Fade to Midnight

by Shannon McKenna

  Kev was taken aback. "Holy shit, Bruno. That's a lot of food."

  "You need to tank up, both after sex and before it," Bruno said knowledgeably. "And I'll help you eat it. Getting a clueless slob like you ready for a hot date is going to give me an appetite."

  "But I don't want to wait for food delivery," Kev complained. "I want to get going, find a parking place near the hotel. In case she gets bored, or wants to leave early. I don't want to risk missing her."

  Bruno's eyes swept over him contemptuously. "In that? You're looking to escort a woman in an eight-thousand-dollar evening gown in those rags? Those jeans look like you slept in them. And what's on the shirt? Blood stains? Dude. Gross. Your blood, or the other guy's?"

  Kev peered at the front of his sweater. There were brownish smears on his chest. Physical violence was hard on a guy's wardrobe.

  "It's the other guy's blood," he said. "And get out of my face. We can't all be George Clooney."

  Bruno rolled his eyes. "Get into the fucking shower," he directed. "I'll pick out your clothes. Just wash your hair. I'll gel it myself. Shave, too. Looks weird when the beard starts coming in only on one side of your jaw, and you look weird enough as it is. Put on the aftershave I gave you. Chicks love the stuff. You haven't even broken the seal."

  "Stop snooping in my cabinets, punk," Kev grumbled as he headed for the bathroom.

  He had to laugh at himself as he got ready. Primping for his date like some crushed out teenage boy. Not that he had any memory of being one of those, but he could imagine it. Sex on the brain. Young, dumb, and full of come. Shaking inside, with terrified joy.

  He hadn't known sex like that existed. He'd never dreamed how deep it could cut. How hot it could burn. He was wide open to her now.

  She could slide those slender, cool fingers in between his ribs, grab his heart, and squeeze it out of existence. And he didn't care. He'd found his angel. She was his. Or more precisely, he was hers.

  And he was cooked.

  CHAPTER 13

  Sweet Jesus. It was freaking bedlam in there.

  Sean leaned on the doorjamb of the kid's playroom and took a pull on his beer. Sveti had been on duty, having offered herself up as usual. She seemed to think being hosted by Tam and Val to go to high school in America meant she should babysit like a bounden slave. So far, nobody had been able to persuade her any differently. But she'd roped him into temporary kiddie coverage to run to the bathroom. He was counting the seconds til she came back. Christ, he was so tired.

  He stared at the giggling, shrieking knot of kids, rubbing his eyes. Rachel was the ringleader, Val and Tam's four and a half year old fire-ball with fuzzy, bouncing black ringlets. She was absorbing through her pores at a tender age the manipulative power of beauty, and who could expect less of Tam's kid. Blond Kevvie, Con and Erin's oldest, was almost three. He was attempting to dislodge Rachel from her perch on the rocking horse with the toy pistol and a yellow plastic hammer, a blatant attempt at hijacking, but Rachel held her own, batting him away with a rubber fairy wand. Davy and Margot's daughter Jeannie, five months younger than Kevvie, was jumping up and down, flopping her red mop like a muppet and screaming, apparently for the pure joy of it.

  And this was nothing. Considering that Seth and Raine's ten-month-old son Jesse was only crawling, Becca and Nick's five-month-old daughter Sonia was just starting to wiggle on her belly like a snake, and two-month-old Madeline, Con and Erin's youngest, was asleep in the snuggle pouch against Erin's chest. In two or three years, the decible level would be tripled for these gatherings. So would the tantrums, owies, squirted beverages, flung food, and various other disasters.

  And his and Liv's own little Eamon would be in the thick of it. Flailing around, hopefully holding his own in this many headed hydra monster of The Cousins. Risking life and limb on rocking horses and tricycles. His little boy. His son.

  It gave him goose bumps. A thrill of excitement, but it weakened his knees, too. He sucked on his beer, trying to banish the shivers.

  It was true, what he'd told Liv. He wasn't afraid of fatherhood. It would be hard, but he would love it. It was just that he hadn't slept in months. Those nightmares kicked his butt out of REM phase every time he got near it, leaving his nerves jangling, his temper ragged as a bullet wound. And from what his brothers and Seth and Nick had said, new fatherhood wasn't going to do anything for the quality of his sleep.

