Split Feather Page 4

  As I was finishing up and still feeling sorry for myself, I heard an engine approaching and halfway hoped it was my home invader back for another look-see. It’d give me an easy target, at least.

  It was the UPS guy. Which was even more awesome, because I looked like someone who’d been sick for a week and got fired and then sat in the front yard crying because the demon in her head was being mean again. And my UPS guy is really cute. Fuck. I stripped off the rubber gloves I’d been wearing and pushed the sweaty hair back from my sweaty face with the back of my hand, and opened the door.

  Federico has big beautiful brown eyes with lashes so thick he looks like he is wearing mascara, and ridiculously thick wavy black hair. And oh-my-yes legs. Thank God for shorts, right? He has beautiful, even teeth and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes that said he smiles a lot and is probably too old for me. But whatever. It’s not a crime to look, right?

  “Letter for ya, Miss Siggy.” He flashed his pearly whites and dimples. Yes, he knew he was cute. He held out a fat tan envelope, the kind that’s lined with bubble wrap. Taking it, I signed his electronic thingamajig, and checked out his butt as he walked away.

  Hey, I’d had a shitty day.

  Slut, whispered my demon. He wouldn’t want you anyway.

  “Oh, shut up already,” I snapped. Seriously, I’d had it. I stomped inside, slammed the door, scowled at the damn thing as it bounced back open, and reached for the scissors, meaning to cut the tape. But I’d tidied the stupid kitchen, so my scissors weren’t on the edge of the counter where they’d been for the last week. Hell, I’d probably never find them again. Grabbing a steak knife from the drain, I sawed the thing open instead.

  First I tore away the sticky stuff and tore the envelope open—it was stapled shut, too. Without any fingernails to speak of, I had to use the knife again—and then stood there staring, puzzled as hell. The envelope contained a card, like a birthday card or something in a red envelope. All this fuss for a card? And who’d sent it, anyway? Even if it was my birthday, and it wasn’t.

  This had to be a mistake. It couldn’t be meant for me… but I wanted it to be. I wanted to be the person who gets birthday cards or Christmas cards or just “long time no see, miss you” cards in the mail. No, that wasn’t me, and I shouldn’t even take it out of the UPS package. I looked again, and it didn’t have a return address… just my address, and it was addressed to “S. J.” So, okay, I’d find out who this other “S. J.” was, and make sure they got their pretty card.

  Thinking there might be something written on the red envelope—a return address, a name, anything—I pulled it out, and blinked in surprise. It had “Sigurd John” scrawled on it in wobbly letters. It was for me.

  My day had gone from utter crap to weird as fuck, and it wasn’t even noon.

  The flap had been tucked in, not sealed, so I popped the envelope open and pulled out a card. A birthday card, all balloons and butterflies and sparkles, like it was meant for a little girl. Curiouser and curiouser. I grinned, delighted—a mysterious card, sent to me, and on purpose. It seemed an awful lot of expense and bother to go through.

  I opened the card way too quickly. The words “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” were stamped in shiny fake gold on the inside of the card, and there were balloons and clown faces and stuff. Normal stuff. Inside there was an old Polaroid-type photo with another, narrower envelope, taped to the back. Someone had written a note there, in the same uncertain hand that had addressed the envelope. I held the card in place with my thumb, and read that first.

  It wasn’t much, just three lines.

  Dear Sigurd,

  It is time for you to come home.

  Love, Grandpa John

  “I have a grandpa,” I whispered, hoping that might make it seem real. I couldn’t tell how I felt. There weren’t any words in any language that could possibly describe it. Agony? Joy? Heartbreak? Hope?

  None of those worked. It felt like someone had reached into my chest cavity and ripped out my heart and then shoved it back in place and forced it to beat again. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe, and black dots like demon fireflies danced all around my field of vision. I popped the smaller envelope open, too, and sat down hard.

  It contained a plane ticket to some place called Tsone, Alaska.

