Split Feather Read online

  Strong as I was, I kept the big wrench in the back of my truck. It was big, it was heavy, and it felt good in my hands. Yeah, I know…

  That’s what she said.

  Looking around, I smacked the heavy part of the pipe into my right hand. Being a lefty had caused one of the mothers to accuse me of being the spawn of the devil. Far be it from me to disagree with a nun.

  A voice rose up in anger. A powerful voice, a singer’s voice, a voice that had made me feel happy for a short while. There came a distinct thud-smack of a fist striking flesh, and that gorgeous voice cried out in pain and fear.

  Oh hell no.

  Oh hell no.

  When I move fast, I move fast. I sprinted across the gravel parking lot holding that wrench in both hands like a caveman with a club. My face was frozen in that madwoman’s grin I get, and I was drunk on adrenaline like I never get with alcohol. My demon was humming a little tune, happy as a fuckin’ clam because the rage was closing in and shit was going all dark around the edges. My ears were ringing with this nasty tinny noise like bells and evil crickets, and oh yeah…

  Something bad was about to go down.

  When I realized the demon was humming, I made my fingers drop the wrench, because I don’t want something bad to end up with me in prison. My demon shrieked with rage and called me all kinds of nasty things, but I kept running, taking the corner like a baseball player rounding third base. Then I slid like a boss, smack-fuckin-dab into—you guessed it—Dirty Stinkin Motherfuckin Hipster Dude.

  He had the singer pinned up against the nasty dumpster behind Honey’s, and he’d pulled a knife. I don’t know if he had rape in mind, or robbery, or maybe he was just showing off his shiny new pseudo-penis. Whatever his intentions were, I belted him hard enough to knock them clean out of his skanky little head. I may have knocked out a few teeth, too, and I sure as hell broke his nose. That came from martial arts class. You know, Far East spirituality, and all that crap. I never did learn how to control my temper, but I sure as shit learned how to throw a punch.

  He threw up his arms to protect himself—and when my knee hit his solar plexus, he threw up, noisily, all over himself and half the parking lot. His hands came back down, and the hilt of his knife glanced off my temple just above the jaw. It wasn’t much of a blow, but damn it hurt, and it pissed me off even more. The rage closed in, the buzzing noise almost like I was being mobbed by my bees. Dirty Hipster Dude threw his arms out wide and his head back, to surrender, I guess.

  All I could see was his exposed throat.

  One blow, hissed the demon in my head. One blow, that’s all it takes, you know you want to. And I did want to, wanted to hit that asshole as much as I’d ever wanted anything in my life. I twisted my hips with every intention of doing it. Killing him. Killing every fucker who’d ever hit a child, a woman, a girl, hit me…

  “Don’t,” Bane said. Hands out, smiling, face as serene as if he was asking me not to pick flowers in his garden. The words pierced the cloud of red fury, and instead of a killing strike to the throat, I threw a regular old punch to the gut.

  Hipster Dude collapsed into a pile of new puke and self-pity, and I tried to unclench my fists, my jaw. I was wound tight, too tight, like a broken alarm clock. I tried to breathe through my nose, tried to bring my lips back over my teeth, tried not to show what a crazy, fucked-up nutjob I really was.

  Bane reached out and touched me.

  Don’t ever, ever touch me when I’m mad. Something bad will happen, every damn time, and even if I’m sorry afterward it’ll be too late.

  But Bane touched the side of my face, and I didn’t die, and he didn’t die. Nobody died. The ringing in my ears faded away to almost nothing, and my vision cleared, and for a change my demon wasn’t bellowing violence and obscenities.

  People started spilling out the back doors, yelling and pointing at us, at Dirty Hipster Dude moaning in his own puke. Bane smiled at me, really smiled at me, and for a moment I almost smiled back.

  My demon, seeing that my attention was diverted, seized the opportunity. She grabbed my battered head in both hands and squeezed so that the pain in my temple came crashing through the door. Cue blackout in three…

  2

  I hate hospitals.

