30
Farley was typical of western towns abandoned once cattle ranching became more mechanized, then slowly rebuilt, caught in the middle of a refurbishment that lifted up each old relic one at a time. The VA center occupied a two-story, L-shaped corner building that had once been a mercantile store; it still bore the name Weston’s in colored tile just inside the front door. The offices occupied the top floor, and the rooms where counselors offered private meetings with vets who wanted or needed them.
The bake sale was being held downstairs, in a wide room with stacks of plastic chairs along the wall: the group meeting room, Rooster thought, and felt a prickling of unease up the back of his neck. He wasn’t going to stay for the meeting after, he told himself over and over – but he knew that he probably would. He’d do anything if Red looked at him adoringly.
He was currently holding up a brick pillar, one eye on the door, the other on the horseshoe of folding tables where the veteran’s wives, and Red, had set up a feast of baked goods and were happily selling them to the families of Farley.
He watched a woman touch Red’s shoulder and say something to her that made her smile. Saw another put an arm around her in a brief, encouraging hug. Saw Vicki watch her handle a sale with a warm, maternal smile of such obvious pride it nearly took his breath. How kind they all were to her; how welcoming and warm, when they had no reason to be.
It eased the knot of tension in his chest to see so many treat his girl the way she deserved. Like a normal person worthy of love and acceptance; like the sweet soul she was.
He was so absorbed in his gratitude for the women of this city that he didn’t hear anyone approach, and suddenly Jack was beside him, taking a deep breath that Rooster figured was more for his benefit than because the old man was actually tired.
Rooster jumped a little, but Jack didn’t comment. Just said, “Pretty big turnout.”
“Yeah.” He swallowed down the last of his startle response. “Should raise good money, yeah?”
“Oh yeah. The town likes to take care of its own.” He nodded toward Red. “Your girl looks right in her element.”
“Yeah.”
“She’s a real sweetheart. Vicki’ll miss her company if y’all decide to move on.”
Rooster spared the old man a sideways glance. “If?”
Jack slumped back so his shoulder rested against the pillar beside Rooster’s. “Oh, you know. If you decide you’re tired of being drifters and want to stay.”
Rooster’s stomach clenched tight in automatic response. Run, run, run, that old voice chanted in the back of his head.
“It’s not a bad place to settle down,” Jack continued, oblivious to Rooster’s mental implosion. “It’s not fancy, but you could find work. So could Red. There’s even a community college if she wanted to take some classes. They just put in a five-screen movie theater last year. There’s the farmer’s market, and the new Albertsons. We’re really moving up in the world.” He sent Rooster a considering look. “Might be worth a thought, at least.”
“Yeah,” Rooster said woodenly.
But even as panic roared in his ears, stronger than his pulse, he allowed himself a moment to consider it. A little house with a yard big enough to start a garden: vegetables, and flowers, and fruit trees with pale blossoms every spring. Red could go to school, sit in chilly classrooms with other students her age, learn about dead presidents and the life cycle and how to diagram a sentence. He could get a nine-to-five, break his back on a construction site, help build a Kroger to compete with the new Albertsons. On the weekends, they’d go sit on Jack and Vicki’s porch. Or some other neighbor’s. Sweet tea, and the chirrup of cicadas, and shadows growing long on the grass. They could go to Cody, and see the rodeo. Red could build a whole wardrobe of fringed leather and dusty cowboy boots.
He saw it all in the span of a blink: normalcy. And maybe, maybe, during the long winter nights, with snow blanketing the flat Wyoming fields, he would pull Red to him and–
He cut off that line of thought abruptly. No, he couldn’t betray her trust that way. Couldn’t let his shameful fantasies intrude on their bond.
But he’d seen the possibilities. And they were sweet, and tempting as cool water on a hot day. The mirage of sanctuary. Safety. Happiness.
“Just think about it,” Jack suggested.
But that was the problem: he already had.
