***
Suffocating on congesting tears, the atrocious scene unfurled before him. Fulvio’s eyes filling with water, he couldn’t make out his son’s face, let alone speak of Pomfrey’s lewd insinuations. The bastard’s last-ditch effort to make people hate him.
“Nothing, Fulvio?” Pomfrey had strut toward him to spit in his face. “No denial—No remedy to soothe your son’s mind? Or to beg for mercy? No final confession to those who love you?”
Fulvio inhaled a choppy breath. His mouth opened, but the words stuck like paste. Clearing his throat, he said, “Don’t believe everything you hear. My son, I love you. I love you all.”
“That’s it?” The veins in Pomfrey’s temple bloomed. Toting a gnarled expression, his eyes and mouth twitched uncontrollably. “String him up.”
Mediator Grunt shoved the big man over the trap door. Flaunting an arrogant façade, he roughly pushed the rope over Fulvio’s head and cinched the noose.
“No-o-o—” Peter broke from the crowd. Forceful, he threaded among jockeying bodies.
Implementing the butt of his rifle, a Mediator clipped Peter in the head. He crashed backward. Shrieks of discontent and dismay resounded.
During a cursory lull, an echoing blast penetrated the basin. Fulvio’s garroting noose unraveled by a precisely targeted bullet and dangled over his shoulder like a ponytail. Doogan jumped into action. Disarming Korbi of his rifle, he sucker-punched the boy in the mouth. Korbi fell, unconscious.
Doogan did not fight alone. Keeyla’s fingers rounded the barrel of a rifle while instantaneously kicking the Mediator in the groin. He buckled.
Browbeaten and incensed citizens joined the fray.
Rampant riddling shots split air. “Doogan McTullan,” yelled Pomfrey, brandishing two revolvers like a raving lunatic. “Good riddance to your father.”
Listening to Pomfrey’s threat, the conflict delayed long enough to detect moving shadows impeding the sun. Disoriented citizens didn’t know where to look, at the crazed Pomfrey or the mysterious winged creatures.
Heedless of the fowl’s officious squawking overhead, and one in particular that zoomed like a torpedo. Pomfrey leveled his revolver at Fulvio.
“Pomfrey! No—!” Doogan reached out, an illusory effort to save his father.
The revolver discharged, Fulvio’s body reeled, and an immense heagle clamped Pomfrey’s shoulders. Caged in talons, the carrion bird didn’t hesitate, and ferried the thrashing Elite, disappearing from sight.
Spread-eagled on the wooden platform, Fulvio.
Harried shrieking, citizens ran amok, dodging and ducking plummeting heagles. Doogan retrieved an unconscious Mediators gun, then discerned the birds weren’t actually attacking. Obliquely wheeling, the creatures orbited the square. A turbulence of feathery winged heagles performed a tactical aerial ceremony.
“Kill those peckerheads!” Grunt said, sticking the rifles scope to his eye. He pressed the trigger. “Hah! Got one!” Black and white feathers peppered the clear sky. The unique heagle’s cry harkened as it fell to earth.
Like a fitting condemnation, boring talon’s anchored Grunt from behind and ascended. His cantankerous caterwauling dissipated like frost in the sun.
The remaining heagles seemed to loiter in formation above Fulvio like a relevant accolade. Mediators lowered their weapons, swapping bemused expressions.
Suddenly, charging into view, a cyclonic Tibbles unleashing his fury with an unrestrained roar. And behind the ferocious beast were Smelt, Gus, and Ennis. Mediators shouldered their weapons and fired.
“Don’t shoot! Stop!” Keeyla and Doogan erratically bashing the Mediators rifles to the ground. “He’s friendly. Stop!”
“Keeyla, see to the boy and anyone who’s wounded.” Doogan ignored the whizzing bullets and dashed to the platform. His physician eyes, alert and exact, perused Fulvio’s condition.
Shirtless, a blood-splattered mess, and an evident bullet wound to his upper chest. He knelt, praying he was alive. Faint but shallow, Fulvio breathed. He was alive, for now.
“Son,” he wheezed. “I cannot die with a guilty conscience.”
“You’re not dying today.” He wanted to hold his hand but noticed them cuffed behind his back.
“Listen.” He blinked, attempting to focus on him. “After your mother died, I was enamored with Gwin.” He coughed, spitting blood. “She was not stout like Brige, but…flirtatious. It was a trivial dalliance; nothing came of it. Paniess is not my daughter.” His chest heaved, catching a breath. “Be-lieve…me…” Fulvio’s eyes rolled in their sockets.
EPILOGUE
Snowflakes cavorted over a winter white Tallas, claiming every nook and cranny. The amassing accumulation numbed and tempered the basin into a feeling of serene tranquility. Doogan released a veritable plume of mist as he strode beneath the defrocked oak trees lining the mansions entrance.
Stomping clumped snow from his leather boots on the jamb, he opened the heavy door. Struck by a blaze of warmth, he chafed cold hands and prior to meandering onto the marble-tiled floor, shucked his boots.
He padded into the main parlor and found Fabal, nose in a book. Tucked into the tiny alcove on the tattered cushion his mother had sewn many years ago, fleeting memories rose to the surface. Him as a boy, and reading in that same spot. “Hey, buddy, how’s it going?”
“Dad—!” Fabal bounded off the cushion and into his father’s arms. “You were gone too long this time. Mom’s in the kitchen cooking up a storm.”
