Crisped + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 2) (17 page)

Lucas was there. Cavalo could see him standing off to the side, the black mask across his eyes. He was shirtless, and his skin was free of tattoos. At least, tattoos of schematics of power and water. Instead there were lines down his back and chest, crisscrossing scars that Cavalo recognized as being from a whip. He wondered why he never saw them before, even hidden under the black lines that covered his chest and back and arms. He had tasted some of that skin, had touched it, but never thought of the raised bumps under his tongue and fingers until that moment. He had only been focused on the one scar, the large one around Lucas’s neck.

The scar that wasn’t there now. This was Before.

Cavalo shuddered in his chair in the vacant house in Cottonwood.

Cavalo shuddered as he stood next to a bonfire in the Deadlands.

“Lucas,” he said.

But Lucas didn’t respond. Cavalo wasn’t really there.

Except he was. He could smell the fire and something sweet above it. Could feel the heat of the air around him. The roaring jumble of words spoken and spat around him. It was chaos, and the bees were screaming. The Dead Rabbits were unaware of his presence. They didn’t bump him. They didn’t walk through him. They walked
around
him, as if he took up space and that was all.

He took a few steps and stopped when he found what the sweet smell was above the smoke and fire. Meat. Cooking meat. Except this was torsos. Arms. Legs. Tongues. Eyes. His stomach clenched, and he thought the bees were trying to crawl out his ears.

He saw her then. The woman Lucas had told him about. She’d been beaten, her clothes ripped from her body. Her arms were bound above her head to a long wooden post that sat across her shoulders. Her dirty hair hung in clumps around her face. There were bloody teeth marks on her thighs. Her neck.

But there was that spark. That flame. It burned so brightly in its defiance. There was fear in her, yes. Her skin practically thrummed with it. But she was not bent over, begging for this to end. No. Her back was rigid and straight, her teeth bared at anyone who attempted to come near her. They laughed at her and tugged on her naked skin. She reached for them, but they knocked her down. She pushed herself back up. It took time. She used the wooden post, and her arms shook with exhaustion. But every time she was knocked down, she pushed herself back up.

Cavalo looked toward Lucas. He watched the woman closely. He never touched her. He never stopped anyone from touching her. But Cavalo could see the tense, coiling posture, his feet digging into the black soil. It wouldn’t be much longer before he lashed out.

And then Patrick came. He moved like smoke.

Something flickered in Lucas’s eyes, a complex thing Cavalo couldn’t even begin to understand. Patrick was dressed as he’d been when Cavalo had seen him. Simply. Elegantly. He was not sick as most of the others were. There were no sores on his face. No blood leaking from his body. He moved quickly and quietly, and when he passed the Dead Rabbits, they stopped talking until all eyes were trained on him. Patrick stopped in front of the nude woman.

“Hello,” he said to her. His voice was kind. Cavalo knew it as lies.

The woman looked up at him but did not speak. Her breasts heaved as she struggled to hold on to her composure.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Patrick asked her in that same level voice.

She didn’t answer him, but she didn’t look away. Though Cavalo didn’t know who she was, he felt fiercely protective of her, like he would of any cornered animal that showed no fear. She knew what was going to happen to her. She knew there was no chance. She’d accepted her fate.

“Hmm,” Patrick said. He looked down at his hands. “They’re usually screaming by now.”

The Dead Rabbits around him laughed.

“I like you,” Patrick told the woman. “Very much. You might be what I’ve been waiting for. For a while now. Lucas, if you please.”

The Dead Rabbits turned toward Lucas. Cavalo did too, unable to help himself.

He did not miss the rage that flashed in his eyes. The fear. The anguish and sadness. It all rolled into one, but then it was gone.

“What do you want me to do?” Lucas said, his voice hard. And it was the first time Cavalo heard him speak aloud (though the bees reminded him he hadn’t
really
heard his voice, because he was sitting in a chair in a vacant house while watching Lucas create shadows on the wall behind him). He sounded exactly how Cavalo thought he would. Angry. Deep. And young. So impossibly young that it caused Cavalo to choke on his breath. His heart hurt, and he wanted nothing more than to take him from here. He knew what was coming. And he knew there was nothing he could do.

