Destroyer Angel: An Anna Pigeon Novel (Anna Pigeon Mysteries) (24 page)

“I’m good to go,” she said. Wily licked the side of her face.

Making a circle behind the deadfall, they approached the boulders from the side of the burn. The northernmost boulder was by far the larger of the two, or had been. Repeated rains and freezes had worked on its veins. Pieces of stone, from as small as a toaster to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, had been pried loose. Fallen, they lay around the boulder’s base like the skirts of a curtsying maiden.

From this vantage point, Anna could see neither hostages nor thugs. After some minutes the unmistakable scent of wood smoke tickled through the maze of rock to where she and Wily waited back in the trees.

A word had yet to be spoken.

These thugs were not a quiet bunch. Sean was a regular chatterbox. This lack of thuggy banter made her nervous. It suggested something of import had occurred. Reg must have reported the existence of a woman and a dog. That could be their death knell. Wisdom forbade her to spy on them until full dark, so she listened until her ears rang.

When the fire was burning well enough that the crack and spark of combustion filled the empty silence, her aural vigil was rewarded. A voice, cricketlike in its tiny singsong, said, “Superdog.” This was followed by a low wheezing chuckle.

Then came an eruption, so sudden and loud Anna jerked like a landed fish. Wily let out a voiceless “Woof!”

“I’ll break your fuckin’ neck,” Reg boomed. “It was him! God damn it! Forget the dog and the cape and shit. I didn’t see any fucking dog, okay? But it was fucking Jimmy! Jimmy. I shit you not. Jimmy dead as roadkill. Bang and he disappears. Like that. Gone.”

“Faster than a speeding bullet,” Sean said.

“It’s not funny, you asshole. I should blow your fuckin’ brains all over these fuckin’ goddam trees.”

Mysteries unraveled.

Reg thought she was Jimmy. Reg had seen her through a fog, both real and that made by his terror of the woods. She’d been wearing Jimmy’s coat and cap, the earflaps down. Reg panicked and squeezed off half a dozen shots while falling on his naked rump, and possibly in his own excrement. When his eyes cleared Anna had “disappeared” beneath the boughs of the fir.

No wonder he’d run. Anna scratched Wily’s back through the green nylon. Superdog. Green Lantern. Both of them smiled. The last wistful hint of gray was slipping away. The thugs were noisy and occupied with their fire. Anna could hear the soft murmur of the women’s voices. A breeze, with teeth of northern ice, had sprung up ahead of the cold front she’d dreamed—or sensed. If she and Wily were to survive, they, too, would need a fire tonight.

Leaning down, she whispered in Wily’s ear, “Time.” Moving with the careful grace of a slow loris, she walked to the base of the scatter of small boulders. For the able, they formed a giant’s crooked staircase to the top of the leaning stones. To a one-armed woman and a three-legged dog, they would be a challenge. A warm tongue touched her fingers.

Wily was up for it.

She squatted to gather Wily up in her good arm. “This isn’t going to be pretty,” she murmured. Her arm under his belly, his front and hind quarters dangling, she stood. Despite the fact she’d not lifted it, the gunshot arm flooded her with toxic pain. For a moment, she leaned on a rock and breathed. Eventually, with no medical care, no food, no proper sleep, and other slings and arrows, she wouldn’t be able to pick him up, wouldn’t be able to carry him on her back. Then what? Leave him? Cut him loose? Memory flashed on a hiker who had cut off his trapped arm to save his life.

That was an arm.

This was a comrade.

Totally different things.

A day, she told herself. Two at the most. “We can last that long,” she breathed. Could Wily see in the dark like a cat? Best not to ask. He was old. Old dogs, like old people, often lost vision.

“Blind leading the blind,” she whispered as she awkwardly dumped him on top of the rock she was leaning against. Hitching and swallowing groans and cries, they bumped and scrambled their way to the top of the stairs.

Fifteen feet above ground level, where the rocks came together in a natural depression, a tiny island of soil had collected. The maple tree that had taken root there was taller than Anna and a little bigger around than her thumb.

In the shallow bowl in the juncture of the boulders, they curled together around the slender sapling. Worn down by hunger, blood loss, and fear, warmed by the dog and the heat, Anna slept.

THIRTY-SIX

The dude and Sean believed Reg spooked himself and ran, then made up the story about Jimmy’s ghost to cover his cowardice. The part about the specter of a dead dog in a superhero’s cape didn’t help his case.