  Yeah, I know that sounds stupid. I mean, who likes hospitals, right? Nobody ever says, “Hey, I’m having a great day, let’s go to the hospital,” but me, I haaaate hospitals. They’re full of pain and death and lies the size of a friggin’ elephant standing right in the middle of the room while everyone pretends it’s not there. Another broken arm, another broken leg, a bruised spleen, a split lip. What a clumsy fuckin’ kid. How long has she had this rash? We need copies of her x-rays… Everyone stands around talking, eyes looking at you over their paper masks, all concerned, but it’s just lies and lies and more lies.

  If they cared so much, how come I had to keep coming back? At least this time I’d put myself in the hospital. Maybe that’s what they call growing up.

  You know what’s even better than waking up in the hospital? Waking up in the hospital with a cluster headache—or as I like to say, a clusterfuck headache. I hadn’t had one in over a year, and the tears that came leaking out now were as much about the despair as they were for the pain. The eye on the side of my face where I’d been hit felt like it was burning and all swollen up, as if someone was trying to pop it out of my head with a hot spoon.

  This was the price I paid for not letting my demon have her way. Pain so bad I’d do almost anything to make it stop.

  Almost anything. I hadn’t yet killed anyone, but the headaches were getting worse, and deep in the hell that was my brain the bitch was laughing at me. She knew it was only a matter of time.

  I had to get up. I had to get up and move. I tried to sit, whimpering a little at the pain and the nausea, and again when the IV needle clawed at my arm. Of course, nurses love that shit. “Poke ’em full of holes, stuff ’em full of pills,” and if they don’t like your story, “Stick ’em in the psych ward for a few days.”

  Scootching my butt back on the bed, I tried again to sit up without tearing the damn needle out of my arm, crying because it hurt so bad and I hate needles and I hate hospitals and I hate those fucking short gowns. I couldn’t sit up all the way, and I couldn’t lie back down because that would make my head hurt so much worse, so I just kind of leaned back wishing I was dead. Just when I thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, the nurse walked in, saw me, and stopped dead in his tracks.

  His mouth flattened into a line of judgmental distaste.

  Yeah, I remember you, too, I thought. Asshole. His eyes flicked to the scars on my forearm, and for a minute I wanted to cover them with the blanket and just melt into a little puddle of shame, and then I got mad. It didn’t help the pain any, but it got me to stop crying.

  “You need to lie back down,” he said, setting the little laptop thingie on a table and advancing on me like he was going to push me down.

  “I need to get up,” I croaked. “I have a cluster headache.”

  “You have a concussion,” he said condescendingly. “You were in a bar fight.” Contempt dripped from him like sweat. Mean little piggy eyes. “I need you to cooperate. I need—”

  “You need to work on your bedside manner.” A voice as sweet and low as clover honey brought the nurse up short.

  “Are you family?” Nurse Asshole snapped, turning toward the door. He knew I didn’t have a family.

  “Oh, yes, I’m family.” Bane stepped into the room, carrying a bunch of shopping bags and looking more fabulous than any human has a right to look. “My family is this hospital’s biggest contributor, so I think you’d better drop the attitude, or you’ll be looking for a new job.” Asshole stiffened as if someone had twisted the stick he kept shoved up his rectum.

  “I’m going to get the doctor,” he snapped, bolting from the room.

  “You do that, sweetheart.” Bane smiled at me, and his smile was so full of real compassion t
hat the tears started leaking out again. Was it possible that this stranger could care about me? I didn’t care about me.

  Of course, he didn’t know me, and I did.

  He pulled the IV pole closer and untangled the line so I could sit up straight, then adjusted the bed and attempted to free me from my hair. It’s so long that if I sleep with it unbraided, I wake up tangled like a fish in a net. Long fingers massaged my back, my neck, and my scalp. It felt so good I would have wept with relief, if I hadn’t already been crying.

  “Poor thing,” he crooned, and it felt genuine. “Poor thing. Can I get you anything? Glass of water? Another blanket? I brought you some clothes. Yours were all covered with someone else’s blood, and that’s terrible juju. Just let me know when you’re ready to put them on, darling. No hurry. You poor little thing.”

  “Unh,” I replied, by which I meant “keep doing that.” I hate being touched by strangers, hate it hate it but omigod, his touch was magic. The pain let up a little, enough so that I could focus on my rescuer.

