Kealan Burke - Kin

“Just take ’er easy now,” he mumbled, as if advising himself.

With no room to move, her hand bent behind her, Claire felt the wire she’d taken from the bedsprings poking her between the shoulder blades. She told herself to relax, that panic would get her nowhere, but then realized that was a lie. Stark panic had freed her the first time she’d found herself a captive in this charnel house. But would it do so again? And even if it did, did she really want to give herself over to such impulses a second time when she was still haunted by the guilt of the first?

“Don’t do this,” she said. “If you let me go, I won’t say anything.”

“Why not?” McKindrey asked.

There was no response to that. She shook her head dumbly.

“I would think it’d be the first thing you’d do, mad as you are at me.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Claire lied. “I’m mad that my friends are gone and I can’t bring them back.”

“But I had a hand in that.”

“Not the worst one.”

He smiled unevenly, appraised her anew, but the gun was steady in his hand. “You’re a clever girl. I’m real sorry you’re stuck in this, though I expect you won’t believe that.”

She closed her eye. “If you are sorry, then you might as well do me a favor and end it.” The wisdom of the request eluded her, but whatever had motivated it, it suddenly felt absolutely right. With it came a calm similar to the one she had felt when McKindrey had mentioned the field with the dead tree. An end was coming, and though she did not know the form it would ultimately take, she welcomed the peace it promised.

“End it how?”

“Pull the trigger,” she told him. “You’ve helped put a whole lot of people in their graves. Might as well help one more.”

In the darkness, she relied only on her senses and the small voice that drifted up from somewhere deep inside her that whispered, There’s no way out except his way. You fight and even if you escape him all you’ll ever do is fight. Why not end it right here, right now? What do you even have that’s worth fighting for?

She heard the raspy sound of his breathing.

The jingle of the keys on his belt.

The creak of leather.

But the sound she expected, feared, hoped for…didn’t come.

She looked.

He was still standing there, still staring at her, the cruiser lights flickering behind him, the headlights painting one side of his face, the other mired in shadow. Frustrated, she asked, “What are you waiting for? You have me. I’m giving you what you want.”

He nodded once. “So I see. Why?”

The void dissolved. Anger and the anguish that had plagued her since the day she’d fled this place coalesced inside her, surged upward on the crest of a red tide that made her whole body tremble.

“What difference does it make? You suddenly give a shit? Pull the fucking trigger, you hick bastard.”

The uncertainty that had come over him did not evaporate under the brunt of her insult. Instead he stiffened, seemed to consider what she’d said and then looked down at the gun. To her disbelief, he gave a rueful shake of his head. “Real sorry for what they done to you. Better dead than be left—”

Before she knew she was going to do it, she rushed him, expecting the surprise of it to make his trigger finger spasm and send a bolt of hot fire into her chest, but instead he staggered backward, away from her, his mouth open in a dark circle. His wounded foot betrayed him and he stumbled, fell heavily to the left and landed on his side. Claire was on him. He quickly brought the gun up, even as she brought the wire down like a tribal Indian spearing a fish.

An odd roar accompanied the downward arc of the wire and the upward swing of the gun. The light through the windows changed, brightened, became the sun on a new morning though it was far too early.

As a cry of primeval rage burst from Claire’s mouth, the wire found its target, piercing the side of Sheriff McKindrey’s throat, his eyes widening in surprise. Dark blood spurted from the wound. Cursing, one hand flying to his neck, he pulled the trigger but the gun was now aimed upward and though the shot deafened her, the bullet plowed harmlessly into the ceiling.

Dust and splinters rained down.

Claire withdrew the wire and stabbed again. All she could hear now was a distant rumble and a low whistle in her ears, which worsened as McKindrey scrambled, his feet scrabbling against the bare wood as she straddled him, the wire held overhead in a two-hand grip. He flailed at her, the cold metal barrel of the gun smashing into her right temple once and again. She persisted despite the nauseating tilt of the world through her good eye, gouging his arms, his face, his chest with the rusted wire. She smelled old death and decay, new blood and sudden fear. It inspired her, and she doubled her assault on the man who was three times her weight and twice her height, empowered by rage to keep him down. Panic did not fuel her. There was no name for the impulse that pounded through her now.

McKindrey bucked. She held on, her free hand planted on his chest, the other incessantly perforating his bulk with the wire. He cried out as she punctured his jaw, punched his broken nose.

Then the wall and windows seemed to detonate as the light exploded into the room and they were enveloped in a storm of flying wood and glimmering glass.

Beau came to on a hard flat surface. Immediately he realized that he was no longer in the woods.

He was also bare-chested.

And he was not alone.

Instinctively he reached out a hand for his gun, driven by the unreasonable hope that whoever had brought him here had left it close by. Unsurprisingly, his trembling fingers found nothing but air.

Sudden scalding pain in his belly made him roar and ram his knuckles into his mouth, biting down to keep from chewing on his tongue, and he raised his head to identify the source of the agony through the tears in his eyes. He blinked furiously, struggling to clear his vision, but already he knew what he would see. The pain could not suffocate the dread that came at the thought of it.

They had him.

Leaning over Beau, who was lying on what he now realized was the kitchen table he’d seen earlier on his inspection of the cabin, was a giant, blocking out the strained light from a naked bulb, which reduced him to a wild-haired silhouette.

“Aw God ,” Beau moaned as another round of fierce pain blasted through him from his wound. He convulsed, began to scream and did not stop, even when the man’s large hand covered his mouth and he tasted blood and dirt.

Claire lay on her stomach and waited.

She felt weight on her feet and wondered if she’d lost them, or at the very least broken them and tangled the nerves. But there was no pain, only heat. Beneath her face, the surface of the floor was rough like sandpaper, but she didn’t move. Wasn’t sure she was able. Any moment now McKindrey might rise up, shake off his discomfort and pump her body full of bullets. Even if he had been short on reasons to hurt her before, which he hadn’t, she’d given him ample motive to hurt her now. She had attacked him like an animal, and though she did not mourn the passing of that peculiar, frightening impulse, nor did she regret it. It had served its purpose and again, though the dangerous resignation with which she was growing grimly familiar had swept her up in its calming embrace, she had fought for her life. The absence of reasons for it to continue had not been enough to drain whatever resolve existed in that untouchable, unseen reservoir inside her.

“Claire?”

She did not raise her head. Gradually, small campfires of pain registered across the dark landscape of her body. Cuts, lacerations, bruises. She didn’t care. Superficial , the doctors would say, just as they had said at the hospital in Mason City and she had sneered at them. Nothing about what had been done to her had been superficial. Every incision they’d made with their dirty blades had branded her with the memory of the faces and intent of those who’d made them.