~*~
“This is good.” So good, in fact, that Rooster popped the last corner of his iced pound cake into his mouth without bothering to be mannerly about it.
Red glowed with pride.
“I told her she’s a natural,” Vicki said, smiling fondly at Red as she passed. “Give her a little more practice, and she could open her own bakery.”
Red blushed furiously and looked down at her boots.
The cake turned to lead in his throat, and Rooster struggled to swallow it. Yeah, a bakery, because he could keep her safe there.
“Have you decided about the meeting, honey?” Vicki asked as she was packing empty Tupperware into a tote bag, and Rooster realized two things.
One: Vicki was talking to him.
And two: people were unstacking chairs and setting them up in two rows that faced a wooden podium.
The meeting was starting.
His gaze darted between the men who’d begun to shuffle into the building: most of them older, a few of them his age, one or two even younger. Tidy hair, and straight backs…save for those with noticeable limps; but even those boys held themselves with pride.
He could have picked a military man out of a lineup from ten yards away, and here were a whole pack of them. Talking quietly with one another, some of them laughing. He smelled fresh coffee, and a few of the wives were laying out the bake sale leftovers on a low folding table against the wall.
“I…” he started, and couldn’t get any other words out. He was petrified, suddenly. He couldn’t sit down and put his back to the door like that. Couldn’t be vulnerable. Couldn’t…
But Red was looking up at him with so much hope.
Jake stepped through the front door, Spence at his side. He stood on the Weston’s tile at the entrance and looked toward Rooster; nodded.
“You don’t have to,” Red said.
But he thought maybe he did. Maybe he ought to.
“If it’s okay,” Vicki said, casually, “the girls and I are gonna borrow Ruby for just a bit and go get some supper. You can walk up with the rest of the guys for milkshakes after.”
He took a series of deep breaths, hands curling and relaxing. Looked at Red, helpless. “I have to keep you safe.”
Vicki overheard him. “Honey, it’ll be safe as houses. We’ll be just up the street at Morton’s Diner. Okay? And there’ll be a whole bunch of us. We won’t let anything happen to Miss Ruby.”
And so far, it had been safe here, hadn’t it? No funny looks, no men in black. Jake and Jack had both stressed that they knew he and Red were running, and that they understood, and that they wanted to help.
He took one last deep breath and let it out slow. “Okay.” It was maybe the hardest thing he’d ever said, but he pushed it out. “Okay, I’ll see you after.”
Red beamed at him. Stood up on her toes and kissed his cheek. And that made it all worthwhile, no matter how painful the next hour would prove.
~*~
“Hi, I’m Brian.”
“Hi, Brian,” the group said as one.
Rooster laced his fingers together between his knees and squeezed tight. He moved his mouth – “Hi, Brian” – but no sound left his lips. His lungs were too tight.
“Um,” Brian said, and licked his lips, gaze falling to the podium…where his hands gripped tight, his knuckles white from the strain. Rooster wasn’t the only one with nerves, he guessed. “I’ve been having the nightmares again.”
Nightmares much like Rooster’s own: reliving the explosion, knowing it was coming, unable to stop it. Watching his friends, his brothers, die over and over. Brian talked about them in halting, painful sentences, gripping the podium tight, sweat shining at his temples. He left out the bloody parts, but Rooster filled them in with his own. It didn’t matter which war it was, or in what part of the world they’d seen battle: every man and woman in the room had witnessed the same thing. Humans blown to pieces. Humans bleeding, screaming, dying.
Brian finished to a smattering of quiet applause and shuffled back to his chair. He sat like a man who’d just run a marathon, curled-up and shaking, exhausted.
Rooster felt himself pitching forward, mirroring his posture, nerves strung tight. He couldn’t go up there. He couldn’t.
A noble, iron-haired man who Rooster pegged as a leatherneck on sight took the mic next, his gaze oddly kind in his stern face. When he spoke, it was with the quiet command of an officer. “What Brian’s just described is something that I think we can all related to.”
