The Edge of Ruin

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “Well, putting aside the hating-your-guts part, I convinced Judge Cole to give me a warrant, and I had a little peek at Snyder’s bank account. On January third he deposited twenty-five thousand dollars,” Weber said.

  “A hit.” I tried to wrap my head around the idea. It wasn’t easy with the morphine washing through my system, but once I did the rage returned. “Crap, he did this for money?”

  “Seems likely,” Damon said.

  “Watch your language,” my father said at the same time.

  “Now it makes sense what he said. When I drew the sword he said, ‘it’s real.’”

  “Implying he knew about the sword,” Angela said. “Which means somebody told him about it. Gee … three guess as to who that might have been,” Angela added and smiled. If it was meant to be an ironic smile it failed, presenting instead like an angry grimace.

  I was hoping everyone would assume Angela’s fury related to Rhiana’s betrayal of Kenntnis. I knew it had a whole lot more to do with me. I was suddenly so tired of everyone’s desires and expectations being focused on me. Why couldn’t Kenntnis have arranged Lumina as an order of warrior monks, or celibate Amazons?

  Damon’s hand gripped my shoulder. Wearily I opened my eyes again. Weber smiled down at me. I was momentarily fascinated by the way the light glinted in the graying stubble on his chin. I wondered how he’d look with a beard.

  “Hey, we’re wearing you out.”

  “It’s okay.” I forced a smile and banished the thoughts that would have jeopardized the friendship we’d barely reestablished.

  “Look, you rest now. If I bring by a laptop tomorrow, do you think you could write up a report?”

  I forced energy into my voice. “You bet.”

  Suddenly my father stirred. The blinds snapped together with a metallic clink. He walked to the door and I realized that he had barely said a word.

  He opened the door and looked back at all of us. “I’d like a few words in private with my son.”

  I had heard these words too many times in my life not to know what they portended. Bile climbed up the back of my throat. I wanted to beg Angela and Damon to stay. But that wasn’t going to happen. The judge brooks no disobedience. Even Weber, a nineteen-year veteran of the police force, was suddenly in motion out the door. But Angela was made of sterner stuff.

  “I think Richard has had enough conversation. He needs to rest,” Angela said. She folded her arms across her chest, shifted her feet as if she planned on taking root in the linoleum floor, and stared defiantly at my father.

  “He can tolerate one more,” the judge said, and the level of ice in the words told me that this was a fight even Angela couldn’t win despite her reputation as the World’s Meanest Chicana. She had met her match in the World’s Toughest Man.

  “Angela, please, it’ll be okay.”

  At my words she deflated. She leaned down and pressed her lips against mine. Again there was that burst of chocolate and coffee and desperate longing. “I’ll be back in the morning. You get some sleep. Don’t stress.”

  Angela walked to the door, then looked back at Pamela, who leaned against the wall, arms folded across her breasts, clearly intending to stay. My sister’s face held an odd mix of disapproval, pleasure, and contempt. Angela’s eyes narrowed, and I realized she had decided that while she might not be up to my father’s weight she was definitely up to Pamela’s.

  “Either everyone or no one gets to hang around for the ass kicking,” Angela said.

  “This is a family matter,” Pamela flared back.

  My father walked to the door and pulled it open. “All of you, out.”

  “Papa, I think—” Pamela began.

  “Out!” It was the voice that had issued from the bench for sixteen years, and mobsters, drug dealers, and murders had quailed before it.

  No wonder I didn’t have a chance.

  The door closed, and we regarded each other. Two weeks ago he had come to my rescue. After days of beatings and torture I had been at the end of my strength and bravery. He had run into Grenier’s office and gathered me in his arms. I had never felt that safe before. Now I was hurt again, but there was none of the warmth and love I had seen in Virginia. Once again I’d disappointed him. A faint shivering invaded my gut, and a tightness filled my chest. This was going to be an ugly one.

