The Ritual

dark-brown
cabinet, some pots and wooden plates, a back door. And a tiny crib, hand carved, in which the old woman sat; in her dusty black dress beside the hearth, like a cat. She stared at him too, waiting.
What did they want from him, these people?
    And then he saw it; the rifle leaning against the wall beside the door he had come through. And Fenris saw him see it. The world then became a blur with a judder going through it as time passed
too quickly.
    Fenris swung his legs, then his whole body off the table, and stood up still inside his sleeping bag; it dropped in a scarlet ruffle about his knees. ‘Good morning, Luke. Maybe you go back
to London now, eh? Wearing your faggot dress. It look good on you.’
    He slept in leather jeans and a T-shirt that advertised Bathory. In his hand was the sheath knife. It came into that slender feminine hand and the room and Luke’s life so quickly he knew
in a heartbeat that the youth could use it. Had used it. Relied upon it and slept with it like a lover.
    Luke’s heart dropped like a stone into a stomach that shimmered, then vanished. Only this far; only to get this far and they were there again, in his way.
    He ran at Fenris, his own knife at his side. Then hesitated, one step away from Fenris, for a time shorter than a wrist-watch could measure. He asked himself how it was done, the entering of a
sharp point into a living human being. Even after all he had been through, it was simply not in him. But he had paused in that room long enough for Fenris to grin and thrust up a skinny white
arm.
    Luke flinched. Jerked to the side. Then his breath seized up inside him when he felt the opening of himself like wet pastry across his hip bone. A long sting followed the parting of his flesh
under the gown. There was a hot flash down one thigh, and when he looked he was all red and drippy to the knee. He gouted, he gushed.
    Fenris grinned, swivelled the knife about in his hand so it daggered down from his fist. Luke looked into the boy’s hard blue eyes and felt too angry to breathe. He had not wanted this and
because of his decency he would have to die in a dirty kitchen. ‘Cunt,’ he said, and spit came out of his mouth. It made Fenris blink. Then the boy’s skinny tattooed arm was up in
the air and coming down at him fast.
    Luke walked under his elbow. Caught the girlish wrist in one hand, like he’d plucked a cricket ball whizzing through the air at second slip, and he had the ball in his hand before anyone
had seen the actual catch. He punched his other hand up and into the skinny boy, blade out. His fist came to a stop as his thumb and knuckle indented the boy’s flat stomach, and then he
stepped away.
    Fenris gasped. Looked down himself in surprise. Then screwed up his smeared face like he was going to cry, like he was so disappointed who something was over, or that he had been cheated.
    Luke went for the gun. Around him all he could hear was Fenris’s cries and his own breath, which was loud and hot and wet all over his own face. He was dizzy at the sight of the blood. It
was all over his own leg, and coming out slippery between Fenris’s long scarlet fingers where he clutched them at his soggy side.
    The gun was heavy. Ungainly. Luke heaved it up and into his arms and nearly dropped it. His hands were shaking too much to hold it steady, or to get his finger inside the trigger guard.
    Fenris howled. His face was fury and grief and panic now. The old woman looked on from her little wooden box, impassive, as if strangely bored with their behaviour.
    Fenris stepped out of the sleeping bag and came at him. Luke forced a jittery finger inside the trigger guard. Put the end of the barrel in Fenris’s direction.
    Fenris did not stop.
    Luke pulled the trigger. The trigger was unmovable. He tried to turn the rifle around to use the butt to strike Fenris, but the long barrel struck the wall behind his head. His own clumsiness
and lack of coordination infuriated him; his arms felt like they were full of warm water.
    He quickly swept the rifle to the side and parried Fenris’s bony hand that came slashing at him with his hunting knife still gripped in it. The point of the knife whisked a slot across
Luke’s bicep, then cut his chest above the nipple. It felt deep; seemed to wake him up. He kicked the heel of his right foot into Fenris’s side, where it was wet.
    The kid fell back, holding himself around the middle with both wet red hands. Luke ran sideways to