by Gwen Hunter
I caught a fleeting image. A house on the outskirts of town. I had driven by it on the way home. My eyes flew open, meeting her blue ones. Gail laughed at me, baring her teeth. “Not there. Not there anymore. I sold him. They took him this afternoon. The gold is mine. And I’ll never have to let him touch me again. Never!”
Gail had sold him? Sold my brother? To whom? I pushed again with my mind. “Davie!” I saw a man. Adam Wiccam. He turned and looked at me. A syringe was in his hand. Davie was slumped on a bed beside him, eyes half-lidded.
And I realized Wiccam was looking at me. He saw me looking at him. He reached toward me with his free hand, flexed his fingers out and in, like gripping a ball, or pulling on a rope. Something jerked at me. At my mind.
I wrenched back, away from the image. I was suddenly outside the house. A blizzard swirled around me. I saw the house. It was the house in Gail’s memory. Davie was still there. And I knew where he was.
I rose from Gail, pulling out the sender pick. It came free of her flesh with a soft sucking sound and she gasped, a wounded moan. I looked at her, at the woman who had taken my brother. I knew the entire plan now, almost all that she knew. I threw the pick across the room, heard it clatter in the silence. Shaking, I turned for the loft and saw Isaac and Evan.
They were gaping at me. Revulsion and abhorrence were present in both pair of eyes. Yet, atop the disgust rode something else, something purely masculine, primitive and earthy—bloodlust or wonder. Excitement. I didn’t have time to parse their reactions and really didn’t care what they thought anyway. All I wanted was Davie. “I didn’t hurt her,” I rasped. “Much.” I wiped my hand down my skirt, which had bunched at my waist. It left a fresh blood smear. Something rose up in me, something large and ugly that I hadn’t looked at in years. It was familiar, this shadowy thing that hulked in my mind. I could look at it later. If I could face seeing it again. “She doesn’t know who shot Jubal,” I said.
I turned and fled the bizarre, condemning, hungry stares, rushing through the short hallway and the shop, up the stairs to the loft. I smelled Chinese food and old smoke, burned oily rags, and the scent of my rage, like bitter wormwood, the things of insanity. In the apartment, I ripped off my bloody clothes, hearing seams tear, seeing the dried blood that had soaked through to my skin. Eloise’s blood. I ducked into the shower, not waiting for the water to heat, letting the icy flow burn its way over my skin, and then, for just a moment, hot water, too hot to bear. It scalded me, boiling away the expressions on the faces of my friends.
I dried off hurriedly, dressed in warm clothes, long under-pants, jeans, a flannel shirt, two pair of socks, heavy boots, a down coat. I gathered the afghan off the sofa, a second coat, a pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt. When I turned, Jane stood in the doorway, Dyno in her arms. Her eyes were huge, fingers tangled in the cat’s short fur.
“I don’t care what you did.” Her eyes were dry and hot, her face merciless. “Just bring my daddy back.”
I couldn’t stop the rush of tears that sprang to my eyes. I hugged her once, fiercely, and I ran from the room and down the stairs, pocketing the keys. I picked up the box of spring rolls and ran from the shop into the ice and snow that blew a raging blizzard. I was outside before I registered the sight of Isaac and Evan, standing in the shop. Gail was sitting in the wing chair I favored, a wad of gauze at her shoulder. Outside, I heard sirens approaching.
I was heading for the Geo when a horn tooted. Whirling, I saw Aunt Matilda, sitting in the front of a large SUV—Jubal’s vehicle, towed back from the side of a mountain where we had left it so long ago. The driver’s window came down and Aunt Matilda stuck her head into the blowing snow. “I’ve already been pulled out of one drift today. Why don’t you drive to this house where my nephew is being held and let me ride shotgun?”
“I don’t have a shotgun,” I said, walking to the big vehicle. “I don’t have a weapon at all. No way to force him to give Davie to me.”
The older woman, dressed for the weather in a smock, thick sweater and socks beneath sandals, slid over to the passenger seat, leaving the driver’s seat empty. “I was speaking metaphorically. We are St. Claires. We need no weapons except our minds. After your recent experience with the Speeler woman, haven’t you learned that yet?”