Doogan liberally inhaled. “Ummmm…Roasted turkey and gravy.”
“How’d you know?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” He rumpled his son’s hair. “Swan and Knox want you to come next time.”
“I miss them. They’re my best friends, now.” He lowered his head, and Doogan knew he was thinking of Larksen. After learning of his friend’s death, Fabal had cried for a month. Even now he spotted bleakness in his son’s eyes. “Why won’t Tanya come and live here? They could go to school with me.”
“Your mother and I are working on it.” He shouldered out of his coat and hung it over a peg on the wall. “You’ll be surprised when you see the new settlement.”
“When do we leave?”
“After the snows. Okay?”
“Yep, I can’t wait.”
“I knew I heard your voice.” Keeyla waddled into the room, hands dusting up and down on her print apron. Her fingers splayed on her bloated belly to scratch. “I don’t think my skin is going to stretch much further.”
Keeyla smiled, drenching him with her enticing charm. He sauntered and palmed his hands on her mounded form. “You’re perfect. And this baby’s going to be perfect.”
“Oops.” Her eye’s popped. “The little imp already knows you. Did you feel that?”
“Soon baby.” He kissed her stomach. “I can’t wait to see him.”
“Or her.” A booming voice pealed into their ears. “What makes you think it’s a boy?” Fortified and slimmer, Fulvio swaggered toward them. “Doogan, I need to drag you away from your family reunion for a moment, please.” His thistly eyebrows arched.
Once contained in the mansion’s library, Fulvio winced while lowering onto the couch.
“Do you need me to check out those wounds again?” Doogan asked, and sat opposite of him. A patina of moisture speckled his fathers creased forehead.
“Darn thing still smarts, that’s all. I’m fine.” He withdrew a hankie and swabbed his face. “I was never meant to manage a village, not really. I like being out and about, in the wild.”
“We discussed this. You need to heal before going half-cocked over the mountain.”
Fulvio shook his head with an exaggerated eye roll. “How’s Gee?” he asked, finding a new avenue of conversation besides his health.
“Feeling guilty as hell, and responsible for Riggs. I keep telling him that Riggs was too far gone.” Doogan blinked away the rush of tears and wiped his nose, the memory of his friend was still raw. “He li
kes tending to the people at the new settlement. He’s an excellent physician.”
“Gee knows better than to blame himself,” Fulvio said, poking his baby finger into his ear and jiggling. “That’s Pomfrey’s sin to bear.”
They sat through a minor silence collecting their thoughts.
“Okay.” Fulvio sounded contrite. “Let’s get down to business. In the past four months, I see a change. I can only hope and trust Tallas is on the mend, much like myself. What do you think, my boy?”
Imitating his father, Doogan stroked his new growth of a bristly mustache and beard. “I like that word, mend. I agree. The walled fencing is good for abating monsters.” His upper lip quirked, recollecting when Fabal first talked about monsters in the wilderness. “We’ve opened the perimeters for hunters, which means people won’t starve this winter. Fresh meat is plentiful, though, pantries of root vegetables are beginning to dwindle. Let’s hope for an early spring for planting.” He bracketed his elbows on his thighs. “Are Cletus and Zent cooperating, and the Executives?”
“Pomfrey was the mange in this society. That disease has been abolished, for now.” Fulvio supported his spine into the couch cushion and propped his ankle over his left leg. “We’re blind and ignorant men if we hold a belief in a utopian world. It will never be seamless. Problems and riffs will be forever on our doorsteps. But for now, at this moment, citizens are at peace. Living and thriving. New life, new babies.”
Doogan perceived a smile peeking below his father’s mustache, probably thinking of his new grandson or granddaughter.
“We have a sister settlement over the mountains, which some citizens have decided to uproot to see the new land.” Fulvio continued, “Mutated persons are no longer treated like they have the plague. And more survivors are trickling in. That’s a good thing.
“Our planet isn’t totally decimated as we presumed. People survived all around the world; I’m sure of it.” He hesitated, tweaking his nose and snuffling loudly. Outdoorsy, gamey fumes bathed the area. “I know you’re there, my friend. And by the smell, you’re due for a bubbly bath.”
“Rarrrra?” A blocky blue head poked into the library.
“Go, go. But don’t scare Greta, or anybody else today,” Fulvio warned Tibbles. “Everyone’s just getting used to you.”
“I assume Fabal’s going with you?” If bears could smile, Doogan swore he smiled and nodded. It was still hard to handle the notion of Tibbles sharing a bedroom with his son. The two had become inseparable.
Doogan rose. “Do we have a name for the new settlement yet?” He observed a grimacing Fulvio easing off the couch.
“Hmmm…” Twisting the hairs of his silvery beard. “I have been giving it some thought.” Fulvio’s gray eyes, which he’d been told were the exact replica of his own, stared at him. “How about— Zennith?”
“Zennith, a perfect name.” He set a palm on his father’s shoulder, about the only part of his body he claimed didn’t ache. “Perfect.”
They wandered into the foyer where a very expectant Keeyla knuckled her expanding hips.
“Where are you going, young man?” She said to Fabal, who was dressed to the max in his fox fur coat and boots. “We’re eating soon.”
“Tibbles and I are going sledding.”
“Go and have fun,” Fulvio said, chuckling. “You’re only young once.”
Doogan arranged a loving, protective arm over Keeyla’s shoulders and kissed the tip of her nose.
###
Snow on Cinders (The Tallas Series Book 2) Page 22
