The Crimes of Orphans

by Obie Williams

  Alex nodded and did as he was told.

  Michael, too, lowered his head. “God, the Father of mercies, through the de—”

  Alex suddenly shot his free hand out, grabbed a fistful of hair on the back of Michael’s head, and brought his knee up to collide with his captor’s face. The speed and strength of the act surprised even Alex, who felt he had just tapped into something he hadn’t known was inside him. He didn’t let it cause him a moment’s hesitation, though, as he yanked Michael back up by his hair, loosened his grasp long enough to snatch the dagger from his belt, and then wrapped his arm around the young man’s throat, pulling him into a headlock on his lap with the tip of the blade touching his ear.

  “Now you listen to me, you son of a bitch. You’re going to unbuckle your belt, slowly, and toss away that sword. Then you’re going to reach down and untie my ankles. If you try anything, I swear, I will jam this thing straight through your throat.”

  “Let me go!” Michael cried, then coughed on the blood that was streaming from his nose.

  Alex shook him once, and the tip of the dagger nicked the flesh just below his ear. “Don’t push me, Michael. I swear to God, you’ve got three seconds to—”

  A white flash erupted in the right side of Alex’s head and he lurched to the side as far as his bonds would allow. His body flailed once involuntarily. It was just enough for Michael to slip free and scramble to his feet. He backed away from Alex as he wiped a hand across his nose.

  Cleric stepped in front of Alex, grabbing his wrist tightly with one hand and wrenching the dagger from his grasp with the other. He tossed the weapon to Michael, who just watched it fall to the ground before reaching down to pick it up. “You deserve what you got,” Cleric chided. “Mind your distance next time.” He turned back to Alex and began re-securing his wrist.

  Looking at Cleric in his momentary daze, Alex asked in an oddly polite tone, “Will you please stop hitting me in the head?”

  Chuckling, Cleric finished tying his hand, making sure it was painfully tight this time, before he brought a hard punch down just above Alex’s left kneecap. The boy screamed in agony. “Better?” Cleric asked.

  The pain, though intense, cleared Alex’s head. “Much,” he said flatly, then spat out a mouthful of blood. One of his teeth felt loose. He glared at Michael. “I should have just killed you, you lunatic.” He was getting used to this rage. It felt empowering.

  Michael’s face suddenly went a deep shade of red, his knuckles white around the hilt of his dagger. It took every drop of control in his being not to leap on Alex and cut him wide open. Only the knowledge that it would ruin everything he had worked for kept his rage in check, but it still needed some outlet, so, with a petulant scream, he lunged at Amelie and slashed the dagger deep across the meat of her shoulder. She screamed and threw her head back so hard Alex felt it shake the post they were tied to.

  “You son of a bitch!” Alex yelled.

  “Hey!” Cleric boomed. He rushed Michael and took him by the back of his collar, yanked the dagger from his grasp, and threw him to his rear in the dust like he was nothing. Turning on him, he pointed that dagger down at the young man menacingly. “You keep the hell away from her, you little shit.”

  But Michael wasn’t even looking at Cleric. His eyes were transfixed on Amelie. Following his gaze, Cleric looked to her as well and his own eyes went wide.

  Seconds after it was cut open, the wound in Amelie’s shoulder began to emanate a soft white glow. Its red edges smoothed and came back together, sealing up seamlessly, leaving behind only the blood the wound had spilled in its short existence. Amelie burst into tears, not only at the pain, which would still linger like a phantom for some time, but at the realization that her gift had been discovered by the person she most feared finding out.

  Awestruck, Cleric stepped forward and carefully sliced a small cut in Amelie’s cheek with the dagger. It wasn’t nearly as painful as the first wound, but she cried out again. Both Cleric and Michael watched in amazement as this too healed itself almost instantly. The entire time, Alex was thrashing violently at his bonds, so much so that his wrists started to bleed, but no one else seemed to notice.

  “Fascinating,” Cleric said.

