The Isis Knot (16 page)

A horse and wagon drew up in front of Amherst’s. The gaunt, surly man at the reins turned to the woman sitting next to him and barked, “Get out, Elizabeth.”

The woman didn’t respond. Didn’t move.

“
Now
.”

The hate laced through the man’s tone snatched a series of vivid memories from the recesses of Sera’s mind and blinked them in front of her eyes like an old, broken movie.

Men pounding on the door of the cheap apartment in Las Vegas she’d shared with her mom. Bitter men. Angry men. Men who liked a little violence with their fucking. But her mom saw them all—never turned any away. She’d take them into the one sorry bedroom, close the door, and leave Sera to her cartoons. When Sera had gotten older, she’d been taught how to follow the men afterward and pick their pockets. Or she’d learned where they lived so she could break in and steal things.

And then there was the one guy who’d treated Sera that way. Not a john—no, she’d never been a hooker herself—but a second or third date who’d transformed into a monster once she’d agreed to sleep with him. That was as far as it got, though, that agreement. He’d tried to get violent, she’d kneed him in the naked balls and taken off, and that was that.

It only took one guy to know how you deserved to be treated from there on out. It only took one guy to make you swear off serious relationships altogether until you got your own head straightened out.

The shittiness of that former life made Sera go cold underneath the coat. How many more layers of her past were there left to uncover? Was she really trying to get back there, to that time and place? How was it any better than here? Or was she more afraid of going forward than going back?

Again, the answer to that lay with William.

She shoved aside the images of the past and kept walking straight down the main thoroughfare out of town. Another wagon pulled up opposite the one with the asshole and Elizabeth. Sera didn’t want to jump up onto the boardwalk outside of Amherst’s—didn’t want the chemist to notice her—and had to squeeze between the two horses and two giant sets of wheels. At that moment, Elizabeth jumped down from her wagon and Sera knocked right into her.

Elizabeth was a tall, frighteningly thin woman, and she fell backward in a flurry of grimy yellow skirts, landing with a splat in the mud.

Elizabeth’s pained and pitiful face, on the verge of tears, turned up to Sera’s.

Even though it could draw attention, Sera bent over the other woman. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

“Get up, Elizabeth.” The woman’s husband stamped around the horse but did not make a move to help his wife. “You’re embarrassing yourself. And me.”

Elizabeth flinched from the man and returned her pinched eyes back to Sera. Misery in human form.

“Here.” Sera couldn’t help it. She shot a warning glare in the awful man’s direction. “Let me help you up.”

“Thank you so very much.” Elizabeth’s voice was small and heavily accented.

Sera thrust out her left arm. The sleeve of the coat tugged up. Sunlight found the cuff like a magnet, bursting in a flash of brilliant gold. Elizabeth gasped, her eyes bulging. Sera tried to pull the sleeve back down but it was too late.

The despondent, helpless, meek woman disappeared. Elizabeth jumped to her feet eerily fast. She was a full head taller than Sera. A bony finger jabbed at Sera’s wrist and her face twisted into a combination of rage and triumph. “
That
doesn’t belong to you.”

Sera stumbled backward, a pit opening in her stomach. Dumb, dumb mistake. She should have been more careful.

Malice lit deathly fire in Elizabeth’s eyes. She lunged for Sera’s arm, her clawlike hand swiping downward. “Give it to me! Give it back to me. It’s mine!”

Elizabeth didn’t just crave mere gold. She wanted this particular cuff. Which should have been impossible, except that it definitely wasn’t.

Run
.

Only Sera’s feet were trapped in invisible quicksand. No, not her feet. Her entire body, nailed in place by some incredibly powerful new force that sprang up from the depths of her soul and expanded like a weed inside her. It fed off her fear. It erased all pity for Elizabeth and replaced it, bit by bit, with consuming hate.

It was
not
the sensuous woman who’d recognized William. And it was
not
the magic that had wanted to heal Viv.

