Blightborn (8 page)

The baby cries, an insistent wail that sets Rigo’s teeth on edge. It sounds wrong somehow—maybe the baby is sick. Babies get sick and die all the time out here. Sometimes they’re born too early like the Blaymire’s little girl—she lived, but now, three
years later, she’s still a frail thing with matchstick legs and bulging eyes. But Eben didn’t say anything about his baby being sick, and that’s something he would’ve mentioned, right?

Rigo winds his way around one shelf and sees what he thinks is the crib in the middle of the floor, but the room is dark, and he’s afraid to be fumbling around a tiny baby without seeing what he’s doing. On the other side of the room he sees a faint glow: a light source of some kind. Rigo takes a few quick steps, and there on the counter is a visidex lying flat, screen up toward the ceiling. It’s the screen that’s giving off the light.

A visidex,
he thinks.
Heartlanders aren’t allowed to have those
. Another image suddenly flashes in his mind: the lighter with the Pegasus sigil emblazoned on it. A fear tickles at the base of his mind.

Rigo reaches for the visidex.

As he picks it up, the light from the device washes over the back wall behind the counter, and Rigo sees the sign:
WHEATLEY PROVISIONAL STORE
.

Wheatley. Lord and Lady, that’s where Lane told the hobo they were from. Is
this
town Wheatley? Rigo tilts the visidex toward him.

His heart leaps into his throat and lodges itself there like a frog caught in a cat’s mouth.

On the visidex is his face. And Cael’s. And Lane’s.

It’s a Most Wanted alert. Words pop out at him from the screen:
terrorists
and
sedition
and
dangerous
. Then the image flips and becomes a different alert, this time for Arthur “Pop” McAvoy and Filomena McAvoy. Same words. Same alert. This
time with an added text in big bold letters at the bottom:
DEAD OR ALIVE
.

“Wait, what?” Cael asks, trying to cut through the gauze of his own drunkenness to understand what the hobo is getting at. “Rovers?”

Eben leans in, face framed from beneath by the fire. “The dogs. The packs of dogs I was telling you about. They’re not real. Not around here anyway. Haven’t been Rovers seen around here. Not ever.”

“Oh,” Lane says, laughing it off, drunk and obviously bewildered. “Yeah, right. So?”

“And that tree, in the center of Wheatley?” the hobo asks.

“The . . . lightning tree,” Cael says.

“You see a tree around here?”

Cael joins Lane in laughing, but now it’s just the sound of his nerves jangling, because something’s gone off-kilter here, dipping and swaying in a way he can’t quite get his hands around yet.

“I don’t . . . I don’t see a tree,” Cael says, and he’s about to ask what the vagrant is getting at, but he catches the cold look on Eben’s face—a look of ill-contained rage, of hate trying to push its way out, stretching his mouth into a grim, flat line—and he realizes what’s going on. “This is Wheatley.”

Lane keeps laughing. He doesn’t get it, not at all. “This isn’t Wheatley; this is—” He suddenly goes silent. “Wait, what town is this?”

“Wheatley’s a dead town,” Eben mutters. “And you’re sitting in it.”

“I . . . ,” Lane stammers. “I don’t understand.”

“He’s been playing with us,” Cael says.
Like we’re little mice.

Then Eben drops a real firecracker, saying, “I knew your father, Cael. I knew Arthur McAvoy.”

Everything feels hot and tense, and Rigo breaks out in a fast sweat on his hands, under his pits, and it feels as if someone crammed his heart and all his innards into a tin pail and threw it down a bumpy hill.

If this is Wheatley and if Eben knows who they are . . . he’s an Empyrean agent. A
secret
agent. He must be. Or he’s planning on selling them out to the Empyrean. One way or another, they’re in deep.

Rigo tries to call out but finds his throat dry and the crying of the baby growing louder and louder, and he thinks,
I need to hush that baby
, and the stranger thought that comes after is
This isn’t a place for a baby. I need to take it away from here and keep it safe
—so he grabs the visidex and tilts it forward to give him some light, and he hurries toward the crib.

