True Refuge

by Annabelle McInnes

  Euan lifted his chin in resignation. He didn’t have time to look to Nick one last time, to say good-bye, to apologise, to plead forgiveness and profess his love. The monster leapt into the pit with a crash, stepping over Euan’s previous conquest without thought to the life lost.

  ‘Ready to die?’ the beast taunted.

  Euan’s knife remained embedded in the throat of his last opponent. He couldn’t believe he’d been so careless, as it now lay useless behind the giant. He took an intentional step back to reassess, and spied another option. His first victim’s bearded hatchet was to his left, covered in blood and dust from the ground.

  Euan dived for the axe, just barely avoiding a harrowing swing from the sharp spikes of his opponent’s weapon.

  With the wooden handle slippery in his sweat and blood-soaked grip, he lashed out to block the next attack. His weapon held together as it made contact with the wooden club. Lightning bolts of pain radiated down his wrist and forearm from the impact, and sparks flew when metal collided. Euan’s power rivaled that of his adversary, but his energy was gravely depleted. He would have to rely on wits rather than brute strength.

  He skirted the edge of the pit, deflecting blows, ducking, weaving and avoiding as much contact as possible. He was conserving his energy and as he watched his foe, he realised that though the man was big, he wasn’t trained. It gave Euan a small spark of hope.

  Soon, both his opponent and the crowd became impatient. Out of the corner of Euan’s eye, he saw Nick jostled and pushed. If this didn’t end shortly, Nick would either end up swallowed and lost in the crush of bodies or in the pit with him.

  He had regained enough strength and intelligence on his rival now that he knew how to attack. The mammoth was slow, and he might’ve been a little blind in the left eye. If Euan could get his blade back, he was sure he could make enough cuts to slow the man further with continual blood loss, giving him the opportunity to make the killing blow.

  Euan continued to skirt the edge once more until he stood close to the body that now lay still. His challenger prowled after him, his determined gaze nefarious, glinting with thirst for Euan’s blood.

  Euan falsified a thrust with his hatchet and used the opportunity to bend and wrench his bowie knife from the flesh of the dead man. It came away with a wet sucking noise that was lost amid the chaos. He deflected another attempt at attack and rolled on his haunches to the other side of the pit.

  Emitting a growl that was spawned from his hatred of everything the world had become, he began to advance.

  His enemy bellowed a war cry of his own, but in the face of Euan’s meticulously planned attack, he was nothing but a one-trick pony. Each of Euan’s blows was intentional, each strike considered and planned. Subsequently, every attack hit its mark and eventually the behemoth before him began to sway.

  Death by a thousand cuts had never been more apt.

  Euan’s chest heaved as he struggled to regain his breath. His body was still depleted despite his measured onslaught, but his opponent’s condition was worse. Blood rushed down his left eye to hamper his vision, and the multiple gashes and lacerations would not only be causing him incredible pain, but also hindering the use of his body. He was sluggish, unresponsive and hesitant—everything Euan had intended.

  Just as he was gaining confidence in his plan, the beast regained enough strength to summon one final, blindsiding blow.

  In his confident state, it caught Euan off guard. His body was suddenly staggering to the left, his arm screaming in agony. That barbed club had finally hit its mark, and he was shocked when his face met the dirt.

  But he was not surprised when the breath left his lungs as the entire weight of the monster of a man sat upon his chest and attempted to wrap his large hands around Euan’s throat.

  But he would not tap out yet.

  They grappled and fought, wrestling for superiority. Euan lost his knife and his opponent lost his spiked mace in the melee as the two of them fought with fists, teeth, knees and boots.

  Even as his muscles implored for rest, and his right arm hollered in searing pain, Euan ignored it all. He thought of Nick. He thought of the girl. He thought of his damn self.

  But eventually, his conviction was not enough to overcome such adversity and he found himself on his back, in a muddy pool of the blood of his vanquished. The beast above him sported a triumphant grin, his yellowed teeth shining brightly against his bloody, dirt-streaked face. Two beefy hands were wrapped around Euan’s throat, and no matter how much he struggled, lashed out, punched, kicked and clawed, that grip could not be loosened.