But most of all, he wondered when Lucas had gotten so under his skin, like a shard of glass now breaking into pieces. He wondered if he could have stopped it if he’d even tried.

“You know what I want,” Patrick said. There was a small smile on his face.

Lucas took a step toward the woman. Patrick looked surprised when Lucas drew his knife from his side. The other Dead Rabbits parted as he walked, cries and jeers rising up from the crowd. His black mask reflected the firelight. Every step he took was deliberate and cautious.

He stopped when he stood next to his father, facing the woman on her knees. She stared up at him. Cavalo moved until he stood at their sides. He’d forgotten he couldn’t be heard. He’d forgotten that none of this was real. All he could focus on were the shards of glass embedded in his skin and the voice of the one he had only ever heard in his head.

“Don’t do this,” he whispered harshly. “Don’t.”

Lucas didn’t acknowledge him.

Cavalo reached out. But his hand was stopped as if a wall separated them.

Lucas’s eyes narrowed as he stared down at the woman. His lips twitched down. Cavalo knew that look. It was the bees. Even now. Lucas couldn’t be more than sixteen years old, and even then the bees were in his head.

“Come with me,” Cavalo said, hearing how desperate he sounded. “Please. I’ll take you away from here.”

But Lucas did not look at him because this Lucas no longer existed.

Shadows, flickering on a wall.

Cavalo was in a house.

Cavalo was in a field.

His bees were confused. They didn’t know what was happening. This scared them. They wanted him to run as fast as he could. Down the stairs. Or into the forest of the Deadlands. They weren’t sure which because they didn’t know where he was.

Run
, they begged him.
Down (through) the stairs (the forest). Hide behind the house (the trees). Don’t let him (them) see you.

But Cavalo could not run.

Lucas did not run.

“A piece of her,” Patrick said, briefly touching his son on the arm. “I should like her hand.” As if it were nothing at all.

“Listen to me,” Cavalo said.

Lucas pointed the knife down at the woman.

“Lucas.”

And didn’t Lucas twitch then? As if he’d heard a voice? He had because Cavalo was in a house in a town at the end of the world, and there were shadows along the walls that told a story he no longer wanted to hear. He tried to leave. Tried to stand. He couldn’t because he was already standing in the middle of a forest, surrounded by those clever monsters, those clever cannibals.

“Lucas,” Patrick said. “Do it now.”

Lucas didn’t. He didn’t. The bees had gotten so loud in his head, and he ground his teeth together. Cavalo could hear them, roaring things like
DEATH
and
BLOOD
and
KILL HER KILL HER KILL HER
, but in all those bees, in the great storm that was the mind of Lucas, Cavalo heard a small voice say
no
.

Lucas stepped back. The knife went to his side.

Patrick sighed.

The Dead Rabbits around them were silent.

“One day,” Patrick said, “you’ll tire of the whip.” He sounded resigned. Regretful. Like a father who has just caught his son doing something disappointing. Cavalo had used the same voice on Jamie.

Cavalo saw a tremor roll through Lucas. It was brief. It never touched his eyes. But Cavalo understood what it was.

Lucas was afraid. Afraid of the whip.

Of Patrick.

But even as the tremor passed up his legs and arms, Cavalo saw him steel himself, beginning to coil down. To spring forward. Cavalo knew. Lucas was going to kill the woman, but not in the way his father wanted. A stab to the heart and it would be over. She would not suffer. She would not fall under the teeth of the Dead Rabbits.

He lashed out and—

Patrick caught his wrist. The tip of the knife had barely pressed against the woman’s breast. It dimpled the skin. A drop of blood beaded over the blade and dripped onto the ground. She grimaced but nothing more.

Gone was Patrick’s fatherly mask. His face had twisted into something dark and monstrous. It was then that Cavalo realized Patrick must have his own bees, because he could see their stingers poking out around his eyes. It made sense. Cavalo knew bees could follow from father to son. His own father had been drowning in them, using alcohol to chase his away for as long as he could. Or his fists against Cavalo’s young face. They always had them, darkly amassing in their heads, but it took something extraordinary to let them take control. For Cavalo’s father, it had been the death of Cavalo’s mother. For Cavalo, it’d been the destruction of Elko and everything he’d loved. He didn’t know what it’d been for Patrick, but Cavalo was sure he could see what had caused it for Lucas in the lined scars on his back. And he knew he was about to see the final act that made Lucas so lost in his own swarm.