The crib is a ramshackle thing, something someone made out of old chair legs and a few wooden pallets. Inside it is a bundle of ratty brown blankets, the edges fraying and tattered. The sound of the crying baby is harsh to his ears, reedy, and Rigo, he reaches down and pulls back the blanket, and he thinks,
It sounds almost metallic
—

Oh, Lord and Lady.

It’s no baby.

A dead dog stares up from the crib, its dry, puckered-grape eyeballs staring out from their sockets, lips peeled back over gums that look like jerky, teeth yellow and crooked.

Around its neck hangs a little box with a speaker on it. A small wire antenna winds from the box and up the side of the crib.

Rigo rips the box from the wires. The crying dies down, the sound slowing in a way that suggests melting.

Oh no oh no oh no
.

He turns to run out of here, this time ducking between two shelves right for the doorway—

His foot lands on something—

He feels something give. Pressure. Followed by a
click
.

A rusty jaw trap snaps shut on his ankle.

Hot fire lances up from his foot. Blood runs into his shoe as he tumbles forward, the teeth of the trap scraping flesh from bone.

Rigo screams.

Eben reaches into his dirty overalls and pulls a long, makeshift knife—the steel blade showing the clumsy scratches of an amateur’s forging and whetting, the handle swaddled in strips of raggedy leather. The hobo shows his teeth—teeth so clean, so white, they gleam and glow in the light of the licking flames.

Cael reaches for his slingshot—

But the vagrant holds it up. “Looking for this?”

He tosses it over his shoulder into the darkness.

And the rifle—

It’s over by the man, too. Along with the bag.

Eben circles toward them.

Cael and Lane go the other way—but as soon as they get near the rifle and the bag, Eben moves back in the other direction. Swiping the blade through the air, cutting it with brutal hisses.

“Who are you?” Cael asks.

“Name’s true as I’ve told it. Eben Henry is my name.” He snarls, again slicing the blade across the fire. “Your father and I go way back.”

“What do you want?”

“Justice.”

“I can’t give you that.”

“You can’t give it. But I can
take
it.” Madness dances in his eyes. “I can
cut it from your pretty skin
, boy.”

Lane says, “I don’t know what you think you know—”

“I know I need to take what’s owed to me. Like the chronicles of Jeezum Crow say, ‘I have found that the justice must match the injury, bone for bone, tooth for tooth, blood for blood.’ ” The man’s knuckles begin to go white around the hilt of the knife. “I want your blood. The blood of Cael McAvoy to pay for the blood of my boy, Arthur Henry. I want your blood, your teeth, your eyes. I’m gonna take what was taken; I’m gonna—”

From inside the darkened building nearby they hear the child’s cry cut suddenly short. Eben chuckles, and only moments later do they hear Rigo’s spit-curdling scream—an animal sound of grave pain.

“Rigo!” Lane calls, and he makes a break away from the barrel.

Eben lunges with the knife, a long stride into a mean leap, and Cael gets asphalt under his feet and crashes into him. His head swims; his body feels slow like it’s stuck in a puddle of molasses—the impact of his body into Eben’s and the
sensation
of that impact are disconnected, as if he’s feeling everything a half second too late.

And it costs him. As the two of them tumble to the ground, Eben gets the advantage. He pushes Cael aside and holds him down, his filthy denim knees pinning Cael’s shoulders to the shattered street.

“This is for my son,” Eben growls.

He raises the knife and slams the blade down.

Rigo lays facedown on the dusty wooden floor of the old provisional store. He reaches out with both hands and gets his fingertips around the break in the floorboards and tries to pull himself up, but even the slightest movement sends lightning bolts of pain blasting to and from his trapped ankle.

He winces; one of his fingernails snaps. He cries out again, reeling in his arm and tucking it under his armpit.
Don’t cry,
he thinks,
damnit, don’t cry,
but already he feels the hot tears pushing at the corners of his eyes, and it’s like a dam starts to break. Everything hits him at once: the loss of his town, his family, his home; the scene of carnage back at the McAvoy farm only a week ago—all of it culminating in the grim revelation that
It’s all over; I’ll never be the same; I’m going to die out here
.

