No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Moira swiveled back to face them in time to see the nod. “In a murder trial the jury has to be unanimous for a guilty verdict.”

  “Guilt isn’t in question here,” Zac said.

  “Nor is any possibility for rehabilitation. He’s been clear on that.” Clearer than they knew.

  “But a tied vote means confinement,” Moira said.

  “Aye.”

  Zac nodded again.

  David couldn’t relax. His every muscle was coiled for action, even with Colm confined. They were in accord now, but they might not be in a minute. He tried to envision a few decades as an alternating prison guard. If it were only impractical, he’d do it. He closed his eyes and drew a long breath, sending a twinge to each bruise on his torso. He’d fought this man in the most desperate of scenarios, for Colm at least. If he’d gotten the upper hand and David were able to die, Colm could have killed him and would have needed no weapon to do it.

  “He’s dangerous,” David said.

  “That’s not in question, either.” Zac glared.

  “I mean he’s too dangerous. Simon’s right. A prison wouldn’t hold any of us forever.” The words tasted like bile. David’s stomach clenched. Lord, if I’m thinking wrongly, show me. “Even if he never killed again, he ought to pay for the lives he took. But he will. We all know he will.”

  Moira bowed her head, covered her face. A crinkle formed between Zac’s eyes, but he didn’t move toward her.

  “Moira, you know we speak the truth.” David tried to lower his voice, to make it gentle, but the edge inside surfaced in his tone.

  “No, I don’t,” she said through her fingers.

  “Finish your deliberating.” Simon’s voice cut between them, and Moira lowered her hands. “Call me when you know what’s to be done.” He hung up.

  “I don’t know why he said that,” Moira said as Zac shoved his phone back into his pocket. “It’s three for the death penalty and one against.”

  “I heard no fourth vote,” David said.

  Her eyes lifted to Zac with a sudden, stunning hope. Zac held her gaze as he pulled out a chair across from the one she’d vacated. She didn’t move away from the window, instead leaned into the wall beside it.

  Half of David expected Moira to pounce with demands, but she stood silently for the few seconds it took Zac to clear his throat, sit forward, and spread his hands open on the table.

  “I might not have the right to vote.”

  Moira’s mouth pursed, but she remained quiet.

  “I know what has to be done.” Zac held up one hand when she drew a breath to argue, and she seemed to shrink against the wall. “But I don’t know if I can carry it out myself. And …” He looked up at David. “Asking you or Simon to do what I can’t would be wrong.”

  “We’ll sedate him,” David said.

  “It isn’t that.”

  “What then?”

  “You’re all picturing exsanguination. Colm’s picturing it too. Run a line into his arm, keep drawing blood until he flatlines. If he’s already asleep, it’s a serene death. Easy on us too. A body that looks asleep.”

  He stopped talking. David nodded him on.

  “But I’m not sure …” Zac closed his eyes. “I’m not sure he would die.”

  David had much to learn, but this seemed straightforward. “No blood, no serum. No serum, no healing.”

  “Yeah, we’ve always thought that. But if one of us is to be executed, we can’t use trial and error on the method.”

  “And you have reason to believe Colm could survive without—?”

  Zac pushed to his feet and nearly tipped his chair. His gaze darted around the room, stopping at each of the four corners. “Sorry, I … Could we talk outside?”

  Without another look at David or Moira, he left the room. The sliding door onto the deck opened and shut.

  “Come on,” Moira said and went after him.

  First David went to the bedroom, his footsteps soundless on the carpet. He stood in the doorway and listened. Breathing. Slow, easy exhalations. Colm might have fallen asleep there in the dark. He had to be as weary as the rest of them.

  David left him to it and went out into the yard, where Zac and Moira sat in the grass, their backs against the wooden privacy fence, their legs stretched in front of them. Zac was staring up at the sky, Moira’s hand on his knee. They weren’t talking. David approached and sat on Moira’s other side.

