The Bequest

by Hope Anika

  Not exactly. But close.

  “Look,” Cheyenne said, trying her best to sound reasonable. Human. “Georgia and I—we weren’t…anything. You need to call someone else.”

  “There isn’t anyone else,” came the reply, oddly clear. “You are the sole guardian she named. If you won’t take the boy, he will go to the State.”

  “Not my problem,” Cheyenne retorted bluntly. But she felt something—a ping? a pang?—that might have—maybe—been shame. Dismissing Georgia was nothing, like throwing out holey underwear. But the kid… The Kid. She’d been The Kid, once.

  “You won’t reconsider?”

  “Ha,” she said, but then—ping! Damn it. “Where’s his father?”

  “I don’t know. Miss Humboldt didn’t see fit to share his identity with me.” The voice was faintly disapproving and touched by a Midwestern accent Cheyenne knew intimately: the diction of a Cheesehead. One too many lagers, and she’d sound just like him. “Miss Elias, you are this child’s only hope.”

  Well, that was just profoundly stupid. Who would make her anyone’s only hope?

  Ah, Georgia. The hate that had once lived in Cheyenne’s heart had long since faded to indolence—or perhaps apathy, because really, why expend the energy?—but this...this was almost funny. Almost. Except for the whole kid thing. And the whole “ward of the State” thing. And the whole “you are this child’s only hope” thing.

  Fuck a duck.

  “Son of a nutcracker,” she said.

  “I take it you and Miss Humboldt were no longer…close?”

  Cheyenne could only laugh, a harsh, bitter bark that hurt her throat. She had no words. What she’d once been—what they’d once been—bore no relation to what they’d become.

  “No,” she said, so cold an unknown part of her shivered. Chuck growled softly in response. And then—ping.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what to say,” said Smith/Jones.

  Which made two of them.

  Georgia had given birth?

  Cheyenne could not even begin to comprehend it.

  “To what?” she wondered. “Rosemary’s Baby?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “I am sorry to be the bearer of such unexpected news, Miss Elias. I was under the impression that you and Ms. Humboldt were…friends.”

  “Not in this universe.” Then, in spite of herself, “Where’s the kid now?”

  “At the DHS temporary placement center, Haven House.”

  Bile surged with sudden, violent force. The response was wholly visceral; she stumbled back a step, lost her footing, and fell ass-deep into the sagebrush, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Chuck wandered over to sit beside her, his body warm against her thigh. In the distance, the Grand Teton Mountain Range rose from the valley floor like a row of stalwart, granite infantry lined up for battle, and high above them, the sky was pure, azure blue.

  She saw none of it.

  Haven House.

  The crumbling red brick building bled into her brain in rivulets, streams that ebbed and flowed until the image coalesced into the hellish homestead of her childhood, shockingly familiar in all of its dilapidated glory.

  White walls and scarred wooden floors and windows barred by steel. Sirens and screams and cold, angry hands. Blurred faces, hollow words, pain, pain, pain—

  Cheyenne shook herself. Struggled to breath. Put her hand over her heart in futile effort to ease its breakneck pace. Chuck put his paw in her lap.

  “Fuck me,” she said.

  “Miss Elias?”

  Another bark broke from her.

  A kid and a mental breakdown. The gift that keeps on giving.

  “Cheyenne?”

  “Haven House,” she croaked. The scent of urine and Lysol spray flooded her nostrils; mildew tickled the back of her throat. Her stomach clenched in rebellion. “Shit-boy-howdy.”

  “Er…do you know it?”

  Like the back of her scarred hand. Tied to a truck and dragged down memory lane. What had she done to deserve this?

  Try being born.

  “Not funny,” she whispered, her knuckles aching where she gripped the phone.

  That it had such power—that all she’d become could dissolve so quickly into what she’d once been…she never would have guessed. Everything she’d considered conquered merely lay dormant, existing in stasis, mute until its reawakening.

  Like the plague.

  “I am sorry, Miss Elias. Clearly this is an unwelcome surprise.”