  “This must stop.” Papa removed the hilt from his pocket and laid it on the bed next to my uninjured leg. “This is your life now. This and nothing else. Accept that. Because of a fluke of genetics you are the only one who can use this weapon. Had there been a more well ordered manner of selection, I’m sure you would not have been everyone’s first choice …”

  I’d lost track of his words. But I did well in Virginia. I was clever. What could I have done differently? I didn’t break. I took it. I’m not a coward. How could I have done things better, Papa?

  “The madness that infected that father is symptomatic of events occurring across the country and around the globe.”

  “And because I had the sword I saved those three kids.”

  “We have far bigger problems than that. It’s fallen to you to lead the defense of our world. Instead you’re hesitating and regretting and postponing instead of accepting your responsibilities. That has always been your problem, Richard. Always. This weapon”—he gestured at the hilt—“is the only defense we have against these creatures.”

  “I don’t know how to save the world. I knew how to save those kids.” I was surprised to discover that the bowel-loosening terror I always felt when he berated me was gone. What I felt was anger.

  We were matching stares. I grabbed the control and with a hum raised the top of the bed so I could face him more easily.

  “Can you look me in the eye and seriously tell me that I should have done nothing? Just driven on down to headquarters and resigned? Let those children die?”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

  I stared at him and wondered who he was. At some point every kid secretly suspects they were adopted. In my case I figured I was a stepchild. I knew I was my mother’s child. It was written in my face, and our emotional bond, but I was so different from my older sisters and my father that I figured we couldn’t share any genes. It had been a source of grief for me because I so wanted to be his. Now I was grown, and I knew he was my father. And at this moment I didn’t want to be his son.

  “You don’t get the life you wished for, Richard. You get the life you have. Now get on with it.” The words were cold, clipped, and precise. “You will resign from the force immediately.”

  I couldn’t look at his face, pinched with anger and disappointment, any longer. I closed my eyes, and suddenly new faces pushed their way forward. Faces of victims as their fear turned to relief at learning of an arrest. The blank surprise and anger that crossed a perp’s face at the moment of capture. That sense of enormous satisfaction I’d felt when my testimony had resulted in a guilty verdict, and taken another animal in human skin off the street.

  And the face of every criminal I had arrested held a shadow of the faces of the men who had hurt me, disrupted my life, and led me to attempt suicide. That assault had brought McGowan into my life, and with his help I had regained my strength and the will to live, and found my life’s work. I had been good at police work, very good.

  “Have you anything to say?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. “I’m going to be on leave anyway because I shot a fellow officer and because I’ve been hurt. We don’t have to deal with this right now.” He opened his mouth to continue the argument. I cut him off. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you got me a wheelchair.” I picked up the phone and started dialing.

  “What nonsense is this?”

  “They hired someone to kill me. I don’t really want to stay in an unsecured hospital. I’ll be safer at Lumina. The limo is big, so I won’t hurt my leg … too much.”

  The expression on my father’s face was hard to interpret. “You need medical car
e.”

  “Angela can look out for me.”

  “She’s a coroner, for God’s sake. She cuts up dead people.” The words were explosive with fury.

  “Yes, and I’m trying to keep from becoming one of her customers.”

  FOUR

  Even at 3:00 A.M. Bourbon Street was rocking. Music poured out of the doors of bars and dives—the sob of a saxophone, the husky voice of a blues singer, the clear blare of a Dixieland clarinet, even the rollicking rhythms of a Celtic band. The moisture-laden air reeked of booze, grease, the pungent scent of seafood, humidity, and humanity.

  Neon signs blinked and flared, throwing garish multicolored light across the cheap T-shirts that hung in every store window demanding SHUCK ME, SUCK ME, EAT ME RAW. Signs screamed out ALL NAKED, ALL THE TIME!!! A big-bellied white man, his face beet red and moisture-slick with sweat, shouted at her.

  “Come on in, darlin’. You could win a hundred bucks! Mud wrestlin’ contest. You’d be a natural.” Rhiana froze him with a look.

