Page 204 of The Wild Charge

He tilted his head to an angle meant for sharing secrets, voice still low and resonant. “There’s people who think revenge is a losing game. You can’t solve violence with more violence, they say. But those people aren’t like us.” He offered the toolbox forward. “The whole reason all of this happened, the reason we know Abacus exists, is because of this little bastard.” He gestured toward Luis. “And I think what you need more than anything right now is your pound of flesh.”

Luis whimpered something unintelligible, and Fox stepped forward to kick him in the ribs.

Tenny looked at his brother, and, slowly, Fox nodded. “If you want,” he said, leaving it open-ended.

He closed his eyes a second, and breathed in the scent of dust, and ancient hay. Saw Reese as he’d seen him suspended from the ceiling, battered and bloody. Felt his shoulder throb…and felt helpless, all over again.

When he opened his eyes, he took the tacklebox, and Mercy’s chuckle sounded like a distant roll of thunder.

~*~

It was Michael, afterward, who offered him a shovel, and then helped him dig. Who showed him how to line the hole with paper, and soak it in kerosene. Tenny was shaking, faintly, from exertion by the time it was ready, so Mercy laid the body out, but Michael had the matches.

“Smells like a Christmas roast,” Tenny observed, as they stood at the edge of the hole, half-blinded by the brightness of the flames.

Mercy smacked his shoulder good-naturedly, and something deep inside him unclenched, finally.

~*~

He sat on the back bumper of the van, tired in a pleasant way, blood drying under his fingernails, while Mercy and Michael raked the barn floor and sprinkled it with sawdust. Fox sat beside him, smoking. He offered the cigarette and Tenny took it with a low hum of thanks. Outside, actual thunder grumbled along the horizon, promising more rain, sounding no less threatening than Mercy’s earlier laughter.

“Better?” Fox asked.

“Yeah.” And the funny thing was…hewas.

He didn’t feel normal. Didn’t feel at peace. But he thought if he were to look into a mirror right now, he wouldn’t want to smash it to bits at sight of his own reflection.

Mercy waved in farewell when he finally stood to leave. “Doctor’s always in, bro,” he said in offering, and Tenny found himself smirking, rather than frowning.

Those people aren’t like us, Mercy had said, and as Tenny waded back through the rippling grass, he recalled the flash of terror on Luis’s face when he realized what was in the hypodermic needle Mercy handed over. Recalled the way his expression had frozen as the paralytic – the same one he’d used on his victims in Texas – had hit his system and rendered him immobile. He’d nicked the pad of one finger with a nail, when he’d staked Luis out. He’d rinsed his hands with water from a bucket, but he swore his wrists were still warm from the first spray of arterial blood, as he’d dragged the knife across Luis’s throat, at the end.

He played the past two hours out in his mind, as the rain began to fall, and realized he was smiling, head tipped back so the raindrops stung his face, and washed away the blood there.

He was soaked to the bone by the time he stepped through the doors of the barn, and shook off like a dog, droplets spattering across the concrete. He hung his windbreaker and hoodie up on the pegs on the wall, and left his muddy boots on the bottom step, padding up the stairs in his socks.

He didn’t know what awaited him, what sort of mood Reese would be in, or how to approach him regardless. But he knew that he wasn’t going to turn away this time; wouldn’t offer any resistance…if it wasn’t too late.

He opened the door to a flat warm with lamplight. Reese sat cross-legged in the center of the bed, a book open on the comforter in front of him. Tenny held his breath, and waited, just inside the threshold, as Reese marked his page with a finger and lifted his head. Tenny searched, but couldn’t find so much as a trace of resentment in his expression. Instead, his eyes went round with surprise.

“You’re wet,” he said.

“Yes. It’s raining.”

Reese’s gaze flicked down to his book, groove forming on his forehead as his brows drew together. He traced his thumb along the text on the cover. “Did you–”

“Reese.”

His head snatched up. His face smoothed, and his lips moved to form words.

But Tenny moved faster. He crossed the rug in three long strides and scrambled up onto the bed without any of his usual grace. He caught Reese by the back of the head, fingers tangling in his hair, and simply held him a long moment, gaze tracking back and forth across his face, cataloging every detail. He’d not had a proper stare at him in weeks, unless he was sleeping; stolen, blue-tinted glimpses in the fall of moonlight through the skylight. He watched now, up close, as the surprise in his expression warmed to understanding; as his blue eyes glittered and the corners of his mouth lifted up in the tenderest little smile.

“Hi,” Reese murmured, and it smashed him to bits.

Tenny’s fingertips dug into his scalp, and his arms began to shake, thumbs wobbly as he brushed them over his cheekbones and the stubble-dusted razor-lines of his jaw. “I’ve looked it up,” he said, and his voice wobbled, too, but there was nothing for it. That onehihad hit his walls and defenses like a wrecking ball. “But I haven’t memorized the whole thing.”

Reese’s hands were warm when they landed on his chest, the heat of his palms bleeding through Tenny’s cold, wet shirt. He looked up at him with such gentleness, such trust; like he knew straight off that this was Tenny’s odd, roundabout, very English way of going about fixing things.

“That bloody poem you named me after,” Tenny went on. “‘Half a league, half a league/Half a league onward/All in the valley of Death.’ I only know what much. And something about a charge.”

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