Page 8 of After the Fade, Vol. 1 (Asheverse: B-Side)
The force of the charge carried both of us six feet before I slammed up against a massive cedar, its needles prickling the back of my neck and filling my nose with their balsam. My breath exploded out of my lungs, and my head cracked back against the trunk, the whole world flashing out in a nova.
The white-out only lasted an instant. Then I was back, blinking into the shadow of Bud’s fist, turning my head at the last instant so his fist skated along my jaw instead of knocking my teeth down my throat. I got in a punch of my own, a little too low to catch his solar plexus, but he still wheezed and angled his body. This kid wasn’t used to getting hit, not like this. He liked to hit. But brawling like this—I got a better blow in, a right hook that cracked against his ribs—this wasn’t Bud’s domain.
He staggered back, letting instinct take over, pulling away from the pain. I landed a glancing punch, catching more of his belly than anything else, and my next blow just whistled through the air. Bud wound up for a jab, his whole body like an electric sign telling me what he was going to do, and when the punch took off from the shoulder, I dodged.
And Emmett’s Sorels slipped in the slush.
I hit ass-first, squishing wetly into the melting snow so that I was lying on my back. Bud staggered, gathered himself, and stared down at me. He was still just a big old electric sign, every dumb thought flashing on his dumb face. He lifted a boot. He was going to smash my head into the snow, through the snow, into the grass and the thin scraping of soil and the granite underneath. He was planning on putting his boot straight through my head.
My left hand snapped out, grabbing at the branches, the needles feathering down under my palm. It was here. I’d planned for this, planned for something going wrong, planned for—
The boot started to come down. I rolled, but I was hemmed in by the branches, couldn’t roll far enough. I flailed. Cedar needles stung the back of my hand.
My fingers caught a loop of emerald-green line hidden in the scaly cedar needles. I tugged, hunching my shoulder to catch the tread of Bud’s boot, and the loop came free. Branches cracked; air whooshed. Bud’s boot caught my shoulder, rolling me onto my back, laying me open for Bud’s next stomp.
It never came.
I lay in the slush, staring up, as the branch I had hung in the cedar crashed down. It caught Bud about four degrees off center on the shoulder, whipping his head to the left, scratching open his ear and neck and ripping his jacket and shirt back to gouge his shoulder. Yelping, he staggered back, one arm slapping at the branch as though it were a horsefly. The weight of the branch carried him down, and he landed on his back, his head thunking against the granite slab.
He was breathing. And his eyes were open. And he was saying something to Jessie—Jessica Mecham, I guessed. It sounded like an apology. I figured she probably deserved one.
Hooking him by the collar, I dragged Bud out of the pines and down the canyon’s slope. I left him by the fire.
Brush rustled down by the riverbank.
When I trampled down a patch of nutgrass, I could see Piss-boy squatting on the clay shore, his heels sinking deeper as I watched, the river washing around his sneakers.
“Boo.”
He fell back with a splash, and the glacial water swept him out into the middle of the river, where he stared at me for a moment until water splashed over his mouth and he gasped and paddled toward the opposite shore.
My head was ringing from the collision with the cedar tree, and something on the trunk—the broken stump of a branch, maybe—had cut open the back of my scalp. It stung like an inch of hell. The blood soaked my hair, the sweater, the coat. I could wash my hair; Emmett could buy himself new clothes if he wanted.
When I got to Sugar and Jimpson, they were both staring at the opposite shoreline, where Piss-boy was clattering up a rocky embankment.
“Don’t worry about him.”
Sugar turned her dark eyes to me. Her head bobbed.
“You kick me, you try to run me down, you pin me between the two of you and I’ll turn you both into glue.”
Sugar ran her long face against my hand and whinnied. I left my hand there for a moment, surprised—I was surprised every time, over and over again—by the texture, the strength, the warmth.
Then I packed the gear on the horses as best I could and led them down the canyon.
Sugar bit me once, on the shoulder, when the smoke from the cabin feathered up above the trees. Just a nip. I decided it was the horsey equivalent of a love tap.