Nods all around.
“Our traumatic experiences have a way of sneaking up on us. At the time, in the middle of combat, we compartmentalize. It’s a normal human response: we can’t deal with the panic and the guilt at the time, so we stow it away, and we get on with our missions. But later, once we’re home, and we know we’re safe, the memories come back sometimes. We lose sleep. We flinch when someone drops a plate in a restaurant. When a child screams.”
More nods.
“We have trouble trusting others, sometimes,” the man said, and his gaze came straight to Rooster. “I see some new faces here tonight,” the man continued, nodding at Rooster. “Some nervous faces. I hope you’ll feel welcome here. You’re among friends.”
Rooster looked down at his linked hands, the jagged pink-white scar across the back of the left one. A bit of rebar had gone through his palm, in one side and out the other; the nerves still lit up with pain when he made a fist, dulled though it was beneath Red’s magic.
“Who else would like to share?” the man asked.
“I will,” said a familiar voice, and Rooster lifted his head to find Jake walking to the front.
“Hi, I’m Jake,” he said when he was situated.
“Hi, Jake.”
“Retired Army Major,” he continued. His mouth twisted. “Medical discharge. My convoy was ambushed. I was in the lead vehicle, but I wasn’t supposed to be. I should’ve – but we had a Humvee break down, and we got a call about an incoming air strike, and – I wasn’t supposed to be in the front. The two vehicles behind me…nobody survived. I got thrown. Massive head trauma.” He tapped the side of his skull with his knuckles. “The docs didn’t think I’d ever be able to see again.” The last he said with a bitter little smile, a soldier’s private joke: Look at me, able to see, unable to protect my men.
“I’ve had…a lot of frustration,” Jake said, blowing out a deep breath. “I wanted to spend my whole career in the Army. And now I…” He made a helpless gesture, and there were murmurs of understanding from the crowd. “I, uh, don’t quite know what to think about it all, still. My boys…it shoulda been me instead of them. And that’s…that’s hard.” He looked like he meant to say something else, but got stuck, staring into the middle distance, poised at the edge of admission.
Rooster knew the feeling. People had said – everyone from the nurses in Germany to well-meaning civilians who’d seen him limping through drug stores – that it would help to talk about it. But they didn’t know the weight of those words on the tongue. The way they tasted of bile, and rot, jagged as a mouthful of broken glass. It was too painful to prepare them; putting them out in the world was unthinkable.
They gathered at the back of his throat now, as he watched Jake struggle with his own admissions. The sound of his own helmeted head ricocheting off the floor. The taste of blood, and gunpowder, and the stink of his own piss. That awful, awful relief of knowing that he would die, and being glad about it.
“Anyway,” Jake said, “that’s me.” He’d strode up to the podium before, but melted away from it now, sliding back down into his seat like someone only taped together at the seams.
~*~
Rooster didn’t ever go up to talk, but many of the others did. Some were still fresh from combat, and others, the older ones, mostly, offered perspective and acceptance. It was…
Well, it wasn’t as terrible as he’d thought.
And yet it was twice as much so.
He didn’t know.
When the iron-haired man – someone called him Dan – announced that they would be done for the evening, Rooster stood up and went to fix himself coffee just to have something to do with his trembling hands.
Jack appeared beside him. “Pretty terrifying stuff, huh?” he asked, without a trace of mockery.
“Yeah,” Rooster admitted.
“It’ll get better.” Rooster looked over at him, and he added, “And I mean that. Not just talking a buncha therapy bullshit.”
Rooster smiled. It was weak, and it hurt his face, but he could feel that it came from a true place inside himself. A raw, broken-open, vulnerable place that frightened the hell out of him. But still.
Jake pulled up on Jack’s other side, face lined with tiredness in a way Rooster hadn’t seen previously.
Jack turned to him. “You did good, kid.”
Jake shrugged and reached for a Styrofoam cup. “I dunno.”
