Theron glanced back at her, still watching Darrell as he yanked on the second wire.
“They’ve lost power, Grandma Pearl. If they don’t have power, they can’t see the trackers. There’s nothing for them to send a signal to.”
The crowd moved forward collectively as the second wire snapped loose.
Theron stood there, his heart pounding in his chest as he considered just what they would do once the fence was open. They had no boats, had no cars nor roads to drive on if they did. The trek to freedom or civilization – especially civilization not policed by Baird Davenport – would be treacherous and long. And in this weather, there was no telling how rough the going would be. Still, from the looks of the people that gathered around him, the notion of freedom was worth all of that.
“Are you sure?”
The voice startled Theron, and he turned mid-stride to meet the source. “Sinead, what are you doing out here? You’ll freeze.”
His panic suddenly doubled. It was no longer Darrell’s speed that concerned him – it was Sinead. She couldn’t make this journey. No matter how many of them might get through, she couldn’t go with them. She wasn’t a shifter, and even bundled in every jacket on the Extension, Sinead wouldn’t make it twenty minutes in this storm.
“You’re gonna get someone killed. Darrell! Why won’t you listen?” Pearl screamed.
Darrell growled, his brow furrowed against the wind and snow.
Sinead reached for Theron, tugging at the lapel of his jacket with her bare fingers. He wrapped his hand around hers to shield her from the cold.
“What will you do? Where will you go? There're still half a dozen families on the other side of the -”
Theron blew warm air on her fingers. “I’ll go to Halifax. I’ll find your parents. I’ll tell them where you are, what’s happening.”
Pearl continued to berate her grandson, despite the waiting crowd egging him on. “You’re gonna get someone killed. Darrell! Why won’t you listen?”
“Damn it, Aanak. Enough!” Darrell growled, his brow furrowed against the wind and snow.
Theron couldn’t help but think of his own mother – of the gruff manner that she’d spoken to him in his whole life. These Holden women weren’t experts at showing love.
Not to their sons, anyway.
There was a quiet click, then a hum, and Theron caught a glimpse of orange light flickering to life on one of the fence panels in the distance.
Theron spun around, hollering against the wind. “Darrell!”
Darrell stiffened, his fist clenched around the third wire He stood stock still, the wind whipping his hair around his face.
The fence was on. Darrell was being electrocuted.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SINEAD
“Darrell!” Theron called again, drawing a nervous shift from the crowd. Sinead’s body was shaking violently, half from the cold and the sudden surge of tension she felt in every muscle.
Sinead gasped, fighting not to cry out as she recognized Darrell’s body language. He was being electrocuted.
A blur of movement stole her eye from Darrell, just as Theron shoved Gregory Holden aside, and lunged forward.
No, no! She thought.
Panic ran through her mind so fast, the only word she could muster was, “Please!”
Yet, Theron was moving toward the helpless man, and in an instant, threw his whole body through the air, wrapping his arms around Darrell’s chest as he flew into the helpless man. Darrell’s hands pulled free of the wires and the two men came crashing down into the snowy ground. The crowd shrieked and cried out, but Sinead couldn’t speak.
Oh my god, please be alive. Please, god! Be alive.
She pushed passed the gathered figures, her fingers turning numb in the cold. She didn’t know what use she would be, but she had to do something.
She couldn’t understand the emotion. She’d known Theron for less than a few days, but the thought of him being hurt – or so much worse.
She couldn’t forgive a god that would let Theron meet the same fate as Eddie Holden. Not when he’d only just appeared in her world.
She drew close enough to touch him and froze. She wasn’t ready to know.
He didn’t wait for her to draw strength. A moment later, Theron moved on the ground and she exhaled.
She watched as Theron shifted on the ground, rising to his knees over Darrell’s still form. Theron tore open Darrell’s jacket and pressed his ear to Darrell’s chest. She watched. She was no EMT. She didn’t imagine Theron was either, but still this new man listened to the man’s chest.
