Page 141 of The End of the World As We Know It

Ruby let out a big sob and stepped toward Elise. Hiram pulled her back, yanking her arm hard enough to lift her off the ground. Elise blinked a tear from her eye and whispered, “I’m sorry.” She glanced toward the office again and saw the man-shape more clearly. He wore engineer boots and blue jeans and a belt with a wide, shimmering buckle. Tattooed arms extended from the sleeves of his work shirt. His head was smooth and round and moved with inquisitive little jerks. In one blink, Elise saw her daddy’s face. In the next she saw Jason’s. Predominantly, though, she saw the devil’s face. He had blue eyes and handsome feathers and a long beak that caught the light like chrome.

“Place that shooter on the floor and slide it over to me,” Ali Cat said. “Do it real slow, but do it now.”

Elise nodded. The devil could only lay claim to her for as long as she did what he expected, what hedesired, and while killing these trailer-trash dirtbags would doubtless satisfy, she refused to do it.

“Now!” Ali Cat snapped.

Elise removed her left hand from where it supported her right, raising it above her head in a gesture of surrender. She dropped slowly to one knee and lowered the Hardballer toward the floor.

“Attagirl,” Ali Cat said. “Reeeal slow.”

Ruby sobbed again and reached out with the hand not holding her tote bag. Hiram curled his lip and spat. Elise glanced over her shoulder at the devil, then turned to Ali Cat. She looked into her eyes and waited.

It happened quickly—in a blink, to be exact. Ali Cat flashed her X’s at Elise, and Elise shot her in the left kneecap.

She’d been in a position of surrender for two reasons: being lower to the ground made her a smaller target (although, as Ali Cat said, that scattergun didn’t need a large one), but it also gave Ali Cat a false sense of security. The moment her eyelashes came together in their slow, showy way, Elise pulled the trigger. She’d sacrificed accuracy for the element of surprise. Her shot could have gone anywhere. The fact that it blew out Ali Cat’s kneecap led Elise to believe that someone was looking out for her—someone other than the crow-headed thing in the shadows.

Ali Cat hit the floor screaming, clutching her ruined leg with one hand. The other still held the shotgun. The double barrels swung perilously this way and that. Elise had recovered her balance after the Hardballer’s recoil almost knocked her on her ass. She sprang to her feet, closed the distance between her and Ali Cat, and kicked the shotgun out of her hand. It skated across the floor and disappeared beneath one of the shelving units.

“You fucking bitch!” Ali Cat screeched in a manner befitting her name. Her eyes were wide—from X’s to O’s. “Dirty fucking cocksucker! That’s my leg, goddammit! My goddamn fucking leg!”

Elise locked Ali Cat in the Hardballer’s sights, targeting the center of her forehead. Something bristled and flapped in the dimness. It sounded the way Jason’s smile looked: alluring, but dangerous. Elise switched her aim to Ali Cat’s right thigh and pulled the trigger. The air-shaking report could not envelop her scream.

“You’ll live,” Elise said.

She turned on Hiram, who looked on with a stricken expression, his mouth flapping soundlessly. He’d pulled Ruby in front of him and still had hold of her arm.

“Let her go,” Elise said. Her words were somewhat lost in all the dreadful noise, but he heard her just fine. She lifted the Hardballer and stared along the barrel at Hiram’s gaping face.

He was low on options and his shotgun-toting backup was bleeding on the floor. None of his earlier brazenness remained. His expression was that of a man who fully realized that shit had gone sideways.

“Let hergo,” Elise said again. “Or I will shoot you dead.”

The devil bristled again. Elise imagined him hunched, watching eagerly.

Hiram pushed Ruby off to the side and made a run for the exit, except he stood on the toilet paper and it rolled beneath his boot, spilling him to the floor. Elise stepped over to him. He looked up at her. His right hand and his stump were raised.

“I let hergo!” he cried. “Take her! Christ, justtakeher, you scornful whore!”

She could kill him and that would satisfy the devil. She could let him live, but the bruise on Ruby’s face was dark, and there were deeper wounds, no doubt, that would take longer to heal. Ali Cat was bad, after all, but Hiram was worse.

Jason’s beautiful, terrible smile bloomed in her mind.

You’re the baddest motherfucker I know.

“Not quite,” Elise said. She pulled the trigger and blew a hole through the middle of Hiram’s hand. His screams matched his cousin’s. It’d be a long time before he used that hand again, and never in the same way.

Emotions welled inside Elise. Mainly disappointment, but fear and anger, too. She swiveled at the waist, aimed across the store, and fired a round into the office. There was nothing to hit, though, other than the back wall, maybe the desk. Elise saw no engineer boots, no tattooed arms or softly glowing beak. She thought he’d disappeared,then noticed two perfectly round blue eyes peering at her through the gloom. They were in the far back corner, up high. He’d either grown three feet or clung spiderlike to the ceiling.

“Leave me alone,” Elise whispered. She pulled the trigger again, but the gun clicked empty.

Elise and Ruby quickly exited the trading post hand in hand, blinking their damp eyes at the brilliant afternoon sunlight. Elise fished the Chevette’s keys from the front pocket of her jeans, then stopped, let go of Ruby, and went back into the store. She stepped over Hiram—still screaming—and grabbed the toilet paper from the floor. It was speckled with his blood, but only the first few layers.

“Something to wipe with,” she said, rejoining Ruby.

The girl managed a trembling smile and her eyes flashed with an affection close to love.

They pulled out of Cactus Belle’s parking lot with the tires screeching, eastbound on El Camino del Cuervo, the crow’s path.