  A-frickin’-laska. What the frickin’ frick. Like, polar bears and igloos and shit, right? Hands shaking like an old woman’s, I turned the old photograph over, more afraid of what I’d find than I’d ever been of my demon. She, at least, was imaginary… this was real.

  My bruised heart stopped short, boom. Then it started up again, boom, and I started to cry. It was an old photo, washed-out and flat looking. Something had been written in the upper left corner in blue ink, but smeared off again so that it couldn’t be read. Names and a date, maybe? If they had been names, I knew what one of them had been.

  Siggy J. Aleksov.

  The little fat face, maybe three years old, stared out of time at me like she was hoping I could save her. Like I could prevent all the things that had happened between that day and this one. Like I could talk to the woman who held me in her arms, the woman with the strong face and brilliant smile, the woman with long black hair like mine, and beg her not to put me down and walk away.

  5

  I almost didn’t wake up in time.

  I almost didn’t wake up at all.

  I’d been having one of those dreams where shadowy figures were standing around my bed, talking to each other and laughing as someone held a pillow over my face. It was an old dream, and the most terrifying thing about it is that I think it might be a memory. I’ve tried and tried to remember what might have happened to give me such nightmares, but it’s one of those places my brain just won’t go.

  I must have been very young.

  When I finally fought my way out of it, I opened my eyes to find my demon sitting on my chest, holding both hands over my face and making that awful burning-flesh sound that demons make when they laugh. It was nothing new. Horrifying, but not new—the bitch had been trying to kill me for as long as I could remember. The smell was new, though. I’d been able to see and hear and feel my demon for years, but I’d never been able to smell—

  Holy shit! My house was on fire.

  The night terror still had hold of me, so I couldn’t move except to roll my eyes, and I could hear myself making helpless little sounds, like an animal facing the slaughter knife. Like a little kid. A terrified, helpless little kid. That pissed me off and broke the dream’s hold on me. I’m no easy meat, not anymore, and fuck that demon if she thought I was. I broke free and sat up with a yell, which was stupid because I sat right up into a thick cloud of smoke and it knocked me flat on my back again, right through the demon, pop! Like a bubble.

  Once my demon was gone I was able to concentrate enough to stop being stupid. I grabbed the envelope from my dresser, rolled out of bed with a thud and crawled on my belly over to my bedroom door—sure as shit, there was smoke rolling in under the crack, so I didn’t bother seeing if the knob was hot or any of that stuff you learn in kindergarten. I crawled over to my bedroom window.

  It was flimsy as shit, just a few horizontal strips of dirty green glass; I pulled my tee shirt up to cover my face, popped those fuckers out, and wriggled out the narrow opening. Being skinny as a stick bug, I only left a little flesh behind on the metal frame, and that’s better than having all my flesh turned into bacon.

  It was telling that that package was the only thing I even tried to take with me. Sure, I was lucky to have gotten out at all, but it would have been nice to save a few of my things. Maybe the wooden box one of the older brothers had made for me in shop class—it held a few letters and postcards from foster-grands and friends, and I’ll never get those back. Or the little blown-glass unicorn on a mirrored stand that took me six months’ worth of allowance to buy when I was in third grade.

  Or my bottle of Glenmorangie, because things made a lot more sense if viewed through the botto
m of a bottle of good whiskey.

  As I flailed and fell out the window, I could swear I heard the fire behind me, reaching out and calling my name. I hit the ground harder than I’d expected—things like that look a lot easier in the movies—and then rolled and crawled and clawed myself away from the trailer, expecting that at any minute the whole thing would blow up to the sky and send me flying.

  Making it to the edge of the woods, I grabbed a little cottonwood tree and hauled myself upright, then turned to see my trailer gushing red flame from both ends like a dragon. Dark smoke rolled from the window I’d just gone through, black as ink, spilling across the night sky and blotting out the stars like Ragnarök in the stories.

