InkStains January Read Online Free

straight
line.
    One eighty. You’re getting brave. I like what
I see. I like the music of that engine and the heavy rhythm
pounding out of those speakers. Loud music always goes with speed.
One ninety. You’re pushing it now. Just a little more. Coax those
horses over the edge.
    Helicopter? So what? It’s up in the air.
You’re on the ground, on the street, a flash of lightning, two
hundred miles per hour and they haven’t got a chance in Hell of
catching you. At least until you run out of gas.
    Until then, drive it like you stole it, babe.
‘Cause after, you’re headed for a long slow stay in a cell.

7 January
     
    They chased her into a dark dead-end alley.
Her name was Simone. When she turned to face her pursuers, an angry
mob, she grinned. There was nothing jovial about her expression. It
was pure hunger.
    I’d warned them.
    The mob was about a dozen deep, men mostly,
who might have convinced themselves they’d seen something. They
hadn’t. Not yet.
    Simone crouched like a tigress. She said,
“Stop,” but they did not listen. She did not plead; it wasn’t her
life at risk. She drew a long, thin blade from the sheath on her
hip. She held it defensively. Poison gleamed on its edge.
    They came at her anyway.
    After she finished with them, when all that
remained were steaming corpses and a few final agonized moans, she
returned the knife to its home and spoke to me in the shadows.
“You’ve been following me.”
    “ Watching, yes,” I
admitted.
    “ You want to know if it’s
true, what they say about me.”
    I would’ve smiled for her if I were capable.
“I know that it is.”
    Another night, I had seen her talking with a
rat, stroking its head, giggling, certain they were alone.
    Another night, I had seen her accept free
bread from the stingy baker. He’d slept every day and night since,
and slept still, though I didn’t think she knew this.
    Another night, I’d seen her drink whiskey
from a bottomless bottle.
    “ You want something,” she
said.
    “ We all want
something.”
    “ You’re not good at
enigmatic,” she told me.
    I stepped out of the shadows so she could see
my scars. “I want justice.”
    “ You seek vengeance,” she
said. “It’s not the same thing.”
    “ It’s close
enough.”
    “ You want my blessing?” she
asked.
    “ I want your dagger and
your poison.”
    She touched the blade sheathed at her hip.
“It acts swiftly.”
    The mob had gone silent. I said, “I
know.”
    She didn’t ask who had scarred me or how or
why. She didn’t ask if there had been another victim, perhaps a
mother, a daughter, a lover. She judged me by the expression in my
eyes and the determination in my voice. I was unwavering and
unafraid. She unhooked the sheath from her hip and handed it
over.
    I drew the blade, sheath still in hand, and
examined the edge. She’d wiped it clean, but there were traces of
blood, and of course the poison.
    “ Return it to me here,” she
said, “twenty-four hours from now.” The threat was implied. I
nodded. I left her to her shadows.
    My plan had been simple. Twenty-four hours
later, precisely, I sat cross-legged in my bare room in the dark.
My boots were next to me, the knife and its sheath in front of me
on the ground.
    Simone entered through the window behind me.
I only head her because she allowed it. I knew she would find me. I
knew she’d know my name and, by now, my story.
    “ My blade is dry,” she
said. She hadn’t even retrieved it. “You failed to find your
justice.”
    “ Justice moves at its own
speed,” I told her.
    “ You couldn’t find
him.”
    “ I didn’t look.”
    She knelt in front of me, slid the knife from
its leather. The blade glinted. Though dry, it was still potent.
“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “Many who quest for vengeance find they
haven’t the stomach for it.”
    “ He’s dead,” I told
her.
    She raised an eyebrow. She put the knife in
its sheath. “How?”
    I raised my hands before me, palms up,
fingers