by eden Hudson
Scout shoved Harper off and leaned against the bar, glaring around the room like the whole world was stupid and unfair. I used to take that same attitude with Ryder. Maybe I had deserved some of those ass kickings.
Harper hopped onto Desty’s barstool and pointed at the tequila. “Set me up, Tough.”
I slid her the bottle.
“Yeah, drink up and bend over just like everybody else in this hell-hole,” Scout said. “Sell your soul for protection.”
Harper rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Scout.”
The tequila hit me pretty hard right then, so I sat down while Scout rattled on about life in prison and how much easier it was to be someone’s bitch than to fight the power or whatever. She sounded like Colt.
“Hey, Tough.” Harper touched my elbow next to the chain burns. “You okay?”
I’m pretty sure I nodded. I couldn’t believe Desty had left with that prissy dickwad. Why the hell were girls into guys like that? Finn even plucked his eyebrows—I’d seen him do it once after P.E., back when he was still human.
“PKR?” Harper asked, pointing at my shot glass.
I nodded. Jax, Harper, and I invented PKR. It’s a pretty simple game—pour, kill, refill. The object is to get shitfaced.
Scout looked over her shoulder at us.
“I want to play, too,” she said.
Harper and I knocked our shots back at the same time, then poured another round.
“You guys suck,” Scout said.
“Go pout about it,” Harper said.
I raised my glass to that.
After a few more, I got into the rhythm and pretty much forgot Harper and Scout were even there.
Desty hadn’t seemed like a vamp-groupie. They were usually pretty easy to spot, all Gothed-out or wearing fancy Romeo and Juliet dresses. She wasn’t like that. Or maybe that was just a month’s worth of self-service thinking for me. I tried to picture her again. Dark hair—short, but it looked like she was letting it grow out. Combat boots, so that was one in favor of the vamp-groupies. Faded t-shirt with an old hipster-looking band on it. Shorty-shorts that stopped about an inch down her thighs. I got stuck there for a while. Even if they make a girl a little taller than me, long legs really put the wood in my stake.
Speaking of Spike… I stood up. I was running out of room to store my tequila and I needed to figure out a way to get to the bathroom that didn’t end with me facedown on the floor.
Scout grabbed my hand. “Ready to get out of here?”
I pulled away from her and looked around.
“Are you looking for Harper?” Scout yelled over the music. “Her vamp Logan came and picked her up, remember? She said something about him getting too lazy to hunt? None of this is ringing a bell?”
Did I black out? I reached up to take off my hat so I could run my hand through my hair, but I grabbed an empty space.
Scout held out my John Deere hat.
“I didn’t want you to forget it,” she said. “I know how special it is to you, with Sissy giving it to you and all.”
That wasn’t right. I would never take it off and set it down in the bar. Even seriously wasted, I always went out with my hat on, like a cowboy and his boots.
I took my hat and jerked it on tight.
“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Scout said, cocking her hip at me, offended. “I guess you’re not going to walk me home, either?”
That definitely didn’t sound like me. But Harper was gone and I couldn’t let Scout try it on her own. She was almost at the end of the grace period underage kids got in Halo, but NPs who didn’t care about the rules and just plain dickheads might go after her, especially the way she was dressed.
Scout latched onto my hand again.
“Take me home and tuck me in, Tough,” she said.
I made sure she stayed an arm’s length from me the whole way to her trailer.
Colt
Mikal’s forked tongue slid into my mouth and her legs tightened around my hips. Her body was scorching—all those years before the fall that she spent singing glory to God around His throne were still burning deep in her bones. Her tar-covered wings stretched out to full span and rocked with her.
I tried to remember what it was like to feel guilt or disgust, but they were gone. Just not there anymore. I wished I was numb. Without the constant, boiling anger just under my skin, I would’ve been. But if I was numb, I wouldn’t be able to fight her. I had to keep fighting because… Shit. There was a reason. I knew there was.
Difficulty recalling information, Mikal said. That’s new.
