Page 15 of The Sinner and the Gunslinger
Nine
The Past
“Wait here,” the boy said to the girl. “I’ll find him.”
“No,” she cried and tugged his sweatshirt. “It will get you.”
He stared into her teary eyes. “You will be safe out here until I get back. The demon doesn’t want me, remember? It had a chance, and it walked on by. I will return with Snuggles.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.” He dragged his pointer finger over his heart twice. “Now you say the next part.”
She pouted, fashioned her fingers into a gun, and pointed at his face. “Stick a bullet in your eye.”
“Eat a horse manure pie,” they said together and then made puking gestures.
She giggled. It was all he needed to hear. The world was empty without that sound.
He pushed her away and then jogged into the burning building.
He ran through the burning building, hunting for wildcat’s stuffed toy.
Be like Doc Holliday,he chanted in his mind.Be like Doc. He faced death without fear. Be like Doc.
He found the toy kicked to the side of the upstairs corridor. It lay at an odd angle like its neck had snapped. Picking it up, he dusted it off and remembered when he’d first seen it years ago.
Nearby, air hissed from a vent repetitively. It sounded like sniffing. Flames licked up the walls, furiously growing brighter. The boy flinched and covered his mouth, trying not to inhale the smoke. His blood sang for him to escape, but something about this moment sent him falling into memory—the day his sister died.
Fire.
Smoke.
Sniffing. Sniffing.
The fiery-eyed demon reached for his sister, hissing the words, “Snuggle time.”
The teen gasped and looked down at Snuggles. One eye was missing, and the other was a button. Stitching down the middle looked like it had been on the receiving end of an autopsy. It flopped in his hands like a carcass.
Flames and fire had followed Wildcat wherever she lived. She would have been the same age as his sister. She’d had this toy since birth—it was the only thing with her when she was abandoned at the fire station.
What if the fiery-eyed demon had never been after his sister... but was after Wildcat?
What if Snuggles was the magnet this demon was drawn to? These fires would keep burning until one day, they consumed Wildcat as they had his baby sister.
His fist clenched around the toy, and he glanced down the corridor toward the exit—where the path to Wildcat was still clear and safe. He should leave the toy here, let the fire consume it. Or... he glanced in the opposite direction, to where the path was wrought with danger and flames...
When Doc Holliday’s tuberculosis brought him perilously close to death, but his best friend—hisonlyfriend—Wyatt Earp was about to face the bad cowboy alone, Doc didn’t give up. He didn’t roll over. No. He pretended to be dying. Then he snuck out and killed the bad Cowboy, so Wyatt was safe.
Doc knew his life wasn’t worth as much as Wyatt’s... and he wanted to repay the man for giving him hope when no one else cared.
Everyone would think the boy had burned alive if he escaped now. But he could be like Doc. He could be crafty. He could use Snuggles to draw the demon out. He could be Lei Ling’s huckleberry. He would kill the demon.
And if he couldn’t, then the demon would kill him instead of her.
* * *
Lei Ling stood outside the burning building long after the fire department arrived. She stood and waited for her huckleberry to come out.