It was something entirely separate. And it wanted death.

Elizabeth whipped back to her husband, screeching, “Thomas! Give me back my ring!”

Thomas stalked toward her, but not to give her anything. Face red with rage, he grabbed Elizabeth from behind, hands locking tight and low on her stomach. She was like a green twig, weak and thin, thrashing uselessly in his grip. She kept shrieking about her ring, demanding it. Tears streamed down her face.

And all Sera could do was stand there amidst her own inexplicable torrent of anger and hate and bloodlust. It froze her. Petrified her. She could barely focus her vision. The desire for death—Elizabeth’s death—shook every cell in her body.

She used that energy and reversed it, forcing it into her legs. It took all her strength, but she was finally able to back away from the cursing Thomas and the screeching, flailing Elizabeth. When Sera cleared the barricade of wagons and put some distance between the couple, her mind cleared a bit and she could see how many other people had either turned their heads toward the scene or were cautiously, curiously approaching.

Amherst burst out of his shop, palming a pistol. “Enough! All of you! Be on your way!”

For a split second Elizabeth paused in Thomas’s grasp, her frantic eyes rolling toward the gun. Strands of dirty blond hair hung down her cheeks. Then she kicked backward, her heel slamming into the shorter Thomas’s groin. With a great shout he released her and doubled over in pain. Elizabeth sprang from his control.

Run, Sera. Run
. Still, she couldn’t.

With Amherst’s attention deflected to the man writhing in the street, he didn’t notice Elizabeth as she lunged for his legs. The chemist had been standing on the edge of the boardwalk but Elizabeth took him out at the knees and he fell forward to the mud. She tackled him and wrestled the gun away. She popped to her feet and clutched the gun with both hands, swinging it between Thomas and Amherst. Neither made a move for her. The murmurs of the gathering crowd intensified, grew fearful.

Then Elizabeth whirled, gun aimed at Sera’s heart.

Run, Sera. Run.

Facing that gun barrel, the bloodlust came roaring back and Sera couldn’t move.

“Now,” Elizabeth sneered. “That piece of gold is not yours. Don’t try to pretend it is. Give it to me.”

Sera could barely hear over the pounding rush of death in her head. It twisted her vision into a tunnel, Elizabeth at the center. Some deep, dark, newly uncovered part of Sera wanted her to kill.

She’d spent the latter part of her life, however, battling hate and consciously turning it into something positive, refusing to give in to what her childhood had tried to make her. If there was one thing she knew now, it was control. If she faltered now, if she released even a sliver of the control she held over this despicable new power, it would strike Elizabeth dead without thought or permission or regret. So Sera held on to that control with everything she had.

Clenching her fists, she stood her ground and told Elizabeth between clenched teeth, “I can’t take it off.”

Wrong thing to say. Elizabeth calmly raised the gun, finger on the trigger. “Then I’ll take off your arm first.”

She fired.

The gun exploded in a deafening
crack
. Sera watched the bullet eject from the chamber the same instant Elizabeth’s face melted into a look of utter satisfaction.

A great force slammed into Sera, stealing her breath upon impact and sending her flying sideways into the mud.

“No!” screamed Elizabeth.

Sera lay in a cold puddle, staring up at the sky and waiting for the pain of death—the fear, the panic, the bone-chill that announced the end. None of it came.

“Sera.” A familiar voice. An answering buzz in her blood.

She blinked and turned her head. William stood over her, his blue eyes wild, his chest heaving, blond curls plastered to his cheeks and neck.

He couldn’t be out in the open, she thought. He was a known bolter and there were lots of people about. He had to get away, to hide.

And then she saw the circle of crimson consuming his belly.

Good God. The man had jumped in front of a gun. He’d taken a bullet. For her.

Dizzy, gulping for air, she managed to scramble to her knees before a swaying, heaving William. Worry and alarm swept through her.

