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I pivot on my heels and lead them to the cage. As we step inside, carnage and death invade my nose, the scent of candlelit rage and ruthless punishment sharpening the icy cold.
The sight of his corpse turns my stomach. She butchered him. First, with her fists. The worst from the pipe. The force of her blows landed with purpose and malignance, not to render him ineffective, but to permanently remove him from the earth.
His face resembles a squashed tomato. His legs splay in a ruby lake of blood. Hard to see the damage beneath the thick coat, but I’m certain she broke ribs and possibly arms when he raised them in self-defense.
“Holy fuck.” Leo grips the back of his head with both hands. “Jesus Christ.”
Wolf stares, unblinking, the steam rising from his mouth his only response.
“There was only one way he would restore the power.” I grab a blanket and throw it over the remains. “So I made a deal with him.”
I start from the beginning—Frankie’s first confrontation with Denver, our argument, my decision to surrender, and her arrival in a blaze of gunfire.
“She was unrelenting.” Word for word, I repeat her conversation with Denver, recalling with admiration how she bartered to save him in exchange for electricity. “You would’ve been proud of her.”
“Proud?” Wolf leans against the wall, hugging himself. “She killed us.”
“We’re not dead yet.” My hackles rise. “Now we have one less mouth to feed. One less threat.”
“Can’t blame her.” Leo rubs his brow. “If I’d found either of you in here with him, I would’ve shot first and asked questions later.”
“Mental health tip of the day.” Wolf’s icy blue eyes flare. “Don’t kill your only escort out of hell.”
“She didn’t just kill him,” Leo says. “She went ballistic. That’s what I would do, not her. Something set her off.”
“He refused to cooperate.” I pull my coat tighter, trying to stave off the cold. “Even knowing he would bleed out in minutes, he toyed with her, quoting movie lines and describing what he would think about as he died, his memories of my body, and what he’s done to it. That’s what set her off.”
I guide them through the details of the assault and the words he spoke to make her stop. His alleged connection to her husband, his jaw-dropping revelation of having two brothers, his claim that the husband ripped away his life, and how he, in turn, ripped away even more.
“Monty is his brother? Why didn’t Denver tell us?” Leo paces in the cage. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
“No. His final words were even more cryptic.” Slowly, I repeat the riddle. “Beneath its wings lie the answers you seek in a cage of ice and echoes.”
“What does that even mean?” Leo’s eyes convey a turmoil of fury, frustration, and despair.
Fists balled at his sides, posture rigid, he exerts great effort to contain his temper. No doubt his thoughts swirl in shades of reds and blacks like the massacre surrounding us.
Wolf slumps against the frozen, unforgiving wall, his gaze reflecting a gloom that runs even darker. As I monitor him, a fist tightens in my chest.
By blood or not, this is my brother, once a vibrant soul, now reduced to a shadow. For weeks, he’s been on a slow and relentless march toward an end he seems ready to embrace. The numbness that hollows out his features speaks louder than words. It’s a silent scream, a testament to our harrowing reality that he’s given up, resigned to a fate he no longer has the strength to fight against.
It guts me to see him like this, to watch helplessly as he drifts further away from the world, from me, and from the will to live.
Leo and I trade unsettled looks. We don’t know how to save him.
We don’t know how to save any of us.
I thought I knew. I had a plan, a horrifying one.
Now what? All that remains is an ambiguous riddle and a plane we can’t fly. I’m fucking enraged that Denver left us teetering on the brink of starvation without electricity or hot water.
Apparently, no coal, either.
“The snow machine broke down?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Leo deflates, exhaustion visible in the thinning shape of his body. “Left it miles down the river with a cart full of coal.”
The cruel hand of fate squeezes tighter.
“I need to eat.” Wolf pushes off the wall and nods at the corpse. “What’s the plan for that?”
“Can’t dig a hole until the thaw.” Leo sighs. “So much for tea-bagging his tombstone.”
“We’ll feed him to the wolves.” I regard my brothers, noting their blistered skin and significant weight loss. “Go eat. Check on Frankie. I’ll finish up here.”
“You can’t haul that body to the hills by yourself.” Leo lifts his chin at Wolf. “Tell Frankie we’ll be back in a few hours.”
