by Rob Thurman
What Stefan had actually said had been, “No matter what you do, Misha, no matter absolutely fucking what . . . we can always get bail in this podunk town. So don’t sweat it.”
It was good advice, straight from his mob days.
I’d been a little disappointed. There was a certain lack of No matter what, I will find you! or They can take our land, but they can never take our liberty! Movies do leave you with certain anticipations in some instances. He’d more than made up for it back in Bolivia when he’d told me that if anyone in a uniform grabbed me, I was to kill every last motherfucker wearing one and run for my life. He’d been less concerned with the consequences to my morals than to the consequences to my physical body I carried them around in. And logically he’d been right.
But I wouldn’t have done it, and he knew that too. That was the reason it was a long time before I was able to go anywhere by myself. He’d been my shadow until Cascade Falls, which he eventually deemed safe enough for me.
My background checks on every citizen and the homeless man who lived down by the river with his dog helped. I also got a background on the dog, whom I took a can of Alpo to every day. He was a nice dog. His name was Ralphy, obtained at the pound two counties over—mixed breed, neutered, approximately five years old, and he smelled, but none of us are perfect. This was true of background checks too—they were effective when it came to dogs but useless when it came to tourists. There were too many, too little warning, and not enough time.
Now, here we were . . . about to find out if he’d been right about that bail.
Stefan stayed sitting, and I stood, looking innocent as a lamb—I knew I did as I’d practiced that expression in the mirror many times too. I’d had to. Innocence hadn’t come as easily as the coffeehouse employee-of-the-month expression. Innocence took a great deal of work; it was something no student from the Institute could ever claim. The tourist got out of the car behind the sheriff, his mouth moving. “It had to be that punk. He put something in my coffee. He’s been giving me attitude the whole week. Little bastard probably tried to poison me.”
People—always jumping to the wrong conclusions. Okay, jumping to the wrong methods. And I hadn’t hurt him. I hadn’t. I had inconvenienced him, but I hadn’t hurt him. It was an important distinction. I . . . had . . . not . . . hurt . . . him.
Whether he deserved it or not.
Sheriff Simmons hefted his belt again with one hand and rubbed his mustache with the other. He was young for a sheriff. The mustache, skimpy at best, was overcompensation. He didn’t appear that concerned, however, which was good. I could all but see the thought running through his mind: Of course mild-mannered, well-behaved Parker Alonzo hadn’t poisoned this whiny-ass tourist and if I had, maybe I deserved a medal. But he had a job to do or at least go through the motions of doing.
“This fella—excuse me, sir—Mr. Mitchell says he became violently ill after drinking the coffee you served him, Parker.” The sheriff yawned and continued to question me in a tone more bored than any that could be found in the world. “That’s not so, is it, Parker? You trying to poison this fella? Mr. Mitchell, I mean.”
“No, Sheriff, sir,” I said, shocked—terribly shocked. Goodhearted Parker whom every parent in town knew and wished their kids were like? Never. “I was walking down the sidewalk to take Stefan his lunch when this guy started yelling at me. I didn’t want to get into trouble, and I was kind of worried, you know. Sort of. He’s twice my size.” Three times was more like it, but I was playing nice, although too little, too late. That slippery slope had me now, but I kept the teenage talk flowing. “I kept going, but, like, I could smell the alcohol on him. I hate to say it . . . er . . . sir,” I added earnestly. Hand to God and light a candle for the tourist’s alcoholic soul, I was that earnest. “But I did. He smelled like Old Bob down at the river.”
“Bullshit.” Mitchell, the tourist—with vomit fumes instead of alcohol now, snarled. “I wasn’t drunk.” Which could be true. He could’ve only been buzzed? . . . Yes, buzzed was what they called it. “And I grabbed the spiteful little shit. Shook him good. You be rude to me, that’s what you get. And then he told me—”
Stefan cut him off. “You touched my brother?” The sheriff’s car hadn’t gotten him standing, but that did. “You grabbed him? You shook him?” I slanted a glance to see Stefan’s eyes go that wolf amber . . . slits of pale brutal brown. “You called him names that I’ll bet your mother should’ve put on your birth certificate? Is that what you did, shithead?” He seemed to get bigger somehow. “Well? Is it?”
