The Horrors on Blood Mountain Part 4

A hard-hitting stoic hero finds a woman on the side of the road dying and begging him to save her daughter, but is there more to the task than being a hero?

The fear wrapped around Emma deeper than the cold. She ran from the man who saved her, but she didn’t know him. He believed an angel told him to go out into the world to fight evil. He was crazy, maybe not as bad as her father, but she didn’t want to find out. She knew what men could do with girls like her. She had counted her blessing. The Duke Boys didn’t hurt in the way they raped her mother. Her mother, the poor woman, didn’t cry once during the whole event, but she wouldn’t look over at Emma either.

                Emma knew about sex. Her father had taken her to one of the w****s’ houses in town to show her where not to end up in life. He wanted to make sure she understood the depths of evil in men’s hearts while hiding the darkness in his own.

                And yet, Emma had watched her father order the death of whole families like he ordered lunch. She watched him beat the skull in of the ladies of the house. He never hit her mother, but he wanted to more than once. He raised his hand at her, but never, let it fall until -

                Her mother pulled Emma from the house with blood still leaking from her nose. “He hit me,” her mother said, jumping into the car, “he’ll do it again, if not worse. I’m getting us out of this life. We are going to Omega with the angels.”

                At least, you are with the angels now, mama.

                Emma raced up the hill using the trees to hold on to something, trying not to give herself away with the snow under her feet. She had no real idea of where she was going, and the cold had reached into her blood turning it to ice. A deep numbness started to take hold of the night’s events.

Her mother was dead.

Her father was hunting her.

And she was in the wood while it was snowing. She would die out in the woods, never seeing the city above the clouds.

Emma dropped into the snow, bring her knees into her chest, and leaning against a tree. The snow slowly floated down petting her chilled skin. The wind blew a kiss to her almost freezing the tears dancing on her cheeks. She closed her eyes for a long time waiting for the pins and needles to stop brushing her. Once the needles had died away, then it would only be hours until the cold overtook her.

She hoped she could see the sun one morning time.

She looked up, hoping to see the stars before the end. The darkness above her eyes hidden all of heaven from her raining down angel feathers.

I’m coming home to see you, mama. We’ll see the angels together.

Something moved in the cloaked of darkness around her. She bites back a gasp wondering if it was the man, Abel, or she feared her father. The footsteps grew closer on the other side of the tree. Her hands shield the cries from her mouth when the wolf circle around. The beast stared at her for a moment with golden eyes leaving her there to die, alone. The wolf ran off into the woods hunting for its pack.

                “Miss Arkansas,” a soft voice said from her side. She turned to see the tall Native American with one dead eye, and a newspaper boy’s cap resting on his head. He had bright red wolf paws tattoo on his hand, a pistol on his side, and a Tomahawk hanging from the other side. “I’m glad I found you,” he said smiling like the moon.

                Emma went to flee from the hunter known as Crow in these parts, one of her father’s best killers, but the man’s powerful hand wrapped around her pulling her close to him. He wouldn’t allow her to scream, but she fought with all the fury of a cat being held against its will.

                “Stop fighting me,” Crow snarled. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

                Crow carried her off into the woods and back to a line of three cars, where a group of five men waited. He let her go once they were in the circle of men, and Emma turned to smack him for grabbing her so hard. Her hand went up to hit the hunter, but her father stopped her. He spun her around to face him.

                “Oh, thank God I found you,” Mr. Arkansas said, hugging her. She stood there, unsure what to do at this moment. She wanted to hug him back. He was after all her father and thought he could be cruel to others, he never hurt her. On the other hand she couldn’t get the look of horror and terror of her mother’s face in her last moments of life.

                Emma wanted to hate her father.

                Emma wanted to love him.

                But all she did was stand there.

                “That’ b***h try to take you from me,” he said, holding her tight.

                “You had her killed,” Emma shouted, pushing away from him. The new set of tears raced down her face staring at the man who didn’t care about the death of his wife. “They raped her, and you ordered it.”

                Mr. Arkansas said nothing.

                “They made me watch, dad,” Emma yelled,” They made me watch, b*****d.”

                “I’m sorry,” Mr. Arkansas said calmly. “I didn’t mean for you to see that, but your mother tried to take you away from me.”

                “It’s because you are a monster,” Emma snarled at him.

                “We don’t have time to talk about this,” Mr. Arkansas said. “We have to get you back home.”

                “Sir?” Crow said, stepping to his side.

                “Right,” Mr. Arkansas said, nodding turning back to Emma. “Who was the man who killed the Duke Boys?”

                “I don’t know,” Emma said, crossing her arms.

                “Was he sent from New York or the McCallion Family?” Mr. Arkansas asked.

                “I. Don’t. Know,” Emma said, slowly staring hard at her father.

                “Don’t give me lip,” he snapped, trying to hold back the beast raging inside, the same monster which had ordered the killing of his wife. The devil wanting to lash out now. “Tell me who took you?”

                “I did,” Abel said, making all the men spin on these heels to face him. He stood at the edge of the cars like the wrath of God had come rolling down the mountain.

Author's Note

If you had made it this far, then I appreciate it, and before you start to tear my work apart (which doesn’t bother me too much), let me explain something. The most common critique I see is about my spelling and grammar. It is an understandable critique, and I do not blame you for pointing it out. After all spelling and grammar are the tools in which we use to craft our work, like a paintbrush or a chisel. The artist must know how to use these tools well, but like an artist who has a tremble in their hand's somethings will never be perfect.
My tremble in my hand is caused by my dyslexia. It is something, no matter how much I learn, study, or works on, it will never go away. It is the reason you will find a good bit of spelling and grammar mistakes in my work. I ask you to keep this fact in my when you are about to write your critique.
Also, I feel the need to point this out, this website is like a journal for me. A mess journal I used to work out problems in my stories or to simply warm up before digging into my novels. I do not hire an editor for the work here. I do not spend hours and days pouring over these stories to make them perfect, that energy is saved for the project I plan on taking to market. Everything on this website is my world-building exercise or sketches for other projects.
I do hope you enjoy my work, but this website is not a publishing house for me, and it shouldn’t be for you either. Something to keep in mind as you write your critique.

I came up with Abel Solomon after reading Solomon Kane and looking into the Question a bit. I wanted a hero who was very black and white in his moral code while at the same time quick to action. Abel will react without thinking in almost all situations, the cost of those actions might come back to bite him. This story was simply me getting to know Abel and seeing how I could write for him. It took me a bit longer to get to the end because I’m trying to move quickly in these stories, but I think you’ll enjoy it