Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (28 page)

Brodie smirked. “You noticed. Austin. That city’s full of pigs and whores. I walked by this group of rat-faced youngsters who were running around like they owned the place. I challenged them to a Neely-fight, fist to fist, but the damn yellow bellies just laughed. So I thought, you know, what the hell. I’d make them burn.” 

Neely stopped rubbing his eyes. His hands snapped into fists.And he hit him.Left cheek.Dead center.So fast that even Brodie couldn’t slide out of the way. 

Brodie did nothing. He didn’t even move his head. He just took it, and kind of smiled. 

“Fight back,” Neely said, his face brick red, his eyes bright.“I’ll give you a fist to fist. Right here. No glow.” 

“Spark,” Brodie interrupted, touching his bruising cheek and still smiling. “I call it the spark.” 

Neely ignored him. “You set people on fire, you make me shove a knife in my brother’s throat. I blamed River for that stuff at Glenship Manor.He tried to deny it but I wouldn’t listen, I didn’t believe him—” 

Neely’s fist flew.But Brodie dodged out of the way this time, quick and light, like it was way too easy and he was only half trying. 

Neely’s face was red.Red as blood.Red as Brodie’s hair. 

River put his hand on Neely’s arm.“It’s all right.” 

Neely pushed him off. 

“I should have known.” Neely was almost yelling now. “I thought you were just some little rancher kid Dad was trying to do right by.But of course you’ve got the glow.Why else would he be supporting some skinny Texas spawn?” 

Brodie grinned. “I bet he told you all the other halfRedding bastards are just kids too. Not nearly old enough to have the spark. And you believed him?” 

Neely was circling and pacing, trying to get closer to Brodie. River reached out and grabbed his arm. “Don’t, Neely,” he said quietly.“He’ll just cut you.” 

“Boooooored,”Brodie’s voice drawled. He sat down on the kitchen table and wrapped an arm around his knee. His other leg swung free, boot heel rapping against the table leg. “This is
so
boring. Neely,
shut up.
River, you too. You are both boring the shit out of me. Look, I came all the way here to see what my legit, sparking brother was like. I wanted to bond, brother-style. Maybe see if he’d want to team up and have some real fun. But so far you aren’t impressing, River. I think it’s because do-gooder Neely is a bad influence.Thoughts?” 

I heard a noise,but didn’t take my eyes off Brodie.None of us did. 

I hoped it wasn’t Jack. I prayed it wasn’t Jack. I didn’t know what Brodie did to him. Maybe put him to sleep so he’d be out of the way. 

Please just be unconscious, Jack.
 

Brodie tilted his head and looked toward the doorway. “Well, well, well.This must be the twin brother. Sunshine mentioned you, before her father killed her with a bat, that is.” 

I followed Brodie’s gaze. Luke was standing by the door, a half-worried expression on his face. He looked at me. “What the hell happened to Jack? He’s knocked out cold on the ground outside. We need to call an ambulance
. Now
.” And then he saw Brodie. “Vi, who is this cowboy on our table?” 

Luke nodded at Brodie. He didn’t walk over to him, though, or try to shake his hand. Some deep, instinctual part of my brother told him that Brodie was wrong. 

Off. 

Bad. 

“Run,” I said to Luke. But my mouth was dry and made no sound. I coughed, swallowed.
“Run,”
I whispered. 

And that time Luke heard me. He backed out of the door, turned— 

But Brodie was faster.He flew off the table and landed on his feet, softly, his boots making small clinks on the floor. In the corner of my eye, I saw something glint in the light coming through the windows. And then my brother was bleeding. Wet round beads of blood formed a line down his left cheek. Luke’s eyes went from surprise, to shock, to anger. 

To nothing. 

I stepped forward, my arms outstretched, wanting to help him, take him in my arms, shake the nothingness out of his eyes, but River held me back. I remembered why, and froze. 

Luke walked into the kitchen. He bent over and picked up the kitchen knife from where it had fallen on the floor. He spun around and threw his body into Neely. Neely went flying against the kitchen wall. And then the knife was at his throat. Neely’s neck was stretched taut; my brother had one hand on the black knife handle, and one hand on Neely’s chin, forcing his head up. 

Brodie clapped his hands. “Let’s see.The first order of business,I think,is to get rid of Neely on a more permanent basis.He can’t spark,and even if he could,I wouldn’t want him around.He doesn’t have your . . .morally ambiguous nature, River. You and me, we’re the same, brother. You just don’t know it yet.” 

