Hiding the Moon

by Amy Lane

  Ace shook his head. “I can deal with police, Ernie, and you can’t. I can take the country out of the voice, don’t you worry none.”

  Which hadn’t sounded promising, really, but Ace worked hard to keep his voice flat and uninflected, and mostly he succeeded. He placed the call and then unpaused the action movie they were watching. Jai grunted in satisfaction.

  “You think the cops will catch them?”

  Ace nodded. “I hope so—that was a lot of fuckin’ guns and a lot of fuckin’ coke.”

  All of them shuddered, and about an hour later that coiled nausea uncoiled, leaving Ernie feeling tired and limp.

  “I bet the cops have ’em,” he said softly. “If you want, I can look it up on the computer.”

  “Think Burton would know?” Sonny asked, one of the first signs of real animation they’d seen from him since Ernie touched his elbow.

  “Burton’s busy,” Ernie said, not wanting to think about that other source of anxiety. “Don’t worry. We’ll find out from the cops if we need to.”

  Turned out it was on the eleven o’clock news.

  They all watched in relief as an aerial view of the burgundy SUV Jai and Ace had worked on got pulled over by the police. The copter had captured the subsequent shoot-out and wounding of two of the men—and the death of the other two.

  Everybody breathed a sigh of relief—and Ernie had a moment to give thanks for people who could be just as cold-blooded as he was about saying “This person isn’t good for my people. He can go now” and have “go” mean death or simple relocation—it didn’t really matter as long as they were gone.

  Still, it was reassuring to have Jai stay the rest of the night, sleeping on the futon in the living room rather than going home. Ace gave him the morning off so he could go get a decent nap and get ready for Christmas Eve.

  Ernie hadn’t had a family for Christmas since his parents died. The first year he hadn’t really wanted one. He’d had a small but happy family. There hadn’t been grandparents or aunts and uncles and cousins, but he’d been the center of his mom and dad’s world, and the thought of spending a Christmas any other way but with them had left him heartbroken. After that there had been nobody, not even when he’d been sleeping his way through the Albuquerque club life.

  But this year he had people, and a sort-of boyfriend, and a dog.

  He drew a small salary for the work he did for Sonny and Ace, and with a little help from Burton, they’d established a bank account and an alternative identity. Elmo Caldwell. At first Ernie had been dismissive—like this was going to keep him safe?

  They’re not looking for you to come back, Burton had texted. And at this point nobody knows about Victoriana, and I’m working hard to keep it that way.

  Ernie had needed to think about that one. The shark and the fish?

  Yeah. They’re trying not to stir things up there too, but I’m not sure I can put them off much longer.

  I’m so excited to meet them! It felt like a foolish thing to say, but Ernie couldn’t help himself. He’d been dreaming about the two of them, circling in a small, perfectly clean, neatly kept fishbowl. Ernie wasn’t sure if they were going to eat each other alive or start some really amazing fish sex in his dreams, and he always woke up before he found out.

  Well, I think you may catch them by surprise. Maybe don’t mention we know them from beforehand, you think?

  Well, no. That’s not circumspect. Ernie felt no disappointment about that—he knew that sometimes what the gift gave him was a sort of television voyeurism. He was fine with that—people didn’t need to know he knew everything. But he was excited about meeting them. It was like hearing about cousins for your whole life and wondering if the real thing would measure up.

  But right now it wasn’t the fish and the shark he was thinking about. He was thinking about Christmas with Ace and Sonny and Jai and Alba. And Duke, his walk buddy. He’d ordered presents for them all, little Amazon packages that Ace had left outside his bedroom door before he’d awakened in the evening. He’d wrapped each one as it came and set it under the little tree they’d put next to the TV. Other presents had shown up there—some from Jai, some from Alba.

  One day about a week before Christmas, Sonny and Ace had gone shopping at Walmart in Barstow—a place that gave them both the willies—and two hours after they got back, Sonny emerged with an armload of packages that went under the tree. That morning, when Ernie had come in from his walk, he found Ace up, finishing the last of his wrapping.

