But not Shaun. Shaun was not something he could fight for. He couldn’t even pretend.
“Alex,” he said. He’d stopped moving, stopped the dance, let his hands hang loose at his sides. He swallowed hard. “I loved Shaun.”
A childish snicker went through the crowd. They all were wound up tight as tops and wanted violence like they’d paid for it at the gate, but Ré ignored them. “Shaun was family,” he said. “I never in my life thought I’d hurt him.”
“Tell that to his fucking nan,” Alex snarled, whipped up, still dancing. “Tell it to his fucking mother. Tell it to the brothers here tonight.”
But Ré couldn’t honestly say it to anyone. He knew deep down that he’d meant to kill Shaun. It was all over his dreams like bloody fingerprints, those fucking deer stalking him, filling him with evil. The fucking Windigo. Réal saw Shaun’s torn belly, popped open like a bag of rotten noodles. He knew what he was. He knew what he’d done, even if all memory of it was gone.
“Tell it to his damn girlfriend,” Alex said, and Ré’s eyes went wide. No! She’s not still here, is she? Unsteady, ethereal, other-planet Evie. Sweet, forgiving Evie. No, no, no. He searched the dark, desperate. He turned, hoping not to find her, but there she was behind him, all Venus-eyed.
“Ev…” Ré whimpered, thinking, Why TF didn’t you go with Sunny, girl?
Then he heard her little voice in his head. I could love you, if you asked me to. And he wanted so bad to ask her now—right now—before he had to tell her everything else. Before the terrible truth was out.
But that would be cheating. Stealing the prize.
“Go on, Dufresne,” Alex taunted. “Tell her what you did. Tell us all what you did to your so-called brother.”
He sunk to his knees at Evie’s feet. The words choked in his throat. They clicked, unsaid, as he stared at the ground, reeling with all of his demons. He couldn’t breathe. His hands balled into fists. Tears spilled from his eyes. He whispered.
“What was that, Dufresne?” Alex called out like a sideshow barker, like a man in a top hat.
Ré closed his eyes. Warm tears snaked down his neck into the collar of his shirt. “I ate him,” he confessed, the words like chunks of flesh on his lips. Like stringy red arrows pointing to his guilty heart. “I killed him, and I ate him.”
32
R
“You what?” Alex shrieked.
Réal slumped farther down on his folded knees, ruined, destroyed. Sick, psycho, fiend.
“You fucking what?” Alex bleated again. “Holy mother of God.” He stumbled back, hands fisted in his hair, eyes wide and white, flashing firelight. He breathed like a broken bellows. This was clearly not the answer he’d expected, not at all the one he’d been teasing out for the crowd.
But there it was. Out loud. At last.
Ré could feel the crowd changing around him, the mood shifting. They stepped back, confused, frightened, knocking into each other, voices hissing and scared. Alex looked to the big biker for direction, but the guy just stood there with his mouth open, his meaty hands at his sides.
Réal was not the sacrificial ox they’d wanted—some poor, dumb creature Alex had dragged out here to destroy. They’d asked for an animal. Ré had given them a monster—he’d given them the goddamn devil.
He could feel the ring widening, could hear people stumbling to get away. Car doors slammed, engines growled. He closed his eyes. He imagined he could hear her feet stepping away too. The sound of losing everything.
Feared, hated.
Just like Black Chuck.
Ré’s picture next to Chuck’s in the family book. Aunties telling his story to little boys who’d wet their beds, claw bloody any arms that tried to hold them.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, small and warm. He shivered like it was electric, opened his eyes and looked up. Evie stood before him, Venus blues, lips pulled in a frown. She was dripping water everywhere, and for one tiny moment all he felt was love and worry. “Why are you all wet?” he whispered.
And then the air left his lungs as he was kicked to the ground.
Alex stood behind him, cracking like lightning. “Get up, you psycho!” he screamed.
Pain lanced through his shoulders, down his spine. Evie scattered to the side. He sucked for air, tried to push up, but Alex was on him again, heavy boots striking his kidneys, neck and arms. He crawled on knees and elbows, coughing.
Alex kicked his ribs hard, knocking him sideways. “Get up!” he screeched.
Réal obeyed. He staggered to his feet, stumbling sideways, gasping for air. He cradled his shattered ribs under one hand. The other was held out for balance, defense, but it found neither.
Alex swung at his jaw, and Ré spun like a puppet, spitting blood into the cheering crowd.
There was no fighting back. Alex was on him too quick. The blows fell like bombs, lit fireworks in the air between them. When he fell, the crowd only dragged him back up, violence drawing them back to the circle. Through his bloody eye, Ré could see Satan’s Own standing among them, looking grim. There was no escape, even if he’d wanted one.
Sparks lit out from the blows to his head. Constellations. One eye had swelled almost shut. He blinked blood from the other, tasted the tang of a cut lip swelling fast. Each breath filled his lungs with broken sticks. And the crowd howled at each strike like a piano split with an axe.
He could feel his body giving up.
He wasn’t fighting it.
He was going to die.
This must have been what Shaun had felt that night, Ré coming at him in the dark. Pain squeezed Ré’s heart, but it wasn’t from fists or boots. He fell again to his knees, blood roping down from his open mouth, his hands limp at his sides. He was ready.
“Stop!” someone cried.
She pushed between
