Page 10 of Blood Ties

Kai

I drag a sobbing, struggling Riley toward the house.

Knox soon emerges from the scrapyard, blood-soaked with a knife in hand.

I’m breathing hard, my heart beating a frantic drum against the inside of my ribs.

I ran fucking hard to make sure I was the one to catch her.

If I had been just a couple of seconds later, Knox would’ve seen her first, and she’d already be dead.

“Well, well,” Knox says, grinning as he lowers the knife. “Didn’t think you had it in you, Kai.” He flips the blade, holds it out to me in offering. “You wanna do the honors this time?”

My stomach lurches as Riley goes rigid in my arms. She feels so small, so fragile. I remember how soft her lips were, the way she smiled at me on the porch.

It would be a kindness to kill her now. But Knox is right. I don’t have it in me.

A smirk breaks across Knox’s face, and his eyes go sly. “Oh,” he says. “You want to keep her.”

I feel the way Riley’s breath hitches at his words. She tries again to pull away from me — but then shrinks back against my chest as Knox steps closer, trapping her between us.

My brother grins at me over the top of her head.

“Y’know, you don’t have to chain her up to fuck her.

Just go for it. She’s easy like that.” He reaches down between us, cupping her between the legs without breaking eye contact with me.

Anger floods me in a hot rush, and I imagine snatching the knife from his hand.

Slitting Knox’s throat and running with Riley.

“What are you two idiots fuckin’ around for?”

At the sound of Dad’s voice, my anger sputters out as quickly as it ignited, replaced by icy fear. Knox steps away, and we both turn to face our father as he strides toward us with his shotgun in hand.

“Haven’t you caused me enough trouble?” he asks. “Get out of the way.”

“We want to keep this one,” Knox says.

“I said get out of the fucking way, Knox!”

Dad slams the barrel of the gun into the side of Knox’s head. My brother stumbles, barely keeping his feet. Dad hits him again, and he goes down with a grunt of pain.

I hold tighter to Riley, shifting so I’m between her and the gun.

“You two dumb motherfuckers,” Dad seethes, turning toward me. “Hand her over.”

I swallow hard. Giving her to Dad is worse than giving her to Knox. When he’s done with people in the barn, they don’t even look like people anymore. “We can put her in the basement,” I say.

“Did I ask for your goddamn opinion?”

He presses the barrel into my face, just below my right eye. I stay statue-still, my gaze locked on his.

“Useless boy,” he says. “Stupid. Pathetic. At least your brother helps clean up his messes.” His eyes narrow. “I shoulda killed you the first time I realized what a sniveling little pissbaby you are.”

I stare him down, pressing my cheek into the gun without flinching. I’ve been afraid of him as long as I can remember, but nothing he’ll do to me will be worse than him taking Riley to that barn. “Do it, then.”

When I see the fury in his stare, I think he really might. I think he’ll finally do it, after all of these years of threats and beatings that left me halfway to dead.

Then his gaze slides from me to Knox. I didn’t see my brother get up, but he’s crouched in the dirt now, his knife held in a white-knuckled grip as he watches us. He doesn’t say a word, but something I don’t understand passes between him and Dad as their eyes meet.

Dad barks a laugh, steps back, and lowers the gun. He casts an appraising look at the girl in my arms.

“Well,” he says. “You’re still a pussy, but at least this proves you ain’t a faggot.”

He turns and walks back toward the house, shotgun over his shoulder.

My breath whooshes out of me, and I sag, releasing all the tension that fills me whenever my dad is around. Knox rises fully to his feet.

“Nice going,” he says, grinning with a mouthful of bloody teeth. I feel sick, especially when Riley starts struggling against me again.

“Please,” she says, barely more than a breath. Her face is streaked with dirt and tears, her bare feet bloodied, but still, she’s trying to fight. “Please, just let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I swear, j-just...”

Knox doesn’t even look at her. He just grins at me. “Let’s get her down to the basement,” he says.

I swallow the urge to apologize as I haul Riley up over my shoulder and carry her toward the house. After all, I have no right to be sorry. This — and everything that’s about to happen to her — is all my fault.

*

R ILEY IS LIMP AND SILENT as I carry her up the porch steps. I’m grateful that shock is taking hold of her. She hangs like a corpse over my shoulder, and I hope it means she isn’t seeing the actual corpses of her friends as we pass by.

Felix lies in the dirt in the front yard, coated in blood. May’s broken body is in the living room, Frank standing over her possessively. Through the open kitchen door, I catch a glimpse of Caleb, his face a mess of blood.

Riley doesn’t make a sound as we walk by her dead friends. She doesn’t so much as twitch.

Dad is talking quietly to Frank in the living room, both of them blood-spattered. Frank has his usual dumb grin, while Dad is narrow-eyed and calculating.

“Hurry up, you’ve got a mess to clean,” he barks at me.

I nod and walk past them to unlock the basement door.

Knox follows me, his boots thudding down each step into the darkness.

I want to tell him I don’t need any help, but I know it’s not true; I’m going to need him on my side to keep Riley alive.

Otherwise, I’ll come down these stairs one day and find her with a slit throat.

The basement is a square concrete room, windowless and musty. A single dirty lightbulb hangs from the ceiling. On the far wall, there’s a sink, a toilet, and a mattress on the floor. A set of rusty chains attaches a handcuff to a pipe running along the wall.

I set Riley down on the mattress. She’s still unmoving, just staring ahead with a blank expression.

Knox crouches beside me as I work the metal handcuff around one of her wrists. I have to pull it tight to fit her. It probably hurts, but she doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even blink.

Knox snaps his fingers in front of her face, to no reaction. “Hope she ain’t gonna get stuck like this,” he says. “Some of them do. They just break.”

“She won’t,” I say, though I really have no idea. It’s not like I have much experience with this sort of thing.

“Hey, even if she does, we can still have some fun with her,” Knox says. My stomach roils as he punches me in the shoulder. “Look at you, bringing a girl home for the first time. I’m proud of you.”

I hate him as he grins at me. But more than that, I hate that a part of me still relishes his approval.