Brother (31 page)

The muscles in his legs tensed as he let the knife fall to the floor with a
clang
. He bounded toward the axe and the stairs simultaneously, ready to finish this once and for all. But he stalled out when Alice screamed. His eyes darted upward just in time to see Reb's arms piston away from him.

Alice cried out as she fell back.

Michael flashed back to her mother,
their
mother—how her corpse had slipped and tumbled down to the concrete floor, her neck cracking in the silent gloom.

Distracted by Alice's yell, the tip of Michael's boot connected with the axe handle and it went spiraling across the floor like a faulty boomerang. He jutted out his arms as Alice pinwheeled through the air, her bound hands offering no hope of purchase. For a moment, he was sure he'd miss her. She'd hit the ground and snap her neck—like mother, like daughter—and then everyone Michael had ever cared about would be gone.

But he caught her. A momentary flush of victory swelled up his chest, but Alice cut his triumph short when she recoiled from his touch.

“Oh, goddamnit,” Rebel muttered with a roll of the eyes. “My brother, the big hero.”

“I know what you did.” Michael backed away from the staircase as Reb descended into the basement. His gaze skimmed the ground, searching for the axe. He caught sight of the handle peeping out from beneath his workbench.

“Oh yeah?” Reb looked self-satisfied. “Ain't it just
bruta
l
? Did you get a chance to tell Alice about it yet, or do I get to tell her the story myself?”

Alice had run back to her original spot against the wall, as though repositioning herself where Reb had left her would somehow spare her punishment.

“I heard you yelling at him,” Reb told her. “
You killed Lucy
!
” He squeaked out the words, mocking Alice's grief, then snickered. “But
son of a bitch
?” He cocked his head to the side, giving them a thoughtful look. “How 'bout that. Interestin' choice of words, don't you think?”

Michael shot Alice a look, but he didn't dare turn away from Rebel for long. Alice's terror had faded a notch, just enough to make way for an ounce of confusion.

“You don't get it, do you?” Reb asked her. “Because it's fuckin'
complicated
, that's why. You know how long this thing took to put together? Or maybe you're as stupid as your big brother, here.” He nodded to Michael with a snort. “Your momma wasn't all that bright either, so maybe dumb runs in the goddamn family.”

“Don't,” Michael said, holding up a hand to keep Reb from coming any closer, from saying any more. “You wanna kill me, drive me out to the woods? Okay. Just leave her alone.”

“Into the woods?” Reb scoffed. “We're so far out of the woods it's, like, epic. Fuckin'
epic
. Now, what did you do up there?” He nodded up at the ceiling, signifying the house that sat above them. “Did you kill 'em? Chop 'em up like that crazy Lizzie Borden chick, forty whacks and all that?”

Michael swallowed against the thump of his heartbeat, backing up with every forward step Rebel took.

“I hope you did,” he said. “I
know
you did. Revenge is hard to resist. I got personal experience with that.”

“How?” Michael asked, unable to stop the question from slipping past his lips.

“
How
?
” Ray almost sneered at that. “Shit, I don't know, maybe because you killed Lauralynn? You don't remember how it happened? You, sneakin' around, stealin' one of her rabbits, skinnin' that thing in the forest and feedin' it to her for dinner? Gotta say, that was dark. Hell, maybe you were the one who taught me everythin' I know, not the other way around.”

Michael stared at Reb for a long while, not able to process what he was hearing. He remembered the rabbit. Even though it was years ago, he was never able to shake that memory. The remorse that surrounded it kept it from fading like the others. But he had eventually been able to push it to the back of his mind, because at least Lauralynn had gotten out of the house.

“Lauralynn's in North Carolina,” he said softly, as though reminding Rebel of what really happened to their big sister.

“Oh, she ain't in fuckin' North Carolina, you stupid shit,” Reb snapped, his eyes going black with resentment. “I watched Wade carry her into the woods that night, and the next mornin' she was gone.”

Michael opened his mouth to speak, but he didn't know what to say. There had been a moment when he had feared the worst for Lauralynn. But he always managed to convince himself that Grandma Jean and Grandpa Eugene were a better, safer option than home could ever be.