  He'd gone a long way toward normal, after that experience with Osterman that ended up with his skull sawed open, under the surgeon's knife. They said that depression was normal, after a severe head injury. But he had no reason to be depressed. Everything in his life was going fine. Work. Love. Family. Kids. Great.

  Except that he was haunted by his brother, more relentlessly than ever before. Maybe it was like Liz said, just the metaphor his brain chose to represent any stress or anxiety. Or maybe it wasn't.

  One thing was for sure. He wish he'd insisted on making those assholes at Helix squirm harder before letting them off the hook. They could have made every last filthy, bloody detail of Osterman's work public, as well as how much Helix had benefited from it.

  Davy and Con had looked at the whole picture, like the super-righteous dudes that they were. They'd considered thousands of people worldwide who could lose their livelihood if Helix went down. They had concluded that it wasn't worth it. Who would it help? Kev was still gone.

  He himself wouldn't have been so forgiving. But he'd been in the hospital, hooked up to machines. Comatose and incommunicado.

  The screams were getting louder. He tried to analyze the situation. Out of female solidarity, Jeannie had come to Rachel's aid, and was whacking at Kevvie with what looked like a rubber pirate's cutlass, while Rachel continued to belabor him with the fairy wand. Kevvie's small face was one huge screaming mouth, surrounded by a narrow, beet red border of a face, wet with tears of outrage.

  Sean rubbed his bleared, sandy feeling eyes, wondering if he should intervene, but Kevvie opted at that moment for a strategic retreat and barelled between Sean's legs, making a beeline for his mother. Rachel calmly resumed her perch on the rocking horse. Jeannie spun, babbling and slicing at the air with her cutlass. Resolved without bloodshed or time-outs. Score one for the girls. Those two took after their Amazon mamas. Watch out, world.

  Yeah, poor Kevvie had his work cut out for him. He'd have to wait for years for tactical support from Jesse and Eamon, poor little squirt.

  Sveti came back, smiling her thanks, and he wandered back into the living room, relieved. Kevvie had been consoled by the bowl of potato chips on the coffee table. In fact, the kid had dived into it bodily.

  Davy's front door opened, and Miles and Cindy came in.

  Kevvie launched himself at Uncle Miles with a pretty good roundhouse kick, which Miles parried, responding with a careful neck chop. Then Miles whipped the little kid around, clamped his head and proceeded to tickle until Kevvie was shrieking with delight.

  "Yo. Miles," he warned. "Don't tickle that kid too hard. He's going commando today. No pull-up pants."

  Miles grinned, unintimidated, and kept tickling. He could afford to be cavalier about baby piss, being the only one left of their bunch that was not in some stage of procreation. He and Cindy were going at it like minks, night and day, but for purely recreational purposes.

  Those were the days. Frolicking in the daisies, just for fun.

  Not that he was scared of fatherhood. They were going to be just fine. It was amazing. The online pregnancy journal kept them up to date on when Eamon's bladder formed, when his testicles descended, when his eyelashes appeared, when he got fingerprints, tooth buds, toenails.

  It blew his mind. What little was left of it.

  "Hello, Sean." The low, perfectly modulated bell tones of Tam's voice made every muscle in his body contract. "I see from your bloodshot eyes that you're in training for your son's first year of life."

  He turned, bracing himself. Tam looked incredible. Her dark hair was slicked
into a long, thick braid. She was wearing elaborate, baroque drop earrings and a black turtleneck that showed off her slim, curvy figure. Tam had softened slightly since hooking up with her true love, ex-super-spy and man of mystery, Val Janos. The operative word being slightly. She was still an unapologetic bad girl; hell on wheels, utterly secretive, with only marginal respect for the law. And the guys weren't quite comfortable with Janos yet. Something about the way the women eyed his movie star good looks and giggled about his perfect ass, his perfect legs, his perfect everything. They hadn't gotten a fix on Val.

  But Tam had saved their collective asses in various ways, on various occasions since they'd met her years before. If Tam vouched for him, that was good enough for them. Right now, she was giving him the dazzling smile that said that she was going to fuck him up. It was Tam's way of showing affection. If she wasn't fucking with you, it meant she didn't like you. And if she didn't like you, well, that was plain bad news.

