The Children and the Blood (27 page)

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” the girl asked.

Ashley nodded again.

“Want to keep going?”

She shoved the earplugs back into place and then reloaded swiftly.

Two hours later, Spider called it quits and motioned Ashley away from the booth.

“Can you tell me what that man meant?” she asked the girl as Spider pulled open the drawer for earplugs and safety glasses.

Spider shook her head tiredly and tossed her gear inside. “He’s just an old coward. One who thinks killing ferals is what makes them attack us, and that everyone who stays out there and not here deserves their fate.”

Ashley wasn’t sure what to say. She set her safety glasses in the drawer, and then held out Spider’s gun.

“Keep it,” the girl said, her attention on the ammunition boxes.

Startled, Ashley’s brow furrowed.

“I’ve got others,” Spider said. “And it might’ve helped if you’d had one earlier. Though you did pretty good anyway.” She glanced over, amusement in her eyes. “Plus this way, wherever you end up, you can protect yourself. Even if it’s just from creeps like Wood.”

The girl went back to sorting through the boxes.

Ashley looked down. “Thanks,” she said quietly.

Spider shrugged.

Uncertainly, Ashley paused, wondering how to carry the weapon.

“Back of your jeans works in a pinch,” Spider said, her eyes still on the boxes in front of her. “We can get you a holster too, though.”

Hesitantly, Ashley reached around and tucked the weapon away.

Spider’s gaze flicked to her briefly and a small smile tugged at her lips. She shut the drawer and then pushed the boxes back into their stacks. “Come on,” she said, her expression taking on a sarcastic cast. “Dinner’s probably ready.”

They headed upstairs. Emergency lights provided the only illumination in the massive room, making the space surreal. Leading her deeper into the building, Spider wound through the darkened hallways, emerging finally into an empty sunroom overlooking a broad patio.

Bright against the darkness, a bonfire burned on the lawn, lighting the people seated on a ring of logs around the blaze and in a large pavilion to one side. Windows and glass doors separated her from the porch and festivities, and made the firelight waver strangely in the carpeted space. Beyond the bonfire, a river she hadn’t seen from the building’s other side shimmered with the flames and moonlight.

Spider pushed open a door, and then closed it after Ashley. Crossing the patio, the girl paused at the stairway, scanning the crowd.

“What?” Ashley asked.

“Blue’s not here.”

The girl’s brow furrowed. “Listen, I’m going to go check on Sam. Will you be alright?”

Ashley nodded. She didn’t have much choice. The alternative just made her feel ashamed, like some helpless person the others had to carry.

“Okay,” Spider said, still looking distracted. “See you later then.”

The girl jogged down the steps and then disappeared back up the path toward the houses. Ashley watched her go, nervous and hating herself for the feeling.

She made her way down the wide stairs to the lawn. People were hard to distinguish in the harsh firelight, though it would have helped if she’d known more than a handful of them anyway. The shifting crowd parted and she spotted Bus sitting on a log by the fire, a group of children surrounding him. Unbidden relief moved through her, and she worked to ignore it while still heading quickly toward the only person she recognized.

Bus was telling them a story, the gist of which she grasped only too easily. A feral was chasing him, intent on taking his life. In rapt horror, the children listened as he described the wizard’s crazed expression and the way it taunted him as it hounded him through the streets.

At the edge of the group, Ashley sank onto a log, trying not to interrupt. He’d run into the first store he’d seen, Bus told them. He’d just been trying to get away. But the store turned out to be a pet shop, and as he ran, he’d slammed headlong into a stack of cages, each of them filled to bursting with mice. The cages scattered, their tiny occupants flying to the four corners of the room. And as the wizard came in, even with his magic, he couldn’t hope to get past the crowds of people suddenly screaming and jumping as the furry terrors scurried up their pant legs.

The children erupted in laughter and questions, but at the sight of Ashley, Bus waved them off. “You need to get food before your parents eat it all,” he told them seriously, and at his words, most of the kids grinned and clambered up, rushing for the pavilion and the dinner waiting inside.

“Do you want me to bring you some?” Peony asked, still sitting beside him.

