Commitment Hour Read Online Free

creek. Cautiously, I lifted my head.
    The Neut, Cappie and I stood dripping in a widely spaced triangle: me against one bank, Cappie against the other, the Neut in the middle, several paces downstream. Cappie no longer held the spear; I assumed she’d lost it when I fell into the creek.
    Keeping Its eyes on both of us, the Neut asked, “Is either of you named Fullin?”
    The question startled me. I said, “No,” immediately, the same reflex that automatically lied to Cappie whenever she asked what I truly thought.
    Cappie said nothing.
    “This makes things easier,” the Neut said with a dark smile. “Two against one isn’t so bad when I have the knife.”
    The Neut waded down the center of the creek, until It stood on a direct line between Cappie and me. That particular stretch of the Cypress isn’t wide—from the middle it was only a few steps to either bank, where Cappie and I waited to see which of us the monster would attack. Behind my back, my hands scrabbled for any sort of weapon: a stone I could throw, a stick I could jab at the Neut’s eyes. I found nothing but a dirty piece of driftwood, shorter than my forearm and light as a bone with the marrow sucked out. It would break into tinder with the first strike of the Neut’s knife…but I swung it up smartly and hoped that in the dark, the Neut couldn’t see how flimsy my defense was.
    I must have looked intimidating—the Neut lunged for Cappie instead of me.
    She still had the spear. Just below the surface of the water, she must have held it pressed between thigh and bank so that her hands would seem empty. I marveled at the ingenuity of the devil that possessed her. Now she snapped up the spear in the face of the Neut’s charge and thrust forward. The Neut managed to parry the attack with Its knife, but not entirely. Cloth ripped. In the dark, I couldn’t tell if the spear point had torn flesh as well as shirt.
    The Neut wasn’t fazed by whatever damage It had taken, and now It was inside the arc of the spear. Cappie had no room to swing her weapon around for another attack, and the Neut was raising Its blade. Without hesitation, Cappie let go of the spear and grabbed the Neut’s knife arm with both hands.
    I plunged forward to help as the two of them wrestled. Cappie was at a disadvantage: pressed up against the bank, she had no space to move for better leverage, while the Neut had a weight advantage. Slowly, the knife descended toward Cappie’s face. I wished I had time to find the spear, but it had sunk into the creek as soon as Cappie released it. The only weapons I had were my bare hands, my vulnerable musician’s hands. I delayed another second, trying to decide how I could save Cappie without risking injury to my fingers. At last, I grabbed the Neut’s shoulders and dragged sideways, the two of us slamming against the bank beside Cappie.
    For the second time that night, I had saved Cappie’s life. My move had thrown the Neut off balance; with groaning strength, Cappie angled the knife point away from her body and over the ground. A split second later, she let go of the blade. The Neut’s momentum stabbed the knife deep into the mud. Immediately, Cappie leaned over and punched the Neut in the face, bare knuckles into soft cheek. I shouted to her, “Run!” and grappled to pin the Neut’s arms.
    At that moment, a boot stepped onto the bank beside my head—a boot surrounded by violet fire. I began to lift my eyes to look at the newcomer; then a metal canister struck the ground and exploded into smoke.
    The smoke stung like a hundred campfires and stank like the marsh’s worst rot. My stomach was already fragile from Cappie’s gut punch out on the flats; now, I bucked up my supper, vomit splashing warmly on my hands, the Neut, the mud. I tried to keep my grip on the Neut’s shoulders, but my muscles felt as slack as string. Cappie made one more swing at the Neut’s jaw, but her fist had no strength behind it. The Neut slumped, not from