Endgame Novella #2

by James Frey

  Declan gazes at her, this woman to whom he’s sworn his lifelong love. The woman he fell in love with the first time he saw her, hunched over a book in an uptown branch of the New York Public Library, strands of hair curling over her face. “Of course we can,” he tells her. “We can talk about it as much as you want. You’re right, we shouldn’t make a rash decision. We won’t do anything until we both agree it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You promise?”

  He kisses her, takes her in his arms, and holds on like she’s a buoy in rough seas, the only thing that can keep him from drowning. “I promise,” he tells her.

  Then he waits for her to fall back asleep, and kidnaps their daughter.

  He tells himself it can’t be kidnapping, because Aisling belongs to him as much as she belongs to her mother.

  But he knows better.

  Declan drives all night with Aisling sleeping in the backseat. They can’t leave the country yet, not until he puts together a fake passport for the baby. But he can at least put as much distance as possible between himself and his family. He hears the Amber Alert on the radio, but by that time he’s ditched the car for a hot-wired Pontiac and is halfway to North Carolina. When he’s too exhausted to keep his eyes open, he checks them into a motel, paying in cash. He’s taken $5,000 from the safe at the back of the closet, which should get them through the first few hurdles of the journey. Declan has accounts in banks all over the world, accounts that Lorelei doesn’t know about, and he supposes he should feel proud of himself that he’s so prepared. But he’s not proud, only profoundly sad that he’s so good at keeping secrets from the woman he loves. This is exactly the life he doesn’t want for Aisling.

  He never wants her to learn not to trust.

  He plays with Aisling on the dingy motel carpet while the press conference plays on TV in the background. Lorelei has wasted no time calling the cops on him. He can’t blame her.

  He’s glad of it, actually, because he knows the High Council would prefer to conduct their search in secret. Having police bumbling around and getting in their way will only help Declan.

  Still, he can’t stand to hear the pain in Lorelei’s voice.

  “Please, Declan, bring her home,” she says, before a crowd of eager reporters. Aisling looks up at the sound of her mother’s voice, reaching eagerly for the TV screen. “We can figure this out together, if you just bring her home.”

  He wonders what she’s told the police. Probably that her husband’s gone off his rocker.

  He hasn’t given up on her yet. Now that she knows he’s serious, maybe she can still be convinced.

  Declan gathers Aisling to his chest, trying to soothe her to sleep. He lets his eyes close, and he dreams of Lorelei’s tears.

  His training taught him to get by on only a few hours of sleep, so it’s not long before they’re on the road again. Declan has a contact in West Virginia who’s more than happy to make the baby a new passport, for the right price. While he’s waiting for it to be ready, he and Aisling duck into a drugstore. He buys a pink stuffed bunny nearly as big as her head for her and a cheap burner phone for himself.

  It’s a risk, but it’s one he has to take.

  He dials Lorelei’s number.

  “Declan.” She breathes his name into the phone, as if she’s afraid to scare him away. “Declan, what have you done?”

  “I’m sorry.” He swallows hard, fights back the tears, presses his lips to Aisling’s forehead, reminding himself why he’s doing this, why he must. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Is she okay?” Lorelei asks. “Please, just tell me that.”

  “She’s fine. Of course she’s fine. You know I would never let anyone hurt her.”

  “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “I can’t come home, Lorelei. I can’t bring her back. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Then tell me where you are.”

  “So you can send the cops for me? Or Pop?”

  “So I can come to you,” Lorelei says. “I know you, Declan. If you want to take Aisling away, hide her where no one will ever find her, you can do it. So you win, okay? I can’t be away from her. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come with you. Wherever you want to go, whatever you need to do. I’ll go. I’ll do it. Just tell me. Trust me.”

  Her voice is full of pain—and love.

  “What do you think?” Declan whispers to Aisling, ruffling her red hair. “Can we trust Mommy?”

  At the word, Aisling bursts into tears. It’s the only answer he needs.