“Though I guess it was better that Claudine bashed her brains in rather than sending her to live with them two psychopaths, to get raped by that dirty old fucker over and over again.”

“I . . . I didn't know,” Michael croaked, his hands still held out in front of him. He was nearly backed into the corner now. Alice was less than three feet behind him, her breaths coming in quick, terrified hitches. But Rebel refused to stall his steps.

“Don't matter,” Reb murmured. “It don't change the fact that you did what you did. You took my sister from me, Mikey. Yeah, it pissed me off that she paid more attention to you than she did to me, but I could have lived with that. I could have roughed you up now and again and made peace with it. But then you went off and got her killed, and what kind of a lovin' brother could let that slide? At first I thought I could take it all out on the girls, but Claudine . . .” He laughed, shook his head. “No, Claudine insisted on girls that looked like her, like Misty, like goddamn
Lauralynn
 . . . and you can see how that could
hurt
a guy like me, can't you?”

“Yes.” The word was nothing but a dry grunt. Michael had noted the similarity between Momma's girls and Misty Dawn too, but there was no point in questioning Momma's tastes. Momma got what Momma wanted. If she didn't, Misty was at risk. But during all that time, Rebel had been watching her kill Lauralynn over and over again instead, and it had slowly poisoned his already twisted mind.

“Can't blame me for turnin' my interests to other things,” Reb said. “Can't blame me for lookin' away from the thing that hurt me and lookin' toward the thing that would hurt
you
instead.”

Michael blinked as his shoulder grazed something behind him. Alice yelped as he stepped into her, Rebel cornering them both.

“Hey, Alice,” Reb said, a dark smile crossing his face. “I found your long-lost brother for ya, but I think you two have already met.”

Michael couldn't breathe.

Alice's mouth formed a surprised
O
.

She stared at Michael, finally putting it all together. Finally realizing that Rebel calling Michael her brother wasn't a euphemism. It was real.

“Not sure you guys will wanna hang out after this, though.” Reb shrugged. “He helped me drag your momma out of the house a few nights ago. You know, outta that cute little place in the hills with the green shutters around the windows? He hung her right here.” Reb caught the chain hanging from the ceiling, directly above the drain in the floor. “Cut her throat, drained her blood, gutted her. He did that.”

Alice's face twisted with a kind of anguish Michael had never seen before. It was all-encompassing, so consuming that it seemed as though it would swallow her whole, tear her open from the inside out.

“And then we had her for dinner,” Reb added casually. “Probably still have leftovers, if you're hungry.”

His jackal smile curled up at the corners, forming a devil's grin.

Michael's chest heaved.

Rage. It burned his stomach like battery acid.

He knew he should have been devastated, but those emotions had hit him earlier. All he wanted now was to shut Reb up, to never hear his voice or see that hideous expression again.

“So you see, that's the beauty of all this, brother. I tricked you into killin' your own family . . . and then I tricked you into killin' your adoptive family too. Way better than leavin' you in the woods to die, don't you think? You just abandoned yourself.”

A low moan drifted up from behind Michael. It was ugly, mingling with a ravaged sob.

Michael wanted to move, but he was frozen in place. No matter how hard he willed himself into action, he couldn't bring himself to step away from Alice and put her in harm's way. He would derail Rebel's plan by standing there forever, and Reb would be wrong—Michael wouldn't have killed his entire family, because Alice would still be alive.

But then Alice's voice grew into a wail, the full understanding of what Reb had just revealed unspooling inside of her. She pressed her hands to her ears and shook her head so violently that Michael was afraid she'd break her own neck. The suffering poured out of her, her cries startling him into motion toward the axe.

Dashing across the basement, he dropped to his knees and skidded against the smooth concrete. He snatched the handle from beneath the worktable with a quick sweep of the hand. Rebel spun around, momentarily caught off guard, and grabbed the knife that Michael had left on the floor.

