North of Seana, Eganene
He had no desire to dig up old graves tonight. Thinking about the past was a pit he didn’t want to fall into. He knew better than to reminisce about Milly.
It was better to think about the present. They were close to Seana. The woodcutter had told him there was a town about fifteen miles south where they could buy horses or passage with a carriage caravan. Peter was hopeful. If they could make it that far without Family catching them, they would have a real chance. The lands between Seana and Orlenia were too vast a place to track, even it was filled with Family.
The last time he had been outside, the snow was a wall of white. The closest trees were bent beneath the wind’s force, debris kicking up to swirl across the ground. He had been right. It was the helstorm.
Peter signed and thanked the gods. Someone was definitely looking out for him. Had they been caught out in the woods in this, they would have been dead. Instead, he was stranded in a cabin, with a beautiful woman and a pocketful of money. There had definitely been worse days.
Laying back against the pillow, he watched Elisabeth sleep. He heard her whimper in her dream and smiled. He liked the noise. The girl had been exhausted, sleeping straight through the day and far into the night. He had slept, too, but his dreams had been dark. They were nothing but half remembered thoughts and partial memories, but he disliked them all the same. The past was dead and there was no point in ruminating on it. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to choose his dreams.
“Peter?” the girl said as she woke. The room was very dark, the smoldering fire in the hearth providing the only light.
“I’m here,” he replied, reaching his hand out to touch hers. She slept beside him, in her own pallet. He found it strange now not sleeping beside her. They had been together for a few weeks now, relying on one another’s warmth to survive the night. There was probably more to it than that, but he didn’t feel like considering it.
“I’m starving,” she said, pulling her hand away.
He grunted, surprised at the move. Perhaps she was wary of him, the last time he had touched her had been… interesting.
She sighed and got up, her legs missing his head by inches.
“The people?” she asked.
“Are fine,” he replied. “I had them use the chamber pot a few hours ago. None of us are going out in that storm.”
“You weren’t sleeping,” she said. It was a statement.
“And you are awake.”
Her stomach grumbled and he said, “There is some bread on the table if you want it.”
“God, yes.”
He struck a match and lit a candle. Momentarily blinded, he rubbed his arm over his eyes.
She was staring at him, her hair a wild disarray.
“You shaved,” she remarked, getting up.
He suppressed a shiver and buried himself in his covers. Despite the fire, the wind was making its way into the cottage. The woodcutter might be handy with an axe, but the helstrom’s winds could topple trees and homes alike.
“Trimmed, really,” he said. “The beard was too good a disguise to get rid of completely.”
She returned and sat back down. “It suits you.”
He shrugged. “Bathing suits me. You need to do something about this hair.”
“You grew yours out, what about I get rid of mine?” she asked between mouthfuls. The crumbs scattered on the sheet.
Peter was glad he had pulled the covers up. The idea of sleeping on breadcrumbs was right up there with sleeping on twigs. “How old are you Elisabeth?”
She froze, even her chewing stopped. “Well, I guess that would depend on what day it is,” she said finally. “I don’t suppose you know, do you?”
He shook his head. “Close to mid March probably. I was keeping count before the Dogs jumped us.”
She squared her shoulders, and he realized what he said.
They hadn’t talked about that night, not one mention of it. Sure, she knew others were hunting them, but they hadn’t talked about what she’d done. The wind howled outside, battering the window. Elisabeth scooted from her bed to his, the side of her leg touching him.
In the light of the fire, he could see their breath steaming in the air, the two streams mingling into one. He sat up and arranged the blankets over both of them.
“Still nineteen, then,” she said after awhile. “Our birthday is at the end of April.”
He didn’t respond. Her brother was another topic they hadn’t discussed. One that he preferred to avoid.
“How old are you?” she asked him. She sounded young and uncertain.
How to answer that question?
He wasn’t even sure, although he had made a guess for himself years ago. He couldn’t remember a life before the Family, couldn’t remember his parents. There was nothing there, just the blackness of forgotten memories, the darkness of the things he had done and things that had been done to him. He didn’t want to tell her about that.