Ignore her. Start at the beginning. The reasons that came easy from repetition. I had to keep fighting because Mikal started the war the day she killed Mom. That was right. And because God chose us to be His soldiers. That was right, too.
I always said your father was a smart man to indoctrinate you kids so young, Mikal said.
Fuck you. She was trying to mess me up, twist everything so I would doubt the stuff I used to believe and have to trust her.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t trust me, she said, tracing my jaw with her fingers. I’ve never lied to you.
Dad never lied to me, I said.
He never had to because you kept secrets. If he had known about the black noise—
He helped Mom, I said. He would’ve helped me.
You can’t believe that or you would have told him, Mikal said.
No. Remember the times Mom had locked herself in the bathroom. Sang to herself, stadium-volume and smashed stuff to drown out the black noise. Sissy or Ryder would call Dad and no matter where he was—on duty as the hospital chaplain over in North Fork, in his office at the church, visiting the shut-ins around Halo—he would come home. He would’ve helped me. He had always helped Mom.
How? Mikal asked. What did he do to make the black noise go away?
I didn’t know. It had been my job to keep Tough outside, take him down to the creek or out to the barn to shoot hoops until it was safe to come back in.
So, you don’t know if your father was shoving anti-psychotics down your mother’s throat or beating the black noise out of her, Mikal said.
Something exploded inside my brain and shrapnel went everywhere.
Dad would never hurt her! He loved her more than anything!
Outside, I felt Mikal detonate, too, getting off on the force of my reaction. I’d walked into a trap, engaging instead of just saying “fuck you.” Now I was pinned down in her warzone on her terms and I couldn’t get out without her blowing everything to pieces.
Focus. Think. Dad had always protected Mom. He wouldn’t have hurt her. He would’ve protected me, too, if—
—if he could have, Mikal said, picking off the thought. Even coming down from the orgasm she was a crack shot. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? A congregation to lead, four children to care for, and a wife he had to constantly pull back from the edge. Danny might’ve been a man of God, but he was only human. He did everything he could, but when it got to be too much he suggested getting help, didn’t he, Colt?
This was the part where I was supposed to bleed and hurt, to remember hearing Mom tell Dad that getting professional help was one step away from the nuthouse, and to admit that I didn’t tell Dad because I was scared he couldn’t handle two crazy people at the same time.
You were right not to tell him, Mikal said. He would’ve let them lock you up and throw away the key. He would’ve had to choose between you and your mother and—
—and Dad loved Mom more than anything. I didn’t realize I was repeating the words until I felt the shrapnel from the explosion shift. Dad had always saved Mom, but he wouldn’t have saved me.
Mikal understood. She’d been rejected, too. We were just alike—two soldiers whose families had abandoned us because we were screwed-up.
But Mikal wasn’t screwed-up, not to me. She was strong, powerful, and so beautiful. I buried my face in her neck. She smelled incredible, like cinnamon and coffee and hot, sweet peppers.
I could make her pain go away for a little while. I could make her feel what I felt when I looked at her—my Mikal, my burning angel.
As if I was standing somewhere outside, I watched myself make love to her. I heard my voice tell her how much I needed her, how bad I wanted her.
My chest hurt, then prickled and burned as if someone was drawing pictures on my skin with dry ice. “Resist or Serve”—the tattoo cut through the haze like razor wire. Bile stung the back of my throat, pushing up farther and farther until I was choking on it.
Don’t fight it, Mikal said. I know that you want this as much as I do. You can’t lie to me, Colt.
I couldn’t hold back. I came, too. When it was over, that empty pit in my stomach ached. My fault. All of this had been my fault. Just say “fuck you.” Disconnect. Don’t engage. It wasn’t rocket science.
Mikal folded her wings and laid down with her head on my shoulder.
I know you can feel the end closing in, she said. That’s why it’s getting so hard to remember what it felt like to hate me.
Fuck you, I said.
She laughed. You just did. And well, I might add.