River ignored him. “Luke. Drop the knife. Drop that knife.” 

“Can’t,” Luke said, his voice strained, his eyes never leaving Neely’s neck.“This bastard was going to steal my cattle and rape my sister. I have to keep this knife here so he doesn’t get away.” 

River tried again.“No, you don’t, Luke. It’s a trick. Put your arm down.” 

Luke shook his head.“Can’t. It hurts.” 

I wanted to shout at Luke like I had shouted at Neely. I wanted to fall to my knees and beg Brodie to let Neely go, as I had for River,but I knew it wouldn’t work again.
“Stop it, Brodie, stop it, just stop it,”
I screamed anyway. 

“I’m going to kill you,”Neely whispered.“I’m going to beat your face in with my fists.Try to laugh while choking on your own teeth, you mad fucker.” The knife cut into Neely’s neck when he spoke, just as it had River’s. A red smudge formed underneath the silver edge. River saw it and let out a loud, angry, chest-rattling moan. 

He clamped his hands around my brother’s arm and began to pull. “Drop the knife, Luke,” he yelled.
“Drop it.”
 

Luke’s arm began to lower,and then he began to scream. He screamed and screamed. He screamed like the time he fell out one of the Citizen’s windows when he was ten and landed with his leg twisted and broken beneath him, scream, scream, scream. 

River let go and stepped away. Luke’s arm flew up, the knife went back to Neely’s throat, and my brother’s screams stopped. 

“I told you,” Brodie said. “Don’t interrupt my victims. They don’t like it.” 

River turned his gaze away from Luke and from the blood that was beginning to drip down Neely’s neck,saturating his shirt. He looked at Brodie, and his eyes were deep, dark hurt and horror and rage. 

River put his hand on his heart. “You know, Brodie, that I can see colors.People’s colors.I’m not sure if our dad told you that.” 

Brodie nodded.“He did.But I didn’t give a shit,because I can’t do it, and it’s not worth doing anyway.” 

“Well, most people are made of bright colors,” River continued, as if he hadn’t heard him. “Pink, yellow, blue, green. But not you. You’re black. Black as coffee poured across a night sky. I’ve . . . I’ve never seen that before . . .” 

River’s eyes were scared. 

Brodie smiled. It was a crooked smile. River’s smile. Neely’s smile. “I’m pretty special, ain’t I? I’ve always said it, but now everyone else will be saying it too. River, would you please look at me when I’m talking to you? I can see that you’re trying to use your glow. I can sense it, like an electric current running from your body to Luke’s there. But you don’t exercise your madness. You’re much, much, much too sane. Dried up and weak. You can only stand around, ignoring me and staring at Luke, wishing you could make something happen with your glow. But you can’t. You’re not nearly crazy enough, brother. Trust me on this. My sparks will dance circles around yours.” 

Brodie waved his arm above his head in a circle and then tapped the heels of his boots together, like Dorothy and
There’s no place like home.
 

“Heck,
this
is only the beginning.” Brodie’s eyes were jumping and crazy and so damn green. “Wait until you see what I can do. Count on it, this is going to be one hell of a ride. And by the end, you’re going be my biggest fan. Believe it, brother. My time has come.” 

We didn’t move.We didn’t say anything. 

Brodie let out a long sigh, and his body slunk back into a slouch,like he was disappointed in us.“Shoot.I’m bored. What do you say we have some real fun now?” 

And he looked at me. 

I started to see the dark spots again. 

“Violet,” Brodie said.“Come here.” 

I closed my eyes and shook my head. 

“Violet, come here.You are going to help me convince River. Come here. Now.” 

Something flashed in the light. River threw himself in front of me, but Brodie spun out of the way, and I felt a sharp sting on my cheek. I put my hand to my face. 

And then it began. 

R
iver had used the glow on me. Many times, probably. He used the glow to make me see Jack’s devil. And my mother. He used it to calm me down, after seeing 

the dead body of Daniel Leap.But River’s glow was a soft thing, a seductive thing; it crept up on me like twilight, and became such a part of me that I missed it when it was gone,like the sun at the end of the day.River’s magic might have been bad, but it felt . . .
good
. 

Brodie’s did not. 

I felt a hand, a hand as hard as steel, grab my brain in its fist.I could feel its steel fingers clamping in,as it began to press, harder, and harder. 

It hurt. God, it hurt. 