The cold of the storm seemed to coalesce inside me. Behind me, two cop cars came to sliding halts. An ambulance climbed the hill at a crawl. The falling snow obscured me from the cops and they ran inside Bloodstone Inc.
I threw my supplies into the open window, except for the food, and opened the SUV door, climbing inside. Raising the window, I adjusted the seat forward. In order for my feet to reach the pedals, the steering wheel nearly touched my chest. Stupid American car makers. I put on the seat belt and stared at the front window, already blanketed with a layer of snow. I turned on the wipers. Finally, with nothing left to do to occupy my body and mind, I turned to her, a taste of acid on my tongue. “You were there? With me? When I…tortured Gail?”
“Of course.” Aunt Matilda’s face was calm, composed. “And when you raped her mind to find out where Davie is.”
I flinched, knowing that was what I had done. I looked away, swallowed back the rising horror. Then I put the SUV in gear and eased down the road, past the cop cars with their flashing blue lights and the ambulance with its flashing red lights, down the hill beyond Main Street. I took a left and headed out of town. Ravenous, I ate spring rolls as I drove, sharing with Aunt Matilda, who seemed hungry, too. For a long space of time, in which I fought wind and snow and tried to compose myself, we said nothing at all.
“Tell me what you know of this Adam Wiccam,” she said at last.
“He claims to work for the government, for the Treasury Department. But Davie thought he worked for Q Core, a—”
“I’m perfectly familiar with Q Core.”
I glanced at her, surprised. “Then maybe you can enlighten me,” I said politely, wondering if she knew more about the group than I had learned from Davie’s letter.
“Q Core was a small division of the Department of Defense back in the sixties and seventies, a secret agency-within-an-agency dedicated to investigating whether paranormal activity, psychic gifts such as those possessed by the St. Claires, could be used in intelligence gathering.”
“And?”
“Unlike its counterpart in the CIA, Q Core was successful.” She pointed across the cab to something at my side, and I spotted deer cantering across the snow, a doe leading two large fawns. I slowed to a stop and the animals raced in front of the SUV, prancing, pawing, running for sheer joy, blowing clouds of breath with wide nostrils. When they were out of sight, I eased back into motion and she went on. “So successful were they that their budget was tripled, and they turned from mere observation to trying to change events. They planted ideas in the minds of foreign heads of state, nudged paranoia in others, suggested new or different ways of thought.”
“And you know this, how?”
“They started recruiting psychics from all over. The St. Claires were already known as a family of gifted individuals, and so they came to us. Several of our people joined them, worked with them, until Q Core changed its tactics and its original purpose yet again. The new presidential administration brought new people into Q Core. People who tried to turn the talents into weapons.”
I remembered the feel of the pick inside Gail’s flesh. My mind piercing her mind, a weapon, cutting and hungry and utterly without conscience. Oh, yeah. That I understood. I forced down the images. Not now. Not yet. Not until I find Davie.
“In the mideighties, they experimented with key members of the then Soviet Union, causing accidents. And they taught the St. Claires, working with them, on how to kill. Your uncle was one of them.”
“Uncle William? He was a gifted St. Claire?” When she nodded, I said, “I always thought he was head-blind.”
Her face was pensive in the failing light. “He was the second Q Core talent to make a kill. He went into the
mind of a KGB colonel, driving drunk along a dark road after a party. He planted an image of a sea serpent rising out of the dark waters beside the road and striking the vehicle. The colonel swerved hard in the other direction and crashed into a tree. William was still in his mind when he died, in terror and pain. Will never got over it. He lost the use of his gift. Started drinking. They booted him out of Q Core, which was what he wanted. He came home to me and I did what I could to heal him.”
“My father was recruited by Q Core,” I said, remembering the information Davie had learned while working for the government as David Lowe.
“We think so, though we never learned if he made it to them or not. Unlike the others, who went to Washington, D.C., your father went to New York. And he seemed to simply disappear. Which was why Davie went to the agency when he reached his majority and joined them under an assumed name. He wanted to look for your father.”