Before the sheriff’s sunglasses had a chance to slide down his nose more than a fraction at “Harry’s” sudden change of temperament, Stefan was punching the tourist in the nose, which resulted in an explosion of blood. He then aimed the same fist at the man’s oversized gut, causing yet another episode of vomiting, which he had to be tired of by now—before waiting until the man dropped to the ground and following up with a hard, solid kick to the ribs.
I looked up to see Sheriff Simmons peering over the top of his reflective glasses, his eyebrows raised. He didn’t reach for his gun or move. He didn’t look wary . . . but he should have. He was seeing Stefan, the real Stefan for the first time. Harry, the gingerbread-painting, fence-repairing, gutter-cleaning, toss-back-a-beer-on-Friday-nights-at-the-local-bar-and-talk- football, all-around laid-back guy, had just added ass kicking to his resume. And not ordinary ass kicking. In the split second of speed and very purposeful brutality, the sheriff had seen Stefan Korsak of the Mafiya. He’d seen the man who hadn’t wanted to choose a life of violence, but when he had, he’d made sure he was extremely good at it.
What he’d done in that second was only a fraction of what he could do. But then he remembered he wasn’t Stefan here. He blinked, and the bared teeth and wolf eyes were gone and he was Happy Harry again—the gingerbread man. “My old man was in the marines.” He gave a sheepish shrug but didn’t back down. “He taught me a thing or two. He also taught me you don’t pick on kids or family. This guy did both.”
“And I think he’ll regret that—once he stops puking.” The sheriff pushed up his sunglasses and let it go—what he’d seen and what he had to suspect, because it had turned out a few weeks ago that Stefan was right.
In Cascade Falls you could get bail for anything.
Two weeks ago, Stefan had gotten in a bar fight on his usual have-to-be-ordinary-to-fit-in-Friday routine. I’d told him that wasn’t the way to avoid notice, the same thing he was always telling me to do. But he’d shrugged and said, “It was the whole damn bar going at it. If I hadn’t swung back when that guy punched me, I would’ve stood out. Exception that proves the rule.” The bail had been only five hundred dollars. When I’d paid it and picked him up, he’d shrugged, wadded up the receipt, and tossed it in the backseat. “ ‘Harry Alonzo’ now has a record. Actually, that’s my first time behind bars, believe it or not, which means no worry about comparing fingerprints,” he’d said.
This time there was no bail. The folks of Cascade Falls liked their tourists for the most part. But they didn’t like ones that messed with their citizens. The sheriff waited until the one on the ground stopped puking, handcuffed him, and shoved him into the back of the car. “Assaulting a minor is no way to spend your vacation, son.” Before he pushed his sunglasses back up, he winked at me to let me know it was a good time to pretend to be as young as I looked—seventeen instead of the twenty I almost was. “You call us next time you have some out-of-towner giving you trouble, Parker. Harry,” he said, tipping his hat, “nice moves. You done your daddy proud.” Then he was in the car and gone.
Maybe he’d recognized one of his own—a soldier of sorts. Although, from the premature beer belly on Sheriff Simmons, it’d been a long time since he’d kicked anyone in the ribs, which was, if you thought about it, great cardiovascular exercise. I’d have to look into the sheriff again. I’d underestimated him and his skills, former or not. I was really beginning to lose faith in m
y background checks.
Stefan folded his arms. “If I had a woodshed you hadn’t blown up, I’d take you behind it and beat some sense into you.”
I didn’t bother to roll my eyes, the threat not worthy of a response.
“Seriously, what did I tell you, Misha? Don’t let anyone see what you can do. Although making that fat bastard puke his guts up in the street. . . .” He swallowed the grin that surfaced and went for a more somber tone. “If it’s to save your life, do what you have to do. Absolutely anything you have to do. If it’s just a jackass messing with you, come get me and I’ll make him sorry his father bought that on-sale cheap-ass expired condom. But if it’s not life or death, keep what you can do secret, okay? Or we’ll have more than the Mafiya and that hellish place that took you after us.”
