8. Alas #2
Other men buy flowers. Other men make promises over dinner tables.
I don't know how to do that. I don't have the vocabulary for gentle things. My existence has been shaped by violence, survival, and blood. I’m a weapon. And right now, the only way I know how to show her that she’s the center of my fucking universe is to systematically dismantle the army marching on her borders.
Three hours.
The volume of the Syndicate's work pisses me off. They spent days mapping this. They walked this path. They stood in these woods, looking up toward her farm, calculating how to use her land for their dirty money. The unnamed lieutenant ordered this. He sent his men up here to touch what’s mine.
I find the laminated county easement notice.
It’s nailed securely to the trunk of an oak tree at the main crossing of the lower trail. A plastic sleeve protects the official white paper. The county seal is stamped in blue ink. The legal jargon claims the route for "agricultural commerce."
I stare at the paper. The audacity of it. They weaponized a clerk's stamp. They hid their war behind civil procedure.
My combat knife flashes in the dark. I drive the steel blade through the center of the county seal.
The tip sinks three inches into the solid oak.
I drag the blade downward with force. The plastic splits.
The paper shreds. I rip the ruined notice off the tree.
I shred the paper into tiny, unrecognizable confetti with my bloody, sap-covered fingers.
I scatter the pieces into the mountain wind.
The wind carries the white fragments away into the blackness. The legal fiction is dead.
I yank the rusty nails out of the bark with the back of my knife. I toss them into the brush. The oak tree stands clean. Pre-claim status.
Four hours.
The muscles in my back scream in protest. My thighs burn from the constant crouching, pulling, and climbing.
My canvas jacket is soaked through with sweat.
The freezing air turns the damp fabric into a layer of ice against my skin.
My left pocket is packed tight with a compressed ball of crushed neon plastic.
My hands are a mess of blood, sap, and dirt.
I stop at the edge of a steep drop-off. The trees break slightly, offering a view of the valley below. The distant, scattered lights of Crimson Hollow glow in the deep basin. It looks like a pit. That’s where the Syndicate lives. That’s where they plan their moves.
"Come up here," I say to the empty air. The sound of my own voice is gravelly, feral. "Try to find your way in the dark. I’ll bury every single one of you under these pines."
I turn around. The descent is finished. The eradication is complete.
I start the grueling climb back up the mountain.
The hike back takes another hour. The physical toll of the destruction settles into my bones.
The adrenaline begins to fade, replaced by a deep, hollow exhaustion.
Every step up the steep, rutted incline requires a conscious command from my brain.
The mud pulls at my boots. The roots try to trip me in the dark.
I don't let the fatigue win. The thought of the white farmhouse waiting at the top of the ridge fuels my legs.
The sky begins to change. The oppressive pitch-black of the deep night slowly bleeds into a cold, bruising gray. Dawn is coming. The outline of the pines becomes sharper. The shadows stretch and distort.
I walk the path I just cleared. I check my work.
There’s nothing.
The neon orange is gone. The wooden stakes are gone.
The laminated notice is shredded. The rutted dirt track winds seamlessly through the dense timber, looking like an abandoned, forgotten logging route.
The Syndicate's claim has been erased from the physical world.
Let the lieutenant wave his county paperwork in the air.
Let him try to enforce an invisible map. The trail is closed.
I break through the tree line at the top of the ridge.
The wild meadow of the bee farm stretches out in front of me.
The first faint rays of pale morning light crest the eastern peaks, washing the frost-covered grass in a cold, blue glow.
The white wooden hive boxes stand in perfect, silent rows.
The windbreak holds strong. The farm is an untouchable fortress.
I walk across the meadow. My boots leave dark tracks in the silver frost.
I approach the main farmhouse. The lights in the kitchen are on. The yellow glow spills out through the windows, cutting through the cold morning gray. The sight of that light hits me with the force of a physical blow. It’s a beacon. It’s the only place in the world I belong.
I climb the wooden steps of the front porch. The wood groans under my weight. I stop in front of the wooden door.
I reach into the left pocket of my jacket. I pull out the compressed wad of crushed neon orange plastic ribbons. I dig into the pockets of my jeans and pull out the torn surveyor flags. I dump the load onto the frost-covered floorboards. It forms a chaotic, ugly pile of bright synthetic colors.
A monument of my violence. A proof of my claim.
The deadbolt clicks.
The sound is sharp and sudden in the quiet dawn. The brass lock turns. The wooden door swings inward.
Susan stands in the doorway.
She’s fully dressed in her work pants and an oversized wool sweater. Her boots are laced tight. She’s holding two ceramic mugs. The scent of fresh percolator coffee and sharp cinnamon rolls out of the warm kitchen, hitting the cold mountain air in a cloud of steam.
She stops dead in the doorway.
Her gaze drops to the floorboards. She stares at the pile of crushed neon plastic.
She stares at the shredded flags. She processes the volume of the garbage.
She calculates how many markers it took to make a pile that size.
She calculates how many miles of dense, dangerous mountain terrain I had to cover in the pitch black to pull them all down.
Slowly, her eyes drag up from the floor.
She looks at my boots, caked in ridge mud. She looks at my jeans, soaked to the knees from the wet, frozen brush. She looks at my canvas jacket, stained dark with sweat and dirt.
Finally, she looks at my hands.
I don't hide them. I let my arms hang loose at my sides. My knuckles are split open. Dried blood crusts the scrapes. Sticky smears of golden pine sap coat my palms and fingers. Dirt is ground deep into my nail beds. My hands look like the aftermath of a war zone.
Susan doesn't gasp. She doesn't drop the coffee mugs. She doesn't recoil from the dirt or the blood.
Her jaw tightens. A fierce, overwhelming clarity breaks across her face.
The stubborn, isolated armor she’s worn for two years shatters in the quiet dawn.
She understands. She sees the uncompromising devotion standing in her doorway.
She sees what it means to have an unpatched prospect of the Broken Halos anchor his existence to her safety.
She steps forward.
She crosses the threshold, stepping out of the warm house and into the freezing morning air. She doesn't look at the pile of markers again. She steps right over it. She stops in front of me. She’s small compared to my frame, but her presence is the most grounding force I’ve ever encountered.
She lifts her left hand and extends one of the ceramic mugs toward me.
I raise my right hand. The joints are stiff from the cold and the labor.
My bloodied, sap-covered fingers wrap around the smooth, warm ceramic.
Our knuckles brush. The heat from her skin sears through the grime on my hand.
The connection flares, a hot burn traveling up my arm, locking into the marrow of my bones.
I take the mug.
"The trail is clear," I tell her. My voice is wrecked. "The paper at the courthouse doesn't mean a damn thing. There’s no line to follow. They don't cross this ridge."
Susan stares up into my eyes. The pale morning light catches the fierce, unyielding strength in her gaze. She doesn't say thank you. Thank you is a polite word for strangers. We’re infinitely past polite.
She lifts her own mug to her lips. She takes a slow sip of the black, cinnamon-laced coffee. She swallows.
"I know," Susan says quietly. Her voice is pure iron. "Because you hold the line."
The words lock into place inside my head.
The chaotic rage that defined my life extinguishes, replaced by a cold, lethal clarity.
I take a drink of the burning hot coffee.
I taste the cinnamon. I smell the beeswax on her skin.
The cold whips around us, rattling the empty branches of the oaks, but standing here beside her, I’m immovable.
Let the Syndicate come. Let them try to find their way through the dark.
This farm is my territory. This woman is my anchor. And I’ll slaughter anyone who tries to take her away.