Chapter Nine #2
The McCulloch went one better than the American combat shotgun models it’d been copied from. It was built for a seven-shell load. Duncan fed in the final cartridge and laid the gun back down. He looked at Garner.
“The Fae? It’s not like I’m going to give them a choice. You ever see what iron filings will do to a Huldu’s eyes?”
The other man broke gaze, looked away, as if Duncan was suddenly somehow too bright to stare at directly. Duncan snorted.
“Oh, come off it, Garner! Don’t get prissy on me. You choked one of these fuckers to death with your bare hands not so long ago. I bet they still stand you drinks on that story.”
“That was him or me, lad. I took no pleasure in it, then or now.”
“You think I take pleasure in these things?”
Garner said nothing.
Duncan sighed. “Look, it probably won’t come to that anyway.
I can get the trees to talk to me most of the time.
The Haunts are trickier; they like to play games, but you can usually work around that, too.
It’s not like torturing Huldu is my preferred option.
It’s just…it might come to that, is all.
And if it does?” Duncan shrugged. “Well, I’m not squeamish about it. ”
“Aye, I’ve heard that.”
Silence stretched in the cramped bedchamber. Garner would not look away. Duncan nodded. Started to lay out Crumley & Kegg’s Fae-fucker bombs on the oilskin.
“Tell you a story,” he said quietly as he worked.
“Back in the summer of ’16, I went out as part of a reconnaissance party at Delville Wood.
We got pinned down there in a bombed-out sap, and we were still there when the German counteroffensive kicked off.
We were low on ammo already, ran through what was left pretty fucking fast, and they just kept coming, so it was down to bayonets and whatever else you could grab.
Fucking mud everywhere from days of rain and the artillery, men slipping and sliding in it as they fought. Screaming, bloody chaos—”
“I don’t need to hear thy bloody war stories, lad.” Something abruptly broken off in Garner’s voice. Duncan raised a pacifying hand.
“This won’t take a minute. I’m not trying to bore you.”
They’d never talked about Garner’s loss, and he didn’t want to start now.
What it must have done to the other man, to take his son back from the Huldu, to bring him home safe, bundled up in his arms, and then to lose him sixteen years later to a poster of a mustachioed fuckwit in a field marshal’s cap over the mawkish plea Your Country Needs You.
Duncan held down the old rage. He drew a long breath.
“So like I said—bayonets and whatever else you could grab. What I could grab was a signal pistol, and when this big fucking Fritz came over the top and down at me bayonet first, I shot him in the belly with it, pretty much point blank.”
Garner grunted. “Guess that stopped him well enough.”
“Aye, worked a treat. Flare went right into his guts, buried itself there. Killed him.” Duncan’s face twitched with the memory. “Eventually.”
Silence again in the small, homely room. Beyond the attic window, above the Forest skyline, a fading glow as the last light of evening drained down to amber dregs.
“You want to know what that sounds like?” Duncan asked. “A grown man screaming for his life as a flare burns his insides out? Slithering around in the mud and rain, tearing at the wound with both hands, trying to dig it out with his fingers as they scorch? You want to know what it smells like?”
Garner shook his head, wordless.
“That’s right, you don’t.” Duncan finished laying out the Kegg bombs, stared down at them for a long moment. “And you know the thing about that Fritz? He was a total stranger, probably a husband and father, a man who never did anything to me.”
“Apart from come at thee with a bayonet.”
“You know what I mean. He was just a man, slapped with a uniform that said he had to kill me, or I him. Seven years later, I close my eyes and I can still smell him burning to death. I can still hear and smell what I did to that man.” Duncan swung his gaze on Garner.
“So if you think it should bother me in some way, working my way through a handful of these Fae fucks one scream at a time to get Mimi Rush back to her mother, well, that ship has sailed. Now, I’m going to the Forest. You’re welcome to sit this one out.
Not sure I could afford to pay you enough to come along anyway. ”
Garner nodded at the window. “It’s getting dark out there.”
“Aye, but it’s a good moon. Clear skies, still mild. Come on, it’s as perfect a woodsman’s night as you’ll get this time of year.”
“Daylight would be better.”
“Not for me, it wouldn’t.”
Garner gave him a come-off-it look. “Forest is a quieter place during the day. A safer place, and tha know it.”
“Aye. Which makes getting the answers I want a harder, slower slog.” Duncan found his rings in another pouch on the oilskin wrap, dug them out.
“That’s no use to me, Garner. The evidence says Mimi Rush has been gone at least four months.
If I don’t act fast, the trail is going to be cold.
Look, you don’t have to come. I’ll understand if you don’t. But I’m not wasting any more time.”
Garner stood for a moment, watching him slip on the rings in silence. Duncan finished, flexed his fingers a little, and glanced at the other man. Garner nodded.
“I’ve a short-barrel Woodward’s over-and-under in the cart,” he said gruffly. “I’ll get it.”