  Unwelcome. What a pale, weak word for Georgia’s last hurrah. So mild and understated, the antithesis of who she’d been. Like declaring the sun lukewarm. Or the ocean a bit briny.

  “Perhaps you should take some time and think it over?”

  “Negative.” Over and out. But—“How old is he?”

  Stupid, Cheyenne thought. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t care. The entire conversation was like rolling naked in poison oak. But her mind’s eye—insolent and defiant and gleefully giving her the finger—drew him in startling, painful clarity: thin, like Georgia had been; all angles and sharp edges. Narrow and slight in his mother’s shadow, a whisper to her scream. Hushed and anxious in a prison of rusting iron bars and inhuman chill.

  Yeah, sure, why not?

  “Just make it up as you go,” she told herself.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing.”

  Smith/Jones sighed. “Rafferty is currently ten years old.”

  “Ten,” Cheyenne echoed tonelessly. At ten, she’d been shooting craps and sneaking into R rated movies. Vandalizing freeway underpasses and drinking stolen beer—with this kid’s mother.

  Goddamn irony. Someday she would figure that shite out. But not today.

  “Miss Elias, even with the best of foster families Rafferty’s existence will be…difficult. Children are all too often lost within the system and left to fend for themselves. I would urge you to take some time and consider this. A decision need not be made immediately.”

  You must learn to control your impulses, Cheyenne. They do you more harm than good.

  Bite me, Phil.

  “I don’t want him.” The words were harsh, stark, unflinching. Truth. Next to her, Chuck whined softly. “Not today or tomorrow.”

  “I see.” Smith/Jones went cold. “Well, I apologize for bothering you. I will let family services know you have no wish to serve as Rafferty’s guardian, and they will act accordingly. Good day, Miss Elias.”

  And then he was gone.

  Cheyenne stared down at her phone. Then she turned and threw it into the sagebrush.

  “The Kid is not my problem,” Cheyenne told Chuck an hour later.

  They sat at the summit of Sheep’s Mountain, also known as Sleeping Indian, in the exact spot where the Indian’s arms crossed his chest. Below them, the Jackson Hole valley spread like a picturesque landscape painting, spires of pale gray granite interspersed by waves of brilliant, aspen green and swells of dark pine that hugged the low alpine like an artfully draped scarf. The Snake River wound sinuously along the base of the Teton Range, a glittering ribbon of sun-flecked gold.

  “It’s a play,” she continued. “Georgia was a textbook sociopath. Games defined her, and if she could destroy someone’s life, she did. Just for kicks.”

  Chuck grunted, content atop the small boulder they occupied, his gaze sharp on the hills of sage below them, ever vigilant for the possible chisler sighting.

  “I don’t care why she did it. Doesn’t matter. I know what she’s doing—but I let that go a long time ago.” Which might not have been—strictly speaking—entirely true, because really, how did one let the complete and utter annihilation of everything they ever were—the stripping of their bones to their fucking soul—go? “I refuse to rise to the bait, Chuck. Because that’s what he is—bait. And I’m not biting.”

  There was no doubt in Cheyenne. Not about this. Georgia had been many things: selfish, greedy, vain. Fri
ghteningly intelligent. A woman who was wholly incapable of empathy, sympathy, or compassion.

  What appeared to be was only illusion. Manufactured deception was a skill at which Georgia had excelled. Even at sixteen—the last time Cheyenne had seen her—she’d been capable of building a house of lies so vast, so intricate, that determining her end game was nearly impossible. But there was always an end game.

  One where everyone but Georgia lost.

  That realization had come late to Cheyenne. In spite of every malevolent act she’d witnessed in their decade of friendship, every machination Georgia had played out around her. Every lie told. None of the pain had mattered, so long as it wasn’t hers. And then, it was.

  Sirens screaming and blood spilling down–

  “The Queen of Fuckery, smiting her subjects.” A hand down Chuck’s silky, brindled coat, a deliberate release of the tension. She had to tread carefully—the memories of blood and death and terror slept fitfully within her and were easily woken.

