Page 56

CHAPTER 56

REDLEY

It’s not Doc who steps out from behind the trees like I’ve been expecting. At first, my heart jumps into my throat, thinking it’s Wolf. He’s about the right size, about the right coloring, but as my eyes focus, I realize I’m looking at Carver. His blond hair and lined face definitely don’t belong to the man I refuse to love. He holds a pistol that I’m sure he can handle and aims it squarely at my head. I don’t have any doubts he would greatly enjoy killing me, and that’s exactly what he plans to do.

“Don’t stop,” he says. “You were just getting somewhere.”

He steps out of the tree line, coming closer with the gun trained on me. My eyes run over him, and though I’m terrified, I realize he looks really bad. I knew I shot him the other night, but I assumed he missed more of the spray than he did. He stumbles as he moves, and I wonder if he waited so long to show himself because he was leaning against one of the trees to support his weight.

“I’m taking a break, actually.” If he’s going to kill me, then I’m going to die, but there’s no way in hell I’ll finish the last of the work for him and hand over whatever is hidden inside this coffin. Even if it's nothing but bones, I won’t disrespect my great-great-granddaddy like that while I’m digging him up.

“You want to die, bitch?” he asks me. Wolf suggested I was his bitch once, and it pissed me off and turned me on. The word on Carver’s tongue makes me want to carve the muscle out of his mouth and feed it to him.

“Not too worried about dying, actually. How about you? You don’t look far off.”

“I’m not fucking dying. Not until they break this mountain down to rubble and pull out every diamond inside. Not until I can lord over your daddy’s grave.” He tips the gun toward said grave. “And show him I won. That he let me be his friend, opened his door to me, and like ‘The Wolf’ I am, I turned on all of them.”

He’s pouring sweat. The bandages wrapped around his arm and shoulder are old and dirty, looking yellowed from sweat and puss, and he no doubt sports an infection. The yellow in his eyes has spread to the whites, and I don’t know what that means in medical terms, but I know your eyes don’t turn full yellow like that unless you’re real sick. The gun shakes in his hand as he aims it at me. It’s not that he’s nervous or unsure about what he’s doing. He’s weak, and it looks like he’s got one hell of a fever.

I have no doubt he can still shoot that gun and kill me, but I’m amazed he’s standing on his feet. Will I die from that gun, or will he die from the infection raging through his body?

“You know, it takes a special kind of coward to kill a kid,” I tell him, trying not to get myself too worked up, but here in my family's place of rest, it’s hard not to feel a certain type of way about his presence.

“Takes a special kind of moron to trust your enemy,” he spits back, and I’m not sure if he’s talking about me or the entire Little line. They’ve indeed taken advantage of us a fair few times over the years, but that doesn’t make us stupid. We just didn’t know we had anything worth working so hard to steal for. There isn’t a chance a Little would have believed in that ghost story about the wolf if we knew there were diamonds on our land.

Great-great-granddaddy beneath me right now was the only one who ever learned that secret, and he died before he could tell us, just like my daddy, mama, and brother died because of the monster standing in front of me. I wish I had my gun with me. It’s sitting about five feet away, so it’s not far, but he’ll have more than enough time to put a hole in me if I dive for it. All I have is a knife, and he’s not close enough to stab, and I’m not good enough at darts to risk throwing it.

Sweat coats my skin until I’m as sweaty as Carver. My heart pounds in my chest, nearly popping, and I’m not sure what’s on the other side, but I hope to God it’s soft. That it isn’t loneliness and struggle like my life has been up until this point.

“Open the goddamn coffin!” Carver shouts at the top of his lungs, but I don’t move an inch. “I said do it now. I swear to God I’ll shoot you, you stupid little bitch.”

I close my eyes and think of Wolf as a small boy. What horrible things must this man have done to him? I don’t want to die, but part of me is relieved that at least one shot I took did its job. Carver might be dying slow, but there’s no denying he’ll die without medical care, and for whatever reason, he's too crazy to ask for it. The explosive pop of gunfire goes off around me, and I feel the shock of being hit, of dying, but I don’t feel the pain. A full five seconds pass before I realize I’m not in pain because I wasn’t shot. Did he miss?