“No, you did,” Jack insisted. “Starting’s the first step. The rest will come.” He reached over and clapped Rooster on the shoulder. “Maybe in another few weeks we can get this one up there.”
Rooster cringed. There it was again: that assumption that they would stay.
Which…wasn’t so crazy anymore, if he was honest with himself. All he had to do, he realized, was stop resisting, and he and Red would slowly be absorbed into the town, sheltered, befriended, and made residents here. He thought he might even want that.
“Don’t rush the man, Jack,” Jake said, and sent Rooster a commiserating glance. “Basic was less brutal than standing up there.”
Rooster felt another timid smile touch his face.
“Alright, alright,” Jack said. “You boys ready to walk up for milkshakes?”
“Yeah.” Jake pulled out his phone and typed a message. “Sure.”
Rooster set down his untouched coffee gladly. He hadn’t been this far from Red in…well, ever. And he itched to get back to her, look her over, make sure she was safe and whole.
As if he sensed that, Jack touched his shoulder again, a softer pat this time. “She’s alright,” he said, under his breath.
But Rooster wouldn’t believe that until he saw so with his own eyes.
~*~
Red took a long sip of her milkshake and winced as the brain freeze hit. One of the vets’ wives, Sophie, laughed across from her. “I do the same thing,” she assured. “They’re too good to take slow.”
It was possibly the best thing she’d ever tasted. All diners had milkshakes, and most were pretty good, but this place had a whole laminated menu dedicated to them, filled with over two-dozen variations, all of them hand-dipped and topped with homemade whipped cream. After a solid minute of indecision, Red had finally selected the chocolate fudge cake shake. It had crumbles of real chocolate cake in it and fudge sauce too thick to come up the straw.
She leaned back in the booth and massaged the place between her brows with two fingertips. “Totally worth it.”
“You better order a burger, too, honey,” Vicki suggested, “or you’ll have a sugar fit.”
“That’s a good idea.”
There were seven of them crammed in the long, pink vinyl booth, all stirring shakes and talking a mile a minute, the kind of harmless town gossip Red had never had the chance to contribute to.
“Did you see Louise’s hair?” Daphne asked.
Penny chuckled and said, “It’s better than it was last month.”
“Now that’s saying something,” Sally said.
“Oh, did you girls hear about Mark and Renee’s eldest?” Julia asked.
“Such a shame,” Penny said.
Daphne asked, “What happened?”
“Oh, it was the most terrible thing…”
Red turned her gaze out the window, stomach full of cold milkshake, body pleasantly tired from a busy day. Evening lay across downtown in rich golds and ochres, the shadows plummy at the bases of buildings. Families moved languidly down the sidewalks, holding to-go coffee cups and paper shopping bags. A line was forming at the ticket kiosk outside the movie theater, its marquee lights chasing one another around the featured showtimes.
Idyllic Americana. The sight of it filled her with a rare peace.
And then Vicki gasped beside her.
Red seemed to turn in slow motion; she didn’t want to turn at all. Vicki’s shoulder tensed where it touched her own, and she knew, as she glanced away from the street scene, that the thing she’d find inside the diner was something she didn’t want to see. Maybe even something that was her fault, because she and Rooster had stayed so long. They never stayed. Maybe this was karma telling her how wrong they’d been to do so this time.
While she was gazing through the window, Spence from the garage had come in and taken a stool right beside their table. His gaze was trained on the cash register, same as everyone else, where a man in a black ski mask held a gun on the teenager working the till.
Red had spent the last five years living on the road with a Marine. She didn’t hesitate.
“Everyone, get under the table,” she whispered.
Vicki turned toward her, panic in her eyes. “Oh, honey, don’t–”
“Get under the table.” Her voice was not her own: hard, emotionless, uncompromising. It was the voice Rooster always used before he put a bullet in someone. “Get down, all of you.”
They must have been too shocked by the change in her to resist, because, slowly, they followed orders, wedging themselves down into the booth, getting as far beneath the table as they could.
