Shadow Train (5 page)

An elbow fell heavily on his stomach and vomit gushed into his mouth. Choking on it, he rolled onto his side to spit, then Rick's fist blasted into his temple, sending his head clacking off the pavement. His tongue slipped across his teeth, finding their edges no longer smooth and uniform, but broken and jagged. Two more blows hit him in the ribs, sending starbursts of pain through his chest and abdomen. Every shallow breath he took sent a sizzling lance of pain through his chest.

The world was spinning violently, and he couldn't see anything—but whether it was because there was blood in his eyes or because he'd somehow gone blind, he didn't know. His hands groped above his head, and he felt what had to be the edge of a Dumpster. He pushed with his legs, trying to clamber behind it, but the blows kept coming with mechanical precision, one after another after another. Someone was shouting. Someone was cursing. He was wet—with blood? Maybe urine? He didn't know. There was no order to the spin of his mind. He thought once more of Myka, standing in the doorway of the restaurant. His last thought was of the Valentine's Day card he was going to give her. It was in his jacket pocket, and he hoped it wasn't crumpled.

Another firework shimmered above, like an explosion of stardust. As it faded, Emory's mind surrendered to darkness.

Chapter 3

When Bran pulled into the parking lot
behind Rosa's Trattoria, he didn't see Rick at first. He got out of his car and walked across the parking lot and the darkened alley at his normal ambling pace, occasionally glancing up at the fireworks. July Fourth had always been his favorite holiday as a kid, and even though he would never admit it to Rick or any of his other macho friends, he loved watching the beautiful colors tracing across the sky.

He was almost to the back door of the Starlite when he heard the sound: a rhythmic thumping, like someone dribbling a basketball, with a few grunts and curses mixed in. His heart rate quickened, and he jogged toward the sound. There was movement in the shadow of a big green Dumpster and he hurried toward it, but the sight he witnessed there made him freeze.

It was Rick, and he was kneeling over someone. There was so much blood the guy's face was unrecognizable, but whoever it was made no effort to defend himself. He just lay there, completely limp, no more animate than a pile of dirty laundry.

For a second Bran felt like his brain had come untethered from his body and he watched, frozen with a bizarre sense of horrified detachment, as Rick cocked his fist back and brought it down once more on the distorted, unrecognizable face beneath him.

Then Bran was moving, grabbing Rick from behind, yanking him hard enough to haul his much bigger frame halfway across the alley in one mighty heave. He was talking, too, though he didn't remember when he'd started to speak: “Rick! What the hell are you doing? Stop! Stop! What did you do?”

Rick thrashed, but Bran was so juiced with adrenaline that it took Rick a moment to shake free of his grasp.

“Get off me!” Rick shouted. “That little Flats bitch had it coming, all right, for screwing around in my father's business.”

Bran stared down at the figure on the ground. That was one of the Flatliners? The face was so bloody and broken he couldn't tell which one it was.

His body shivered violently, and for a second he thought he was going to throw up. Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out his cell phone.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rick demanded.

“Calling an ambulance—what do you think?” Bran shouted.

Rick grabbed him and started dragging him away.

“Let go of me, Rick!”

By now, Rick had hauled Bran into the dimly lit parking lot between his SUV and a big delivery van. Sheltered from prying eyes, he grabbed the front of Bran's shirt and jerked him like a rag doll, so hard that his cell phone fell out of his hand.

“You listen to me, Bran. Listen carefully. You are part of this. Do you understand me?”

“We have to call, man. We don't, and he's going to die!”

“And what does that make you, tough guy? An accessory. Think about it. We have to get out of here.”

Bran was shaking his head.

“Yes,” Rick snarled. “We're getting out of here.”

“No—Rick! We can't leave him like this! What's wrong with you?”

Rick jerked Bran again, so hard his teeth clacked together.

“You want to sell me out, Bran? You sure about that? You want your dad to lose his job? You want your parents to get tossed out of their house like a lousy Flats rat? And they'll lose their son, too, because I'll make damn sure everyone knows you helped me do it. Who do you think the police will believe? Jack Banfield's son—or you?”