“Thirty-six.”
He felt the warmth of her exhale against his neck.
“How did you know those men in Philly? The ones who tried to kill me. You said you knew them.”
Peter cursed mentally. Another thing on his list of least favorite topics.
“I used to work for a business. I've mentioned it before. They’re called Family.”
She laughed. “Are they Italian?”
He smiled, thinking of movies he had seen on Earth. Perhaps he could use that. It might be something she could relate to.
“No,” he said. “Not exactly, although I guess there are some similarities.”
“Like?”
“You won’t like it if I tell you,” he warned her. “I used to work for them, Elisabeth.”
“I want to know,” she countered. “I already know you kill people. How much worse could it be?”
I wish I could tell you, he thought
“I was a kid when I started working for them. Young, I’m not sure what age. They have a code, you know. It isn’t easy to work your way up. I had some talents that they wanted to exploit. They had food I wanted to eat. It was pretty simple.”
“I was around your age when I got my first contract. I guess you won’t believe me, but I never wanted to hurt anyone. It was part of the job. Just part of the job. Like taking out the trash or fixing something that is broken. It wasn’t fun, but I had to do it.”
He could feel the heat of her beside him.
She asked, “Were there a lot of kids like you? Kids that had guns.”
“No. Not because they weren’t doing what I was doing, but because guns are rare here. And expensive. I didn’t have a gun myself for a long time. You have to prove yourself, show them that you are worth the investment.”
“So, you were worth the investment? You are proud of what you did.”
He caught that one and tried to turn it aside. “No, not proud. But I’m not ashamed either. I have a talent, Elisabeth. It keeps me alive and it makes me hard to kill. That isn’t something I should feel ashamed of. It has kept us both alive.”
“But what about what you did?” she asked ignoring his last comment. “You never told me what that is.”
“And I won’t either,” he said. “The past is the past. Anything I did, I did to survive. I won’t apologize for that. The Family might have owned me at one point, but they don’t own me now.”
He could feel her tighten.
“I don’t have anything to do with them,” he said. “I can tell you honestly that they don’t want anything to do with me.”
The words he said were true, if not the meaning behind them. He knew she could read him. Had he lied, she would have known. If it was half-truths and omissions, then so be it. It was better than the truth.
She said, “I’m glad. Those men in Philly were awful. They were monsters. I don’t like to think about you being like them…or like the people in the forest.”
She stopped short.
“I’m glad they are gone, Elisabeth. I know you are, too.”
She was shaking her head in the darkness. “I didn’t want them to die.”
“Of course you did. You didn’t want them to kill you. There wasn’t any other choice. Be happy you succeeded. The alternative would have been so much worse.”
Silence stretched out and he wondered what she was thinking, how she was justifying the murders in her mind. He had witnessed it before, the mind’s ability to build pathways that never existed, all in a worthless pursuit to absolve itself from guilt. He had been there himself. It hadn’t ended well for him.
He had been a boy, and it had been a different time. The days and years before that moment were lost in a blackness that reached further and bled darker then even his most recent memories. His teenage years had been filled with hunger, abandoned buildings and beatings. While the witches were consolidating power in the larger cities, the poor were left to fend for themselves in the ruins that they brought through the Umbilicus.
The Family was just starting to organize a resistance, to create order, but Peter didn’t know that yet. Instead, he made friends the best he could with some of the other street children. No one asked where you were from. No one cared.
Survival was all that mattered and to survive you needed numbers. Peter learned quickly- how to hide, how to cling to the darkness. He was also lucky. While he never had enough food, he grew fast and strong. Because he wasn’t cruel, other kids stuck with him.
Eventually, his group was large enough to hold one of the safer alleys. With new buildings from Earth being ripped through to Eganene, finding a stable structure was often difficult.
The street corner had been his for exactly fourteen nights. He didn’t have to remember. He had scratched the tally onto the lamp post at the corner. It was a badge of honor. There were others who tried him, but his knife was fast and sharp and the kids hadn’t wanted more than a taste.
