Page 28 of Sinner
They mattered.
She clenched her fist and hit him in the neck, piercing skin and breaking cartilage. The man’s scream bubbled. He let go of his rifle to protect his face. She gripped the falling weapon, spun and with two shots hit the final two guards in the chest.
This all happened before the final crumb of plaster hit the floor.
Mary paused, listening; breath quiet, heart loud. No more guards, but a car coming.
She dropped the rifle, ran to the van, snapped the door open and hopped in.
“Go!” she cried and hit the dash, ignoring Flint’s horrified face as he stepped on the gas.
* * *
Dust and blood covered Mary,but not as much as she’d feared. After wiping her hands and face with a baby wipe, she felt semi-decent.
They drove quietly for forty minutes before Flint attempted to speak. He’d opened his mouth a few times, but clicked his jaw shut. He shook his head, checked on the kids behind him and mumbled to himself, deep voice rumbling through the car.
The van descended into silence, nothing but the sound of tires whizzing, and air pushing on the windows. The children were asleep. It took twenty minutes for them to relax, but the drag of night and the soothing motion of travel wore them down until the last of them drifted off.
It had been just Flint and Mary for a few miles, and yet he’d said nothing.
Heat warmed Mary’s face. She didn’t know what to say. What did he think of her now? That look when she’d entered the car. His skin had turned pale. His pupils so black and big they covered his irises. He saw her kill and maim those men. It was necessary. It was also necessary to leave a woman and child behind in a burning building.
He must hate her.
Despite the loss, and the gaping void she feared would never close, she had no tears. No pain. She was numb. This was her. This violence was part of Mary. For years she’d been taught that it was a necessary evil, but only after Flint she understood that her life could be more. And she wanted that.
She wanted to feel again, just like she had when they’d kissed.
Suddenly, she was a littlebrujagirl back at a festival. Behind the performance tent her father had whipped her while her mother watched, sneering. How she hated her parents then. How she had wished to maim and torture them back. Mary’s little back had bled and oozed from welts for days after that. All because earlier that morning, Mary had been so hungry, so starving out of her mind, that she hadn’t paid attention to the vision she had earlier. Food was how they paid Mary, and they’d fed her nothing since the night before. She’d been so caught up with the taste of lunch that her mouth watered and her stomach cramped. Pictures of barbecued chicken swam before her eyes. The smell. The taste. When a man came and asked what his future held, her mind was elsewhere. She couldn’t future-tell on demand, but had to remember what she’d seen in the days before, and try to relate it to the right customers. The memory was hard to force, and it demanded a lot of attention to detail.
In the end, someone had died. She couldn’t remember who, but they all blamed her. If she was worth her money, she’d have seen how to stop it, how to prevent it.
A death. You couldn’t come back from a death.
The hate for her parents still drove Mary to violence. She’d often wished they weren’t hers, that they’d stolen her from loving, kind parents who would have fed her big family meals, who would have tucked her into a warm bed, and who would have kissed and cuddled her when she scraped her knee. But they weren’t. They didn’t feed her for days after that death… until she had grown too faint to walk.
Mary squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the memory, but it was replaced with a more recent failure. She’d done it again. Too caught up in her own feelings. If only she had written down her vision, like the Sisterhood had taught her, she would have noticed Gloria was missing. She would have noticed the seven children included the new baby, but not Despair. She would have seen past her hormones and starry eyes, and maybe she could have saved them.
Pain flared in her chest, expanding, threatening to block her airways.
She bit her lip and tried to glimpse Flint as the passing street lights illuminated his face. He had become impassive. Deathly quiet.
She should never have dragged him into this. He’d seen her kill without mercy, and she’d forced him to leave a child behind. Maybe it was better she sent the children to the Sisterhood, despite her promise to Gloria.
You couldn’t come back from a death.