  ‘Euan!’ Nick’s voice rang through the din like cannon fire, the sound pulling Euan’s lagging focus into sharp relief. ‘To your left!’

  His enemy had not heard the cry over the calamity; to him, the voice was just another in a sea of bellowing caterwauls. But Euan heard it. And he understood.

  His left hand dropped from clawing at his throat. Even as his vision darkened around the edges, his fingers scrambled in the sloppy earth until it made contact with the hilt of the bearded hatchet.

  He hesitated only to split his bloody lips in a cruel smile at the man who towered above him. Then he swung with all his might, every ounce of his remaining energy focused and centred behind the blow.

  The axe embedded in the skull of the blue-eyed beast, with almost the entire blade lost in the bone at the temple.

  In an instant, Euan was smothered in blood and gore, infiltrating every orifice. His ears rang from lack of oxygen and he tasted iron, his vision washed in crimson midnight. His chest heaved as he tried to resume breathing through the fists still wrapped around his throat and the excessive dead weight that now lay lifeless on his torso, crushing him to the ground.

  The grip around his neck finally loosened and he gasped the life-giving oxygen into his lungs. His chest burned from the lack of air and his throat felt as though it had been through a meat grinder. He coughed, sputtered, coughed again.

  He couldn’t see, but he didn’t care. Nick was safe; he’d done what needed to be done. If Mickey-O kept his word, Nick would leave with the girl and they would both be unthreatened. Maybe if he just lay down for a little while, caught his breath, he could see Nick again. He just needed a little sleep until then.

  He was dreaming. Nick’s voice was yelling his name in his ear. He could breathe and though every muscle felt like lead, he could move his fingers if he thought really, really hard.

  ‘Euan! Euan! Wake up! Euan!’ Nick’s voice bellowed.

  His chest shuddered with racking coughs, pulling him from his swirling daydreams.

  ‘Euan! Can you hear me?’ Nick’s voice sounded pained, desperate. That couldn’t happen. Nick had to be happy, safe. Always.

  ‘Nick?’ Euan tried to utter, attempting to open his sticky eyes.

  Nick’s face suddenly swam in his line of vision, his features anguished and distressed. He was fussing. Euan could feel the hands of his lover patting his body, those clever fingers he loved to watch running over his bare skin. If he didn’t ache all over and wish he’d just hurry up and die, he’d find the whole thing erotic.

  He blinked and used the last of his depleted strength to reach out and touch the clenched jaw of the beautiful man above him.

  ‘Nicky?’ he croaked.

  ‘Thank you, God,’ Nick breathed, his worried features easing slightly before he turned his face to an unknown source. ‘You gave us your word, motherfucker! He fucking won. Now give us the woman and the backpack!’

  Euan’s head swam. Woman? Backpack? But it slowly came back to him. He was lying on his ass in a dirt pit. He’d fought and killed two men. He’d won, and now they were going to leave with the prize of a lifetime—a woman.

  Nick helped Euan to his feet, and even with his strength all but eradicated, he knew they were not out of danger yet.

  His eyes scanned the edge of the pit for an opening. The crowd was subdued, a million faces uncertain and wary. He took the knife Ni
cky offered and, through sheer will alone, hefted himself over the lip of the hole in the ground. The mob parted before him as he stalked, bloody and limping, to the dais where Mickey-O sat.

  His adversary’s face was pinched with disappointment. His posture no longer relaxed and at ease, he sat rigidly in his wingback chair and watched Euan’s every step towards him with resentment.

  ‘Well, you proved me wrong,’ the biker said. ‘Fancy a career here?’

  Euan had to clear his burning throat before he could speak, and even then, it came out as nothing but a breathy rasp. ‘Give me the pack and the girl, and we’ll be on our way.’

  A hush moved over the crowd, and Euan had the distinct impression that this had never happened before. He wondered how many lives had been lost before this fight.

