Chapter 16: Skin and bones

(DAVID J. ROCH)

Blaire’s eyes roam the silent wasteland. The desert is empty; desolate as her heart. She can’t grasp how anything this dead can still sustain life, but bees are buzzing around them, and ants are crawling in neat lines across the sand and onto their shoes. From time to time she slaps at them, or shakes them off. There are spiders here. Some lizards too. Even micro plant life. All existing in this dead place.

Maybe there is life inside her too, hiding deep within, awaiting the opportunity to flourish.

And she still breathes. On and on and on. Inhale following exhale. One. Two. Three. A thousand. Her dead heart still pumps blood through veins. Blood, air, loads of cigarettes and alcohol with an occasional meal sustains her flesh. Vengeance sustains her mind. It is the hope that’s keeping her from slitting her wrists.

“Boris,” the Devil’s voice whispers into her mind. “Boris and Blaire belong together. Red King deserves a living legacy.”

She sighs, shaking her head to get rid of the thought. The midday sun beats down with fiery fists, intensifying the headache she had since morning. She steps closer to the single tree for miles. The man tied to it slumps forward, straining the ropes. Her eyes drop to his chest, waiting anxiously for movement. It comes, and she almost shouts a cry of celebration.

She didn’t expect it to take this long, but here they are, stuck together. Bruises cover his torso, wrists and ankles. His fingerprints adorn his neck. His skin is cut in several places. In the heat, the blood becomes sticky, then thickens, then crusts.

“Where are they?” she asks. “Don’t they love you at all? Do they want to lose another brother at my hands?”

He mumbles, but the words are too soft to discern. This wasn’t part of the plan. They should have been here sooner. His dying is slow. Which is what she wants. Yet, at this pace, he might die before they even arrive. She’d hate that.

In the three days before now, she killed eleven men who took part in the killing on The Farm. The others before him were minions, so she killed them with the gift the Devil gave her. It was faster than she anticipated. Crueller too. She watched them writhe on the floor like snakes, gasping for breath as their skin bubbled and boiled. They clawed at their throats, backs arching as they strained to breathe. Someone paid them to tear her home to pieces, her heart asunder. Mercenaries by trade. They did what the man with the money told them to do. But they still needed to pay the prize for what they did.

This one is Pyotr Bykov. He didn’t die with the others, which caught her off-guard. He is part of the inner realm of The Bull Tribe and if they acted in union, he would have been on the scene. Brother to her husband by birth. Born to the same father, but a different mother. A Bull, like his parents. Strong. Huge. He is a fighter, a warrior. Not her fighter, though.

Not Boris.

“I should have married you,” she says, waving at the flies buzzing around blood splatter on her face. “Red King would have approved of such a union.”

He snickers. Spits at her. It falls short, a little blob of mostly blood sizzling on the dry desert floor. She rolls her eyes at the childish gesture. He sighs, head slumping forward. She steps closer, pressing fingers into the deep wound in his shoulder and tears at seams of flesh and skin. His eyes fly open, head whip-lashing backward to hit the tree trunk she had tied him too early in the morning.

“Don’t give up your soul so easily,” she whispers through clenched teeth. “Don’t close your eyes either. This isn’t over yet. Not for me.”

His lips move, the words too soft to hear. She laughs. It is a vicious sound, born in her core, her very womb. She slaps him across the face, grandma’s ring tearing a crevice into the fleshy part of his cheek. It doesn’t bleed. Not properly. It won’t be long now. He wasn’t supposed to die. She didn’t want innocent blood on her hands.

“It’s useless to pray,” she tells him. “An utter waste of good breath. There is no god. Not in heaven; neither on earth. And if there is, he obviously doesn’t care about us. Not at all. So, save your breath, keep inhaling and exhaling.”

“I still believe,” he mumbles.

“You do? Even now?” she asks, knocking on the wood next to his ear. “Even as you die tied to this wood? You want me to nail you to it, like a modern Jesus?”

“I don’t fear death, but I understand why you do.”

She laughs forcefully, stepping away from him to look at the horizon. He is right. She should fear death. In two days, she killed eleven men. His death will make it a baker’s dozen. If there is a god, he should forsake her, if he hasn’t already. She wants to finish the quest without divine interference, whether it is to save her or to stop her.

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“If there is a god,” she shouts at the wilderness, “stay away from me. Do you hear me?”

Turning back to the grumbling man, she places her forehead against his, looking into his half-closed eyes.

“We are the same animal,” she whispers. “You and I. Lambs to the slaughter. Right now, I’m running on instinct. My soul has flown. What you see is just flesh and bone, covered in skin. An animal driven by hatred, thirsty for vengeance. That is all I have in mind. You Bykovs have reduced me to this… animal… after your kind stripped my humanity away.”

“And you?” he forces the words out deliberately. “You have done the same to us when you killed Luka.”

She snickers. “Sure, he died by my hand, but it wasn’t murder. It was suicide. He slept with my sister while I still grieved for our son. The soil on the grave didn’t even settle yet when he sought warmth and sweet nectar from her body. In my house. In my fucking bed. While I was mourning at the grave. Tell me, what would you have done if you were in my place?”