  His arrival seemed to focus Zac. The man sighed and drew his knees up, and Moira removed her hand. He turned his head toward them.

  “It’s time to talk about Marble Canyon.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  They moved from the yard to sit on David’s porch, single file, feet on the step. Patio furniture would be a welcome addition to his place. David grabbed the thought as it flitted through his mind, glared at its flippancy, then realized it wasn’t flippant. If these people were going to remain in his life, his home should accommodate their presence.

  Zac gave a quiet half laugh and spoke to Moira. “I know you wondered.”

  “About the canyon?”

  “About why I’m alive after falling eight thousand feet.”

  She shrugged, but her mouth turned down. “I did. I thought it had to be the serum.”

  “Moira, think what you’re saying. The serum requires blood to work. Blood requires blood vessels. I fell. Eight. Thousand. Feet.”

  Moira rested her hand on him again, this time on his thigh. The gesture somehow spoke of layers of embroidered history, days or nights she’d sat with him exactly like this.

  “I fell,” Zac whispered.

  “I’m so sorry.” Moira leaned her head on his shoulder.

  He cleared his throat. “When I came to, I was lying in … I don’t know how to describe it. My own remains. There should have been nothing left. Of me.”

  “Why you disposed of the clothing,” David said.

  “Shreds, David. The physical … like the clothes had burst. Like a body had burst from inside them. But still on me. My arms in the armholes of the shirt. The waist of the jeans around my waist.”

  His eyes were losing their focus. Moira rubbed her thumb in a slow circle above his knee. Aye, they’d done this before.

  Zac met David’s eyes again. “So you see?”

  Colm. David nodded. “I do.”

  “I won’t experiment on him. If he has to die, you know how we have to do it.”

  The one thing David had always figured would be enough to end him: separating the brain that could die from the body that couldn’t. Another nod, while acid rose in his throat.

  Moira shook her head. “No. Zac, no.”

  “It’s the only way to be sure.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. It’s not scientific.”

  David would defer to them in this if they agreed. They had more information than he. But if their conclusions were different, he had to weigh in. He tried to sort it all as both of them fell silent. Colm’s body continuing to function without blood, managing to wake up when the drugs were drained away as well … David shook his head.

  “She’s right, Zac. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Neither does my survival.” He lifted a hand and turned it over as if his palm and fingers fascinated him, but his face was tight. His jaw clenched. “I will not take the chance of accidentally torturing him. We do it clean, or we don’t do it.”

  Clean. All right. “But didn’t you also survive …?” He couldn’t find a wholesome way to phrase it.

  “Brain death?” Zac said. “Not that, I didn’t.”

  “No,” Moira whispered.

  “He’ll go to sleep first. He’ll never know.”

  “Confinement. We’ll be careful. He’ll stay locked up as long as we live.”

  Zac shut his eyes.

  “Zac,” she whispered. “Please.”

  It wasn’t that one death was more final, more wrenching than another. But the reality of it had at last sunk into them both. So Zac’s vote wa
s cast. David stood unnoticed and slipped back into the house. He padded back to the bedroom and inspected the closet door again, listened to Colm’s unbothered breathing and fought down a boiling desire to kill the man here and now. Kill him for the sorrow he was causing those who loved him with greater love than he knew.

  Or perhaps he did know.

  “You could have spared all of us this next part.”

  David turned from the room and went to his own and knelt in front of the cedar trunk. He lowered himself until he was prostrate, carpet fibers scratching his forehead, nose, chin. He spread his hands outward.

  “Lord God,” he said. “Is there no other way?”

  Eleven souls. At least. Few serial killers confessed to all.

  “If it’s a righteous cause, if You wish the man’s life ended, then I’ll do it. Our duty to bear the sword against one of ours, against evil when the mortals cannot defend themselves. But, Lord, this weight is heavier than years.”