Heath didn’t know what to think. Thinking made her head hurt even worse than the slow screaming of the nerves on her cheek and along her temple.

Her head drooped. The muscles of her upper body ached. Cold seeped from the stone, trickled down her bones, and pooled in the pit of her stomach. Lightning shot along her jaw where Sean’s blow had burst the skin. Fortunately, the .22 was a small rifle, light. E’s foot had sustained no lasting trauma, and Heath’s jaw was unbroken.

Elizabeth was next to her, their shoulders touching. Leah and Katie sat opposite, their backs against the other boulder, their feet and legs making a cat’s cradle with E’s and her own. Everyone but Heath had their hands bound in front of them with the plastic ties. Elizabeth was asleep, a blessing Heath could not emulate. Her body had sustained too much trauma. Recognized pain throbbed through her upper body, while phantom pain wreaked havoc in her lower limbs. They quivered and jumped as they fought their demons. If she survived this abduction there would be medical consequences.

Leah’s head was resting against the boulder, her eyes closed. Heath hoped she slept. The fire was coming along nicely; they would not freeze tonight. Heath was grateful for that. Katie was not sleeping. She was pretending to. Sean was on watch. His eyes were not on the darkness, where the deadly shade of Jimmy and the wolves lurked, but on Katie. Whenever she peeked at him from beneath her lashes, he would stick out his tongue and wag it, or pucker up his lips in a parody of a kiss. Katie didn’t want to see it, but, like a mongoose near a cobra, she couldn’t resist. Each time he caught her, she would screw her eyes tight shut and pretend again.

Heath looked to the dude and Reg. They were arced like parentheses, one on either side of the fire. The dude slept. Reg was too nervous. He kept popping his head up every few minutes to look for ghosts or canine caped crusaders.

Heath had finally dropped into a nightmare-infested doze when Sean’s watch was up.

“Reg. Your go. Got to watch out for ghosts and shit.”

She opened her eyes in time to see Sean kick the bottom of Reg’s sneaker. The blow hurt Sean’s blistered foot; Heath enjoyed the wince that contracted his mouth.

“Fuck you,” Reg said predictably. He got up. Patting his midsection with both hands, he reassured himself the Walther was in place.

“Take this,” Sean said and handed him the rifle. “I got me things to do.”

“Like what?” Reg asked as he took the gun.

“Payment on account. The dude said long as I don’t wreck the merchandise, it’d be okay. The way I see it, what I’m gonna do only improves the value.”

“Bullshit,” Reg said.

“Want sloppy seconds?” Sean offered.

“Jesus, you’re a sick fuck,” Reg said disgustedly.

Heath’s stomach clenched. Bile rose in her throat. There was nothing in her stomach; otherwise she would have lost it. Reaching down, she found Leah’s foot and shook it gently.

Sean was skirting the fire, his eyes as hot as the coals.

“Leah, wake up,” Heath whispered.

Leah opened her eyes in time to see Sean, stooped, stepping into the space between the protective boulders. The man wasn’t big, not more than five foot seven. Just enough to block all the light in the universe.

“Get out,” Heath ordered.

Ignoring her, Sean kicked his way through their legs and grabbed Katie by her bound wrists.

“No!” Leah screamed. In the confined space, she couldn’t get to her feet. She pounded at him with her fists. Screaming as well, Heath grabbed at his legs and tried to bring him down. If they could get him down, maybe …

With surprising strength, the troll-like Sean yanked Katie upright. Her head struck where the rock slanted inward. Sean dragged her out into the light of the fire. Heath felt a fingernail bend and snap below the quick as he shook loose from her clutching hands. Elizabeth hadn’t had time to do anything but awaken and cry out.

“What’s going on?”

Heath never thought she’d be glad to hear the dude’s flat voice, but she was.

“He’s taking Katie!” Leah screamed, as Heath yelled, “Stop him, God damn it!” Katie, scared past utterance, her pale face painted orange in the light of the fire, looked waxen, lifeless.

“You said—” Sean began.

“Shut up,” the dude snapped.

Everyone obeyed but Leah. “Please, you can’t do this. You bastard. You bastards! If he touches her, I will kill you.”

The dude, who Heath had come to believe was more machine than man, showed a flash of humanity, an ugly one. The hard planes of his cheeks tightened. His cod’s eyes lost their last shred of light.

