands there.
“Let me ask you once again,” the woman says. “Was this alleged fight perpetrated or instigated by the aforementioned Levi Blood…son of the Colonel?”
She didn’t need to say son of the Colonel; the point was already well made. The fight never happened. Adam dreamt the whole thing.
He glances at the white curtain wall and the faint shadow of a figure beyond, and he tries to discern the sound of breathing. But nothing comes.
“Your answer,” the woman says. “Were you attacked by Levi Blood? Yes or no?”
Adam looks at her. “No, dammit. No! Now leave me alone.”
The candlelight bounces off the woman’s dark spectacles and she smiles, revealing brown teeth. She places the stylus behind her ear and looks at Adam. “Storm’s lifted,” she says. “Come morning you will saddle up.” She glances at Kane’s bed. “And you will be alone.”
—
An ether smell, soaked into the bedsheets, keeps Adam from falling asleep, and he listens instead to the night sounds. A door closing, down the corridor. Someone coughing, hacking somewhere in the dark. The drone of the machines feeding Kane.
At dawn, he finds himself dozing, half awake, half asleep.
“Sorry, Sadie,” he says aloud to the room. “I should’ve done something…I could’ve—”
“Should’ve. Could’ve. Would’ve,” a voice croaks in response.
Adam rises off the pillow. “Who said that?”
Silence. The murmur of humming machines. Someone snoring. Adam waits. No answer. His eyes adjust to the dim moonlight filtering thro
ugh the window. The clouds must have dispersed. There’s no sound of rain. He stares at the gauzy curtain next to his bed and he swears he can see movement. And there it is, a hand, beckoning him into the room.
“You gotta go,” Kane whispers, labored and slow. Adam leans right into him, holds his ear to Kane’s split and swollen lips. “And keep goin,” Kane murmurs, his breath on Adam’s ear.
Adam watches him breathe. Watches his chest rise and fall. Kane’s face is almost unrecognizable. At least one tooth is missing. His nose is broken. One eye is swollen shut. The other open just a fraction, revealing a bloodshot orb, more black than yellow. A lurid stitch cuts across his temple and countless other nicks and bruises mark his face.
He squeezes Kane’s hand, then drops it, feeling awkward and at the same time more bonded to him than before. “Kane…did I…do something out there?”
Kane looks at him. “Like what?”
“Levi. He said…I attacked you.”
Kane looks at him with his half-open eye. Even now a dim flame burns in him. “No,” comes the hoarse whisper. He points a finger at Adam. “You did nothin.”
It isn’t meant as an accusation, Adam knows that. But it feels like one.
I didn’t hit him with the rock, but I did nothing to stop them hitting him.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Don’t beat yourself up….” Kane’s mouth twists with pain.
Adam lifts his head and helps him get comfortable. His wounds are horrific in the candlelight. It reminds him of Frank.
You can’t break people like Kane or Frank.
You can put ’em down and you can make ’em bleed. But you can’t break ’em.
“Reckon Sadie’s okay?” Adam says, watching him.
Kane nods. “She’s a survivor.” His voice sounds like the rattle of stones in a tire.
“I should’ve done something,” Adam says again.
“What could you do? Wyatt had you covered.”
“I don’t know…something. I tried to, but—”
“You love her.”
Adam looks at Kane and feels himself blush. “Doesn’t everybody? Don’t you?”
Stone Rider Page 18