Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (118 page)

A low moan of pain escaped Casey’s lips, Lawrence’s ginger hair and pale, clear eyes rearing up stark in his mind. Killed for the inconvenience of his existence. What love or joy had his brief life ever known? “Was it Morris Jones he went to meet?” Casey ground the words out, the sickness surging hard through his system again.

“Aye. The lad was right to be afraid of him. I’ve known some sick bastards in my life but he was altogether in a league of his own. He’s some ugly appetites an’ he’d a special spite for the lad. He lured the boy there with some sort of threat, then raped him amongst other things. By the time,” Robin swallowed, the scene apparently still vivid in his own mind, “I found him he was in a bad way, a very bad way if ye understand my meanin’.”

“Ye forget maybe,” Casey said harshly, “that ‘twas me that found the boy, an’ myself an’ my wife that buried him.”

“An’ yerself that loved him,” Robin said quietly, “no I’ve not forgot. Not likely to, am I? For it’s what brought you here tonight, the belief that ye’d avenge his death.”

“And I will,” Casey said, in the tone of an oath.

Robin coughed again, a sound like a sputtering engine, and blood bubbled from the corner of his mouth.

“Robin—”

“Nay,” Robin said shortly, “I’ll do. Now ye’ll have seen enough of fightin’ to know there are some men excited by the sight of blood?”

“Aye,” Casey replied tersely, the wealed crosshatch of fine silver scars scattered about Lawrence’s body all too plain in his memory.

“Well, Morris was that way, but it had to be a boy’s blood. I think maybe it started out with a few simple cuts, nothin’ that the child couldn’t heal physically from, but then like most appetites it built until it was out of control. Lawrence wasn’t the first to be hurt at the man’s hand.”

“He wasn’t dead when ye found him?”

“No, but ‘twould have been better for him had he been.”

“So it was you, then,” Casey said, voice flat, a tone that made Robin brace for the expected blow. None came, though. “Why, Robin? He was nothin’ to ye, he’d not harmed anyone. He’d kept yer secrets that long, there was no reason he’d have told then.”

Robin shook his head. “It wasn’t my secrets that I was worried for, don’t ye understand?”

“No.”

“It was a mercy, do ye see? Ye can’t live proper with such scars on yer soul. The boy wasn’t going to heal this time, I knew that an’ so I did what I had to for him.”

“It wasn’t for you to decide.”

“But it was, who better to know what the boy felt?”

“He wasn’t you Robin, ye can’t know—”

“Yes, I can know,” Robin said wearily, “an’ that is why the boy didn’t like me. He saw himself, another decade down the road, when he looked in my face.”

Casey didn’t think he could stand much more revelation tonight. “I didn’t know, Robin, why did ye never say? Maybe I couldn’t have helped but my Da’ would have gotten ye out.”

Robin shook his head, tongue tentatively flicking at the corner of his mouth, causing a fresh stream of blood to trickle down his chin. “Do ye think I could have ever looked ye in the face had ye known? I couldn’t bear the thought of ye not treatin’ me like an equal anymore, I’d have become somethin’ to pity, not to love.”

“I knew about Lawrence, all of it, an’ it didn’t change my love for him.”

“Aye, but that’s as a man loves a child, we were boys together an’ that’s a different view. I was hollow before I met ye, but when ye gave me yer friendship, when ye cared for me as though I wasn’t—” Robin paused to take a ragged breath, “wasn’t broken an’ filthy, well there wasn’t any secret worth tellin’ to sacrifice that.”

“Tell me how.” Casey said, barely able to force the words past his throat, but needing to know all the same.

“I just held his nose. It was quick an’ peaceful, he barely struggled, ‘twas more like he slipped off to sleep. He’d not have survived the night anyway. He was damaged real bad. He said yer name just before he went beyond words, just sort of breathed it out. Ye need not worry yerself about Morris neither, I took care of him that night as well. ‘Twas him ran the ring that killed all them young boys. He spent a deal of nights at that house where Pamela found my sister’s bones.”

