Page 208 of American Hellhound
“I…I’m fine.” Her voice was this detached, floaty thing, like it was coming to him down a faulty telephone line.
“Maggie.” He couldn’t stop touching her, her face and her throat, still looking for injuries, worrying that some of this blood might be hers.
“He…” she started, and then the words came easily. “He came to Bonita’s. I went into the kitchen, and he was there, he’d broken in, or he knew where the key was, I don’t know. But he was there, and he had a gun. I tried to get away, but he took me with him. He…” She touched the back of her head, wincing. “When I woke up, we were here. He…”
“Are you okay?”
Her eyes came to his face, and behind the shield of shock, he could see the riotous, bloody tumble of emotion snarling around in her head, fighting to get out, howling and clawing and trying to rectify what had happened – what she’d had to do. “He said he was going to make it look like the Ryders did it. To get you back on his side.”
Ghost let out an unsteady breath and had trouble taking another one. He framed her face with his hands to ground himself. “And you had your knife.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I…”
“No.” He crushed her to his chest, holding the back of her head, clinging to her. “No, I’m not…Jesus, I’m…thank God. Mags,thank God.Good girl.”
They held each other for a long time, dry-eyed, swaying with fatigue and shock.
Finally, Maggie pushed back, face paper-white beneath the splash of blood. “What are we gonna do?”
He wanted to sit down hard on the cold concrete, pull her into his arms, and just hold her for a few hours. His good, sweet, ferocious, uncle-killing,wonderfulgirl. He wanted to pull her so tight to his chest that he absorbed her, drew her into his own body, hold her tight inside his ribcage, and let every scrap of wonderful soak into his blood, so he could face the challenge that now lay before him. He wasn’t just the fuckup nephew anymore: he was a king. A king in waiting, but one all the same. James was his placeholder, but the club, and its future, lay in his hands.
But he couldn’t do that. He had to keep her at his side, because he’d need to lean on her the whole way, however long it took. He needed her to stick knives in the throats of the monsters he couldn’t handle himself.
He pressed his lips to her forehead. Jesus Christ, he’d almost lost her.
Against her skin, he said, “I’ve got an idea.”
~*~
The ground hadn’t been tilled, nor seen the tenderizing hooves of cattle, in over a decade. And so it was hard. Packed-down sand full of rocks. In the headlights of the truck, Ghost could see the shine of sweat on his arms, bare now; he’d peeled off first his jacket, and then his shirt, and finally his wifebeater as he dug, overheated and bare-chested, his skin steaming in the cool night air.
Maggie helped, her shovelfuls small and not efficient, but she toiled alongside him, stripped down to her tank top, her skin stark white in the wash of the headlights…save where it was dirty brown with blood.
Around them, the night was alive with the rustle of bare tree limbs and the crackle of underbrush as foxes and deer ventured to the edge of the woods to see what the humans were doing, digging a hole in the dead of night. A whippoorwill called, too-cheerful. Clouds scudded across the moon, distorting their shadows so they looked like strange, inhuman things mining rocks and earthworms.
Ghost finally straightened and swiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one dirty glove. “That’s deep enough,” he decided, and levered himself out of the hole, reached down to pull Maggie out by both hands. Her jeans were a ruin of mud up to the knees, her elbows dusky with earth, and the tip of her nose for some reason, a deeper shade than the blood spatter beneath her eyes. Eyes that looked luminous and blue in the headlights.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
They’d wrapped Duane in a roll of old burlap and it took both of them to send him down into the hole. He landed with a muffled thump that sounded alive. Ghost wondered, standing on the edge, wondered if –
But no. He’d checked his pulse himself. He knew. No one could survive that kind of blood loss…not even a hellhound.
“Bring me the can, baby.”
Maggie fetched the can of kerosene from the truck. The roll of paper towels they’d use for kindling, the matches.
The flames started with a softwhump, and a flash of bright orange.
Maggie moved to stand beside him, their shoulders touching, steamed skin gluing to steamed skin. He found her hand with his and linked their fingers together.
They watched the flames catch and spread, the edges of the burlap blackening and curling. Smoke belched up from the hole, a muddy black against the clear indigo backdrop of the night sky. Eyes flashed at the tree line: animals…watching other animals.
Ghost said, “I wanna get married.”
Maggie took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”
