Page 137 of Roses Are Dead
“You’re such a bitch.” He kicked the gas can, spilling the contents in an arc over the grass. Then he dug in the cab of his truck and returned with a lighter. He tried lighting some grass first, but it fizzled out.
A light mist blew in from the west. The clouds grew thicker, and the sky hung low overhead.
He bent over the stack, attempting to light one of the smaller sticks. But the wind blew the flame sideways and he scorched his fingers.
I gave up trying to find something near my feet, opting instead to curl the soles of my feet against the wood post at my back. It gave a small amount of relief to my shoulders, but the angle made it difficult to hold.
He went back to the truck one more time and came out with a box of matches.
Meanwhile the mist turned into stinging rain that spat at my bare skin, chilling me.
Carl bent over, close now. I braced one foot on the post and swung the other leg at his head. I kicked as hard as I could, causing my body to swing loose. I screamed at the strain on my arms.
But I made contact, and my target fell on his ass, spilling the matches into the wet grass.
“You’ll pay for that!” He picked up my athame.
“Thor, if you’re listening? Fuck this asshole up.”
The wind sucked inward and shifted, heralding a major front barreling down on us. Lightning cracked against the blackness.
Carl startled and dropped the knife.
Maybe he was scared of the Gods? The thunder rumbled. Three miles away. I’d counted the seconds from flash to sound.
Then there was calm.
In the stillness, Carl flicked the lighter with trembling hands, and caught one of the matches on fire. He tossed it onto the pile and it hit one of the larger logs soaked in so much gasoline it glistened. The match bounced once, then sputtered out as it landed in the puddle of fuel.
Carl skipped the science class about flammability.
I bit back my suggestion that he hold the next match in the fumes.
Another spear of lightning forked across the sky. The air erupted with a loud crack.
In the flash, I saw a creature rise up behind Carl’s truck.
My heart beat faster. I knew that form. I knew that war braid. But Bear was in berserker mode and not the man I bedded. His eyes were streaked with black mud, and when he smiled, the flare of his capped canines flashed in the night.
He moved quickly, running with stealth and speed, knocking Carl from the pile and rolling with him. In the motion, Bear pulled a knife. But Carl managed to knock his aim off, and the blade hit a rock.
Carl grabbed another rock from the ground and slammed it against the side of Bear’s head. Blood trickled down his face as they wrestled. They rolled out of view, and I tried to twist to see them but only managed to get a glimpse of Carl on top before my body swung back to stare at his truck.
The noise of battle was drowned out by the rising storm. Bolt after bolt of lightning flashed overhead making my hair rise. The wind picked up again and this time blew in straight across the hill and cold. Shivering, I tried to scale the post, aiming to free my bound hands from the pulley connected to it. My feet slipped against the slippery wood and I hung in place, staring at the metal cap at the top of the pole.
Almost directly overhead, the roiling clouds lit up and there was a flash that blinded my good eye. Pain seared around my wrists, then drove deeper as I fell from the post onto the piled wood. A spark dropped into the mess and caught. I scrambled forward, searching for the safety of the grass and ended up tumbling off the stack and rolling onto my back, stunned senseless.
I could barely see, the aftermath of the flare making the center of my vision a bright orange blob. But out of the corner of my bad eye, something glinted. I reached for the object and wrapped my fingers around my athame. With it in hand, I crawled away from the wood pile, but was tripped by my hair. I flung the mass over my back and managed another two feet before someone yanked on it hard.
Carl had a hank of it wrapped around his fist and used it to drag me back toward the wood pile that was now ablaze. I leaned away, trying to escape my fate, and realized that I had salvation literally in my hand.
Using my body weight to pull my hair taut, I cut across it with the knife. The blade was so sharp it swept through the strands cleanly.
I landed on my ass, and Carl fell forward into the fire.
Bear rose up from the shadows and pushed Carl back in when he tried to stumble out.
Against the backdrop of flames, Carl laughed and pushed to his feet. “You think you won?” He turned to me and taunted, “Say goodbye to Beth.”
