Chapter 5 Dead or Alive

Mercy POV

The guard lifts me so high my boots kick air.

"Got her!" he yells. "Hollis! I got the rogue!"

My collar is choking me. I can't breathe, and I can't think, so I don't. I do what Dottie taught me when I was eight and a trucker grabbed me behind a gas station. I go limp.

All my weight drops at once. The guard stumbles forward, and his grip slips. I twist out of my coat collar like a snake out of its skin. My heel finds his knee, hard. Something pops.

He goes down howling.

I'm already running. As I pass the post, I rip the poster off the nail and stuff it in my pocket next to the silverbane. My face doesn't get to hang there and watch me go.

The firewood truck starts on the second try. In the mirror I see three men running at me. And behind them, standing outside the big tent with his arms crossed, a man in a black sweater who isn't running at all.

He watches me drive away. He doesn't send anyone after me.

I don't know what that means. I drive faster.

Mr. Pruett's truck has never gone over fifty in its life. I push it to seventy on the mountain road, and it shakes like it's going to come apart. I take the last turn into camp on two wheels and slam on the brakes so hard the logs in the back slide forward and bang the cab.

Boone comes out of the trailer at a run. "Did you get it?"

I hold up three tiny glass vials. They catch the morning light.

Boone stares at them. Then he stares at my neck, where the collar left a red line.

"Who grabbed you?"

"Doesn't matter. Is he still breathing?"

"Barely."

Inside, Wade's eyes are closed. His breath sounds like wind going through a broken window. I crack the first vial open with my thumb and tip it between his lips. Then the second. My hand is reaching for the third when I remember a voice in the tent. Silverbane alone won't hold a bad case. He needs someone who knows the dose.

I don't know the dose. Nobody here knows the dose.

I give him the third one anyway.

We wait.

Boone sits on the floor with his back against the wall. I sit on the edge of the bed. The clock above the sink ticks so loud I want to pull it off the wall.

Then Wade coughs. Not the wet, ripping cough. A real one. His eyes open, and they're clear, and there's pink coming back into his cheeks like someone turned on a light inside him.

"Well," he croaks. "Look at that."

Boone makes a sound I've never heard him make. He puts his hand over his mouth.

Wade looks at me. "You stole it."

"I borrowed it."

"From who?"

"The King."

Wade laughs, and then the laugh turns into a cough, and then he grabs my sleeve with a grip that's almost strong. "Mercy. Sit. I have to tell you something. I swore to God and Dottie I'd take it to the grave."

"Then don't tell me. Get better, and take it to a grave in twenty years."

"Sit down, girl."

I sit.

He looks at Boone, then back at me. His fingers twist my sleeve.

"The night Dottie died," he says, "she wasn't walking home."

The clock ticks.

"She was taking you back."

I don't move. "Back where?"

"To the Redfern ranch. You were sixteen. She said you deserved your real name, and your real family, and a real bed. She said she couldn't sleep one more night knowing what we'd done." His eyes fill up. "She was going to go first and talk to them. Bring you after. She made me promise to keep you home that night."

"And she never came back," Boone says quietly.

"She never came back." Wade's grip tightens. "They said the King's wolves got her in the purge. Wrong place, wrong night."

"Who said?"

He shakes his head against the pillow. "Don't believe it, Mercy. Don't you ever believe it."

"Dad. Who said?"

His mouth opens. "Ask the one who caught you."

"Caught me? Caught me where?"

"When you were born. She caught you. She'll know. She'll—"

He stops.

His hand is still on my sleeve, but it isn't holding anymore. The pink is draining out of his face like water out of a sink. His eyes are looking at a spot on the ceiling, and they don't move.

"Dad?"

Nothing.

"Dad." I shake his shoulder. "Dad, finish the sentence."

Boone gets up. He walks out of the trailer without a word. A second later I hear it. Thud. Thud. Thud. His fist hitting the big pine by the woodpile, again and again, until I hear him stop and spit.

I stay sitting on the bed. I reach out and close Wade's eyes. Then I pull the blanket up to his chin, the way he did for me when I had the flu at seven. I fold the edge over twice so it's neat.

When I go outside, Boone is holding his right hand against his chest. His knuckles are split open and bleeding into the snow.

"Let me see it," I say.

"No."

"Boone."

"You know what's going to happen now?" He doesn't look at me. "Harlan put ten grand on your head. Every rogue in this valley who needs rent money is going to come looking. Because of that stupid tag." He holds out his good hand. "Give it to me."

"Why?"

"Give it to me, Mercy."

I don't know why I do. Maybe because he's my brother and he's bleeding. I take the yellow tag out and put it in his palm.

He turns and throws it straight into the cook fire.

"Boone!"

I'm on my knees in the snow before I think. I shove my hand into the coals and grab it. The heat bites my fingers. I yank it out and drop it in the snow, and it hisses. One corner has melted into a brown bubble. But I can still read it. Redfern, girl.

My fingers are red and blistering.

Boone stares at my hand. Then at me. "You'd burn your hand for them. For people who put a price on your head."

"It's not for them," I say. "It's mine."

He walks away.

We dig the grave together anyway, at sunset, behind the school bus, where Wade used to sit and watch the kids play. The ground is frozen hard, and it takes us three hours. Nobody from the camp helps. They're too afraid of the poster. There's no pack prayer, because rogues don't get one, and nobody here remembers any other kind.

"We should say something," Boone says when the hole is filled.

"Okay." I pat the dirt flat with the back of the shovel. "The ground's going to sink when it thaws. We'll need to bring more dirt in March. And rocks, so the coyotes don't dig. Big ones, from the creek. Not the little ones. The little ones roll."

Boone looks at me. "Mercy."

"And we'll need wood for a marker. Cedar lasts longest. I can carve his name—"

"Mercy. Stop talking about rocks."

I stop. I'm still patting the dirt. I make myself stop doing that too.

That's when I notice the quiet.

The birds have stopped. The wind has stopped. The whole forest is holding its breath.

Boone sees it too. He reaches for the shotgun leaning against the bus.

Out of the pines at the edge of the clearing, a black wolf steps into the last of the sunlight. It's huge, bigger than any wolf has a right to be. Its eyes are gold, with silver in them.

It doesn't look at Boone or the gun. It looks at me.

And it starts walking, slow and steady, straight toward Wade's grave.