Red snuck a glance toward Spence, and found him drawn as tight as she felt, his body humming with checked energy. He nodded at her.
She nodded back, and moved.
She’d only get one shot at this, so she had to make it count.
She climbed up onto the table – slow, soundless – then crouched, lifted her hands, conjured flames in her palms with a crackle of electricity in her veins. It filled her with a rush every time, calling on her power and feeling it roar to answer. She tensed, readied, and leapt–
Something closed around her wrist, and sent her crashing to the floor. The flames faltered. Her hair fell in her face and she thrashed to clear it, to see, to get loose from the thing that held her.
It was a hand, she saw.
Spence’s hand.
He looked down at her, his mouth set in a grim line, his eyes wide and frightened, as he slapped a cuff to her wrist.
And then she understood: this wasn’t a robbery. It was a trap, and she was the prey. Spence was part of it.
A slow trap, but one nonetheless.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “you seemed nice.” And fire filled her hand, and swelled, boiling into the air between them.
~*~
They were a dozen strides from the door of the diner when its big plate glass window exploded in a shower of glass that glinted like fire in the light of the setting sun. A man landed on the sidewalk with a solid thump. And Rooster realized there was fire – both inside the diner, and on the man’s sleeve, flames that he tried furiously to beat out with a reddened, scorched hand.
Fire meant one thing: Red.
Rooster felt the old switch inside himself get flipped. He had one objective now: find her, secure her, extract her from the situation. Anyone who got in his way would be collateral damage.
It was too warm for it, but he’d worn a jacket. He reached inside it now, hand closing around the butt of the Beretta he kept there. He drew as he took a running step forward–
And his leg buckled.
His right leg. His good leg.
He didn’t understand at first; he took a step, and suddenly the concrete of the sidewalk was rushing up to meet him. He threw out his hands to catch himself, the gun in his right, and rolled sideways onto his shoulder, his back, attempted to spring back to his feet.
And that was when he realized what was wrong.
Pain ripped through his calf, a bright, fresh hurt. He saw the blood on the leg of his jeans, running down over the top of his boot, pattering down onto the sidewalk. He’d been shot. In his good leg. He’d been so focused, he hadn’t even heard the gun. But he somehow knew, before he lifted his gaze, who would be holding it.
Jack’s eyes were huge in his face, his mouth open. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”
Jake held a sleek little Glock in one hand, and his expression was apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Rooster shot him in the heart.
All of this had taken a single second. When the round from the M9 shoved Jake back, Rooster didn’t wait to watch the body hit the ground. He lurched to his feet, teeth gritted against the pain. He had to put all his weight on his bad leg, and hobble forward, but he did it. He had to get to Red. Had to.
He reached the shattered window, and the burned man. It was Spence, the kid from the garage. His eyebrows were singed off; one side of his face was blistering. Tears ran down his cheeks.
“Hold it,” a woman’s voice said.
She stood facing him, on the far side of Spence, a Glock of her own held in steady hands. Athletically built, hard-eyed, unmistakably military – formerly. At the moment she wore the plain black fatigues and tac gear of every other Institute lackey that had come for Red.
His finger caressed the trigger.
Red stumbled out through the window, a set of massive silver cuffs dangling from her right wrist, her left hand raised, fire flickering in her palm. She didn’t hesitate; sent a spray of flame toward the woman, as focused and forceful as the blast from a flame thrower.
The woman shouted and staggered back, bringing up her arm to shield her face.
“Hold her there!” Rooster shouted over the rush and crackle of fire, and shot out the window of the car parked at the curb beside them. It took two rounds, and then he had to peel the safety glass away. With a bloody hand, he dragged himself across the front seat and started pulling wires. “Red!” he called when he had the engine started. “Let’s go!”
She didn’t so much jump into the car as fall into it; she pulled the door shut with her left hand, having to reach across her body, her right hanging limp in her lap.
