“I'm here ta negotiate a cease-fire, o' sorts.”
My eyebrows lift themselves at his brazen supposition, and I can't quite stifle the sarcastic, bitter laugh that results. “That's a rich joke, Jester. You have no grounds on which to negotiate, and no validity on which to stand. Are you going to sing and dance for us next?”
He can't quite keep the leer from his lips, and I believe that somewhere in the most twisted part of his mind, he is enjoying the show even if he believes he might die. I can feel the tension ricochet among the boys behind me. They're just as unsure as the parasite before me of how I will react, almost as unsure as I am myself.
Derrik swallows thickly, says, “I'm here with terms from one Gram Marg -”
His voice chokes in his throat as the end of my gun presses against his lips. The laughter dies from the world as that name began to roll from his snake's tongue. My temper is nowhere nearly as sedate as Freddy's.
Derrik tries to play it cool, but I can see terror in the muddy brown of his eyes. Maybe he can see the muscles of my arm pull and harden under the weight of the gun. Maybe he can see the flash of red in my mind at the drop of that name, the name to which I wholly attribute the death of my brother. I find my finger pulling without thought. It takes every ounce of my resolve to stop myself, just before the mechanism explodes. My cheeks burn hot as molten lava.
“That's a very bad word in these parts,” I purr to keep the growl from surfacing.
He won't dare speak now. I'm fairly sure he isn't breathing either. I'd love to watch him suffocate on Charlie's gun barrel. The pressure I'm exerting against his lips must be making his teeth hurt.
I hope it really does.
Frederick is at the edge of my vision, weapon ready to lock onto anything that might make trouble. I can see his left arm stretched before him, as tense as mine. It's trained on Derrik, but his eyes come to me, calculating my collectivity. He too has seen the ways my anger flashes, and he knows that I'm almost across the line of caution. His attention is like heated Spanish whispers, like the night we got too drunk on dark beer and wrestled in the warm summer mud. It's my audacity, my madness that he loves in me.
I bridge the space that separates Derrik from me, push up close until I can smell the cloves on his breath, and look up into his eyes under the brim of his hat. I'm so close that his hands almost touch me, so that he draws them back as if a touch will burn him. Maybe he's right.
I say, “I think you should leave, and if you're smart, you will sink back into the swamp you crawled from and stay out of this.”
He takes a tiny step backward, just so he can speak around the barrel of my brother's Smith and Wesson. The smile is gone from his lips now.
“Without even hearin' me out? You kids are so green. You'd be a fool not to listen, little girl.”
“There can be no cease-fire. This is war, you piece of shit,” I snap.
“What would you know of war?” asks the Jester in a tone so acidic it leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.
Silence drops upon me. My fury is rampant, contagious. It stings my nose, makes my skin thrill. My finger begs to twitch as my thoughts pit into chaos. I hear a chair scrape the floor behind me, hear movement.
“Maria, wait!” says Joshua, a voice of reason calling from somewhere in outer space, somewhere far removed from the center of the storm. His plea is like a stab of doubt in my back. It stays my hand, but it misses its true mark.
He's right, how rude of me.
“Frederick,” I whisper to keep my voice from shaking.
My guard sidesteps to me, moving with strained grace to my side, asking what I need from him without a single spoken word. Our arms extend beside each other, our shoulders almost touching.
“Gram has sent us his right hand to do his dirty work. Let's send his messenger back without his, shall we?”
Dark eyes widen. Derrik takes another step back, snakeskin boots scuffing the floor. He wants to speak, to defend himself, but I've given him no room to think I'm afraid to act. Freddy doesn't answer, only snickers once, quietly. His arm barely moves as his target changes slightly from Derrik's face to his now-trembling, raised right hand. I can feel rather than see the grin tugging at the right side of Freddy's mouth.
“Freddy, don't!” cries Joshua.
Frederick doesn't answer and he doesn't stop. His expression never changes as he pulls the trigger. The Desert Eagle whispers a curse, and Derrik's hand explodes into a mess of blood and bone. The man howls and the glass door behind him shatters beneath the shade that's drawn over it. Nobody else moves.
I can hear Noah curse outside, hear another voice doing the same. Derrik collapses to his knees in a screaming pile, the big bad wolf reduced to sniveling dog. My stomach lurches. There's blood on my face and tequila rebelling against my stomach. I let my disgust show, aim it down at the bleeding leech.
“That's how much I fucking care what Gram has to say,” I tell him, somehow defeating the sick feeling for the sake of the moment.
Tears are running
