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CHAPTER 42
THE BAD MAN STANDSIN front of me in the stone room.
No, he’s sitting at my mother’s table, shoveling her home-cooked food into his mouth. He leers at me from between the elaborately carved twin doors, twisting his favorite blade.
No, he looms in the desert, firing a bullet through my mother’s throat.
He is now. He is then.
He is here.
And I’m just me: no gun, no knife, no magical powers. I can’t scream. I can’t run. I can only stand in place as he approaches.
The Bad Man and the older woman go together. And now, that woman stands over D.D., poker ready for a fresh strike. D.D. is on the ground next to the tunnel opening, not moving.
I need to do something. Protect my friend. Escape the Bad Man. Make him pay.
So much anger and frustration well up inside me. Always, it’s been him. He killed my mother. Robbed me of my voice. Enslaved me into a life of servitude where I was forced to watch him destroy other girls.
There’s no good in this man. Just layers of evil.
“Clayton, hurry up!” the grandma woman urges. “I don’t think she’s dead.”
So maybe D.D. will be all right. If I can find a way to get the Bad Man away.
He smiles again. He knows I’m a cripple, but it doesn’t inspire compassion in him. Just contempt.
I try to cower back, but my hip makes contact with the wall. I’m trapped, no means of retreat. So I try something else. He thinks I’m helpless—and I let him.
I take a small step sideways onto uneven stone. Grunt as I pretend to twist my ankle. Fall crouched to the floor.
One, two, three, four...
He strides forward, sure of himself, as he whirls his hunting knife.
Five.
He reaches me. I rear up awkwardly, and lash out as hard as I can with my good leg. I hit the side of his knee. He roars in surprise, and staggers slightly, pulling the woman’s attention away from D.D. Good.
I kick him again, nailing him in the balls. He screams, clutches himself, and drops.
“Clayton!” the grandma woman screams in clear distress.
I head for the doorway.
At the last second, he slashes out with his blade, slicing open my exposed ankle. In sheer rage, I turn on him again. I kick his head, watch it bounce against the hard floor. I do it again, spraying blood from my ankle. My blood onto the stone. My mother’s into the red earth. We have both bled too much for this man.
“Stop it!” the grandma woman shrieks, but she is stuck behind the table. She can’t get to me, and seems to have momentarily forgotten D.D.
I don’t want to leave the blond detective, but if I go, the Bad Man will follow. I want to believe D.D. can figure out how to handle the giant woman. Whereas the Bad Man... No one has ever fought him and won.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, I think in my mind to D.D. Then simply: Survive.
Because I don’t think I have it in me to bear another loss. Then again, I don’t think I have it in me to still be alive by day’s end.
I struggle out of the room, limping badly down the hall. I’ve had years to learn how to hobble with speed. I’m not giving up now.
Behind me I hear cursing, then crashing. The Bad Man staggering to his feet.
He will come for me.
I can’t scream. I can’t run.
I limp as fast as I can into the dark.