The second the door clicked, Rooster gunned the engine and they peeled away from the curb. Several oncoming cars swerved to avoid them. Blare of horns. Crunch of metal. But they were clear, and he kept going. He’d stopped feeling guilty about property damage and theft a long time ago.
Red half-hung out the ruined window for at least a quarter mile, ready to throw more fire, but there were no shots, and no pursuit. She collapsed back against the seat. “What’s wrong with your leg?” she asked.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” He risked a glance and saw that she was working at the cuff with her left hand. They weren’t police issue: thicker than normal, with no visible clasp, eerily smooth and close-fitting. Her fingers came away bloody, and that was when he saw the tiny spikes on the inside of the thing.
“Holy shit,” Rooster hissed. “Is it stabbing you?”
Her fought the impulse to jerk the wheel and pull over. They were in the outskirts of town, houses giving way to fields and clumps of low forest. But they were still too close; he had to keep driving.
“I don’t know how, but it’s…” Her voice was strange, too slow, slurred. “I can’t use my fire with my right hand. It…I think it’s…” She trailed off, fingers still fumbling for a latch that wasn’t there.
“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Your leg,” she said.
It trembled now, his foot shaking so badly that the car’s acceleration lurched and stuttered. The pain was terrible, but manageable; he’d lived with worse. The problem was the blood loss. He needed to apply a tourniquet. He was already dizzy and clammy, bile pushing up his throat. He didn’t have long before he passed out, he knew, and then he’d be of no use to Red at all. But they were still too close. He just needed to get a little farther…
If he hadn’t been bleeding to death, he imagined his reflexes would have been quicker. Because as it was, he didn’t see the spike strip until it was too late. He hit the brakes, but the front tires skidded over it.
There was a deafening pop.
And they were fucked.
~*~
The moment the cuff clicked into place around her wrist, Red felt its bite. The literal sting of the spikes, and the way, from first touch, it seemed to sap her strength. She couldn’t conjure fire in her right hand. A slow numbness was steadily creeping its way up her arm, like when she fell asleep on it wrong and she lost circulation. She kept tracing its smooth contours with her fingertips, scrabbling at it with her nails. She had to get it off. The stink of hot, fresh blood filled the car, and she knew that she was their only real defense against their pursuers. The bulk of Rooster’s arsenal was split between the truck and the hotel, all of it beyond reach. On top of that, the car was stolen, and would be reported, which meant local law enforcement would get involved. An untenable situation.
If she could just get the cuff off–
She had to fling up a hand and brace herself against the dash as Rooster hit the brakes. She heard what sounded like twin gunshots…and then a hiss that definitely wasn’t.
The car came to a shuddering halt.
“Spike strip,” Rooster said, voice detached in the way it got when he was in battle mode.
“We can’t stay in the car,” she said, and a second later, the windshield exploded in a spiderweb of minute cracks. The bench seat jumped, and Red saw that there was a hole in the windshield, and a matching one in the center of the seatback between them. The crack of the rifle came a fraction of a second later, after the shot was already buried in the upholstery.
Rooster pulled her down below the dash, a hand cupping protectively around her head. Both of them were panting, their breath loud and quick in the close confines. When she turned to him, she saw that his face was pale and clammy.
She started to reach for him with her left hand, to heal him, unsure if she could even conjure the necessary power with the cuff on her wrist, but he caught her hand with his own. “No, not now,” he said. “I want you to open your door, and when I say ‘go,’ we’re gonna go down the shoulder and into the trees, okay?”
Another shot pierced the windshield above them, and she heard shatter-proof glass rain down onto the dash. A few pieces landed in her hair.
“We can’t make it,” she said, stomach cramping with panic.
“Yeah, we can. Throw up a little fire screen, and I’ll lay down cover fire. Okay?” When she didn’t respond: “Red, I need confirmation.”
“Okay,” she breathed. “Okay, okay.”
“Alright. Get the door open, then wait for the next shot, then go.”
“Okay.”
