Page 1 of Chained Knight

1

EVENTUALLY BIT

Normally the glaringred Check Engine light plus billows of steam from under the black Oldsmobile’s hood would be frustrating but solvable problems; the headlights cutting through dusk behind her could have been part of said solution if not for their red-and-blue flashing accompaniment.

It figured. If God existed he was a sadist toddler, never content to simply crush an ant when a few legs could be pulled off or a magnifying glass hauled out to focus sunshine. There were even zombifying mushrooms which could take over poor silly insects, forcing victims up to high places before they died in a puff of spores—which was the surest indication of the divine’s fucked-up prioritiesandsense of humor Ariadne Millar ever heard of.

The road curved sharply ahead. She’d be out of sight for a few minutes if she could just nurse the car along a few more hundred feet, and if she was going to get away it would have to be now. They wouldn’t chase her into the woods with night approaching and rain on the way, right? She’d only have to worry about starvation and hypothermia.

Risky, sure. Worth it, though?

She’d probably feel differently when she got hungry, but that was Future Ari’s problem. Current Ari had all she could deal with right in front of her, especially since the Olds’s overworked engine chose that moment to seize completely. Power steering failed, but she did manage to get the car onto the gravel shoulder. Tires crunched to a stop; multicolored lights had briefly disappeared from her rearview.

Running into the forest was a stupid move, yet in hindsight completely inevitable. Ever since she’d lunged for the gun on the nightstand, this was the only possible place she could arrive at.

Arrest, court, sitting in prison—oh, the Hardisons had more than enough resources to make the most of those opportunities. It wasn’t even old Earl she was truly afraid of; Wanda Lee was far more dangerous by virtue of ambition, not to mention sheer venom per pound. Wanda would never forgive a daughter-in-law who had the temerity to say no and mean it, let alone one who had grabbed the snub-nosed .38 and put a stop to the beatings, the gaslighting, the thousand casual cruelties.

What you gonna do, Ari?Mike’s perfect, expensively capped grin, because he knew she had nowhere to run.Cry to the cops? My daddy owns this town.

Well, wasn’t he surprised now. And if she was going to die, she’d prefer it to be in the woods rather than a concrete cell.

Ari realized she was attempting to put the car in park, but the gearshift was frozen and the Check Engine light had been joined by a few others, all crimson and orange, none of them good news. At least she hadn’t careened off the road; she stamped on the parking brake out of habit, though the Olds clearly wasn’t moving under its own power ever again. Her right hand shot out, grabbed the backpack on the passenger seat, and she had a bad moment tugging at the door-latch. Pawing at the lock’s nobbinwith clumsy fingers, she sobbed once before it chucked upward with a solid, comforting sound.

Why the idea of breaking a window to scramble out of a stalled car should be so much worse than anything else tonight, she had no idea.

Cool rainy air caressed her wet cheeks, temporarily soothing the puffing and bruises. Her backpack wasn’t heavy; all she had were a few spare T-shirts and clean panties, a couple pairs of jeans, her mother’s silver crucifix, a battered700 Years of Western Visual Art—her favorite textbook, its margins populated with many a doodle of feverish, staring eyes—plus a pathetically thin roll of cash she’d managed to scrape together with some dim idea of perhaps hitching a ride somewhere, anywhere else. The small roll represented months of careful, patient, tiny thefts from Wanda’s pin money, and Mike’s wallet on the increasingly frequent nights he came back near-blackout drunk from the Kittykat Klub over in Legeville.

Each time she hoped he’d either get stopped or into a Jim Beam-fueled accident, but he was the town’s golden boy. If he was pulled over for weaving or running a stop sign the cops brought him home, apologetic, holding their hats in both hands while Wanda thanked them kindly. If she slipped a crisp, folded Grant or Benjamin their way at the same time, well, it was only polite to tip for good service.

Apparently Mike’s guardian angel was a brown-noser as well, because even while wasted Ari’s husband always managed to pilot his giant black-and-chrome truck home without major incident.