A few of the younger children did his bidding. He wasn’t sure why they listened to him, but they did, running his errands and stealing food. When a couple of them didn’t return, he had been angry, pacing the confines of his tented walls.
His boys discovered where the missing girls were and his anger cooled. He had thought that they rejected him, but instead, they had been taken. Peter was no longer someone to cross. He was a known man. It was surprising how fast he had gotten used to sleeping inside, covered by blankets, with his head on a pillow and someone else’s eyes keeping watch.
The two girls might not have meant much to him, but they meant something big to his reputation. Had he thought about it, he might have seen the irony. He had been nothing, another face on the grey pavement. Now, he was off to take back two underage children whose names he didn’t even know.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
He brought Buddy with him to identify which girls were theirs. The rest of Peter’s crew stayed inside the tent, armed as well as they could manage and prepared for some kind of counterattack. They seemed pretty happy about the possibility, sharpening their blades and trading stories. There was a lot of bad blood on the streets and a chance for pay back was a sweet opportunity.
It didn’t seem odd at the time that they gave him their loyalty so easily.
He and Buddy waited past midnight, the city’s shrieks and screams becoming infrequent as the surviving population sunk into sleep, drunken bliss or something worse. Only a couple of the streetlights still burned and they trembled as if to throw off a chill. The apartment complex was large, much larger than he realized, probably three stories with fifteen bedrooms. It was a gold mine.
“This is the house,” Buddy told him, sinking back against a heap of garbage. Candlelight shown in each window, the brightness shuddering across the ceilings and glass. The shadows bucked and flew across the walls like so many demons from hell.
“Our boy followed them. He says there are some back steps we can take. Only one guy to get rid of. Front has two and one more inside that does the money. Course there could be others.”
Buddy was a bruiser, probably a year older than Peter, but shorter. He had a thick scar driving horizontally across his jutting chin. In his hands were heavy chains, steel or iron, Peter didn’t know the difference. They were wicked; one good hit in the face and a guy would go down hard. He wasn’t sure where Buddy had gotten them, but they were worth more than anything Peter had.
They climbed onto the roof a few buildings down. Traversing the wooden planks was easy for him. Peter’s legs were sure. He placed his feet gently like he was a grandpanther from the stories.
He needed the girls. There wasn’t much beyond that. Prostitution, theft, murder, these were lucrative trades. Not that he had thought about making them do that. The little things weren’t more than nine or ten, but both of them had quick hands and faster fingers and had been supplying him with food over the last few weeks.
Buddy grabbed his legs and carefully lowered Peter from the roof to look into the window. Fortunately, there hadn’t been much to see beyond small wrists tied to the bedpost. It was possible he was in luck.
He signaled for Buddy to let him down to the window. He grabbed it and hauled himself upwards, his arms and shoulders straining. Skin like porcelain. The kid was tied to the bed and had her eyes closed. Her hair was tangled.
Standing nimbly on the window ledge, he surveyed the room. There wasn’t much to see besides the bed, the girl and a stool. There were candles shining from mirrored sconces and they filled the small room with a dim, yellow light.
Pulling a rusted knife from his pocket, he gently inserted it beneath the window, jimmying it back and forth until the glass moved up a quarter of an inch. Peter pushed in a wooden shim and shoved it down. The window slid upward, letting the summer air into the room and the stench of the place out.
He wrinkled his nose and climbed inside. His bare feet made no noise as he dropped to the concrete floor. The building was an old one with solid floors. Based on what he could see, it was probably been brought over by the witches. Without warning, the window closed, his shim dropping to the ground as the flow of air abruptly stopped. It didn’t make a sound, just materialized back in its previous position. Peter was left with the hot, humid air of the brothel.
The girl had yet to notice him, which was good. He didn’t need her screaming her head off, although, with all the noise in the building, it wasn’t likely that anyone would come running. Standing, watching the light from beneath the doors, he heard crying and moaning. A few rooms down, a male voice was hollering drunkenly, unintelligible, just an explosive series of sound and anger.
