It happened Christmas Day.
It was the same Christmas Day that was captured in that goddamn photograph—people all eggnog and smiles, never seeing that the moon was tumbling from the sky; unaware that the sun had gone black and the earth itself trembled under their feet, hungry to devour them. I guess that’s how people made it through life . . . by the God-given grace of ignorance. If you knew what was coming, I had my doubts you’d stick around this vale of tears to experience it firsthand.
If ignorance is bliss, I was the happiest dumb fuck around that day.
Christmas for a kid was always the best day of the year. It was even better than Halloween. Yeah, okay, Halloween did have costumes and pounds of tooth-rotting candy, but at fourteen, I’d been far too old for that; not that Lukas and I’d ever had much of an opportunity for trick-or-treating. Our home, the one we’d lived in all our lives, wasn’t the kind that rubbed shoulders with its stuccoed neighbors. The nearest house to us was at least a half mile away. You could say we lived in a gated community, only the gate started at our driveway. There was a modest wall of crushed coquina shell that while nearly indestructible was easily scaled. How’d I know? I’d done it many a night, just for the hell of it. I’d also gotten my ass busted each time I was caught. The true security lay in the most up-to-date system on the market—two German shepherds and a few rotating “friends” of my father’s. He had a lot of friends, Anatoly. All that wasn’t as easy to get around as the wall. No, not easy.
But not impossible.
We’d spent most of the day with the new horses, riding them inside the walls, which was a good ten or twelve acres. It sounded like quite a bit when you said it, but on horseback it may as well have been the corral at a pony ride. We wanted to run flat out, gallop as long as the horses would go. We wanted to hit the beach and kick up clouds of sand and water. It wasn’t an extraordinary request. I was good on a horse, thanks to lessons, and Lukas may as well have been born on one. He was a throwback to our Steppe days, our father liked to say; our own little Cossack. On most days the Cossack and I would’ve gotten our way.
That day was the exception. Anatoly’s annual Christmas party was in full swing before noon and would most likely last until past midnight. People would come and go all day. Thoroughly vetted at the front gate, they’d wine, dine, and suck up to the almighty Korsak with all the lip-smacking capability in them.
With the festivities, no one had the time to take us out and keep an eye on us—as if we needed that. It was the typical sneering complaint of the average teenager. And for all that went on in my father’s business, I was still as average as they came. Unforgivably stupid would be another label that fit to a T. Life can be like that, for an adult or a kid. You look away from the road for one moment, one reckless, idiotic moment, and your car is careening directly into Hell. It could be that you go over a cliff or ram a school bus full of children. It might even be convincing your little brother that sneaking your horses out of the back gate for a ride is the best idea since peanut butter and
The wall hadn’t been much of a challenge for me, and it wasn’t one at all for the horses. They sailed over it, flowing smoothly as a quicksilver shot of mercury. We’d gone to the far back wall and escaped unnoticed. It was an innate skill. Lock a punk-ass teenager in Fort Knox and given enough time he’d find his way out to the nearest trouble. It was what we were bred for.
“Just like Zorro,” Lukas had said, beaming, his hands entangled in mane.
For my little brother, however, it wasn’t sneaking around. It wasn’t breaking the rules. It was an adventure of two heroes, no more and no less.
We rode bareback, and as I pulled a ferocious mock scowl at Lukas, I felt the warm liquid glide of horse muscle beneath me. “If you’re Zorro, then who am I?”
“My loyal sidekick,” he said solemnly. Our mounts, Annie, the sorrel mare and Harry, the big bay gelding, moved over dry ground and stubby grass toward the path that led down to the beach.
“Okay, I see where this is going.” Narrowing my eyes, I nudged Harry’s sides and propelled him into a trot. “So, if you’re Robin Hood, I’m . . .”
“Little John,” he finished with delight, urging Anna after us.
Counting myself lucky he hadn’t said Maid Marian, I continued the game. “Butch?”
“Sundance!”
“Batman?”
“Robin!” he crowed, laughing at the image of me in green tights.