I said pointedly, “Because pounding him to a pulp was much more subtle.”
“No, but it’s not science fiction, so do what I tell you, all right? Now, are you done testing those teenage boundaries? The ones you missed while you were under that bastard who took you? Get it all out of your system, defying the big brother?”
Yeah, my brother was smarter than I have given him credit for sometimes. In matters of emotion, he was five Mensa levels smarter than I was. “He was a dick,” I said stubbornly.
“Michael, in life you’ll discover there are a million times more dicks in the world than there are shitheads to fucking hang them on,” he snorted. “It’s not right. It’s not fair, but we have to work around it. You keep your Superman powers out of sight and I’ll beat the crap out of anyone who messes with my family. Illegal, sure, but not science fiction.”
Superman . . . that was so far off base, I didn’t bother to go there. Like any other nineteen-year-old, I wanted to take care of myself. But unlike any other nineteen-year-old, I could take care of myself. I could take care of myself in a way that could leave the streets littered with bodies. My brother was right. He usually was. And like any other nineteen-year-old, that made me sulk for a while.
But, hey, the word “dick” had come to me naturally. That was something.
Chapter 3
“You be kind to Stefan. He deserves that.”
“Kind” was an odd word to come from a man who may have killed as many as the man who’d kidnapped his son, but he’d meant it. It was the only thing he’d meant as he’d talked to me the time when both Stefan and I had been shot by Jericho and his men. I was different then . . . and now. . . . I’d healed much faster than Stefan, although I’d been shot in the chest and he’d been shot in the leg. The bullet had broken his thighbone, which caused him to limp in cold weather. Me? Who they’d thought would die long before the AMA-booted doctor would show up? I barely had a scar.
It had been when I’d been closer to healthy and whole and Stefan knocked out on pain meds in that South Carolina safe house that Anatoly had said that to me.
“Be kind to Stefan. He deserves that.”
He’d been right and I hadn’t had to hear it from him. Stefan did deserve it. Stefan hadn’t given up on his brother—he had saved me, and he didn’t lie to me. Anatoly had done none of those things. He never even said my name, either of them, not Lukas or the “Michael” the Institute had given me. He’d been polite, for a killer, but weren’t we all killers in that beach house/ makeshift hospital? Stefan had said that Anatoly was my father, but I hadn’t trusted the older man for a second.
Now, though, looking at what was left of him on my computer screen, I wished I’d tried to find out more of who’d been behind the killer. Was there more to him? I’d had the skills at reading people, same as now, but I hadn’t used them. Everything, the entire world, was so damn new then that Stefan was all I needed and all I could handle. I didn’t want or need a father, I’d thought at the time, especially one who’d given up on me.
“Be kind to Stefan.” I remembered those words.
I looked at the bones and chunks of decomposed flesh on the screen. He’d been in a lake. Lake Michigan. Floaters aren’t pretty and I honestly couldn’t remember if I’d learned that at the Institute or on one of the thousand TV cop shows since. Wherever I’d heard it, it was right. He was roadkill marinated in a swampy Everglades ditch. He was in pieces and the pieces didn’t fit together to make anything that looked human. They’d identified him by dental records. I clicked on the next picture. These weren’t the kind available to your average Internet surfer, but I wasn’t your average anything. If there was a place that cybertendrils didn’t extend into, I hadn’t found it yet. Chimeras were trained to fool people. I’d found that fooling machines was far easier. If there was a data stream, I rode it; a path of pixels, I walked it. I saw it all, saw through everything as if it were made of glass.
Not like Anatoly.
“Be kind to Stefan,” he had said. He hadn’t been much of a human before or after he died, I’d thought, but he’d loved his son. He hadn’t loved me; I could tell. I didn’t read him, but I didn’t have to search his face or catalog his movements and words to know that. Love is easy to see; no effort required. Other emotions took effort, but love was simple. I didn’t know why he hadn’t accepted me like Stefan had. Maybe I’d been gone too long. Maybe he’d wiped me out of his heart and mind. The reason didn’t matter.
