The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [93]
Emer took control of me. “If it wasn’t for the daylight, I’d kill you right here and eat your eyes for breakfast!” I screamed, stuffing the capes into a bag.
“Ah yes, my eye. Bad manners, entirely! But wasn’t I able to kill you, despite that? Just after I killed your little cabin boy? Honestly,” he said, twirling the knife around his wrist, “I never thought you’d be stupid enough to come here!”
“I want what’s mine.” I tossed the second empty crate to the side. “I want my life back!”
“Isn’t that what you have? Isn’t this your pathetic little life?” He splayed his arms to accentuate my situation. “And didn’t I leave you enough to be happy about? Those stupid cloaks. You used to prance around like you were some enormous hero. Like you were in charge!”
“I was in charge.”
“Not when I had you, you weren’t.”
I stared at him so hard that I bored a hole through his skull. I didn’t know what to say, but Emer moved my mouth. “You never had me, asshole.” I snatched my father’s army shovel from the ground and climbed out of the hole, ready to beat him to death.
He faced me.
“Is dat you, Fred?” someone called from the road.
Neither of us had heard a car stop, but now a taxi sat there, revving, and a plumpish Jamaican man stood there, the rising sun behind him, peering into the trees. We both froze. Every Saffron-atom in my body said, Run. And every Emer-atom wanted to kill both of them before they killed me. But once I thought about it, it didn’t seem worth it. Everything was spent. The whole crazy thing was over. All that time, I’d been calling on Emer to give me courage, and now that she’d finally come to help, I had to make her go away again. I didn’t want to kill anyone. I just wanted what was mine. And now I knew—there was nothing. The only thing left to do was get out of there before Fred Livingstone did something crazy.
As I moved away, Fred limped after me. “Just where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going home,” I said.
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Aren’t you going to fight?”
“No.” What could he give me, anyway? He couldn’t give me what he once took away.
“Fred?” the Jamaican called, now standing at the door of the condo, looking into the tree line. “You in dere?”
“Oh damn,” Fred muttered. He seemed suddenly distracted and confused, like part of him wanted to crawl back into bed.
He pointed the knife at me. “You can’t just walk away!”
I shrugged and took a step toward the road.
Fred Livingstone was not used to being blown off.
“I’ll kill you!” he yelled and came at me, aiming the knife for my chest. I dropped the bag of capes and swung my dad’s shovel at his head like a baseball bat. I hit him square in the ear, knocking him off his feet.
Next thing I knew he was falling, head-first, right for me. I leapt out of the way and let him fall into the hole. He landed awkwardly, on one of the crates, and the knife tumbled out of his hand into the dirt. My bag fell in after him, and landed to his left. He was passed out and floppy like he’d broken his neck. Sand sprinkled onto his head from the steep side of the hole, and blood trickled from a deep cut on his balding forehead.
“Fred, mon! No games, yanno. You dere?”
I panicked and didn’t know what to do, so I jumped into the hole with him. When I peeked out, I saw the Jamaican creeping slowly toward me, holding the jumpy Doberman by his collar. Who was this guy? History couldn’t really repeat itself, could it?
“No kidding, Fred,” he said. “I need some cash for de taxi man.”
The taxi honked. I was paralyzed, so Emer took over. She moved my legs toward Fred and bent my body over him. She made me reach down toward the stuffed bag, and that was when I smelled his breath. It was the same. The same breath from the cave on Tortuga, and from the Bahaman prison, and from right there on that cursed beach, the night Emer died.
On the dirt, just inches in front of me, was his knife. To my right was the bag, stuffed full of capes. I looked at the knife, then at Fred, and then at the bag. And even though I knew Emer would want