doors and thick chain; when he turned, hands up and open, they slammed him into the door and drove him down. He shook the big chain once before they peeled his fingers loose and flipped him on his back. Then it was laughter and warm spit, the smell of rubber as a shoe crushed his nose and brought the bright, hot blood.
“Don’t mark him this time.” A faceless voice above dirty jeans. “Not his face.”
Julian screamed. “Michael!”
“Your brother’s not here to save you, you little freak.”
Julian knew the voice. “Hennessey. Wait…”
But Hennessey didn’t wait. He bent low, copper hair dull in the empty light, his eyes narrow and dark as he curled his fingers into Julian’s hair and pushed down, grinding the smaller boy’s skull into the concrete, twisting so that his left cheek came next, pressed flat on the filthy floor. “Say it.”
His mouth forced hot air into the tunnel of Julian’s ear. Julian rolled his eyes, saw the flush in Hennessey’s skin, the wisps of pale hair on his lip, the crazy, unforgiving eyes. “No.”
Hennessey pushed closer, his lips touching Julian’s ear, the whiskers as light and fine as a spider’s silk. “Say it.”
“Please…”
“Hennessey is the king of Iron House.” Julian started to cry, but that only made Hennessey push harder. He leaned in until skin tore from Julian’s cheek. “Hennessey is the king. Not Michael. Say it. Hennessey is the king of Iron House. Michael is a pussy-”
“No.”
“Michael is a pussy. Say it.”
“Please…”
“What?” Hennessey thumped Julian’s head on the floor, then stood. “Please, what?” They loomed over Julian, all five of them. A smile touched Hennessey’s lips and the same mad light filled his eyes. “Please what, motherfucker?”
“Please, wait.”
But they ignored him. Hennessey laughed once, said, “Boys.” And they went to work with their feet. They kicked until Julian stopped moving, then leaned close and told him what they were going to do. Julian curled tight but it was useless. Hands found his legs, his hair. They pulled until cold air knifed his skin, then threw him naked through the window. He landed in a drift of snow, on his back beneath a metal plaque bolted to the stone wall. Snow obscured the letters on the plaque, but he knew the words.
Laughter came from beyond the window, pale faces pressed against the glass, then gone. Julian touched his gushing nose and saw finger-paint snow on his nails. He spit blood into the drift, and when he tried to pull himself up his hand brushed something sharp and hard, an old knife, lost in the snow. He tilted it and saw a wooden handle, half-rotted, and eight inches of rusted metal. He touched the flat edge to his cheek, then squeezed the handle until his fingers ached. “Michael,” he wept.
But his brother never came.
Julian looked at the sky, the pinpricks of white.
Snow like tears.
Falling.
The limousine crept up a mountain road edged with slush and broken asphalt. Road grit feathered the car’s paint, a rough film thrown up by tires that had no business on a black-ice road four thousand feet up in the North Carolina mountains. The air outside was cold, the light flat. Nothing else moved on the mountain, no traffic or blown leaves, just a heavy, wet powder that sifted from the low sky. The woman in the backseat never looked at the drop-offs, the vast open spaces where the earth simply vanished. She closed her eyes until the car plunged back under the trees and the vertigo left her, then she stared out at the forest, at the snow that lay between the naked trunks. She lit a cigarette, and the driver’s eyes rose in the mirror.
“I’m not smoking again,” she said.
His eyes flicked away. “Of course not.”
“It’s just today.”
“Of course.” His hair remained military short, but she noticed that it was starting to gray. Creases cut the back of his neck, and against his black jacket, the collar of his shirt shone whiter than the snow. She twisted her wedding ring and pulled smoke into lungs that burned. They’d been an hour out of Charlotte when the first flake fell. The driver had twice suggested they turn back, but she had refused each time. Today is the day, she’d said. Now, here they were, alone on the edge of the world.
The driver watched his passenger for a long second. She had translucent skin and green eyes, golden hair that curled at the tops of her shoulders. She was barely twenty-five years old, young for such wealth and power.
“We’re going to be late,” she said.
“They’ll wait for you.”
“Yes.” She lit another cigarette. “I suppose they will.”
Snow thickened as the car moved over and around the folds of silent rock. Cigarettes appeared, turned to ash, and she thought of why she was here, high in the frozen mountains. She thought of why she had come. “Stop the car.” She rocked forward in her seat, pressed a palm into her stomach. The driver hesitated. “Stop the car.”
The driver slowed and stopped. She swung the heavy door into the falling snow and stepped out, her expensive shoes ruined by slush and salt. Three steps carried her to the edge of the woods, where she bent at the waist.
“Ma’am? Are you okay?”
Snow beaded her hair, her fine silk blouse; when she finally stood, she smoothed the back of one hand across her cheek. The cold air felt clean on her skin, and the nausea passed. She turned and found her driver standing by the front of the car, one hand on the hot metal. He nodded. “It’s a big day,” he said, as if he understood.
“Yes.”
“I would be nervous, too.”
She allowed his misperception to stand.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She looked at the wet linen sky, the skeleton trees with crooked arms and a million twisted fingers. “It’s so still,” she said.
“Let me get your door.”
“So cold.”
It was after four when the limousine began its slow descent. The road wound into a narrow valley, the town at its center a knot of low buildings. Abigail Vane did not claim to know the place, but she knew what it would look like: properties in decline, bars with vinyl stools and people in cracked skin. There would be a gas station at each end of Main Street, a drugstore near the middle. It was a small town, a blink of light on the dark edge of the mountains, and she knew that in a half-day’s drive there were a hundred others just like it. North Carolina. Tennessee. Georgia. Small towns, and people who dreamed of other places. The car edged onto Main Street and she watched the bar fronts, the rough men with bent necks. “Soon?” she asked.
“Yes.”
The road narrowed on the other side of town, and the driver turned right onto a barely plowed
