The black mass of his men broke up and their dark figures scattered across Olive's yard. Many carried heavy bags on their backs, others lugged carts loaded with mounds of supplies concealed with canvas. Most of the men were heavily protected — with long pants, animal hide strapped to their legs, arms, and middles — as if ready for battle. They strolled across Olive's yard with a cocky familiarity, dropping their bags, unpacking, sprawling out across the grass.
"Same fellas as last time," said someone behind Eli.
A small crowd had gathered around him along the shoulder of the road. They grumbled about all the food this group would eat, how the men spooked and frightened them.
"Time to sing your song and dance now, Mrs. Grant," said a woman behind him. "The puppet master is here."
Quinn pointed at Olive again, then thrust a finger at the guest house. Her narrow figure finally slipped from its post and down the stairs, an oil lamp in her shadowed hand to light the way. She floated across the yard, a series of glowing lines in the darkness. When she was a few feet away, Quinn spun on his heel and marched toward the guest house. He walked with authority and anger, his back straight and head held high.
Someone brushed Eli's arm. He became aware of voices, a brush of cool air on his skin. His mind cleared. The sky above was velvet black, the stars stamped out by clouds. He stood on a cracked asphalt road and a mansion loomed before him. Behind it, a guest house, dozens of innocent girls trapped inside. Regret swept over him like a sickness.
Eli may as well have kidnapped the girls himself — he'd turned Quinn from a loving father of three girls into a man who snatched them for sexual servitude.
The door opened, and a rectangle of light glowed soft and yellow through the dark. Three silhouettes appeared. The door shut and they vanished into shadow. Olive's lamp kindled and its light traced three shapes.
Olive. Jane. Quinn.
Eli marched down and across the road to meet them.
Quinn led the others down the yard to Olive's mansion. He gestured angrily around him at the sea of candle flames, his familiar voice drifting on a chill breeze, as soft and calm as Eli remembered.
"Do not tell me I'm mistaken, Mrs. Grant," Quinn was saying. "I saw the bruises myself."
The group stopped and Eli drew closer. Olive's voice split the quiet like cracking ice. "Ask Martha —"
"I will, but we had an agreement. You're responsible." Quinn edged into the sphere of light gleaming from Olive's oil lamp; the orange glow licked a bushy red beard and an angry face. "These girls deserve better. They're sacred."
Olive cleared her throat and gazed over Quinn's shoulder. "I'm sure they are."
Eli neared. Jane spied him first, her face a bodiless orb floating between Olive and Quinn's taller figures. Eli studied Quinn's tall and broad-shouldered frame; his flaming red hair, once cropped short but now a thick mane; a thicket of beard stretching past his collarbone. The gaunt face, leathery and lined. And the eyes, like smoldering coals in a fire: dark, angry, and quivering with perpetual horror.
"Mr. Stentz, there you are," Olive said.
Quinn's gaze found him. His winged eyebrows knotted. Slowly, deep sorrow weakened the hard face. Then blood rushed to the leathery skin and Quinn began to shake. Eli's muscles seized like he'd been electrocuted.
"We'll be serving dinner shortly." Olive's eyebrow arched. "You'll join us, Mr. Stentz. I — "
"Do you remember their names?" Quinn interrupted calmly.
Eli fixed his gaze on Jane's face, shining like the moon. He savored the last time she'd look at him without hate, then nodded.
"Donna, Laurie, and Brianna."
"And who were Donna, Laurie, and Brianna?" Quinn uttered their names like a prayer.
Eli forced himself to hold Jane's gaze. His heart pounded against his ribs. "Your wife and daughters."
Bodies rustled around him, gathering closer; Eli spoke loud and clear so everyone could hear his confession. Quinn took a steadying breath.
"And how do you know them?"
"Three years ago, I was with a group of thieves, killers, and rapists. Mr. Percy and his people lived in an asylum. We wanted it and everything he had. We broke in." Eli paused as dizziness overtook him; he didn't want Jane to hear the next part, but she stared at him, listening to every word. "They killed the men, raped the women. I did nothing to stop it. When it was done, I executed Donna, Laurie, and Brianna."