  He stayed on his face a long time, wrestling himself, giving the burden up. The others left him alone. At last he rose, opened the trunk, dug to the bottom, and lifted his saber. Untouched for so long but not rusted. He drew it from its sheath, and the steel gleamed. Sharp. Ready.

  He set it on the lid of the trunk and went out to the others.

  Seated on the living room couch, they were huddled together, feet drawn up under them, arms around each other. Moira seemed to be asleep. Her eyes were swollen, but Zac’s held steel, saber strong.

  “I called Simon.”

  David nodded. Sat in the chair and turned to watch the turtle. She was active at the moment, clawing a burrow into the one corner she hadn’t dug up lately.

  “He was at the gate for his flight. He knew what we would decide, and he said … well, he said he’ll be a witness.”

  “From where is he flying?” Odd, David had never asked that before. Knew nothing at all about Simon, really.

  “Florida.” A smile tried to find Zac’s mouth but failed. “We call him the old codger.”

  “Tiana’s called me the same. I cannot fathom why.”

  Now the smile surfaced, though only for a moment. Zac cupped his hand over Moira’s head and sighed.

  “Have you spoken to Colm?” David said.

  “No.” The word was flat. Final.

  “Seems someone should inform him of his verdict.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Zac …” David scrubbed at his face. The words wouldn’t come. Zac said nothing, and at last David cleared his throat. “I’ve a saber in the house.”

  Zac stopped breathing.

  “It ought to be tonight. Once Simon’s with us.”

  “I know,” Zac said quietly. He cleared his throat. “There’s a bottle of sleeping pills in my luggage.”

  “All right.”

  “When I fly, one keeps me chill, but it doesn’t knock me out. He’ll probably need two or three, to be sure.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Okay.” He drew a ragged breath.

  “Will Moira be all right?”

  Zac nestled her closer to him. She stirred but didn’t awake. “She cares a lot. Even about him, I guess. She fell asleep still asking me to change my vote.”

  “I know it isn’t your custom, but I’d like to hear his story.”

  A little time passed in silence. David turned again to watch the turtle, but she was still now, facing the corner, half burrowed into the mulch.

  “Colm was our smithy,” Zac said, and David kept his face toward the terrarium. “He could make just about anything. He and his wife never had any children. When she died, he didn’t marry again. Showed no interest in it, ever, until he met Rose. And after Rose he … well, he changed. Closed himself off to some degree, though I never …”

  David faced him. “You couldn’t have.”

  “Anyway, about Fisher Lake. He got sick, and Doc Leon decided it had to be appendicitis, and if it wasn’t, maybe he could find what it was before Colm died. So he operated.

  Come to find out there was some tumor on Colm’s stomach, but when Doc tried to remove it, it ruptured and Colm started bleeding out. Like one of his organs burst or something. The notes are vague; Doc never knew what happened. But he figured if your internal injuries had healed, maybe Colm’s would too, and nothing to lose, so …” Zac shrugged. “He was right, of course; Colm made a full recovery, and …”

  Zac turned his face to the wall. Sighed with something like a groan and then tried to laugh away the sound. “Yeah, uh, so that’s the story. Of Colm.”

  “This isn’t the way you thought his story would end.”

  Zac met his eyes with a hollow gaze. “I thought the serum would run out one day. And we’d become old men.”

  Together. David nodded.

  “But he’s cut other stories short, David. I know that. Men, women. With loved ones, families, lives left to live. He chose that. So he’s written his own end.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll see it through.”

  Nothing more to say. David nodded.

  After a while Zac eased Moira down to the couch and slid a pillow under her head. It was barely afternoon, but Zac said she had been up most of the night as David had, tossing and turning until the bed creaked. He set a kiss on her forehead and then followed David to the library.

  Zac turned a circle, taking in the full bookshelves, before settling on the floor against the wall. David got them both coffee and they drank it in silence, but a nettle of a question had been pricking at him since last night.

  “You called Him Jehovah,” David said.

