Page 34 of Freedom’s Inferno

I pushed myself to my feet and joined her. “Lucky Lana.”

She looked at me, eyes unreadable. “I don’t believe in luck.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small brass key. The tag was smeared with soot. “This,” I said, holding it between us, “is all we’ve got left.”

She nodded once, grim, and knowing.

Cop cars pulled into the lot, doors slamming, officers shouting over sirens and the rush of water hoses.

We’re about to be at the mercy of their questions.

I glanced at Lana.

When’s the right time to remind her we still have a forty minute motorcycle ride ahead of us?

Part Two

Pendulum Swing

The pendulum swings

Blade suspended over both

Ruin and desire

Interlude

Charles Sterling sprawled on his belly across the twin-sized mattress, a worn book clutched between his hands. The candle on the night stand flickered, and he pressed the book closer to his face, struggling to make out the words in the warm glow of the flame.

He’d discovered the old book on his walk home from school, in a box marked FREE on the side of the road. Dante’s Inferno was a lot for a twelve year old to digest, but the boy was an enthusiastic reader, and he wasn’t about to be intimidated by a challenge. He devoured everything his English teacher would slip into his backpack, and this was no different.

Charles didn’t understand every word of Dante’s Inferno, but something about it stuck to him—the way sins became punishments, the way every wrong thing eventually circled back. He couldn’t name it then, not divine justice or moral reckoning, but he connected with it. The idea that people ended up exactly where they’d earned. That made sense to him in a way the real world never did.

He paused, ears straining for any sound that might suggest his father was up. He didn’t particularly enjoy reading by candlelight like he was stuck in the Middle Ages, but he didn’t dare turn on the lamp. Light under the door was a risk, a beacon that would invite his father’s wrath. Normal boys his age played ball, or went fishing with their dads. Normal kids didn’t hide books under the mattress like contraband.

His father hated that he loved to read. He said it made him soft, that books were for kids without friends or more impressive talents.

The words still stung when he allowed himself to think about them, but he’d learned not to argue a long time ago. Not after the night his mother tried to stop one of the fights and ended up on the kitchen floor, blood on her lip and broken glass in her hair.

She’d left two years ago, taking her suitcases but leaving Charles behind. He remembered watching from the top of the stairs, his father shouting, his mother crying, her eyes red and swollen. He told himself that one day she’d come back for him, but time ticked on, and she never did.

The candle guttered, throwing shadows that twisted like gnarled fingers climbing the wall.

His eyes darted toward the door again, ears tuned for the creak of floorboards or the clink of a bottle. Nothing. Just the old house settling and the faint hum of the fridge downstairs. He turned another page, careful not to let it rustle too loud.

Every day since his mother left had been the same: a slow, waking hell. His father had traded screaming at her for screaming at him. The insults were different, but the venom was the same. Sometimes the blows came after, and sometimes before, but Charles had stopped trying to predict it.

He often wondered what his father saw when he looked at him. What reflection twisted in his eyes to make him so angry? Maybe it wasn’t hate at all, but recognition. Maybe he hated the part that looked like his mother… and the part that didn’t.

Either way, he couldn’t stop reading. Reading was the only thing that made sense. In Dante’s Inferno, every sin had a weight and every cruelty a consequence. That’s what drew him in: the promise that even monsters had to answer to something. He didn’t know yet that some monsters never paid for their crimes.

Down the hall, a door slammed.

He stilled.

His father’s heavy gait carried down the hall, a man whose only expression was anger.

Charles bolted upright, moving across his bed to get to the candle, book still tucked under one arm.