Through the fire, p.1
Through the Fire, page 1
THROUGH THE FIRE
C. E. MURPHY
THROUGH THE FIRE
ISBN-13: 978-1-61317-192-9 (ebook)
ISBN 13: 978-1-61317-193-6 (print)
Copyright © 2023 by C.E. Murphy
All rights reserved.
Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, now known or heater invented, is forbidden without the express written permission of the author, cemurphyauthor@gmail.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint lyrics from "Face It" by Kansas. Courtesy of John Elefante.
Cover Art & Design: Midjourney, Miz Kit Productions, & so much guilt
Created with Vellum
For Kate Sheehy
(obviously)
How many times do I have to tell you
That things just can't go on this way
We've tried so many times but things go on the same
We've spent one too many years in all this pain
KANSAS, "FACE IT"
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by C. E. Murphy
Excerpt: Urban Shaman
CHAPTER 1
Dad's dead. You probably don't care, but the funeral is Friday.
The text carried the same body blow every time Nick read it. Both the news and the sheer assholery of the delivery. Punch to the gut, followed by a groin shot. Enough to make him sick. The phone had fallen out of his cold hands when the message first came in. Tyler, his roommate—wide-shouldered, dark-skinned, with a handful of dreads caught in a band and the rest falling free—picked it up, read it, and handed it back. "So your brother's a dick. Need a lift home?"
"Yeah." Nick hadn't said a whole lot else since. Tyler called Stephanie for him, because he didn't seem to be able to do it himself. She met them at the truck less than an hour later. Ty drove, while Nick and Steph sat in the back, Nick alternating between staring at the message and out the window. Eighteen hours between San Francisco and north-east Colorado, a stone's throw away from the Nebraska border.
"There's nothing fucking out here," Ty said at one point. "Like a million miles of nothing."
"Yeah, that's kind of the appeal."
"I thought your dad was a bounty hunter," Ty objected. "Don't you have to be, like, near people to hunt them?"
Stephanie said, "Shut up, Ty," but Nick shrugged.
"You go where the hunt takes you, that's all. It's okay," he said to Steph, more quietly.
"You don't like talking about it."
"Yeah, well, I don't like my dad being dead either, but here we are."
Stephanie inhaled sharply but said nothing. Nick looked out the windows again, tension thinning his lips and flaring his nostrils. It took a minute to say, "Sorry."
"It's all right." Her hand, warm around his, squeezed.
Nick risked a look at her. She hadn't slept much. Shadows marred her dark, concerned eyes and made the gold-brown depths of her skin look sallow. Her loosely curling hair, usually worn down, was back in a severe ponytail that made her look worried. He tried to offer a more apologetic, or reassuring smile, and knew it didn't work. "It's not, but thanks."
She nodded, and Nick turned his attention out the window again, then almost immediately pulled his phone out to stare at it. He'd texted Chris back after he didn't know how many hours. You okay?
Not really, had come back faster than he'd expected it to. You?
No.
No answer since then. No asking if Nick was coming to the funeral. No information on what had happened. Just 'not really', which—honestly—was more of an admission than he'd expected out of his older brother.
Nick had already been on the road by then, but if he hadn't been, that would have been enough to bring him home.
"Turn here," he said to Tyler. The north-eastern corner of Colorado didn't have much going for it: wide roads, repetitive views, and a wind that came from every direction at once. Dry snow blew in gusts across the road, although it was surprisingly thin on the ground, for March. They'd passed through Sterling, close to the state border, and it had looked like nobody had even needed to bother with snow plows that year.
"This is south," Ty objected. "Didn't we just spend a long time driving north coming the other way?"
Nick chuckled, barely a breath of sound, but still, the first laugh since he'd gotten his brother's text. "Yeah, but you can't get here from there."
"This is a 4x4, my dude. I can get anywhere."
"Tell that to the bison."
Tyler flashed a quick wide-eyed look in the mirror and took the rest of Nick's directions without complaint.
"Hey." Steph smoothed her thumb over the back of Nick's hand. "You're tensing up, babe. Are we almost there?"
Nick tried to loosen the strain in his hands, but it came from his neck and shoulders, coursing through him. As soon as he shook it out, it seeped back in. "Yeah. Another couple miles."
"You haven't been home since you left for college, have you." Steph knew the answer, but Nick appreciated the effort to distract him, so he nodded.
"Three years. Almost four now, I guess. I left as soon as I graduated high school." His brother had been hurt. Their dad had been furious.
He hadn't seen the old man since.
His stomach clenched and he closed his eyes, jaw rigid to keep tears from coming. Stephanie squeezed his hand more tightly, but she didn't know what to say. Nick didn't know what she should say, either. There wasn't anything to say, except, "Left up here," to Ty.
The bumps in the road were still familiar. A pothole that had gotten worse with time; a sharp dip that he'd loved as a kid because it left his stomach behind. Asphalt turned to gravel and Nick swore he knew the exact rock that pinged from beneath the tires to hit the truck's undercarriage. Without opening his eyes, he said, "Left again at the next chance," and felt the back tire sink into a divot that could drag a whole car down, if it had been snowing.