I think I told her, I do hate you, you sadistic bitch. I hate you. I can’t wait ‘til you’re burning in Hell—but I don’t know for sure. I couldn’t hear myself anymore. The more I tried to yell at her, the louder the echoes in my head got—louder and louder until all I could hear was My Mikal, my burning angel, my Mikal, my burning angel, my Mikal, my burning angel… The words were everywhere, part of everything, and I had to start screaming to drown them out.
Tough
It was a dream, so I didn’t freak out that Ryder was alive again. He had a dip of Copenhagen in his lip and he was trying to beat the pussy out of me, like always. But unlike always, Colt wasn’t cleaning the same gun for the hundredth time or recounting ammo while I got my ass handed to me. So I spit out some blood and asked Ryder, “Where’s Colt?”
“Don’t act as dumb as you look, Baby Boy. You know where he is.” And I got a boot in the face for letting my guard down.
When I got back up, Sissy was there. She hugged me and I started crying because she was getting blurry and I couldn’t remember what it sounded like when she talked.
“I hate this town,” I told her.
Sissy wiped some snot and blood off of my face and smeared it across the knee of her jeans. Then she picked up my John Deere hat, dusted it off, and put it back on my head.
“I can’t get Colt back,” I told her.
“Then you better man the hell up,” Ryder said. I ducked the first punch, but the second one caught me in the stomach. He didn’t let up when I doubled over. “You’re on your own for real now, Baby Boy. Sing your way out of this one. Maybe if you play your guitar real pretty, they’ll just let you be.”
I tried to fight back, even though in real life all that ever did was make it worse. Ryder got his arm around my neck and choked off my air. I tried to tell him I gave up, but Jason Gudehaus had my voice again. Sissy would stop Ryder if I asked, but she left because I couldn’t holler for her to come back. She left and Colt was gone and Ryder’s bicep crushed my throat.
*****
I fell off the couch.
Jax laughed and looked away from his video game for a second. “Flashbacks?”
I shook my head, then stopped when the motion made me sick. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the floor and listened to Jax pause his game while he got off the coffee table and sat on the couch. My brain did a slow spin inside my skull.
I must’ve won PKR. At least I hadn’t pissed the couch—which was kind of a wonder looking at all the empty beer cans by the coffee table. Then there was that bottle of tequila at Rowdy’s.
Oh, shit, Scout. If I thought really hard, I could remember standing in the kitchen of her and Harper’s parents’ old trailer house. She couldn’t find a piece of paper, but she had a pen, so I wrote it on her hand—Get some self-esteem.
Man, I missed being able to groan.
“All right, guys, I’m heading out,” Harper said, bouncing into the living room. She had on her hot pink bikini and her beach bag over her shoulder, ready to go lifeguard the lake. “You look like crap, Tough.”
I rolled onto my back and made the sign of the cross at her with my forearms.
“Excuse me?” she snapped, getting her body all cocked the way her and Scout both do when they’re offended.
Right then, I didn’t have the energy to figure out how to apologize. Thank God for Jax.
“Take it easy on him,” Jax said. “Can’t you see the alckie’s hurting?”
“I got some hangovers in high school—I know they suck,” Harper said. She shoved my shoulder with the toe of her flip-flop and I tried not to barf. “That’s no reason to make the sign at me like I’m some kind of Godforsaken freaking vampire. Me and Jesus are best friends, preacher boy, so don’t you even—”
I reached my hand out to her before she got really wound up.
“Fine,” she said, squeezing my fingers. “But don’t do it again. It’s offensive.” She leaned down and kissed Jax. Her bellybutton ring dangled straight down and it looked like her breasts were going to drip out of her bikini top. She stood back up. “I’m gone, guys.”
“Later,” Jax said.
I waved.
The door shut behind her. Jax went back to his game. I got up to take a leak, puke, and shower. Somehow, I made it to the stairs.
“Hey, Tough,” Jax said.
I stopped.
