Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (37 page)

But he
was
sure he’d never seen the Dead Rabbit say his name before. He was sure of this.

His name on Lucas’s lips felt like the scrape of knife, the scrape of a kiss.

It was too much.

He lowered his head. Touched his lips against the Dead Rabbit’s. And again. It burned. His eyes couldn’t close, and he stared directly into the dark eyes inches away. He kissed him again and felt the tip of a tongue press against his lips. The breath on his face. His gaze never left the Dead Rabbit’s.

I want to fuck you
, those furious eyes said.

I want to kill you.

I want to taste your blood and come on my tongue.

Lucas’s voice echoed in his head through the bees and it was fucking and murder. It was pleasure and death. Bones and dust.

He pulled away.

Took a breath.

Pushed Lucas’s head to the side, exposing his neck.

He began to cut.

The blood flowed brightly.

And then Cavalo stopped.

From underneath the rough tunic, toward the back of the Dead Rabbit’s neck, just barely visible, came an intricate black line, etched into the skin. It disappeared underneath the shirt.

Trivial
, the bees said.
Finish this, and when his head is separated from his body, you can see what it is.

Cavalo
, Lucas said again, blood running down his neck.

But the black line had caught Cavalo’s eye. It called to him, and he didn’t understand why.

Had he seen a tattoo before on Lucas?

Had he seen Lucas without a shirt?

Surely, he must have.

He’d been here for weeks.

He thought on it, knife digging into scar tissue.

He hadn’t. Not once.

Never even seen his bared arms.

He bent over, looking closer.

He could hear Lucas exhale. It sounded like a storm.

The line was multiple lines. Four of them. One about an inch thick. The other three were razor thin, only centimeters apart. They looked as if they continued.

He wanted to follow them. To see what he could see.

He turned the Dead Rabbit’s face back toward his own, the knife still pressed into his neck. Lucas’s eyes were almost black with fury. His teeth were bared.
Cavalo
, he said again.

“What is it?” Cavalo asked. “On your skin.”

Do it
.
Do it. Do it.

“Who put it there?”

Do it. Do it. Do it.

Lucas jerked his head. The scrape of the knife against his throat opened the cut further. Cavalo gripped his hand tighter. He could feel the outline of bone and teeth against his fingers. His thumb was becoming slick with blood. He couldn’t hold on much longer.

It’s none of your business
, Lucas said with a scowl.
It doesn’t matter.

It will be there still when he’s dead
, the bees told him.

MasterBossLord!

Cavalo turned his head as Bad Dog came bounding up the stairs behind him. It was a momentary lapse, the tiniest of distractions.

But it was enough.

Cavalo turned his head. His thumb slipped in the blood. His grip lessened. The knife raised a fraction.

The Dead Rabbit exploded beneath him. His hips bucked up, twisting his lower body one way while moving his shoulders and head the other way. The knife ground deeper before it slipped through the already parted flesh into empty air. Cavalo’s hand slipped from his face as he fell to the side.

He landed on his back but kept his grip on the knife. If he dropped it, he was dead. This he knew. He’d had his moment, the element of surprise. He’d had it and lost it. Mysteries were distractions that Cavalo did not allow himself to have time for. Another reason why it was better if the Dead Rabbit no longer breathed. He was too much for Cavalo’s ordered world. He didn’t fit.

But now that was over because the Dead Rabbit would descend on him, and even though Bad Dog was growling ferociously and SIRS was clambering up the stairs calling after the mutt, it wouldn’t be enough to stop his teeth from tearing out Cavalo’s throat. As his carotid artery pumped blood out over his throat, he would feel the scrape of lips against his skin as the Dead Rabbit began to drink and—

It never came.

Cavalo opened his eyes.

Bad Dog stared down at him.
What are you doing? Should I kill him?

“Not yet,” Cavalo muttered.

“I tried to stop him,” SIRS said, sounding apologetic as he reached the top of the stairs. “That ridiculous animal ignored me.”

Completely ignored
, Bad Dog agreed.

“Are you two done trying to kill each other?” SIRS asked. “I should think there’s been enough of that today.”

I haven’t tried to kill anything
, Bad Dog said.
Yet.
He growled toward the Dead Rabbit.

A metal hand gripped Cavalo’s arm as he was pulled up. The storm of bees had passed. They weren’t gone, but they were quiet. Whatever had happened in the woods was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. None of it was real. Not Warren. Not the tree-wife. None of it. It never had been. The woods were not haunted. It was only Cavalo who was haunted.

Or so he told himself.

And in this crumbling prison as a winter storm began to howl outside, the man stood next to dog and robot. Across from them in the cell stood a psycho fucking bulldog. A Dead Rabbit. I am Lucas. They all had their own bees. Some more than others.

It has taken losing my mind to find my soul.

“It’s why he wants you back,” Cavalo said quietly. “Patrick. Isn’t it?”

The Dead Rabbit said nothing.

“Did the UFSA know?”

Nothing.

“I don’t think they did. Not fully. Otherwise, they would have….”

Lucas scowled.

“What did he do to you?”

Instead of answering the Dead Rabbit reached up and slid his fingers along the joints of the cell gate. They came away black with grease and grit. He mixed it with the blood dribbling from his neck and then rubbed it around his eyes, dark streaks that covered his skin. When he finished, his mask dripped down his face.

This is who I am
, Lucas said, pointing at his face, his fingers black and red.
This is what I was made into.

“What did he do?” Cavalo asked again, taking a step toward the cell.

Lucas stepped back into shadows. Cavalo could still see the glitter of his eyes.