I glanced at her. I hadn’t known about his search until I found the letter in the personal records box from the Secure Room, hadn’t known about his need to find our father. It seemed Aunt Matilda had. “And?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Davie won’t talk about those years.”
I thought about that, downshifting to make the last hill. “Yeah. He never talked about them with me, either.” Why hadn’t he told me?
“According to all the St. Claires who worked for them, Q Core was disbanded nearly a decade ago after some scandal was brought to light. Most likely the scandal David exposed when he left the DOD. Adam Wiccam is all that’s left of the unit. It’s possible he came to punish David for stealing the money that Q Core had amassed in private accounts not part of the government budgetary and audit process. It’s possible that he holds David responsible for the loss of his dreams and power.”
I understood, putting one of the odd-shaped pieces into the puzzle. “Davie caused all his problems? So now it’s personal?”
She smiled again, a slight tightening of her lips. “Yes, that’s what I think. So now we pay the price of Davie doing both the right thing—turning Q Core in to the proper authority—and the wrong thing: stealing. Though it was illicit money that Q Core had gained by use of their gifts, it wasn’t money that Davie himself owned.” She looked out the side window, away from me. “So you see, I am fully aware that our gifts can be used for evil as well as the good we try to do. And when we misuse them, we always pay a price.”
“I’d do it again,” I said, my tone fierce, my hands tight on the wheel, knowing she was referring to Gail Speeler.
“I know. And that is indeed the sad part of it all. The end always seems to justify the means. And absolute power does tend to corrupt absolutely.”
I turned away from her, back to the storm that offered a physical fight with a tangible opponent, but I fought down shame. If I let it, I knew regret would cripple me, and I couldn’t let that happen, not right now. I slowed and turned into a driveway, gently easing the big vehicle over the fresh snow, hoping I didn’t slide into a ditch. “We’re here.”
Aunt Matilda inspected the small house bracketed by tall cedars and a row of bare-branched trees. She closed her eyes. “David is no longer here.”
No. I gripped the wheel hard, staring at the house through the falling flakes.
“A car was parked there.” She opened her eyes and pointed to a place near the small house where dark ground showed through the snow. Tracks left the spot, making a U-turn and heading out the back of the property. “Only recently gone.”
I started to follow, but Aunt Matilda placed a hand on my arm. “Violence has been done here, but one is still alive. Inside.”
“But—”
“No buts. We will offer aid.” She opened her door, unclipped the seat belt in a single motion and slid down to the ground. I shut off the big engine and followed her through the shadows. It was dusk now, darkness hunched beneath the trees and bushes, waiting to pounce. The back door was open, hanging half off its hinges. The lock was gone, replaced by a basketball-sized hole. Splintered wood lay all around. I could faintly smell cordite from the blast.
Inside, Aunt Matilda paused only a moment before plunging down a long hallway, her smock skirt surging behind her. I followed more slowly. Blood had splattered the wall to my right, tiny droplets in an intermittent arc. I saw a man, bleeding. Both hands worked a shotgun, breaking open the chamber, inserting two large rounds, slapping it shut, the motion throwing blood up and away. He stalked down the hallway Aunt Matilda had taken. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew the scent of the man. I followed them both. He raised the gun, his heart and mind cold, as he rounded the corner into the room.
Aunt Matilda was bent over a man’s body. I knew he was dead. In my mind, I saw the man with the gun. Adam Wiccam pumped two rounds into the cowering form on the floor. Now, Floyd Feaster was a broken mass. His face was missing, and part of one arm. He had been followed back from his attempt to steal the gold and burn Bloodstone Inc. Had he purchased Davie from Gail Speeler? Convinced her to share him, perhaps? Found a way to make Davie tell him where the gold was? Had she joined forces with him? But she had said they had sold Davie. To whom? Feaster? Or Wiccam?
And then another puzzle piece slid to the right and into place with a soft clink. They had what they wanted out of Davie. And they sold him to Wiccam after.