  It was small—but then, Ernie hadn’t been used to big. He’d been used to being a vital member of a really small group, and being that person again…

  Felt important.

  He wondered if it was important enough for Burton, who was doing things like saving the world and stopping rogue assassins and whatever it was that had knotted him up so badly in the past two days that Ernie felt like he was holding Burton’s hand across Middle America.

  He wanted so badly to have more than a night’s time with him, to just ask him—but he’d been so reserved about Christmas, about whether or not he could make it.

  Ernie had resolved not to hope. He toned down the “Burton radar” in his head so he couldn’t feel Burton so close and know he wasn’t coming. It wasn’t until they were sitting down to Christmas Eve dinner, talking excitedly about what to watch on television (another thing Ernie had only started doing since he came to live with Sonny and Ace, because it was something better done in company and boring to do alone) when he felt it.

  It was like the light of a nova sun shining down on the little house behind the garage.

  “What?” Ace asked, like it was the third or fourth time he’d said something. “Ernie, what’s that look? Where’d you go?”

  They all heard the crunch of tires on the gravel in front of the garage.

  “He’s here,” Ernie whispered, his heart shining in his chest. “He’s here.”

  He was out the door before the truck had even parked.

  Burton held him so close, so tight, his bones creaked. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see.

  And he didn’t care.

  Ah God! All that strength! All that goodness surrounding him! It was the best, the only thing he could have asked for, and for long minutes he just let it surround him.

  Finally Burton drew back, and Ernie got a good look at him.

  “You’re cut! You’re bleeding!”

  “Shit—I forgot to wipe that off.” Burton grimaced. “Hazard of working with assholes—I’ll clean up and—”

  “We have dinner,” Ernie said, excited in spite of himself. “Fried chicken. And they let me bake cookies. I’ve been baking cookies for a week. Well, not yesterday—yesterday was kind of fucked—but cookies. The sugar kind with the icing that you like best—”

  Burton stopped and held him at arm’s length for a moment, grimacing. “I did not tell you that.”

  “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

  And then he pulled Ernie back against his chest. “Yeah, but that’s spooky.”

  “Well, so am I. I thought you’d be okay after whatever happened yesterday—I didn’t know there was more bad shit.”

  “Me neither. This sort of snuck up on me right before I left the base.”

  Ernie grunted. Right when he’d sat on his “Burton radar,” as it were. “I was trying not to feel you,” he said glumly. “I thought you couldn’t make it, and it hurt.” He brightened a little. “But man, once you hit that last mile, it was like a spotlight in my eyes. I couldn’t have missed you if I’d been underground.”

  Burton grunted right back. “Which is funny. It felt I was being pulled like a string,” he said with a sigh. “But what happened yesterday?”

  “To you? I don’t know. But it was bad. I could feel it—it woke me up around four o’clock.” It had been what alerted him to the bad guys, actually. “It’s a good thing it did, because there was some other shit to sort, but you were not having a good time.”

&nbs
p; Burton’s groan actually surprised him—it sounded emotionally honest. “No, no, I wasn’t. But it’s nice to have someone who knows I wasn’t, thank you. So what happened to you?”

  Ernie shrugged. “Nothing so’s you’d notice. But come in. Wash up. We’ve got dinner and TV and presents and….” His shoulders sagged. “It’s all really normal. I mean, I hope that’s okay. You went out and did amazing, dreadful things, and this is all very—”

  “Normal.” Burton held him close and kissed his temple. “Kid, you don’t know how wonderful normal is until you’re stuffed to the gills with amazing and dreadful, you know what I mean?”

  “No, but you’re going to tell me, right?”

  “Not tonight, Ernie.”

  Ernie took a deep breath.

  And decided to let it go.

  “Merry Christmas, Burton.”

  “Merry Christmas, kid.”

  “Thanks for making it home.”

  “Thanks for making it a home.”

  “Thanks for making it my home.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go sit down to dinner.”

  IT SOUNDED very idyllic, but an hour later Burton was supremely unamused.

