Crisped + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

letting it affect you so? the bees whispered from their hive. They are nothing to you. They are no one . You are alone as you’ve always been. As you will always be. That’s what you’ve wanted. And that’s what you’ll get. They are already dead. Why did you even come here? What did you hope to achieve?
    He closed his eyes against the bees. He could feel them pricking about in his head. He couldn’t tell them (or even himself) about that strange, soaring hope that burst through him when SIRS had started to explain the marks on Lucas’s skin. He couldn’t tell them of words foreign to him like hope and future that danced across his mind. Even as the blood had dripped down the Dead Rabbit’s neck where he’d almost cut his throat, Cavalo had been filled with a terrible wonder. And even with the scrape of the knife, he’d bent his head and scraped a kiss against the Dead Rabbit’s lips. He didn’t know why he did it. Maybe he meant it as a good-bye. Maybe he meant it to say he was sorry for what he was about to do.
    Or maybe he was fucking tired and fucking lonely and maybe he couldn’t get the fucking psycho out of his head. He was always there, mixed in with the bees. Cavalo hated him. He hated everything about him. And even as hope and future had risen in his mind, so did change and destruction , and wasn’t there a moment where he’d almost grabbed the knife and finished what he’d started? Wasn’t there a moment when he thought that it’d be easier if Lucas was dead, his head separated from his body, Cavalo’s hands drenched in his blood?
    There was such a moment, and it was a battle that Cavalo had almost lost.
    Why he stopped himself was a curious thing. Cavalo thought it had to do with the Dead Rabbit always being in his head. Cavalo wished, not for the first time, that he’d killed Lucas the day they’d met. All of this could have been avoided. He might have gone the rest of his life never knowing what Hank was capable of. Alma. Warren. The town. This place.
    He wondered what the morning would bring.
    “If you can get away, you run,” he told Bad Dog.
    Bad Dog opened his eyes and looked up at him. They bad guys now?
    “I don’t know.”
    We bad guys?
    “I don’t know.”
    Can’t leave you , Bad Dog said.
    “You have to.”
    Can’t.
    “Why?”
    Home. You’re my home.
    “Stupid dog.” There was no heat to the words.
    Stupid MasterBossLord. Stupid man who thinks Bad Dog will leave him. I will never leave you. Where you go, I go. And if they come, they will see my teeth and run because I am Bad Dog.
    “The most ferocious,” Cavalo said quietly.
    Bad Dog closed his eyes and slipped back into his dreams, curling closely to Cavalo to stay warm.
    Cavalo watched him sleep.
    Hours passed. The cold air through the window prevented Cavalo from sleeping. It seeped through his deerskin coat and chilled his flesh. He thought of many things, none of them good. The ruination of flesh. Blood splashing against snow. The gnashing of teeth. A little boy, hands outstretched, with a live grenade in his lap. A lady with turquoise hair. A lady who danced amongst the trees. Of Charlie, who lost something. Of a woman with an infected cut on her foot opening a door to snarling animals. Of robotics. Of machines that purified. Of machines that destroyed.
    And of Lucas. I am Lucas , always there in his head. Lucas, who had the audacity to kiss him in the lookout and ruin everything he knew about himself to be true. Lucas, who had the gall to watch him as he did, like a predator hunting prey. Lucas, who had the temerity to exist at all, to bring Cavalo’s ordered little world crashing down as if it were constructed of nothing but ash and smoke.
    Lucas, Lucas, Lucas.
    Cavalo’s skin hummed at the thought of him. He wished Hank had not taken his knife so he could have attempted to cut Lucas out of himself. It was the only thing that made sense. Lucas was a sliver underneath the skin that had become infected. Cavalo