Blood on the Marble

Candice's P.O.V.

I woke to the sound of gunfire.

Not the far-off pop-pop of a range.  

True, near, knocking on the windows of the club-house as hail on a tin roof.

The next moment Mantovani pulled himself to his feet naked and deadly, half-closing his eyes and with a gun in his hand. Moonlight parted the curtains and left silver streaks on his mutilated back as he went to the window.

Stay down, he said ice-cold.

I scrambled to the floor yet, heart beat to my ribs. This was followed by a second eruption of automatic fire that cut through the night, there was then an Italian shout, and the bikes were gearing.

He turned back, with flaming eyes, and looked at me. "Sheriff's men. They hit the gate."

My stomach dropped. His undercover job, upon which he had been despatched, the brother of the sheriff at my school, now came raping at the door with bullets.

Mantovani pulled up trousers, thrust a second gun into my hand (somehow heavy, and black, and terrible). "Safety's here." He clicked it off for me. "Point and pull when one passes through that door."

Then he had vanished, with his bare feet and naked chest, fading away through the passage as though he were a vampire.

I was lying on the bed naked with his hoodie, and my gun shaking in my hand. The clubhouse was in an uproar: pounding boots, men giving orders, the metallic banging of magazines thrown into place.

A minute later the door flew open.

I drew the gun, with index finger on the trigger.

Conti stood at the door-way with hands raised and eyes open. "It's me, Candice. Easy."

He entered, closed out the door. It was some other one on which the blood streaked his cheek.

They broke the east fence, they said, he said. There that Mantovani holding the line with the brothers. We must transfer you to the safe room.

And here is another explosion,--so close, that the dust fell down on the roof.

I stood on shaking legs. I am not sneaking in his absence as he goes out there to get shot.

Conti's jaw tightened. "He'll kill me if I let you--"

There was a new voice used these words--but hysterical and feminine.

Mom.

"Let me in! Let me see my daughter!"

My blood ran cold.

Conti cursed. "She followed us here. Probably followed the car on the day before yesterday.

I pushed him aside before he could stop me, and still holding the gun, my bare feet splashing along the cold concrete, I ran through the corridor to the main room.

The clubhouse was a war zone.

In turned-over tables brothers stood behind in retaliation through the broken windows. Glass was mantling the floor as snow of death. The air stank of cordite and blood.

And there, in full blast of middle, was bound up through two perspectives, my mother--matted hair, smeared mascara, screaming my name.

"Candice! Candice, come with me! We're leaving--now!"

Through the open front door, behind her, I caught a glimpse of the muzzle fire in the darkness. His voice, the quiet and furious voice of Hear Mantovani in command.

Mom spotted me. Her gaze fell on the gun I was holding, the oversized hoodie barely covering my thighs, the bruises developing on my neck.

She escaped out of the prospects and fled to me.

You are going home, said her sobbing, and captured my arm. "This is insanity. He's going to get you killed--"

I yanked away. "I am home."

Her face crumpled. "He's brainwashed you. He's--"

A bullet has come through the wall and has inches away reached her head. Plaster exploded. She screamed.

I didn't flinch.

I went to the doors instead, and took both hands and hoisted the gun just as Mantovani had demonstrated to me once in the garden, and went out.

Bikes and floodlights were set ablaze in the courtyard. The bodies were on the gravel, some in the leather cuts, others in tactical gear with insignias of the sheriff department.

Mantovani was in the middle, naked and covered in blood firing a shotgun into the treeline by which the retreating attackers were running.

He looked me, and screamed, "Candice, get the fuck back in!"

I didn't.

I immediately, with uncovered feet, through fractured glass and hot shell casings, came up to him with a loose gun in my side.

As I fell on him he seized me, lifted me roughly to his breast and knocked out the air of my lungs.

"What the fuck are you doing?" with fear, not anger, he snarled.

I hashed my face against his wet blood.

"Standing by my president," I said distinctly.

The other brothers went dead quiet behind us.

Somebody then began applauding--slow, solemn. Another joined. Then the entire courtyard was in cheers and fists beating the chests and wolf howl in the night.

Mantovani looked down wildly at me.

"You little cuckoo, of mine," he said.

Then he kissed me--stifling, bitter, bitter as powder and brass--right out in the presence of all the surviving brothers, in the presence of the smoking ruins, in the presence of the sobbing broken voices of my feebly-dried mother at the door.

As he drew back he folded his forehead against mine.

"Hello to the war, Mrs. President."

I grinned, my blood rushing at my veins.

"Show me how to reload."

He laughed, dark, shocked, proud enough, and gave me a new magazine.

In the doorway, behind us, Mom had fallen on her knees, as her daughter decided blood over her.

The sheriff's men were gone.

But the message was clear.

They'd started the war.

And I had just asserted to what side I stood.

Forever.