The crowd gasped together. Olive took a sharp, sudden breath. A tear glimmered on Jane's cheek. Eli's stomach roiled.
"Why?" The calm in Quinn's voice faltered with a crack.
"I was ordered to."
Silence fell. Quinn stared blankly into the darkness. Olive glanced at Eli, then at the guest house. Jane wiped away her tear and crossed her arms, staring back with smoldering eyes. She didn't need to speak. Eli knew what she'd say: that she'd never love him now, that he'd ruined their plans to save the girls, that she'd never forgive him.
"Where have you been since?" came Quinn's calm voice.
"In a settlement south of here."
"Have you made anything of yourself?"
"No."
"Have you loved and cared for others?"
Eli hoped Jane read his face. "Yes."
"Have you killed again?"
"Yes."
"How many people?"
"Five."
"Have you thought of my family since that day?"
Eli's throat tightened and he coughed. Tears blurred Quinn's face. "Tried not to."
"Have you changed?"
Eli lowered his head to stare at the black ground. "No."
Olive clutched her chest and leaned in close to Eli, so close that he could smell her flowery perfume. "You're not the man I thought you were."
Her bulbous blue eyes puddled with tears.
"He'll be held in your jail overnight. Set up a platform here." Quinn gestured across Olive's front lawn. "I'll avenge my family in the morning."
Olive's blond head shot up, her eyes dry and grim once again. "You cannot order his execution within my walls."
"The alternative is to have a murderer running free. Such crimes cannot go unpunished."
"That is my decision."
Quinn glared down at Olive. "This man does not deserve mercy. He cannot be saved and he will not change. I've looked into the eyes of evil enough to know that."
Olive's pale skin blanched; she pursed her lips.
"Very well." Olive studied Eli's face, the blue pools of her eyes rimmed in red. "What a disappointment you've proven to be, Mr. Stentz." She stared over Quinn's shoulder. "Execution at dawn, then."
The ground heaved below Eli's feet. He looked up, hoping to root himself in Jane's familiar face. But the space where he'd last seen her was now empty and dark.
Chapter 40
Once again, Eli found himself in a jail cell. It was a small black room with hard dirt floors, a makeshift barred door, and no window.
He sat on the floor in a corner, knees drawn up to his chest, listening to the snores and groans of the other prisoners. On the other side of the bars a man sat on a stool, his hulking form half lit by a shaft of moonlight streaming in through a window outside the cell.
He'd sat there all night, studying Eli in silence, transfixed and focused and wild. Eli felt like prey waiting to be eaten. The man sighed deeply and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
"I normally don't execute evildoers." Quinn spread his hands as if addressing an audience. He spoke low and soft, his voice slightly accented and rhythmic, almost musical. "Physical pain isn't an effective form of punishment. I prefer public shaming."
Quinn shimmied to the edge of his seat. Eli peered at him from the corner of his eye but kept his gaze to the floor. That calm, mesmerizing voice drilled into his mind.
"The evildoer is held in a stockade naked. His sins are written across his body for everyone to see. He stays there for days. His friends, family visit to judge and admonish him."
; Quinn's voice grew husky and amused, and a smile twitched under his thick beard. Eli recoiled, unease gnawing at his stomach and spreading to his limbs. He steadied himself by placing his palms on the cold dirt floor.
"Gradually, the evildoer becomes penitent, humbled. Fearful of being cast out, alone. It's quite effective. People need to face who they really are. Usually they must be forced."
The unease crept into Eli's legs and he jerked to his feet, desperate to leave his cell. Instead he paced, wondering what sins would be painted on his body.
Killing. Lying. Selfishness.
Eli sensed Quinn's frenzied eyes following him back and forth in the small cell. Two overwhelming desires battled inside him: the need for Quinn to leave and the need to hear him speak. His rhythmic voice echoed again.
"If you faced your past, Eli, if you revealed every awful secret and every evil you've committed, you'd feel unburdened and reborn. Even redeemed. Don't you agree?"