  “Okay,” Declan tells Lorelei, hoping he’s not making the biggest mistake of his life. “Get a pen and paper, and I’ll tell you where to find us.”

  He trusts his wife.

  But he also knows his wife.

  “Stay quiet, little girl,” he murmurs to Aisling as he nestles her carrier beneath a tree. She sucks at her pacifier and, he hopes, dreams of happier days. Declan has stationed them on an overlook that gives him a perfect sight line into the valley. Down there, in a deserted stretch of field in the heart of the Ozarks, Lorelei will come for her daughter. He lies flat on his stomach, camouflaged by the weeds, and raises the binoculars.

  He’s been careful.

  He chose a place he knows like the back of his hand, an open field easily surveilled from the surrounding hillside.

  This oasis of wilderness is special to him; it’s where Le Fond first made face-to-face contact with him. Le Fond is his own name for the network of shadow warriors, a small joke with himself: La Tène means “the shallows,” so he thinks of these strange messages from the dark as “the deep.” With few exceptions, they exist for him as whispers, anonymous texts, faces hidden by cloaks and masks.

  The young woman who met him here wouldn’t reveal her name or background, wouldn’t explain how she’d come to know about Endgame or why she’d chosen Declan to recruit. “We watch all the Players,” she said. “We saw something in you.”

  At the time, he’d taken it as an insult. Had Le Fond seen some fault in him that he didn’t even know was there, some evidence that his faith was weak, that he would be willing to betray his cause?

  It’s only slowly, as he follows the bread-crumb trail around the world, that he begins to see. As he searches through artifacts, discovers long-lost documents by long-dead Players of the La Tène line, as he follows their questioning and their clues back and back through the ages, as he finds, finally, the secret cave with its astonishing paintings, he understands. What Le Fond saw in him wasn’t weakness; it was strength—the strength of loyalty and conviction that would drive him straight back to Queens, send him marching into the High Council chambers, desperate to share what he learned. To open their eyes to the truth: that Endgame is a cruel joke of the gods, that the Player’s true role is to kick-start the apocalypse, that this is an endless cycle that the lines can only end by choosing not to Play. That the power is in their hands, if only they decide to use it.

  It didn’t occur to him that he’d be laughed out of the room.

  Or that when they stopped laughing, they would strip him of his duties in the line and brand him as a heretic.

  It’s not just what they want to do to Aisling that scares him.

  It’s the worry that, fearing his influence, they’ll never let her see him again.

  This patch of overgrown wilderness has lodged itself into his heart; this was where his eyes were first opened. Maybe, he thinks, it will be a lucky spot, and he can open Lorelei’s eyes too.

  He holds the binoculars steady.

  He waits.

  And he sighs with disappointment, but not surprise, when Lorelei arrives at the coordinates—flanked by his father and the La Tène Player. She’s betrayed him, just as he knew she would, and he can’t even hold it against her.

  She’s doing what she believes is best for her daughter.

  He loves her all the more for that.

  Declan’s set up a listening relay, a bug in the meadow so he can hear what’s said down in
the valley and speak if need be. He can hear his wife’s confusion.

  “Where is he?” she says, panic in her voice. “He said he’d be here. I don’t understand. He wouldn’t lie to me. Not about this.”

  “Oh, he’s here somewhere,” Pop says, gazing into the hills. His eyes seem to alight on Declan’s hiding spot, and though Declan knows it’s impossible, he can’t shake the feeling that his father sees straight through the brush, is glaring straight at him.

  “You are, aren’t you?” Pop says. “I know you, son. You’re watching us. Listening to us. Don’t blame Lorelei for wanting what’s best for you. We all want what’s best for you.”

  “Declan, if you can hear me . . .” Lorelei sounds hesitant, like she’s starting to wonder whether Pop has gone as crazy as his son. “Stop hiding and come deal with this like a grown-up. If you’ll just be reasonable—”

  She gasps as the Player seizes her. A gun materializes in the Player’s hand, its muzzle pressed to Lorelei’s head.

  Declan stops breathing.