Bran felt a tide of remorse and desperation like he'd never felt in his life. He suddenly realized that he hated Rick, that he'd always hated him. Why had he ever been friends with this guy in the first place? Just because he could throw a football? Because he hung out with all the hot cheerleaders? At that moment, Bran would have given anything in the world for a button he could press to rewind his life, so he could do it all again and never talk to Rick Banfield. What would it matter if he never played football, or if he wasn't popular? But there was no magical rewind button; it was too late.

And Rick was right. What good would it do anyone for Bran to end up in jail? For his father to lose his life's work? The kid was already hurt—nothing was going to change that.

“Listen. Spike Ferrington is having a training intensive in Topeka this weekend,” Rick said. “We're going down there until Monday when all this has blown over. Now, we're going to stop by your house and drop your car off. I'll follow you, then you get in with me and we roll to Topeka. Got it?”

Spike was Rick's mixed martial arts instructor, Bran knew. He was one of the best in the state.

“Sure,” Bran said, so quietly he could barely hear himself. “But what about school tomorrow?”

“Don't worry—my dad will work it out. Now go!”

As he pulled out of the parking lot, Bran looked back and saw the restaurant door opening, casting a puddle of warm yellow light across the concrete. Even from inside the car, he could hear the scream of whoever it was that discovered the kid Rick had brutalized. And he felt a measure of relief. It would be okay. Whoever it was would call an ambulance.

After they left his car in his driveway, parked next to his mom's little Smart Car, Bran jogged over to Rick's SUV and climbed into the passenger seat.

Rick, behind the wheel, was looking down at himself. “Dammit—would you look at this? I got blood on my brand-new shirt. Typical . . .” he grumbled.

“Who was it?” Bran asked.

“Who was what?” Rick seemed perfectly calm now—relaxed, even.

“The kid in the alley.”

“Oh—it was that fairy Emory. Look, man—it had to be done. He was messing up my dad's business in the Flats. Somebody had to teach him a lesson.”

Bran stared at the dashboard. In the sky above them, one final firework ignited, its fast-fading glow drizzling across the windshield before disappearing again into darkness.

The worst part, Bran thought, was that he didn't even know which Flatliner was Emory. As much as he'd hated the rival gang members and wanted to hurt them and blamed them for his and his friends' problems, the sad fact was that he didn't know them at all.

* * *

Clarisse hurried up the alley as fast as she could without breaking into a run.

After leaving Rick, she had doubled back to sit on the curb outside the parking lot, out of the reach of streetlights, and watch the door to Rick's little upstairs lair. She knew they weren't exclusive but somehow knowing it made her feel even more possessive, and she'd decided to spy on him to see if that conceited cheerleader Maggie was going to show up. The thought of catching Rick in a lie gave her a painful satisfaction, she thought, like when you wiggle a loose tooth with your tongue: even though it hurts and you can taste your own blood, somehow it's impossible to stop.

When she had first started following Rick, if someone had asked her what the attraction was, she wouldn't have been able to tell them. Sure, she'd always had a thing for bad boys—her fling with that drug dealer back home after Nass had moved to Middleburg proved that. Her relationship with Oscar Salazar had been sick—so sick that she'd scammed him out of a ton of money and had to flee Los Angeles in fear for her life. But never, even during her thing with Oscar, had she obsessed over a guy like she was doing with Rick.

It wasn't just because he was hot or rich or because he was a football star. She liked those things, but they didn't fascinate her. Rick had a certain indefinable primitive power about him, like some kind of exotic jungle beast. She liked the way he just grabbed her when he was in the mood to make out, without bothering to see if she was up for it. That, she just thought of as taking charge (which she really liked in a guy), but there was something more, something deeper in him that she was trying to discover. It was like . . . a kind of dark, uncontrollable energy bordering on violence that was always on the edge of erupting. And if she could discover what drove Rick, what gave him the brute strength that was somehow connected to the darkness, she might be able to control him.

