About twenty feet away. God.
It’s like something from a smug Instagram photo, this setting. Really, grasshoppers, it would take your breath away; the sky is bruised pink and blue, lined with the black silhouettes of gently swaying palms. Pale gold beach stretches down to the teeth of the shimmering ocean. In the middle of all that, there is my Leo, on her back with her arms bound together at her belly; she’s still, but her head is moving. The water laps at her toes.
Two shapes bend over her: tall, graceful Blood Honey, and in front of him, a hunched and desolate Ash. A knife glints in Ash’s reluctant hands, and Blood Honey guides it into a swift slash across the air. A shift, and the sun hits them just at the right angle, a translucent lemonade beam. Master and his weeping apprentice. What a scene.
You know that figure of speech, heart in your mouth? What a load of bullshit. My heart’s hammering like a fucking freight train but it won’t budge from beneath my ribs, and God, I wish it would, just to ease the pain a little.
“He’s going to make him do it, isn’t he?” Ethan says quietly.
“He’s going to try.”
“Sick motherfucker.”
Suddenly all I can see is my mother, cradling a two-year old Ash and whispering, “You're not gonna to be such a pansy, are ya, sweetie? You're gonna be a contender.”
I need to pretend that this isn’t what she meant.
I think she always hoped that you’d save her from me.
Fog rushes into my vision. My forehead grows heavy, lulls forward until I shake away the hollow ache.
Ethan steps forward on to a twig. Such a fucking cliché, but Jesus, there’s good reason for it—Blood Honey jerks up the minute the thing snaps, surveying his territory with blank eyes.
Ethan gasps.
Then Ash spots us.
“Aeron!” he shrieks, suddenly writhing in the bigger man’s grip. “Ethan! Over here, over—no!”
Blood Honey slams his palm across Ash’s mouth, immediately zeroing in on the pair of us. It’s only then that the inevitability of it all gushes into my brain.
We’re a good twenty second run away from him.
In that time, he could stab Ash and Leo.
Once we got there, we could still rip his bowels out between us, but what would be the point?
“Ethan,” I say in a hushed voice, “if we run at him, he’s gonna kill the pair of them.”
“So what the fuck do we do?”
He’s watching us. Trying to hold Ash still. Perhaps, just perhaps, he wants to hold on to the desired ritual…and we can exploit that.
“Go a few feet down so you’re coming from another part of the forest,” I say. “Quick! Go!”
Ethan turns and runs.
A muffled scream bleats out. In that same gash of sunlight, the knife rises in Ash and Blood Honey’s combined hands, its blade tipped with opulent scarlet. Ash convulses with stifled sobs—they’ve cut Leo’s thigh.
My pulse roars in my ears.
I’ve got no fucking idea what we’re doing. There’s no time to play clever shits; all I have is shredded hope.
Ethan runs first, screeching like he’s a goddam monkey, his bread knife held aloft. You can practically smell the adrenaline pouring off him in ribbons of salted smoke.
A breath later, I run too.
The sand is baking hot. Each step makes me hiss and quiver, and I’m not as fast as I want to be, but my nerves blast in to blur everything and all I can see is Ash and Leo. The knife handle grows slippery with sweat in my palm, and I squeeze it so hard that my knuckles sting.
What are we even trying to do? My throat tastes like blood, I’m so sore.
Then it comes. Tuija’s gift. The world melts into slow motion. Blood Honey seems unfazed by the pair of us running, but then the sunlight shifts just slightly and it messes with his vision. Without thinking, he puts a hand up to shield his eyes; the hand that has the most control over his knife. Ash, still gagged by a fist, seems to blink at me once—
And we won’t get there fast enough, I see that now—