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10
Mercy
The guys droppedme back at my house with a promise to pick me up early next morning to regroup and strategize. I waved goodbye to them and watched them drive down the darkened street. It was past midnight, and all but a couple of the lights in the house were off. I hoped Sarah was sleeping okay in her new room. I’d managed to find an old bedspread from my childhood with pink and purple clouds printed on it that she’d squealed over on sight.
A few of the Claws men had come to a stop on the lawn near me, braced to leap to my protection, but the street around us was dead. I nodded to them with a smile of thanks and headed up the front walk to the house.
Sam was hanging out in the living room with a couple of the other guys, passing a joint around as they discussed some new job they were putting together to increase our income. “Everything good?” I called to them.
Sam grinned at me. “Yep.”
I’d noticed a change in their morale ever since we’d successfully carried out the ambush on the weapons truck. While it hadn’t been as all-encompassing a blow as I’d hoped, it seemed to have had a positive effect on the Claws men in general.
I picked up a target practice board that’d been knocked to the ground. It was splintered with knife gouges. When I passed through to the dining room, I found the table laid out with an assortment of weapons from the ambush—guns of all sizes, from pistols that would easily fit into one of my hands to semi-automatic rifles.
We were definitely well-armed now. Jenner figured we could sell a bunch of the extras to help fund our continuing operations.
I sighed deeply. My body still buzzed with the adrenaline of our forest mission, and I knew sleep wouldn’t come easily.
Instead of making my way upstairs, I walked through the house and opened the door to the backyard. Maybe the cool air would help soothe the growing restlessness in me. It almost felt like I was holding in a breath and waiting for something, but I didn’t know what.
The sky was clear, stars twinkling through the thin haze of city smog. It was so silent out here that I could hear the crunch of a few fallen leaves under my feet. The grass was overgrown, in desperate need of trimming, not that landscaping was a big priority at the moment. Wild tufts of weeds knotted along the edges of the white picket fence that towered a good seven feet off the ground. Dad had always liked to keep the neighbors out of our business.
I’d have to clean this place up better… when I had time. It was hard to wrap my head around the idea of doing anything that wasn’t directly toward our fight against the Storm. Who cared if my backyard looked a bit ratty when we might all be dead in less than a week?
I sucked in the cool night air and tipped back my head, letting the breeze lick over my skin. Of its own accord, my hand dropped to my pocket, where I was carrying my childhood bracelet like usual. The one that’d been my mother’s last gift to me.
A sudden urge came over me. I tucked my fingers into my pocket and pulled out the thin silver chain. It gleamed in the faint light. I ran my thumb over the words engraved in the narrow panel:Little Angel.
We’d played out here all the time. Flashes of memory passed through my head: Mom swinging me around over the grass. Us tumbling onto the lawn together and rolling all the way to the flower bed, giggling. Her boosting me up so I could perch on the lowest branch of the tree. I’d always demanded to get up there, and she’d gone along with it, even though she’d hovered nervously beneath me in case I’d fall.
I never had. What would she think of my climbing abilities now?
I glanced back toward the house. The memory of the last morning I’d had with her was fragmented too. I’d only been six, and I hadn’t known it was going to be my final glimpse of her. I could picture her willowy figure swaying through the kitchen, humming a tune under her breath as she prepared pancakes for me with sweet maple syrup on top.
She’d always been there. It’d never occurred to me that she might leave. She’d given me the bracelet on my sixth birthday, kissed my nose, and told me I’d always be her angel, no matter how old I got.
And then less than a month later, she’d disappeared.
She and Dad hadn’t been married—I knew that much. And they’d argued sometimes. I had shaky memories of those moments too: of cringing in a corner when he’d lay into her for some small oversight. She’d been the only woman who’d ever given him a kid, and he’d blamed her for not managing to produce a son for him. I wished I’d had the guts to point out to him that if he couldn’t knock upanywomen, the problem was obviously below his belt, not theirs.
Mom wouldn’t have left me with him all alone on purpose, would she? Or would I rather that she had than think that Dad hadforcedher to leave in some permanent way? How well had I really known her anyway? Sarah probably hadn’t believed her mom would ever run off on her.
A thump at the fence brought my attention jerking to the far end of the yard. At the sight of the massive form crouched on top of the white pickets, my stomach flipped over.
It was Xavier, poised like a tiger about to spring, with a menacing grin stretched across his face.
I dropped the bracelet, my dominant hand leaping to the gun wedged in the back of my jeans. Before I’d managed to raise it, Xavier pointed his own pistol right at my face.
“Hello, Mercy,” he said like he had yesterday night, balancing on the narrow top of the fence without the slightest waver. I hadn’t even heard him coming. For all his bulk, he was obviously agile and stealthy as well as strong.
Of course he was. How else could he have snuck onto the Noble property to leave me all his horrible “gifts” like the creepy drawing and the severed cat tail—not to mention the rest of the cat’s corpse and the rotted body parts he’d dug up?
I could never forget that I was dealing with a total psychopath in him, someone who didn’t operate according to typical human standards.
I kept my fingers curled around my gun, afraid to raise it in case Xavier shot me before I could shoot him, afraid to turn my back on him to run toward the house. I took one step backward, and he clicked off the safety.
“You’re staying right there,” he announced, so coolly and confidently I had no doubt that he’d put a bullet in my brain the second I made another move. Then he started to whistle an eerie tune under his breath, as if he were taking a casual stroll down the street.
