Valknut: The Binding (9 page)

She struggled against his grip, panting,
every nerve on fire. Over his shoulder, she saw Jim tug at
Junkyard, who sat up groggily. She needed to stall and give him
time to recover. The Ragman yanked her close, trapping the pepper
spray between them. Her finger found the nozzle. It had to work
this time. She closed her eyes and whispered, “Please, please,
please.”

“Hey, I like it!” The Ragman tickled her ear
with his knife. “Beg some more, little 
chica
.”

“I wasn’t talking to you.” She triggered the
pepper spray, not caring if she caught herself in the blast as
well. The canister sputtered pathetically, barely making her eyes
water. “
Chingao
!” The Ragman coughed and wiped at tearing
eyes, his face contorted with fury. “Fuck, bitch—you gonna pay for
that.”

Red-faced, he twisted her arm so hard that
cords stood out on his neck and she thought her bones would break.
She resisted, refusing to let go of that useless spray.

Where the hell is Junkyard?

Sharp pain shot through her wrist and her
fingers sprang open. The spray fell to the ground and the pain
stopped, but she saw her death in the Ragman’s contorted face. He
raised the knife. Screaming, she shielding herself with her free
arm and waited for the slice of the blade.

But the blow never came. A harsh laugh
erupted from the Ragman. She lowered her arm and found him staring
at the tattoo on the back of her hand.

“Shit, man!” Grinning unpleasantly, he
touched the design with the knife. “Looks like you gonna be no fun,
after all. I gotta save you for El Lobo.”

Lennie met his feral gaze and her breath
caught. He twisted her hand into her face, as if she needed a
reminder of what was branded there. But she couldn’t look away from
his eyes.

His animal yellow eyes.

They burned like acid into her brain. An
answering burn flared in her tattoo—an electrical charge that
radiated through her hand and prickled up her arm like a column of
fire ants.

Then Junkyard tackled the Ragman and Lennie
stumbled as his grip tore from her arm.

Dazed, she straightened slowly, still seeing
those yellow eyes, full of alien malice. El Lobo—didn’t that mean
“wolf”? Like in her dream.

The Ragman yelled somewhere nearby. There was
a loud smack, a fist striking flesh, and the thud of something
large hitting the ground. A knife bounced to her feet. She looked
at it stupidly, then scooped it up with a foggy idea of helping
Junkyard. But the Ragman was already flat on his back. Blood
streamed from his nose, and Junkyard’s booted foot pressed down on
his throat.

Blood ran from Junkyard’s temple and smeared
his chin. He glared down at the Ragman, the whites showing around
his eyes. Mouth twisted in a snarl, he drew a harsh breath, ready
to bear down on the Ragman’s neck.

Lennie shook off her stupor. “No, Junkyard!
You’ll kill him!”

Junkyard didn’t look up. He was going to do
it. Lennie started toward him, but Jungle Jim got there first and
laid a hand on his arm.

“Let it go, Dougie.”

They stayed that way for a moment: Junkyard’s
foot pressing down on the Ragman’s neck, Jim’s hand on Junkyard’s
arm. Then the wildness drained from Junkyard’s face. His shoulders
slumped as if he were the one who had been defeated. He released
the gangbanger and nudged him with his boot.

“Get up,” he said dully.

The Ragman lay as if still pinned, chest
heaving, looking up at Junkyard with wide, terror-filled eyes.
Brown eyes.

Junkyard waved his hands as if shooing a fly.
“
Ya estuvo
. It’s over. Go home.”

Watching Junkyard suspiciously, the Ragman
scrambled to a safer distance before climbing to his feet. He
backed away, rubbing his throat. His smirk returned.

“Pay now or pay later.” He shrugged,
grinning. “It’s all the same to El Lobo.”

Irritation crossed Junkyard’s face. “I said
go!” He stomped a foot toward the Ragman, who jumped like a
startled dog and ran.

Junkyard sighed and worked his jaw. Wincing,
he probed his bruised and bleeding temple. Reaching into an outer
pocket of his pack, he took out a wet wipe and dabbed at his
injury. Lennie watched, nervous about him all over again. He might
look harmless, but she would never forget how he took down that
streetwise punk so thoroughly.

Still, she had been with him for more than
twelve hours, and he had done nothing but protect her.

“Here.” She reached for the wipe. “Let me do
that. You can’t see.”