Footsteps heavy on the floor—Rigo looks up, expects to see the leering vagrant or whoever the hell he really is, but instead
he sees Lane’s face, a face forge-struck in horror. Lane bends down and scoops his hands around Rigo’s midsection and starts to lift him—

“No no no!” Rigo cries out. “My ankle, my damn ankle!”

“Holy shit,” Lane says. He hurries to Rigo’s feet, gets his fingers between the rusty, monster teeth of the jaw trap. Lane struggles and grunts, the cords in his lean neck standing taut as he wrenches open the trap. He mutters, “Not yet . . . not yet . . . move your foot
now
.”

Rigo grabs his own thigh and yanks his leg—a leg already starting to feel numb and cold—and his foot and ankle pull free from the trap.

Blood drips on the wood.

“Is Cael . . . ?”

“I don’t know,” Lane says, breathless. “You okay?”

Rigo tries not to whimper. He nods.

“Good.”

And then Lane bolts back outside.

The knife slams down just as Cael wrenches his head to the left—the blade
chink
s against the broken blacktop, sending up sparks. Eben roars in rage and raises the knife once more—

Cael has a move planned out in his head: he’ll fling his hips upward and swing both legs with them, hoping to hook his ankles around the vagrant’s neck in order to pull the bastard off him. Instead, Cael’s limbs flail upward, and the tip of his boot connects clumsily with the side of Eben’s skull—not the maneuver
he’d hoped, but the hobo falls to the side, giving Cael the chance to wriggle free.

Both Cael and Eben hurry to their feet.

Eben quotes again from the books of Jeezum Crow, snarling each word through clenched teeth: “ ‘The Lord and Lady, gracious patron and glorious matron, slow to anger, quick to love, know yet that the hearts of sinners must be fixed with pins’ ”—here he stabs the open air with the knife—“ ‘and if a father escapes his toll, the children must pay the pennies.’ ”

The hobo lunges again—

Cael sidesteps, swings a fist—

It’s a worthless, desperate punch. Eben doesn’t duck but rather slaps it aside like it’s an irritating fly. The vagrant flicks the knife upward, and Cael feels a burning slash across his chin.

He stumbles backward. Something wet splashes down his neck. He touches his hand to his chin—it comes away smeared with red.

The vagabond flips the knife so it’s pointing downward, blade tucked back against his forearm, and again he lunges—

It’s Lane’s turn to intercept. He races behind Cael and slams up and under Eben. The hobo lurches with the hit but doesn’t fall—Eben plunges the knife, but Lane is lithe, almost liquid, and he twists his body out of the way—

The vagrant isn’t fast, but he is strong.

He picks up Lane and throws him aside.

Lane’s head slams into the burn barrel. A whorl of embers rise, a demonic fireworks display. He doubles over, pressing his head into his knees. Eben moves toward him, knife out—

Cael has to move fast. The rifle lies on the ground nearby; it’s not loaded, but it’ll have to do. He rushes, scoops up the rifle, and holds it by the barrel. The vagrant descends upon Lane with the blade—

He sees Cael coming.

But it’s too late.

Cael wallops him in the cheek with the butt end of the rifle. The wood cracks and splits as Eben drops to the ground by the barrel, knife still clutched in his bloodless grip.

Move fast before he gets up
.

Cael shoves the burn barrel.

Away from Lane.

And toward the vagrant.

The rusty drum vomits burning trash onto Eben Henry. Hot orange ash forms a mask on the man’s face—he shrieks, a ghastly sound that rises up and out of him like the howling of a rabid wolf, and he thrashes around on the ground, clawing at his face, kicking at the broken street.

Cael helps Lane up. “We have to
go
. Where’s Rigo?”

“Here,” croaks Rigo, hobbling out. Blood trails him. His face is the color of spoiled goat’s milk. Cael scoops up the bag and slings the rifle over his shoulder as Lane runs to Rigo. Cael follows soon after, and as he hurries over—the sound of the screaming vagrant filling the air behind him—his boot nudges something.

His slingshot.

He grabs it, tucks it into his back pocket.

And together the three of them hurry-hobble into the hungry corn.