Desolation

  “Goddamn you, boy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t mind staying away from the action,” said Javier. “I was never much one for swinging punches, anyway. Used to get the stuntman to do all my fight scenes. Fat slob he was, a full head taller than me, but I’d still be able to sell it in the close-ups. I don’t think anyone noticed.”

  “Everyone noticed,” said Virgil.

  “I noticed,” said Warrick.

  “Me, too,” said Milo.

  “Yep,” said Javier, “nobody noticed.”

  AMBER SAT ON THE BED in the spare room, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and tracing her fingers over the contours of the brass key. Her eyes were closed and her mind was filled with a single image – the doors they’d passed through when they’d been taken to see Jesper. At first, she’d tried to picture the ornately carved entryway into the mayor’s mansion, but the carvings were too intricate for her memory, and she felt that anything less than absolute certainty would bring her back to Naberius’s cell underground. She didn’t want to go back there again.

  So she focused on the double doors leading into the drawing room. She could see these much more clearly, could still see Jesper’s butler, whatever his name was, the guy with the burn mask, reaching for the handles, opening them. She felt confident that the picture was clear enough in her head. Fairly confident, at least.

  Mildly confident, then.

  The door to the spare room opened and Kelly came in, her hair still wet from the shower. “All set?” she asked.

  Amber nodded, and stood. “I’m ready.”

  “Milo says you’re leaving in five. We’ll be going shortly after. I swear, this is military precision compared to our usual way of working.”

  “More casual, is it?”

  “We have a Warrick and a dog. It pretty much has to be. How’s your shoulder?”

  Amber gave a big smile. “Really, really painful, thanks.”

  “I bet,” Kelly responded. “Take your shirt off.”

  Amber blinked. “Uh … Sorry?”

  “Your shoulder,” Kelly said, opening the medical bag on the side table. “I have to change the dressing.”

  “Oh right. Yeah.”

  Kelly stood there, waiting, while Amber stood there, not moving. “So you gonna take it off, or are you waiting for me to take mine off first?”

  Amber’s laugh was forced, even to her ears. “No, no, you don’t have to do that.”

  “Pity,” said Kelly.

  Amber didn’t know how to respond to that. She grabbed the ends of both her sweatshirt and T-shirt, and hesitated. “I don’t know how I’m going to do this gracefully one-handed,” she admitted.

  “Here,” Kelly said, stepping forward, “I’ll help.”

  Amber allowed her hand to be moved aside, and felt Kelly’s fingertips brush against the skin of her waist. Gently, Kelly pulled the clothes up, over the belly that Amber was now sucking in, over her bra, and now over her head. They caught briefly on her ears, and then they were gone, and Amber’s hair settled back into place as Kelly manoeuvred the clothing off the injured shoulder.

  When she was done, Kelly put the clothes to one side and stepped back. “You’re blushing,” she said.

  “Well, yeah,” Amber said, laughing a little desperately. “But, y’know, it’s only because I’m standing here without a shirt.”

  “Oh,” said Kelly, and without a single hesitation she pulled her own shirt off and dropped it on top of Amber’s. “There,” she said. “That better?”

  Amber did her best to look away. “Sure,” she said, her voice strained. “I, uh, I love your tattoos.”

  “Thank you,” Kelly said. She turned slightly, tapping her fingers on the image on her left shoulder. “See that? That’s the guy who killed my parents and my sisters.”

  “Oh God … I’m so sorry.”

  Kelly tapped her bicep. “This one here? A killer clown, man. A frikkin’ killer clown. I hate those bastards. That was my first time as an official member of the gang, though, so I guess he holds a special place in my heart.”

  Amber’s eyes drank in the detail of her arms. “And these others? You’ve encountered all of them?”

  “My tattoos are my diaries.”

  “But … there are so many.”

  “I guess there are. Linda and Ronnie would have more, if they had tattoos. And, although he doesn’t talk about it, I have a feeling that Warrick would be covered from head to foot.”

