The Risen Series | Book 5 | Defiance

by Crow, Marie F.

  The white house still stands. What it may or may not still hold, we didn’t go in to find out.

  “We’ll send someone for them.” Marxx is watching me, hoping I’m done with my heroics for the day.

  “We won’t,” I tell him. “We can’t risk it.”

  Marxx still doesn’t know Marigold has made it contagious. He doesn’t know the risks of bringing anyone she has left chained in the house back to the fort. Marigold made their graves the moment she brought them to this island. She knew they would never return.

  The path to the boat is silent. We listen for any sound, any motion signaling of what may be around, and for the two we know are around. My fear is more of how many of Marigold’s backup we don’t know may be around, waiting to rescue her or finish us.

  “I need to reset that arm.” Paula is gripping my numb hand, testing it and the rest of the arm with some examination which makes perfect sense to her.

  “It can wait.” Since the arm isn’t listening to any of my demands, I jerk my whole torso to escape her. I can only imagine how ridiculous it must look.

  “We don’t even know if there is a boat still. You may need it to swim back.” Paula turns to my favorite tormenter. “Hold her steady, Marxx.”

  Marxx does so with a smile. He wraps his arm around me from behind, holding me close to him. “This is going to hurt,” he whispers into my hair.

  “Traitor,” I whisper back.

  Paula doesn’t count to warn me. She lifts it, lining up the socket, testing the range once or twice with soft sounds of preparation. When I relax, thinking I have some time, she shoves the joint in place.

  I don’t scream. I simply half-faint in Marxx’s embrace. I can feel him hold me tighter, cradling me tenderly until I fully recover.

  “I warned you,” Marxx says, with a tinge of amusement.

  “Try not to use it too much.” Paula has already moved on to her next victim and Rhett is protesting just a loudly as I had.

  I follow the stumbling shambles of our group down the dirt path. My whole body has begun to ache. A molten heat is traveling the length of it, burning a path to my brain. I preferred the threat of shock to this suffering.

  I fight through my blurring vision to see the boat is still there. Sitting at its helm, is the raven-haired shadow who tried to kill us all. She’s been waiting for us and the smile she beams gives not a measure of relief to anyone around me.

  With a sigh of his acceptance, Lawless hands his gun to Rhett. We know there will be no stopping him now. Watching him storm towards the boat, for a second, I almost feel sorry for what is about to happen to her. Almost.

  “Don’t shoot the boat, you big dummy!” Aimes shouts at his back. She, too, knows he has become rage over sense.

  Leigh never stops smiling. She watches his approach as if he’s merely joining her for a chat, not her possible death. Rhett, lost in his emotions, doesn’t stop to think maybe it’s not her death she has her mind on, but his.

  We are tired, beaten and even broken. We let our guard down, thinking Rhett will close this chapter so we may turn the page to a better ending. We have forgotten it’s not over. We have taken everything from Marigold. She plans to do the same.

  Aimes’ scream rings out the same time the shot echoes in the trees around us, sending the hiding birds scattering in the sky. Rhett’s knees fold, and as his body collapses to the sand, I tear my eyes to the many birds above taking to flight. I refuse to see Rhett fall. I won’t watch what I never thought could happen. His body stranded on the beach and not beside his family, rails against everything he’s fought for to this point. Our demi-god of destruction has been brought down. For once, I don’t want to see.

  “Do something,” Aimes is screaming.

  Paula is doing her best to restrain her, to keep her hidden in the trees. Lawless has crouched down, trying to see where the shot came from, or who is watching us. Using the large scope of his rifle, Dolph copies him, scanning the opposite side. All I can see is Leigh with that daring smile, mocking us, once again.

  “There’s a second boat.” Dolph points down the long beach. “I can’t see how many are on it, but that has to be who did it.”

  “What do we do? We can’t stay here pinned like this.” Collin has kneeled, rocking the still unconscious Genny in his arms.

