The Risen Series | Book 5 | Defiance

by Crow, Marie F.

  “It’s gravel,” I tell her, as if it’s a thousand explanations and apologies at once. The sound of my pulse in my ears disagrees with both.

  Everything seems painfully slow. Time feels to have almost stopped, reluctant to move us forward to save the ones we’ve left behind. The beat of my heart is mismatched to the tempo around me, it almost thuds with its heaving heaviness. My ribs threaten to break, letting the pressure of my chest escape from its cruelty.

  “We aren’t going to make it.” Aimes’ voice is fragile, breaking under the same strain my body is fighting against.

  My eyes stare at the images in my rearview mirror. Through such a small opening of a gate, I can see so much. I can see the children with their hidden messages. I can see the monuments to madness they have become, when they should be resting at peace, free from the suffering they endured at the end of their lives. They were spared one fate to be a shrine to the fate of others.

  Their bodies should be resting under marble headstones adorned with cherubs and angels welcoming them to some version of peace. Instead, they rot under the many seasons, falling, scattered, and dismembered to provide a testament for a woman whose madness will never know peace. Their fates are intertwined, these tiny victims and her, and when I am through with her, she too will never rest under poetic words or soft sobs from the ones who loved her.

  “We’ll never make it,” Aimes says again. She’s almost chanting to herself as her fears push her broken mind.

  “We will,” my voice is sharp, double-edged with anger and concern.

  We will make it because we must. We aren’t fighting to secure a home, this time. This isn’t for a stone building, nor for the many people living inside it. This time, we are fighting to secure our family. We’ll make it. We must.

  Chapter 34

  Marigold isn’t waiting for us on the dock like my mind pictured. It’s Torri, her second in command. Her daughter, and the mother to the little girl being used as a pawn, Wren. She wears the smile of a slaughterhouse, luring the cattle in with false promises and soft words. We’re the cattle, and she doesn’t dim the wattage of her beaming face as we cut the engine of the boat.

  “You made it back!” Torri exclaims, with a sticky sweet tone.

  Her blonde hair holds thick ringlets of long curls. They bounce with her enthusiasm, adding to her false charm. It’s her eyes, though. They leak the secret. They glow with a mischief unknown to honesty. A gleam which means only one thing, someone has done something terrible and she’s waiting for us to discover it.

  “Where is April?” Rhett asks her with a tone of boredom.

  Torri makes a face of uncertainty, pursing her lips with her concentration. “Around. I’m sure.”

  Aimes places her hand over Dolph’s when he tries to take the keys to the boat out. The man pauses, trying to read her face the way we often do when the unspoken words begin.

  “Where’s April?” Aimes asks, again, still holding Dolph’s hand.

  Torri just shrugs. Her shawl billows around her with her arms held out, mistakenly letting the grip of the gun show. Her motion was supposed to leave a thousand unanswered doubts. Her waistband answers them all.

  Torri senses the change in our mood. Her brown eyebrow lifts, arching with the change around her. “Now, y’all aren’t thinking of doing something stupid, are ya?” she asks us, still wearing her red lips in a curve.

  “It’s kind of our thing.” I match my smile to hers, as I say the words.

  Aimes taps Dolph’s shoulder to change seats with her. She knows where my mind is headed. After all, as I just said, stupid is kind of my thing.

  Torri reaches for her waistband. Before the men can answer like with like, the sound of a shot shatters the air around us. Tori’s body bounces forward. Her once amused eyes now gleam with fear. Her knees buckle with gravity pulling her body to the dock. It’s a slow fall and she’s aware of every second. The shot wasn’t fatal, but she’ll die. She’s already coughing thick, black blood onto the metal around her, smearing it the way the slide is stained from similar fluid.

  Leigh steps into the boat’s hull without a greeting or a word about what she’s done. She doesn’t put the gun she just used to kill Torri away. Crossing her legs, she silently stares at us over the sounds of Torri’s labored breathing.

  “Still want to take the gun from her, Marxx?” Aimes asks.

