My uncle slobbered drool and strings of red. “You're dead,” he huffed. “You're fucking dead. I'll kill you, you hear me?”
On hands and knees he crawled towards me. Jacob's rock collided with his temple, ending the attack.
With a pitiful groan, my uncle toppled sideways. The boy who wanted to save me, who had saved me, bent over the fallen monster and kept going. His arm was red by the end.
The rock fell away, sticky and wet. My uncle didn't move, he didn't make a sound. All those nights he'd spent tormenting me in my bed... and now he was dead. I'd killed him.
We'd killed him.
Holding my stomach, I shuddered and vomited. Any joy I had felt evaporated. The fibers of my shirt clung to me, I was pouring sweat.
Jacob put a hand on my back. I jumped, gawking up at him with my lips slack. “Kite,” he whispered. He rubbed my shoulder, trying to soothe me. He was pale like me, the calmness had melted away. “Are you alright?”
“Yes. No. I don't know.” Hugging myself tight, I tried to stand—failed and sat down. “Is he really dead?”
He didn't look away from my face. “Yeah, he's dead. We need to finish this. Can you get up?”
Spitting into the dirt, I buried my puke under the gravel. I was irrationally upset at my reaction. “I'm fine,” I said, forcing my breathing to slow down. “I... I'm sorry I freaked out. I should have shot him. I just froze up.”
Retrieving the gun from the dirt, Jacob dusted it off. “Shooting cans was easier than this.”
“Yeah. It was.”
Together, we rolled his body down the slope. The angle did most of the work. Jacob brought the crimson rock he'd used as a weapon. “No evidence,” he said flatly. The crime stories had been clear, we had to make sure no one could pin this on us.
In the gorge, we walked past the bulldozers and cranes that stood like dinosaur skeletons in a museum. It was dark out, everything eerie and quiet. Our ears strained, but there was no one around for miles.
No one had heard my uncle scream.
Just like no one ever heard me scream when he was torturing me.
People kept to themselves up here. They always had.
“This one.” Jacob nodded at the hole in front of us. It was one of many, a long line of cavities that went straight down into the earth.
Far away, we could see a few that had been completed. Metal supports had been jammed inside, cement filling the gap all the way to the top. There were bags of the stuff nearby, a sign this hole would be filled next.
Crouching beside my uncle, I lifted a hand. “Wait. Just one second.” It was getting hard to see in the rich blue of the evening. The spray of stars overhead and the moon were our only light sources.
Hovering over my uncle, I studied his features—his open eyes that saw nothing. I'd vomited before, the excitement and terror too much when combined. Now, as my heart hardened and my mind found comfort in my new freedom, I felt... good.
The fear was fading.
“You'll never touch me again,” I whispered to his corpse. “You can't hurt me anymore. This is what you deserve.”
Jacob was silent, looking to the side to give me privacy. When I nodded at him, he tossed the rock down into the pit.
Some firm shoving, and my uncle toppled into his new grave. We didn't speak again until we'd finished kicking debris and gravel into the hole, covering up the body from any prying eyes.
“It's done,” Jacob said, wiping his forehead.
There was a chill in my blood. It flowed deeper, protecting me, telling me what we'd done was right. “No one can ever know about this,” I whispered. Lifting my head, I stared Jacob in the face. Starlight glistened in his blue depths. “We're murderers now. Both of us.”
The knife he slid from his pocket was like a sliver of an ocean wave. “Right. We can't ever let anyone know about this. They'd lock us up. They wouldn't understand.”
“They wouldn't,” I agreed solemnly.
I let him take my wrist, holding my palm open. The knife was wicked, but I wasn't afraid of him. Jacob would never hurt me. “Will you promise to never tell anyone?” he asked.
“I promise.” The cold pit in my belly spread further. What we'd done, it was changing me faster than anything ever should. My flinching, wincing former self was blossoming into a creature that had shown it could fight back. I only had one fear now, one thing above all else.
Losing Jacob.
“Do you promise that you'll never abandon me?” I blurted.
He stiffened, laying the edge of the knife on my skin. “Abandon you?” The seriousness in his voice could have cut me as easily as that blade. “Kite, I would never. I will never. What we did tonight... and what we'll always do for each other...” Were his eyes wet? “We're like brothers, right?”
Smiling sideways, my head bobbed. “Yeah. Brothers.” I pushed my palm into the knife, encouraging him. “Blood Brothers, we'll never betray each other.”