  “Ace, you did what?”

  “We fixed their car,” Ace said, unperturbed. “Ernie, is there more of that apple pie you made? That was spectacular. I might eat the whole thing.”

  “You got four gangsters from… from… from….”

  “Ukraine,” Jai said, on his fifth piece of chicken. Ernie had noticed that he never said no to more food. “They did not speak Russian.”

  “They didn’t speak much English either,” Ace said, mouth full of pie. “But they definitely spoke gun, so that was no good.”

  “You will explain that.” Burton glared at him, and Ernie hid a smile. He was trying to be pissed off about the incident, but he’d eaten fried chicken like a champion and was wearing ice cream on his chin. Once they’d washed the blood off his cheek, he looked like he was in permanent dad mode.

  Ace shrugged—an overcasual gesture that actually set Ernie’s teeth on edge, because to someone who knew him, it meant he was about to tell a whopping lie of omission.

  “It means as long as they saw we were carrying too, they weren’t going to give us any trouble,” Ace lied.

  Suddenly Ernie was wondering how Jai and Ace had gotten out of yesterday’s pickle without bloodshed.

  “But Ace,” Sonny said, coming more fully out of his zone. “How do you fix a car with one hand on the gun?”

  Ace and Jai met gazes, and Jai shrugged. “We took turns,” he said. “Ace held gun, I changed out coils. I held gun, Ace changed belts. We needed help, we made them hold things. Hey—they were the ones who came in armed.”

  There was silence at the table, and Burton opened his mouth to say They were going to kill you, but Ernie shook his head firmly, darting his gaze to Sonny and back.

  “You were lucky,” Burton said instead. He swallowed hard. “We were all lucky.”

  His eyes locked on Ernie’s face then, with such heat and intensity that Ernie had to look away.

  “Hey,” Ernie said, a weak attempt at a joke, “I was lucky you were the one sent to shoot me in the first place.”

  There was a gasp around the table, and when Ernie looked up, Burton was hiding his eyes in his hand.

  “What?”

  “That was how you two met?” Ace half laughed in disbelief.

  Oh. Oh hell. “I’d forgotten you didn’t know that.”

  Burton’s weak chuckle curled warmly in his belly.

  “Well, of course he couldn’t shoot you,” Sonny said rationally from the other side of the table. “You’re… you’re Ernie. People don’t go around shooting people like Ernie. It makes as much sense as shooting Duke.”

  If Duke hadn’t been the most important thing in Sonny’s world next to Ace, Ernie might have taken exception to that. Instead he smiled fondly at Sonny and went for reassurance. “Of course he couldn’t shoot me. He’s a good guy.”

  Sonny nodded. “I know it. Anybody else want any dessert or dinner? I’m gonna start putting stuff away so we can have it tomorrow.”

  “Feel free to raid the fridge after you and Ernie get back from his walk,” Ace said casually, standing up to help clear the table. “But don’t stay out too long, okay? I’d really love to fall asleep before three a.m.”

  “Burton needs to sleep too,” Ernie said, surprised at the authority in his voice. “We’ll be back while you’re still watching TV.”

  Ace smiled. “We sure would like your company,” he said, sincerity ringing from his voice.

  “It’s a deal,” Burton said. “But first, Ace—a word?”

  Ace grimaced. “Course, Lee.” He set the dishes in his hands down on the counter and kissed Sonny’s cheek in a rare public show of affection. “Leave some of it for me, okay?”

  “Sure, Ace.” Sonny nodded, and Ernie started packing up the last of the leftovers. He knew what Burton wanted to talk to Ace about—and he wasn’t sure how to make it better. But God, he was sure glad Burton was there.

  Fighting For

  BURTON COULD still feel the adrenaline-bleed from the fight and the endorphin hit from when Ernie had run out the door. He could feel the sugar hitting his bloodstream from dinner and from the desserts Ernie had poured his heart into, and the dopamine and testosterone from the promise of Ernie’s sweet body next to his, in a bed no less, with the lights off.