  As proven by The Incident, which had led to The Counselor, followed by The Interrogation and—inevitably—The Diagnosis.

  You have serious anger management issues, Cheyenne.

  And you, Phil, have serious halitosis.

  No, the memories were not something she could afford to let control her. All the more reason she should get up, haul her ass off this mountain, and forget. Problem was, The Kid was real. And she had done that, had colored in the lines and made him whole. She had allowed it.

  Why? Why had she done that?

  She didn’t want to know him. Nothing said he wasn’t as damaged as his mother had been, just as capable of evil. No one could claim he’d been born uncontaminated by her malice, her cruelty. There were no guarantees he wouldn’t mistake a scream for a symphony.

  Besides, she was hardly fit to be a parental figure. Cheyenne knew herself well. She was short-tempered, impatient, intolerant of stupidity, and wholly antisocial. That she had been cursed with a soft heart was just another mystery of life—like the Bermuda Triangle or Bigfoot. But there was a difference between adopting a three-legged cow dog—or a one-eyed cat, or a goat with a bad attitude—and taking responsibility for a child.

  Especially the child of a woman she’d once fantasized about clubbing to death with a tire iron.

  “That’s just not healthy,” she said. Chuck sighed and rolled over to offer his white belly, his gaze glinting like polished amber as he watched her.

  “Don’t,” she told him. “We can’t. She did this for a reason—some fucked up, crazy-ass reason—and I won’t go there. Not again. She almost killed me.”

  Anger vibrated, deep, steady, eternal. Another thing to add to the unfit list: incessantly pissed off. And while Phil considered that “problematical,” Cheyenne saw no problem with it at all. Except when it slipped its leash. When it became rage. When she acted.

  No kid deserved that. And she would know.

  “I came from crazy,” she said and gave in, rubbing Chuck’s belly. “I have no business even contemplating this.”

  But she was. Jesus, she was.

  Not for the reason Georgia assumed she would. And not because revenge was best served to a ten year old. No, her consideration was born solely of one unarguable truth: because it was the right thing to do.

  Doing the right thing hadn’t mattered in the first half of her life; surviving had superseded any morality that might have shaped her. But she no longer had that excuse. Her life had been changed by one man’s act, and the sole price for receiving that boon was to one day pay it forward. It was the only thing he’d asked of her, and she could no more refuse than fly to the moon. That the opportunity had arisen here and now—when she’d begun to think it never would—attached to the one person whose memory still had the ability to infuriate her really shouldn’t have been a surprise. Goddamn irony.

  But while Cheyenne knew it was the right thing, that didn’t make it the smart thing. Because she was damaged. Her mother had been certifiable, her father a complete unknown. She was scarred—inside and out—and what she felt toward Georgia was…toxic. Dangerous. And she wasn’t at all certain she was any better than those who’d produced her. Perhaps that was just fantasy born of her own need to believe. Was she capable of punishing a child for his mother’s crimes? Would the anger that had become so deeply engrained within her use him as its outlet?

  All pertinent, important questions—none of which she could answer. Not unless she acted. Not unless she leapt.

  ….even with the best of foster families Rafferty’s existence will be…difficult. Children are all too often lost within the system and left to fend for themselves…

  As she had done. First with the rusty edge of a serrated blade and later with her rage. The only difference between her and Georgia—as she’d reluctantly come to realize in the years that followed—had been the simple fact that Cheyenne felt. All of it. And her reactions had been the result of emotion, not the cold, inhuman premeditation with which Georgia had calculated the world.

  Sometimes, Cheyenne wasn’t sure which was worse.

  So she knew what The Kid faced. And part of her thought, Hell, I survived it. So will he. Which was probably true. But another part, the one coerced into life by a man who’d demanded only her best, that part understood that who she’d finally become owed itself entirely to that patient nurturing, to that unbendable belief in her, to the utter refusal to allow her to be anything less. And everyone deserved that. Everyone.

  Even The Kid.