That particular celestial being had certainly been off-duty a short while ago. Ari could still feel the jolting in her palms, the gun trapped against Mike’s chest bucking repeatedly as she squeezed the trigger over and over, until there was only a series of dry clicks and his fingers fell away from her throat.

She coughed, wiped at streaming tears. The back of her head throbbed, blood clotting as it dried in her hair. Steam from the dying engine smelled awful and her eyes hadn’t stopped leaking throughout the whole ordeal; Mike had gone quiet before the first slap, and that was always a signal for the very worst beatings.

If he was yelling, things usually didn’t go too far. But coming home so early, already drunk before he’d gone over to Legeville—she couldn’t tell what on earth had set him off.

Did it matter? Wanda was at bridge club and Earl at an Elks dinner—she’d thought she had more time before they called the cops, the only reason she’d slowed down enough to stuff what she could in the backpack. She hadn’t taken the truck because everyone in town knew it, and if they saw her driving… well, now it was too late to wish she’d stolen a vehicle with a more reliable engine.

The sky looked like a van Gogh or El Greco storm canvas, but there was no time to admire the light or take internal notes. On this side of the road was a high sheer wall of rock, a perfectly good mountain—albeit with its top flattened by assholes looking for coal—frowning at the pavement ribbon clinging to its flank. On the other, the slope fell away steep but not impassable, and though it had been clear-cut many years ago the trees had staged a helluva comeback. Heavy trunks crowded with undergrowth swallowed the rapidly fading sunset, and if she was going to run it had to be now.

I hate camping. It was just the last in a long line of things Ari despised but had to do if she wanted to survive. She wiped uselessly at her cheeks once more, settling the backpack, and jogged across two lanes separated only by a pair of faded yellow lines. More gravel crunched underfoot as she reached the shoulder, and a stitch gripped her side. Even that short burst of activity was a little too much at the moment.

She’d been hoping to get to a city and… what? Find a cheap motel, at least, and maybe get some real sleep for once. But not only had she killed her husband, she’d also stolen Wanda’s old car to escape in, and even if she tried to explain about self-defense anyone in town could guess the foregone conclusion.

Christ Himself knew both Wanda and Mike said it more than once.Nobody will believe you, you’re just the wife. Shut up and do what I tell you.

Ari snapped another glance down the road. No sign of the cop car just yet, just a white glare of headlights at the curve announcing it wouldn’t be long.

Would it really be so bad? Arrested, put in handcuffs, attempting to explain to big-bellied good ol’ boys who were already on the Hardison payroll—yes, Ari thought, it would be worse than what she’d endured so far, and that was saying something.

No water. No food but a couple energy bars. A few hundred dollars. That and her brains, overworked just as surely as the Oldsmobile’s wheezing innards. She was vaguely surprised steam wasn’t escaping from her ears too; a silly little art history degree couldn’t prepare you for this nonsense.

Just as she stepped off the shoulder and onto steep weed-laden embankment, a series of loud crackles forced her to look back. Now the vapor from the engine was black instead of white, billowing ominously. Gasoline reek tiptoed across the road, further marring a soft spring evening. The hills muttered to themselves, trees brushed by an invisible hand, and the glow of not-so-distant headlights swelled, accompanied by vicious little dapples of bright color.

Not like a Turner painting, a moment of light-filled loneliness before catastrophe; the palette was different. More like Hopper, but there was no peace to be found in this isolation.

Ari staggered down the hill. She ducked between two vine-wrapped trees, heard the suppressed laughter of water running fast over rocks, and hoped she wouldn’t turn an ankle. The bruised glow of evening was fading fast, and her blundering sounded loud as the heartbeat banging in her ears, or the sobbing gasps as her lungs heaved. A vine clutched at her arm, another at her ankle. Kudzu? She couldn’t tell; she was hoping she wouldn’t stumble through poison ivy or onto a snake just minding its own business.

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