They’d been nine.

Sweet Andy. I still miss you, brother.

“Killing my own kind,” Orson finally said, “that’s what feels wrong.” But still he pushed the blade a few microns deeper into the flesh of Donaldson’s throat, imagined that last layer of skin beginning to split under the pressure of the blade. “How many like us do you think are wandering around out there?”

“More than you’d think.”

There was a snicking sound, metallic and unmistakable.

Orson felt something spear into his bare ribs.

He grinned.

“You had a second blade. Ankle holster?”

“Smaller than the one you have right now, but enough to puncture a lung. Ever seen a lung punctured?”

“Of course.”

Donaldson’s face softened. “I love that half-gasp, half-flapping sound.”

“I love the wet, gurgling noise of someone taking a deep breath while their lungs are filling up with blood.”

“I have an idea,” Donaldson said.

“Hit me.”

“We’re never gonna trust each other.”

“True.”

“And even if we become the best friends in the world, we’d probably always want to kill each other.”

“True.”

“Maybe it’s best we go our separate ways.”

Orson considered this. “Two lions passing each other in the dark?”

“Exactly. And we both live on to kill another day.”

“Or we could cut each other to shreds. Blaze of glory and all that.” Orson winced, feeling Donaldson’s blade nick his rib cage. “But separate ways sounds cool, too. I want to still be doing this when I’m seventy.”

A line of blood had begun to bead out across Donaldson’s throat, Orson wondering how much of the fat man’s head he’d be able to cut off before his lung collapsed, and if he could then make it into town to the hospital before he bled to death.

“Count of three,” Orson said. “And we disarm.”

“That didn’t work out so well the last time.”

“Second time’s a charm. One…two…three.”

Neither man so much as flinched.

“Why don’t you be the bigger man, Donaldson, and throw your knife away first? I am the customer, after all.”

“I’m not feeling that so much. How about you go first? As a gratuity for the one who carried your new toy so many miles to its new home.”

Dust swirled around them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Orson noticed a jackrabbit racing through the sagebrush.

“It gets awful cold out here when the sun drops,” Orson said. “Coyotes come out. Can I trust you?”

“Probably not. Be a helluva way to die, getting eaten by coyotes.”

Orson eased the pressure of the blade, just a hair. “Your turn. We’ll do this in baby steps.”

Orson felt Donaldson’s blade pull away from his ribs.

Orson lifted the blade completely from the surface of his neck.

Donaldson followed suit.

And then Orson rolled off the man onto the ground and jumped to his feet. “Need a hand up?”

“I can manage.”

Orson smiled, watching Donaldson struggle onto his feet like a bloated elephant. “That was graceful.”

“Nice takedown earlier.” Donaldson widened his stance. “Want to try it again?”

“If I want to take you down, you’ll be the last motherfucker to know about it. Look, I gotta get home, and if you want to be out of this desert before nightfall, you’d better hit the road.”

Orson backed away, moving toward his car.

“Hold it, asshole.”

Orson paused.

“The knife.” Donaldson pointed at Orson’s blade. “Where’d you buy it?”

“Custom knife maker in Montana. Works out of Bozeman. Last name’s Morrell.”

Donaldson nodded.

Then he folded up both of his knives, pocketed them, and backed away toward his sedan.

Out in the desert, a coyote mourned the sun as it slipped under the horizon.

The pair of buzzards had flown on, nowhere to be seen.

As Donaldson opened his car door, Orson called out, “So what’ll you do to blow off all this steam we just built up?”

Donaldson shrugged. “Probably take it out on a hitchhiker.”

“Just be sure and watch yourself,” Orson said. “Never know who you might pick up.”

A Brood of Hens

New England, 1992

“Historians typically delineate four manifestations of the Inquisition.”

He hated this class.

“The Medieval Inquisition.”

He hated the professor.

“The Spanish Inquisition.”

But more than anything…

“The Portuguese Inquisition.”

…he hated the subject.

“And the Roman Inquisition.”

Hated history. Hated looking back on things, hated dwelling on events long-since passed and people long-since dead.

“Can anyone tell me the purpose of the Inquisition? No takers? Okay, how about you?”

He was only twenty years old, but he’d made it his life’s work to live in the present. To occupy the moment.

“Excuse me…Mr. Kite?”

Shit.

Luther looked up from his desk on the back row of Room 107 in Howard Hall.

Professor Parker had stepped out from behind the lectern to stare a hole through him from across the room. The guy was young—couldn’t have been much older than thirty—but he dressed like a crusty old coot in a beige wool suit, red bow tie, and green suspenders. Parker probably hadn’t had a moment of fun in his entire life.

“Mr. Kite? Yoo-hoo! You with us? Terribly sorry to wrench you up out of your nap, but we’ve kind of got a class going here.”

Luther cleared his throat and straightened up in his desk, felt his face growing hot with a deep, scarlet flush.

“Sorry.”

“Care to take a shot at answering my question?”

“Could you repeat the question please?”

Professor Parker smiled. “Of course. Be thrilled to. Can you tell me the purpose, the objective if you will, of the Inquisition?”

Luther hadn’t read the assigned pages. In fact, he hadn’t even cracked the book that had cost him, his parents actually, a hundred twenty dollars in the student bookstore. He hadn’t wanted to come to this stupid college in Vermont to begin with, but his father had insisted, and now, only half a semester in, he was flunking every one of his classes.

“The purpose?” Luther asked.

Parker smiled. “Yes, the purpose.”

“Um…”

“Did you read the assigned pages?”

“Not really.”

“Not really. Okay. Would you like me to answer the question for you?”

“Sure, that’d be great.”

A ripple of laughter spread through the classroom. Had he caused that? He wasn’t trying to be funny. In fact, he was fairly certain he’d never made anyone laugh in their entire life. Just wanted this moment to be over.

He didn’t like the way Parker was watching him across the room. Luther had disappointed all of his professors during his underwhelming two-month tenure at Woodside College. He knew they hated him, wanted him out of their classes, but none of them had stared at him quite like this. Maybe he was imagining things, but it was almost like Parker wanted to hurt him.

“The objective of the Inquisition, Mr. Kite,” Parker said, returning to the lectern and adjusting his gold, wire-rim glasses, “was to combat heresy, and in this regard, the Inquisition only had jurisdiction over baptized members of the Church. Maybe I’ll throw Mr. Kite a softball now. Mr. Kite?”

“Yes?”

“By what means did the Inquisition examine, interrogate, and punish heretics?”

“Um…torture?”

“Very good, Mr. Kite. Excellent. Yes, the Inquisition is perhaps best known for its sadism and unrelenting cruelty. After all, it gave us the Pear, the Garotte, the Wheel, the Spike, Punishing Shoes, Heretic’s Fork, the Boots, the Hanging Cage, Head Crusher, Judas Cradle, Iron Maiden, and that most brilliant method of inflicting revelatory, false-confession-inducing pain, the Rack.”

Luther sat just a bit straighter at his desk.

One of the jocks a few rows down raised his beefy arm.

Parker called on him.

“Is the Rack that thing where they string you up outside and leave you for the crows?”