“You might want to put that away, first.”

She looked down and realized she still held
the open knife. The blade looked sharp enough to cut herself just
thinking about it. She tried to figure out how to close it,
fumbled, and let it drop to avoid slicing her thumb off. Junkyard
picked it up and folded the blade away, showing her how the
mechanism worked. To her surprise, he handed it back to her. She
held it between finger and thumb like a dead fish. “Aren’t these
illegal?”

“Probably. Some places, anyway. But death is
more unpleasant than a little jail time.”

She shook her head and tried to hand it back.
“No thanks—I’m more likely to cut myself than someone else.”

His lip twitched. “Yeah, I know.” But he
closed her fingers on the weapon. “Take it. The threat alone might
be enough to stop a fight.”

Under his firm touch, she realized her hands
still trembled. She met his eyes. “What you did to that guy—I’ve
never seen anything like that before. You saved my life. Twice,
now.”

He reddened and looked away, withdrawing his
hand. “So bake me a cake when I get you back to your house. I like
chocolate.”

An awkward silence followed, and he avoided
her eyes as she cleaned the blood off his face. She was on her
third wet wipe when Jungle Jim gave a yelp and bent close to the
ground.

“Hot dog, Dougie! Lookit what I found.” He
scooped up the Ragman’s spray paint. “Just the thing I need.”

He wandered off behind the train, shaking the
can and chuckling to himself. The hissing Lennie had heard earlier
began again. Baffled, she stared after him. Junkyard grinned and
shrugged.

“You want that?” He pointed at the pepper
spray lying near the track.

“That stupid thing!” She picked it up and
thumped on its impotent nozzle. “Do you know how long I’ve been
carrying this piece of crap? Going on midnight runs through the
park? Walking home from work after dark?”

“Too long, maybe,” Junkyard said.

The amused glint in his eyes irritated her
beyond tolerance. With a yell, she heaved the canister as far as
she could. It bounced on a stretch of empty track and came to rest
in the gravel. A stream of pepper spray fountained high into the
air. Lennie watched it stonily.

“Perfect.”

Behind her, Junkyard cleared his throat and
said in a flat voice, “I hate to rush you, but we should probably
get going.”

“Right.” She didn’t move.

“Don’t want to get caught standing right
under the Brotherhood’s logo.”

“True.”

She gave the canister one last, dark look. As
she turned to go, her gaze caught on the fresh graffiti emblazoned
in red and yellow on the side of the hopper. Three interlocking
letters, BRR, were laid out in a rough triangle that was much too
similar to the tattoo on her hand. Her head swam at the sight of it
and she had an urge to run far away from anything to do with
trains, gangs, and spontaneous tattoos.

Junkyard touched her arm. “You okay?”

“No—yeah.” She thrust her tattooed hand into
her pocket. “Just shock setting in, I suppose.”

She smiled to show she was joking. He didn’t
look convinced. She tried to match his casual calm, but her voice
cracked when she spoke. “So, do you think the Ragman’ll come
back?”

“Maybe. And if he does, he’ll bring friends.”
Junkyard raised his voice. “Hey, Jim—time to go.”

The hiss of spray paint stopped and Jungle
Jim’s voice drifted around the corner of the hopper. “Be there’n
two shakes, Dougie.”

The paint can rattled exactly twice, and then
hissed one more time in a staccato burst. Silence followed. Lennie
and Junkyard exchanged puzzled glances. Jungle Jim came out from
behind the hopper. He was wearing bright yellow shoes.

He looked from Junkyard to Lennie and then
down at his feet, a big grin on his face. Gravel stuck to dripping
laces and yellow spattered the cuffs of his baggy pants. “What d’ya
think, guys?”

“Uh,” Lennie said. She looked at Junkyard,
hoping he could do better. He was laughing.

“I think the kids are going to love ’em.” He
patted Jim on the back. “Grab your bag and let’s go try them
out.”

Chapter 5

The back of Lennie’s neck prickled with the
feeling of being watched as she followed Junkyard and Jungle Jim
through the train yard’s exit. She glanced back, half-expecting to
see a pack of gangbangers charging after them, led by the
Ragman.

His eyes haunted her. Brown eyes. She had
seen them clearly before the Ragman had run away. Had they ever
been a different color?

And who was this El Lobo that was supposed to
be looking for her?