“Oh Jesus,” was all Casey managed to gasp out before the sickness took him firmly in its maw and shook him without mercy. He wished with the force of everything in him that he could erase the sight of Lawrence’s ruined body from his mind, that he would never again know that smell, the scent of utter depravity and cruelty. To not know that the boy had died calling his name, wondering why he didn’t come to his rescue. But no, he thought as another spasm of nausea clawed his insides, Lawrence had not believed in fairytales. He had known the cavalry didn’t rush in at the last minute on white horses, holding salvation in their hands. The child had not had any illusions and somehow that seemed much, much worse than the alternative.

As the retching subsided, he felt Robin’s hand on his back and tensed immediately for the blow that would end the night and all things with it. He no longer had the energy to resist it. The dark would be welcome. He realized with a shock that Robin’s hand was fast in his hair, the singing tension in his scalp only now registering itself on his ravaged senses. And then there was a knife at his throat, scoring the skin just below his adam’s apple.

Robin’s mouth was by his ear, breath as intimate as a lover. Casey could move neither forward nor back and was completely at the man’s mercy. The anger that had sustained him for so long was ebbing, swamped in the beginning of a grief that threatened to become a deluge he would surely perish in.

“Do ye have less courage than a wee lassie, then?” Robin hissed in his ear. “She killed without a backward glance to keep ye safe, will ye sell her so short as to let me take ye here an’ now?” He yanked back on the handful of hair and Casey grunted, teeth gritted, not daring to swallow with the knife so tight against his throat. “Come on, ye black Irish bastard, ye said ye’d avenge the boy’s murder so fight me, fight me!”

Robin let him go so quickly that Casey half fell into the sticky muck on the floor. He was quickly losing feeling in his right arm, which seemed a mercy at this point. He took a shallow breath, aware of the coppery taste of blood on his tongue.

He rose onto his knees to find Robin had circled round to the front of him and was propped against the dusty sacking and empty wire spools. One arm was wrapped protectively around his shattered ribs, the other pointed straight at Casey, with a pistol snugged tight in its grip.

His wife’s voice was suddenly clear in his head, the words she’d spoken only days ago. Though it seemed a lifetime. She had found him sitting on their bed, pistol in his lap.

“Some night you’re going to find it.”

“Find what?”

“The bullet with your name on it.”
And his reply, which in the cold, hard light of what he now faced, seemed naïve and foolhardy.

‘Better that than to live afraid for a hundred years.”
And untrue. He did not want to die, not here and not now, not by the hand of a man who’d been trying to lure him into a fatal death dance from the moment they’d seen one another across that smoky card table. He slowly put down his left hand, not trusting the right to support him, and pushed himself up into a standing position, preternaturally aware the entire time that the gun continued to point at his head. His legs were shaky, but they held him upright and it seemed—if he gave them a minute or two—they might be willing to carry him out of this place.

Robin was speaking again, voice gone soft with fatigue. “Do ye remember the time we were goin’ to run off to Liverpool together?”

Casey drew a ragged breath and nodded. “Aye, we’d not the sense of a goose between the two of us, had what—thirty pounds total to call our own in this world? I remember we were goin’ to meet down by the Donegal Quay.”

“Aye, well I was there, but you never came.”

“What?”

The gun dropped between Robin’s knees, his eyes shimmering with tears. “Do ye know how long I waited there for ye?”

Casey shook his head, the tension still thrumming hard through his shoulders, down his arms and into his hands.

“Three days I waited, three days,” Robin’s voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. “I even slept on the goddamn dock, thinkin’ if I just gave ye another hour ye’d show up.”

“Neither of us was thinkin’ clearly, ye knew I’d a powerful fear of the sea, an’ when it came down to it I couldn’t leave my da’ an’ brother.” He sighed, feeling the stab of his lungs against the cracked ribs.

Robin nodded, all the wariness gone from him. Casey dragged over a spool that had once held cable, wincing at the pain the movement caused, until he was only a few feet from where Robin stood slumped against the wall of sacking, the nets under him thick with the smell of diesel and fish guts.

