by Rob Thurman
Stefan had one of the towels wrapped around his hips. It hid the ugly scar on his thigh that had come from a bullet from Jericho’s gun, which had broken Stefan’s thighbone like a brittle winter branch. He limped sometimes now in cold weather or after a long day because of me. He’d taken a bullet trying to save me. That I’d done the same for him didn’t matter as it wasn’t the same. Couldn’t be the same. Chimeras are hard to kill. People are not. He didn’t seem to notice when he limped.
I never failed to.
“Yeaaaah. Seven times. It’s impressive. I’m getting the number tattooed on my arm I’m so proud.” He sat back down on the bed. “But you’re a virgin.” He held up a hand when I started to protest. “An emotional virgin. You haven’t been kicked in the teeth by someone you love yet and Pinky there looks like a girl who could rip out your heart, play tennis with it, stick it back in your chest, and continue to lead you around by your di—um . . . nose. But the first time is the worst. Once you get past that, it gets better.”
“She doesn’t seem as if she’d do that. She’s been helpful.” In ways she hadn’t planned on being. “And who’s to say I wouldn’t like being led around by my no—dick.”
“Fine. You’re a cursing machine now.” He put the gun back on the table. “Then be extra careful. The nice ones don’t play rough, but they don’t give your heart back either. And growing a new one takes a long time. Trust me.” He stripped, pulled on sweatpants, and slid under the covers of his bed for the night. “But don’t trust me much.” He stared at the ceiling. “Between being based at a strip club and Nat . . . to hell with it, I don’t know shit about women. Or maybe I don’t know shit about myself. Either way, just be careful.” He turned over, then yawned with an exhaustion that covered body and soul. He’d found out Anatoly had died, we’d lost our home, and now he was thinking about the past. And the past was Natalie. All of that would exhaust anyone.
Natalie was the woman Stefan had loved. Or, as he’d said, as much as he was capable of loving. Searching for me, blaming himself, putting away his morals to make as much money as he could in the Mafiya—it had all meant there wasn’t much left over for Natalie. She’d known it too. She’d left him and, as far as I knew, he hadn’t tried again. If he had an itch to scratch, as he’d phrased it, several of the strippers liked making a little money on the side.
“The side of what?” I’d asked, but that was when I was new to the real world, barely rescued. The Institute didn’t spend much time on procreation beyond the very basics. They didn’t describe the way it made your brain explode in the best possible way, the almost painful but beyond-pleasurable feeling of ejaculation. It felt as if your life were draining away in a rush of warmth and ecstasy, and you were happy to go with it. If that was what happened with only your body, I couldn’t imagine if there was emotion involved. What poured out of your body was warm; what poured out of your heart if someone ripped it in half when they left you would be an ice-cold river of sharp razors and broken glass.
Why would anyone want to repeat that experience? Or risk it to begin with? I looked at the laptop for several seconds before pushing it away across the bed. Then I went to the bathroom, emptied the ice into the sink, and filled the bucket with water. Carrying it to the door, I used my penknife to slice the carpet. Just as I thought. Cheap hotel equaled cheap or no insulating rubber or wood threshold. There was at least an inch between the bottom of the door and the floor. I went outside and quietly poured the water all the way up that nonexistent threshold. Back inside, I closed the door, I went to my backpack for my small case of tools, and knelt before the TV. “Sorry.” I sighed with real regret. “I know it’s your life or ours, but we need the light.” And as with all no-tell motels, that was all we had—a single lamp and the bathroom light.
After unplugging the television, snipping the cord, stripping the insulation to find the hot wire, usually the black one, I folded the grounding wire back out of the way. Counting my blessings there was an outlet by the small table by the smaller window (in case you brought your own extra lamp—God, I hadn’t missed these crappy rooms), I plugged the TV cord in and rested the tip of the black wire in the water that had run a few inches under the door onto the concrete floor that had been under the carpet. There. It wasn’t a pipe bomb, but it would do . . . and it wouldn’t kill.
“What are you doing? You destroyed a TV. That’s like the Holy Grail to you. And you gut it to electrocute the maid?” Stefan demanded, the flat motel pillow folded under his head.