  It’s Lawless who puts his hand on Aimes’ shoulder saying, “Let’s go.”

  “We don’t know where everyone is!” Aimes’ pitch is close to hysterics.

  “Yes, you do,” Leigh tells her, with her flat voice sounding more ominous than the dread her words bring.

  “All of them?” I ask her.

  “All of them,” Leigh repeats, not changing a single tone or placing any emphasis on any of her words.

  Upon hearing what he feared, Rhett lifts Aimes from the seat she took from Dolph, dropping her on the back row. She doesn’t fight him or make a single remark with Leigh’s words still heavy around us. As each of us interpret what her words may mean, Aimes doesn’t object at all when Lawless takes over the controls. Her mind is lost on the little girl her and Rhett have adopted to form their little trio.

  Tori reaches her blood-covered hand out to the expanding space between her and us. She laughs with Leigh’s revelation. She watches the blood drip from her fingers with a steady beat. When it spills from her lips with the effort to speak, she finds it all darkly amusing.

  “She just wants to save them, but she hasn’t figured out if yours are worth saving, yet,” Torri tells us, taunting us, even as the dark blood flirts with the knowledge her death will be soon.

  The sound of her laughter follows us from the docks, haunting us with what she knows and of that which we do not. Leigh doesn’t react to the melody of Torri’s death. Leigh already knew Torri would die and she already knows what’s waiting for us.

  As Lawless races the boat to the little island, her steel eyes watch me through her hair being tossed into black ribbons around her face. There’s a heavy weight to them, warning of the battlefield waiting for us. We both understand we are the pawns rushing to fight the queen. Whereas she can move anywhere, at any time, on this field of her creating, our movements are small and measured. Leigh’s asking me if I’m prepared for what is about to happen. I’m not. I never am. Stupid is kind of my thing.

  “Anyone going to fill the rest of us in on what we are missing?” Dolph asks. His eyes bounce from the sullen Aimes to the finger-tapping Lawless, knowing something is about to happen, but unsure of which way he should prepare his emotions.

  “Marigold took them,” Leigh calmly explains. “She heard of what happened to the man she sent to leave you on the beach. She wanted to be prepared for when you made it back.”

  “Why, though?” Marxx joins the questioning.

  “Because you know,” Leigh exhales with her words.

  She expects her answer to complete the circle of questioning, but it doesn’t. They don’t know. She’s only looped more questions in the start of a downward spiral of Marigold’s madness.

  “Woman, I don’t know shit!” Marxx shouts. “We did what she asked. We went where you told us to and there was nothing there. Now, you’re telling us she has our people. Why?”

  Leigh doesn’t answer Marxx. She’s watching me again, waiting to see what I will reveal, and what I won’t.

  The silence strains what is left of Marxx’s nerves. “God damn it! Someone tell me what is going on!”

  “Marigold is infecting people with the children she turns from other children she’s already turned, because she thinks of this as a cure for death, but she’s really just making these things to make them and now they can talk and shit. So, she’s taken the rest of our people to the lake house to turn them which will keep us here forever under her thumb or drive us batshit crazy like her!” Aimes screams in one breath, each word overlapping the other as they fight to escape.

  The same way I was stunned when L
awless admitted it, everyone in the boat is stunned, now. Everything from shock, confusion, and rage flow upon the faces of those around me. Sometimes all three, only to form the expressions all over again with their thoughts circling over what Aimes has said.

  “How long have you known?” Rhett’s voice is deadly. It’s the hushed whisper of a man having his last will to live dangled in front of him.

  “Last night,” I tell him. “We learned last night.”

  Lawless still taps his fingers on the steering wheel, saying nothing. His face is blank with his brown eyes empty as they watch the island growing closer. I won’t tell them he’s known the whole time, but I won’t forgive him for not telling them, either.

  “So, you go, bust her little secret shack and in less than twenty-four hours she has us by the balls?” Rhett is leaning dangerously close to me. I can feel the heat of his words when they escape his mouth.

  “She’s very proactive,” I hiss back, leaning into the rest of the space he has left between us.