When she pushed the door open – right arm numb, heavy, pained – a rifle round went through it; she thought she heard the quiet click of it ricocheting off the pavement somewhere beyond the car.
“Go,” Rooster said, and she went, bringing up a fistful of fire and pushing it out, out, out, the screen Rooster had asked for.
He kept one hand on her shoulder, his steps stumbling and uneven as he followed her. His Beretta cracked out shot after shot.
Red tripped on the edge of the pavement, and then skidded down the embankment into the little patch of forest, dragging Rooster along with her.
“Get up, get up,” he said when they hit the bottom, half-pulling, half-leaning on her.
They got their feet under them like an ungainly, newborn four-legged creature, and limped into the cover of close-growing pines.
Last light flared orange in the tree tops, lighting them from beneath, but down amongst the trunks it was all a shifting collage of shadows. The air was cooler here, and smelled of nearby fresh water.
Water might mean a stream, which could help them hide their tracks.
“Smell that?” Rooster asked.
“Yeah.” She turned toward it, and Rooster’s arm slipped off her shoulders. He went down hard on his knees with a curse, and she turned back to him.
He swayed back and forth, his face an eerie bone-white in the gloom, hair glued to his temples, and forehead, and the back of his neck with sweat.
“I have to help you first,” she said, reaching for him again. And again, he batted her away. “Rooster.”
“I’m fine.”
“You can’t even walk! Let me see it.”
“We don’t have time.” He glared at her. Or attempted to. He was half-a-head shorter than her on his knees, and he kept swallowing like he was fighting not to be sick.
“You can’t keep going like this,” she tried to reason.
He nodded toward her hand. “But you can?”
She frowned down at the cuff. No, not effectively, she couldn’t. The numbness was crawling up over her shoulder and spreading across her chest, cold but relentless, like frost across a windowpane. If left unchecked, it might move down her other arm, shut off her abilities completely.
They’d been made for this purpose, she realized: something in the throbbing points that pierced her skin, or the metal itself, was designed to contain her power. The Institute was getting smarter, bolder.
But there wasn’t much that could control fire.
“I’m going to try something,” she announced, and sparked a flame in her left hand.
“Red,” Rooster said like a warning.
“Shh.” She brought the flame to the cuff on her other wrist, touched it to it, and then pushed with all her might.
Light flared, bright enough to make her eyes water, and the heat burned her skin. She’d never managed to scorch herself; never found a single blister or even a pink patch, but the sensation was there: of roasting flesh, and melting bone; of being burned at the stake like the witch she was.
“Red, stop.” Rooster sounded scared now, but she kept pushing. Kept funneling more and more of her power into the heat. She wrapped her fingers around the cuff, willed all of her fire and her fury into it. Her scalp prickled; tears streamed down her cheeks. She became aware of a high whining sound, and finally realized it was coming from between her clenched teeth.
“Red.”
The cuff fell to the forest floor, and sensation flooded her arm, painful and wonderful. Red drew back on the flames, let her power ebb, and blinked down at her wrist.
Her skin was pink, but not burned like it should have been. She rubbed the bones, smearing blood drops into a grisly bracelet, and tried to catch her breath. She trembled, drained in the low-sugar way that always followed a power usage of that magnitude. But she was still on her feet, and she cultivated a little flame, no bigger than that of a cigarette lighter, in her right palm.
She looked at Rooster.
He was gaping at her. “Your hair…” he said.
He sounded delusional; blood loss. There was no time. “Your leg,” she prompted. “Rooster, come on.”
He moved to comply, wincing.
And she heard the bullet take him in the shoulder. The soft, fierce thump as it bit through meat and muscle. He shook, pushed forward by the impact. Red grabbed at his shirt, tried to catch him, and only succeeded in slowing his face-plant.
He landed on his side with an animal sound of pain, teeth gritted, face white from blood loss and shock.