“Mercy,” Patrick said. His voice was no longer kind. “You would show mercy.”

Lucas struggled in his grip but could not get free.

Cavalo screamed and cursed at Patrick. Tried to reach both of them, but that invisible wall kept him away. It did not stop him from trying. He banged his fists on the barrier. He hit it with his shoulder. He kicked it.

No one ever noticed him.

Because we’re not really here!
the bees cried.

But what if we are?
they answered themselves.

Cavalo thought his head would split. “You fucking bastard,” he snarled at Patrick as he smashed his shoulder into the unseen wall again. “Look at me!
Look at me
!”

But Patrick never looked at him.

The other Dead Rabbits did not move. They seemed to breathe as one.

And Lucas. Cavalo saw him the most out of all of them. Could see the contempt in his eyes that did nothing to hide his fear. He was trembling, and Cavalo knew he was about to witness the birth of the hive in his head. Lucas had the bravado of a man but the heart of a child, and there would be no coming back from this.

“I’ve given you much,” Patrick said. “I’ve given you leeway, even when you went against my word.”

“Lucas!” Cavalo shouted.

“Whip me,” Lucas said. “Get it over with.”

“No,” Patrick said. “Not this time.”

He broke Lucas’s wrist then, snapping it sharply. Lucas screamed and dropped the knife. It slipped through his fingers toward the ground. Patrick caught it by the handle with the other hand, crossing his arm over his body and crouching. He still held Lucas’s broken wrist. Cavalo knew it would come then.

He did not look away.

Shadows, on a wall. By firelight.

Patrick swung the knife up in a flat arc. The knife caught the glow from the bonfire and flashed. It hit Lucas in the throat, slicing skin. The blood arced. The last thing Lucas said was done in a wet, choked voice as he fell to his knees.

“Dad.”

Patrick dropped his wrist. Drops of blood dripped down his cheeks. Patrick did not wipe them away.

Lucas fell forward. His face hit the ground.

“Keep him alive,” Patrick said. “God help any of you if he dies.”

Lucas was picked up in a hurry. Carried away. The fired danced off the blood on the ground.

Patrick closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Turned back toward the woman bound at his feet. She was crying now.

“Take her,” Patrick said quietly.

And they descended on her. The Dead Rabbits. With their hands. Their mouths. She found her voice then and screamed. They took their time as they ravaged her, and when the light began to fade from her eyes, when she rose above the pain inflicted by the assault, she turned her head toward Cavalo and looked at him directly. Her head jerked once as their eyes met. She smiled with blood in her mouth.

And then she died.

Everything went dark. Cavalo could hear voices whispering around him. He couldn’t make out their words, not completely, but he heard scraps and pieces like
damage is great
and
won’t survive
and
he’d better if you know what’s good for you.

Flashes of light. Cavalo stumbled in the dark. Something flew near his ear, the buzzing noise sharp. Another flew overhead.

A woman’s voice, far away as if it crawled up from the past:
brave little boy my brave little boy and you will be so strong and—

A man’s voice, closer:
it’s a miracle he did not die he should have patrick patrick it’s patrick’s will and his will is the way and he will—

A voice he knew, a kind voice that did nothing to hide the monster he was:
and i will provide for you and i will care for you because you all belong to me i have saved my son from the brink of death i called him back from the abyss he lives or dies at my word much like you will stay with me and you will see what power truly is and—

The monster:
they won’t like that no they won’t like that one bit but that’s okay we need more time i’m not ready yet i have to find a way to hide it so they can’t find it some way to—

The monster:
if he can’t speak again it’ll be easier that way it’ll be better that way it’ll be—

The monster:
mark him when he’s strong enough mark his half if he can survive a knife to the throat then he can survive anything you mark him and me and then we destroy it all we’ll find a way we’ll find a way and soon the fathers in st. louis won’t know what hit them they will die in the fire just like the world did before and i will rise from their ashes and the new order can begin and—