They turned, and a minute later Ty said, "Nick?" uncertainly, which told Nick he was home. He sat there a few seconds, eyes still closed, then unlocked his jaw, forcing himself to speak.
"Just…gimme a minute, okay? Just…stay in the truck a minute?"
"Yeah," Stephanie said quietly. "Yeah, of course, babe." Tyler started to protest, and she kicked the back of his seat as Nick got out of the truck. From the corner of his eye, he saw her crawl into the front seat as he walked past the truck toward a familiar scene, surreal only because this time it was his dad who'd died.
A few dozen trucks and other big vehicles were parked in a loose circle on the prairie, half or more of them with their headlights on. About as many people were gathered around the funeral pyre that the headlights illuminated. It stood tall and stark, stacked high with dry wood. Nick could see, but couldn't look at, a body wrapped in white at the top of the pyre. A few people turned his way as he approached, all familiar faces. Mostly older, mostly male, mostly white, all with a rugged or hard edge to them, all with skinny long shadows thrown by the headlights that lit the scene. Some of their faces softened as they recognized him. One or two gazes widened as they looked again, either at Nick, or into the small crowd around the pyre.
Beer and harder alcohol were being passed around, and the tremendous empty night sky swallowed most of the low voices anyway, but as people recognized him, silence was traded like the booze, until the last voice was a familiar one, putting on an air of hail all and good cheer that exhausted Nick just to hear. The silence got to even that voice, though, and the crowd made way as the speaker turned to see what was going on.
Nick's big brother had gotten shorter, somehow. Otherwise Chris looked like himself, hair cut brush-short, jaw as tension-lined as Nick's own, a bottle in one hand and a forced cock-of-the-walk grin smeared across his features.
His face crumpled for a heartbeat when he saw Nick, relief and disbelief crushed instantly by the return of the forced smile. "Ayyyyyy, there's my little brother. Jesus, Nicky, you got tall."
"Nah, man." Nick's throat felt thick, like the words couldn't find their way out. "You got short."
"I can still kick your ass. C'mon, bring it in, big guy." Chris gestured and the gathered mourners took another step back as Nick crashed awkwardly into his brother's unfamiliar hug.
For a minute the world vanished. Why Nick had come wasn't real anymore, what had happened before he left disappeared, everything he'd done since then didn't matter. Chris's hug was as tight as iron bands, which all by itself told Nick how bad things were, but it didn't matter. For a whole minute, he held on, and Chris didn't even try to let go. Then, his voice deep and rough, Chris said, "Aight," quietly into Nick's shoulder. "Aight." He released him, pounding on his back, and handed the bottle in h
"They brought me. My, ah, my roommate and my girlfriend, they drove me up. I couldn't get here fast enough otherwise."
That douchebag grin slid across Chris's face again and he punched Nick's shoulder hard enough to hurt. "Seriously, a girlfriend? You? Is she hot?"
"Don't be a dick, Chris."
"So she's hot." Chris lifted his chin toward the truck, and the doors opened, Stephanie and Tyler climbing down from opposite sides. "Damn, she is hot! What's her name?"
"Stephanie. Chris, don't—"
Chris had already walked forward, offering a hand. "Hi, Stephanie. I don't know what you see in him, but I gotta say, my little brother's got good taste in women. Chris Cassidy. Nice to meet you."
Stephanie glanced at Nick. He could see her reeling back half a dozen sharp comments and choosing to say, "Stephanie Moreno. I'm sorry for your loss."
"Yeah." Chris's voice went rough. "Me too. Chris," he said to Tyler, who shook his hand in return.
"Ty Jones. Sorry about your dad."
"Yeah," Chris said again. "Me too. Thanks for bringing Nicky home."
"No problem." Just like Stephanie had done, Tyler glanced at Nick and just as obviously decided not to say something pointed. "'Nicky', huh?"
"Don't," Nick said. "Just don't."
Tyler's grin, much like Chris's but in a darker face, flashed. "I'll give you tonight."
"We can go," Stephanie said, a little sharply. "We'll go, if you want us to, Nick. We didn't know your dad."
"No, it's okay. I'd like you to stay, if it's not too weird for you."
"There's a Viking funeral pyre over there," Tyler hissed. "It's super weird and totally cool. We're staying."
Stephanie started, "Tyler, I swear to god," but Chris gave a big hard laugh that interrupted her.
"Cool. Yeah, totally cool. Guess you didn't tell them much about the family business." He took Nick's beer bottle back and walked away, leaving Nick standing between his bewildered friends and enduring the hard, sympathetic looks from his dad's friends.
Tyler's whisper would have made a librarian scold him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Stephanie elbowed him hard enough to make him grunt as Nick shook his head. "I'll explain it later."
"No, you won't."
Nick turned his head toward Ty, knowing his gaze was tired and blank with incomprehension. "You never explain anything," Tyler said. "Especially when you say it that way."
"Jesus, Ty, this isn't the time." Stephanie put her hand in Nick's, glancing around at the older men and women who were slowly turning back to their own conversations and drinks. "You don't have any friends here?"