  "Yo, Tam," he said. "Your daughter has been assaulting my nephew with a rubber wand. You gotta civilize that kid."

  "It's best she learn early to keep men in their place," was Tam's cool rejoinder.

  Sean snorted. "That's cold. Kid's not even three yet."

  "Law of the jungle," she said, with a flutter of her blood-tipped nails. "I hear you're having nightmares again."

  His jaw tensed. "Oh, did you hear that? Is that so?"

  "Don't be mad at Liv. I overheard a chance remark, and pried the rest out of her using a poisoned hairpin to her carotid artery."

  He nodded, grimly. "I see. And so?"

  "And so. Have you tried drugs?" she demanded.

  "Have you tried minding your own fucking business?"

  She blinked, her topaz eyes unreadable. "This is what I'm worried about," she said. "You're losing your sense of humor, and this is a matter of some concern, since it's one of your defining charactistics. Outside of your ridiculous outsized libido, that is."

  "My libido's none of your concern. I never inflicted it on you."

  She harrumped. "And a good thing, too, bucko, or you'd have been worm meat long ago. My point is, you're going to need that sense of humor when your son is born."

  "I know that," he ground out. "And I do not need a lecture."

  "Sean." She hesitated. "I had chronic stress nightmares." She instantly looked like she regretted the confession. "About people I lost. I...I didn't sleep for years. It practically drove me crazy."

  "You were crazy to begin with," he pointed out.

  "Fair enough," she agreed. "But drugs might help. Liv said you guys already tried therapy. She also told me about the restraining order the psychologist put out on you, after the, ah, incident."

  "I'm going to go have a little talk with Liv," he said, turning.

  Clawlike nails dug into his shoulder and yanked him back around. "Don't blame her. She's worried. She needs to vent. You're being hard to live with, right when she needs you to be strong for her--"

  "Shut up, Tam, and don't butt into my--"

  "You shut up," Tam hissed back savagely. "We are not going to let you fuck this up. It's not an option. Take a deep breath. Calm down."

  He glared at her, but her worried look was so unusual, it made the tirade he'd been building up to drain away, leaving him sad. Scared.

  Like anyone had ever been able to stop him from fucking up before, no matter how motivated they were. His fuck-ups had the grand, massive momentum of a tsunami.

  "Don't scold a pregnant woman," she scolded him. "It's bad for the little...the shrimp thingie in there."

  "Shrimp thingie?" His voice rose in outrage. "It was a shrimp thingie months ago! Now, it's more like a...like a..."

  "Space alien?" Tam offered, ever helpful. "Outsized head, huge staring, lidless eyes? Flippers? Gills?"

  "Shut up," he grumbled. "Don't kill the poetry. Have some respect for the goddamn miracle of life, already."

  "Oh, but I do. That's why I won't let you go scream at your wife right now. She doesn't deserve it. And you would regret it." Her hand shot out, and clamped around his wrist, like a steel manacle.

  Sean stared down at her hand, at his own fist, struggling with the urge to shake her off and bounce her off the wall. He was much stronger than she, and they both knew it. She also knew that the fact that she was female inhibited him from using his superior strength.

  He just couldn't, no matter how annoying she was. Not on a friend. That evened the field. And Tam knew it.

  But her rant wasn't over yet. "Liz is worried about you. She's thinner, and she's supposed to be gaining weight! She's got circles under her eyes. She's sleeping badly. It's bad for the baby!"

  "Tam, this lecture is not--"

  "Get yourself together, shitbrained idiot." Her nails dug into his wrist, deep enough to leave crescent moon shaped holes.

  "Hey! Sean!" Miles's cheerful voice was a godsent distraction. He handed Sean a fresh, cold beer, which Sean accepted gratefully. Miles offered a beer to Tam, who declined it with a delicate wrinkle of disgust on her perfect nose. Miles cheerfully took a swig himself from the bottle he'd offered to Tam. Sean looked him over with proprietary pride. The kid was a far cry from the puny, pallid computer geek he'd been years ago when they met him, pining hopelessly for the sexpot sister of Con's wife Erin. He was filled out, bulked up, well dressed. Regularly laid.

  "I've got something to show you," Miles said.

  "What's that?" he asked, absently.