I did know it now, but it didn’t matter. Anatoly had ceased to matter to existence itself.
I couldn’t read him emotionally any better today than then—it was hard to read pieces. But I could read what had been done to him. Brutal, vicious, and messy, but effective. I could’ve done it more quickly and neatly, but there weren’t many of my kind around. Others had to make do with chain saws. This hadn’t been done for punishment or fun. It would’ve taken too long. Psychopaths, such as the Mafiya, as much as they liked chain saws, were generally into immediate gratification. This had been done methodically by someone looking for information.
I searched the screen. I’d seen Anatoly and what had been done to him. It was what was behind his tangible, rotting memory that I’d noticed: a man. He was in all the pictures. In the ones where they’d pulled Anatoly’s remains from the lake, loading him into the coroner’s van, in the autopsy room—he was always there. The suit, short fringe of dark hair, opaque sunglasses, and inscrutable expression said government, but his dedication in following the body from place to place implied more dedication than FBI or IRS, the major bloodhounds on Anatoly’s tail according to Stefan.
I clicked on the next picture and zoomed in on those deep-set black eyes in the one picture where he’d removed the glasses. Not entirely inscrutable. There was interest there, a deep and passionate desire. But for what? Anatoly was beyond indictment and prison. What was left that could be that fascinating?
The knock on my bedroom door had me automatically switching to another computer window. Stefan stuck his head in. He looked at the computer screen and groaned, appearing more than a little worried. “Again? Seriously, kiddo, you’ve got that live girl at the coffee shop made of mostly human parts, you’ve got porn at your fingertips, and you’re wasting your time on that?”
I glanced at the Lolcats site. “There has to be a logic to it. It’s idiotic, but people say it’s funny. Unless all people are idiots, I’m missing something. I’m going to figure it out.” It wasn’t strictly a lie. It was not volunteering information and . . . waiting. And waiting wasn’t wrong, not if you thought of it in the correct way. My mind was an Olympic gymnast at twisting and bending to see things in the manner that benefited me the most.
“Cats are intelligent.” It was a diversion, but it was also true. “If they could talk, then I’m quite sure they could spell.” My eyes were drawn back to the screen and the idiotic U haz hareball on fut under the picture of an evidently highly annoyed cat biting someone’s ankle. There had to be something to it . . . but what in God’s name it was, I couldn’t figure out. “Maybe their owners can’t spell, but they could.”
“Misha.” His lips quirked. He was tired and darkness was in him, shad
ows filling up a flesh and blood pitcher. “Thanks for taking one of the more crappy days and making it better.”
“By making a tourist vomit and giving you a chance to take out your frustrations by kicking him in the stomach?” I asked curiously, tearing my eyes away from the screen before it burned my retinas with its idiocy.
The grin was quick and fleeting, but it was there. “Don’t do it again, but, yeah, I enjoyed it. I shouldn’t have—a few of my old ways creeping back. But sometimes you need a distraction, and you, little brother, are always that. I needed it today. Now, get your ass off the computer and go to bed. It’s past midnight and we both have to go back to work tomorrow as if nothing happened.” Because as far as anyone knew, nothing had, but it didn’t stop the darkness in him from beginning to overflow. He needed time to remember, time to put those memories in all those tiny boxes we have inside us. To put them away for another day—a day when they would be bearable again.
“Go.” He pointed at my bed where Godzilla was curled up on my pillow. “And . . . thanks.”
He closed my door. I didn’t sleep, though Godzilla snored through a tiny deviated septum. I was nineteen and far beyond curfews and bedtimes, but Stefan’s trying to take care of me made him feel better about Anatoly, so I didn’t argue. I simply didn’t obey, and by the morning I had more than enough reasons for Stefan to take back that thanks he’d given me.
I iz up shit crick, haz no paddle.
I now liked all animals except cats, which, if they’d allowed this travesty to go on, weren’t as smart as I had thought they were. Kind of like me, I thought grimly before correcting myself. Self-blame, so sayeth Jericho, was destructive to the mission, any mission, including staying free and alive. I should’ve seen it sooner. I hadn’t. It was time to move on to more constructive thoughts.