Peter reopened the window and gestured for Buddy to swing himself down. He held the glass, so that it wouldn’t close suddenly. He knew he was avoiding waking the girl but wasn’t ashamed. There wasn’t much he could do for her that he wasn’t already doing. Getting her out of this place would have to be enough. He didn’t think he was made for hugging and holding.
Buddy, on the other hand, didn’t have such qualms, shaking the girl as soon as he entered the room. When she didn’t respond, he slapped her face.
“She’s one of them,” he said when she didn’t stir. “Guys probably gave her something to knock her out. Likely they were done with her screaming and didn’t want to hear no more.”
Peter grunted. “I could lower her down on the sheets and you could carry her back. I can look around for the other one.”
Buddy smacked her face again, but the girl didn’t bat an eyelash. Peter tried to imagine what it would be like to want her and couldn’t. She was just a dirty, little kid.
Buddy picked up the girl and Peter stripped the bed of its sheet, tied it around her painfully thin waste and across her shoulders. He took her from Buddy. She weighed less than nothing.
“What does the other one look like?”
Buddy shrugged. “Same as this one. Small, skinny and ugly. Oh, and she has red hair. That oughta help a little.”
“Get the window.”
Buddy climbed out quickly and lowered himself so that he was hanging by his fingertips. He jumped the remaining few feet, his impact muffled by raucous laughter below.
Hanging the girl from the window, Peter let the sheet slide from his fingers, concentrating on keeping her from knocking against wall. Leaning over dramatically, he waited for Buddy to signal and then dropped her into his arms. Throwing her over his shoulder, he waved to Peter and stalked off down the alley, chains in hand.
Peter was alone.
He didn’t mind, really, he was more comfortable that way. Cracking the door, he peered out into the dusty, darkened hallway. The wall in front of him was broken, its surface covered by ragged holes like someone had thrown something against it again and again. There was no one outside.
A couple minutes later, he moved to the next door and listened. Heavy breathing and a rhythmic thumping sound could be heard. He passed the room. The next door was locked and he didn’t want to be stuck in the hall.
Moving on, he found the next room dark, a promising sight if the inhabitants were truly asleep. He tried the door knob and slowly unlatched the door. Quickly, he blew out the nearest candle and then ever so gently pushed the door the rest of the way open. Two forms, one large and one small, rested on the twin bed.
The small one’s eyes were open, he could see the light from the hall reflected in their glassy surfaces. He moved forward at a crouch. She didn’t move. He noticed her hands were tied to the bed post. The man beside her was massive, his socked feet hanging far off the bed.
Peter was almost close enough to touch him, close enough to see the tuffs of brown hair that grew from his ears. They merged with this greasy hair and beard to hide his pockmarked face. The girl’s eyes tracked Peter. Her small body was darkened by bruises and scratches.
He drew his knife. Touching it sent chills through his body, his mind trying unsuccessfully to remember when he had gotten the weapon. The memories died prematurely and resolved into blackness.
The red-haired girl never made a sound, her teeth flashing into a white smile as Peter opened the man’s throat. She didn’t scream when his blood splashed her face.
Peter cut her free. The man had money in his pants and Peter took it all. He wiped the blood from her face with the sheet.
Together they pulled the guy from the bed. His body was too heavy and it made a loud sound when he hit the floor. Peter tore the sheet free from the bed. The girl was standing by the window, holding it open. He threw the sheet outside, winding it around his arm and planted his feet wide. The girl needed no encouragement.
She grasped the end and lowered herself down the blanket. For Peter, it wasn’t much of a strain, she hardly weighed anything. He felt her reach the bottom, hang there and gather her courage. Suddenly, her weight was gone and he was stumbling back. He fell beside the dead man. His pants became wet and warm with blood.