I reached for my cell phone to call police. It wasn’t clipped to my jeans. I had remembered the spring rolls but not the phone. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Aunt Matilda stood. “In here.” Moving into a room across the hall, she knelt beside a second body and said, “It’s all right. We’re here to help.” The light was dimmer moment by moment, and I was losing my chance to follow the tire tracks in the snow. I had to leave. Now. But the sight of Harry Boone on the floor, propped against a chest of drawers, stopped the words in my mouth. The cop looked up at me, barely conscious, his body in a pool of blood that had stopped spreading. I turned on the light switch, throwing the room into sudden detail and vivid color. I had seen so much blood today. Too much.
“Find a phone,” I said as I grabbed the spread and a pillow off the bed. “Call 911. Tell them a cop’s been shot.” I knelt beside Harry and pressed the pillow into his abdomen, into the hole there. He was still breathing, but shallowly, and so fast I couldn’t count the breaths. Biting into the edge of the spread, I tore it into long strips and tied the pillow into place on Harry, talking to myself as I moved. “There is no egg in the world big enough to be the egg this sucks.”
I heard Harry’s breathing change. He was laughing silently, the sound abruptly cut off as pain claimed him. His faced wrenched, smoothed, and he fell unconscious again.
Aunt Matilda came back. “They’re on their way. I didn’t know the address, but they’re coming to the address on the phone. They’ll be here as fast as they can.”
Harry’s eyes fluttered. He was out cold, only the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest revealing that he still lived. I stood and looked at the bed. It was the bed in my vision of Wiccam, the one where Davie was given a dose of drugs. I looked out the window into the darkness. I had lost my chance to save Davie.
With a violence I hadn’t known I possessed, I hit the wall with my fist.
18
Monday, 10:30 p.m.
The shop was empty when Aunt Matilda and I finally got back. In a panic, I raced upstairs to check the messages and discovered that Jane had gone with Isaac and Evan to the hospital. Of course. The men needed medical help. I remembered the blood at Isaac’s temple when I saw him prone on the workshop floor, and the wound in Evan’s upper chest where Gail had shot him, the bullet grazing his flesh.
And of course, Gail herself needed her knees cleaned and bandaged, and the neat hole in her shoulder needed tending. The memory of the pick digging into the flesh near her collarbone rushed over me, a torrent of sensation. The smell of blood and sweat and fear. Silent, Aunt Matilda came into the loft behind me, carrying the Chinese food, which had been
left at the shop door.
I called Noe and left word on her answering machine that we were safe, but ignored the other messages.
I stripped again, adding more clothes to the bloody pile I had started earlier. Naked, I climbed into the shower and let the scalding water run over me, taking with it the blood and my failure. Once again I had used my gift and gotten nothing for it. Not even Harry Boone’s life, which had seeped away long minutes before the ambulance and police got to us. They had been led by Lieutenant Jason Reasoner, Harry’s boss, the man furious with questions and mordant suspicion, and equally furious with my inadequate answers. It took hours and I still didn’t know why he let me go. He had wanted me to be guilty of killing his officer. He wanted someone to be guilty.
All that, and I still didn’t have Davie.
Standing in the scalding shower, I washed Harry Boone’s blood off me. Leaning into the shower stall wall, I cried, huge tears, racking sobs, misery that flooded out and yet seemed to back up deep inside me, a dam of blood and corruption clotted together in my soul. So much blood. What had I done? What kind of beast was I?
When I was clean, when no more blood ran from my body, I dried off and smeared cream into my cracked and chapped skin. I dressed in a velour jogging suit and fuzzy bed socks, but even after the hot shower, I couldn’t get warm. I was cold as death. Aunt Matilda had the Chinese food reheating on the stove, and she passed by me with the admonition to keep an eye on it for her. She too dropped her bloody clothes and stepped into the shower.
Left to my own devices, the voices in my own mind, I watched the food simmer and sizzle, and drank three Blue Moon Blondes in quick succession, wanting to cloud my mind. Wanting to get away from the pictures, the images, the visions of the day. Wanting to block the remembrance of what I had done to Gail Speeler.
Moments after Aunt Matilda was dressed in a fresh skirt and blouse, they all came in, Evan and Isaac and Jane, trudging and thundering up the stairs to the loft. They turned on the lights and it was only then that I realized I had showered and dressed in the dark.
