The dried-out wild-animal eyes bulged out of its skull and were abruptly, unexpectedly, human. Bell’s eyes. The same blue as Ledger’s own, with a brown fleck in the corner where he’d poked himself with a stick as a child.
This time Ledger couldn’t stop himself from flinching. He staggered back into Wren’s shoulder as the thing’s face twisted, and it screamed. And screamed.
“That’s no use!” Ledger yelled.
The thing grabbed at his face. The blunt, split nails on one paw-hand dug hot, deep welts into his skin. Wren pushed Ledger behind him—and Ledger finally remembered to let go of his hand—and gave the thing a hard shove that made it stagger back into the road.
It caught its balance and doubled over around itself. It stared at the ruined, broken carcass it was in and screamed again. It pulled a chunk of hair out of its arm—flesh and meat dragged off the bone with it—and let it drop to the road. Then it coughed up a chunk of something black and tarry before it went for Ledger again. The mindless screaming tore out of it. Wren grabbed for it, but chunks of its hide just sloughed off in his hands and oozed between his fingers.
Ledger dodged to the side.
The thing staggered by him, tripped in a rutted hole, and staggered into the fence. It took it a second to work out how to turn around.
“I need it to talk!” Ledger yelled. He wasn’t sure yelling was needed—if Earl could hear him, the volume probably didn’t matter—but it felt good. The scrapes on his face hurt as his jaw moved. “It’s not talking!”
The thing turned around in a series of bone-cracking jerks—hips, waist, and neck. It chewed the air for a moment, and then Earl’s voice creaked out of its mouth.
“It’s… got nothing… to say. Yet,” it said.
Wren tackled the thing. He grabbed it around the chest, its leg/arms pinned to its side, and dragged it back up onto the road.
“Ask,” Wren gritted out over its shoulder as it writhed and snapped at him. Sweat sheened his forehead and curled his dark hair.
Three questions. That was Ledger’s allotment. He couldn’t afford to waste a question, so where did he start? Ledger pressed his sleeve to the side of his face, the dull sting distracting, as his mind raced.
“What happened to the deed?” he asked.
The question made Wren grimace in annoyance. The thing he held stopped struggling. It hung there for a moment before turning those bulging, about-to-pop eyes toward Ledger.
“Why the fuck should I tell you?” it rasped out. “You little shit stain.”
CHAPTER10
LEDGER STARED ATthe thing.
It wasn’t Bell. Bell was dead, dissected, and turned to dust. This was just a thrown-together revenant stitched into a coyote’s skin.
That said, Earl had managed to accurately recreate what a charmer the man was.
Ledger only had three questions, two now. If this thing was enough of Bell to be an asshole, then Ledger needed to be smart.
Or,Ledger thought as he opened his eyes, he just needed to be smarter than one-third of Bell’s corpse. It had been true, what Syder had said earlier. Bell had always liked Abigail better. She had a knack for that. Ledger never had, but he’d never really tried either.
He and Bell had a… different relationship.
“You’re dead, shit stain, that’s why,” he said. “Keep up.”
The patchwork revenant that Earl had glued together stared at him as something like thought tried to form in the sludge and dust of its brain.
“You did this?” it said. The mess of its muzzle-mouth peeled back in something like a smile. “That’s my boy. Dumb as fuck to the end. Let me go. Before he finds out I’m back.”
“You… If you mean Earl,” Ledger said, correcting himself mid-sentence. “That’s who brought you back.”
It laughed, a cracking hoot of noise that ended when it dislodged something from its chest and spat it—black and gooey—onto the road.
“To the fucking end,” it repeated. Then it twisted its head around and snapped at Wren, who pulled his head back to avoid the dry, scabby fur touching his face. “Put me down. My boy likes cock in his ass. I don’t.”
Wren curled his lip. “Trust me, it’s not going anywhere near you.” He looked at Ledger and raised his eyebrows. Ledger nodded, and Wren let the revenant go with a shove to put some distance between them. It staggered and caught its balance, shaking its malformed head dopily.
