My eyes drifted to her body. Most of her layers were gone, but nothing had been ripped. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I wasnot sure how long that would last. Although her bottom lip was bleeding, both were turning blue. She was freezing to death.
Rattler brought me next to Atta and sat me down. This was when I noticed what I did not before.
The unmistakable sound of a rattlesnake’s rattling. A warning. I sat as close to Atta as I could, a single bulb swinging from the rafters, giving very little light to the darkness. I wanted to know where that snake was.
“Bianca Watt knows where I was coming,” I said. “She will come to check if I am not back in an hour.” It had already been thirty minutes since I left the ranch.
Hopefully this no-good son of a snake could do proper maths—er, math.
“Let her come,” he said. “Let her join the party. The more the merrier.” He touched Atta’s chin, and she allowed him to, but her eyes looked away from him.
He went to touch mine and I tried to bite him. Atta screamed, “Sistine, no!” as his palm wrapped around my head and he slammed it into the wall.
When the stars cleared from my vision, she was whispering, “Don’t say anything, don’t fight, please.”
I registered her words, but my eyes were on Rattler. He was going for something tucked inside a deep basket on the other side of the barn. He used something like oversized tongs to pull the whipping and hissing snake out. Once he had a good grip on it, the snake seemed to still but was still hissing. Its fangs were exposed. It wanted to inflect its poison into anything it could, whether that thing was good or bad.
Rattler came closer, his brothers laughing, smoke billowing from their mouths from the cold.
Atta grabbed my hand, squeezing, but I could feel her shrinking. It was not long before I understood why.
Rattler put the snake in my face, so close, if he had released the tongs just a breath, it would have struck me on the nose.
This game went on for what seemed like forever—forever being thirty minutes or so. My coats were taken, my gloves, even my hat. They left the boots. The snake was back and forth in my face, irritated, the hissing nonstop.
Despite peeing myself out of fear, and the cold ripping my skin open across my knuckles, perhaps from clenching them so hard, my mind spoke the truth to me.
These ass faces were using mind games to weaken us. Atta was already there. Each time the snake would come close to us, she would not scream out, only suck up a shuddering breath, as if she could not control them, as if she had no more energy in her to make a noise.
When Rattler looked in my eyes, he grinned for the first time, running a gloved finger down my face. “You’re not so easily broken.”
My eyes moved from the snake’s eyes and into his master’s. I could not control the clattering of my teeth, but I kept my chin lifted. “You have no idea,” I breathed out. “You will die for this—perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but someday, you will.”
Perhaps he took my threat seriously. He flung the snake toward his brothers, who all started to whoop and holler, frightened by the thing. It was moving through the hay, making a path.
Even bracing for his heavy hand would not have helped ease the blow. It came out of nowhere. It was strong enough to make my head rattle. I wondered, absentmindedly, if that was how he got his moniker.
Atta’s hand jittered in mine. She could no longer squeeze. The air was too cold, and it was making her blood move slower.I was feeling it as well. The blow was a distant fire that did not warm me.
Still. I forced my eyes to stay frozen on his.
“That’s a witchy little bitch,” one of the brothers said. “I don’t like the way she’s looking at you, Rattler.”
I turned my dull stare on him, and he lifted his hands, taking a few careful steps back. Theviperawas still on the loose.
“Me either,” Rattler said. He leaned down, grabbed a piece of hay, and stuck it in the side of his mouth. “Get me another one, little brother. Time for this bitch to know what true pain feels like.”
“No!” Atta screamed out.
I kept my eyes on his.
He was starting to sweat in what felt as cold as a freezer.
Every head but mine and Atta’s whipped in the direction of what sounded like a stampede. It took us longer. I wanted so badly to warm Atta with the heat still lingering in my veins. The blow had pissed me off. My fingers were curling and uncurling, my skin too numb to even feel the splits from my hands being chapped.
Rattler turned to one of his brothers. “You didn’t secure the gate?”
“Dumbass.” The one who walked me in pushed the irresponsible brother in the back. He tripped a little but was still mindful of where he was putting his feet down.