Jake stood five paces away, hands steady on his gun, expression hard to read in the shifting, wind-tossed shadows. Behind her, Red heard the rustling of brush: the rest of the team, moving into position, surrounding them.
Rooster twisted with a low groan, glancing back over his good shoulder. “Vest, huh?”
Jake’s eyes flicked to him, briefly, before coming back to Red. He did in fact wear a vest, visible between the torn-open halves of his shirt.
“Shoulda shot you in the fucking head,” Rooster said. He forced a wheezing, humorless chuckle.
Red had been angry before.
She didn’t have words for the way she felt now.
Banking on the fact that they wanted her alive, she slowly straightened, empty palms turned toward Jake. Her bare hands were more dangerous than any weapon, and the way his throat jumped as he swallowed told her he knew that.
“I didn’t want it to be this way,” Jake said.
“Me neither,” Red said. She felt the power gathering beneath her skin; it hummed like a colony of bees. She could see the shimmer of heat above her hands, little curls of steam lifting up toward the last flare of the sunset. The wind shifted, pulled in toward her warmth, coming at her from all sides now, tree trunks groaning. “This is going to hurt very badly,” she said, quiet, bored, almost. “And I’m not sorry.”
She called the fire, and it came.
It erupted from her hands. From the ground, a protective circle around the two of them, a huge, blinding white column of fire. She felt her hair lift in the draft; felt the heat enfold them. Rooster looped a weak arm around her legs, held her steady, and the fire never touched him. It was Red’s to command, and it knew that she loved him, that he was to be protected.
She was aware of a sharp pain in her right arm, like a bee sting. The fire danced. Wavered.
Two men, nothing but dim shadows on the other side of the fire, circled them. Red gathered the flames in close, into her open palms, and then shot it toward them.
Screams. Stink of scorched flesh.
Another pain, this time in her leg, and her knee buckled.
They were shooting at her, now.
She gathered the flames to her, swirling them around herself like a cloak, preparing to send them–
It felt like she was shoved. Like someone hit her across the backs of the thighs and shoulders with a monstrous baseball bat. One moment she was standing, and the next she was on the ground, twitching, teeth closing on her tongue until she tasted blood. The fire went out. Her power fritzed, and flickered, and died in her veins, leaving only weakness, and a horrible twitching.
She’d been electrocuted.
The woman from before, dark-eyed and fierce-looking, stood over her, holding the Taser whose leads were now attached to Red. Her hair was frizzed from the heat, soot marred her forehead, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.
“I need the cuffs!” she called to Jake.
Rooster, curled on his side in the dirt, moved like a striking snake. Red saw the flash of silver as light caught the blade of his knife, and he sunk it in the woman’s thigh.
When she yelled and went to her knees, Rooster sat up and cold-cocked her in the face. She went over like a felled tree, unconscious. And dropped the Taser.
Bleeding, shaking, hardly able to sit upright, Rooster leaned over and pulled the leads from Red’s twitching body. The spasms lingered, but they were already fading, the last of her energy funneling power through her, healing her; she could already feel the bullet wounds starting to close.
She was so tired. If she closed her eyes, she would fall into a deep sleep, and when she woke, she’d be only a little sore, but mostly whole.
Rooster was looking down at her, swaying; a little trickle of blood leaked from one nostril. “Finish him, sweetheart.”
That’s right: Jake was still on his feet somewhere, cowering from the fire. But he would come soon.
She gathered air into her lungs. “Leave him!” she shouted, and hoped Jake could hear her. “You can have me, but you leave him alone! Understand? That’s the deal: take me, but leave him. Don’t you dare hurt him!”
Rooster’s face blanked. “Red–”
She reached up and pressed her palm to his forehead. Drew on what little of her strength remained, and pushed it, just like always, through his skin, and bone, through all his atoms.
Please let it be enough, she thought.
She retained consciousness just long enough to see his eyes roll back. To watch him collapse.
Was just drifting into the black when Jake came to stand over her, a pair of fat silver cuffs in one hand.