  “Why?” Amber asked. “Why do you do it?”

  “You know why.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “Once you’re on the Demon Road, Amber, you can never get off. So you’re either a bad guy, or a good guy. We’re the good guys. Same as you.”

  Amber didn’t say anything to that, and Kelly started to work on the dressing. Her fingers were warm. Amber was finding it difficult to know where to look. As she removed the dressing, Kelly pressed against her for a moment.

  “You’re healing really fast,” she said. “Like, a fraction of the time it’d take a normal person. Being a lowercase-d demon sure has its perks, doesn’t it?”

  Amber nodded. “Definitely perky,” she mumbled.

  Kelly wrapped up the used dressing and dumped it, then walked over to the medical bag on the side table. Amber watched the muscles move beneath the skin of her slender back.

  “You’re in such great shape,” she said before she realised what she was doing.

  Kelly shrugged. “I guess. We do a lot of running. Mostly from horrible people wanting to kill us. Tends to keep you trim, you know?”

  She came back. “You’re still blushing,” she said.

  “Am I?” Amber laughed. “Sorry. Just … y’know. I’m not used to having my shirt off in front of someone.”

  “Ah. I could take my pants off if it’d make you more comfortable?”

  Amber burned hotter, tried to disguise it with another laugh. “No, that’s all right.”

  “Pity,” said Kelly again.

  “You, uh, you just run, then?” Amber asked, to change the subject. “You don’t work out or anything, or do yoga or Pilates or … boxercise?”

  Kelly raised an eyebrow. “No one boxercises anymore. When was the last time you were in a gym?”

  Now Amber’s laugh was genuine. “Me? Never. Look at me, for God’s sake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m fat,” Amber laughed.

  Kelly glared. “Hey. None of that talk.”

  “Oh no, no, I’m not being mean to myself. I’m just being, y’know, honest. I’m overweight.”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t look good without my shirt on.”

  Kelly looked her square in the eye for the longest time, then stepped back and looked her up and down.

  “Uh,” said Amber, “what are you—?”

  Kelly held up a hand for silence, and Amber complied.

  Seconds dragged by. Eventually Kelly completed her examination. “Okay, Amber,” she said, “you’re overweight.”

  “Uh, I know.”

  “So what?”

  “I just … I don’t look good, that’s all.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  “You look great, though,” Amber said, her words speeding up. “You look amazing. I love your hair. It’s gorgeous. And you’re so pretty. So slim and so pretty. You’ve got such a great figure.”

  Kelly started to smile. “Why, Amber, are you coming on to me?”

  Amber blinked. “What? No. What? I’m just—”

  “Because as the person currently fixing your bandage, Amber, I am bound by a strict code of professional conduct. I can’t kiss you.”

  “What? I didn’t say anything about—”

  “I can’t grab you and kiss you,” said Kelly, wrapping the bandage around Amber’s shoulder. “I can’t pull you into me and press my lips against yours. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “I … I know that, I’m just—”
>
  “I can’t pull your hair, either,” Kelly continued. “I can’t grab a fistful of your hair to pull your head back to kiss your throat. It’s against all the rules, Amber.”

  Amber nodded.

  “I can’t nuzzle your neck,” said Kelly. Her voice was a little softer now, her mouth right at Amber’s ear. “I can’t kiss your collarbone. I can’t kiss the length of your jawline. I can’t do it, Amber. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Amber swallowed.

  “While I’m tending to your wound,” said Kelly, “I can’t do any of those things. Not even if you begged me. Not even if you begged me to kiss you, Amber. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Amber whispered.

  Kelly checked the dressing one more time, and stepped back. “There,” she said. “All finished. Professional conduct no longer applies.”

  Amber stared at her.

  Kelly moved in slowly. Her lips, when they brushed Amber’s, were soft.

  Amber kissed her back.

