Shadows (Ashes Trilogy #2)

Shadows (Ashes Trilogy #2) Page 65

He’s giving me water. There are no guards and Davey’s not here and he’s not going to kill me. That was all he could think. The hot surge of gratitude, absurd and irrational, made him want to weep. He let Finn fit the bottle to his lips and hold the back of his neck as he drank, greedily, the icy water spilling around his mouth and down his neck and exploding into his empty stomach with such force that he moaned with the pain.

“Easy, boy-o, not too fast,” Finn murmured, almost lovingly. He didn’t take the bottle away, but kept talking as Peter gulped. “So I thought to myself: Finn, stop with the threats and the pressure. Making the boy fight for his life might not tell you what you want to know.”

“What . . . what’s that?” Peter gasped. Every drop of water was gone. He leaned back with a sigh. His belly sloshed. He would probably be sick; might even bring it all back up. But he didn’t care. His head was spinning, and now his hunger was a roar again: something struggling to be born in the taut tent of his skin that just might tear him in two.

“Every man breaks, eventually.” Finn capped the bottle. “Even Jesus cracked at the end. But that wasn’t because of what was being done to him. His pressure was doubt and came from within, but he always had a choice. We just call it destiny when it’s too late to change our minds. But I realized that I had to make your choice yours and not mine. In the heat of battle, all a man wants is to live.”

He had no idea what Finn was going on about. His head was muzzy and, too late, he wondered if maybe the water had been spiked with something. Killing me with kindness, he thought, and nearly giggled. The water made him a little giddy. But the hunger was sharper now, a knife slashing at his guts, and he stifled a groan when his stomach cramped.

Beyond the cell, there was a clank of a lock and then a gush of cold air as the prison house door swung open. “Ah,” Finn said, checking his watch. He pushed up on his thighs. “Right on time.”

Three guards guided Davey in on control poles fitted to that wide leather collar. The Changed boy was fully dressed in the same uniform everyone else in Finn’s compound wore.

Peter’s heart lurched against the cage of his ribs. So it had been just a trick. Probably, Finn gave him water so he’d be strong enough for one last bout.

Keep fighting. Using the wall for support, he struggled to his feet as the guards maneuvered Davey down the center aisle. Davey’s glittery eyes fixed on Peter, and his nostrils flared and relaxed and flared again, like those of a hound eager to have at the fox. Peter slid along the wall and then felt along the bars until he could wedge himself into a corner. If he used the bars for leverage, he could kick. Better than Davey catching him in the center of the cell. Kick at his face, if you can. He wrapped his hands around cold iron. No matter what, don’t just give up.

“That’s good,” Finn said as the guards reached the cell. “Hold it there.” Finn had his knapsack again, and when he opened it, Peter saw Davey’s head suddenly jerk toward the old man. The Changed boy actually tensed, going up on tiptoe the way little kids did at Halloween so they could dig into that bowl for their favorite candy.

“Sorry, Davey boy, not for you,” Finn said. Chuckling, he reached a hand to Davey’s head and ruffled his hair. The Changed boy didn’t react at all.

My God. Peter’s heart stuttered. He’s turned it into a pet. “Here we go,” Finn said, and withdrew a white paper packet. Waxed paper? Peter wasn’t sure. He watched as Finn squatted, set the packet down, and teased open the paper. Coils of steam unfurled, releasing the juicy aroma of fresh-grilled meat and perfectly seared fat.

A moan pushed between his lips before he could call it back. Saliva gathered under his tongue, and the beast of his hunger tried clawing right into his throat.

“Yes, smells good, doesn’t it? I do love a good steak. I hope you like medium-rare. Oh, and it’s fresh. Just butchered this morning.” Finn used the point of his knife to flip the muscle so Peter could see the crisscross grill marks—

And the faded red ink of a tattooed heart.

At first, he just didn’t understand. His eyes fixed on that tattoo, and then his brain was working the problem like a complicated geometry proof. There was meat and . . . a tattoo; steak and a—

“N-no!” he gasped. He cringed back against the bars. He did not know which was worse: the steady, strong claw of his hunger that simply refused to stop—because the scent of that meat was so strong and he was really and truly dying—or the sudden, cold blast of horror. “I . . . I won’t. You can’t make me p-put that in my m-mouth. You can’t make me eat.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Haven’t you been listening, Peter? This is your choice now. No threats. No pain. No Chucky ready to tear your eyes out. I wash my hands of this fight. There is only you, Peter, and”—he aimed the knife—“that piece of meat. This fight is between you and you. There is food, and it is the only food. So eat, and live.”

