It was darker up there. No more than threads of light came from the windows, tracing alien letters on the floor. Instead of going to the place where Allen had told her to hide if there was ever trouble, she went to the bedroom at the front of the house where a single window looked down on the center of Fairfield.
Standing a few feet from the window, she watched the strangers (horsemen) circle Allen, he who had been her guardian since her birth parents deserted their posts. The horses stomped and tossed their heads as they came to a stop. One of the riders, she noticed, was not like the others. His hands were tied to the horn of his saddle, and his face was spotted with dark bruises.
She listened as Allen raised his voice in protest to something Jenny had not heard. She watched as the sword came down, felt a scream come ripping through her throat, heard the explosion of gunfire as Allen fell to the ground. She turned back to the stairs, ready to race down and help Allen…
But then she stopped herself. She had to wait until the horsemen were gone—had to. Because they had been shouting about her, looking for her, and if she went outside now she would be tied to a saddle just like that man with the bruises on her face. She would be taken away, and she would never see Allen again.
Slowly, feeling as if she were entering free-fall, she returned to the window. A few minutes had passed, and now a group of people were gathered around Allen’s body. Two of the men were tussling, and as Jenny searched the street to make certain the horsemen were really and truly gone, something happened to the world around her.
The glass, frozen on that cold morning before the noon sun could melt it, dissolved into a waterfall of reflective light. The sound of a cannon struck her from ear to ear. There was no sensation of falling, no realization of the sound she had heard. The next messages from her senses came like buckshot—
her arms brushing through a litter of glass, like a bug trapped in water -
a tremendous pain in the back of her head that pulsed with every heartbeat, swelling her head to the size of a watermelon -
knots of pain in her back, as if someone had crept up behind her and given her a few punches -
and a darkness that swarmed over her eyes like a cloud of insects.
She opened her eyes—and discovered they were already open. Adrenaline pulsed through her veins. She reached for her face, trying to remove whatever mask must be smothering her, as a scream bottled in her throat.
She became dimly aware that pieces of the day were missing and she could not account for how long she had been lying on the floor in the litter of glass. She forced herself to lay her head back down and listen…listen…listen for the sound of those horses outside, for the voice of the man she had come to embrace as father, the man who had given her hope and taught her about God and shown her the need to forgive others, even her parents. He could not be dead. He would find her, cure her. She had only to wait, and then…
Then there was a creak on the stair.
Jenny tried to go cold but too much had happened, she was too hot, she was starting to hyperventilate. Clarity was returning to her ears and she could hear the loudness of her own lungs in the still house. She tried to lift her head, but the pain was so savage that it took all her strength just to grit her teeth and lie back without screaming.
And so she lay on the floor in the litter of glass and tried not to think why the room had gone so dark, tried not to imagine how much closer someone might have crept since the stair creaked, how he might be standing over her just now, while she was powerless to do anything except wait and listen.
“Papa?” she whispered.
_____
At first Victor thought she was dead. She certainly looked dead, lying still on the floor with shards of glass all around her, the hair at the back of her head matted with what appeared to be blood. Felix had fired into the air to stop the fight between Victor and Allen’s cousin, and this is what had come of it. But even from a distance, standing just inside the room, Victor could tell the bullet hadn’t hit her.
“How bad is she?” Felix murmured in his best damage-control voice. Victor noticed he did not get near the girl. It was almost as if he suspected he might catch something.
Allen’s cousin knelt down beside the body and touched the girl’s neck. “She’s alive,” he said, “but she’s pretty banged up.”
“Will she make it?” Felix asked.
The man started to rock the girl, almost as gently as if he were putting her to sleep rather than waking her up. The girl’s eyes sprang open and began darting around the room. The man leaped to his feet and backed up.
“What the hell?” he said.
“She’s blind,” Victor answered, stepping into the room. He hunkered down and studied the girl. Her breathing was quickening (she was probably still in shock), but he saw no injury that looked life-threatening. The trauma to the back of her head looked the most serious, but it appeared the blood had already stopped flowing. The worst damage was probably on the inside. Victor knew it was possible to go blind by blunt trauma to the head, such as taking a hard fall, but he had never seen it himself.
“Papa?” the girl whispered. “Where’s Papa?”
Victor glanced at Felix for an explanation.
“The girl’s father,” Felix said, unable to take his eyes off the girl. “Foster father, I mean.” He seemed almost as shocked as the girl was.
Victor recalled the name he had heard Allen murmur. “Jenny,” he said, taking the girl’s hand. “It’s going to be okay. I’m—”
The girl jerked her hand from his and began backing across the floor, her elbows shuffling through the glass.