“Fuck the lot of them, if you want, just keep it quiet. You wake me again and I’ll throw you into the fire.”

“Please, please,” Leah begged. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay. I’ll pay anything you ask, please. Katie’s a child, an innocent.”

“Tell that to Gerald,” the dude snapped. “Shut her up,” he ordered Reg, then rolled over, putting his back to the fire. “If she doesn’t shut up, Sean can kill the kid when he’s done.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

A war broke out below. The thud of blows, women’s screams, and men’s shouts woke Anna and Wily.

Wily started to rise, the hackles on his neck stiffening. Anna put her arm over him and whispered, “Stay.” As long as they did not show themselves and made no noise, night, smoke, and elevation rendered them invisible. The fracas fifteen feet below was as clear and offensive as if the thugs stood next to them.

Katie cried out for her mother. Leah shouted for Katie to run. It didn’t take a social scientist or a criminologist to figure out what was happening. Many societies continued to view women as things, objects, items to be bought, sold, used, discarded. That was proven by the prevalence of rape throughout most cultures, including that of the American military.

The objectification of slaves was old when the she-wolf was suckling Remus and Romulus. Weaker or conquered peoples were inferior, ergo not human, but chattel to be used.

In enlightened countries, the landscape had changed, and continued to, yet rivers of misogyny flowed beneath the surface.

Anna had known it, met it, fought with it, put aside bitterness, and moved on. What differed this night was not the ancient hatred of men for women, it was Anna. As she embraced the ways of Wily and the woods, humanness slipped away. Concepts such as contempt, guilt, and sadism became alien.

An action was necessary for survival of the pack or it was not. Cruelty was not.

Sean’s brutal intentions smashed through this thin veneer of naturalism and struck Anna with the same power as it had when she was fourteen and realized her father’s warning was valid. Boys—most boys—were after only one thing, a thing, not a person. Girls were not welcome in their clubs, sports, or activities as equal participants, but only as the bearers of that coveted thing, the keepers of the cookie jar.

Anna had greater compassion for the stones upon which she and Wily lay than these men had for a golden-haired girl child. As they had at fourteen, waves of confusion and hurt washed through Anna, the force wrenching loose the last tethers that tied her to her former life. What remained was the connections with the dog, the forest, and their pack huddled below.

Leaving Wily beneath the tree, Anna suited her movements to those of Sean as he dragged his victim from the firelight, and around the side of the boulder away from the cries of the women being beaten into submission by Reg and the dude. At the edge of the boulder, where darkness was infused with the faintest of orange from the flames, she saw Sean and Katie.

Katie did not struggle, scream, or weep as she was thrown to the ground facefirst. She didn’t even try to break her fall with her bound wrists.

“Throw fire at me and I’ll burn you where you sit,” came the dude’s voice. Then the light brightened and faded. “More courage than brains.” The dude again, and a woman screaming in pain.

From Leah or Heath came a wordless keen that filled the crevices in the stone on which Anna stood.

“Fight, Katie, fight him,” Elizabeth was screaming. “Bite—” A dull thunk silenced her.

Emboldened by the words, Katie got to her knees. Sean kicked her between the shoulder blades. She went down again, but this time she rolled and made it to her feet.

“I get it,” Sean said. “You want it the hard way.”

As if there were an easy way to be raped.

Panther-footed, Anna slipped along the edge of the boulder to where the drop was less shear.

Sean grabbed Katie’s wrists as he had before. Anna saw the yellow of her hair shift. Sean howled. Katie had sunk her teeth into his hand.

Good girl.

Biting earned the good girl a vicious blow to the jaw. Katie fell limp and voiceless as a rag doll.

Muttering, Sean went through what had to be the litany he used to get it up when opportunity provided a victim. “You’re gonna like this, you little bitch, never had it so good, that’s right, old uncle Sean…” As he verbally flogged himself into an erection, he pulled Katie’s trousers from her unresisting body. Not bothering with her underpants, he turned his attention to his own trousers, fumbling with belt and zipper.

Lust and panic wafted up to Anna’s nose, a smell like musk and bleach. She sat on the edge of the sloping stone. A hitch of her buttocks and she was sliding fast over the rough rock face, the oversized coat rucking up around her waist. She sensed her wound was sending out waves of agony. They were masked by pure adrenaline. A small thunk heralded something hitting the earth. An instant later Anna’s moose-hide moccasins landed as lightly and quietly as an autumn leaf.