  Kelly moved closer, pressing her body against Amber’s. Amber didn’t know what to do with her hands so she kept them by her sides. Kelly seemed to be okay with that. When the kiss broke off, Kelly was smiling.

  “Hey, beautiful,” she whispered, and they kissed again.

  But of course Amber wasn’t beautiful. They both knew it. Kelly was this gorgeous, tattooed redhead and Amber was a lump beside her. Amber visualised them, saw in her head how their kiss would look to someone watching. She didn’t like that image. It threatened to dampen the fire she was feeling inside her. Amber didn’t want that fire to go out. She liked it. She needed it.

  So she used it. The fire flared and she shifted, and she pulled Kelly closer to her, kissed her harder, and she imagined how it’d look now and she liked what she saw. Two beautiful women, one tattooed and red-haired and the other horned and red-skinned, wrapped around each other, stumbling against the bed. Suddenly Amber wanted to see all of Kelly, wanted to kiss every last part of her, and her hands went to Kelly’s pants, started dragging them down, and then she felt a hand on her chest and she realised Kelly was pushing her away.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Kelly cried, backing off and wiping her mouth. “What the hell?”

  “What?” said Amber. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? Look at yourself, for Christ’s sake! You turned! You turned halfway through the goddamn kiss! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Embarrassment or shame or humiliation or something awful, something nasty, curled up from Amber’s throat and filled her cheeks and burned her eyes and turned to anger, turned to snarling and sneering. “You’re the one who kissed me.”

  “I kissed you without all this,” said Kelly, motioning to the horns.

  Amber barked out a laugh. “You can’t handle me, that’s your problem.”

  “What, did you think I’d like it?”

  Amber grabbed her clothes and pulled them on. “I couldn’t give a shit what you like or don’t like.”

  Kelly shook her head. “Oh, come on, don’t be like this.”

  “I’m not like anything. Obviously, I’m just not your type.”

  “It isn’t that, Amber. Come on, I was taken by surprise, that’s all. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  Amber laughed again. “You think you’ve hurt my feelings? My parents are trying to eat me, Kelly. You’re just going to have to get in line.”

  She walked out, and Austin saw her and screamed. She ignored him.

  IT WAS GOOD BEING back in the Charger. It felt right. The great black beast growled and roared at Milo’s touch and swallowed up the blacktop as they skirted the inside of the town boundary. They stuck to back roads, trying to stay out of sight of the cops. Every now and then, Amber would catch a glimpse of a motorcycle through the trees, the weak rays of evening sunlight glinting off chrome. The Hounds could sense the weakening barrier, it seemed. Another few hours and it would dissolve entirely.

  “You’re upset,” said Milo.

  Amber looked at him. She hadn’t bothered to revert. She didn’t see the point of keeping up the pretence this close to Hell Night breaking out. “I’m fine,” she said.

  Milo nodded. She thought that was the end of it until he said, “You’re clearly not, though. Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”

  “Yes,” said Amber, growing irritated. “I told you, I’m fine.”

  Milo looked at her, but didn’t respond. After a moment, she sighed.

  “Let’s not do this, okay? This sharing thing. For a start, you don’t know how. And out of everyone – out of everyone – you should be the one person I know who respects the fact that when I don’t want to talk about something, I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not a ploy to get you to ask me questions I secretly want to be asked. I don’t want to be asked and I don’t want to answer and I don’t want to talk about this. Is that okay with you?”

  Milo nodded again.

  “Thank you.”

  He pointed out of the window, to the door of a small house they were passing. “What about that one? Is that interesting enough?”

  Amber looked. “It’s brown.”

  “Brown isn’t interesting?”

  “Not in a door, no. Look for something with a design to it. Something that stands out.”

  “Are you sure we can’t do this with one of Virgil’s doors?”

  “No, I’m not. Maybe I could keep a normal, boring old door in my head, even when this black metal door is doing its best to sneak in there, but I don’t want to risk it. It’s easier, it’s safer if I have a door I can easily visualise to come back to.”