Eli found himself nodding, but inside he felt something else. Redeemed? No. But free? Yes. Everyone knew his sins now and their weight on his soul had vanished. In his cramped, dark cell, he felt lighter than he had in years.
"I'm glad you agree with me, Eli," Quinn whispered. He leaned back on his stool and stretched out his legs expansively. For a moment he was silent, his vacant face turned to the window. Then he asked, "What do you think those creatures are?"
Eli stopped pacing to stand in the center of his cell. "All I know is they ain't human no more."
Quinn nodded. "And what purpose do you think they serve?"
"None."
Quinn stood up suddenly. "Wrong. Everything serves a purpose in this world." He grabbed the bars of Eli's cell with thick fingers and peered inside. Eli felt chilled; something in his eyes was unhinged, as if man and soul had been severed.
"They're a mirror, Eli. In those soulless creatures, we see our depravity and demons. You remember how the world used to be — full of greed, violence, heartache, hatred. And look at what man has done since then: murdered and stole, just to survive. We've chosen that path and committed atrocities because there was no one around to stop us. There's a rottenness inside us, Eli. And we've been given a second chance to root it out."
Quinn peeled his hands from the bars and spread out his arms.
"We have an opportunity to build a glorious new world. But to do so, we must rid ourselves of these demons." His manic eyes flashed, the winged eyebrows flicked upward. "We must face our sins, atone, and correct our behavior to become more perfect versions of who we once were."
Eli studied the face before him: the deep creases across the forehead, the thicket of red beard and flushed skin, the wild eyes. Quinn's words suffocated him with their truth, but they came from the mouth of a madman. Eli remembered Simon's dirt-stained face, staring at him with horror.
What was the mission? Eli had asked him.
You don't want to know.
"You don't believe me, I take it?" Quinn said.
"It's not for me to say."
Quinn stepped back to his stool and sat. "I'm surprised. You know as much as I do what horrors mankind can commit, Eli. I've seen it. You've done it. And you've seen the healing power of confession and come dawn, atonement."
Eli turned away, Quinn's probing gaze burning a hole in the back of his skull.
"What about you?" Eli finally said.
"What about me?"
"Look what you've done to those girls."
Quinn chuckled behind him. "They're sacred creatures. And they're going to help me take back the world."
"Sacred?" Eli's temper flared up his spine to his skull, but he swallowed it down. "Two of them are dead, you know."
Every line in Quinn's face drooped and the skin blanched white. He shook his head slowly. "You're lying."
"I'm not." Eli imagined Lily, cold and white on the forest floor. "But maybe dead is better," he whispered. "What happens to them? You tie them out in the wilderness alone?"
"It's a noble sacrifice, Eli. I wouldn't expect you to understand."
"I guess I don't. But you can't trap every Parasite. You can't beat them."
The reality of the words hung heavy in the air. It was something Eli never dared think of: that the world didn't belong to them anymore and there was no getting it back. Quinn stood up and strolled over to the cell.
"Eli, Eli, Eli. I can defeat them. But you won't live to see that. People like you don't deserve my new world. I hate to admit it, but some people just can't be corrected. Some people deserve physical pain."
People like me.
A man who killed to survive, who lied to his loved ones. Who created a lunatic in one horrible second. Whatever this world had become, Eli saw his hand in it.
"What kind of new world?" Eli asked.
A broad smile curled Quinn's lips. "A world where humanity can thrive once again and not hide. Where everyone is equal and unafraid of his fellow man. No lies, no treachery, no violence, no hunger. That is the world I'm going to build, one redeemed sinner at a time."
Eli shook his head. "By punishing people? That's nothing new."
"No. Through correction and teaching." Quinn backed away from the cell bars and slipped into the shaft of moonlight. He stood with his hands clasped before him, studying Eli, then glanced out the window. "Someone will fetch you at dawn. Should be only a couple hours now. Your last thoughts will be of my wife and children, and all those you've killed. You will picture their faces — all of them, standing before you. You will beg their forgiveness. Is that understood?"
Eli nodded. "What else would I think of?"
