‘Help! They shot at me! They’re trying to kill me!’
I went out into the night. It was quiet. On the road in the distance I could see a car stopped, its headlights picking up the evening dust shifting in the gentle breeze, the occasional fluttering of a locust attracted to its beams. I started down the garden path and out of Dez’s front gate. Kash was close behind me, actioning his pistol.
‘Who is it?’
‘Probably Jace Robit and his merry band of meatheads.’
‘If they fired a shot at that kid, we’ll need to bring them all in.’
‘ I’ll just talk to them,’ I said, waving him off. ‘Stay here. We don’t want to present a hostile front.’
The car remained idle, the engine humming as I approached. I could see there were four men in it. The elbow hanging out the driver’s side indeed belonged to the leathery brown body of Jace Robit. He was watching me approach with a small smile playing about his lips. I knew these men. Though they’d used their truck tonight to chase down a frightened teenager, cracking pot shots off over his head to put the fear of God into him, he wasn’t their usual quarry. These were the guys who went out chasing, hunting, gutting bush pigs and kangaroos. The bloodthirsty, bored, angry men of small towns who had too much firepower and not enough targets to keep them satisfied.
I gained speed as I approached the car, lifted my boot as I got within range and kicked the mirror off the driver’s side door. The mirror and its casing smashed into the road, glass sparkling in the dim light.
‘Hey! What the fuck!’
Jace shouldered the door open, jumped down and grabbed my shoulder, fingers going for the underside of my arm in a bruising grip. I gave him a half-strength jab to the face, sending him stumbling back, more surprised than injured.
‘I told you to leave that kid alone,’ I said. ‘You got hearing problems?’
‘And I told you that we handle things ourselves out here,’ Jace said. The other men were out of the truck now and all around me. Two were behind me, blocking Kash’s advance. My partner was on the road, a hundred metres back and approaching fast, his gun by his side.
‘ That kid’s a danger to our town.’ Jace pointed at the house. ‘We want him out. I don’t care what you do with him. Take him back to the fucking city with you. Take him into – what d’you call it – protective custody.’
‘He hasn’t done anything wrong.’
One of the farmers behind me snorted.
‘You’re not from around here, sweetheart,’ Jace sneered. ‘You’ve got to understand. There are people who belong here, and people who don’t. And the Taby kid doesn’t belong. In the bush, you have the native animals, and you have introduced species.’ He held one palm up, then another, separate. ‘Like feral cats. They prey on the natives. If you don’t squash ’em before they multiply, suddenly you’ll be overrun.’
‘Thanks for the environmental science class,’ I said. ‘Truly enlightening. I have a couple of lessons of my own, you know. But you’re not going to enjoy them. So I’m telling you just one last time. Get back in that truck and fuck off home, before I decide to start teaching.’ A ripple of surprise went up through the group of men around me. They looked at each other and laughed. None of them backed down.
‘Harry.’ Kash was at the edge of the gathering now. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’ Jace sniffed, looked me up and down.
‘You heard the man, Elliot,’ I said, cracking my knuckles. ‘He said they handle things themselves out here. So let’s handle it.’
Chapter 52
WHEN I FIGHT men, they try to put me on the ground first. They don’t want to punch a woman right away. Not until they understand that I’m no ordinary woman. They figure they can grab me and push me into the dirt and I’ll realise that I’ve been playing big boy games and I need to go back to my dolls and stop fooling myself. Jace Robit was a hard man. Wiry strength from years working on farms, burning off fat and loading muscle around uncrackable bones. His big hands came for my shoulders again. I ducked and stepped sideways, gave him a fast uppercut to the ribs, knocking the wind out of him. He stumbled, tried to swing an arm around the back of my neck. I bowed out of it, stepped behind him and kicked him in the arse.
A short, involuntary laugh from the men around him, a sudden betrayal. Jace’s fury was rising quickly. Big mistake, fighting angry. I was enjoying this. I wanted them all to jump in at once. This was my therapy. I sidestepped Jace as he came for me again but he saw the move, swung and glanced his knuckles off my ear. I took the pain. Lapped it up gratefully. I stepped forwards and faked a left jab, punched him square in the nose with my right.
Blood on the dirt. Exhilaration zapped through me at the sight of it.
‘Steady on!’ One of the farmers stepped towards us, having had quite enough of my show. He grabbed me from behind and I kicked Jace in the chest, used the backward momentum to shove me into the second attacker, the two of us barrelling into the ground. I rolled, righted, stepped on his hand and heard a crunch. The man screamed.
‘Grab her,’ one of them said. ‘Fucking grab her, John!’
‘Yeah, John,’ – I beckoned the man with a wave – ‘come grab me.’
The two of them lunged at me at once. Hardly fair, but not unexpected. They thought I’d back up, so I dove instead for John’s legs and felt him tumble over me, his own momentum working against him. John’s friend came for me and I kicked up at him from the ground, catching him in the chin.
Jace’s nose was pouring blood down his face as his friends dragged him to his feet. The men gathered together to reassess the situation. Mentions of a ‘psycho bitch’.
I wasn’t done yet. But when I beckoned the men forwards again, none of them moved. They just stood there, panting, bewildered by the first devastating round.
‘Come on,’ I urged. My own fury was starting to rise. No one moved. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! You pussies!’
I watched the men drive off past Dez’s house, standing in the dark beside Kash. My partner had surprisingly little to say at first. We walked back down the dusty road together under the stars. I hadn’t even exerted myself enough to break a sweat. The punch in the ear had caused a warm, throbbing pain that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. I reached up and held it, relished in the hurt. It would bruise. It’d be hard to sleep on it. That was something, at least. Kash laughed after a while and I looked up at him.
‘I thought you said we didn’t want to present a hostile front,’ he said.
‘That wasn’t hostile,’ I said. ‘Hostile would have been arresting them on sight. They wanted us to speak their language. I spoke it. I just wish they’d held out longer.’
He didn’t reply. I knew how it sounded. My brother was accused of being one of the most vicious, violent people in the nation’s history, and here I was, upset that I hadn’t been able to beat a bunch of men into unconsciousness. But the words just came out of me before I could stop them. Kash glanced sideways at me and I caught it – the wary look of someone assessing a threat.
The truth was, Kash was right to be wary of me. Most of my life I’d wavered over a very thin line between light and dark sides of my being. There were things in me that were frightening. How quick I was to anger. How much I liked hurting people sometimes. My mind was full of shadowy places where violent fantasies lived, sickening things that sometimes came out in my dreams. Vengeance I played out mentally against bad people from my past. Most of the time, my light half won out, and the shadows and smoke were sent recoiling to where they belonged, not completely driven out, but controlled.
But sometimes, the halves collided. The score came down fifty fifty, and everyone was left guessing what I might do.
Even me.
Chapter 53