  Now, there was a chance—similar to that whole pigs flying thing—that some exemplary foster family would come along and provide that cultivation. It could happen. Allegedly. And who said she wouldn’t be destroying that opportunity? Who said her need to pay it forward wasn’t simply egotism in the guise of charity?

  “The odds are screwed,” she said to Chuck. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

  Which left only…instinct. And since she was thinking pretty seriously about getting on a flying boat and embracing legal responsibility for the child of her nemesis, well, instinct had spoken. Loud and clear.

  Anger was her one consistent, her companion; her fellow man-at-arms. Fear was not something she’d experienced since she’d awoken in a cold, hard hospital bed at fifteen, her body reshaped, her soul rewoven in hate, but she felt it now.

  For The Kid, because she had no idea if she had the ability to give back what she’d received. For herself, because to fail in this would not only mark her, it just might erase what she’d fought so hard become. But most of all, she feared the motives behind this sequence of events, the manipulative, malicious hand which took such pleasure in arranging the pieces and watching them fall.

  “All bets are off,” she muttered. Chuck thumped his tail, his gaze conveying all of the unknown secrets of the universe, his delight in her unhidden.

  Stupid dog.

  Cheyenne pulled her phone from her pocket, checked the signal and dialed.

  Chapter Two

  Blood coats his teeth.

  His lung gurgles and threatens to send the acid in his belly surging up his throat, onto the hard ground around him. The air is frigid, turning his exposed skin to ice, stiffening his limbs. He is dying as he drags himself across the merciless scrub and sand and broken rock. One dark, pulsing thought drives him forward, and he clings relentlessly to the life that drains from him with every shallow, bloody breath—

  William Blackheart woke with a violent start, a howl of pain and fury and grief wedged in his chest. Cold air sliced through his lungs, piercing them as effectively as the bullets he dreamt of. Sweat matted his hair and trickled down spine; his hip ached as though he’d caught the business end of an angry mule. The throb of his arm echoed the hammer in his skull, and he could still feel the cold weight of his weapon cutting into his palm as he dragged it through the desert sand.

  Next to him, the clock’s obnoxious green display read 4:35.

  He pushed from the bed, ignored hi
s pain, and lit a cigarette. His heart beat like a heavy, angry drum, driving the furious rush of his blood. Adrenaline pumped through him like the slide of the finest whiskey.

  Fifteen weeks, six days, and seven hours had passed and still, the sand continued to cling. The air—like raw earth—remained in his nostrils. The shriek of the wind—lunacy given sound—was a song that haunted him.

  The pain was ripe, fresh and new; this, he accepted. Enjoyed. Because it meant he yet lived, that the promise of retribution had not been stolen. But the sand, the air, that wail of madness…those were not things he’d expected to live on, to trail behind him like a deep, dark wake. To hunt him.

  Mock him.

  Fury was a raw, living thing within him, and their echo only fanned the fire, like careless children teasing an animal kept chained. The wrath swelled against his flesh, and his skin ached at the effort of keeping it contained. The darkness born within him wanted to unleash the fury and revel in the destruction. The darkness wanted screams.

  He had moments of clarity, of knowing, when he understood he’d broken, that survival had become irrevocably interwoven with the need to destroy. That he was no longer who he’d been, but something far more dangerous…to himself, to everyone else. That perhaps he should have died that night, if only to save his own soul. But those flashes of self-awareness could not compete with the hunger that gnawed at him, the ruthless appetite for carnage that had enabled his survival. They did not restore his sanity.

  He was damaged and—in singular, terrifying moments—deranged. Unable to separate then from now, incapable of thinking past the blood, the pain, the incessant need to paint the world in living crimson. Everything he’d ever been—a son, a soldier, a decent human being—had bled away, leaving only a hollow, hateful husk driven solely by one goal: vengeance.

  By any means necessary.

  Cigarette smoke curled into the air around him. Outside his dingy motel room, footsteps sounded, and he tensed, his hand going to the Glock that sat on the bedside table. He moved to the window and looked through the narrow part in the worn, yellowed curtains. A man and child were climbing into a minivan parked a few feet from his door.