  Molly is only 17 years old, and she’s known Lorelei since she was a child. Lorelei once babysat for her, and Molly in turn has babysat for Aisling. Molly and Lorelei have gone shopping together; they’ve ridden the carousel in Central Park together; they’ve sipped frozen hot chocolate and dunked churros into caramel sauce; they’ve watched terrible movies on rainy days; they’ve been the best kind of family to each other. And Declan has no doubt that if Molly thought it was necessary, she would pull the trigger without hesitation.

  “You know I’ll do it, Declan,” Molly says calmly. The listening device is sensitive: he can hear Lorelei’s rapid and frightened breathing. “You’re the one who taught me how to be ruthless.”

  Declan trained her to shoot. Declan was with her for her first kill. He steadied her, whispered in her ear all the lies he once believed, about how Playing called for blood, how killing could be righteous when in service to the line and the game. He created her, as his father had created him. Thousands of years of cruel lies, all come down to this: A killer he made. A woman he loves. A daughter he’s sworn to protect. A gun.

  “I’m sorry, Declan,” his father says. Declan’s heart breaks at the sound of his voice, so disappointed—so hard. “You’ve left us no choice.”

  “You want her to live, show yourself,” Molly adds in a hard voice. “Now.”

  “Please,” Lorelei murmurs. “Please, Molly, don’t.”

  He spent so many years learning how to shut down his feelings, to do what needs to be done. But now, when it matters most, his love and fear threaten to overwhelm him.

  He tries to clear his head. Aisling and Lorelei need him focused.

  They need him.

  He swaddles the pink bunny in Aisling’s blanket and presses it to his chest. He kisses his daughter good-bye. “I’ll be back,” he says, but he doesn’t promise. He tries never to make promises he can’t keep.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he says into his comm. Then, just in case, shouts it as loud as he can, his voice booming across the green. “We’re coming!”

  Then he descends into the valley, taking a circuitous, untraceable route down.

  “Give me the child,” Pop says as soon as he comes into view.

  Just seeing his father makes Declan nearly lose his grip on his emotions again. For so many years, Declan has excused the man’s obstinance, telling himself that his father is trying to do the right thing. That Pop believes his stubbornness is in service to a higher cause, and that even wrong, there is virtue in loyalty and steadfastness, in Pop’s commitment to his people and their beliefs. But no more. Here is the man who raised him, swore to love him—the man who is willing to put Lorelei’s life at risk, to sacrifice his beloved granddaughter, all for a lie. “No.”

  “You’d risk your wife for this insane delusion of yours?”

  “Endgame is a lie,” Declan says, fury rising. How many times has he tried to force his father to face the truth, and how many times has his father refused to listen? “If you would just hear me for once—”

  “I’ve listened to enough of your bullshit!” Pop snaps. “We all have, and I can’t let you humiliate yourself anymore.”

  “You mean humiliate you—”

  “I mean disgrace your family and your line and yourself!”

  Lorelei is murmuring something, soft and urgent, trying to convince them all to calm down, to lay down their arms, but Declan and his father are too focused on each other, too angry, both of them too determined to finally win this argument they’ve been waging for years, both of them so certain, both of them so hurt, both of them so lost without each other, neither of them hearing Molly when she snaps, “Enough!” and makes a move to reach for Declan’s bundled blanket and Lorelei won’t let her lay hands on the child and fights free of her grip and there’s a struggle and a shout and then instincts kick in, a mother lunging for her child, a Player fighting for her line, and a trigger is pulled and a shot echoes, and only then do Declan and his father fall silent, and see.

  Lorelei, on the ground.

  Lorelei, bleeding.

  Lorelei, eyes open to the sky, unseeing.

  Lorelei, gone.

  Molly drops to her side, screaming. “I didn’t mean to,” she says, over and over again. “It wasn’t supposed to go like that.”

  Declan lets the blanket drop from his arms. The bunny rolls in the grass, lands a few feet away from the pool of blood.

  Pop looks back and forth between his son and his daughter-in-law, between the living and the dead, frozen in between. “Son,” he says. “I’m—”

  But Declan will never know what he is: Sorry. Not sorry. Tired of blood. Thirsty for more.