I open my eyes and find Carver has fallen to the ground. He twitches back and forth, writhing in wordless agony for an excruciating moment before opening his mouth and screaming at the top of his lungs. I don’t know how he shot himself, but I’m thanking God for the miracle.

I should have known it was the devil helping me and not some angel. Wolf steps out of the woodline, my granddaddy’s pistol in his hand. He must have taken it from the cabin when they set it on fire. His father has dropped his gun beside him, and Wolf walks up to him. Standing over top of him, Wolf stares down at his dad with an emotionless expression.

“How could you?” his father asks.

Wolf doesn’t turn away as he answers, “I guess you named me Wolf for a good reason, Dad. You were stupid enough to let me inside, weren’t you?”

“How could you choose her over your own family, your own blood?” I can’t see where Carver was shot, but somewhere on his body. He’s fighting to speak but determined to twist a knife into Wolf any way he can.

“How could I not?” Wolf asks.

Wolf’s hands shake as he points the gun at his father. He prepares to take the final shot and put him out of his misery, but it’s not going to be that easy. He’s not going to die point blank in the same place where my family he murdered rests.

“Stop, Wolf.”

“No, Muffin. I need to finish this this time. You wanted me to choose? Well, I have.”

“I didn’t tell you to choose. I told you I was done with you,” I say as I climb out of the grave. “I told you I didn’t want to be with you, and I didn’t love you.”

“Well, you’re a liar, obviously.”

His father makes a disgusted noise. “You chose her over me, and she won’t even pretend to love you. You’re even more of a disappointment than I thought, Wolf. I should have killed you like I did your mother, gotten rid of both my problems.”

Every inch of Wolf’s body tenses, and I wonder if that’s news to him or something he’s had to spend years living with. I resent it, but every time I learn something new about Wolf, I can’t help but feel for him.

“If I was old enough, Father, I would have gutted you for sport to protect my mother. She might be gone now, but it’s not too late to make a point, is it?”

Wolf doesn’t hear my approach, too caught up in arguing with his dying father. I pull out a pocket knife I got from Daniel as I close the distance. I’m standing behind Wolf with the knife to his neck when I say, “It’s far too late for that, Wolf. He’s mine.”

Wolf turns around quick, not worried about me or my knife for one minute.

“Fuck,” he curses as the blade knicks his skin. His eyes drop to the knife. “That’s what you want to kill him with?” he asks. “Seems a little small.”

“So I’ll feel him die.” I shrug.

I kneel next to the man who killed my family, not Granny the mean bitch who put these scars on my face, but the family who wanted and loved me more than anything. I run the blade over his sweat-slicked face, and he purses his lips to spit at me, but I slap him straight across the cheek, hard, before he gets the chance. I lean down, press my lips to his ear, and whisper, “I’m going to gut you like you did to my daddy, Carver.”

He curses and shouts a stream of profanities, and despite the fact I told him to stay out of this, Wolf kicks him in the side. Carver coughs and heaves, trying to catch his breath after the brutal force, but it never comes. I insert the knife into the soft flesh just below his rib cage. Dig that blade as deep into the fatty tissue as I can, and then drag it down.

It may be small, but it’s sharp, and it’s more than enough to split his insides open, even if it does take two passes. The knife ends at his pubic bone. He’s bleeding terribly, but I can tell I haven’t split him deep enough for his organs to fall out.

“This one is for my mama,” I tell him conversationally as the warmth and heat of his blood and guts spill over my fingers.

And because something inside me has truly snapped along the way, when his stomach is sliced open and he’s nothing but a bowl of guts, I reach inside that warm, nasty goo, and find his intestines. He wails in agony as my hand moves, and his screams echo like you wouldn’t believe, but there’s a smile on my face.

With a strong grip and a lot of determination, I pick up the slippery ropes and tug them out of his abdomen. A sick wet, slurping noise fills the air, and once his guts are slapped on the forest floor, he doesn’t last much longer. He dies, bloody and painful, right on top of the family members he killed.

I guess that’s a better gift than a few fresh-picked flowers.