Page 69 of Scythe & Sparrow
“Crap,” I hiss as he strides toward me.
“Rose.” Fionn’s eyes dart from my face to the seat of the broken chair in my hand and back again. “What are you doing?”
“I’m, um … working …?”
“And by working you mean running around yelling, ‘Come get me, you ugly piece of shit,’ and laughing maniacally?” His eyes narrow. “I thought I saw someone in a costume following you. I came to make sure you were okay.”
“That’s really … that’s nice. I’m totally fine … just out here representing the spooky season atmosphere,” I say with a shrug as he reaches forward and flicks one of the stuffed arms of my jester’s hat, the bell on the end tinkling in reply. He frowns.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” I try not to shift my weight on my feet, but I can’t help the need to fidget under his unerring stare. “Why don’t you go get us some hot dogs? I’m totally famished. I’ll meet you there as soon as I’m done with my … thing.”
“Yourthing.”
“My performance thing.”
“I thought you said in your text that you were done for the night.”
“Um … Yeah. Almost. Just one more thing.”
I dig in the pockets of my baggy black-and-white pants, the fabric stained with a spray of blood that could be fake. Or not. When I withdraw a roll of food and drink tickets and hold them out forFionn to take, he watches my hand with suspicion. “So when are youactuallydone?” he asks.
“Maybe give me, like … twenty minutes?” It comes out as a squeaked question. My throat just seems to close around the words. Fionn’s eyes snap to mine as though I’ve just confessed every one of my mounting sins. His chin dips toward his chest, and he pins me with a stare both wary and menacing.
“Rose—”
A floorboard creaks behind Fionn. A flash of orange light glints off a blade. I drop the tickets and grip Fionn’s wrist to tug on it as hard as I can, enough to imbalance him and send him stumbling past me.
I deliver a solid kick to Matt’s shin as I hear Fionn’s shocked voice say Cranwell’s name like a question behind me. “Thought you’d never catch up,” I say. With a second kick, his knife flies from his hand and hits the wall. He snarls in frustration, searching the floor as I duck behind Fionn and shove him forward toward the next room. “Time to go, Doc.”
We tumble into a mock bedroom with Matt on our heels, his irate string of swears punctuated by the screeches and screams and cackles that pour from the speakers overhead. There’s fake blood everywhere. On the walls. The ceiling. The bed where a life-size possessed mannequin springs up from the mattress. An old TV that crackles static in the corner of the room. Fionn rushes forward, and his movement triggers the sensor for a strobe light. It pulses a disorienting rhythm of light and darkness.
Fionn reaches back for me and grabs my wrist as he stumbles toward a door on the opposite side of the room, hauling me forward. But Matt catches my shoulder. Spins me around. I’m knocked outof his grasp and a shocked cry fills the room. There’s a blinding flash. It’s the automatic camera, hidden to take pictures of frightened visitors. In the light, I see the horror on Matt’s face, his features exaggerated by makeup and blood and shadows.
The strobe turns off, leaving only the dim green and blue lights mounted in the corners of the room. Fionn drills Matt with an unblinking, ruthless stare. Even when Matt looks down in horror at the knife Fionn presses into his abdomen, Fionn never breaks his gaze away. He keeps hold of the back of Matt’s neck with his free hand, his fingertips digging into the painted flesh.
“You thought you were going to enjoy your revenge,” Fionn says. With a swift tug, he draws the blade upward. Crimson floods from the wound, staining Matt’s torn shirt. His mouth is open but only a strained noise of pain escapes, as though his body is too shocked to manufacture sound. “And how does this feel?” Another jerk of the knife. “Still pretty good?” A soft tear of flesh, followed by Matt’s whispered plea for mercy. “Because I think it feels fuckingfantastic.”
Fionn whips the knife free of Matt’s abdomen and tosses it behind him. He bunches Matt’s shirt with both hands at the shoulders and pushes him to the wall where mannequins disguised as dead bodies hang from meat hooks. He slams Matt’s back into the wall and keeps him pinned there with one hand as he tosses one of the dummies to the floor with the other.
“Please,” Matt begs, his voice barely audible between the recorded screams and voices playing around us.
But Fionn ignores him.
Matt has no strength to fight back. No way to stop Fionn as he hoists him up and pushes his back against the wall, letting gravitydrive the pointed hook into Matt’s body. He gasps with a fresh wave of pain. Fionn takes a step back and surveys his work. Blood pours from the gash up the length of Matt’s abdomen. It trickles from the corners of his mouth. Matt’s limbs scrape across the wall, but they don’t touch the floor. One of his hands raises above his head in a desperate search for relief from the metal hook, but he can only trace the rusted iron. He doesn’t have enough strength to grab it. Everything is moving slower than it should, like he’s a fly caught in amber, stuck in the sticky embrace of time.
Matt’s lips move, but they can’t seem to form words, just a slow series of motions that carry no sound.
But Fionn seems to decipher the plea, his focus still locked on Matt. He laughs, a callous and cold delight that quickly dies. “Help?You want someone tohelpyou?” Fionn shakes his head. “Do you really think I would ever,everlet you threaten her and walk away? Do you seriously think you could hurt her, and I would just let you live? You don’t deserve mercy. When have you ever given that to anyone else? So the only thing I’ll give to you issuffering.”
With his final word, Fionn delivers a punch to Matt’s face that renders him unconscious. His head drops forward. His breathing is shallow, a liquid rumble. And then it goes quiet.
We’re both staring at the man on the wall when excited voices come from a few rooms away. Fionn turns to me and I’m sure my face is an identical mask of panic. “Get under the covers,” I hiss, pointing to the bed before I rush to the mannequin lying on the floor. I whip the burlap sack from its head and pull it down over Matt’s instead, cringing when I catch a glimpse of the bulging eye. With a few deep breaths to recenter myself, I turn to check on Fionn’s progress. But he still hasn’t moved.
“Come on, Doc. Under the covers. Make some creepy sounds.” I take him by the hand and lead him there, forcing him to lie beneath the stained white sheet. His face is expressionless when I cover him over just in time to creep out a pair of couples who clutch each other and laugh. I keep them moving toward the exit, and as soon as they’re gone, I take the walkie-talkie from my pocket and turn it on.
“Wendy, it’s Rose, come in.”
