Savaged

He took another step inside the room, looking around for an enemy. “Who did this?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know him . . . tall . . . man.” His breath made a high groaning sound and his face screwed up.

“You lied to me,” Jak said. “You betrayed me.”

Driscoll ignored him. “Please. Help me. You can’t move me from this wall . . . will make it . . . worse for me. Just . . . my phone.” Jak looked at the dresser where he saw the small black thing Driscoll wanted him to hand to him. He paused. Why should I help this man? He looked back at Driscoll who was watching him. Anger came into his eyes and they bugged from his head like a green slimy frog. “If you don’t help me, they’ll lock you in a cell! In a cage like an animal! You killed, Jak. They won’t understand. And if you let me die, it will be even worse for you.”

Jak’s head pounded, hatred for the man flaming like fire. He should walk out. He should let him die. He had planned to kill him himself. He was a liar and a cheat. He was one of the enemies. He’d killed Pup, and Jak wanted vengeance.

Driscoll’s shoulder’s drooped. He made a strange jerky move, and blood came from his mouth “Please . . . my phone. I’m sorry you suffered just . . . hand me my phone.”

Jak paused for another minute, the whispers growing loud within him, drowning out his hate even though he tried to hold it tight. The woman’s voice rose up, above the whispers. Let it go. He knew her . . . her words . . . the things she would say to him. He heard her in his mind. Let it go.

On legs that didn’t feel like his own, he walked to the dresser, picking up the object and moving slowly toward Driscoll, stepping around the puddle of blood and holding the phone out to him. He took it, pressing on it for a second. Jak stepped back and Driscoll looked up, their eyes meeting for a moment. More blood came from Driscoll’s mouth. His eyes grew soft. “To see you,” he whispered, “a wolf over your shoulder and . . . dragging a deer behind you, the body of your enemy lying dead in the snow.” More blood. A gurgle as if a river flowed in his chest, moving, bubbling. “It was a marvel. And only twelve years old.” He laughed and blood splattered. Red rained on his shirt. “I knew . . . then. That moment . . . you were a warrior of another era, worthy . . . of the Spartans. You . . . surpassed . . . all . . .” He straightened his neck, seeming to use the last of his strength. He brought his hand to his forehead and made a salute to Jak. Then a whistle sound came from his mouth and his breath halted as his head dropped, the phone in his other hand splashing into the blood on the floor.

&nb

sp; Jak stood there for a minute, the whispers quieting, drifting away. Jak was alone. He turned, walking from the room, closing the front door behind him.

It was snowing. Soft, fluffy flakes. He put on his flat shoes and walked toward the trees on the other side of Driscoll’s house. More footsteps in the snow, ones that went to the side window and disappeared. Jak’s heart beat quickly. The snow was already filling them in. Soon they’d be gone. Jak raised his head and sniffed the air. The snow would stop soon, though there was more, high in the sky. He stepped forward, his eyes to the gray horizon, reminding himself that sometime in the near faraway, deep beneath the frozen earth, spring would begin to stir.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Where is she? Jak’s heart thumped nervously as he looked out the window for the hundredth time, hoping to see her truck pulling through the gate, but the gate was still closed.

He walked down the stairs and into the foyer where Nigel appeared as Jak had hoped he would, though he still couldn’t figure out how he did that. Jak would say he was like a wolf and could smell people as they got near, but the man didn’t have the feel of a wolf. He definitely had the feel of something slinkier. “Did I miss any calls?”

He cleared his throat. “No, sir. Not in the last twenty minutes.”

He narrowed his eyes sensing the man was using . . . sarcasm. He’d learned that word today from one of his books, learned the meaning. But his books hadn’t said that some people used sarcasm to make people feel bad about themselves. Slinky.

He leaned closer, wrinkling his nose. He smelled slinky too. Oily. “How do you see people before they come into a room?”

Nigel lifted his nose like he was smelling something but didn’t inhale. “The cameras, sir.”

Cameras. Jak’s heart dropped to his feet. “Cameras?”

“Yes, sir. There are cameras in the rooms so the staff knows where the family may need service.”

A buzzing had started in Jak’s ears, like the cicadas—he’d learned the name of those insects that buzzed and sang in the trees, filling the forest with their noise, but only every seventeen years. They’d only come out once but Jak remembered them—the whole forest had vibrated from their mating.

Jak turned from Nigel, walking toward the library, glancing up now and again, trying to spot the cameras.

He was being watched. Again.

He closed the large door behind him, standing against it for a minute as he fought to catch his breath. He felt . . . he didn’t know the word. There were still so many words he didn’t know. He walked to the table, picking up the dictionary and leafing through it like he might stumble upon the right word to tell him how he was feeling.

The door clicked. He smelled her before he saw her. The bird woman. She smiled at him and closed the door behind her.

“Jak,” she purred. She was always purring, like a cat. But cats hated birds. Maybe that’s why she liked to hear them cry. She came toward him, and he wanted to back away but held his ground, that slight cicada buzzing growing louder in his ears again.

She ran her bird talons down his chest, licking her lips and looking up at him. “Oh, the things I could teach you, Jak.” She unbuttoned the top button of her shirt, then the second.

He understood what she wanted. She was going to get naked like the redheaded woman and offer her body to Jak, though he’d done nothing to try to earn it. He stepped away and her hand dropped from his chest. “I have a woman.”

She laughed, but it wasn’t like a laugh. More like the sound a coyote made right before it attacked something. Her tongue clicked and she moved closer again. “Big man like you?” She looked down, her eyes stopping between his legs and then raising to his face. “One woman can’t be enough.”

“You’re wrong.”