  “I think you mean terrifying,” Michael said, rising. Cleric looked back at him quizzically. “One of the very possessed souls we are trying to cleanse from this world nearly took control of our most powerful city. I struggled with my decision to sacrifice her, but now I understand it was truly God’s will working through me, showing me the evil I could not see for myself.”

  “You know, a smart man would put a power like that to use, not let it go to waste,” Cleric said.

  Michael narrowed his eyes, dropping a hand to the hilt of his sword. “And a righteous man knows notions like that are Lucifer whispering in his ear. It’s already bad enough that you forced me to give your hellfire boy and demon hound sanctuary. Don’t try to tempt me to share your damnable tolerance.”

  Cleric stepped closer, pointing Michael’s own dagger at him. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to here. It wouldn’t take me five minutes to kill all of you and walk out of here, wash my hands of this whole thing.” With little more than a flick of his wrist, he sent the dagger down to stick in the ground at Michael’s feet. “You have work to do. Why don’t you stop letting these two get under your skin and try getting it done before we run out of time and botch this whole job? I’ll even make it easy for you and find something to gag them with.” With that, Cleric turned and walked away, headed back towards the coliseum door from which he came.

  Michael picked up his dagger and put it away, then walked around so he was in front of Amelie. Crossing his arms, he shook his head, looking at her with a strange sadness in his eyes. “I truly wish the demon inside you didn’t keep you from understanding why this is what I must do. My mother understood when she started me on this path, but then she began to falter when she called Cleric off finishing the job he had begun with your mother. She thought you escaping that fate had been a sign from God that you were meant to live. Then, after marrying your father, she lost her way completely, trying to tell me the Gifted were some sort of blessing. I had thought she must have been persuaded by Richard’s delicate sensibilities, and I was left with no choice but to send her to heaven. Now I see the truth. Those infective thoughts came not from your father, but from you…from the thing inside you that makes you unclean.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Amelie whispered. “You can’t just kill all these people.”

  Michael’s jaw clenched. “The world must be purged of infection so it may return to the glorious path it was once on. Before the Last War, Lucifer led us astray with bombs and guns and we nearly destroyed ourselves. So God, in his infinite wisdom, sought to cleanse us with his Great Plague, but now Lucifer tries once more by giving humans power that no being but God should possess. Once I cast out that sickness, those of us who remain will be truly worthy of our Lord’s providence. I am deeply sorry that you will not be counted among us.” Looking down, Michael shook his head and headed back towards the pillars he had been examining before.

  “Are you alright?” Alex asked over his shoulder.

  “Yes, I’ll be okay,” Amelie replied. “I just can’t believe I never saw this madness in him before.”

  “If we do get out of here, and you become Lady of Chicane, may I make a suggestion?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You should probably require some sort of evaluation of sanity before a person can become an heir. That seems like it would be helpful.”

  Amelie actually laughed a little. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “Good choice.” Alex looked around and sighed. “Well, that escape attempt didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”

  “No…though we did learn that Cleric and Michael don’t seem to like each other much. My father once told me that discovering dissent can be as powerful as any weapon.”

  “Maybe,�
� Alex said, “but it doesn’t cut us loose from these ropes.”

  “True. So what do you suggest we do now?”

  “Wait for our next chance.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  I

  “I’m not entirely sure how comfortable I am with this,” Rain said, and punctuated the sentence with a jet of smoke from his nostrils. He dropped his hand from the steering wheel long enough to shift gears, then flicked some ash out his open window.

  They were making their way into a shadier part of Maple City now, towards the end of town where Lita lived. The stretch of road they drove down was littered with trash of all sorts, sloshing up against the ankles of dilapidated buildings that seemed to groan under the weight of their own feeble structures. There were no streetlights in this area. Around the center of town there was a ten-block radius with electrical lighting along the sidewalks. Another five blocks out from that contained torch lamps—some lit, some neglected. Here, there was only a torch still standing every three blocks or so, and all were black.

  “You know, for someone who built a whole house by hand, you’re kind of a sissy,” Lita said, paying him a smirking glance.

