A Black and Endless Sky by Matthew Lyons

Author:Matthew Lyons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Jonah

Interstate 70, UT

649 miles to Albuquerque

The woman—Anna, Jonah assumed from the note he’d found—stood slowly, keeping her hands high, her elbows bent at perfect ninety-degree angles. He kept the empty shotgun trained on the back of her skull, trying to calm the tremors that shook his hands. It was a decent bluff, but it was still a bluff, and if she, with those cabled arms of hers, clocked it, Jonah would be in for a world of hurt. They all would. He was already running on fumes. He wasn’t sure he had another fight in him today. Maybe not ever.

“You’re making a mistake here,” the woman said as she turned to face him, her voice perfectly pleasant. “This is all a misunderstanding.”

“Yeah, that’s why you were holding a razor to my sister’s throat,” Jonah said. “A misunderstanding. Put it down.”

Anna didn’t move.

“Now,” he demanded.

Her expression darkened; moving very slowly, she folded the razor’s blade back into its filigreed handle, then bent to set it down on the cement at her feet.

“Kick it over there,” Jonah commanded, jerking his head toward the other side of the garage. Silently, the woman put one shoe atop the fancy blade and kicked it away, into the dark.

“Good. Now back up. All the way, until your heels hit the wall.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Anna said.

“Would you please, please shut the fuck up,” Jonah implored.

Glaring at him, she stepped away from Nell and backed up until she was standing against the far wall, hands still raised. Jonah kept the gun on her.

“If you move, I swear to god, I will cut you in half,” he said.

It was another bluff, but even Jonah had to admit it sounded pretty convincing. Cutthroat razor or not, he had to assume that whoever this woman was, she didn’t have a lot of experience looking down the barrel of a gun.

Turning his attention toward Nell, Jonah stooped down to help her up off the ground. Underneath a deep black stain that had been painted onto her forehead, his sister’s eyes were brilliant white in the dark, wide with terror. Getting his free arm all the way under Nell’s armpits, he lifted her to her feet, and together they started to back away, toward the door and the clamorous rainstorm outside.

“You’re making a mistake,” Anna said from the far side of the room.

“Yeah, you already said that,” Jonah muttered as he dragged Nell toward the open door. Why wasn’t she moving? What the hell had this woman done to her?

“Your sister is sick,” Anna said. “She’s got something inside her that you can’t even comprehend, let alone fix.”

“And what? You can?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Find someone else,” Jonah said, taking another step backward, then another. He could almost feel the rain on his back now. “Find anyone else.”

“She told me about her blackout,” the woman called after him. “About the desert and the caves. How you brought her back. You saved her once already. You can help me do it again. Just put her down and let me do my job.

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