“I w-won’t.” And now he was weeping. His legs wouldn’t hold him up anymore, and he let himself sink to the grimy, bloodstained floor. “I . . . I can’t.”

“You can,” Finn said. “You could. The question is, will you? Because of the pressure, Peter, you see? In a battle, even of the soul, a man will do anything to live. The only saints exist in fairy tales and legends. So maybe you won’t break today or tomorrow . . . but soon, Peter, very soon.”

No. Peter turned his face to the bars. The smell of succulent roast meat was overpowering. No, I won’t. I’ll die first, I’ll—

“Watch and learn, Davey,” Finn said. “Watch and learn.”

Dawn was two hours away, the night sky a black bowl salted with stars. Beyond the bouncing ball of her headlamp, the snow between camp and the church spun out in a brassy, bright ribbon. Luke moved easily enough, but the only one of the three who seemed to be having any fun at all was the dog, a yellow Labrador that trotted ahead, its tail whisking a mad, happy semaphore. Every twenty feet, it dashed back to give Cindi an encouraging yip.

“Yeah,” Cindi huffed. She was no expert on skis, but she could tough out a couple miles. Kind of. She felt like she’d been on these stupid skis for a solid day instead of only forty minutes. “I’m coming.”

At the base of the church steps, she sucked wind until her heart stopped trying to pound its way right out of her ears. When she was done gasping and spitting, Luke said, “Maybe we should just leave him alone. You know, give him space, like Mellie and Weller said.”

“Screw them.” She used her poles to unclip. “He’s been up there two whole days. It’s not good for someone to be alone so long.”

Luke jammed the ends of his skis into the snow to stand them up. “How do you know what’s best?”

“My mom was a shrink.” She stood her skis up alongside his. “She said you had to help people want to stay. Like, yeah, someone you cared about just died, but here are all these other people waiting for you to come back. So.” She shrugged the pack a bit higher on her shoulders. “We’re Tom’s other people now.”

Luke screwed his face to a knot, like he’d just gotten a whiff of something stinky. “Maybe I should stay here with the dog. You know, make sure no Chuckies show up.”

“There’s not a Chucky around for five miles,” Cindi said. No one knew that for sure, of course, which was why they’d taken the dog to begin with. A lot of Chuckies had survived the cave-in and flood, and there really was no telling where they might be. Weller and Mellie thought many might be heading north toward Rule. If so, the Chuckies would have company, and pretty soon. She gave Luke a withering look. “Come on. Stop being such a wuss.”

Luke made the dog lie down to wait, and then they slogged up the church steps. Inside, the church was gloomy as a tomb and cold. They skirted the nave, taking a side aisle to stairs and a dusty library on the third floor. There was a trapdoor beneath the organ pipe chamber, and then they huffed up a spiral iron staircase that led directly to the bell tower. In the bell tower, there were seven landings reached by a series of iron ladders bolted to the limestone. A defunct wooden carillon console dominated the southern half of the seventh landing. To Cindi, the batons and foot pedals, with their ropes extending to the church’s twenty-three carillon bells, looked like a gigantic weaver’s loom. Or, maybe, a spider’s web.

At the top of the last iron ladder, Cindi reached up and popped open a sturdy wooden trapdoor. The trap yawned; a wave of cold air splashed over her head and shoulders.

“Hey, Tom,” she said, clambering up the last few rungs. The belfry was open on all four sides, and she tossed a glance north, her flashlight cutting a gash through the blackness. The way north gave a very good view of the mine. Well . . . what was left. But she was sure that was the vantage point Tom would choose, and he had, all right: hunched on a high stool, a bulky sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders, that big scoped rifle with a girl’s name propped against the stone. He didn’t look around, but she knew from the way his head tilted that he was awake. “It’s Cindi. I brought you something to eat.”

No reply. She hadn’t really expected one. The rest of the belfry was very dark from the bells that dangled from a latticework of vertical struts behind louvered openings. They gave some shelter, but the air up here was much colder, and she was starting to cool down. She shivered as a tongue of wind licked sweat from her neck. She heard Luke scramble up behind her and then shut the trap, and said, “Luke’s here, too.”

No answer. Luke shot her an “I told you so” look that she ignored. Crossing the belfry, she set her pack on the floor, unzipped, pulled out a thermos and then a cup. “I thought maybe you’d like some soup?” When he didn’t reply, she unscrewed the thermos, releasing a cloud of chicken-scented steam. “It’s chicken noodle. Well, not real chicken noodle. I used bouillon cubes and some ramen and—”