“How old do I look to you, kid?” he retorted indignantly. “You think I can’t fight those grownups off? It’s little things like you that got to worry. Now scoot!”

Giggling, Peony pushed off the log and ran after the others.

Once the little girl was gone, Bus winked at Ashley and motioned her closer. “So how you doing, Ashe-girl?”

She shrugged. “Is that story true?”

The old man affected a hurt expression. “You calling me a liar?”

Ashley shook her head and he smiled. “I might’ve embellished a bit,” he admitted. He glanced around. “So where’d Spider get off to?”

“She went to check on Samson.”

His eyebrows moved expressively. “Blue said it’ll be a while before he can walk again. And Spider’s really not going to like hearing that. Close as anything, those two. Been looking out for each other since he found her on the street when they were kids. Couple ferals had her cornered in an alley, but she’d already taken one of them with a shard of glass and her bare hands by the time Samson showed up and shot the other.”

Bus shook his head. “She’d pay money for it to be her in there rather than him, no questions asked.” The old man sighed, pushing the thoughts away. “So how’re you settling in?”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s nice here.”

He nodded amiably. “I always like it.”

“Did you guys build this place or something?”

“Nah,” he said, chuckling. “Bought it. Few decades back, it was some kind of resort. The company who owned it went belly up and, after the war started, Carter and most of the folks here pooled funds to get it, add the mobile homes and keep it all running.”

He paused. “You could probably stay, if you’d like.”

Surprised, she looked over at him.

The old man shrugged. “If you’d like,” he said again.

Uncomfortably, her gaze fell to the firelight on the grass. She’d avoided thinking about it. Couldn’t really in the midst of all the information she’d received over the past day. But things had changed after Spider told her the truth of what was going on. Yesterday, she’d been a girl whose family had been brutally killed. Today she was a wizard in a war, whose family had been brutally killed by monsters in whom no one but these people believed.

A wizard who, if the others learned the truth, would be cast back on the streets. Or shot. If she didn’t accidentally kill them all first.

Her gaze strayed to the people milling around the fire. Hastily finished with their meals, the children ran between clusters of talking adults, their rowdy play undercutting the quiet conversations. By the pavilion, she could see Magnolia, her gray-speckled brown hair slipping from the loose bun at her neck as she threw back her head in a happy laugh.

Ashley turned away. She didn’t know what to do. She wished things were different. That her family hadn’t been killed, or that she could’ve been a cripple like the others believed.

It might’ve been nice to stay.

“Ashe?”

Blinking, she pulled herself from the thoughts and glanced back to the old man, who was eyeing her curiously.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just… thinking.”

His brow furrowed. She cast around quickly for another subject to distract him.

“So, um… would you mind telling me why everybody likes, you know, different names? I mean, did cripples always do that or…” She balked as his eyebrow raised. “Unless that’s just your name. Or it’s personal. I don’t mean to be rude, I just–”

She cut off as he grinned.

“You sure took to it easy enough,” he told her.

Ashley shifted uncomfortably, and he nudged her shoulder companionably. “Just teasing, kiddo. Not all of us are as lucky as you were, having a family who’d watch out for us. Most of us have to do what we can for our own protection, sometimes first and foremost from those who knew us before.”

Her brow drew down in confusion, and he sighed. “Families went weird after the war. All of a sudden, people had to make life or death decisions constantly, and so priorities got shifted, sometimes not in the best ways. Cripples can’t defend themselves. At least, not how the wizards would consider ‘traditionally’. And when you’re on the run, people who don’t seem to offer much defensively can start to look like a liability. Or, because of other things, an opportunity.

“Some people’s families abandoned them. Others turned on them. Samson’s Taliesin relatives looked the other way while his vicious bitch of a sister went after him and his twin brother for power, and only Samson got away. Spider’s Merlin group kicked her out on the streets to die when the war started, even though she was barely twelve at the time. My own family would readily let me stay wherever they’re hiding, on the sole condition that it’s only me. Everyone else I care about can go to hell, because it’s not about compassion in their eyes. Just duty.”