  ‘Fine,’ Mickey-O finally agreed with a flick of his wrist in the direction of the suddenly alert woman, a sneer crawling around his thin lips. ‘The pack and the girl. She’s just about dead anyway.’

  ‘And safe passage out,’ Euan demanded, reiterating the promise Mickey-O had given earlier.

  Mickey-O’s sneer turned malevolent.

  ‘And safe passage out,’ he repeated.

  Euan nodded, knowing in his gut that death would bite with bloody fangs at their heels until they could lose themselves in the countryside.

  Chapter 10

  The darkness swallowed all three of them as they ran from Nirvana. Euan carried their listless and silent prize over his shoulder while Nick bore the old and new packs filled with the hard-won bounty strapped to both the front and back of his body.

  Their breaths bellowed in noisy, ragged gasps and their steps often staggered in the terrain that was only lit by wan moonlight. They didn’t follow a road, just headed west, using the stars as their compass, in silent agreement to continue until their legs gave out beneath them.

  Euan was shattered, beyond exhaustion. His throat was raw, and every panting breath raked like nails down his gullet to solidify in his chest. His arm, where he had sustained his enemy’s final blow, ached incessantly. The dull throb had him clutching the weak, treasured body of the girl in a fireman’s hold by sheer resolve alone.

  They jogged for hours until Euan found his legs could no longer sustain the pace he’d set. He stumbled to his knees, embarrassed at his weakness. He wanted to run a thousand miles from where they’d been, wanted to take both his wards as far as possible from the nightmare that was Nirvana. The suffering they’d all endured at the hands of the merciless biker and his horde of thugs would forever be stitched into their souls.

  The moonlight shone feebly above them, its ineffectual light casting weak shadows in the rolling grassland that surrounded them. A faint breeze tickled the seeding grass heads, the pods rattling in the otherwise silent field.

  Euan shifted and placed the body of the girl onto the ground. One eye was swollen shut, but the other watched him with wariness. She had been silent their entire journey and Euan had thought her unconscious, so he was surprised as he met and studied her uncertain gaze. The colour could not be discerned in the dark, especially hidden in the deep recesses of her emaciated skull, but he could sense her fear.

  Once she was settled into a sitting position, Euan removed his jacket and placed it over her narrow, bony shoulders to protect her trembling body from the wind. The garment was threadbare and swallowed her gaunt form in the folds of the fabric, but it would keep her warm in addition to Nick’s shirt, which they’d dressed her in hastily as they prepared to run.

  She was a skeleton wrapped in tight, bruised and abraded grey skin. As he moved his hands over her malnourished body to position the coat, his gut tightened in growing horror as he considered the ongoing repercussions of saving her.

  Euan was struggling to bring Nick back from the brink of two days of torture and brutalisation, and this poor creature could have suffered for months, maybe years. How could anyone make it back from that? How could he help?

  ‘Water, Nicky,’ Euan croaked, his voice still raw from its earlier abuse.

  Nick had fallen to his knees beside him, his panting laboured, his hands clasping the tops of his thighs as he caught his breath. His face was tilted skyward and his fatigued features were washed in starlight. His eyes were closed as his chest rose and fell, the packs strapped to his body shifting with each exhalation.

  At Euan’s words, he turned to face him. They’d been lovers for years. He had seen a million different expressions flash across those beautiful features, but the fury and rage that radiated from his eyes in the dark shocked him. Nick was the affable one of the two of them, always seeing the positives in everything, even the damn plague. It was one of the reasons why the attack on his body had been so hard to bear; losing that innocence from Nick’s soul was heart-shattering.

  Their gazes held for a moment, a wealth of unspoken communication sizzling between them. It didn’t need to be said. It never needed to be said. They would do everything they could for the woman, everything in their power to bring her through the mire of her abuse and see her well again. And they’d do it together.

  Nick was the first to break their connection to fish out the water from the pack still strapped to his front. He pulled out a shiny, clear plastic bottle filled with naturally derived spring water. Euan took the bottle from Nick’s hands and couldn’t help but think of all they had risked for it.