There would be plenty on his mind in those last moments: the girls and the hope that this last act would work. Even if he was going to die at first light, he could still fix what he'd ruined.
He could still save them.
Quinn nodded. "You will be cleansed, I promise you. Truth has that power."
"I agree," Eli said.
Clouds rolled in to cover the moon and the room outside Eli's cell dipped into velvet blackness. He could only sense Quinn's presence — a heavy, hulking weight, a whisper of slow, calming breath.
"There's someone I want to say goodbye to," Eli announced. His own voice sounded separate from his body, a floating sound attached to nothing, alone in the dark.
Quinn cleared his throat. "You will spend the rest of this night alone. You're a condemned criminal."
"I just want to give her a message."
Quinn paused for a breath. Then, his bodiless voice slithered into the silence.
"If I am anything, I am a man of mercy," he said. "Who is the message for?"
"Jane Beedie. The doctor."
"Very well. And what shall I tell her?"
Eli pictured Jane's large green eyes, the color of moss. Felt her curls between his fingers.
"That I love her," he said. "And that I don't want to die in vain."
Chapter 41
Eli fidgeted against his bindings so the rope would burn the tender skin of his wrists. He wanted his last feelings to be of pain.
Just after dawn, he stood on a raised platform that had been dragged onto Olive's front yard, facing the guest house. The morning was cold and the sky blazed blue, the brown grass crisped with a blanket of frost. The frigid fingers of a stiff northwest wind raked Eli's exposed skin, but he welcomed the stinging pain. Soon he'd feel nothing.
The thought gave him peace.
Eli glanced down the road and found, from his high vantage point, that the town's warren of cabins, its gardens and muddy streets, were empty. Everyone had gathered around the platform: on the road, in Olive's yard, in front of the guest house. A hundred and fifty hard pairs of eyes stared up at him from dirty faces. They whispered behind their hands about the doomed man they had come to watch die.
Olive stood a few feet away from Eli on the platform, bundled in white fur with her arms crossed, lips pursed, her nose in the air. She studied the crowd, her expression somber and defeated. Quinn's men
outnumbered hers.
Eli searched the crowd for Jane's face, but she wasn't there.
He was relieved.
The crowd buzzed. Bodies shuffled and drew back, opening a path. Quinn strolled through and the path closed up behind him. The people watched him with awe as he climbed the steps to the platform and stopped at Eli's side. Now up close, he studied the man: the wrinkles carved deep into his face, the cut of his mouth drooped with deep sadness. Eli fell to his knees before him and a thought struck him: these were to be his last words.
"I'm sorry for what I done. I don't expect you to forgive me."
Quinn's face bloomed red. His eyes wobbled in their sockets, back and forth. He took a deep pull of cold air and shook his head.
"I don't," he growled.
Quinn clenched his hand into a fist. Then pain radiated across Eli's cheek and skull with a burst of light. The crowd hooted in excitement — one mob, one monster, pleased with Eli's suffering.
"Look at me," Quinn ordered.
Eli obeyed, stared at Quinn's flushed face. There was so much pain in his eyes.
Harder.
Knuckles met bone. The impact crunched in Eli's ears and his head fell back. Metallic blood dripped from his nose into his mouth. The crowd clapped and called for more.
"Look at me."
Eli looked up. Quinn's black eyes, their pain and sorrow and mania, seared into Eli's mind like a brand.
Harder.
Quinn's hand clenched into a red fist. The knuckles turned white and his arm drew back. Pain, white light, and blackness. Eli fell through the air; his cheek and shoulder smacked wood, its splinters poking his skin. Through the fog curling across his brain, Eli heard the mob hoot. Their voices began a steady, rhythmic chant. "Kill him!" they cheered.
Yes, Eli thought, kill me. No one wanted him to be alive and no one would weep at his death.
The fog parted. Eli peeled his eyes open on a stretch of rough wood. and beyond, a blurry scene: faces and bodies, a sea of them, all watching him bleed. Someone yanked him up by his shoulders and forced him back on his knees.
"Look at me!" Quinn hollered.
The Human Wilderness (A New America Trilogy Book 1) Page 30
