by Tarah Benner
At that moment, something inside Lark snapped. “Shut up!” she yelled.
Soren’s shoulders twitched, and silence fanned out around the room. It took a long time for the full weight of Lark’s outburst to travel from her lips to the back of the church. When it did, Memphis turned his cruel eyes on her, and his face fell into a deadly expression.
“What did you say to me?”
Lark’s heart seemed to have rematerialized inside of her. It was pounding in her throat, making it very difficult to swallow or breathe. Her eyes darted from the twenty or so bikers blocking their exit to the cold black rifle in Memphis’s hands. Her palms were still slick with sweat, and she had the horrible feeling that Memphis was about two seconds from blasting her with a stream of hot lead.
When Lark didn’t answer him, a dark cloud settled over Memphis’s face. He tilted his head to one side and climbed the three steps to where Lark stood in the chancel. For several seconds, all Lark could hear was the muffled clunk of Memphis’s boots on the marble steps and the jangle of keys hanging from his belt.
In a flash, Soren jerked out of his captors’ grip — trying to position himself between Memphis and Lark — but another biker lurched forward to restrain him.
Up close, Lark could smell Memphis — a pungent mixture of body odor and Black & Mild cigars. She could see the gaping dirt-clogged pores that dotted his nose and the deep angry lines fanning out from his eyes to his temples. Underneath his leather vest, he wore a torn white T-shirt stained with sweat and dirt.
As Memphis inched closer, Lark saw Soren turn to look at her. She gave her head the tiniest of shakes, but he jerked again to shake the bikers off of him.
Memphis smiled and raised his Heckler so that Lark was staring down the muzzle. “What did you say to me?”
Lark swallowed, and she felt her mouth move of its own accord. “I said . . . Shut. The fuck. Up.”
She’d spoken just loud enough for Memphis to hear, but to her horror, a stream of angry mutters rose up from the crowd.
Memphis’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes searched hers for several seconds before settling on a reaction. “My, my . . . Aren’t you a feisty one?”
Lark didn’t reply.
“Normally I go for the blondes, but . . .” His eyes raked up and down her body. “Maybe I should make an exception just this once.”
At those words, Soren lunged forward with such great force that he managed to slip out of his captors’ grips. He dove across the chancel toward Memphis, but Taz jumped in front of him and pistol-whipped him across the face. Soren tackled him to the ground, blood gushing from his head.
Memphis watched in amusement as Soren and the biker wrestled for control of the gun. They rolled over and over in front of the altar, but then one of the other bikers threw out a kick that caught Soren hard in the spine.
All of the air seemed to leave Lark’s lungs. She watched as the bikers lifted a dazed Soren off the ground and yanked his arms behind his back.
“Well, now,” said Memphis, his lip curling in irritation. “Should I make your boyfriend watch?”
Raw, unchecked terror oozed into Lark’s stomach. She knew what was coming. She’d known men like Memphis — well, at least one man like him. In an instant, she was two people at once: She was nineteen-year-old Lark on the Fourth of July, and she was the Lark who’d lived through San Judas and everything that had happened since.
Present-day Lark watched with an odd sense of detachment as Memphis handed his weapon to one of the men behind him and started to remove his belt. Her heart sped up, and a grim cloud of resolve settled over her.
In that moment, she realized that Memphis and his men weren’t going to let any of them leave the church alive. These men enjoyed inflicting pain, and Memphis was their king.
But before her brain could come up with a plan, Katrina wheeled around and smashed a biker’s face with the side of her fist. She caught him squarely in the nose, and his yell distracted the others long enough for Soren to tug himself free from his captors’ grips.
Soren tackled Memphis to the ground, and the church descended into chaos. A gun went off somewhere nearby, and Taz and Stumpy dove down to help. Taz captured Soren in a choke hold and peeled him off of Memphis.
There was a flurry of grunts and yells, but the bikers seemed reluctant to shoot up toward the chancel and risk hitting one of their own.