Victor glanced at Felix and the faces crowded behind him in the hall. “Damn it,” he said, “isn’t someone going to do something?”
Felix finally looked away from the girl and signaled to the men behind her. “Help her downstairs,” he said. “You know what to do.”
Victor moved toward Jenny, wanting to help calm her, but Felix stopped him. “Not you,” Felix said. “You and I need to talk.”
Chapter 11: Consequences
Felix waited until his men had reached the bottom of the stairs with the girl. Then, with an exaggerated sigh, he turned to meet Victor’s gaze. He was wearing a light blue dress-shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, black slacks, and a zebra bow tie. His clothing, along with the frown that accompanied them, made Victor feel as if he had just been called to the principal’s office.
“What a Goddamn mess,” Felix exclaimed. He ran a hand through his thinning hair, then carefully smoothed it back in place. “If I’d known what I was getting into from the start, I wouldn’t have taken the job.”
“Mayor, you mean?” Victor answered.
Felix snorted and walked over to the shattered window. “It’s a title, anyway.” He brushed glass off the sill and leaned out, looking down on the town. “Tough luck, huh?”
Victor frowned, unsure what he meant.
Felix turned toward him. “The girl.”
“Maybe next time you should keep your gun holstered.”
“Whoa,” Felix said, raising his hands, “tough guy! Maybe if you hadn’t come in here shooting at everything in sight—” He stopped himself and shrugged, almost apologetically. “I’m just saying. You started it.”
A cold breeze drifted in through the window. Victor was thinking about where this change of circumstances left him. The horsemen could be miles away by now, so it might be best to learn some things before he set out on the road again.
He said, “What do you know about those riders?”
Felix started scratching his chin. “Why do you want to know about them?”
“Because they took someone, and I’ll kill to get that person back.”
Felix faced the window again and leaned on the sill, letting the wind drift into his face. He shivered, but didn’t seem to mind.
“Used to be simpler,” he said. “I’m not talking about back when I was a real Mayor. Just a year ago, we had n
o problems. They came, took the bounty, and if we were having any trouble with thieves or whatnot, we told the horsemen. They called themselves “problem solvers.””
“Bounty?” Victor repeated.
“Food—mostly grain, but other kinds of vegetables, too. Whatever the blessed ground would give us,” he said with false enthusiasm.
“And in return, they protected you.”
“Still do.”
“As I recall, you’ve got a man bleeding out in the street and a girl who may never see again. That’s a strange brand of protection.”
Felix turned and raised a finger, as if to make a corollary to Victor’s point. “You see, that’s where it gets interesting. A few months back the rumors started. We get word from the other towns now and again—some tidbits of wisdom on how to grow certain crops, exchanges we should make for medicine and supplies. Recently we started hearing people were going missing.”
“Go on,” Victor said.
“Got your attention now, don’t I? See, people kept saying it was men on horses who did the kidnapping, but I didn’t believe it. They protect us, for goodness’ sake. That’s why we have hardly any guns—that was part of the arrangement, since we don’t need as many now.”
Victor decided not to share his opinion on their decision to surrender their weapons. Instead he said, “So if you have a problem with someone, how do you contact these horsemen?”
Felix sighed. “We don’t. They come to us twice a year or so. If we’ve had any trouble during that time, we tell them and the problem goes away. But this visit…” He frowned hard at the floor. “They’ve never done anything like this before.”
“So your “protectors” rode in and demanded you give them the girl. When Allen refused, they cut him down. That about right?”
“Listen, you don’t under—”
Victor took one long stride across the floor. He stopped just in front of Felix, chin to chin. “I don’t give a damn about whatever arrangement you have with that band of criminals,” he said. “All I care about is learning who they are, where they’re going, and why they took my brother.”
“Mind giving me a few inches?” Felix said, leaning back. “You’re crowding my airspace.”
Victor stepped back and began pacing across the floor, crunching glass beneath his boots. When a few moments had passed in silence, he looked at Felix. “Talk!”
“Hey, let’s not forget who’s in charge here. My men are downstairs. All I have to do is say the word. I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
“Fair enough,” Victor answered in a low voice. He stopped pacing. “You seem to like making deals. So why don’t you and I make one? If you tell me everything you know about the horsemen, everything, I won’t throw you out that window. Sound good?”
Felix frowned. “Hell no—” he started to say, but the sound was cut short as Victor grabbed him and pushed him through the open window so that Felix was sitting on the frame, his legs in the room and the rest of his body outside.
“Alright!” Felix shouted. “Alright!” People below had stopped to watch, and a warning went off in Victor’s head. You could only push people so far before they pushed back—a lesson he meant to teach the horsemen when he got the chance.
