Cat Tats Part 5
Part Five
He was pretty sure the food or water was drugged, but not enough to put him out. Just enough to leave him sluggish and woozy. The beams holding up the roof seemed far away, shifting with shadows like bird wings; the wing-shadows lightened, changed position, and lengthened again as the day moved past. Insects swarmed around him, biting and buzzing, gnats attacking his eyes and dive-bombing his breathing passages. His mouth and nose covered by an edge of the sheet, he slept toward noon, surprisingly dreamless, or nothing worth remembering. Maybe the unconscious mind just can’t compete with a reality that makes less sense than dreams, like sitting through needle torture for hours.
Loriann had left him water, and he forced himself to drink every time he woke. Toward what he judged was mid-afternoon, the drugs wore off and the nerves in his muscles and flesh began to protest, itching and burning, tight with the futile resistance of the night before. He stood and began to stretch, trying to remember the moves his youngest sister made when she took up yoga and vegetarianism at age 13. Surprisingly, the slow stretching helped. When he could move without too much pain, he shoved an edge of his sheet between the shackle and his skin and began to walk the length of his chain. It clanked hollowly as he moved, the dust beneath him fine, almost soothing as it slid around his feet.
Moving to the length of his chain, he searched the parts of the barn he could reach. He found a rake head, the kind with five thick tines, for throwing hay. One tine was broken, but he could wrap his left fingers around the handle-base and slide his right fingers through the tines. It was a pretty good weapon against a lesser being than vampire. For her, the handle would have made a better weapon, a stake to plunge into her Isleen’s black heart. But there was no handle.
I could kill the girl though.
The thought shocked, like a bucket of icy water. He stood, unmoving, his thigh muscles trembling, his stomach cramping with hunger. The iron cool between his fingers.
A weapon. He could kill Loriann. Kill her and take her key. And go the Master of the City. He turned the rake-head over in his hands, the iron hard and deadly, rusted at the break. The tines sharp, still showing flakes of green paint between them. I could kill the girl.
The nuns had made it clear to them that all men could kill. Cain and Able, the very first sibling rivalry, and the very first murder. I could kill the girl. He worked through how he would do it. The moves he would make. Grab her. Throw her to the ground. Plunge the tines into her abdomen, just below her rib cage. The idea turned his stomach. But I could kill the girl.
He swiped experimentally at the air. It was a clumsy weapon. If he killed Loriann, Jason, her seven year old brother, would likely die before he could get to Pellissier and convince the MOC to go after one of his own. And of course, he’d have to live with himself after.
I could kill the girl.
He took the weapon and sat on the black stone, trying to use a remaining tine to pick the lock on the shackle. It was too big for the tiny keyhole, but a nail might work. Excitement buzzed through him. Horses were shod with nails.
He set the rake-head aside and dropped to his hands and knees, his fingers sifting through the fine dust. He concentrated on the area near the walls, as a good farrier would never leave a shooing nail lying in the center of the barn where it might injure the tender part of a horse’s hoof. But if one went flying, it might land in the shadows, lost. He felt his way along one wall before his fingers found something hard and slender in the dust. His heart gave a single hard thump. A nail.
But it was larger than might be used for shooing a horse—a ten-penny nail, too thick to fit into the keyhole. I could kill the girl. Tears gathered in his eyes, burning. His nose ran. He lay his head against the wood and closed his eyes as tears leaked slowly from his eyes and trickled through the dust on his face. I could kill the girl. Hail Mary, full of grace, he thought. I could kill the girl. Hail Mary, full of grace…
A measure of peace separated out with the words, to fall across his shoulders, and settle into his heart. The words of the Apostle’s Creed came to him, as clear as if Sister Mary Thomas were standing over him in the barn, ruler in hand, tapping his skull each time he forgot a word. She had never hurt him, but that ruler was a constant threat. Eyes closed against the falling light, he whispered, “ I believe in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth…” Murmuring the creed, and the rest of the rosary he searched the barn to the reaches of his bindings.
By the time he was done, he had found three more ten penny nails and discovered the boards of a stall wall that had been replaced. The carpenter had the dropped nails during his repair job. He set the nails with the rake-head, a metal button, a buckle, part of a leather bridle with two rusted rings, a broken plastic spoon, and a dog collar. Nothing that would kill a vampire.
He was filthy, his sheet so full of dust that he looked as if he had been rolling around on the ground on it. Which he had. Sister Mary Thomas would have smacked him with her ruler if he’d come back in from recess looking like this. Nuns, especially the older ones, still believed in corporeal punishment, although not to the black and blue state. And back when he was in school, they had practiced punishment, searching for perfection—though whether they hunted for the perfection of the method of chastisement or perfection of the souls of their charges he had never decided.
It was late afternoon when he thought to use the rake tines to pry and chop a stake from the old wood. And felt so stupid he started laughing. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “A damn fool idiot.”
He chose a board, low down, that could be hidden in piled dust, and felt along it with his fingers, searching out a weak spot, and found one in the corner, damp from long contact with the ground. Rick pried into the grain and started to chop.
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