His eyes flare wide for a moment. “We didn’t know there was a child. Or that he wronged you.”

“All you need to do is find me. Ask me. Even kill me, if you couldn’t forgive. But instead, you slaughtered my kin. The Snake Clan wiped off the planet like dust. Went for my friends too. You stripped everything away. Now it’s only me, left with this cold, dead heart.”

She slaps her chest, biting back tears. She has shed too many tears on behalf of the Bull Tribe since the burial. No way did she want him to see her vulnerable, stripped. But she feels exposed in front of him.

His eyes close again. She bumps her head to his, waking him from slumber, worried that he might go into a coma, or die.

“Don’t go quietly,” she insists, looking into his eyes while inhaling his shallow exhales. “I am here with you, watching. I will be here when you die, that I promise.”

“You are signing your own death warrant,” he says, trying to sound brave. “You are dead already.”

“We both are. Like I said, my soul already left me. The Clan cut it off. I have nothing. I am nothing. Everything worth living for is gone. I am as dead and empty as this desert. I have made my will. I have put people in place to rebuild The Farm. I am ready to join my family. Not just am I ready. I have a deep longing inside me to do so.”

“They will come for you,” he whispers. “And they won’t make it easy. They will tie you in The Pit and extract a thousand cries from your lips before you die. It’ll take hours, even days.”

“Oh, I count on that,” she answers. “Now, there is a dust cloud rising on the horizon. I bet it is them. Try to hold on till they arrive, will you? I want to see their faces when they find you, see hope flood their hearts when they find you still alive. And then, when you inevitably die, I’ll drink in their pain like nectar from the gods. Maybe it will sate my blood lust. Maybe it’ll satisfy my vengeance.”

He gasps for air, eyes fluttering as realization reaches his awareness. She reaches out to caress his dry lips with quivering fingers, quieting the sounds struggling to leave his throat. Everything about this is wrong, and the urge to take him off the tree is overwhelming. He is in a bad way, that is clear as day. What the fuck is wrong with the Bull Tribe? They should have been here ages ago. She has to keep him alive until they arrive.

“Listen carefully, Pyotr, if I feel vindicated in their pain, no-one else has to die. Only you and me. Between the two of us, we can put an end to this ugly mess.”

His head lolls to the side. She doesn’t reach out to lift it, but keeps one eye on his chest and another on the approaching vehicles.

“You and me?” he asks. “Nobody else has to die?”

“Only if your death pains them to the same degree as the devastation I felt when I arrived on The Farm and found only devastation. I made a Blood Oath with your grandfather to hand myself over after one last meal with my family. You cannot even imagine the betrayal, the anger, the loss I felt. I couldn’t even bury them. I had to gather what I could and burn it on a pyre. I won’t wish that on my worst enemy, Pyotr. Not even on the Bull Tribe, or the Chinese Cartel, who killed my parents. Your tribe left me nothing but hatred.”

“I’ll make it good,” he says, coughing a bloody blob into her face. “Promise.”

Blaire snorts. “Forgive me if I don’t have any faith in Bykov promises right now.”

“What do you want, then? What can I do to satisfy your hunger?”

“I want the guilty to pay. And you, Pyotr, are innocent of this crime. You were not among those who killed my people. I don’t understand why, since you are Luka’s brother and in the leadership circle. In fact, I’m almost sure there was none of the leadership there. And this doesn’t make sense to me at all.”

His head rises until his eyes meet hers. “How do you know I’m innocent?”

“The moment you punched me and I bled, you would have died already if you were guilty. That is how the mercenaries died. This was the plan, you see. I would visit your grandpa. You guys punish me. I bleed. Everybody dies. Everything was in place. I followed the steps perfectly. It’s a good plan too. There is no reason for me to assume that it wouldn’t work.”

“Sounds like a well thought out plan. Why do you think it won’t work now?”

“Because of you, that’s why,” she says. “You didn’t die, that’s what went wrong. And now we are here, and three vehicles are approaching. I assume they are here looking for you, hoping that you might still be alive. So, whatever you do, hold on.”

He coughs, blood splattering onto his chin. “Blaire Nathara, will this end if I die?”

“You’re not going to die, Pyotr. Unlike your tribe, the Snake Clan doesn’t kill innocent people.”

I don’t care about guilt or innocence. I want to save my people. Will you forgive them if I die?”

The cars come to a screeching halt. Pyotr’s eyes closes slowly. Blaire grabs the knife from her belt and sliced the rope holding him to the tree. He fell forward, his body driving her off her feet. They hit the ground hard.

Angry voices and running feet. Above her, the sun screams loudly. Hands grab Pyotr, lifting him off her. Hands grab her hair, her arms, dragging her away. She keeps looking at Pyotr’s chest, waiting for another inhale.

A fist enters her view. For a moment, it seems like it comes from the sky, from the harsh sun. The punch is to her left cheek. A soft crack, but it’s almost drowned out by the rattle of bones.

The bone song takes over, turning her world dark.