As Soren disappeared under a mound of leather and fists, somebody struck Lark in the temple.
She hit the ground face-first, slightly dazed from the force of the blow. She gasped for air, squinting through the agony, and somebody landed on top of her. Pain erupted in her calves and shoulders as a strange set of knees and hands pinned her to the floor.
“You stupid bitch,” Memphis growled, shoving her face into the cold marble and shifting to get a better grip.
A bitter wave of terror washed over Lark as Memphis jerked her around to face him. His filthy hands were gripping her arms so tightly that she could practically feel the bruises forming. Her hips were twisted uselessly to the side, and she couldn’t seem to fill her lungs.
He shifted his weight, and Lark felt a sharp stab of pain in her side. There was something solid and metallic wedged against her ribs, and Lark realized she still had Soren’s revolver.
In that instant, everything sped up. Memphis was breathing loudly in her ear, moving his left arm to her windpipe and shoving his other hand between them to pull her hips under his. He was so busy clawing at her jeans that he didn’t notice Lark reaching for the handle protruding from her waistband.
She tugged out the revolver in one violent motion and shoved the nose of the pistol into his stomach. She pulled the trigger, and the gun went off with a short, harsh blast.
The tremor traveled from Lark’s fingers to her elbow, turning her entire arm to jelly. The shot rang out across the room, and Memphis’s face contorted in pain.
Burning-hot blood gushed down over Lark’s middle. Memphis was still straddling her, but she wasn’t aware of what he was doing — only that she still had the gun in her hand and another person’s blood on her skin.
As the ringing in her ears subsided, a thousand new sounds erupted all around the church. Somebody yelled from the doorway, and the air became charged with fire. Gunshots ricocheted off the cold brick walls, and soon the air was filled with frantic yells.
Lark squinted toward the entrance of the church, where a large hulking figure stood in the doorway. Bikers scattered for the exits, and a rough hand closed around Lark’s wrist.
She gasped. It was slick with blood, but the grip was strong. She caught a glimpse of fiery eyes and the cold, hard look of a man bent on murder.
It was just her and Memphis, and he had nothing to lose. Lark stopped breathing, and her vision narrowed to a point. Memphis’s blood was still seeping out over her stomach, causing her shirt to stick to her skin.
He was a dying man, but he was putting up one hell of a fight. One moment his hand was on her arm; the next he was trying to pry the gun out of her grip.
In one gut-wrenching motion, Lark yanked her arm away and punched the revolver up under his chin. She pulled the trigger, and the gun went off in her hands.
Two hundred pounds of flesh and bone collapsed over her body. She sucked in a burst of air, but all she tasted was blood and sweat. Lark choked, willing herself not to swallow, but the saliva was pooling in the recesses of her mouth, and she felt as though she might suffocate.
She didn’t want this. This wasn’t happening. A moment later, the room started to blur as gunshots and the rumble of engines overtook her senses. People were running and yelling, but all Lark could see was the fleshy dirt-encrusted neck of the dead man pressed against her.
This was it, she thought. This was the world. There was no reprieve from suffering, she realized. It was kill or be killed — if one was lucky enough to be given the choice. Lark had been tested, and she’d shown what she was. She was a predator — an ani
mal. She was a cold, ruthless killer.
nine
Soren
The gunshot echoed through the church before dying in the rafters. Soren heard the sound of bullet casings rolling across the marble floor and the groan of engines receding in the distance. Katrina let out a sharp burst of air, and everything went quiet.
Axel was standing in the doorway, the bright morning light squeezing in around him. Eight men in black leather vests lay dead in the nave — some of them folded over pews like rag dolls and others lying flat on their faces.
Soren’s eye was starting to swell, and he could taste the iron tang of blood in his mouth. His ribs were bruised and his jaw was stiff, but all he could think about was Lark.
He looked around. Simjay was slumped on the floor beside the altar with an arm wrapped around his ribcage. Thompson was bent over him, checking to make sure he was all right, while Mitch comforted Katrina.