Scrambling up, Peter tied the sheet to the end of the bed. It was further from the window and he would have a longer drop, but it was better than nothing. No sooner had he knotted it for the third time, then the room’s door slammed open. It came off its hinges, the fractured wood careening into an already sorry looking wall.
“What’s going on in here!” The man was bigger then Peter, with a thick middle and arms the size of the little girl’s waist.
Peter backed up and pulled the window open. He didn’t wait, but leapt out, his hands grasping for the sheet. He caught it, jarring his elbows and changing his fall so that instead of plummeting to the ground, he smashed into the building. His right leg shattered a first story window. Landing, he rebounded off the softer grass.
Dazed, he felt the girl pull at his arm. The window above him was whole again, but his leg was injured, his blood adding to what had already soaked into his pants.
“Quickly,” she hissed. “They’re coming.”
She took off down the alley and he followed as best he could. The pain was bad, spikes of glass sunk deep into the meat of his leg. Thankfully, the girl knew where she was going. Peter followed her methodically, concentrating on moving forward. He recognized his alley when he saw it.
The girl ran headlong down its length and slipped unmolested into the tent. In moments, his boys were crowding about him. Peter stumbled around the corner, out of breath and losing blood. He struggled to tell them what was coming.
They hadn’t been idle. Buddy had gotten more muscle-- neighbors looking to curry favor or change allegiances. There hadn’t been a good fight since Peter had won his tent. Many of the kids were hungry and bored. If Peter’s gang defeated the men in the house, they would have a roof over their head when he claimed the building for his own. A businesses and a functional building, a dream come true.
Peter let the kids bandage his leg, but he refused the whisky. He needed a clear head. Seated outside the tent on a wooden box, he waited, counting the kids behind him and concentrating on looking confident. If they thought he would lose, they would take off. So, Peter sat still, projecting a sense of confidence and calm.
It worked. More than twenty kids assembled around him. They ranged in age from fifteen to near twenty. Hungry, desperate and armed, they stood in a solid block, their faces angry. Peter smiled at the irony. The only adults in this part of town were monsters. It was fitting that a group of children would have an opportunity to bash their heads in.
Their wait wasn’t a long one. The men tracked him easily; his blood on the street was a clear trail. There were five of them, thick, fat men and one gun. Peter could hear the kids behind him shuffle their feet. They had known it was a possibility, but they didn’t like it.
A gun wasn’t enough to send them running, though. Many weapons were nothing more than rotting metal and ammo was scarce. Most people didn’t even know how to fire a gun. They might be able to pull a trigger, but aiming was another story. It was doubtful that the man cleaned it correctly. It could even back-fire in his face.
Peter smiled reassuringly. He had no idea how he knew this information, just some thing he’d learned on the streets. He whispered it to Buddy while the men surveyed their little army. Buddy passed the information on. Soon all his boys were smiling.
Now, it was the men’s turn to look worried. Peter’s crew watched them put their heads together in discussion, the men’s eyes darting back towards the crowd assembled to fight them.
Peter’s boys carried blades. Mostly, they had crappy looking knives or swords, but they were sharp enough and that was what mattered. Some of the younger kids had stakes, but a stick could kill someone just as easily as a piece of metal. The boys in the back had bows and arrows.
That was the best part. Standing high on layers of garbage, his kids looked proud. These were his boys. Peter had shown them how to shoot.
He picked up his own bow, testing the string with his fingers. At least one of the men would be dead before they reached the end of the alley. He motioned Buddy to go and speak with the men. The kids would respect him more for attempting to parley. They would want blood in the end but good showmanship was a must.
Buddy walked out, eclipsing Peter from view, just as the five men started forward. Peter could see their shoes, they were walking slowly, trying to draw the kids forward into the alley. He held up his hand and the other kids maintained their positions behind him. Then, he nocked an arrow.
“We want the girls,” the guy with the gun said, pitching his voice down the alley.
Buddy squared his shoulders. “Yeah. And we want you to turn around and get outta here.”
One of the men laughed. “Look kid, I don’t think you know who you are messing with. Those girls are our property. You need to return them. It’s simple.”