“It won’t kill. But it will make you extremely sorry you came knocking at our door.” I stood from my squatting position and said, “You might want to call Saul. If he steps in the water in the morning, his beard will bristle like a porcupine getting a prostate exam. Oh, and he’ll be thrown a few feet away, wet himself, and will probably scream himself hoarse when he can move again.” I grinned. “On the other hand, he’s probably already asleep. Let him rest.”
He snorted and reached for his cell phone resting beside his gun. “Running for the second time is a damn sight different from the first. Now you’re teaching me instead of the other way around.” He pressed the numbers. “And you have become somewhat of a shit, too, just like I said. And not so little either.”
I thought about that and the pipe bombs, the plane, hiring drug dealers, possibly electrocuting the maid, and more Stefan didn’t know. No, I didn’t mean he didn’t know—I meant, he didn’t know because he hadn’t asked me about them. Semantics can save your soul.
I’d become a shit, my brother thought. I grinned again—nothing theoretical about that.
I really rather had.
Chapter 7
I forgot the satisfaction of knowing my new self and becoming who I was meant to be—a manipulative, slightly amoral shit/genius—when at four a.m. a scream and sizzle/zap woke me up. Preparing for the worst was an excellent hobby. Getting the worst was not as enjoyable. Stefan was already at the door with his Steyr 9mm in hand. He didn’t have to tell me to pack. We’d learned last time. You pack before you go to bed for cases like this. “Watch out for the water,” I cautioned. “I can’t drag a crispy, fried brother to the car and our bags too.”
Avoiding the inch or two of water that had seeped under the door, but not unplugging the cord in case whoever was out there had a friend, he opened the door. Half in and half out of the puddle of water, a man twitched convulsively, eyes rolling back in his head. “Well, he’s not dead, but I’m not sure he’s quite alive either,” Stefan remarked.
I raced across the room and yanked the TV cord from the outlet. “Incompetent,” I muttered at myself. “Older buildings had a less safe wiring configuration and their electrical insulation isn’t always up to code if the owners don’t make the investment, which apparently they didn’t.”
“I’m not crying any tears over it.” Stefan lightly kicked the man’s shoe with his own bare foot. “See the gun? That is not a particularly friendly gun. It’s a Russian GSh-18 pistol, made to carry armor-penetrating rounds. It’s what we used to call a nye ostavtye ni odin jiveaum, a ‘take no prisoners’ gun or a Siberian Special.” Lingering long ago from the Stalin years (the History Channel cleansed my palate between movies), some older Russians considered Siberia equal to death . . . or Hell. Many had passed on that sentiment. Stefan’s grandfather had survived Siberia, but to hear Stefan retell the stories, none of his grandfather’s friends had.
“Call Saul. Get your shoes and rat while I check to see if there’s anyone else out there.” He was out the door, bare-chested and barefoot. He didn’t look any less dangerous for it. Five minutes later, the three of us were in the parking lot. The still-twitching guy wasn’t Mafiya despite the Russian gun, which was at least one less problem. He was one of Raynor’s men, loyal beyond his boss’s death—I’d checked his wallet. He had the same crappy fake government ID. He was alive but wasn’t exactly functional. The three of us went back to our rooms, dressed, hefted our bags, and ran back out to the parking lot.<
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Saul was equally unhappy. His ginger hair was standing on end, there was a sleep crease on his upper cheek, and he was in pajamas—in a way. He saw me wincing and huffed. “This is what you get. If I don’t have a half hour to do it right, I’m not doing it at all. He headed for his SUV, parked several cars from the one we had stolen. Our vehicle had its license plate switched twice over from the fast food place where we’d acquired the Mustang. It paid to take precautions. I started after Stefan when Godzilla jumped off my shoulder after spotting half a discarded Twinkie on the asphalt. I turned, dropped one bag, and caught him in midair to scold him. It was only half a minute, but that was enough time for Stefan to reach for the car door handle.
That was when I saw it.
