Broken Lands (Benny Imura 6)
Spider kept grinning. “Last week it was Corey Hale. I think he does know. Not so sure Alice does. Not so sure she’d be into it.”
“Into what? I haven’t said anything about anything to anyone.”
“Yeah, yeah, Gutsy the Pure. I get it. But you’re going to have to pick a side. Guys or girls.”
Gutsy shrugged. “Why do I have to pick one or the other?”
Spider thought about that, picked up a couple of the tiny pebbles he’d pried from Gordo’s hooves,
and tossed them out into the street. He made no further comment.
That was fine with Gutsy. She was fifteen, and while she understood the whole puberty process and the biochemical imperative to procreate, blah blah blah, she preferred to put thoughts of romance and sex aside for now. And that worked most of the time. There were dreams, of course; just as there were some of her classmates—Alice Chung, for example, and Corey Hale—who were sometimes incredible distractions. Not that either of them knew it, of course. Not that Gutsy herself obsessed on them. Much. There were more important things to focus on.
After a few minutes of silent stillness inside the barn, Sombra got up, went outside to the trough, drank, and came back inside. He lay down with his head between his paws and watched them with his smoky eyes.
“About last night,” Spider began. “It was really close. If the town guards found out that your mom came back, they’d have—”
“I know,” she said tightly. “It’s the law. If someone comes back like that, they have to use a sp-spike.” She tripped over the word.
Luckily—if luck was even a word that applied—no one but Gutsy and her friends knew that Mama had returned. Spider and Alethea had been over, sitting with her through the hours of emptiness in the Gomez house. When the two of them kissed her good night, and went outside, they’d all seen the nightmare figure in the front yard. It took all three of them to wrestle Mama to the ground, gag her, drag her inside, and tie her up again. And put a new shroud around her.
It was awful. As a thing to have to do, and as a memory that persisted with brutal clarity.
Gutsy knew Spider was reliving it too. He didn’t have any blood relations, and Mama had loved Gutsy’s friends, as they loved her.
Silence owned them both for a while. It was broken only by the slow, rhythmic crunching of horse teeth on hay.
“It’s my fault,” said Spider.
Gutsy glanced at him. “What? What’s your fault?”
“Your mom,” he said in a small voice. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. I think it’s my fault. When we were getting her ready, you know? Doing her shroud and all. I was never good at knots. I—”
“No,” said Gutsy firmly.
“Really, I think—”
“Listen, it’s not your fault and it’s not my fault. Someone dug her up,” she said, and it stopped Spider’s words as surely as if she’d slapped him. His mouth worked but no words came out. Gutsy nodded. “I saw the shovel marks.” She described what she’d found at the cemetery. Spider gaped at her.
“That’s insane. Who would do that? I mean . . . why?”
The heat of rage that had burned in Gutsy all day had changed. It did not go out but was instead replaced by a coldness that ran so deep it vanished into blackness.
“That,” she said, “is what I’m going to find out.”
As she said that, her fingers gripped the handle of her machete. Spider swallowed hard, but Sombra gave a single, sharp whuff. In that moment, he looked less like either a coyote or dog and more like a wolf.
PART TWO
RECLAMATION, CALIFORNIA
ONE WEEK EARLIER . . .
THE VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAINS
Sweet is the memory of distant friends!
Like the mellow rays of the departing sun,