  “And now the bitch has April.” Rhett holds his space, letting his words flow slowly with his anger.

  “And she has Genny. Who is actually blood, not just a side piece to make me feel better about my life.” I don’t slow my words, nor do I even think about them, until after I’ve said them. Words are like that, poison-tipped and filled with regrets.

  “Maybe she is. Maybe she isn’t. But if she is, then it’s because of a side piece who made someone feel better about their life.” Rhett digs deeper with his poison, making sure it’s secure in one of the four pumping champers of my heart.

  “If you two are done dick checking each other’s panic, we are here,” Aimes shouts before I can form my next attack. “Just an idea, but maybe you two should save some of that for the woman who has our ‘side pieces’ and not each other? Just an idea. What do I know?”

  As soon as the boat hit the compacted sand, I was out of it. I don’t wait for back up, or a plan. I don’t even know who I’m rushing to – Paula, Genny or April, maybe even the other men, but I do know I’m escaping the ghosts Rhett has stirred.

  All my heart knows is that they need us, and we left them. We left them to become stakes in a battle they didn’t start. Like a spoiled child not happy being told what to do, I started it, and she’s threatening to break all my toys to teach me a lesson.

  The trail seems twice as long this time. The mud has turned to dirt, dusting me as I run. I’m covered in more than just panic and sweat when I finally arrive at the house. Its doors are wide open. Like the arms of an enemy waiting to welcome you with false promises and deadly designs, I run right into them.

  Stalling in the front room while my eyes adjust to the change of light, I listen, waiting for any noise to hint where they may be. This is a three-story house, four if you count the cellar. Picking the wrong floor may cost me time I cannot regain.

  Marxx crashes through the same doors I just did, panting and just as dirt covered. I wave at him to be quiet and he flips me a middle finger response.

  “Leigh says the barn,” he fights to say between his breathing.

  “Leigh also said the shed,” I point out, still forcing myself to listen for any hints.

  Marxx stands up from where he was resting on the doorway. “You don’t trust her?”

  “She shoots one person and suddenly I’m supposed to believe her? No, I don’t trust her.”

  I can see him mentally chewing on what I’ve said. His jaw twitches as he weighs my words and her deeds. “They’ve all headed to the barn.”

  “Just you and me, again?” I ask him, pulling forth memories of the times we stood back-to-back against the world.

  “That didn’t end well,” he reminds me, but he joins me as I listen. “You’re going to get me killed one day.”

  “Death is inevitable. Isn’t that how J.D. used to explain all his choices?”

  “Yeah and he’s dead.”

  “Guess he made his choice.” I end the verbal game by taking the stairs as fast as I can.

  I’m not ready to face Marco, again. Besides, the cellar is too small to fit them all. She would hold them somewhere where she could control them, turn them, or kill them as she wanted. The cellar doesn’t provide her that comfort.

  “Slow down!” Marxx is shouting in an attempt of a whisper.

  I blew our cover a long time ago. I’m not worried about any of that, now.

  Kicking open the first wooden door I come to, I blanche at the smell of piss and thicker things. An old man wearing stained pajamas lays chained to his metal bed frame. His mattress is bare, exposing where the springs have worn their way through. He stares at me with hope, a flashing minute of where he thinks I am here to help him. All around his bed trays are scattered with food having become nothing more than crust with its age spent on the floor. A woman of his same age sits in a rocking chair. A cotton housecoat hangs upon her frame. Her body is slumped in such a way to answer any concerns over her in life and death. She, too, has become nothing more than waste as she was left to rot in front of who I can only assume is her husband, but the chain loops around her arms hints there was no other fate planned for them.

  Marxx almost slams into my back with his momentum. “What the …”

  “Welcome to Marigold’s world.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” he says, placing his hand on my shoulder to pull me from the room. “We’ll come back,” he whispers into my ear, trying to pull me back to the hell we are facing and not the hell I am seeing.

  The man begins to struggle against his chains when he sees us stepping away. The paper-thin skin splits from his actions causing fresh blood to seep and join the numerus stains around him. A garbled voice is calling out from this throat, but there’s something wrong with his mouth. There are no words, just sounds, and I realize he has no tongue.

