Patchwork

by Karsten Knight

  “She’s just a kid, Horace,” Jack pleaded, choking on the words. “She is everything to me. And she is suffering. You of all people know what it’s like to waste away your childhood in constant agony.” He desperately searched Nox’s face for any sign that he was getting through to him. “So please, let’s put all this behind us and work together. There’s still time for us to give her the miracle that she deserves, before it’s too late.”

  There was a strange glint in Nox’s eye as he stared down into his drink, and Jack briefly hoped that he might have struck a chord. But then Nox asked, “Do you know what the difference is between me and Echo?” He tapped the area over his heart. “I’m a fighter. A survivor. After thirty years battling my way back from death’s threshold, I’ve earned my stripes. So I’ll be damned if I’m going to just pass off my ticket to a healthy life to some toddling slum rat who doesn’t have the guts not to give up.”

  That last part pushed Jack so far over the edge that his lips took on a life of their own. “Thirty years? All I see is the same cowering, sick little boy who never grew up—”

  Jack was blindsided when Nox drilled a fist into his injured knee. His vision seared white. “Where is the seventh page of the journal?” Nox screamed into his face. “Where is it, you little maggot?” The gangster hammered Jack’s mangled knee a second time, this time eliciting a pained scream from the boy. “I know you found it, so where is it? In the museum?”

  Jack offered nothing. He would protect Echo until his last breath.

  In a rage, Nox threw his drink across the room. It shattered against the stone wall. The kingpin stripped off his expensive coat and rolled up his sleeves, cuffing them at the elbows, exposing a tattoo across his wrist that read aiséirí—Gaelic for “resurrection.”

  Nox wound up like he was going to strike Jack again, this time across the face, but his hand stopped just shy. Instead, the gangster gave his men a single softly spoken order: “Funnel him.”

  Before Jack could make sense of this, Drumm forced the end of a plastic tube into his mouth. While Jack gagged, Aries uncapped a bottle of vodka and began to pour it into a funnel attached to the tube.

  The alcohol hit Jack’s mouth like a tidal wave of napalm. While his throat burned, he tried to push the tube out with his tongue, but it was jammed so tight that he was forced to swallow the booze to keep it out of his airway. His stomach turned from the onslaught. Right as Drumm removed the funnel at last, Jack vomited. He had to turn his head to keep from drowning in his own bile.

  “Where is the journal page?” Nox screamed. When Jack gritted his teeth and shook his head in response, Nox motioned to his henchmen and the process repeated. Drumm had to pry open Jack’s jaw to get the tube back in, but eventually he prevailed, and again the vodka flowed down his throat.

  By the time the second round of torture was over, the alcohol had already bled into Jack’s system. The room spun in lazy, uneven circles, and when he turned his head, there seemed to be a three-second delay before his body would obey the commands of his brain.

  This time, Nox grabbed a handful of Jack’s hair and forced the teenage boy to stare into his eyes. “Last chance, Tides,” Nox seethed. “Where is the journal page?”

  Jack brought his lips as close to Nox’s ear as he could.

  And then he whispered, “I used it … to wipe my ass.”

  Nox took a step away and sized up his prisoner. “He’s not going to tell me,” he said, his fury giving way to resignation. “If he wants to be a martyr, then let him die.” From a tray in the back of the room, Nox produced a large syringe. A transparent liquid squirted out of the needle when he tapped the plunger. “Pure ethanol,” he explained. “See, when your blood alcohol level rises above point-three percent, your body slowly begins to shut down. Severe motor impairment. Loss of bladder control. Irregularities in breathing and heartbeat. Unconsciousness. And death. Combined with the alcohol already in your system, this should put you right up around point-six percent.”

  Jack squirmed beneath the ropes, but Drumm and Pearce held him down by his shoulders. Nox handed the syringe to Aries. “I’m going to find that riddle, with or without your help, Jack. Once I obtain the Serengeti Sapphire and am resurrected, I promise to send two bereavement cards to your mother. One for you and one for Echo.”

  With that, Nox turned and headed back for the elevator doors.

  “What do you want us to do with him, boss?” Aries asked, twirling the syringe between her fingers.