“Glad you saw the light,” he said as he pulled Felix back into the room. “I think the deal’s about as even as the one you made with the horsemen.”
Felix bent over on hands and knees, trying to steady himself. “Alright, you bastard,” he said. “Alright. I’ll tell you what I know, though you really should have asked Allen when he was still alive. He knew a thing or two about them.” He paused. “But after I tell you what I know, you have to do something for me.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
Felix’s eyes narrowed. “Get the hell out of my town.”
_____
I should not have run, Dante thought. And once I started running, I should have gone on running instead of hiding inside a tomb. A tomb! What the hell was I thinking?
But he knew what he had been thinking, because since the moment Walker had cornered him by the closet in the cabin, he had set his mind on finding some way to escape. He didn’t know what the horsemen wanted with him, or where they intended to take him, but he did know this was not one of those comedies where every problem proves to be some ironic misunderstanding. The horsemen were not his friends, they did not have his best interests in mind, and he was not going to like what he found at the end of this rainbow.
The person standing in the open doorway of the tomb, however, was not one of the horsemen. He was dressed like an elderly Jesus in a low-budget production, complete with a sleeveless robe and sandals. The third leg, which Dante had heard tapping along the side of the tomb, was a cane.
The figure squatted down in the center of the darkness with his back to Dante. He moved his hands, and moments later a small fire was burning. The cane fell beside him with a rattle as he moved his hands over the flames.
Dante, convinced by now this was not a vampire returning to its lair to await the coming night, stepped away from the back of the tomb. He now faced the dilemma of how to reveal himself without scaring this person out of his or her clothes. Was it better to make a sound to draw the person’s attention, or just to speak?
“Hello?” he said hesitantly. The figure kept moving his hands over the flames. It reminded Dante of the way witches in children’s stories would move their hands over a cauldron or a crystal ball.
“Hello?” he said again, a little louder this time. The figure started, reaching for the cane with surprising speed. With his third leg in hand, the man - now Dante could see for certain it was a man, or something like a man - pointed the cane at Dante and uttered the growl of a cornered dog.
That face… It seemed more like it was covered in bark than flesh. The nose was lumpy and misshapen, the cheek livid with a single large boil. But despite the dimness of the tomb, Dante could still discern this was - or had been - the face of a man not much older than himself.
“I’m sorry,” Dante said. “I was just—” But how to explain? He was trying to escape men on horses who had kidnapped him? It sounded crazy. Then again, this man looked like he might know crazy firsthand.
Before Dante could think what to say next, the man lowered the cane and stepped forward. The space at the back of the tomb suddenly shrank.
“Help me!” the man pleaded, and his voice was like air pressure escaping a tire. “Do you have medicine?” He took another step forward, and now Dante could see the boils all over his body. Blackened fingers reached for Dante, and he sprinted past the man, shoving the gates open as he emerged back into the clean air, and then he went on running. He could still smell the dampness of that tomb and he snorted hard, trying to dispel any molecules that might have lodged in his nostrils, because he had read about those symptoms before and he knew what disease he had just seen.
The Black Death. The Bubonic Plague. The disease that had ravaged Europe, killing millions, and now it was here again and he had been in the same room (Home, he thought, but dismissed it) as one of its victims.
He didn’t stop running until he was beyond the graveyard again. He looked back at the stones, then at the gates - still open wide - of the tomb he had fled. The man did not appear. Dante heard no sound but the songbirds in the trees.
And then a soft whistle from nearby.
Walker stepped from behind a stand of trees and leveled his Glock at Dante. Dante immediately raised his hands, remembering his fight with Walker at the cabin and how little Walker had cared about the rules of a “fair fight.” Dante was not about to give him any more excuses to shoot.
“You got me,” he said. “There’s no need to shoot.” In the back of his mind he was thinking how, even though he had been caught, his attempted escape should have bought Victor time. That was all Victor needed—a little time.
Walker lowered the weapon as he approached, casually swinging the pistol around his finger.
“Where a
re the others?” Dante asked.
“Not here.” Walker stopped only a few feet away from Dante. “I’ve got a question. Why’s your brother hellbent on saving you?”
Dante met Walker’s eyes, and once again he saw that unhinged smile, that prancing glee. “Because he’s my brother.”
Walker uttered a low, humorless chuckle. “There are no brothers any more—no family, no friends. There are just…” His eyes flicked toward the tomb Dante had just fled from. “Those who are dying, and those who have a little time left.”
“You’re going to kill me, then?”
Brothers (The Last Colony Book 1) Page 8