  He utterly failed to follow the thread of Miles's rambling discourse, while Tam's fingers tightened, grinding his bones and cartilage. Her eyes were narrow, promising punishment should he fuck up. As if he'd notice Tam's punishment, were he so shitbrained as to mess up his thing with Liv. She was everything to him. The sweetest life had to offer. And the little alien space shrimp was just going to make it better.

  "...amazing, the resemblance," Miles rattled enthusiastically on. "Cindy and I were dragging our chins on the ground when we saw it. So then we had to go out and buy the whole series, and you know what? We're hooked on it now. It's totally great. You have to--"

  "Wait," he cut in. "What resemblance? Resemblance to who?"

  Miles floundered, cut off in midramble. "Uh...uh, to you," he said, bemused. "The guy looks exactly like you. Except for the scars all over the right side of his face, that is. Otherwise, it's you. To the bone."

  His stomach dropped into the void. He saw the dreamlike vision he'd had while doing the crazy mind duel with Osterman, trying to reverse the X-Cog dominance. He'd found the kite mandala in the blue sky, and followed the cord down to the man who held it. Kev. Older, harder, the right side of his face covered with scars. But it was Kev.

  "...hold on, Sean! Shit! That hurts!"

  Jesus. He was gripping Miles's shoulder, in a white-knuckled death hold. "Who?" he demanded. "Who looks like me? Who has scars?"

  "Calm down!" Miles looked scared. "It's just a fictional character!"

  "What fictional character?" His voice shook. "Show me."

  "OK! Just chill. You're wigging out." He yelled over his shoulder. "Hey, Cin! You brought the Fade Shadowseeker books, right?"

  "Just a sec, I'll be right there," Cindy sang out.

  She came bouncing over, hair swinging, a vision in low-slung jeans and a T-shirt shrunken til it was two sizes too small, straining around her perfect little figure. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a book. "This is the third one, Midnight's Oracle. It's really--hey!"

  Sean snatched it out of her hands, stuck his beer into Miles's free hand, and opened it. The hole inside him deepened, widened into a whistling void. He heard voices around him, discussing, asking questions, repeating his name. He ignored them. In shock.

  It was Kev, as Sean had seen him in the vision, while Osterman had performed the X-Cog interface. He saw it clearly in the deceptively simple, fluid drawings. The subtle differences between his own face and Kev's. Hard to grasp with the eye. More a thing to be sensed.

  "It's him," he sa
id, interrupting whoever was speaking. "It's Kev."

  The small group fell silent, cast each other worried looks.

  "Sean," Tam said, in the careful voice that made him want to wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze. "It's a graphic novel."

  "Holy shit!" Miles's big brown eyes were wide. "I never even thought of Kev. I just thought he looked like you. Wow!"

  "The scars." Sean looked wildly from Tam to Miles to Cindy. "I saw them. They're exactly the same."

  "What are you talking about?" The deep, disapproving voice was Davy, scowling over Cindy's shoulder. "What's going on? Should I put the steaks on, or have we got a crisis happening?"

  "Hold off on the steaks," Tam advised. "It's crisis hour."

  Davy scowled at his brothers. "What crisis? What scars?"

  "Kev's. The scars. I saw them." He knew that sounded crazy, that he had to rephrase, to explain so they wouldn't flip out, but that touched off a loud, confusing interchange in which Davy was brought up to date on the graphic novel, and then Connor arrived, and they did the whole damn thing again. Then Erin, then Margot, and so on.

  Some minutes later, Sean found his ass planted on the couch in the living room, the rest of the group ranged around him in a circle that felt vaguely accusing. The Fade Shadowseeker books lay on the coffee table. He couldn't stop staring at them.

  "So, once again. From the top," Davy opened the proceedings, his voice heavy. "You saw what? And when?"

  "Twice," Sean explained wearily. "In dreams, I guess you'd say, or maybe they were visions, since I wasn't asleep. First when Osterman was doing the X-Cog interface. I didn't think...I mean, I saw Mom, too, and Dad. They talked to me, tried to help me, so I figured Kev was just another ghost in my head, trying to help me out. But he wasn't like I remembered him. He was my age, hair buzzed off. Flying a kite. And he had scars. Exacly like these." He pointed at the books.

  "And the second time?" Connor asked.