Peter saw Buddy tense. The alley was small, he would have to be quick.
“Those girls are Peter’s,” Buddy said. “You want them, you go through me, him and all his boys.”
The guy laughed again. This time his friends joined in. “Right, kid, you seem like you got potential. What say we don’t kill you and you work for us? Bring the girls. Everybody is happy, yea?”
Even Peter was surprised at Buddy’s retort. Upward mobility in the job market was difficult to come by. “Can’t say as that’s a good plan. Peter wouldn’t be none too happy about me letting you kill him.”
Another voice said, “Let’s just kill them.”
Buddy dropped to the ground, the chains he was carrying wrapping around the nearest guy’s legs. He pulled the man down with him.
All hell broke loose.
Peter let his arrow fly. It took the man with the gun straight through the throat, his blood spraying in an arc. His archers got another two, one in the leg and another in the arm. With that, the rest of his army ran screaming into the alley, madness written on their faces. Anger and rage filled their lungs.
From his throne, Peter watched more boys leap from the rooftops. They hauled down the two men still standing. It was a slaughter.
The guy with the gun got off one shot, hitting one of Peter’s kids in the stomach, but the man was dead when he hit the ground. Peter’s arrow had killed him. It was just the last reflex of a dying man. Another kid took a knife in the shoulder and a few more received gashes on their arms and legs. Within minutes all of the men were dead.
Peter opened the bottle whisky and waited for Buddy to return. He had a nasty gash descending from his hairline. It matched his other one.
Peter took a swig and handed over the bottle.
“Bone and Mark won’t make it, but the rest came out fine,” Buddy reported. He had blood and spit running from his lip.
“Grab the stuff, we’re moving,” Peter said. He didn’t want to look at Buddy’s face anymore. “Have the healthy ones bring the wounded. They can die indoors at least. There will be whisky.”
Peter pitched his voice to carry, “We’ll be drunk tonight!”
There were two men at the house, but Peter and Buddy made short work of them. He didn’t like that he used the knife again, but whatever bizarre sense of dread he was feeling didn’t hold a candle to a warm house, food and a bath.
Peter let the women in the basement go, those who wanted to leave, anyway. The two in the cellar were new and had some place to return to. The other six asked him to stay. Peter shrugged. He had no desire for that kind of work, but supposed it was their choice. To the girls, his guys must have been a step up from the house’s previous occupants. Just about everyone wore a smile that night.
The two dying kids were left downstairs with whisky. Peter couldn’t sleep with all their moaning and whimpering. In the morning, he went to check on them. Mark was dead. Peter wasn’t surprised, stomach wounds were almost always fatal. The other one still cried.
He sent a few kids around town to try and find a healer, but they came back empty handed. Peter felt bad about it but couldn’t think of anything else to do. When the rest of the house was quiet, he cut the kid’s throat. He lost his dinner over it, but at least that night he got some sleep.
They buried the boys in the basement. It was easy, the floor was dirt. When they were done, he sent the girls out for food and the boys out to advertise the ladies. His career lasted over a year.
Elisabeth put her hand on his leg and Peter started. These were old memories. The girl had been silent while he daydreamed.
They were the same, he supposed. Circumstances dictated necessity. He had done what he had to do in order to survive and Elisabeth had done the same. She had done it with skill and cunning. She had saved his life.
He was proud of her. She’d adapted to her new reality with surprising quickness. This wasn’t the same girl that had balked at killing The Sniveler. She had grown and changed. She had protected him.
They sat side by side, not speaking. It was a simple thing, but one heavy with meaning. She trusted him. She believed what he told her, believed in him to help her. He knew she wanted him.
And what did he feel?
That was altogether more complicated. He could feel it in the heat between their bodies. Of course, she was too young for him. But that wasn’t his biggest consideration.
He needed to find the Radcliff girl, to find the witch and kill her. It was the only way back. The only way he could get his sentence lifted, to regain his station. And that left him where? What did he do with Elisabeth?