I fought it. And the grip got worse. It squeezed so hard,my mind turned to mush,thick,oily,oozing mush. 

I stopped fighting. 

I tilted my head and looked down at my shirt. It seemed far away. As if it belonged to someone else. My hands went to the buttons of my mother’s soft painting shirt. The shirt suddenly felt itchy. And hot. Like it was burning me. Like all of its tiny threads were scratching and sparking at my skin, trying to burn me up. I clawed at the buttons. I had to get the thing off of me. My teeth gritted with the pain of it. Long red welts puckered up over my body, and now I was ripping at the cloth and I could hear River yelling my name but it was far away and I spun and ripped and
at last
it was off and down on the floor where it belonged. 

I gasped with relief as my shirt fell to the floor.The itching eased. The grip relaxed. My brain stopped dripping through the steel hand’s fingers, and I could think again. As long as I did what the hand wanted, I was okay. As long as I
believed
what the hand wanted, the hurting would stop. 

My upper body was naked now except for a thin black chemise I’d found in Freddie’s closet last summer. I had slept in it the night before,and hadn’t bothered to change before I followed Jack out to the dead boy. I was wearing nothing but a sheer nightgown and my green skirt and the mud on my knees. 

I wanted to wrap my arms around my body and crawl into the corner. 

But the hand wouldn’t let me. So I did nothing. 

I could hear Brodie’s hoarse voice. It sounded hollow and deep and miles away. It said, “Boys, you haven’t seen anything yet. Getting them naked is only the beginning. I’m going to cut her. Slowly. Gently. Like a knife sliding through butter.Watch this, River.You’ll love it.” 

“Brodie, let her go,” River said, and his words drifted toward me, as Brodie’s had done, and they sounded tired and pleading and sad, like the fight had been taken out of them. “Take the spark back and I’ll hear you out. I’ll . . . follow you, do whatever you want. I won’t put up a fight. You won’t even have to use your glow.I’ll be as peaceful as a newborn lamb.” 

Brodie laughed.“All right.That’s more like it, brother.” 

The steel hand disappeared, just like that. My brain shuddered, swelled. My palms went to my eyes, and I rubbed them, hard. I rubbed the steel hand out of my mind, rubbed and rubbed, and took deep breaths. Then I opened my eyes— 

And River jumped forward. His arms grabbed Brodie and yanked him off the table. A bottle of olive oil fell to the floor and shattered. Brodie and River rolled on the ground, right over the green shards of glass. Brodie was laughing and laughing. He was kicking his boots on the floor and laughing and laughing and laughing.River had Brodie’s hand,the knifing hand,pinned behind his back, and I thought,
This is it, River’s going to win, River’s going to save us . . .
 

But none of it mattered. Brodie turned his head to the side and sunk his sharp white teeth into River’s forearm. 

His teeth came back with blood. 

River’s arms dropped to the floor. His eyes went dead. 

Brodie jumped to his feet, quiet and quick as a cat. 

Why is he so damn nimble,
I thought, somewhere far back in my mind.
How did he get to be so damn nimble? Is that how the Devil moves?
 

Brodie stepped over River’s still body,went to the sink, and spat out blood. “See, Violet,” he said, after wiping his mouth on the little lamb towel, “
that’s
why I use the scraper. So much neater. I do like being tidy. I suppose some might call it vanity,but there you go.I don’t like biting people. It just ain’t civilized.” 

I wasn’t looking at Brodie as he talked, even though I knew that made him angry. I was looking at the blood that was trickling down River’s forearm. I couldn’t even see Brodie’s teeth marks, from the blood. And River eyes were empty now. And the emptiness was uglier in his eyes than it had been in Neely’s and Luke’s. 

River went to the stove,grabbed the teakettle,and filled it with water. He lit the burner and set the kettle on it. 

And then he put his arms to his sides and just stood there, facing the stove. Waiting. 

“What’s he doing?”The benign nature of River’s movements had me more worried than if he was holding a knife. The room was spinning. I rubbed my eyes again, to make the spinning stop.“What the hell is he doing?” 

Brodie lifted his arms into the air and stretched, as if he was getting up from a long nap. “River is going to boil that water,and then pour it over Neely’s head.It’s childish,but I was pressed for time. And it will kill two birds with one stone,so to speak—River will learn what I’m made of,and what will happen if he doesn’t join his glow with my spark. Then there’s the added benefit being that either way it will allow me to finish playing with you.”