“Ye don’t need to waste energy disarmin’ me man, I’ve no fight left in me. Besides, I brought the gun for you.”

“What—what do ye mean?” Casey asked, afraid he was finally understanding just where Robin had been leading him tonight.

“How long have we known one another man? Near to twenty years now, an’ ye know my secrets. Ye’ll know I once had something worth carin’ about, even if it’s long gone now. I’d rather it was by yer hand, than that of a stranger.”

“Jaysus man, how can ye ask me such a thing?”

“That’s what ye came here to do, so finish it. Besides I’m already a dead man, Casey,” Robin said, face entirely sober now. “Ye know it as well as I do. It’s only a matter of a day or two.”

“You could run, man,” Casey said desperately, “go back to the States.”

“I’m too tired to run anymore, I’ve been running all my life.” He shook his head, the dim light picking out the red in his hair. “D’ye remember what it was we used to say to one another before goin’ onto the pitch?”

Casey sucked in a sharp breath. “Aye. Today is a beautiful day to die.”

Robin nodded, a strange luminescence in his eyes, the blue of drowned stars. Then he bent down, the pistol still unwavering, and lit the tinder ends of the sacking. The small flames flickered, uncertainly, then realizing the arid landscape they’d lit upon, caught with a fierce will.

“I’ve thought those words many a time over the years, but I believe,” Robin squared his shoulders with conviction and put the gun to his head, “if ye won’t do it for me then I must do it for myself. And I believe after all that today is a beautiful day to die.” He tilted his head toward the fire that was merrily crackling now, feeding itself in ever larger bites, “ye’ll have to go man, or it’ll soon be too late.”

“Bobbie, those words were never meant, it was said in fun, come on man, give over the gun,” Casey edged his way carefully along the crates, heart threatening to come out of his chest, hands out in supplication. But Robin was no longer listening.

He looked up, eyes now aglow like the heart of a candle flame and smiled, the blood still trickling from the corner of his mouth. “You have always been,” he said softly, “the brother of my heart. Beyond Jo ye were the only family I ever knew.” The breath was stopped in Casey’s throat, the blue of Robin’s eyes expanding to fill all his senses. “I love ye man, but we will neither of us be free, until I am dead,” Robin finished in a whisper.

Time stopped and froze as Robin squeezed the trigger, Casey lunged, legs like lead, pain slicing across his ribcage, the smell of cordite like brimstone on the air. He never knew if he’d screamed ‘no’ aloud or if it was only the pounding reverberation in his skull. It was a kill-shot though, Robin was well trained in such things. He stopped short of the man that had been his best friend, knowing the boy he’d loved had been dead for a very long time. For Lawrence’s sake, he would not touch him, he would not search for a pulse, he would not ask questions that needed no answer, he would let it end here and now.

The fire, rapidly advancing, licked now at the nape of Robin’s neck, grasping finally at the ends of his hair. It caught with a lung-collapsing
whoosh,
and Casey, paralyzed to the spot, understood the smell that had lingered like a ghost since he’d opened the doors. Paint spirits.

And so—this now—was how the world ended. But not for him, not tonight. He was still quicker than the fire, though rogue sparks smoldered in his hair and spent themselves on his clothing, his skin taut with the enticement of heat. His body, apart from a mind that was lost in the ash of revelation, moved, turned, lifted limb, sought the sanctuary of the night beyond these walls.

Hand on the door, he turned. The flames had engulfed Robin, lighting the hellish interior of the plant like a throbbing jewel, making of his childhood friend a living, breathing coruscation of flame that spangled the night, as bright as the last explosion of a dying star.

“
Slan leat, mo dearthair
,” he whispered, and walked out into the night.

THE SUN WAS SETTING when Pamela arrived home. Though it was only late August she could both feel and see the days drawing down, the night creeping in earlier and earlier. She shivered; she’d been cold since the funeral and couldn’t imagine ever feeling warm again.