He scoffed. “There’s a thousand stories like ours, one for every cripple you meet. And so we break with the old. We keep ourselves safe from the ferals or the sellouts in our own backyards by losing those identities. Nobody knows Bob Smith or Julie Brown. All those folks are gone. And we protect our own – most of us, anyway. Most of the time.

“So,” he continued, “if your wizard family is attacked, they can’t give you up. If your relatives get desperate and decide to go feral, you’re nowhere to be found. Because that person doesn’t exist anymore. You’re someone new.

“The thing you’ve got to figure, kiddo,” he told her, “is you choose who you belong to. Who you want to be. It’s not blood or birth. It’s a choice. This is our way of setting ourselves apart, as much as anything. Saying we’re not like them. And we never will be.”

She paused. “But Carter didn’t change,” she said, half-asking.

“There’s a few others,” he acknowledged. “But no, he didn’t. For him, well known as he was, there just wouldn’t have been much point.”

He fell silent for a moment. “The name suits you, though,” he said finally.

Ashley hesitated. “Thanks.”

Bus nodded and then sighed, clapping his hands on his knees. “Better go get some food before it’s all gone,” he said. Pushing to his feet, he paused and then rested a hand on her shoulder. “Glad you’re with us, kiddo.”

She watched him walk away. By the pavilion, Peony and the other children ran up, begging for another story, while Magnolia hurried over to shoo them away. Bus laughed, and then glanced back to Ashley, pointing to the buffet and raising his eyebrows questioningly.

Awkwardly, she managed a nod.

Bus dished up plates of food. Escaping her mother’s grasp, Peony giggled madly as she dashed off. Turning her gaze back to the bonfire, Ashley swallowed hard and tried not to think about the fact that, even though so much had changed, she was somehow still living a lie.

*****

Magnolia sat with them through dinner, and the conversation drifted from gardening to van repair, never settling on any topic for too long or delving deeper than small talk. Content to let her contribute if she chose, the others would merely smile at her from time to time, sharing humor at something said and making space for her easily.

She stayed to help clean up, letting Magnolia take drowsy little Peony back home. With the dishes put away and the food stored, Bus walked with her to the darkened cabin, and after leaving her by the porch, he waved as he headed toward Melody’s.

Ashley pushed open the door, and then stopped.

“If they’re working together now, there’s no–”

Jericho’s angry murmur cut off, and he looked up as she came inside.

Carter turned around. On the end table, an oil lamp between the two men’s chairs provided the only light in the dark house.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s alright,” Carter told her.

Looking between them uncomfortably, she shut the door. “Goodnight,” she said, heading for the hall.

“Goodnight,” Carter replied.

She disappeared into her room and shut the door. A moment passed, and then she heard Jericho begin talking again, his words too low to make out.

A few steps brought her to the chest of drawers, and reaching up, she tweaked the curtains shut. The thin fabric diffused the moonlight, still leaving her enough to see by. Hesitating a moment, she took out the gun, laid it on top of the dresser, and then pulled off the jeans and baggy sweatshirt she’d worn for the last few days, leaving the tank top as a stand-in for her nonexistent pajamas. She lay down, but her eyes wouldn’t stay closed. Words kept spinning through her mind, filled with fragments of conversation from the past day.

Wizards. Cripples. Ferals. Blood. Merlin, Taliesin and the utter lack of gray area in between. Wars and murderers and monsters chasing her because they only needed one.

Whatever that meant.

So many lies. Her life was a lie. Being here was a lie. She’d given them Lily’s pet name because it was all she could think of at the time. And now, a few days later, Lily felt like the only thing that’d ever been real.

Choose who you belong to. Bus’ words rose from the morass. Who you want to be. It’s our way of saying we’re not like them. Never will be.

She closed her eyes.

To those around her, she was the deceived girl. Lied to and misled, naïvely accepting of the untruths that’d filled her life. And she was the broken one. Shell-shocked and hurting, and nothing more than a child needing protection.

But then, that was all they’d ever seen.

Choose who you want to be.

Her gaze found the gun atop the dresser, its dark metal outlined by the moonlight.