  Dazed people brushed past her, clutching brightly colored plastic cups adorned with umbrellas. No doubt they contained New Orleans’s infamous Hurricanes. There was a tingling along her nerve endings, which weren’t entirely human. This was a place where the membranes between the dimensions were tissue thin. Were the branes thin because of voodoo, or had belief in magic taken root here because of the lack of separation?

  They had stashed the man at the Inn on Bourbon. She reached the hotel and ran gratefully up the steps and into the air-conditioned lobby. Bellmen, all of them African American, cat-footed past her, looking like officers in an operetta with their red uniforms and gold epaulets. The staff behind the front desk were all white. Rhiana wondered if this was how New Orleans had always been, or if it was a small symptom of what was happening with the opening of the gates.

  There was a pressure on her chest as if the city were breathing, focusing on her. It forced her to lean against the wall of the elevator. She stepped off the elevator and got her bearings. Down the hallway to the corner room. A room service tray piled with dirty dishes lay on the floor outside. The door was flung open after only a single knock.

  The man was of medium height and whip-thin. He wore only a pair of black jeans. There was the white line of an old knife wound across his ribs; his toenails were long and yellowed. The stink of cigarette smoke hung in his clothes and hair, and he needed a shower. Doug Andresson reared back and raked her with a hot look.

  “Now that’s more what I’m talkin’ about. Some serious booty.” He grabbed Rhiana’s wrist and yanked her into the room. “Now get those clothes off, and get your ass in the bed.” Whiskey breath gusted into her face.

  Rhiana reached out to her power, ready to freeze the breath in his chest, choke him on the offensive words, but she met an implacable wall. Oh shit, he’s a paladin. Magic won’t work on him. She felt a flash of all too human female fear.

  Time for a human solution. She swung her purse and hit him in the temple while at the same time she drove the high heel of her shoe into his instep. He howled, clutched at his foot, and hopped. While he was off balance she shoved him hard in the chest. He crashed down on the unmade bed.

  “First, I am Madoc’s daughter. Second, I’m in charge of you now. Third, I’m going to get you the sword.”

  As she watched, the furious glare faded from the dark eyes, and calculation took its place. He wasn’t smart, but she bet he was cunning.

  “Now get dressed. I’m taking you back to the compound.”

  “No.” He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at her. “I like it here just fine. There’s shit to do in New Orleans.”

  “Oh, really?” She looked ostentatiously around the room. “It’s pretty clear from the stink that you haven’t let a maid in here in days. I saw the room service tray outside the door. The women are coming here.” She forced herself to look at the crusted stains on the sheet. “And you don’t look like a music lover.”

  For the briefest flash she saw Richard’s profile, eyes half closed, head thrown back as his hands swept across the keyboard of the piano. She pushed the memory aside.

  “I’ll keep you supplied with whatever you want, but you need to be where I can find you fast.” Rhiana had a sudden inspiration. “And I need to keep you safe. You’re very important.”

  FIVE

  RICHARD

  The clink of silverware on china had me jerking upright, and the abrupt movement set my thigh to throbbing. The bedside lamp, a tall glass column, switched on, momentarily blinding me. I threw an arm across my eyes, but in that brief moment before spots exploded across my vision I had seen Cross.

  “Oh, sorry,” the creature muttered. The light was dimmed, and I opened my eyes.

  Cross dragged over a chair with one hand while with the other he tried to control the soup bowl. He wasn’t notably successful. Soup sloshed across his hand as he failed to keep the bowl balanced. Then the spoon shipped overboard and rang and clattered on the polished slate floor. Cross picked it up, blew across it, sat down, and began slurping. Noodles clung to his lower lip like a walrus’s bristles, then were quickly sucked in. Broth dribbled into his beard. Watching the homeless god eat was a stomach-turning experience. I swallowed hard a few times. My stomach sank back down.

  I found myself staring at the Old One. In the weeks before Kenntnis’s capture our enemies had kept up a constant assault on Cross to keep him splintered. He had been reduced to a fragile stick figure barely able to muster up the strength to “see” magic, which was his primary use to the Lumina. But now that sickly creature was gone. Color shone in his cheeks. His eyes were clear. The envelope in which he wrapped his alien form looked strong and virile. I said as much, and got back Cross’s usual tactless response.