  “I’m not saying the plan doesn’t have merit,” he replied, “only that I’m very flammable.”

  Lita chuckled inwardly at the thought of a big red warning sign attached to his chest, like the one that hung from the boiler in the basement of her apartment building. She felt a sudden certainty that she would never see it again. For a variety of reasons, the thought failed to upset her.

  “I told you, all you have to do is stay away from his hands. Get the jump on him and get him knocked out, and we can tie him up before he wakes.”

  “And you’re sure about binding his hands?”

  “Positive. He told me all about it when he was drunk after a job one night. If his palms are flat together, he can’t make fire. The asshole even had the gall to say it was God’s way of offering him a ‘peaceful repose.’” The pitch of her voice dropped into a mockingly low, self-important tone on the last two words.

  “I’ll give him a peaceful repose,” Rain said flatly, then took a hard pull off his cigarette, his eyes fixed intently on the road ahead.

  “Just remember, you can’t kill him.”

  He glanced at her briefly, then nodded. “So long as he tells me what I need to know. Anyway, he wouldn’t talk much if he were dead.”

  “You seem to do alright with it,” Lita said. Before Rain had time to retort, she pointed down the road. “It’s right around this next corner.”

  Rain took the corner, and sure enough, the second building on the right-hand side was a modest single-story tavern. Its unassuming doorway was lorded over by a hand-painted picture of a large black playing card—a spade. Paying a cursory glance about the street as they approached, Rain noted two vehicles, one in disrepair and the other not far off. “I don’t see the truck from the cemetery anywhere.”

  Lita shook her head. “He’d have parked it at an inn and walked here.” Rain paid her a glance, so she elaborated, “Jonas doesn’t exactly have a place of his own. When he’s not rooming at Cleric’s warehouse between jobs, Cleric sets him up with an inn near the work. It’s easier to disappear if things go wrong when you don’t have anything worth packing.”

  “That’s a hard way to live.”

  Lita nearly made a sarcastic comment about Rain’s oddly sentimental nature—building a house from scratch and setting up shop there for decades—but something stopped her short. She got the sudden notion that he knew all too well what that sort of life was like and that maybe he had built the house because he was tired of constantly being on the move. Hadn’t she dreamt of doing the same, and more often with each passing year? This insight both startled and dismayed her, so she replied simply, “It has its pros and cons,” and then diverted his attention to directions once more. “Pull into that alley there and kill it by the back door. I’ll double back and head in the front.”

  “You sure there is a back door?”

  “I’ve been in here a couple of times. Besides, when was the last time you were in a tavern that didn’t have more than one door? Even the Red Mare has a back exit leading to the outhouse.” She grimaced at the thought of that thing, but felt a sort of exaltation at the idea that she might never have to deal with it again.

  As they approached the alley, Rain brought the car to a halt. A large delivery truck was parked inside, and next to it a man with a clipboard stood in conversation with a man in an apron.

  “Pull over up the road,” Lita said. “We’ll wait it out.” Rain did so. Once there, they both rolled down their windows, Rain to continue smoking and Lita to adjust her mirror for a better view of the alley behind them. “Shouldn’t take too long,” she said.

  Rain nodded and silence fell between them for a little while. Then something occurred to him. “What’s your last name?”

  She blinked at the question. “What makes you ask?”

  He shrugged. “It seems like something I ought to know.”

  “Do you always wait until after you sleep with a girl to find out her whole name?”

  His eyes dropped suddenly. “I’ve never…I mean, you’re the only…”

  Lita’s eyes widened and she felt immediately compelled to answer him before he could finish what he was about to reveal. “I don’t have one. I mean, I probably did, when I was a kid, but Cleric didn’t see the need for them.”

  “Ah,” Rain said. Silence came once more, during which he expected her to ask the obvious question and she expected him to offer the explanation on his own. Neither of them did.

  “What about yours?” Lita asked finally, veering in the other conversational direction. “Was Moonshadow a common name in the 1600s?”