  It was the end of the world for me, at least in a way. I didn’t have much, I didn’t love much, but every scrap of life I’d held dear was in that shitty little trailer. My books. Photos. My awesome leather boots, dammit, and the towels I’d just paid thirty bucks for, even the things Bane bought for me. All of it gone, and it wasn’t fair, goddammit, it wasn’t fucking fair at all. I had so little and now I had nothing. Noth—

  Something stung me in the leg, and I mean it stung. That shit hurt. I dropped the package I’d been clutching, yelped like a kicked dog, and clapped a hand against my upper thigh. What the fuck… There was a stick in my leg. Without really thinking about, it, I yanked it out. And I mean yanked—that fucker took a chunk of flesh out with it. I stood there for a minute like an idiot, bathed in the red glow of my life, staring at the thing in my hands.

  Not a stick, after all.

  It was a hypodermic needle with a little red tuft on the butt-end. I’d been tranqued.

  What the actual—

  Then I heard it, a little rustle in the brush, an indrawn breath, and I shook my head, trying to clear it. I let the dart fall to the ground, and dropped into a crouch as a low growl built deep in my chest. Somebody had shot me with a tranq dart, like I was a fucking animal.

  Somebody had probably set my trailer on fire, either to kill me or to flush me out.

  Somebody had come into my woods… and he was still here.

  Oh hell no, dude, you are not going to hunt me in my own damn woods. Oh hell no. I grew up hunted, haunted, terrified, cowering under the bushes and praying for the monsters to go away. When you grow up like that, when you grow up prey… sometimes you grow up to be a monster.

  I could feel the odd, cold prickling at my nape that told me my demon had come home. She started whispering inside my head, her multi-tonal voice urgent and full of dark laughter. She wanted me to stalk the intruder, to wrap my hands about his scrawny human throat and squeeze till the breath exploded in his lungs and the life faded from his eyes. Killer, she called me, freak. Usually I tried my best to brush away her vile whispers. Usually, I was strong enough to resist her insistence that I was a savage thing, bred and born to kill.

  On this night, as I stood bathed in the light of the fire that was consuming all that was good and precious in my life, I embraced it.

  Come into my woods, asshole? I thought. Burn me out, shoot me like I’m some wild beast? I’ll show you a wild beast. Lips pulled back from my teeth in a silent snarl, I picked up a double handful of dirt and leaves and stuff, and rubbed it into my face and my hair. Stalk the beast in her own woods, will you?

  Rising to a crouch, I wished I was wearing more than a tee shirt and underpants, thankful that the black fabric and my own dusky skin would make me difficult to see. I didn’t have any weapons besides my own hands and feet, but I did have freakishly good night vision, and was familiar with the terrain and he—whoever he was—wouldn’t be.

  He’d lost the element of surprise. I wondered if it was the same person who’d broken into my place earlier. I wondered if he had any weapons besides the tranq gun, and how long it might take for the drugs to kick in.

  I wondered what it would feel like to kill another human being with my bare hands, and whether I’d get in trouble for it.

  Someone started to move, and I could hear him breathing, walking toward my trailer. Not as quiet as you think you are, asshole. I padded barefoot down the trail to the woodshed and cut behind the raspberry bushes, cutting off his escape. I could smell him. Seriously, who wears manly body scents to stalk their prey? I crouched low, muscles in my thigh burning as I moved with deliberate caution, adrenaline singing through my veins, and the little shadow-demons singing in my ears. The usual shit, you know.

  Kill kill kill.

  Only this time, I didn’t try to tune them out. All the rage, all the pain, and finally I had a target. Hell, I had a volunteer. I could see him now, a dark shape silhouetted against the pale shape of my trailer. He stood just inside the treeline, head swiveling back and forth, back and forth, just like one of the foster fathers who used to watch for gophers as he flooded their homes with the garden hose, waiting to shoot them with a pellet gun as they fled for their lives.

  You know what? Fuck this asshole.

  If I’d had a baseball bat, I would have knocked the head clean off his shoulders, I was that mad. I could feel my lips drawing back from my teeth again, and I let out the most godawful roar and I charged at him—planning, as far as I could guess, to tear him to shreds with my bare hands.

  In hindsight, the plan pretty much sucked.