Stepping back to the thrashing, hysterical girl, Reb grabbed Alice by her short hair, the knife glinting in his grasp. “Go on. Put her outta her misery, Mikey. You killed her momma and her best friend. You ruined her life, man. You think she's ever gonna forgive you for that? You think she's ever gonna want to see your ugly face again?”

Michael hurried to his feet and hefted the axe over his shoulder, making a run for them both. Rebel blinked, surprised by his younger brother's sudden volition. His grip shifted to the front of Alice's T-shirt, yanking her away from the wall as the axe came down. Had Reb not moved, the blade would have landed square against his chest, but with him gone, it only sparked against the stone wall.

Michael pulled the axe back again and swung. Ray anticipated it this time and dodged it again—but rather than parrying away, he stepped forward, using Alice as a shield. The strategy immediately derailed Michael's attack.

“You always gotta make shit difficult,” Reb complained from behind her shoulder. “Don't you get it? It's too late. The damage is already done.”

“Your stupid plan . . .” Michael spoke from between short, quick breaths, his grip readjusting along the axe's handle. “It don't make sense, Reb. For it to work, I gotta kill you too.”

Alice whimpered between them when Rebel burst into sudden laughter, as though he was at a good party rather than in a basement standoff. For half a second, the sound of cold amusement threw Michael off. It simply didn't belong, an affront to everything that made sense.

“I guess that would be true if I wanted you to win,” he said. “Except
that
would be stupid—me thinkin' a loser like you could win anythin'. You think a sorry sack like you could do somethin' right for once?”

Reb's right arm jerked forward, as if punching Alice in the kidney.

Alice's whimpers went quiet.

Michael took a single backward step, and though he couldn't see it, he imagined his own expression matched hers. Shocked. Terrified.

Her black T-shirt didn't offer any clues, but the blood that pooled around the sole of one of her boots was proof that Rebel had just elevated the nightmare to another level. If Michael refused to finish the game, Reb would finish it for him.

Reb's lips pulled away from his teeth. He shoved Alice toward Michael, and she stumbled forward, her face in agony, her hands pressed to her abdomen in bewildered horror. The knife in Reb's hand was stained red nearly up to the hilt, the wet blade winking in the sickly yellow light. Michael's heart threatened to fail as Alice crumpled to the ground at his feet.

“Shoulda known you'd be too yella to take care of business,” Reb said. “But this'll work just as well. After she dies”—he nodded toward Alice with a smirk—“you won't wanna live anyway. Dig a hole big enough for the both of you, brother. Dump her in first, kill yourself after; a regular Romeo and Juliet. It's so fuckin' poetic, Misty woulda loved it if she wasn't already dead.”

Rebel expected Michael to drop the axe and help her, and Michael wanted to. Alice's cries were tearing him apart. But he fought the urge harder than anything in his life, and instead of collapsing next to her, a roar ripped from his chest.

He fell into a run, the axe cutting an arc through the air.

Rebel ducked to make himself smaller and rushed forward as well, slamming his shoulder into Michael's stomach, knocking him off balance. The knife slid across the meat of Michael's thigh, cutting deep through denim and flesh, but Michael swung again. He ignored the searing heat of his wound, pushed past the river of hot blood that pumped down the length of his leg and pooled into his boot. The axe made contact this time, catching Rebel on the shoulder. The knife tumbled from Reb's hand, and he would have easily retrieved it had he not spun away to avoid another one of Michael's attacks. And yet despite the red that soaked into his shirt, he was grinning as if savoring the pain.

“It shoulda been like this from the beginnin', you know,” Reb said, winded. “The night I saw what you did out there, stealin' that rabbit—you and me, to the death. An eye for an eye.”

That was when he pulled something from his back pocket. His switchblade. It slid into place with a smooth
click.
Rebel lunged, the switchblade held at arm's length. The knife caught Michael across the middle, but before Reb could hammer it home, his eyes went wide with surprise. His foot skated out from beneath him on a streak of Alice's freshly spilled blood. The knife flew from his right hand while his left grabbed for the axe in Michael's grasp, either to steal it away or simply break his fall. The handle slid from Michael's hand, the blade hitting the floor next to Reb's prostrate frame.