Page 132 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

“Take me with you,” Remy begged, lip trembling, eyes filling.

She shared a glance with Mercy, and he gave the faintest shrug with his eyebrows. His face was too pale. They were running out of time. But he was leaving the decision to her; he, she could tell, had no problem with Remy witnessing what they planned to do.

Ava didn’t really either, when it came down to it.

She glanced at her mom, and at Aidan, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder across from her. They regarded her with near-matching looks ofup to you, Aidan’s disturbed, Maggie’s resolute.Up to you.

Ava smoothed Remy’s too-long hair, and thumbed a tear off his cheek. “Okay. Shh. Okay, you can come.”

~*~

Harlan woke slowly and swimmily to a white, throbbing pain that seized his stomach in a vise grip. He needed to be sick, but couldn’t move, thoughts fuzzy, eyelids heavy, and so he swallowed, and went through his breathing exercises, and took stock.

The pain – at first an overwhelming, strangling shroud that seemed to pulse through his whole body – shrank and localized to his left knee. It was a sharp, deep, visceral hurt, throbbing in time to his too-quick heartbeat. He remembered being flat on his back, and Mercy above him; the wink of metal in the moonlight, and a crushing weight.

His arm throbbed, too, where a monster had sunk its teeth through fabric and skin. Even the bone felt tender, and he thought it might be cracked.

But he was alive. His wounds weren’t fatal.

Buoyed by that knowledge, he swam up through his cottony half-consciousness and heard voices.

“…starting to come around.”

“He didn’t move, though.”

“Nah, his eyelids fluttered.”

He forced his eyelids still, and tried to keep his breathing slow.

Booted footfalls made their slow, heavy way toward him, across a wooden surface – but one that echoed strangely. It wasn’t a floor, not a normal one, it sounded like–

Shit, it was a dock. He was on a dock.

A boot thumped into his bad knee, and there was no more feigning sleep; the pain was electric, and he screamed, and opened his eyes, and in the blue glow of a battery lantern, he beheld a beast standing over him.

A towering figure, lit from below, the shadows painting a demon’s mask around a wide, white knife slice of a smile. Its eyes burned, two black coals set in that devil face.

Harlan knew, suddenly, that he was about to die. Not in a panicked, prayerful, please-don’t-let-me-die way. But certainty swept through him, cold and final. He was going to die, and no amount of struggling or pleading could stop it.

It was oddly peaceful.

He was ready for his hunt to be over, and this would end it for good, even if it wasn’t in the way he wanted. Sometimes an end, any end, was a blessing.

But then the beast crouched down, and the light slid up its face like a wave, and the beast was Mercy, and his grin was one of deep satisfaction.

Peace fled, and in its place, his veins flooded with terrified adrenaline.

“Bonjour, Hank.” Mercy’s voice was a low and throaty purr that immediately brought to mind the dog who’d maimed his arm. “How’re you feeling?”

The pain in his knee spiked, a white pulse that shot all the way up to his hip, and wrapped around his pelvis. His vision fuzzed, and he realized Mercy was digging a thumb into what remained of his kneecap.

He clenched his teeth against a scream, but it leaked out anyway. He closed his eyes, and his head thumped back against the dock, and he wanted to die right now, to stop the–

The pressure let up, and the pain receded back to its ugly red throbbing.

He gasped.

Above him, Mercy tsked. “I expected more, honestly.”

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