  My mind is shattered, refusing to live in this moment, or any of the moments today has held for me. I watch Collin rocking Genny, her hair so like my own, and in my state, I wonder what my life may have been like if he ever held me. There’s a rage bubbling inside me that I don’t understand. Peyton is dead. Rhett is dead. Here, all I can focus on is my daddy issues and an inferno in my veins.

  “Helena?” Lawless is tugging on my uninjured arm, trying to pull me down.

  I’m the only one still standing, making a beacon of myself in my lunacy. Even this doesn’t fully register. The heat of his skin does, because despite the fire wandering along my veins, I’m so cold.

  “I’ll go get him,” I say, as if Rhett’s just taking a long nap.

  Lawless looks at me, wondering what secret plan I’ve made in my mind. Marxx doesn’t stop me, so used to my lone ranger antics. Paula stares at me. There’s something in her warm eyes which should have let me know that something is dangerously wrong.

  Leigh’s face melts as I come to the edge of the trees. I almost feel offended. I’ve watched her go from her beaming smile to a cold neutral face in mere seconds.

  “Where’s my smile?” I shout to the woman. “All this time, I thought we had something.”

  Leigh doesn’t answer me, but the way her eyes dart to her right, I know where Marigold is hiding.

  “Do you remember the porch of the house we squatted at?” I ask her. I can see her trying to figure out where my story telling is leading us. “You just walked around the right corner of the house, disappearing without a word.”

  Her mouth twitches, thinking she has the clues she needs. “Yes. I knew the right side would be more interesting.”

  “How many of those things did you kill that day?”

  Leigh’s smile spreads again, saying, “I didn’t keep a good count.”

  I shrug, wincing with the pain it causes me. “Guess?”

  “Three maybe four. You took the left side, I heard, killing another five, maybe?”

  I can hear the men behind me spreading out. Leigh gave us the answers we needed.

  “Nothing compared to the fifteen I had to clean up in the basement,” I tell her, knowing who else is listening.

  My comment hit its target. Marigold stands from behind the cover of the rotten boat hull. Her aim is wide, consumed with the grief of her loss. The sand around me erupts as the result of her rage, but none are close enough to stir my dulled nerves to a point of panic.

  Shots ring out from all around me. Some from the trees. Some from the shoreline. Shouting follows the sounds, inciting pure chaos along the still waters of the shore. All of this, in my mind, means it’s the perfect time to save Rhett.

  Leigh stands, swaying the boat with her movement, when she sees me coming towards her. “Get down,” she shouts at me.

  I flip her off, coming to stand where Rhett is laying. The water around him is flowing red, tainting the color of the water with each wave that crashes over him. His face is covered by his uncut black hair. It washes along his jaw line, pulled with the ebb and flow of the water around him. Even in his deepest of sleeps, I’ve never seen him so defenseless, so broken.

  I can feel the cold water soaking through the knees of my jeans where I’ve knelt to lift his head. Sweeping the hair from his face, he blinks at me, moaning as he comes awake. It’s a sound that makes me weep with joy. I don’t hide my tears, as I once did. Chapel never saw what his loss meant to me; I don’t want the same for Rhett.

  “You’re going to have to wake up, now,” I tell him, looking into his hazed eyes.

  He doesn’t answer me. His eyes flutter close before I can convince him of the danger arou
nd us.

  “Get him in the boat,” Leigh has come to stand beside me, lifting half of Rhett’s heavy body to help me move him.

  It isn’t easy to drag the unconscious man to the boat. The waves push against us, stealing a step for every three we take. There is nothing gentle about how we toss Rhett onto the boat, rolling his long legs with a heave of a motion. I’ve turned my back to the shoreline, concentrating on saving my demon of protection. In that slip, I have completely forgotten about the civil war unfolding behind me. I had, until its General appears with the sound of the chambering revolver to my head.

  “What did you do to them?” Marigold’s shaky voice asks me.

  I don’t lift my hands in surrender. If she’s going to shoot me, my hand position will not detour her. “That’s odd coming from someone who tried to blow them up.”