  Rain stifled a small laugh. “Not at all. It’s not the name Alex and I were born with.” He looked to her, and she just stared back at him, waiting for him to elaborate. “For a long time, I didn’t use any last name. Not until Alex came back. He said we needed one to show that we’re brothers. Neither of us wanted to carry our father’s name, so he suggested Moonshadow. It’s from a poem our mother wrote and used to recite to us as a lullaby.”

  Lita nodded and smiled. “I like it.”

  He smiled back. “Thank you.”

  “And your first name? Rain?”

  Amusement disappeared from his face. “It was raining the day I was born.”

  Lita’s brow knitted. “Why would—”

  “Alex knows the story better than I do. Maybe he can tell you someday.”

  “Okay…” Lita said. She felt a small pang in her chest. She wasn’t sure if it was because she wished he’d tell her or because she was sorry she’d asked. She looked down at her hands while Rain finished his cigarette, and as he rolled up his window, she finally decided to go for it. “Was I really your first?”

  Rain swallowed and nodded.

  “How…how is that possible?”

  “Well, vampires—normal vampires—have no sex drive. It’s not their means of procreation. When I changed, it came back, but it just never ended up happening.”

  “Oh,” Lita said and then, after a pause, added, “Well you were very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I mean, really. That thing you did with my leg up was…wow.”

  “I’ve read a lot of books.”

  “I see,” she looked at him and smirked. “Those must have been some damned good books.”

  Rain only smiled in return. But the joking didn’t distract Lita from her burning question.

  “Why did you wait so long?”

  Rain thought about this for a long moment before answering. “I guess I just never found anyone who I could…” he trailed off, unable to find the right word.

  “Trust?” Lita offered.

  “I suppose that would be a good way of putting it,” he looked at her cautiously.

  “Are you saying you trust me?” she asked warily.

  He shrugged a little. “
I’m not sure. I guess I’ve never really thought about what it means to me.” He ran his hands over the steering wheel nervously. “What does it mean to you?”

  “Trust?” Lita asked. “Like, in a guy?”

  “Sure.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. Well, maybe I do, but it’s stupid.”

  “Say it anyway.”

  She chuckled self-consciously and shook her head. “I guess…I’ve always thought I’d know I could trust a guy if I felt like I could dance with him.”

  Rain’s eyebrows rose. “You dance?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well maybe we’ll have a chance to explore that one day.”

  “Maybe we will.” The two exchanged coy smiles that lasted until headlights cut across the car and the delivery truck drove past them. “Time to work,” Lita said.

  Rain pulled the car around and shifted into neutral as he entered the alley, then killed the engine and coasted up abreast of the tavern’s steel service entrance door. As the car came to a halt, Lita asked, “How loud again?”

  “As loud as you’re talking right now, so long as you’re facing this way.” She gave him a skeptical look, but he nodded reassuringly.

  “Alright then, if you say so,” she said, and climbed out of the car.

  Rain ducked his head down so he could see her as she stood. “Be careful.”

  She stooped to peer in at him. “I’ll be fine, you just watch your ass. You’re not too hard on the eyes for a dead guy, so no sense wasting that getting turned into a big pile of ashes.”

  Suddenly, the odd tension of their last bit of conversation dissolved, and the smile that passed between them was as natural as their progression from snide to affectionate teasing over only three nights. Inside its brief silence, they both knew exactly where they wanted to be. Then Lita closed her door, and Rain craned his neck to watch her walk up the alley.

  II

  Lita stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of The Spade, but before heading towards the front door, she paused to look about her surroundings. The street was improbably empty, even for this time of night. There were none of the usual people shuffling to and from night jobs, their heads down, shoulders protectively slumped as they tried to make their way unmolested to their destinations. No vagabonds of the city scrounging for food or making the mistake of propositioning her for sex. The stretch of road seemed ubiquitously dead, and Lita shuddered as a chill crept through her body. She found herself longing for the unexpected comfort that she had so quickly found at Moonshadow Manor, and she couldn’t tell if that made her feel less uneasy or more.