“So was I. The old ways live on, though, don’t they.” He planted his palms flat behind his hips and leaned into them. “He also believed I was going to come after him one night. Tricky situation for a guy who has plans to live a long life. His personal Grim Reaper out in the world, tracking him, waiting for him to slip up, and yet he couldn’t eliminate the threat.”
“You make it sound like you’re his killer.”
“I will be.”
Ahmare blinked at this. “Why?”
“He raped my mahmen. Repeatedly. That’s how I was born. He had her once and couldn’t stop. When her needing came, he took her over and over again. The nature of his addiction to her crippled him, and I believe his plan was to kill her as soon as he had his last hurrah during her fertile time—like a goddamn alcoholic going on a bender. But then when it was over, it dawned on him that he might get in trouble with that whole can’t-kill-my-young thing. He had to wait to see if it took, if she got pregnant, and she did. I have no doubt he hoped she and I would both die on the birthing bed because I heard he had repeated nightmares that what he had sired would exact revenge for the way the conception had happened. No such luck on the maternal/fetal funeral, and then, horror of horrors, I was a son. Like a female wouldn’t be strong enough to take revenge?”
“So he gave you to Chalen so someone else would kill you.”
“Bingo.”
“You were a member of the cult, then?”
“I was born into it, yes.”
“And what happened to your mahmen?”
“My father kept her alive because he was in love with her and he liked to torture her with his presence. The second she died of natural causes, he sent me to Chalen. He might have done that sooner, but I look like him, and every time she met my eyes, it was like he was right with her. He’s a sick fuck.” There was a long pause. “She loved me, though.” As the prisoner’s voice cracked, he cleared his throat. “I don’t know how . . . but she loved me as her son. How the hell could she do that? She should have hated me.”
“None of this was your fault.”
Bleak eyes met her own. “No, I’m just the living, breathing symbol of everything she endured. I wouldn’t have been able to be like her if the roles had been reversed.”
“A mahmen’s love is the greatest force in the universe.” Ahmare thought of her own family. “It is sacred. It’s stronger than hate. Stronger than death, too. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the day and I can swear my mahmen’s hand is on my shoulder and her sweet voice is telling me all will be well because she will never leave me. It’s as though, even from the Fade, she watches over me.”
But if that was true, Ahmare thought, how had her brother gone down such a bad path? Surely the female watched over him, too?
“I will never understand it,” the prisoner said.
She refocused. “You don’t have to. You don’t even need to accept it because every breath you take and each beat of your heart does that. Your sire might have been evil, but love won in the end, didn’t it?”
There was another long period of quiet.
“No,” he said eventually. “I don’t think it does.”
13
SO HOW GOOD ARE you with a knife?”
As the prisoner asked the question, Ahmare had a quick image of her stab—har-har—at decapitation.
“Average,” she said as her stomach rolled. “Why?”
“I need to get this off.” He tugged at his beard and hair. “And without scissors and a razor, I’m going to need help.”
“Mirror,” she added.
“Huh?”
“You’d also do well to have a mirror.” She shifted onto her knees and unholstered her hunting knife. “But I can do it. My father used to shave with a straight edge and he taught me how.”
“You mind if we go over there?” Duran nodded at the bunk. “I’m aching.”
As he got his height and weight off the floor, he grunted and there were cracking sounds, like branches snapping during the dry fall. Also a pop or two that made her wonder if he wasn’t going to need to have a bone set.
“How old are you?” she blurted.
“I don’t keep track of those things. But I am certainly too young to be moving like this.” He limped over and groaned as he sat himself down on the thin, bare mattress. “Too many broken things healed in bad ways.”
Ahmare took her time getting to her feet. Otherwise, it felt like she was showing off the fact that she didn’t hurt all over.
As she approached him with the knife, she was amazed that he sat there so calmly as someone he didn’t know came toward him with a shiny blade capable of doing damage—
Without warning, the Mississippi delta of blood spilling from Rollie’s open, ragged neck barged in, an out-of-order interloper that she would rather have stayed away from her proverbial establishment. God, if she never thought about that death again, it would be too soon. The trouble was, she couldn’t ignore the fact that the last time she had had this hilt in her palm, it had been to kill.
Now, it was to shave.