The man called Memphis was lying facedown at the top of the steps, a puddle of blood blooming from his head. The lower half of his skull had been blown to smithereens, and someone was moving beneath him.
Soren’s heart stuttered. “Oh god. Lark?”
He crossed the chancel in three quick strides and grabbed the corpse by the back of his vest. It was like lifting an enormous trash bag full of meat, but he managed to heave the body off of Lark and dump him onto the steps.
Soren sucked in a burst of air. Lark was lying on her back covered in blood, the revolver still clutched in her trembling hands. He bent down to help her into a seated position, supporting her back while he pulled her by the arm.
“Are you hurt?” he croaked, gently prying the gun out of her cold stiff hands.
Lark swallowed and shook her head. She wouldn’t meet his gaze.
Soren’s breaths were coming in ragged, uneven spurts. He didn’t know what to do. There were no words that could wash away the blood spewed all over her face and pooling in the folds of her shirt. There was nothing he could say to make her forget what the man’s face had looked like when his skull blew apart.
Lark turned to look at the body, but Soren squeezed her hands to keep her attention on him.
“It’s all right,” he said, as much to reassure himself as to comfort her. He shrugged out of his sweatshirt and pulled the gray shirt he’d borrowed from Mitch over his head. He bunched it up in one hand and used it to dab the blood off her face.
A wave of fury and disgust welled up inside him when he remembered the way the biker had looked at her, and he ground his molars together to keep his anger from showing.
“Hey, Fabio!” called a voice from the aisle.
Soren stiffened. He wasn’t in the mood for Axel’s shit.
“Put your shirt back on and let’s get out of here before those fuckers come back.”
“In a minute,” Soren growled, not bothering to look at him.
Mitch and Katrina got up to follow Axel out the front. The side door was still cracked from the bikers’ escape, but nobody seemed to want to approach Lark. Thompson was still talking to Simjay in an uncharacteristically soothing voice. She helped him to his feet, and they staggered out behind the others.
“We should go,” said Soren, searching Lark’s face for some sign that she was coming back to him.
She nodded, glancing at Memphis’s body.
“I killed him,” she said in a terrified whisper.
“You had to,” Soren murmured.
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“You did what you had to do,” said Soren. “If you hadn’t, he would’ve —”
Soren broke off. He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. He was so furious, both with Memphis and with himself. Lark shouldn’t have had to kill that man. Soren should have been the one to blow his brains out. He should have protected her.
Feeling shittier than he had in a long while, Soren got up and lifted Lark into a standing position. He left the bloody T-shirt on the altar and pulled his sweatshirt back on. He’d meant to lead Lark out the side door, but as soon as he released her, she wandered down the steps toward the center aisle.
He watched her meander through the nave, his heart constricting with each step she took. Lark reached the back of the church and turned, wandering toward a little alcove built into the opposite wall.
Inside the alcove stood a wrought-iron votive stand with twenty or thirty candles held in little ruby canisters. A ceramic statue of a saint Soren didn’t know was perched on a dais behind the stand, as if he were guarding invisible worshippers.
Soren watched as Lark fished out a book of matches from the tray underneath and struck one against the back. The match filled the alcove with a soft flickering glow, and Soren watched as she lit three of the votives.
He waited. Lark didn’t bow her head or kneel to pray, but she wasn’t in a hurry. She stood there in silence for nearly a minute before turning and walking back to him as if nothing had happened.
Thompson appeared in the doorway, the hot sun casting a whitish glow around her hair. She caught Lark’s eye with a serious expression, and something like gratitude passed between them. They stepped out into the parking lot, and an overwhelming heaviness settled over Soren.
That morning, he’d gone upstairs to wake Lark and had instead spent nearly twenty minutes watching her sleep. As he’d stared down at her, he’d felt a sense of peace he hadn’t experienced in a long time. A few hours later, nine men were dead.