An instant later, Theron was back upright, clamping both his hands over Darrell’s sternum. He slammed his hands down, and Darrell’s chest compressed beneath his weight. He waited a moment. Then, he pushed again.
“Come on, cousin. Don’t do this to me. Come on,” Theron said, speaking softly as the crowd pressed forward to see. Sinead’s heart ached with something she couldn’t express. Watching Theron frantically try to save the very man that had attempted to kill him just days before – it stirred something so furious in her, she feared she might digs holes into her palms from her clenched fists.
“Darrell, honey!” Pearl said, her voice cracking with endless concern.
Theron pressed into Darrell’s chest again, and Sinead prayed silently to whatever gods might hear.
One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three –
Darrell jerked beneath Theron’s hands as he gasped desperately for air.
Grandma Pearl dropped to her knees at Darrell’s side, grabbing hold of him and shaking him with anger and relief. “I told you, damn it. Why won’t you listen to me?”
Sinead exhaled, watching Theron as he moved aside to let Pearl hold her grandson. Sinead felt the same urge, fighting every instinct to grab Theron, to feel the warmth of life still in his blood.
A soft cry startled her around, and it was only then that Sinead realized Buniq was there, tears streaming down her face. Sinead grabbed the girl and pulled her close, feeling her shudder in her arms.
The tension of the moment didn’t cease as suddenly flashing lights flickered through the snow. Pearl turned toward the waiting faces, all of them waiting for word. Theron lunged toward the fence, and Sinead cried out after him. Yet, he simply grabbed hold of something and an instant later, shoved it under a nearby boulder.
“Run! Scatter!” Pearl called over her shoulder. “Don’t go near the greenhouse! You too, Miss Dalton.”
Theron turned to her, and she froze, tears of relief streaming down her own face. His eyes softened as he looked at her, and it made her heart swell.
The engines of the coming trucks betrayed their keepers’ approach. Theron jumped to his feet, waving his arms as he rushed toward the lights.
Sinead panicked, moving to chase after him. Pearl Holden grabbed her arm, holding her back.
“Hey! Hey! It was me! What are you gonna fucking do about it, you fascists!?” Theron screamed, rushing forward as the rest of the crowd dissipated.
The shot splintered through the air, and even the snowflakes seemed to rattle in the air. An instant later, Theron crumpled backward, his back and head hitting hard against the rocky ground. He stared up at the snowflakes swirling around him.
Sinead cried out in renewed panic, yanking her arm from Pearl’s grasp. She lunged toward Theron, dropping to her knees at his side. “Theron! Don’t you dare. Please, don’t you dare.”
Pearl appeared beside, her own face contorted in grief and anger. She turned her eyes up to the flashing lights, screaming at the coming officers, but Sinead couldn’t hear them. She was watching Theron’s expression, watching his eyes falter, then close.
Sinead pressed her hands to his bleeding chest, her frozen fingers warming from the blood that pooled through his shirt, and cried.
Suddenly, hands gripped her arms, yanking her to her feet. She struggled to pull free. She had to stop the bleeding. She had to keep him alive.
“What are you stupid, girl? You’re gonna freeze to death out here.”
“Let me go,” Sinead screamed, pulling and fighting against the figures that hauled her backward from Theron. Pearl and Gregory were there, grabbing hold of him and pulling him from the ground between the two them. There were no arms at their sides, no one fighting them. Sinead spun around to face those that held her at bay.
Officer Reed had a vice grip on her bicep and a crooked grin on his face.
“Well, you’re getting feisty in your old age, girl,” he said, and a man’s laughter turned her stomach. Sinead found Officer Miller standing just a few feet away, the rifle now lazily propped over his shoulder. She lunged toward the man, growling like an animal.
Officer Miller’s eyebrows shot up. “Careful now. You’re starting to make me think these freaks are contagious.”
Officer Reed shoved Sinead into the backseat of the truck and climbed in after her. She fought to move across the vehicle and out the other door. She wanted to get back to Theron, to help in whatever way she could, but Officer Reed held tight to her arm. Had she been warm, she might’ve had more fight, but as it was, she could barely curl her hands into a fist.