  “Fabulous” hardly began to describe Bane. His eyes were a startling turquoise blue, like a California swimming pool. Nobody had eyes that color, but they looked real. His hair was silvery-white tipped with rainbow colors at the ends, cut short at the sides and sticking up all over the place like a lion’s mane. Think David Bowie as the Goblin King, only younger and sparklier.

  He wore artfully torn clothes of some shiny black material that probably cost more than I’d make in a year, and lots and lots of glittering makeup, and awesome black boots that buckled up past the knee. He wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of Rolling Stone, or maybe one of those girly magazines at the grocery store.

  Me, I’m a torn flannel and old jeans kinda girl, who’s doing well if I can find clean underwear in the morning.

  He pulled away just as I was starting to get antsy.

  “Better?” he asked. I nodded. “Do you think you’re ready to get dressed? That gown looks good on you, but I’d rather we didn’t get pulled over for indecent exposure on the way home.”

  Before I could ask “What the fuck?” Dr. Long knocked and entered in one fluid movement. It’s always tempting to say something about privacy, but since he’d seen me naked and sliced open from wrist to elbow, I have a hard time even making eye contact with him. Plus he has a really nice ass.

  The scars on my arms itched again.

  “Ready to go, Ms. Aleksov?”

  “Do I get to keep the pole?” I tugged the IV line and scowled at him, but he just chuckled and set me free, leaving me with a cotton wad and giant white “x” of medical tape to keep me from bleeding to death.

  “Looks like you’re getting back to your usual self,” he commented. “I’ll send the nurse in with your paperwork. Do you have a ride home?”

  “I—”

  “I’ll be driving her home.” Bane winked at me. “Honey’s orders, so there’s no use arguing. She’s got your bill covered, too, and don’t scowl at me like that, I’m just the fabulous messenger.”

  Dr. Long laughed. “Well, I see you’re in good hands.” He gave me the usual stack of stupid “how not to die when you’ve got a concussion” literature, patted me on the head like I was five years old, and hustled off. Doubtless he had other patients waiting, patients who were in greater need, more deserving, didn’t want to have wild sex with him, and probably had the ability to pay their own bills.

  Bane tossed the bags on my bed and I glared. Or squinted—my head was starting to hurt again.

  “I can get myself home. You don’t have to bother.”

  “And I could have gotten myself out of a mess last night, but you thought you should bother. So I’m in your debt.” His smile was friendly enough, but I knew stubborn when it was staring me in the face, even when I wasn’t looking into a mirror.

  Chasing him from the room, I took the clothes out of the bags and put them on. They were the kind of clothes I’d have picked out for myself, cotton tee and jeans, hiking boots and a big flannel shirt, but way more expensive than I was used to. The bra and panties fit, they matched, and still had tags on them from a boutique I couldn’t even walk into without feeling like a dumpster-diving bum.

  I grumbled the entire time.

  But it felt kind of nice, too.

  * * *

  The sunlight through the trees flashed against my eyes like a strobe light, and by the time we got home it felt like something was trying to bash its way out of my head. As a result I didn’t have the energy to argue when Bane took over. I’m usually pretty pissy about people invading my territory, but he had a mug of coffee in my hands and an ice pack on the back of my neck before I could work up a real snarl.

  Really, I just wanted the pain to go away. Leaning back into my squashy old couch I closed my eyes, half listening as Bane bustled about my trailer singing to himself, wondering whether the half-cup of coffee I’d managed to suck down would stay down. Whenever a clusterfuck headache comes on, if I’m lucky the pain only lasts a week. A month if I’m not, and it’ll purge me of nearly everything I try to put into my stomach.

  “Poor thing,” Bane crooned. “Poor little thing.”

  The demon sat on the couch next to me, ancient springs creaking under her weight, her hot hand on my thigh as she leaned close. I could even smell the sulfur-and-burnt-hair smell of her breath. She was always stronger, always more there, when I had a headache.

  You have knives in the kitchen, she crooned. A hammer in the drawer. Guns in the cabinet, guns in the dresser, chainsaw and ax in the woodshed. Siggy, do it, Siggy, you know you want to…

  Do it, and the pain will stop.

