Sorrow's Crown (19 page)

Another footstep. The house was cold and damp and the rafters groaned and the house shifted mightily with parts of the roof tapping and ringing like a kettle drum. I didn't know what kind of play to make. Frost probably wasn't in any real danger from dying of his wounds, but I didn't want to leave the kid lying in a ring of his own drying blood like that.

I progressed through the living room. From what I remembered there was hardly any furniture to worry about tripping over. Moonlight kept throwing my vision off, one moment lighting the room and ruining my night-sight, the next casting the place back into total blackness. Another footstep, somewhere behind me. I thought I'd take a lesson from Nick and hunker down, holding my breath, hoping not to misstep on a bad spot on the floor and give away my position. It worried me that he didn't care about the creaking; it meant that
I
didn't worry him.

He was moving around from the kitchen to the dining room, maybe trying for the foyer or heading for the back door. Could he see Nick waiting for him back there? Would he circle right into me? Bottled, he'd have to either head upstairs or make a launch for the front door. Was it Teddy
Harnes
? Or somebody looking for Teddy? And might Teddy still be in the house?

My cell phone rang.

Behind me, Freddy Shanks, my old pal Sparky, said, "Now that was goddamn stupid."

I agreed with him as the phone tweeted again and I spun, and a blackjack with one edge of its leather covering showing glinting metal beneath from so much continuous wear struck me low on the back of the skull, his exposed tooth shining with that ragged lip raised in a blissful snarl, his laughter loud in my head stuffed alongside the sudden black agony and knowledge that I deserved this for being so goddamn stupid.

I staggered and scrambled and he hit me some more, moonlight flashing off his tooth and sick eyes, as he struck down with splitting, glancing blows again and again, on my crown and just over the top of my right ear. He liked to toy with his mark, taking his time to inflict the most damage. Shanks had mastered his technique in the rooms of
Panecraft
, using the sap for maximum pain but without allowing me to pass out. His shadow spun around me, the blackjack gliding in first from one side and then the other.

My head became an old dirty sponge jammed with gravel and broken glass. Shanks kept making sounds, little venomous squeaks in between the twittering of the cell phone, until his weird huffing squeals were louder than the tweets. Through the shroud of pain I realized he was laughing. We performed a brutal ballet across the living room and I felt the wet heat heavy in my nostrils, filling my ears and dripping down my neck.

The pain had almost lifted to a floating ache of dull purple and yellow streaks, and new star systems erupted with each strike, but still nothing that would put me all the way under. I couldn't get to the phone in my jacket pocket. I couldn't even find my hands. Frost gargled on the floor and I fell beside him, scrambling to my knees and collapsing again.

Shanks switched the sap to his left hand, hauled back and waited until I'd floundered into the correct position for him to bash me over the ear once more. I managed to wheel aside just enough so that he hit my shoulder instead, and my arm went completely numb. I dropped over backward and lay there breathing hard, unable to see him clearly enough through the glittering haze to protect myself in the slightest anymore.

He knew it, too. A lamp snapped on and a harsh circle of white lit the far corner, igniting among the rest of the swirling patterns of blunted colors vaulting before my eyes. Groaning, I wanted to roll aside but couldn't. My gaze had shifted back to see Brian Frost weakly struggling to get loose from the chair, groaning right back at me.

I expected a lot from Shanks but not this new silence. It went on and on. I had the bizarre sensation of standing outside myself and running through the house looking for Teddy, moving in behind Shanks and pummeling the crap out of him. Unfortunately, it was only a sensation. He stared at me with the clear and innocent eyes of a Secretary of Defense. He was in no rush to proceed.

He said, "You know what the beauty of this moment is?"

Neither Frost nor I had any answer and we both sort of rocked and continued to grunt.

Nick
Crummler
appeared in the foyer, hands in his pockets, his wet hair slung down across his eyes. Trails of rain poured down his face, and when he blinked water squirted out like tears.

"Oh," Shanks said, and stretched and rubbed his bad back. "It's you."

"Hello," Nick said.

They approached as if to shake hands, and my chest tightened until I thought it might crack, and I wondered about how it all fit, with the two of them working together. I struggled to think and make connections but the throbbing became a steel-toed boot kicking me in the head. I tried to talk but my bottom lip hung a half mile beneath the roof of my mouth. He hadn't hit me in the mouth, but I must've bitten my tongue because it felt swollen and bloody and too heavy for words.

Nick glanced down at me and shook his head. He looked up at Shanks as they moved closer toward each other, then back at me once more, still nodding. Sparky broke into a run and rushed Nick with the blackjack raised in his fist, and I felt a great sense of relief washing over me as I started to vomit.

The blackjack came up high and angled down at Nick, but when it descended it slipped through the air uninterrupted. Nick moved that fast. Overextending that way
threw
Shanks off and he nearly hit himself in the knee. I couldn't turn my head enough to watch the whole fight: they swerved in and out of my line of sight, Nick feinting, keeping tight, blocking blows and without any indication of what he was thinking. I craned my neck and my skull flooded with a vat of molten metal. I would've screamed if I could have found the rest of my mouth.

Rain hammered at the windows like the hands of children. The wind roared. They kept circling behind me, where I could hear wheezing and the slap of fists on flesh, Nick's coat still snapping as he wheeled to avoid the sap. They'd come around in a wide circuit over and again, and each time Shanks looked a little sweatier and a lot happier, thin ribbons of blood dangling from his chin, the ripped lip tearing his face up with a vicious smile.

"I should have killed you a long time ago," Shanks said. "It might've saved your life tonight."

"First thing I do when I get back to the hospital is break your brother's legs."

"You're not going back."

