“This place has been occupied recently.” Aric drew one of his swords. “What makes you think the residents won’t return?”
“Wagon-wheel ruts lead away from the house. Deep ruts. The slavers took their wagon full of captives north to sell—to the serious black hats I just mentioned.” Jack certainly knew his way around this part of the world. “They set out after the last rain. But if they return, we’ll kill them. Unless the Reaper is afraid of mortal slavers?”
“In my lifetimes, they’ve come in many different manifestations. Not once have I feared them.”
Jack tried the door. Locked. He kicked it in, and we crossed the threshold into a front sitting room. The interior reeked, like someone had forgotten to take the trash out (for a garbage truck that would never come again). Most of the furniture had been destroyed, likely for firewood.
A line of shackles was bolted to studs in the wall. Definitely a den.
“Fuckin’ hate slavers,” Jack grated. “Worse than Baggers.”
I stared at those cuffs. “When there was no water, slaves dug wells. So what’s the appeal now?”
“Salvage crews.” Gaze alert, Jack checked a closet. “There are food stores if you know where to look—Prepper bunkers, government shelters, cargo ships that got beached, silos, rail cars. And sometimes bosses trade slaves for other goods.”
We entered a living room that smelled cleaner. There were a couple of lawn chairs, a plastic table, a stone fireplace.
Jack faced Aric with a mean glint in his eyes. “Maybe Evie should be asking you about slavers, since you’re the one who kidnapped her. Pretty much the same difference, non? I wonder how you kept her bound. You shackle her? A sixteen-year-old girl?”
Instead of denying it or downplaying it, Aric said, “Absolutely.” There was that startling honesty again. “And once she cut off her own thumb to free herself from her bonds, she called up an army of green and nearly destroyed us all.”
The mere memory of that day drained me. “Can we just not talk right now?”
“Come on, Evie.” With me in tow, Jack cleared two back bedrooms and a bathroom, ushering me into the latter. “Why doan you change?” he said, setting up his spare flashlight. “I’ll find some dry wood and get a fire goan. Stay in here, and take your time.” He obviously didn’t want me to be alone with Aric.
Dry wood? Was there such a thing anymore? “I can help.”
“Non, I got this.”
Guilt weighed on me. “You’re the one who was injured.”
“I ain’t unused to getting my clock cleaned, bébé.” Because his mother’s beaux had introduced him to violence early.
When he helped me take off my bug-out bag and poncho, I asked, “Why are you being so nice to me?”
He turned to go, but hesitated at the door. “See things clearer than before.”
I felt just the opposite.
Once he left, I gripped the counter, fighting a wave of dizziness. Could I keep riding at this pace? My headache throbbed, my legs and arms trembling. I stared into the mirror. My skin was so pale, my eyes seeming too big for my face.
In the reflection, I spied one of those shower squeegees behind me and felt a pang for the previous owners.
What a waste of your limited time.
Things could be worse. I could be dead like them. Though waterlogged and chilled, I remained free. No shackles circled my wrists, no Bagger bites marked my skin.
I stripped and hung up today’s clothes, then unzipped my bug-out bag. Inside, I had an ultra-small sleeping bag, energy bars, a canteen, bandages for Jack, and more clothes. I dug for another change.
Banging sounded from somewhere else in the house. What was Jack doing?
I’d just finished dressing when I heard him return to the living room. “So you’re two thousand years older than she is?” he said to Aric. “There’s robbing the cradle—and then there’s this. She’s a teenager, you fils de putain.”
“When I married her, I was younger than she was,” Aric pointed out. “I can’t control that I’ve endured this long. In any case, counting her various incarnations, she’s lived on this earth for well over a century. She has memories of games when she was older, a woman grown.”
“The unwed girl in there is named Evie Greene. She went to Sterling High, and she grew up in cane country like me. And even if you had married her, you never consummated it, no.” He could be just as snide as Aric. “Not like Evie and me did.” Low blow, Jack.
“I’m going to make you pay for that. In time.”
“Now I know why you tried to stop us that night. How’d that work out for you? All my life, folks been telling me I cheat death. Guess they were right.”
“The honor doesn’t belong to the one she chose first for her bed,” Aric bit out. “It belongs to the one she chooses to keep there.”
“And you think that’s goan to be you? You’re delusional in your old age, you.”
Hostility continued to seethe between them, along with a cutthroat rivalry.
Now I was about to have to wade right into the middle of it. In a daze, I turned toward the door, nearly leaving my bag behind. Accustomed to the security at Aric’s, I’d forgotten the first rule of survival out on the road.
Jack had tried so hard to teach me. I’d thought he was just being cruel.
And now I knew why he’d gotten angry whenever I’d been hungry. I would never forget the image of him as a little boy kicking that trap in frustration. . . .