Movement in the corner of her eye, and her gaze snapped over to where the shot had originated. Elizabeth held the gun in two hands with eerie focus. Her eyes gleamed black behind a greasy, wet flap of hair. She fiddled with the gun like she knew exactly what she was doing, how to make it fire again. Ignoring William, she tilted the barrel down at Sera.

“Give it to me,” Elizabeth snarled once more.

Townspeople started to fill the spaces between the buildings, their faces worried, but the fact that a clearly unstable woman wielded a gun out in the street kept them cowering behind corners. Sera wanted to scream for help, but it would do no good.

Thomas recovered from his kick to the balls and lunged for his wife, sweeping her legs out from beneath her. Elizabeth cried out, her arms losing their aim. The gun went off again, taking out a section of the brothel porch in a shower of splinters. Thomas held her down in the mud.

Amherst bent low and crawled for his shop.

A dirty and bloody hand appeared before Sera’s eyes. She swung her startled gaze around and looked up into William’s face.

“Come with me.” He wavered on his feet and his teeth gritted against obvious pain. He pulled her up with a strength that could only come from adrenaline.

A spear of sympathetic pain shot through her body. What if this killed him? What if he died because of her? After all that he’d been through? After all they had yet to learn?

Her eyes burned and blurred. “What did you do? Why—”

“No time. Stables,” he hissed, clutching his side. “
Go
.”

He pushed her around Amherst’s just as two men came running out from behind the butcher’s, near the church. They were shouting something, but all Sera heard from their lips was the word “bolter.”

She ran, pulling a stumbling William behind her. The commotion at their backs escalated, with Elizabeth’s shrieks turning to anguished banshee wails—calling for Sera, the cuff, that ring that Thomas had apparently withheld. The sound of her voice crawled with icy tentacles down Sera’s spine, sending her feet spinning faster. As they ducked into the stables, another gunshot rang out. Men shouted now, orders to subdue Elizabeth, and to find the bolter who’d been shot and the woman dressed like a man who’d started it all.

William stumbled between the stalls and grabbed the first horse ready to ride. Pulling the animal out, he mumbled, “Get on.”

He could barely stand, his eyes at half-mast. The red obliterated his shirt now and that, more than anything, kicked her in the pants. She’d never ridden a horse before, but she’d seen enough TV—oh God,
TV
—and managed to scramble on using that tiny bit of visual knowledge.

She stretched down, took hold of his arms and hauled him up behind her. Swinging Viv’s bag around her front, William sagged heavily against her back. The hot, sticky wetness of his shirt pressed against her and suddenly there was no fear in the world greater than the possibility of losing him.

She didn’t care if that had come from the braided woman inside her mind or her own personal fear. It didn’t matter. He was dying because of her.

“Kick it,” he slurred. “Kick the damn animal.” She did, and when it jumped she yelped and almost let go of the too-small saddle knob between her legs. The horse wheeled out of the stable.

“Give me the reins.” Even though his mouth was almost in her ear, she could barely hear him. His head lolled like a drunk’s on her shoulder.

“No. You’re barely conscious.” She could do this. For him, who’d jumped in front of a bullet for her, she could steer a damn horse.

“South. Head south.”

Viv’s farm lay to the west but she obeyed, kicking the horse again with all her might. The great beast took off. Parramatta faded behind them. The bush flew by in a beige and green blur.

Every thump of the horse’s hooves threatened to shatter her bones. Her teeth jammed up into her gums and her thighs burned from clenching the saddle so tightly. William’s arm slackened around her waist. She was sure they were both about to be thrown, but she kept going.

Several miles from Parramatta, William stopped groaning. His body turned to dead weight.

No no no no no
.

On TV, they pulled back on the reins to make a horse stop. She yanked at the thin leather cords with all her strength. With a piercing whinny of protest the horse’s neck craned back, its mane whipping at her face. It veered this way and that, finally prancing to a halt.

William’s body fell away. She swiveled and reached around to catch him but he was already halfway to the ground. He struck with a thud, his arms not extending to break his fall.