Chapter 6

By the time the sun was setting in the western sky, I was filthy from my hair to the bottom of my mud and manure encrusted boots and I felt as if the world was against me.

After Declan had destroyed me, all I wanted was to go to my room and cry, instead, I shored up my hemorrhaging heart and went to finish the job of mucking out the stalls.

As I made my way into one of the stalls, I picked the pitchfork up out of the wheelbarrow but stilled. Though I hadn’t heard the sound often, I knew exactly what I was hearing. The rattle coming from the corner wasn’t what I wanted to hear and I slowly began backing toward the door of the stall, my eyes sweeping in search of the snake.

When I finally spotted it, it was coiled and ready to strike, and before I could take another step, its upper body lunged in my direction.

Jerking to avoid its venomous bite, I tripped over the wheelbarrow behind me, knocking it over, and off balance, I stumbled. My footing went out from underneath me and I fell onto the straw and manure that still coated the floor of the stall. Eyes jumping back to where I had last seen the snake, I prepared to vanquish the damn thing somewhere far away...maybe the Antarctic, but it had already begun sliding beneath the wall of the stall. From behind me I heard a snort and whirling around, I glared at Declan as shaking his head, he sneered, “Jeez, doll, it wasn’t necessary to coat yourself in shit, I’m sure some jackass will want to fuck you. Then letting out a low whistle he’d moved so fast I had no warning before he scooped me up in his arms and strode toward the horse-tank, where with nostrils flaring, he breathed, “Holy fuck! I was wrong, even a jackass’s dick wouldn’t get hard for you right now!” Then, relaxing his hold, he dropped me into the water.

I sputtered and gagged on the murky, foul tasting water as it filled my nose and mouth, and as I resurfaced, my furious wail rent the air, as clearing my eyes from the water pouring out of my hair, I watched the broad expanse of Declan’s departing back, a sob shaking my frame.

At the sound, Declan stumbled the slightest bit, but kept moving on.

Once I’d calmed and climbed from the horse-tank, I dried the moisture from hair and the tears from my cheeks as I made my way over to the tool-shed, where I stood gazing at it in trepidation, its ramshackle condition alarming. I’d had my doubts for a while that it would withstand a good gust of wind, let alone bear anyone’s weight.

I’d done everything I could to avoid entering the shed, but I was unable to put it off any longer as a large section of the corral fence badly needed repairs, and the tools Merrick had sent me after, were inside the shed. So, I had no choice but to enter. Shrugging, I tossed up a silent prayer and reached for the door.

When it stood open, the interior loomed in eerie shadows before me, and I tried in vain to shake off the feeling of unease as I raised a foot to step inside. With another pause as an overwhelming desire to look up skirted its way across my mind, my eyes were drawn to the overhang of the roof, where my attention caught and held as my mouth rounded in a silent O of horror, and I took a hasty step back from the small river of spiders as they flooded from the shack’s eaves and down its sides.

Stumbling backward, I tripped over my feet in my haste to get away from the deluge and landed painfully on my rear end, again. Immediately, I jerked my head up with alarm as I heard a loud groan and a tortured creak, before with a thunderous roar, the shack had collapsed into a pile of rubble.

Coughing, I waved a hand in front of my face as a layer of dust began to settle around me, then I uttered a startled squeak as Declan hissed from behind me. “How the fuck, Sydney?!”

Wrenching around on my butt, I stared at him as he considered the pile of rubble that littered the ground.

My mouth sagged open in flabbergasted disbelief and indignation flushed throughout my system. Climbing to my feet, I balled my hand into a fist and drew my arm back as I screamed, “Seriously? You think this was my fault?” Have you not looked at that damn thing lately?”

Afterward, bringing my arm forward, and with all my pain and anger behind it, I buried my fist in his stomach, then immediately let out a smothered yelp as a teeth-clenching, bone-aching throb shot through my fingers and up my hand.

Eyes slit from pain and ire, I blinked several times trying to clear the shimmer of tears forming as I’d glared at Declan, who hadn’t even flinched from the blow. Instead, he just stared down at me with eyes blazing while I wiggled my fingers with tentative movements, wondering if I hadn’t broken the blasted things.

After a few more seconds of his silence, I snapped, “I had nothing to do with that piece of shit coming down! Then turning, I marched away with furious steps, my aching hand tucked against my chest.

After telling Merrick he’d have to come up with another way to fix the fence as the tools he’d needed were buried beneath the shack's rubble, I made my way toward the hen-house.

A few minutes later, clucking at the hens, and my basket almost full, my mood began to lighten and I managed a smile at the volley of clucking I received in return., but as I slid my hand under a hen, I stilled, my hand wrapping around an egg. I felt my stomach plummet around my toes, a sense of dread washing through me as a slight tingling washed throughout my body: a predecessor to the trouble coming. A type that I’d become too familiar with.

No sooner had I given a slight groan of dismay, than a riot broke loose in the hen-house as the hens began flying off their roosts in a mass exodus, feathers and straw flying everywhere as they squawked in a mad litany of alarm. Their bodies bounced off the walls and ceiling in their panic of the simmering wave that formed around me, a blue, nebulous haze that shimmered millimeters above my flesh, filling the air with heat and light before it dissipated.

Though relieved that the emittance of my inner fire had been short lived, I still uttered a sound of dismay when the egg I held crashed to the floor as I jerked my hands up to protect my face from the sharp claws of the hens. With my hands up in protection, I watched between the cracks of my fingers as the basket containing the dozen or so eggs I’d already collected, rocked precariously on the shelf. Then, as if in slow motion, the basket tipped forward and the eggs rolled toward the edge, where laying suspended for seconds, they finally rolled out of the basket and committed mass suicide as they splattered all over me and the floor.

A few seconds later, and swearing loudly, I swiped at the goo as I stomped toward the house, cursing my magic as I called out, “I’m done. Anything else that needs my attention today, can damn well wait until tomorrow. If you have a problem with that, then screw you!”