The cold had worked its way through her, quickly.
“Come on, Dalton. Calm the hell down.”
“You shot him!” She screamed, and the words tore through her throat.
“Well, what choice did he give me?”
She flailed her arms toward Officer Miller as he settled into the driver’s seat up front. “You’re a murderer.”
She caught a snag of his jacket and the skin just under his jaw. He jerked away, shielding himself from her touch. She relished in seeing his pain, curling her fingers to attack him again, but the air left her lungs, and she slumped back onto the seat.
Officer Reed had elbowed her in the chest.
Sinead began to see blue and white lights before her eyes, fighting to catch her breath. Reed’s face appeared over her, grinning. “God, you really are a redhead, aren’t you?”
Miller laughed from the front seat as the truck rolled away. Sinead fought to catch her breath, panic rising in her chest. Theron was bleeding – dying – somewhere outside, and these bastards were taking her away from him, and now she couldn’t breathe.
“I wonder if the rug matches the drapes,” a voice said, and suddenly she felt a hand sliding up the inside of her thigh. Sinead’s whole body tensed, and she slammed her forehead into the grinning face above her.
Reed recoiled, clutching his nose in his hands. Sinead took as deep a breath as she could, ready to fight.
“Keep your hands to your fucking self, Reed. Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I think the bitch broke my nose!”
“You shot him,” she managed to say, fighting to see straight.
“Calm down, Dalton. It’s just a tracker. The new boy is gonna be fine.”
The truck rolled to a stop, and before Sinead could see where they were, the back door to the truck was open, and she was falling to the frozen dirt road.
“Now get inside before you freeze to death.”
It was Miller that kept his calm, and it was Miller who left her there on the road, tussling Reed into the passenger seat, still clutching his bleeding nose.
Sinead watched the tail lights blaze in the whirling snow, then disappear just feet away. The storm was in full force now, the ice in the air burning her face with every second she stayed out in the open. She couldn’t make the trek back to Pearl’s house in this weather. She could barely get to her feet. Sinead struggled up the schoolhouse steps and into the front door.
The wind howled and brayed through every crack in the siding, leaving her breath to form clouds even indoors. Sinead struggled to walk straight, still lightheaded from Reed’s attack, but managed to make it back to her small room. Sinead slumped down beside the tiny space heater and held her frozen fingers to the glowing coils. The orange light made the blood on her hands look brown.
It was just a tracker, Miller had said.
Theron wasn’t dying. Theron would be ok.
Yet, the grief was still there – memories of looking down at that stranger’s face, feeling his blood pooling under her fingers, and feeling like that moment was when she lost all hope. Two years trapped on the Extension, and yet it hadn’t broken her until the instant Theron’s blood was pouring from his chest.
She’d felt her heart break.
For a stranger. She was alone again, locked away from an endless cold that howled through the walls, mocking her.
Sinead took a deep shaking breath, and fell onto the floor, sobbing.
CHAPTER NINE
THERON
“There he is,” a voice said with the soothing tone of a pediatric nurse. “Don’t move, Ther. Just lie still. We’re almost done.”
Theron opened his eyes to find the stained panel ceiling of his grandmother’s house overhead. He shifted on the couch to face the voice and pain shot through him from a burning spot in his chest. He reached up to touch the place, but a pair of soft hands stopped his.
“No, no, sweetheart. We need to change the bandage first.”
His grandmother’s face appeared over him, her teeth just a little crooked and yellowed with age. Still, the smile felt warm and safe.
“What happened?” He asked, his throat hurting from thirst.
“They shot you, pal.”
This voice was familiar. Darrell was somewhere nearby, and no less ornery than Theron remembered.
Memory flooded Theron’s mind. A flood of questions hit him, but in the end, the strongest thought at that moment was simply, ‘I see saving your life doesn’t make you any less of a prick.’