"I've got you." Nick managed a smile that didn't touch his eyes, but Stephanie's answering smile appreciated the effort. "No, we didn't have a lot of fr—Dayton." Even he couldn't mistake the relief in his own voice as a young white woman about his age came around from the far side of the pyre. "We didn't have a lot of friends our age," he told Stephanie, truthfully, "but Day is one of them. Dayton," he said again, as the blonde girl shouldered through the gathering and slammed into his arms. "I'm glad you're here, Day."
"I'm glad you are." Dayton hadn't shrunk any more than Chris had, but she seemed a lot smaller than the last time Nick had seen her. She'd always been little, though, and wore it like an open wound. "Chris didn't think you'd come. Hi. I'm Dayton, yes, my middle name is Ohio, yes, whatever terrible reason you're thinking for naming a kid that is probably pretty close to right." She stuck her hand out to Stephanie, whose smile brightened again.
"Nick's mentioned you. I'm Stephanie. This is Tyler. I'm sorry for your loss."
"Hell of a family reunion to introduce you to. Shy and Jake are here," she told Nick. "Chris is waiting on Dakota before he lights up." She scowled over her shoulder through the cold night. "Well, before he lights up the pyre, anyway. He's pretty lit himself already." She turned back and punched Tyler's arm. "You guys want a drink? There's beer, there's Jack, there's a goddamn bucket of moonshine if you want it."
"Moonshine?" Tyler's voice cracked with interest. "Seriously?"
"One cup of hooch coming up. Stephanie? Nick?"
Stephanie shook her head and Nick wavered, then bared his teeth. "I think I could use a beer."
"Gimme a minute." Dayton slipped off again, her hair bright in the darkness until she disappeared around the pyre.
"She's…not what I expected," Stephanie said after a moment. "Smaller. Cuter. Angrier? She's mad at your brother, isn't she?"
"Day's been mad at Chris for most of our lives. She used to have a thing for him."
"I can see why that would make somebody mad," Tyler said. "Dayton? Dakota? What, you only know women with place names?"
"It gets worse," Nick said with a faint smile. "Shy's full name is Cheyenne. I don't know, it was a thing around here twenty years ago, I guess."
"You really gonna light that thing on fire?" Tyler asked. "Like, Viking funeral shit? What's that about?"
"Tradition."
"Man, your last name is Cassidy, not, like…Ericson or something. Cassidy isn't Nordic, is it?"
"No, it's just…I don't know, my family's been doing it as long as I can remember. There was a big pyre when my grandpa died. I don't remember my mom's."
That left a gap in the conversation wide enough to drive a couple of the idling trucks through. After a few seconds Ty muttered, "Fuck. Shit, man, I'm sorry. I didn't think about this meaning you were, like, an orphan now."
Nick barked a short, hard laugh. "I'm not, as long as Chris is around."
"I thought he was your brother." Tyler, for once, almost shut up before he'd finished speaking, the last words coming out in a mumble as Stephanie gave him another, bug-eyed, hard stare.
"He is. He still pretty much raised me. Lemme tell you, it's great, having your big brother and your de facto dad being the same guy." Nick stopped himself, eyes and teeth both clenched, then said, "Look, can we just…not, right now? I really…can't."
"Yeah." Ty still sounded genuinely apologetic. "Yeah, sorry, man. Want me to, uh…" He glanced around in search of something useful he could do as Dayton came swinging back around the pyre with a couple of bottles and a red plastic cup in hand. Nick took one of the bottles, sniffed it to make sure it was beer, then took a swig. Tyler took a large swallow of the red cup and didn't so much wheeze at the shine's strength as sit like a pole-axed ox. From the ground, he said, "Fuck," and took a more cautious swallow that did make him wheeze. "Jesus fuck."
"Yeah." Nick snickered. "That works. I want you to do that. Sit down and drink."
"My ass is already half froze," Tyler announced. "Also I may be inebriated."
"You said Shy and Jake were here?" Nick asked Dayton. "Do they, uh."
"Want to see you? Yeah, you're not persona non grata to them, regardless of what Chris says. You okay there, big guy?" Dayton said that to Tyler, then frowned up at Nick. "Except I guess you're kind of the big guy now."
"I'm good," Tyler said. "I can definitely stand up on my own. No problem. I just…don't want to."
"Go see your friends," Stephanie said wryly. "I'll keep an eye on Ty for a bit."
Nick whispered, "You're the best," and dipped his head to press his forehead against hers. She stole a kiss, murmured, "I am, and don't you forget it," then shooed him off before putting a hand under Ty's elbow to lever him up from the frozen earth.
Dayton, obviously not concerned with Steph hearing her, said, "She seems pretty cool," before they were two steps away.
"She is. Seriously, though, Day…how's Chris?"
"Fucking awful. He misses you like you're his lungs or something, and he's been holding himself together with baling wire and booze since your dad died. Are you back for good?"
"What? No. I've got school to get back to, Day, I've got mid-terms and I'm starting med school this fall."