They stepped on Brian Frost's hair as they went dancing by and Frost didn't have enough left in him to even cry out. The floorboard in front of my nose
thunked
heavily with the weight of the blackjack. The cell phone was ringing and I couldn't tell if it had been doing so the whole while or if it had just started again. The back of Sparky's shoe brushed my nose.

Nick
Crummler
scooped up the blackjack and said, "I remember this." He hauled back his arm and brought up the sap. I knew what was about to happen. Nick showed nothing in his face but somehow the seething, irrepressible hatred he felt came through

I tried to shout "No," but all that came out was a garbled, "
Uhnumn
…" The blackjack kept rising. "
Uhnumn
."

Those hands, with the power in them, backed by his incredible fortitude, his rage, all the grudges in his life, especially those against a tormentor, and his need to protect his brother, coming in and down toward that smiling face. The blackjack wavered just a bit like it had hit an air pocket, then straightened and speeded up, gliding in the ultimate course of action, and smashing directly between Shanks' eyes.

Sparky stiffened as his frontal lobe caved in, and he went back onto the balls of his feet, wavered there for what felt like a few minutes, and slowly toppled to the floor, dead.

"Now that's the beauty of the moment," Nick
Crummler
said.

~ * ~

He answered my phone and told Lowell what had happened. He lifted and carried me over to a divan in the back room, untied Frost and sort of propped him up against my shoulder, staunched our bleeding heads and said, "You're going to be all right. Tell them the truth. I can't get involved with this and you know why." He put the phone on my lap and ate some of the crab meat quiche. "I'll be around."

I sat on the divan with a towel on the back of my neck and listened to Frost mumble in his semi-conscious state, slowly regaining some feeling in my extremities. By the time I heard the sirens and the room filled with whirling red-and-blue lights, and Lowell's face suddenly loomed in front of mine, I could almost stand.

Lowell put a palm to my chest and gently pushed me back down. "Careful, you might have a concussion."

"I'm okay," I told him, but it came out as though I was conjugating Latin verbs.

Lowell kept his hand on my chest. "Whatever the hell you just said proves my point, don't you think? Just lie there."

The ambulance and other deputies arrived a few minutes later, followed by Keaton Wallace who, for a Medical Examiner, always looked a little put out by blood. He stared at the floor where Frost and I had bled and screwed up his face. He didn't know whether to bag Frost's splintered teeth or let one of the cops do it. He fingered his dentures in sympathy. Wallace glanced over at me and said, "Jesus God, Jonny Kendrick, what the hell are you into now?"

The EMTs loaded Frost onto a gurney and rushed him into the back of the ambulance, taking his blood pressure and shouting numbers at each other. A petite blond with rubber gloves on and the fingers of a masseuse checked my pupils and scalp. She felt my lumps and washed me with something that stung like hell but also brought me fully back to my senses. She gave me a sweet smile that made me hurt worse. "We're going to take you in for a CAT scan."

I was ready to consent until the front door opened and a portion of
Harnes
' party-goers poured in: Anna and
Broghin
and Oscar, followed by a weeping Alice Conway, who
stared
over at Frost on the gurney. She hugged her elbows, and her knees were about to give out. Oscar realized she'd fall over any second and fumbled around trying to grasp her in his arms.
Broghin
pushed my grandmother into the foyer; he'd had a lot more practice with the wheelchair and could've maneuvered it up the rotting steps where Oscar probably couldn't have.

Lowell said, "Oh, Christ."

Sheriff
Broghin
remained extremely drunk, and the other deputies looked at him with the quiet, unhappy resignation of sons watching their father making a damn fool of himself.

Lowell nodded his head at me and asked the pretty blond EMT, "You taking him in?"

"He could use a CAT scan, to be on the safe side. Most of the wounds are superficial, a couple of deeper lacerations on the back of his head and neck, but you can't mess with a concussion."

Lowell stared at me hard, considering factors, friendship, the weight of murder. "I want to ask him questions first."

"I'm fine," I said, pretty shaky and sick, but at least my voice sounded a lot steadier.

"We've got to get that other kid out of here," she said. "He's stabilized, but still in bad shape. If he'd earned his muscles the hard way and wasn't swallowing steroids like me going through coffee he'd be a lot better off. A beating like that is a hell of a lot of trauma." She cocked a thumb at me. "Bring him by as soon as you can."

"Will do," Lowell said.

"Will do," I said.

She packed up her medical kit and joined the others in the ambulance, slammed the back doors and drove off across the lawn past all the traffic that had piled into the driveway.

"No comment about my hard head?" I asked.

"You're fortunate he liked to play games."

“I am?"

"Sap feels light, closer to three ounces instead of the usual five. If he wasn't taking his time toying with you, you'd be dead."

Lowell watched
Broghin
walking around doing his best not to stagger. He didn't comment on the fact that the sheriff had given an open invitation to a crime scene.

"You ready to take it from the top?"

"Yeah," I said, about to get into it, but couldn't shake my curiosity about something. "In just a second. What were you calling me about?"

"I'll tell you later."

"Come on, let's have it."

His stern face didn't soften as he decided whether to tell me or not. I knew it had to be bad then. When he realized I'd picked up on that he had no choice. "Somebody broke into Katie's flower shop. Roy was doing his rounds downtown, saw broken glass, and checked it out."

"
Devington
," I said. "Or his mother."

"It's not too bad, not like you might think. Just a few tossed plants and some busted pottery. No real damage. Wasn't even the front window, one of the little side panes."

"Couldn't have been his mother then, she'd never have gotten in."

"Roy cleaned it up, got some boarding to cover the window."

My head started to throb again, not where the sap had hit, but over on the other side where
Devington's
fist had caught me. I wondered how that might be possible, feeling the specific pain just by seeing his face again, the bile rising in my throat. "Some people have a hard time learning lessons."