The lights in the parking lot were dim and old, same as the motel, but I had excellent night vision and it was getting better the more I matured—as were other things. It was good enough now that I saw the oil on the side of the cover over the rear wheel. Fresh and gleaming, two fingerprints of wet amber—as fresh as if someone had just crawled out from under the car but a moment before. And who changed the oil on someone else’s car at four in the morning?
No one.
“Stoipah, no!” I dropped my bags and ran. “Don’t touch the car!”
But it was too late. His fingers had already hooked under the handle. I’d reached him at the same time and tackled him as hard and fast as I could. I might have been frozen when he had fought the man on the car outside Cascade Falls. I wasn’t frozen now. I wouldn’t let myself be again.
The explosion wasn’t huge; only big enough to take out the car and whoever would’ve been standing next to it. We weren’t. We were fifteen feet away, over a scraggly hedge into the other section of the parking lot. The medium-sized fireball behind us heated the air to more than a hundred degrees; the smoke scorched my lungs, but I didn’t care. Beneath me was my brother and although he was wheezing for breath, his face reddened by the heat, he was alive and not tiny pieces spread far and wide for the morning pigeons to peck. “What . . . ?” he said, choking. “How did . . . you know? How . . . did you get us . . . out of range?” It was a good question, considering he had at least thirty pounds on me and all dense muscle.
I pushed up to take the weight off his chest and let him recover his breath more quickly. “I saw the oil on the back of the car. Fresh. Someone had been under it. You don’t crawl under a car at four in the morning unless you’re planting a tracking device or a bomb.” The rest? Mmm. There was truth and there was explanation. Sometimes they could be entirely different things and sometimes they could be the same. In this case, they were the same. “Adrenaline. I’m in my prime. Not a geezer like you. I’m stronger than I was three years ago. I work out with your weights.” I didn’t. Exercise was boring. “You’ve seen me.” He hadn’t, but ordinary people don’t recall every detail of every day.
Truth, explanation, and half of a somewhat white lie. I’d tell him the entire truth later, when the time was right, but for now, half an untruth was what I gave him. I felt like hell saying it, but I saved my brother’s peace of mind, for now, and his life, for good, I hoped. That made it worth it. The car burned behind us and I felt a hand pat my back vigorously. “Small bonfire,” Stefan said with a crooked smile; then, apparently his breath back, he pulled me into a one-armed hug so fierce that even a chimera like me yelped. “Don’t do that again, okay? It’s my job to protect you, not vice versa. I’m the big brother. Me. Got it? If I blow up, I blow up alone. You go with Saul if that happens.”
This time when I pushed up, I stood and held a hand down to him. “No.” The sentiment was true and spoken matter-of-factly; I wasn’t going to change my mind.
He took my hand and got to his feet. “Misha, this is not a game. It’s never been a game. You know that. You almost died for me once. If you actually succeed, don’t think I’m going to stick around. I did it for ten years. I can’t do it again.”
I saw him again as he’d once been: the drowning man. I’d given him what I said I wouldn’t: lies. He gave me the truth.
I wished he’d lied instead.
I glared at him, but what do you say to a truth like that? I wasn’t going to not try to save him if I had the opportunity, but after what Stefan had given up, it would be like spitting in his face to say I wouldn’t try to survive if I could. I couldn’t do that—throw away what he’d given me. “If I’m too slow next time,” I said grudgingly, “I’ll go with Saul. But try not to make that an issue, all right? Be more careful.”
He raised his eyebrows at my tone—he was lucky to have any eyebrows at all after the explosion. “I’ll do my best,” he said with a patience his colleague didn’t share.
“You two stop bitching at each other and get over here by the fucking SUV,” Saul snapped from down the row of parked cars, some littered with burning debris. “Your TV-fried friend might not have left only one present.” He dropped to the cracked parking lot surface and crawled under his vehicle. A minute later he returned. “Nothing.” He then checked the engine. “We’re good to go. Now, get in the damn car!” People were gawking out of the doors of their rooms and there was the unhappy wail of sirens in the distance.