She had been sitting there on the curb, in the shadows, thinking about all this when Emory, Myka, and Haylee had emerged from the car. She'd seen Rick come out of the doorway. She'd inched silently forward behind a row of hedges that formed one border of the parking lot, and from the hidden shelter of their boughs she'd watched what Rick had done to Emory. In the fleeting glare of the fireworks, she'd even caught a glimpse of the same thing she'd seen the night of the big fight on the tracks when she thought she'd lost her mind. The thing she watched for every time they made out, and both hoped and dreaded to see:
Rick's face transformed into that of a snarling demon.

That night, the sight had filled her with fascination that had quickly turned into lust, even though she had been sure she had imagined it. But tonight, she knew it was real. Maybe she should have felt revulsion after witnessing the beating he gave Emory, but her fascination with and desire for Rick hadn't diminished at all. The truth was, it had increased tenfold.

After Rick and Bran took off, she lingered long enough to see Myka emerge from the back door of the restaurant. She heard Myka's scream, and she saw her push Emory's little sister back inside. She'd heard Myka's words coming out in sobs as she called the ambulance. Then, as stealthily as possible, Clarisse split. If growing up streetwise in one of the worst neighborhoods in L.A. had taught her anything, it was the skill of selective amnesia. It was not a good thing to be the only witness to a crime, especially when the perpetrator was rich and well connected.
No,
she told herself,
she hadn't seen anything. If the cops ever found out she'd been with Rick that night, she'd make sure they knew she'd left Rick and headed straight home, and that she was blocks away when the fight had happened.

It wouldn't be as easy to manage Rick as it was to manipulate Nass, she thought as she cut up the next side street toward the brightness and relative bustle of Middleburg's main thoroughfare. She'd fallen for Rick because she thought he was dangerous. She was a little afraid of him, and the fear was delicious—and there could be a great advantage to having a demon for a boyfriend. If her plan worked out, all her problems with Oscar and his drug-dealing crew back in South Central would be solved—permanently.

* * *

The sound of the scream jerked Maggie out of her meditation and caused her eyes to snap open.

Just a few months ago, the idea that she would be happy sitting at home alone and meditating on Valentine's Day night would have been completely inconceivable. But tonight, that's just what she'd done. She had taken a bath, caught up on her homework, read a book for a while, watched some stupid videos online, texted back and forth to some of her friends to check up on their night, and then settled in for her daily meditation, just as Lily Rose and
The Good Book
had instructed her to do. The book the old woman had given Maggie not long after homecoming, when she'd felt so lost and confused, did give her comfort and guidance even though she didn't quite understand how it worked. At first, she'd thought it was a Bible, but when she'd opened it she'd seen that it was something very different. Its blank pages were luminous, like clouds at night with the moon shining through them. And just when you needed an answer most, words would appear on those pages. But they hadn't yet told her what to do about Rick.

A flower-delivery guy came by earlier with his pathetic bouquet, his attempt at maintaining the charade of their relationship. Even that hadn't dampened Maggie's mood. She had no idea what had made him relax his controlling attitude toward her over the last couple of months, but whatever it was, she was grateful. He still went through the motions. Sometimes he'd force a kiss from her in the lunchroom, where she wouldn't be able to pull away without causing a scene. Sometimes he'd coerce her, with veiled threats about her mother's health, into going with him to one of his Topper dinners at Spinnacle. But more and more he left her alone, and that was fine with her.

The only boy she really wanted to spend Valentine's Day with had been vaporized on the old railroad tracks by a spectral locomotive. The memory sent a blinding howl of agony through her soul.

She didn't know where Raphael was or what had happened to him, but for some reason she held out hope that somewhere, somehow, he was still alive. She'd seen enough magic in this weird old dump of a small town that nothing would surprise her. Sometimes when she meditated she could almost feel Raphael's presence; it felt like if she just concentrated hard enough, she would be able to reach out her hand and find him there. She was having that extraordinary, heavenly feeling on Valentine's Day night when her mother's scream cut her meditation short.

Maggie galloped down the stairs and into her mother's breakfast-room-turned-art-studio in seconds.

“What, Mom? What happened?” she asked, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she saw the answer.