“What is it?” SIRS asked.

“He’s marked,” Cavalo said. “On the back of his neck. It goes down onto his back.”

“A tattoo?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why does it matter?”

“It does.”

“Cavalo?”

“It matters. When the UFSA came for him here, I was told….”

“What?”

You don’t know what you have here, do you?

“Show me,” Cavalo said to the Dead Rabbit. “Show me.”

And in the shadows, the Dead Rabbit bowed his head. His hands became fists at his sides, his posture rigid. For a moment nothing happened. And then Lucas reached up behind his head and pulled his tunic off slowly. Cavalo could see skin, but it was covered in shadows. Lucas dropped the tunic to floor. He raised his face. The mask dripped obscenely onto his cheeks.

The Dead Rabbit raised his arms out and away from his body. Palms up toward the ceiling.

He stepped forward into the light.

Cavalo took a step back.

“That’s…,” SIRS said. “That’s….”

Lucas turned slowly, arms outstretched.

It had not been shadows covering the Dead Rabbit’s skin. No. Every inch of exposed skin from his navel to his neck was covered in lines and swirls, numbers and words. It began on his shoulders and curled around his neck, running down his arms to his elbow, down his chest and stomach. Hundreds of lines. Thousands of them. Not a single space wasted, black and sharp. There was a design to it, a pattern, but it overwhelmed Cavalo, and he could not understand what he was seeing.

The Dead Rabbit spun slowly, and the lines continued across his sides and back, intricately drawn. There were brief flashes of recognition in letters and numbers (P = I × V = R × I2 = V2 ⁄ R and P = E ⁄ t = W ⁄ t) though he could not comprehend what they meant. They were as complex as the lines themselves, and Cavalo did not have the capacity to explain what he was seeing. He felt consumed by it. His world did not exist in mathematical equations that ended in curves and angles that seemed to stretch on for miles. His world did not exist to follow this kind of detail. His world was the weight of his gun. The heft of a knife. The strength of his bow. The sound of Bad Dog at his side and the flap of wings in the sky above. The whisper of wind through the trees that caused them to dance. The silence around him. The emptiness within him.
That
was what he knew.
That
is what he understood. Not this. Never this.

And he might have stood there following the lines and numbers on the skin for the rest of his days had Sentient Integrated Response System not done what it is insane robots do.

SIRS clicked and beeped. When he spoke, his voice was a scream. “O, HOW JOYOUS IS THIS MOMENT THAT I HAVE SEEN THE FACE OF GOD?” He clicked again. “Now we know why,” he said. “Why all the world has descended on our doorstep.”

Cavalo could not speak.

“Do you know what this is?” For a robot, SIRS sounded rather breathless.

Cavalo shook his head, his eyes never leaving Lucas.

“It is the future,” SIRS said. “And it will change everything.”

It’s the map to Wormwood
, Cavalo thought.
It will lead to nothing but death and destruction.

The bees laughed.

Rubber bands broke with the greatest of ease.

And as the Dead Rabbit continued to turn, his arms outstretched as if offering himself for sacrifice, blood dripping down his neck and face, the man named Cavalo knew that nothing would ever be the same.

Afterword

THE FUN
thing about being an author is that I get to make shit up for fun. However, it should be noted that while this is fiction (for now), the North Idaho Correctional Institution, Cottonwood, and all other locations mentioned are real and located in Idaho. I’ve undoubtedly messed with their layouts for purposes of the story, so if you’re a resident of Cottonwood, please forgive my artistic licensing of your beautiful little corner of the world. If you’re in the prison and reading this, as far as I know, there are no tunnels running underneath, so don’t try and use my book as a blueprint to escape. If you do escape while attempting to use my book as a blueprint, there really is no need to find me and thank me. We’ll just call ourselves square.

Also, aren’t cliffhangers just so mean? I know, I know. Tj, you bastard! Tj, how could you! Tj, I want to punch you in the duodenum right now!

Fear not, my violent reader. Unlike some other stories (*cough*
Burn
*cough*), the second part is already written and will be in your hands before you know it.

But I’d be careful what you wish for, because there is a war coming.

And war always has casualties.

Exclusive excerpt

Crisped + Sere

By TJ Klune

Sequel to
Withered + Sere

Twenty-one days.

In a world ravaged by fire and descending into madness, Cavalo has been given an ultimatum by the dark man known as Patrick: return Lucas to him and the cannibalistic Dead Rabbits or the town of Cottonwood and its inhabitants will be destroyed.

But Lucas has a secret embedded into his skin that promises to forever alter the shape of things to come—a secret that Cavalo must decide if it’s worth dying over, even as he wrestles with his own growing attraction to the muted psychopath.

Twenty-one days.

Cavalo has twenty-one days to prepare for war. Twenty-one days to hold what is left of his shredded sanity together. Twenty-one days to convince the people of Cottonwood to rise up and fight back. Twenty-one days to unravel the meaning behind the marks that cover Lucas.

A meaning that leads to a single word and a place of unimaginable power: Dworshak.

Coming soon to

www.dsppublications.com

Part II: Winter

And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms.

—William Bradford,
Of Plymouth Plantation

the map

THERE WERE
nineteen days left when Cavalo stood on the outskirts of Cottonwood, snow blowing harshly against his face. The sky buried the morning in gray clouds, and Cavalo wondered if he would survive the winter to feel sun on his face again. He didn’t think he would. Not now.

Bad guys?
Bad Dog asked him, eyeing the southern gate into Cottonwood warily.
BigHank? AlmaLady?