Soren knew he should have felt lucky that they’d all escaped with their lives, but he couldn’t help considering how things might have gone differently. What if he hadn’t made Lark take that gun? What if Katrina hadn’t distracted the bikers? What if Lark hadn’t been able to pull the trigger?
Soren hadn’t really taken Walt seriously when he’d asked them to tag along for protection. If he had, they might have avoided the confrontation altogether. Soren would have insisted that someone keep a lookout, and Lark never would have had to kill that man.
From then on, Soren resolved to be different. The world had changed, and he had to change, too. He couldn’t let his guard down — not even for a moment. Life was too unpredictable, and he had too many people counting on him.
That afternoon was one of the longest of Soren’s life. The bikers had fled, but they’d left a path of destruction in their wake.
They’d slashed both trucks’ rear tires, dented the hood of the F-150, and taken a baseball bat to the Baileys’ Geo Tracker. It was still drivable, but the windshield was cracked, the headlights were shattered, and both doors were so badly crushed that Mitch had to pry them open with a crowbar.
The dead bikers’ motorcycles were still parked in front of the church, but none of them would start. Axel suspected that the bikers had each installed a hidden kill switch.
After several minutes of bickering, they decided to swap out the F-150’s slashed tires with the Ranger’s two good ones. The Baileys agreed to return the next day to retrieve the Ranger or help Soren find another vehicle.
They jacked up both trucks and put the Ranger on blocks, and then Mitch and Axel went to work replacing the ruined tires. Mitch finished first — much to Axel’s chagrin — and Axel climbed into the F-150 with a haughty scowl.
Soren, Lark, and Thompson piled in behind him, and Katrina drove them back to Carlsbad in a cloud of irritation and defeat. Mitch and Simjay took a detour in the Geo in case they were being followed, and the added distance turned what should have been a short drive into an odyssey.
Nobody spoke the entire drive home. Apart from the rush of wind against the truck and the tired hum of the engine, all Soren could hear was the crack of a gunshot that had been replaying in his head from the moment Lark had fired the revolver. In that instant, he hadn’t known who’d been shot, and the seconds it had taken him to discover Memphis’s body had been some of the worst of his life.
Lark was sitting next to him, staring out the window. Every few seconds Soren would glance over at her, both to reas
sure himself that she was alive and to check for any change in her demeanor. Part of him was expecting Lark to break down in tears, but her face had been frozen in the same cold, dead expression she’d had since they’d left the church.
Soren had cleaned her face the best he could, but there was still a line of blood hardening along her hairline and little speckles sprayed around the sides of her neck. He knew no amount of washing could remove the stain of what had happened, but he kept telling himself that Lark would recover. Lark was the strongest person he knew.
Finally, the old grain silo appeared on the horizon, and the Baileys’ farm stretched out before them. Soren was relieved to reach the relative safety of the farm, but he dreaded the greeting they would receive. He knew Walt and Starlight were expecting them to return with the mother lode of supplies, but all they’d managed to scavenge were a few of the bikers’ weapons — courtesy of Axel — and several boxes of votive candles they’d lifted from the supply closet.
Katrina pulled up behind the Geo but didn’t take her hands off the wheel. She clenched her jaw and stared out the window, steeling herself to face her family.
Within seconds, the front door burst open, and Starlight darted out onto the porch and across the yard. Her eyes scanned the road for the Ranger, and when she saw Mitch’s wrecked expression, her face fell.
Starlight glanced over at the purple truck and locked eyes with Katrina. Something in Katrina’s expression must have confirmed Starlight’s worries, because she bit her lip and dashed over to the driver’s side, practically dragging Katrina out of the vehicle.
At first Soren wasn’t sure how she could have known that they’d run into trouble, but then he realized that it was almost three o’clock — hours later than they’d meant to return. Walt was walking around the house from the fields, wearing an equally grave expression.
Denali bounded up to the vehicle with his tail wagging and jumped up against the passenger-side door. Soren got out to help field Walt’s questions — narrowly avoiding a collision with the dog — but the second he looked around to check on Lark, she was gone.