  Zac’s brow furrowed.

  “Last night. You bowed and called on Him by name.”

  “I guess I did.” Zac held eye contact, and his mouth remained flat. No smirk, no slipping on a mask.

  “Do you know Him truly, then?”

  He gazed out into the dark again. “I used to say I knew Him like Jacob did, before he was Israel.”

  “What of Christ?”

  Zac rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t lack belief, if that’s what concerns you.”

  “Belief is only one piece of knowing Him.”

  “Leave it be, David.”

  It was answer enough. He nodded acquiescence.

  A minute passed, and then Zac shook his head. “What’s between you and God is something I can’t have.”

  David tilted his head. Let the man say more if he chose to.

  “I wrestle. All the time. Never any peace.” Zac clenched his eyes shut. “He gives me no peace.”

  “Then why do you wrestle?”

  “It’s that or submit.”

  Danger crept over David’s soul. “Zac.”

  “Don’t. It is what it is. I’m not built for surrender.”

  “Zac—”

  “And no need to quote Philippians chapter two at me. I’ve tried to bow my knee. I can’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Yes, he did. His expression told that much. “A century of wrestling?”

  “It’s exhausting, I can tell you.”

  Dear Lord. He would pray for this man’s soul a hundred more years if needed.

  When Zac stood and chose a book, David did the same, and he stayed to read while Zac went back to the living room.

  Interminable time passed. Hours. They should eat, but it was safe to say no one felt hungry. Moira woke and asked after Colm. At some point, numb and idle, the three of them tried to make small talk, but it didn’t feel right. David grilled Swiss cheese on wheat bread, and like children they each took a triangle sandwich slice from the plate and nibbled it. He got out an old checkerboard, and this didn’t feel right, either, but he and Zac played ten games. David won eight of them because Zac’s eyes kept losing their focus and straying toward the hallway to the bedroom.

  David tried to remember a longer day in his life. There were a few, but they were draped in cobwebs, pushed to the back of
his memory, not the kind he wanted to relive. This one would be joining them.

  In the late afternoon, Simon came by taxi, no luggage but a backpack. He rang the front doorbell and entered David’s house with heavy steps. Moira rushed to him and hugged him.

  “There,” he said, stroking her hair.

  “Simon,” she said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Nearest thing I have to a jail cell,” David said. “Closet in the back bedroom.”

  They went to the back of the house, the four of them, led by David. He motioned them back as he unlocked the closet door. Colm might jump him. They had to be ready to restrain him if he got free.

  The man was slumped in a corner. His eyes were bright in the dark, reflecting the sunlight from the window as he took them in.

  “Simon,” Colm said, as if the man’s presence alone answered all questions.

  “Colm.”

  “I’ve been sentenced to death for my crimes.”

  Simon stepped up to David’s side. “You have.”

  Colm’s mouth twitched upward. “So you’ll execute an immortal for behaving like an immortal. One of your own is worth less to you than a motley assortment of human souls.”

  “We’re human too,” Moira whispered.

  “We were human, but it’s been a long time since then.”

  “You said this is what you want.”

  Something flickered behind his eyes. He looked past the three of them at Zac, who stood back and to one side.

  “You won’t give me what I want,” Colm said to him. “I deserve to live with myself.”

  “Yeah,” Zac said. “But that’s not relevant.”

  David hauled him from the closet and pushed him down in a corner of the room. He didn’t resist, sat with his knees splayed out and his ankles bound.

  “Tonight,” Colm said. “You’re going through with it tonight.”

  “Delay won’t change anything,” Simon said.

  The expression in Colm’s eyes became shuttered. He leveled a vacant look at Moira. Tilted his head. She stared back. Before David could understand what had passed between them, Simon turned to him.

  “You and Zac figure out where. I’ll stand guard for now.”

  The subtext was clear. Simon had things to say to Colm. He nodded Moira out of the room as well, and she followed David and Zac to the kitchen.