  They passed another house. “What about that one?”

  “What’s special about it?”

  “It’s not brown.”

  “It’s still just a door.”

  “I don’t know what you’re hoping to find,” said Milo. “Most doors are just doors.”

  “Look for a memorable one.”

  “The longer we’re out here looking, the greater the chances are of the cops finding us.”

  “I know that.”

  “And this doesn’t have anything at all to do with Kelly?”

  She shot him a look. “You prying?”

  “I’m not prying. I’m asking a strategic question. If we’re out here because of something that was done or said—”

  “I wouldn’t risk your life like that,” Amber said. “I certainly wouldn’t risk mine. We need to find a door like the one in the motel – something that stands out, that I can latch on to, but that doesn’t mean we have to go into town.”

  “You’ve seen many doors like that around here?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to—” It came to her then. “Got it!” she said, whacking her hand off his arm. “I know where we can go!”

  Milo frowned at her. “You know, you’re pretty violent when you’re a demon.”

  “You noticed that too, huh?”

  A chain-link fence surrounded the summer carnival site, so they parked and went walking. Amber’s shoulder was feeling a whole lot better by the time they found a gap and squeezed through. Whether this was down to her higher pain threshold as a demon or her rapid healing, or maybe just Kelly’s newly applied bandage, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. She was feeling better and that’s all that mattered.

  They walked through long grass at the edge of the site to the slightly shorter grass on the site itself, where it grew up round the covered rides and shuttered booths. Milo touched her arm lightly and she saw the cautious look on his face a moment before she heard the voices.

  They ducked low and crept forward. Three boys sat on the carousel – two on the railing surrounding it and the third on one of the wooden horses. They looked Amber’s age, maybe slightly older, and they were drinking beers and the one on the horse, the one with long hair and ripped jeans, had a cigarette dangling from his lips. The smoke wafted on the breeze.

  “I thought he hated my guts,” the lo
ng-haired guy said. “Remember all those times he said he was gonna beat the crap outta me?”

  “I remember all the times you shat yourself about it,” the bigger of his friends said, grinning.

  “Whatever,” said the long-haired guy, stubbing out his cigarette, “I always thought Cunningham hated me, that’s my point. That’s the point I’m making.”

  “But if he hated you then why would he want us to spend tonight with him and his friends?”

  “Jesus Christ, Marco, would you please pay attention? That’s what I’m saying! I’m saying he must not hate me because he wants to party with us tonight. I swear, you better not be this dumb later on. I don’t want you embarrassing me.”

  “I’m not gonna embarrass you,” Marco said, frowning. “Why would I embarrass you?”

  “Well, I mean, let’s face it, okay? You’re not exactly scholarship material, now, are you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re not smart.”

  Marco’s face darkened. “Don’t call me stupid.”

  “I’m not calling you anything. I’m just saying you’re not smart. That’s not the same as saying you’re stupid.”

  “Yes, it is, Jamie.”

  “No, it’s not. It just means you have a tendency to say and do stupid things. Doesn’t mean you are stupid. So long as you don’t say or do anything stupid around Zak Cunningham and his buddies, we should be fine. This is a big night for us. We can’t let anything go wrong.”

  The third boy, a dark-haired kid with a birthmark peeking up from the collar of his shirt, raised his head for the first time. “Jesus, can’t the pair of you shut the hell up for five seconds? All week, tonight is the only thing you’ve talked about. You know how boring you’ve been? It’s a party, okay? Get over it.”

  Marco and Jamie exchanged glances, and then the grins broke out.

  “I think someone is feeling upset that he’s too young for Hell Night,” said Jamie.

  “I guess you’d better get home,” Marco jeered. “You don’t wanna be caught out after curfew.”

  “Yeah, you wanna make sure you’re tucked in with all the other little kiddies.”

  “Ha, look, poor baby is sulking. Don’t make fun of him.”