  The dude crouched and turned, way too fast for someone who’d been caught unawares, and the moonlight shone cold and dull on the muzzle of a big-assed handgun. He raised one hand, and a thin ray of red light sheared through the night toward me, and a little red pinpoint lit on the side of my hip. There was a small, silly-sounding pop, and then something bit me again.

  Shit!

  Before I had a chance to process what had just happened, I went down hard. The trees started dancing all around me, and the sky spun about like stars painted on a plate. My panic floated away and I just lay there in the sticks and dirt, one arm trapped beneath me, feeling very copacetic.

  A man in a long black coat and—I shit you not—night-vision goggles stepped into the moonlight. He was still holding that oversized pistol in one hand, and a cell phone or walkie talkie or something in the other.

  “Got her,” he said.

  “Are you talking about me?” I asked, and giggled. I never giggle. I growl. So I tried that now, growling, struggling to free my arm so I could get up and kick this guy’s butt. Part of my mind was gibbering in fear, part of it was trying to sober up so I could defend myself, but the largest part of me was dancing around in circles with the trees and the stars and thinking this was all pretty cool.

  “Yeah, she was alone,” he said. “No. No. I dunno. Hour and a half? Yeah, okay not a problem,” he answered to whoever was on the other end, and put the phone in his pocket.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t alone.

  Bane leapt from the shadows, dressed like frickin’ Robin Hood in leather and furs and all, with a bow slung across his shoulders and a knife like Crocodile Dundee’s, and crazy rainbow hair everywhere. He tackled the man in black and they rolled away from me, out of the woods and into the full moonlight. So I had a clear view of Bane as he knelt on top of the man, grabbed him by the hair, wrenched his head back, and sawed his throat open from ear to ear with the hunting knife.

  The man made a terrible noise, a horrible whistling hunnnnnh, and blood poured from him like black water from a bucket as he thrashed and died beneath Bane’s weight. The shock of it broke through my drug-induced haze. I finally got my stupid arm out from under my ribs and sat up, feeling as if I was going to puke. The trees were still spinning, but it wasn’t much worse than if I’d taken a roundhouse to the head, and I’d done that plenty of times. I wasn’t giggling anymore, that’s for sure. I’d just seen a man die. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my fingertips, and I felt weird all over, kind of a queasy tingling numbness.

  Bane rose from his crouch beside the dying man, approached me as warily as if I was a wounded animal, and held out a bloody hand. I took it, equally wary, and let mys
elf be pulled to my feet. Aquamarine eyes flickered red in the light of the fire, intense and dangerous as a cat’s as they stared at me.

  “The debt between us is paid.” He held up the gory knife, and I staggered back a half-step.

  “What the fuck,” I muttered, and started coughing. My mouth tasted of ashes and blood.

  “My debt to you is paid. Do you agree, Sigurd John Aleksov?” He bit off each of my names as if they were lengths of string, measuring them off one by one.

  “Yeah, sure, whatever, but seriously, dude, what the fuck.” It seemed like I was saying “what the fuck” a lot these days. I tried not to stare at the dying man, whose feet still scraped weakly at the ground as if he were trying to run away. Ugh, the noises he was making, and the smell. Not like a shot deer. Not like a deer, at all.

  Bane wiped the big-ass dagger off on his pants and sheathed it, as if he had done this before. Then he reached a long-fingered hand toward me, faster than I could move out of his way, plucked something from the hem of my shirt, and held it up in the firelight for me to see.

  “I think that’s a—” I said.

  “Tranquilizer dart, yes.” Then he did the strangest thing: brought the dart up and sniffed it, nostrils flaring delicately. “Not even two doses of this would be enough to keep you down, though. You should be able to shake this off in a few minutes. Someone didn’t do his homework.” Bane nodded toward the dead man and smiled.

  “Would you please explain to me what the fuck just happened?”

  “I don’t have time to explain.” Bane held up a hand, silencing me, and ignoring my scowl. “I’ve got a dead human to get rid of, a story to concoct, and dawn is less than an hour away. You should get out of town for a while, though. It’s not safe for you here. Do you have someplace you could go?”