  When he offered the water to the girl, she cowered, shaking her head.

  ‘You don’t have anything to fear,’ he entreated, continuing to hold out the bottle. ‘You’re safe with us. From that. From everything. We’ll protect you, and you don’t have to give us anything in return.’

  A skeptical, one-eyed glare was his only reply.

  Euan was surprised when Nick shifted beside him. He was even more shocked when the man offered the loaded Glock to the wraith.

  In the weak light, Euan watched as Nick took the girl’s frozen hands from her lap and wrapped them around the grip.

  ‘Hold it like this. Tight,’ he murmured softly. ‘Point, and squeeze the trigger slow. It’ll have a kickback, so be ready for it. You can use it to protect yourself.’

  It was a risk, absolutely. But as Euan watched the woman tighten her bony fingers around the grip of the weapon, her body straightening with the understanding of the gift they were giving her, he realised he’d take the single bullet in that magazine with a smile on his face if it meant she felt safe.

  ‘It’s loaded,’ Nick continued, keeping his hands wrapped around hers. ‘But there’s only one bullet, so use it wisely.’

  The girl swallowed, lifting her gaze from the gun in her lap to meet Euan’s.

  He felt the force of that penetration like a knife to the sternum. His body rocked with it, shuddered from the force of all the emotions that bombarded his heart like a tidal wave enveloping the shore. It was devastating. It was horrific. It was so astoundingly painful that his breath hissed through his teeth.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, palming the grip.

  Euan saw everything in slow motion. He knew exactly what she was going to do before she did it, that look in her eyes so bleak there was nothing he could do to stop her. He cried out in horror as she placed the barrel of the weapon inside her mouth and didn’t even blink as she squeezed that fucking trigger.

  Their united shout of despair resonated through the picturesque grassland. What had once supported domesticated farm animals now witnessed the atrocity of a life being lost, the resounding echo of gunfire ringing out like a clap of foreboding thunder.

  The broken doll slumped to the ground, the back of her skull shiny in the anemic moonlight.

  Nick groaned and crawled on his knees to the crumpled form lying unmoving on the grass. He pulled the girl into his arms and bent over her lifeless body.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he sobbed into her matted hair, his shoulders shaking with his grief. ‘I’m so fucking sorry for everything.’

  They’d known the woman for less than
twelve hours; they didn’t even know her name. But Euan knew she now owned a section of his weakened heart. She’d taken it with her to the afterlife. He hoped she left guided by the wings of angels, that the memories of her time on earth were staying with her body and not with her soul. She was now free, never again to be touched by the horror of man, taken from this world on her own terms.

  He let his gaze wander towards the horizon. If there was anyone following them, that gunfire would see them found. He swallowed the bile that fermented in his stomach.

  ‘Secure the packs,’ he ordered, with a heavy heart and a still-raspy voice. ‘I’ll get the girl. The gunfire will bring them here. We’ll bury her as soon as we’re able. We can give her that, at least.’

  Nick lifted his head and nodded, smoothing the tangled mess of the girl’s hair as though it were golden thread. They both ignored the shattered bone and blood as they carefully arranged her lifeless body in Euan’s arms and resumed their flight, fleeing further into the darkness and away from civilisation with every purposeful step.

  ***

  ‘Stop here, Nicky,’ Euan rasped just as dawn crested over the horizon.

  Nick fell to his haunches, his body heaving with exhaustion and grief. His hands shook as he pulled the straps of the backpacks from his shoulders, and his chest rattled as he struggled to draw breath through his emotions.

  Euan’s own throat was thick. ‘We’ll bury her over by that tree,’ he continued with a nod towards a weeping willow. The long tendrils dipped gracefully into a meandering river that crossed their path, the root system was exposed from erosion and the small delicate leaves were already turning gold as the season gradually changed.

  Nick nodded, his body spent, his eyes shut tight.

  Euan placed the lightweight body of girl reverently on the rocky shoreline. He took the few steps needed to stand before Nick. The young man stared at his muddy and bloody boots for long moments before he lifted his gaze to finally meet Euan’s.