  “We’ll come back,” I tell him, trying to calm him, but we both know it’s a lie.

  Looking at five more doors down a hallway, it seems to stretch beyond its capabilities. Five more possible scenes of deep human depravity for me to discover. Five more chances for Marigold to expose her darkest demeanors. Swallowing down the bile creeping along my mouth, I start towards to next round of Marigold’s peepshow.

  Marxx grabs my shoulder again, clamping his fingers around it to keep me in place. “This is going to take too long,” he tells me.

  “Hello??” I shout down the hallway. “Anyone in here?”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind.”

  I start to argue with him when we both hear it. Several doors down, there’s a thumping sound. It’s methodic, patterned and clearly an answer to my call. Running towards the sound, I don’t let myself think of the many things it could be answering me, waiting for me to open its prison. I can’t let myself think Life would be that cruel, even as I know she’s exactly that.

  The sound never stops its thudding. It leads us right to the magic door holding either a hostage, our answers, or our doom. Lifting my foot to force it open, Marxx makes a sound, pushing my knee back to the ground.

  “Depending on what’s in there, we may need a door to close,” he whispers, twisting the knob like a sane person would.

  The door opens with restrained inches. With my impatience mounting, I almost tilt to cheat it from its secrets. The fragrance is so heavy I can almost taste it, feel it sliding down the back of my throat. My stomach lurches with it and I must take a step back. Marxx is trying to hold his stance, but he too is overcome with it, having to hide his face in the sleeve of his shirt. Even as our bodies threaten to betray us, our minds screaming to run, we stand waiting for the door to reveal whatever else it has lurking behind the wooden barrier.

  The thudding sounds never stall. They keep the same pace as the door swings to expose her hidden mysteries. My eyes follow the pattern of the worn grey carpet with each inch she exposes until they land on the shoes of Peyton. Tied to a chair, he’s kicking the ground underneath him, answering my call with a call of
his own. Eyes wide with emotions over his gagged mouth, he doesn’t stop kicking when I rush towards him, leaving Marxx to secure the room behind me in my haste.

  “Anyone else in here?” Marxx asks, unwilling to believe the stench engulfing us doesn’t have a form.

  Peyton shakes his head ‘no’, making the effort to untie the knots holding the gag in place even harder.

  “You have a knife.” Watching me fight with the material, Marxx sounds only somewhat judgmental. “Use it.”

  I refuse to admit he’s right, but I use my knife while glaring over Peyton’s head to saw through the ropes, freeing not only his mouth, but him from the chair, as well.

  “Where’s the rest?” Marxx asks, still peering into the closet and under the shambles of a bed.

  “They took Collin into another room. The girls they took with them,” Peyton gasps in between the words, working the sore muscles of his jaw from where the rope was tied.

  “Guess we did pick wrong.” Marxx mutters his words with aggravation.

  Petyon stands from the chair, stretching his once bound limbs. “I’m glad you did,” he tells us, catching Marxx’s concealed meaning. “Let’s find Collin and get out of here.”

  Marxx has already retreated to the hallway where the air is not as thick. I can hear him kicking the doors open, knowing we have wasted time. His choice words let me know enough about what is hiding behind each set of splintered wood.

  “Why did they do this,” Peyton has latched onto my arm, pulling me back to him.

  “You’ll see,” I tell him. “Hopefully before it’s too late.”

  Dropping my arm as a reminder that the clock ticks against us, he follows me to the hallway Marxx has destroyed. He’s dragging my stumbling father towards us. Collin is struggling to keep his numb legs underneath him and Marxx’s speed isn’t making the chore any easier.

  “Let’s go,” Marxx drops the limp body of Collin in front of Peyton.

  “Really?” Peyton’s voice drips with annoyance, as he looks down to his discarded friend.

  Marxx doesn’t reply. He’s already heading down the stairs to what he thinks will be an easy escape from this clapboard prison. He should know better by now, Life doesn’t work that way.