  “Piss off,” I advised, but my stomach heaved, and I clenched my jaw. Damned if I was going to lose my coffee over this bitch.

  She laughed, and I gritted my teeth to keep from crying out as my face twisted in agony. A hand appeared on my other shoulder, long-fingered and cool and strong. I jumped half out of my skin and dumped the half-cup of coffee all over myself and the much-stained couch.

  “Dammit!” I yelled, and then clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from puking.

  “You weren’t talking to me, just then, were you?” Bane’s voice was careful, neutral. I took my hand away, but kept my mouth clamped shut. I knew better than to talk about my demon. I’d tried, once, in a shrink’s office, and it hadn’t turned out well.

  “That’s what I thought.” He moved off, and I figured the next thing I’d hear was the trailer door slapping shut. Well, I hadn’t wanted help in the first place, no skin off my back.

  But nope, the footsteps headed toward the kitchen, not the door. A cupboard opened, pots and pans rattling.

  “I’m making dinner,” he said to nobody in particular, “and I’m spending the night so I can keep an eye on you. If you think you’re big enough to throw me out, you’re welcome to try.”

  The coffee pot gargled to life again, and he began to sing. My demon gnashed her teeth and hissed.

  Then she was gone.

  I put my empty cup on the coffee table and leaned back, listening to Bane’s powerful, wonderful, honey-soft voice. Leaning back I closed my eyes, and must have fallen asleep. The last thing I remembered thinking was that my life couldn’t possibly get any weirder.

  3

  I woke in my own bed to the sound of music, the smell of coffee, and the cautious absence of pain. Figuring that life could only go downhill from there, I decided not to move. Why tempt Fate by reminding her of my existence?

  All good things must come to an end, however, and all women must pee. I opened my eyes carefully, certain the clusterfuck was hovering over my pillow, just waiting for me to sit up so it could grab my head and crush it like a grape. Maybe I’d just lay here another…

  Nope. I really had to pee. I sat up even more carefully, but nothing bad happened.

  “You up, Buttercup?”

  Bane’s shadow filled my doorway. Damn, he was sparkly… and fabulous, and in my house. I fought the u
rge to sound like an ungrateful bitch.

  “You’re still here?”

  Okay, so I didn’t try all that hard, but he just laughed.

  “Mornin’, Sunshine.” Another nickname? “Thought you were gonna sleep forever. Breakfast’s ready when you are. I got rid of that crap you had in the kitchen and got you some real coffee.” I made a face at his retreating back and stood up, intending to root around and find something cleanish to wear.

  Then I froze in shock.

  My room was clean. There were no clothes on the floor, my coffee cups were missing from the dresser, the mirror and windows sparkled… I felt like the seven dwarves must have felt, when friggin’ Snow White invaded their sanctuary.

  “Bane!” I hollered.

  “Siggy!” Bane hollered back with a voice full of laughter. “They’re in the drawer.”

  “What?”

  “Your clothes. They’re in the drawer. The ones I didn’t burn.”

  Pulling open the dresser drawer, I scowled at the clean, folded clothes, some of which were unfamiliar. I couldn’t say for certain they were new—given my tendency to put off doing laundry—but some of them were unlike anything I’d buy myself. Too expensive, for one thing, and what was up with that slinky black top? I shoved it aside and sighed with relief when I found my old Life is Good shirt, frayed at the seams but soft and comfy as a blanket.

  Walking tenuously to the bathroom, I peed, I brushed my teeth, then brushed my teeth again because it tasted like a rodent had crawled in there and died. It occurred to me that I might shower. To hell with that. If Bane was offended by my body odor, then he could just go home.

  I mean, I was grateful and all—really, I was—but this was my place. It was a nasty old trailer nobody else wanted—narrow and dingy, with that’s-not-wood paneling riddled with holes, hideous green carpet, and a bathroom so tiny my knees practically hit the wall when I sat down to pee—and I’m pretty sure I’d violated a bunch of ordinances when I dragged it out here. But whatever, it was mine. The best thing about my place was that I owned it outright, land and all, twenty acres and change I’d bought when one of the foster-grands who actually liked me left me a little bit of money.