  “What did you do to them?” Marigold screams, destroying the image of the revered mother she worked so hard to project at the fort.

  “Which ones? The adults? The children? Or your daughter?” I hear myself ask.

  “I should just kill you now. I knew the moment you arrived you would ruin it all. The way they turned to them instead of me and Torri. The way we kept bending rules to keep them out of sight just to have control again. I knew you would ruin everything.” Marigold is rambling now, biting off her sentences with her heavy thoughts.

  I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I listen, trying to figure it out. With one who keeps flipping sides and the other who thinks psychopaths are trainable, listening for a hint of how to understand her may be my only way out of this mess. I can’t help but think it would be nice if Rhett were to wake up, right now.

  “Ranya is going to be the answer. She is going to be the first adult to be a carrier and not just a host. Everything you’ve done, it’s for nothing. She is going to allow me to save more than just the children!”

  “The children were the only carriers?” I had never put that together, until now.

  All the bites on Ranya’s arm were small, children’s teeth and Marco met his end when going to meet his child. Marigold had the children turn their parents, hoping the same bloodline would transmute, morphing it to be sustainable in adult hosts. Now, she’s out there, somewhere, passing it along with her very need to survive.

  “They were, but I changed that.”

  Marigold sounds proud of herself. I guess I’ll have to fix that.

  “Too bad she escaped.” I don’t even shy away from the joy I feel telling her the little fact she’s missed. “Her and Marco are long gone, making little undead babies of their own. Maybe. I don’t really know how your voodoo works.”

  “Why do you have to be so defiant?” I hear Marigold ask me.

  She’s seething now over what I’ve done to her and how little I’m scared of her. It only brings me more joy.

  “Like I told Torri – doing stupid things is kind of my thing.”

  I’ve watched enough bar fights to know when someone is serious in their threats, or just threatening to bolster their nerves. If Marigold was going to shoot me, I would already be dead. But I don’t want to wait around until she’s ready to kill me, either.

  Planting my feet, as well as I can in the thick mud of the water, I spin my upper body, letting my elbow connect with her face. It rocks her, flailing her body backwards with the force of my strike and the pull of the waves. She fires a single shot into the air as the current takes her under. Even as I prepare myself to find her, to finish what should have ended in the barn, it’s Leigh who beings to fire into the water where we last saw Marigold.

  She continues to pull the trigger of her gun until it clicks empty, and still she pulls it, refusing to accept what the sound means. It’s several seconds before Marigold appears, crawling onto the shore. She’s spitting more than just the salty water onto the sand. She claws herself out of the water, raking the compacted sand into long furrows. Waves crash around her, trying to steal back their treasure. Her silver hair is dark now. Its thick mats soaking in the water, discoloring it with salty stains. Leigh and I watch her struggle until she doesn’t anymore. We watch as Marigold melts, falling limply back into the water, despite her best efforts to free herself.

  I had promised myself she would have no stone monuments in her name. I had vowed that there would be no tears cried for her. As we watch her float by, I know no one will.

  “Do I want to know?” I watch Leigh as Marigold sinks from our vision, tossing in the deeper waves.

  “She was my mother,” Leigh says this, as if it should make her murder completely understandable. Living my life, it does. “I didn’t know what she was doing down there until she had me go find Patrick. When I did, I tried to stop him. He caught me trying to burn the building. That’s when he put me in the closet. He knew he couldn’t kill me because my mother would cut him off, but she never came for me, either. She let me sit there, more invested in her creatures than her daughter. Wren was supposed to be her next subject.” Leigh turns to me so what she says next will fully sink in. “Her own granddaughter.”

  “And that’s why you killed Torri?”

  “Someone had to stop them.”

  Leigh says this in a complete monotone voice. She doesn’t expect me to understand or argue with her. She’s not looking for awards or thanks. She simply did what she knew in her heart had to be done. No fame or glory needed.