Stefan and I threw our bags in the back and obeyed. This nighttime Saul was much more frightening than the day version. Ginger and gray chest hair, combined with his pajamas, a pair of tight purple silk boxers and that was it. He looked like an obscenely horny children’s dinosaur—but lean and quick with ropy muscle. He charged double for wetwork, he’d said. You can’t do wetwork, you can’t kill, if you’re the size of a four-hundred-pound fake prehistoric lizard.
You could have better taste in clothes and pajamas, though. You could have pajamas, period. Was that too much to ask? The color seared my night vision. I couldn’t imagine what it would do in broad daylight. Hopefully he’d cover the boxers up with clothes by then. Godzilla hopped from my shoulder, where he’d returned after the Twinkie incident, to the top of Saul’s head, curled up in the bed-hair nest and dozed off. “There is not enough money in the world,” Saul ground out.
In the backseat, I gave Stefan a visual once-over. He’d hit the asphalt with a lot of force. I knew. I’d been that force. He’d lost his bandage for the cut on his forehead. I’d been the one to clean the dried blood earlier, determine the need for stitches, apply ointment, and bandage it. I was the house vet after all. It was my job. Stefan had complained he could do it himself, but at the same time I could see the pleased look in his eyes. Missing memories or not, I’d accepted I was his brother weeks after he rescued me, but years later, he didn’t take it for granted. Plus I placated him with some cheese and peanut butter crackers while I took care of the wound. The tasty treat worked wonders in distracting cranky turtles, ferrets, and brothers.
I lightly touched the cut with one fingertip to assess how it was healing. It was a thin red line, scabbed over, and much better than before. “So?” Stefan inquired. “Add that one to my other one and I look like some grandma’s patchwork quilt, huh?” He didn’t sound too concerned. Scars didn’t bother him. Vanity wasn’t a problem for him.
“Believe it or not, it looks good. Cleaning away all that blood combined with the best prescription antibiotics that can be obtained illegally from Canada”—I shrugged—“it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed, and I did a fantastic job—as always. Can veterinarians win Nobel Prizes? Although I’d settle for government disability for the permanent damage done to my eyes by Skoczinsky’s sleep-spandex.”
“I was going to say he hadn’t changed, the smug little bastard,” Saul grunted from up front as we passed a fire truck headed back toward our motel. “But he has. For the worse. Now he’s a smug, full-grown bastard.”
I ignored him. I had to or I would’ve reached up to touch his shoulder and paralyze his vocal cords. While I didn’t have a problem with that plan, Stefan might. Leaning back against the seat, I changed the subject. “How many more men do you think Raynor had?”
; “Impossible to know. But not any more, I think, or someone would’ve shot us in the parking lot when the bomb didn’t work. I did leave that one electrocuted bastard alive, though. The smart thing would’ve been to finish him off.” Stefan shook his head and let it go. He’d killed, but he didn’t like it, and I’d never blame him for that. How could I?
“I’m more worried about how they found us,” he continued. “We torched the Institute car. We stole a new one. We swapped out license plates on it. How . . . Ah shit. We didn’t steal Saul new license plates. That mall parking lot was full of cameras. He could’ve tagged us by looking at the security tapes. I didn’t think anyone would go to the trouble, though. Hell, I didn’t know he had more men to begin with. Raynor was acting as if he was off the radar on this one. He may be the only one in the government who knows about the Institute. Jericho was smart that way. But if I had thought he had any more men, I would’ve guessed they’d assume you and I took out Raynor. And Raynor would’ve told them at least enough when he first came after us that they’d know we’d been on the run a long time—long enough to be too smart to steal a car from the same place we’d killed their boss.”
And the motel, cheap and sleazy as it was, definitely had cameras too. They probably made half their income off private detectives buying eight-by-ten glossies of cheating spouses, had a Web site with PayPal, and ran specials on double prints. That would be how the guy and his friends, if he had any, knew which car was ours and which one to plant the bomb under. They would’ve seen us on tape getting out of it. Mr. Fried-and-Crispy would’ve seen it was Saul who’d killed his boss on the mall security tapes, but Saul was nothing more than an inconvenience compared to what I was capable of. “So that guy was either smarter than we think or we’re more stupid than we think,” I said thoughtfully.