I couldn’t decide whether to howl in outrage or laugh. I laughed. It was an easier choice to make then—far easier. “No more old reruns for you, Lukasha.” And then we were on the trail and rocketing down it to the beach at a pace that would’ve turned any adult’s hair white instantly. When we hit the bottom we were at a full gallop. Sand plumed in the air and burned pale gold in the December sun. Salt stung our nostrils as we sent Anna and Harry into the water, but it was a good sting. It was the kind that let you know you were alive and made memories that refused to fade. Until the day I died, the smell of the ocean would always be intrinsically linked with the scent of horse. As much as the rest of that memory sucked, the beginning of it I still cherished. It had been the last perfect moment in my life—the last instant I hadn’t been one of the walking wounded. It was the last time I’d been whole.
“Slowpoke,” Lukas called over his shoulder as he raced his mare along the shore to leave me in the proverbial dust.
I let him go, not realizing just how true that was. I let Lukas go, never knowing how permanent a surrender it was. Directing my mount deeper into the water, I hissed at the chill that soaked through my jeans. Harry snorted at the sensation, tossed his head, but kept going. I would chase after Lukas later. After all, we had all day, right? Child that I was, I believed that . . . right up until I heard the first gunshot.
It was the first I’d ever heard. And although I’d heard a few since, the sound would never rip through me like the first. It couldn’t. The bullet didn’t hit me. It wasn’t even aimed at me, but it staggered my heart as if the lead had plowed through it dead center. When I saw Annie fall, I started to suspect that it might as well have. And when Lukas tumbled onto an outcropping of rock, I wished it had. I wished the blood staining my brother’s pale hair were pumping from my chest instead.
I don’t remember how, but I managed to get the gelding out of the water and gallop him down the beach. I was in the water and then I was almost to Lukas, limp on his back, with no passing of time between. I was close enough to see his hand lying half on sand, half on rock. It was turned palm upward, the fingers curling slightly, unmoving; a piece of flotsam washed in with the tide, lifeless and still. As the next shot took Harry between his intelligent, dark eyes, Lukas’s hand was the sight I carried with me.
I wasn’t knocked out, although I may as well have been. Harry took me down as quickly and thoroughly as any tidal wave. The fall crushed the air from my lungs and for several agonizing minutes all I saw and all I breathed in was blackness. Blind and deaf, I struggled against the vise locked around my chest. When the darkness finally parted, I blinked up at an intense blue sky. Not a cloud . . . not one. It was beautiful. The sun was warm and heavy on my legs; so damn heavy. I reached down and felt it under my hand. It was soft, silky, and tickled my skin with the caress of butterfly wings. I frowned. It wasn’t the sun. Warm, yes, but it wasn’t the sun.
Harry.
Pulling ragged gasps of air into aching lungs, I pushed up on my elbows. Ominously motionless, the gelding lay across my legs, pinning me to the ground. In my life less than half a day, Harry had now moved on. Reaching over to pull myself up with handfuls of glossy bay fur, I saw someone else moving on as well.
The man had his back to me. All I could see was short dark hair, a black Windbreaker, and a gun tucked in the back waistband of the man’s jeans. He didn’t look at me, not once—not even when I began yelling at him, when I screamed for help; when I screamed for my daddy in a way I hadn’t since I was a baby. The shooter ignored it all. Stooping, he scooped Lukas up in his arms and began walking away. Thin arms and dangling legs, my brother was the puppet turned into a real live boy, only this time it was the other way around. I screamed until my voice was gone, but the sound of crashing waves and screeching gulls was my only answer. The house was too far, the party too loud. I clawed uselessly at the sand, trying to dig my way out from under the horse.
When the man disappeared up the trail with Lukas, I was left with nothing but a throat torn to silence, a jaggedly bloody slice along my jaw, hands scraped raw, and a burden of guilt far heavier than the dead horse across my legs.
There were times, even ten years later, when I woke up in the middle of the night and still felt Harry weighting the lower half of my body down against the mattress. Tonight was one of those. Considering the news