  “Thanks. You look like shit.”

  “I got shot. What’s your excuse for being so chipper? I thought you’d be almost permanently splintered with all the crap that’s going on in the world,” I countered.

  “Yeah, things are getting rough out there, but when bad shit happens, good people, I mean truly good people, tend to get even better. They’re worshiping me hard, so I’ve got a little reserve built up against my asshole brethren. And, don’t forget, the chaos feeds me, too.”

  Well, that was an alarming thought. “Help me up,” I ordered. I so didn’t want to face what that might portend while flat on my back.

  Cross set aside his soup bowl, grabbed me by the forearm, and helped me sit up. He snatched up the pillow and revealed the Starfire and the sword hilt that had been hidden beneath it.

  “Little paranoid?” Cross asked. He plumped up the pillow and leaned it against the curving steel and glass headboard. Thrusting his hands beneath my arms, he hoisted me back until I rested against the headboard. He was amazingly strong, and the pressure of his hands both tickled and hurt the muscles and tendons in my armpits. Moving also changed the throb in my thigh to a white-hot line of pain. I clamped my teeth together so hard that my jaw ached, and I still couldn’t hold back the strangled moan.

  When I could talk again I snapped, “Can you blame me?”

  “Nah. Your dad told me what happened. Talk about a co-worker gone bad.” Cross paused and cocked his head, considering. The flippant expression faded. “You gotta make sure no one in this building gets similar ideas.”

  “And just how do I do that?”

  “Use the sword.”

  “Snyder tried to kill me out of greed, not because of all the craziness.”

  “Yeah, but as our dimensions push deeper into your universe, your reality is going to get really fucked up. People are going to believe crazy, crazy shit, and sometimes the crazy shit’s going to start happening. You’ve gotta at least protect the people around you.”

  I reset the pillows supporting my injured leg while I chewed on that. “Great, I can just picture how well that’s going to go over. Oh, by the way, if you want to keep your job you’ve got to let me touch you with this sword.”

/>   “Tell ’em to think of it as your version of a drug test.”

  I wasn’t buying it. I shook my head and then asked, “Will the madness affect your worshipers?”

  “Richard, hello.” He bopped me on the forehead with the palm of his hand in a send-up of the V8 commercial. “Remember, believing in me is crazy, too.” It was said with that patient gentleness you reserve for the old and senile, or the very young.

  With an irritable wave of my hand, I brushed off the condescension. “But you appeal to the best of our natures. Even if the underlying belief is irrational, I’ll settle for the good result.”

  “Problem is, once my worshipers get organized, and agree to power sharing, their worshipers are going to come and kill my worshipers, and they’ve got a lot more warm, crazy bodies than I have.”

  The silken black duvet cover snagged on a hangnail as I began to pleat it between my fingers. “That’s sad.”

  “Which part? The killing or the fact that charity, love, forgiveness, and mercy are way less fun than righteous vengeance and punishing the infidels and the sinners?”

  “Both, and what does that say about us as a species?” I said.

  “That you suck, but you sure are tasty.” Cross lifted the bowl to his lips and slurped down the last of the soup.

  Cross’s flippant response hit me wrong. Maybe it was the pain making me testy, but I wasn’t finding Cross amusing at—I peered at the Bose clock radio—two seventeen in the A.M. “Kenntnis thought we were worth the trouble. He believed in our ability to grow and change.”

  “Yeah, but do you?” And the creature’s brown eyes were suddenly swallowed by his expanding pupils until they were just stone black. I had seen it happen a couple of times, and it still had the nape hairs trying to climb up my scalp. A million years of evolution were screaming at me that this thing was evil, and it would kill me, and I needed to run like a … a … I tried to not use the profanity, but nothing else would serve. A motherfucker.

  Papa can’t read my mind. He can’t know that I’m cursing like a sailor.