Lennie’s feelings of unease faded as she
reentered the everyday world of cars, commuters, and well-kept
buildings. The return to mainstream seemed to have the opposite
effect on Junkyard. He slowed as the sidewalk grew more crowded,
letting Jungle Jim rove ahead. Signs of strain lined his face, as
though ordinary people made him more nervous than a train yard full
of gangbangers.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

His jaw muscles worked under his long
sideburns. He didn’t look at her.

“No.”

His tone ended the conversation. They walked
in silence along a street lined with red brick buildings and
crowded bike racks. A pair of girls came toward them on the
sidewalk, backpacks hanging from their shoulders. Though the
walkway was plenty wide, Junkyard kept his head down and stepped
onto the grass to let them pass.

Lennie watched him uneasily. What was wrong
with him? Less than an hour ago, he had dismantled a punk carrying
a gun and a knife, but now he couldn’t handle a couple of sorority
girls.

Jim bounded back to them with his duffle bag
half unzipped. “I gotta start getting ready,” he said. “We’re
almost there!”

He plopped down on the sidewalk and dug
through his belongings. Junkyard slouched against a lamppost, chin
tucked under his jacket collar, hands deep in his pockets. He
looked like a vagrant who planned to loiter all day.

He looked completely unreliable.

The low thrumming of heavy machinery vibrated
the air. Lennie glanced around, but couldn’t find the source of the
noise. They had stopped in front of an enormous building with a
high, arching facade. It looked familiar. The sign out front said
Williams Arena.

“Hey, isn’t that where the Gophers play
basketball?” she asked. “We must be at the University of
Minnesota.”

Junkyard gave an indecipherable mutter. Jim
looked up from his duffle bag, a sock in one hand and a plastic
snake in the other.

“That’s right, Missy. They hold the Festival
right over there, every year.” He pointed the snake at a large oval
building across the street. “That’s the Marr–ee–ooo–chee
Arena.”

“Right.” Lennie had been here before, for an
invitational track meet at the end of her high school career. She
had done well, placing third in the 300-meter hurdles and first in
the 800-meter dash. But it wasn’t a happy memory. Her mother had
gotten sloppy drunk at a team dinner—

“Hey, Dougie, which hat d’ya think I should
wear?”

Happy for the distraction, Lennie looked at
the two hats in Jungle Jim’s hands. They were possibly the ugliest
she had ever seen: a red-and-green checkered tam with a yellow
pompom and an old bowler so dented it was more of a lopsided cone
than a bowl. Junkyard gave a furtive glance up and down the
sidewalk and pushed himself from the lamppost. He bent over the
hats.

“Definitely the checkered one.” He grinned,
looking more like the man Lennie had met on the train. “The pompom
matches your shoes.”

Oh, yeah—the pompom tipped the scales for me,
too, Lennie thought. She winced when Jim put the hat on. Of course,
she would have winced at either choice.

Jim stuffed the bowler back in his bag and
jumped up. “C’mon! The tents oughta be up by now. Ashley’ll be with
her dad, I bet.”

As they started toward the Mariucci Arena,
Junkyard resumed his unresponsive posture. Lennie walked beside him
in awkward silence, while Jim alternately ran ahead and jogged back
to hurry them along. The rumble of machinery grew louder as they
rounded the building’s curved side. A large parking lot lay before
them. They had reached the Festival.

The noise came from carnival rides in varying
stages of assembly at the far end of the lot. The long, black arms
of the Whirling Octopus were already in place. That ride used to
make Lennie sick as a child. A kiddie roller coaster in the shape
of a snake biting its tail idled next to it. Behind them were the
usual pods, arms, cylinders, and tracks guaranteed to make
weak-stomached customers hurl. She had never been fond of carnival
rides.

Closer to the road, tent canvases flapped in
the breeze as vendors and show-casers readied their displays.
Jungle Jim skirted the crowd control barriers, bobbing and leaning
to see into the tent village. Junkyard smiled and seemed to relax
as he watched Jim’s antics.

“Is this the whole Festival?” Lennie asked.
“It seems small.”

Junkyard shook his head. “Just the carnival
and vendors, out here.” He hooked a thumb back toward the arena.
“The bigger exhibits are inside.”

Encouraged by this relative explosion in
conversation, Lennie asked another question. “I’ve been wondering,
what did that graffiti stand for, back there? The BRR, I mean.”