  He knew these drugs his body produced—had mastered them to an extent, knew how to counter them when they were a hindrance and use them when they weren’t.

  What he didn’t know was which drug was responsible for the heart-dropping, stomach-sick rage pounding through his bloodstream.

  “How did you—” he began, but Ace cut him off with one of those maddening shrugs.

  “We took turns holding the guns,” he said, like he and Jai hadn’t sat out here and repaired a vehicle while worried for their lives. “I watched Jai’s back, Jai watched mine. The boys stayed inside with the drapes drawn. I’m pretty sure even if the worst had gone down, they would have been safe.”

  Burton nodded and tried to calm his shaking down. “You could have been killed,” he rasped. They all could have been killed. “Why didn’t you—”

  “Ernie said you were out of town,” Ace told him matter-of-factly, nothing to see here, sir, just Burton’s entire existence, threatened by gangsters from fucking nowhere. And Burton would have been… would have been…. “He didn’t want to bother you with it, and, you know. Since we called the authorities and they took them out, there wasn’t anything to bother with, right?”

  Burton nodded, eyes closed. “Nothing…. God, I’m pissed. I don’t even know why!” He didn’t like admitting it to Ace. Hell, he didn’t like admitting it to anybody.

  “’Cause your boy was threatened,” Ace said, unperturbed.

  “And my friends.” Burton felt compelled to say it. This was his third Christmas at Ace and Sonny’s, and while Ernie had made it his best, it was still the only place he could think of to be right now. A group of gangsters passing through, deciding his friends were too much of a liability, and Burton could be adrift here in the desert. Just him and Duke, probably, mourning the nucleus of their world.

  “That’s kind,” Ace acknowledged. “And speaking of friends, how deep under are you? Because you look like hell, Lee, and not just from the fight.”

  Burton grunted. “I hate undercover,” he said, thinking Ace might be able to figure he wasn’t speaking at random. “I hate it. You think these guys are okay, some of ’em. You think they’re your friends. But they’re not. They’re just fuckin’ killers looking for a reason to kill.”

  “Mm. I’m glad you’re one of the good guys, yes I am.”

  Burton managed a limp smile in his friend’s direction. “You know as well as I do that guys like me—”

  “Us,” Ace said unequivocally. Well, Ace had done his shar
e of bad things for a good reason.

  “Us,” Burton acknowledged. “Guys like us aren’t really good. We’re sort of—”

  “We have pure intentions and a certain moral flexibility,” Ace said, so innocent and self-righteous that Burton’s smile grew a few watts brighter.

  “That’s a nice way to put it.”

  Ace chuckled. “Well, you either learn to live with the things you’ve done, or they weren’t worth doing in the first place.”

  Burton nodded, letting his hands fall to his sides and staring out into the chill of the winter desert. “I almost failed,” he said softly. “I… I almost let someone innocent get killed. I’m… I’m not okay with that.”

  He heard Ace’s deep inhale. “I almost let Sonny get killed—”

  “That wasn’t your—”

  “Let me finish. The one person I care most about in the world and he was knifed, right in front of me. And I was helpless until I wasn’t. And that’s all I got, Burton. All I’ll ever have on that subject. ‘Almost’ can fuckin’ kill us if we let it. You got a boy in there who lights up brighter than Christmas when he hears your tires in the driveway.”

  “He’s not mine,” Burton said automatically.

  “Well, don’t tell him that—because if you almost keep him, that would be an even bigger tragedy than almost letting the bad guys get away with being bad guys, you think? Don’t let the almosts break you down. Sometimes you gotta be helpless—I get that more than most. But you obviously defended yourself, so I’m going to think helpless was not your gig. It never has been. So you were helpless for once—but not for long, because it was almost. You’re feeling helpless about those drug dealers here at the station—but you left Ernie with me, and I coped, so it was almost. Son, you’ve got a whole lot of blessing you are almost taking for granted, so maybe when that boy comes out here, you give thanks for him instead of dwelling on the almosts, okay?”