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There was nothing that I could do but grit my teeth in frustration as the three men forced me out of the office.
All the while, though, I was thinking about distances and angles and how I could kill the men and then take on
Grimes and Hazel.
But the three men didn't give me any opportunity to cause trouble. The first two guards kept their hands clamped on my arms, their eyes on me at all times, while the third guy hung back, his gun up and ready to pump me full of bullets if I so much as twitched funny.
They marched me down the long hallway, out the front door, down the porch steps, and across the yard.
I thought that they might turn and head toward the pit, so I could join the other poor souls rotting there, but instead, they forced me to walk straight ahead. When we reached the middle of the clearing, they stopped. The two men holding on to my arms yanked me back and forth for a minute, until I was standing on a particular patch of dirt that had been worn smooth by the tread of so many feet on it over the years. Then those two and the third guy did a most curious thing: they slowly backed away from me.
The last guy with the gun raised his weapon high into the air and fired off nine shots, three bursts of three in rapid succession. That must have been Grimes's signal to gather 'round again, because more men started streaming out of the barracks, kitchen, and other buildings.
And they all had weapons.
Most carried guns, long, sleek rifles that could take down an enemy at a hundred paces, and the wooden stocks gleamed like polished bronze in the afternoon sun. Others held big old-fashioned revolvers, which they slowly twirled around and around on their fingers, as though they were cowboys right out of the old West, getting ready for a showdown at high noon. A few clutched knives, while some had crude, simple weapons like the spiked stakes that I'd seen earlier in the forest.
My gaze went from one man's face to another. They all grinned, their eyes lighting up at the thought of my impending torture, whatever it was going to be. No one looked away, and no one had any spark of compassion, uncertainty, or unease in his face. No surprise there, given how many of their buddies I'd killed already. I was mildly surprised that they hadn't brought out the tar, feathers, and pitchforks, along with their other weapons. That seemed like something that Grimes would enjoy, given his seeming fascination with the past.
The men didn't speak, but a collective sense of anticipation and excitement rippled through them, as though this were some show that they'd witnessed many times before and were eager to see repeated. One guy even drew a silver lighter out of his pocket and lit a cigarette with it, as though this was some sort of smoke break before the main event started. He kept snapping the lid up and down on the lighter, ready to get on with things.
I wondered how many other folks had stood in this exact same spot, facing down Grimes's mob. Would these gangsters all raise their weapons and fire at once? Would
they swarm me en masse? Or would they all throw themselves at me, drive me to the ground, and tear me limb from limb? No way to know, until they decided to attack.
I'd killed around a dozen men up on the ridge, but there were a dozen more gathered around me now. My gaze roamed over the crowd again, this time searching for any sign of weakness, any gap in the ring that might be big enough for me to fight my way through, any way that I could escape and live to kill another day. Or at least get back to Grimes and take him down before I died.
But there was nothing - no weakness, no gap, no hope of escape.
So I straightened my spine, stared back at the men, and braced myself for my impending execution.
I didn't have to wait long.
I'd only been standing in the ring of men for about two minutes when the front door of the house banged open, and Grimes and Hazel appeared. Hazel had her arm linked through his, and Grimes escorted her down the steps, through the yard, and out into the clearing in a show of gallantry as complete as any old-fashioned Southern gentleman ever could have managed.
The men parted enough to allow Grimes and Hazel to join in the ring. Once again, the big man kept out of arm's reach of me, but I swallowed my frustration. I couldn't kill Grimes, but I couldn't survive this either, despite my promise to Owen that I would. I'd known that the words were most likely a lie when I'd said them, but I'd at least hoped to destroy Grimes before I met my own end. Now I didn't even think that would happen.
My heart clenched at the thought of Owen, and I focused on the tightness in my chest, imagining it as a drumbeat and letting it steady me.
Live, live, live, live . . .
I could almost hear Owen's voice whispering that to me over and over again, and I seized onto that determination until there was no room for anything else. No doubt, no hesitation, no fear. Just the will to do what needed to be done to survive this.
Because if I couldn't kill Grimes now, that meant that
I had to live to try again another day.
The Fire elemental swept his hat off his head and bowed low to the crowd, before straightening back up and gesturing at me with his dapper fedora. "Allow me to introduce Ms. Blanco," he said in a loud, booming voice. "At least, that's what she says her name is. But we don't pay too much attention to names up here, do we, boys?"
The men all chuckled. Several wet their lips as they stared at me, while others slowly looked me up and down, their lecherous gazes trying to see my breasts through the blood-soaked vest that I wore.
"Now, we all know what we do to the folks we decide to bring up to our camp or those who wander in here by accident," Grimes continued. "We give them a choice. They can stay, or they can go. "
A choice? I seriously doubted that, but I had no idea what he was babbling on about.
"Usually, that choice only involves a few of you, since it's a reward for those who have worked extra hard over the last few weeks. But I think that you will all agree that Ms. Blanco's . . . antics have earned her a special sort of punishment. "
The men all hooted and hollered, their dark cheers rising in a swelling tide of impending violence. The guy with the lighter clicked it on and held it up as if he was at a rock concert, while a few of the others fired their guns into the air or stamped their feet, like they were bulls about to charge me. I really should have been wearing a red cape. It was my color, after all.
