Joker stepped out of the smoke like a ghost. Under his arm was a mop of hair, and when the woman shook violently, uttering a hysterical sob, Beast felt relief when he recognized the voice as the one he’d followed. But something wasn’t right. Beast had to blink away the smoke to recognize the woman as Lana, Knight’s sister, but he immediately went tense when she attempted to pull away, and Joker yanked her back by the hair.
Before Beast could have intervened, Joker released a loud cough and spoke, lowering the T-shirt he’d tied around his face to use as a mask. “We’ve got our rat!” he yelled and shook Lana so hard, she curled her shoulders, barely keeping herself up.
Beast’s brain refused to acknowledge what he’d just heard. He wanted to think it was one of Joker’s dumb pranks gone too far. But Joker’s face held no hint of a smile, and the tears running down Lana’s cheeks weren’t those of anger. She wasn’t defending herself like an innocent would, nor was she screaming for her brother’s help, and the dark streaks on her face could have been left by mascara, but also soot.
“What the fuck is going on here? Let her go,” Knight snarled, emerging from the dusty cloud like a hero appearing in the very last moment to save a lady’s life. Ash dusted his long hair, and the whitish smoke contrasted with the dirt on his cheekbones and forehead.
Joker pushed Lana to the grass, his whole body tense. “I saw her set one of the stands of fire! What is wrong with you? That’s how you repay our hospitality?”
Knight swallowed, and Beast flinched when he saw his friend’s hands ball into fists. “What did you do?” he said in a low, oddly quiet voice.
Lana got to her knees and looked up at Beast with tears rolling down her face in huge drops that gathered the dark dirt, creating streaks. “I had to! You won’t believe me, but it’s all for my little boy! I wanted a better life for him. I didn’t want him to make the same mistakes and trust his heart to the wrong people. I swore on my life I would stop you from destroying the trees. I know it’s unbelievable, but the devil himself came to see me. I’ve got the mark to prove it!” She pulled down the collar of her top and showed Baal’s sigil burned into her solar plexus. “I didn’t know you would be so adamant about these trees. Please, leave them where they are, I beg you!”
Beast’s thoughts were a jumble of fury and regret. He should have never agreed to Lana coming here in the first place. They couldn’t have warned her of Baal, and they couldn’t have prevented him from reaching out to her either. She was vulnerable, a lonely mother without a job and with the baggage of a difficult life. Knight should have rented out a room for her in town. A regular hangaround could be sacrificed—even if regretfully—but family? What were they to do now?
Lana’s tearful eyes met Beast’s, pleading for mercy, but it wasn’t coming. Lana’s head shook, its back exploding with blood and bone, and then her neck exploded like a fountain, staining Beast’s jeans. Her passionate gaze turned to glass, and the overpowering smell of gunpowder shot up Beast’s nose, accompanying the two shots from Joker’s Glock. Beast stumbled back, sobering up from the stupor of dread.
Lana fell forward, hair scattering over Beast’s boot while he stared at the blood gushing out of the hole at the back of her head and pooling around his feet.
“What the fuck?” he uttered, too stiff to kneel and see if she was still alive. He knew she wasn’t. Nobody could have survived such massive blood loss.
Joker holstered his firearm with a snarl made gruesome by the red of Lana’s blood, which had sprayed over his face and naked chest. “You said to shoot the rat! She said it was her!”
Knight went down, rolling his sister over without a word. His breath came out so loudly it muted any other noise, but there was nothing they could do when the open wound on Lana’s neck seeped fluid as if someone were squeezing her dry. The blood stuck strands of hair to Lana’s face, but her eyes were still wide open and staring into the sky.
She was dead.
“She was our friend! Our family!” Laurent’s voice cut through the silence, booming as if it came from a man much bigger.
Beast’s teeth clenched, and he sucked in a laborious breath that smelled of burning flesh. He wanted to shelter Laurent from this, but it was too late. “She wasn’t running. She was right here. It wasn’t your call to make!”
Joker shook his head and wiped his face with his forearm, turning the tiny red droplets into streaks. “You heard it yourself! She promised on her life. It would have been her or us, anyway!”