He didn’t look away from his game.
“Keep your eyes to yourself, all right?”
Desty
Blood. Rivers of blood and I was drowning in it. I tried to force my eyelids open, but they were glued closed by the thick wetness. My lungs bucked and screamed. I thrashed and scratched and clawed until—
I opened my eyes. The rivers of blood were just the sun shining through the backs of my eyelids and the drowning just another dream-panic-attack in a long line. I stayed still, flat on my back looking up at the blue of a cloudless sky, waiting to breathe again. Heat shimmers and soybeans drifted along the edges of my sight, hairy pods of Midwestern gold drying in the summer sun. That lying vampire jerk had dumped me in a field.
Turning onto my hands and knees took more effort than it should have, given that I remembered being bitten before eleven p.m. and it was obviously late morning now. Bite-sedative. I must’ve fought him when I realized he was just stringing me along about knowing where Tempie was staying.
I pushed up to standing, swayed, and dropped back down to one knee. My skin felt hot and like it was stretched too tight over my face, arms, and legs. Sunburn, blood-loss, and dehydration—the trifecta.
My second attempt at standing was slower, but ultimately successful. I was about twenty feet from the two-lane blacktop that ran through Halo. Down the road, through the heat waves, I could see the little green population sign, the much larger Halo Chamber of Commerce sign, and the trailer park at the edge of town.
Maybe the fallen angels had sent that vamp, Finn, because they knew I’d come for Tempie.
My head spun itself into a fuzzy mess again and I had to lean over for a second with my hands on my knees.
Hopeful, optimistic crap. The fallen angels wouldn’t have sent anyone to get rid of me. I posed zero threat to them. Even if that enforcer, Mikal, really had looked into my mind yesterday, the only thing she would’ve seen was an overwhelmed nineteen-year-old grasping at straws. And if I couldn’t convince my own mother not to kill herself, what in the world made me think I could talk my sister out of becoming a familiar, steal her away from a legion of fallen angels, and drag her back home? Nope, that jerk Finn had lied to me about knowing where to find Tempie because he was hungry and he could tell I was desperate.
A shooting pain in my left boob cut my pity party short.
I pulled the neck of my shirt away from my chest so I could look inside. Two fang marks had crystalized just above my nipple an
d a splash of blood stained the bra cup.
“That dickbag.”
I checked the road for cars, then unbuttoned my shorts to make sure Finn hadn’t done anything else while I was out.
Nothing. I hadn’t entrusted my life to a rapist, at least. And there was my backpack by the highway. Not a rapist and not a thief. Stellar.
Bending over to grab my backpack almost made me pass out.
When the dizzy spell ended, I started for town. Crying and whining about being an idiot with horrible judgment wasn’t going to bring Tempie home.
Tough
There was only one place where I knew music would be going on at noon on a Sunday, so when I got out of the shower, I took a handful of ibuprofen and headed down to Rowdy’s.
Dodge was about halfway through the service when I got there. I sat in one of the back booths and watched the serious Jesus freaks sing and dance along. There wasn’t any preaching—as far as I know, there hadn’t been any in Halo since Dad went all Soldier of Heaven—but the music was enough to get the message across. It even kind of made me feel better. Not the part about how we’d sing glory hallelujah, because obviously I wouldn’t. But with the drums driving and the way the guitar lifts you up…and anyway, that kind of music’s written to make your heart fly.
The hangover still had a pretty solid hold on my stomach, but if I didn’t move my head too fast it didn’t hurt, so I closed my eyes and leaned back in my booth, listening.
I don’t remember the first song I learned how to play, but the first one I remember playing said something about laying death in its grave. It was Sissy’s favorite, even after Mom and Dad were dead and she was trying to take care of us and stop Kathan. I wish I could remember more of that song. Once I asked Rowdy whether he knew a gospel song with “death in its grave,” and he said I was supposed to be the preacher’s kid.
When the service was over, Dodge came back and slid into the booth across from me.