Several voices broke out in laughter around him, and Theron realized he’d said the words out loud.
His head hurt almost as much as his chest, and Theron squirmed again on the couch. The words were beginning to settle in. They’d shot him. In the chest.
How was he alive?
His grandmother’s hands pressed to his shoulders, holding him still. “Come now. Listen when I tell you to do something.”
“They shot me? They fucking shot me?” He said, half mumbling the words.
“Well, they tagged you. Sucks, doesn’t it?”
This was Darrell again, still speaking from somewhere in the room. Theron couldn’t look around yet. His head was pounding.
He touched a hand to the back of his head and felt tangles in his black hair – blood.
“Tagged me?”
Theron reached for his chest again, only to have his grandmother stop his hand, making a stern tsking sound as she squeezed his fingers. The pain in his left pectoral was intense, but not the kind of bone deep pain he’d expect from a bullet wound. Theron tried to pull his hand from Pearl’s grasp, but she wouldn’t let go.
“How much did you give him?” The older woman asked, her voice betraying a half chuckle.
“As much as I could get in him. He was thrashing pretty badly.”
Theron stopped, and despite the pain in his head and chest, he smiled. Sinead was there.
“I bet he was,” Pearl said.
Theron forced his eyes open, but quickly shut them again as the room began to spin.
Theron frowned. He had a tracker shot into his chest, his head busted open on a rock, and to top it all off, he was drunk. He had half a mind to feel humiliated, but he was too busy smiling like an inebriated idiot.
“If you promise not to touch your chest, I’ll let Shinny sit with you,” Pearl said, leaning over Theron.
He grinned. “I promise.”
Theron opened his eyes just long enough to see Sinead’s face looking down at him. “God, you are so beautiful,” he said.
“For fuck’s sake. Kid’s here for less than a week and he’s already putting the moves on the finest eligible woman in the place,” Darrell said from somewhere nearby.
“Correction. I’m the only eligible woman in
the place.”
Theron fought to focus his eyes on her face, but the effort made his head pound.
“That’s even worse,” Darrell said, groaning. It was then Theron realized Pearl was tending to Darrell’s health as well.
“And who’s to say she’s not the one putting the moves on me?” Theron said, opening his eyes just long enough to catch Sinead’s cheeks turning bright red.
God, what did they give him? Whatever booze they managed to get their hands on on the Extension, it was damn good stuff.
Theron’s cheeks burned he was smiling so fiercely. “You can put any move on me you like,” he said, and he and Darrell both began to laugh in the same drunken way.
There was a tension in the air that both women seemed to be fighting, and Theron knew a distant memory of terror and despair, but those memories were drowning in a sea of alcohol. He almost wanted to sober up and delve in – what had he missed? What happened to the Holdens when their escape attempt was discovered? Theron knew at least his close family was there, but what punishment had they known for their insolence?
And how much alcohol did she give him?
“Here you are, dear. Bandage him up and leave him. These two need to sleep it off.”
Theron felt Sinead’s hands move over his bare chest, and he sighed. Somewhere hidden away beneath booze he thought to be embarrassed, but for now, he just relished in the way her fingers felt on his bare skin.
Then she pressed the tape down over the bandage and he hissed.
“Sorry,” she said. She pressed the second piece of tape into place, then let her hand linger on his chest, as though she wanted to feel his heartbeat.
“Come on, then. I’ll make you some tea,” Pearl said.
Sinead’s hand remained there for a long moment, and Theron fought to open his eyes and look at her. When he finally managed it, Sinead was already halfway across the room, disappearing into the kitchen with Grandma Pearl.
Theron didn’t have a chance to protest her exit. He was asleep before their tea was warm.
***
The house was quiet when Theron finally woke up. His head and body screamed to greet him with a miserable amalgam of pain – sticky-mouthed nausea and headache of a hangover, the throbbing pain from his chest, and a subtle sting at the back of his head. He swallowed hard, tasting bile in the back of his throat.
True North (The Bears of Blackrock Book 4) Page 7