  “Once his heart stops, toss him out in front of a rival nightclub,” Nox said. “Preferably the Mad Raven. Tonight he’ll be just another college student who didn’t know his limits and drank himself to death.” The elevator doors closed, and Jack’s last image of Nox was of him grinning softly and humming the tune We’ll Meet Again.

  Jack felt at once terrified and sluggish, as the vodka in his stomach continued to leach into his bloodstream. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad way to die. Maybe he’d feel nothing.

  He shut his eyes, crying softly, as Aries came toward him with the needle.

  But behind his closed eyelids, he saw something else.

  Poor Echo, laid up in her hospital bed, looking pale and gossamer as ever, her dimples growing smaller with each passing day. Sabra and his mother sitting by her bedside. All of them, staring at the hospital door, waiting for him to come.

  They’d never know the lengths he had gone to try and save Echo.

  He felt Drumm and Pearce relax their grip on his shoulders. He felt the needle bite into his skin.

  And that’s when he struck.

  With every vestige of strength he had left, he flung open his arms and jerked his body upright. Though the vodka may have diminished his coordination, it hadn’t sapped his brute strength. The rope burned intensely as it cut into his shoulders, but he felt its resistance suddenly give way.

  The rope snapped.

  Everyone was caught by surprise, and even Jack was shocked that it had worked. He ripped the syringe out of his leg before Aries had fully expelled its contents, flipped it around, and plunged it into Drumm’s thigh. Jack could feel the metal tip slice through the man’s mammoth quadriceps until it struck his femur bone. Drumm screamed and collapsed to the ground.

  Aries, doped up on Blyss, was slow to react, and Jack seized her by her prosthetic horns. With a savage jerk down, he smashed her face into the table and she too crumpled to the cellar floor.

  Pearce wrapped an arm around Jack’s neck and squeezed. Jack threw his elbow back into the dog handler’s gut to stun him. Pearce’s grip didn’t falter, so Jack kicked off on the table. The momentum carried the two of them to the floor, with Pearce on the bottom. Jack’s weight came down hard on the man, and there was a crack that must have been Pearce’s skull striking the cement. His hold on Jack slackened.

  Jack could already hear Aries stirring on the opposite side of the table, and Drumm was rolling on the floor, clutching his bloody thigh and growling something about murder.

  Jack knew that as the alcohol continued to seep into his bloodstream, he would soon lose consciousness. So with no other choice, he limped across the basement, hobbled up the steps, shouldered his way through the cellar doors, and stumbled out into the chilly October night.

  He had to call Sabra before the darkness took him.

  About the Author

  Karsten Knight is the author of several novels for young adults, including Nightingale, Sing and the Wildefire trilogy (Simon & Schuster), though some say his writing career peaked at the age of six, when he completed a picture book series about a thrill-seeking worm. He is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross and earned an MFA in writing for children from Simmons College. Karsten resides in Boston, where he lives for fall weather, bowling, and football season. For more information on Karsten or his books, please visit his cleverly titled website, www.karstenknightbooks.com.

  @karstenknight

  karstenknight

  karstenknightbooks.com

  P
raise for the WILDEFIRE trilogy by Karsten Knight

  “In an era when the young adult paranormal and urban fantasy field is blessed with an abundance of great stories and storytellers, WILDEFIRE is an exceptional standout.”

  -San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Knight has created a novel quite different from the coming-of-age/paranormal-teen reads that have glutted the market recently. Ash is a wry and interesting protagonist and the romance and gritty, violent action scenes are compelling.”

  -School Library Journal

  “Knight’s debut novel is an edgy twist on the magical boarding school theme. It’s a fun, well-written, and engaging read with a last-sentence twist.”

  -Publisher’s Weekly

  “There’s introspection here as well as sizzling sexuality, but the novel’s strong narrative thrust relies on action, from violent brawls and accidents to encounters with terrifying, supernatural creatures in the redwood forest. A promising first novel.”

  -Booklist

  “Knight has written a riveting, original multicultural fantasy. Teens will quickly devour this story and will be relieved to know a sequel is on its way.”

  -VOYA

  PATCHWORK

  Text copyright © 2017 by Karsten Knight.

  All rights reserved, including reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  First edition: February 2017

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real events, people, and locales, past or present, are used fictitiously. All other elements are products of the author’s imagination.

  The text for this book is set in Garamond and Cinzel.