  Declan no longer cares.

  Declan cares for nothing now but his daughter.

  He turns his back on his father. His Player. His lovely, raven-haired miracle bleeding into the grass.

  He runs.

  Declan doesn’t know how to tell Aisling what happened to her mother. Not now, when she’s too young to understand—and not later, when she will have questions that he can’t answer. Questions about the choices he’s made, and the mistakes.

  He doesn’t know who to blame.

  He can’t help blaming himself.

  He spirits Aisling away from the Ozarks and drives her into the heart of the Mississippi delta. Deep in the swampland, miles from civilization, an old woman lives in a shack, like a fairytale crone. She speaks with the thick accent of the old world, and wraps him and Aisling in gnarled arms when she finds him on the doorstep.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she says. Her name is Agatha, and she claims to have the Sight. Declan doesn’t believe in such things, but there’s a fire roaring in the hearth and stew boiling on the stove, and the couch is made up as a bed. He stumbles in gratefully, allowing Agatha to take the child from his arms.

  He feels empty without her weight.

  “It’s happened, then?” Agatha says, her voice a rough croak. “They’ve designated her as a Player, and you took her away?”

  “The Sight?” Declan says, skeptically.

  “The evening news,” Agatha says. “I extrapolated.”

  Agatha is La Tène, like him, which is why he is allowed to know her name, see her face. And like him, Agatha is an apostate, a traitor, a nonbeliever. He grew up hearing tales of her, a bogeyman invented to scare the children: ask too many questions, the wrong kind of questions, and you’ll be sent into the wilderness, where Agatha the witch will find you and gobble you up. Agatha has been with Le Fond for longer than Declan has been alive.

  She’s lived in hiding for decades, because the La Tène have never stopped hunting for her and the ancient scriptures that she stole from the archive.

  Agatha blazed the beginning of the trail that Declan has been following.

  She discovered the first clues that Endgame wasn’t what it seemed, in the words of their very own forebears—and as a reward she will live out the rest of her days in lonely e
xile.

  She can be trusted.

  “She’s gone,” Declan says. It hurts to speak the words aloud. “Lorelei. They killed her.”

  Agatha says nothing for a long moment. Her expression never changes. Then, though he hasn’t asked yet: “Yes, you can leave the child here with me for as long as you need. Until it’s safe. Do what you need to do.”

  What he needs to do.

  Go north.

  North as far as Canada, where he can slip across the New York border unseen, then south again as far as the city, his city, where he found the happiness he will never have again.

  Dye his hair, turn telltale red into mousy brown.

  Disguise his face with false nose and beard.

  Return to Queens.

  Watch his people from the crowds and the shadows. Watch his father. Watch his Player.

  Simmer with rage.

  Burn.

  Burn.

  He could kill them, all of them, easily. They’re not expecting him to return. They’re not on guard. He could slip through Pop’s window in the dark of night, slit his throat while the old man snores in his Barcalounger, Honeymooners reruns droning on the ancient TV. He could break into the deli across the street from Molly’s apartment, aim his sniper rifle at her window, send a bullet into her head while she sips her morning tea. Or he could nestle an explosive in the brakes of Molly’s mother’s car, turn her into a ball of fire on the Queensboro Bridge. He could assassinate the High Council one by one. But first take out everyone they love, make them watch. Spatter them with blood.

  An eye for an eye.

  A loss for a loss.

  Declan’s blood is ice; his heart is a stone. He could do it. He could do anything.

  But he holds himself back.

  Not for the La Tène line or for the dying embers of family loyalty, not for the sake of his humanity.

  They robbed him of that, his father, his trainers. They made him a killer, and it’s only justice that they reap the benefits.

  He holds back for Aisling.

  Someday she will be old enough to know him.

  He will be a man she deserves to love. He’s come back here partly to prove to himself that he can be. That in the face of the greatest temptation, he can show restraint. That he’s not simply a soldier and a killer.