  The island has sunk back into the silence of seclusion again. I can hear Aimes and Paula shouting the little girls’ names from beyond the trees. Whatever happened with the rest of Marigold’s people, I’ll ask later, but right now I’m so very tired.

  With the last of the adrenaline leaving me, I can feel my body caught in a wildfire of conflagration. Even the cold water up to my waistline does nothing to quench the heat. My whole body is screaming, splitting my head with the pain it’s causing me. I just want to rest, to close my eyes and let someone else worry about things.

  “Do you have April?” Aimes’ voice startles me, bringing me back.

  “Yes, I always drag small children into my fights.”

  “I’m serious! We can’t find her or Wren.” Aimes is staring at the shoreline, trying to spot anything of resemblance to the little girls. “We left them by the trees. I told them to sit together, to not move, and I’d come get them when it was safe.”

  Lawless and Marxx emerge from the thick trees with the rest falling in behind them. Paula is walking backwards with her hands covering her eyes from the late afternoon sun. She, too, is searching for the little girls, but she too is also having no luck.

  Lawless checks the pulse on Rhett when he arrives beside me. His shirt is stained in irregular patterns of splotches and swirls. The many shades speak to it being more than just his blood he is wearing, but neither of us make a comment about it.

  “You look like shit,” I tell him, earning me a smirk. “Still carry two guns, I see.”

  “People keep taking my main.” His voice is as defeated as mine.

  “We have to go,” Marxx whispers it to Lawless, pressing him on the urgency, despite the two missing girls.

  The shock of what he said must have shown on my face before my words escape my lips. “You can’t be serious?”

  “Rhett is bleeding out. Lawless is bleeding out. You look like you’re going to fall over any moment. Who exactly do you think is going to go into those woods and find the girls?” Marxx asks.

  It’s a hushed conversation about the little girls’ fate. Rhett will never forgive us if we leave her out there, but Rhett may not live to forsake us if we don’t head back. It’s a coin toss of morality, outweighed by necessity.

  “Wren knows the island.” Leigh is trying to sound assuring, but she too is watching the shoreline with a prayer on her lips. “She’ll keep them safe until we can come back tomorrow morning.”

  “We’re leaving?” Aimes is close to a full mental break. Her voice trembles, cracking under the pressure of what is about to happen.

  E
veryone is watching Lawless, waiting for him to make the call. His knuckles are white, grasping the metal railings to keep himself standing. Brown eyes stare into the bottom of the boat where Rhett lays, covering the floor in pink-tinted water. Shaking his head, he makes the choice he hopes won’t come back to haunt him.

  “We’re leaving,” Lawless says, hoisting himself into the boat.

  It’s not a suggestion. He doesn’t leave room for anyone to argue or try to change his mind. He watches me, waiting for me to try both. I give him neither.

  Marxx has already grabbed Aimes, also discouraging her from trying to argue. Instead, she cries. Soft sobs escape from her with her eyes only for the tree line where she left the children. She will forever tell herself this was her fault. She was supposed to protect them, keep them safe, but she abandoned them. She will hear their cries tonight. She will hear their cries every night until we find them.

  Marxx and Dolph help load what is left of our family into the vessel. We rushed to this beach filled with eagerness to save those upon it. We pull away drenched in blood, tears, and defeat. When this started on a snow-covered road by a high school, there were fourteen of us. When we arrived at the fort, there were eleven. Now, as the sun starts to set on a long-forgotten island, there are nine. With the amount of bleeding people rocking with the waves, that number may also change.

  Paula has already started working on Rhett. She assures us his wounds are superficial and that he’ll be fine. Yet, not a single one of us tries to wake him. We let the sleeping beast lie, because when he does wake, every single one of his demons will demand payment for what we have done. Aimes holds his hand, stroking his damp hair. Even her gentle touch won’t be enough to quell his rage once it starts.

  “Let me see that arm.” Paula nudges me awake, pulling the neck of my sweatshirt to examine what’s left of my stiches.