Cross reached for Kale’s hand in the dark. When he found it he held tight. “This. Despite what anyone did to us, despite all the lies, all the manipulation and bullshit, we found each other. Right here, right now, I have my brother back. You saved us.”
“I missed you Cross,” Kale said.
“Back atcha man. Right the hell back atcha. I would have looked for you, Kale,” Cross said. “If I had known, if I had even guessed you were still alive –”
“I know. It’s okay, Cross.”
Anger at what had been done to them half a lifetime ago surged through him suddenly. “No it’s not. They took your life just as surely as a bullet would have. The only difference is, the bullet would have been more merciful.”
Kale put a hand over Cross’s. His voice was one of reason, one of acceptance, and that almost made Cross angrier. He didn’t want to be reasonable. He sure as hell didn’t want to be accepting.
“I can’t change what they did.” Kale said. “Would I like to? Hell yes, I’d like to do a lot of things if given the chance, some of it good, some of it not so much. But one thing Tanya did teach me was you can’t go back, you can only go forward. It might have taken us ten years, but we finally made it right.”
“We might have found each other, but we haven’t made it right. Not by a long shot.”
Kale was silent for a while, and when he spoke again, he obviously decided he had questions of his own. “Cross, how old are we anyway? I’ve been trying to do the math in my head, but I lost track of time a long time ago.”
Cross opened his mouth to answer and found he couldn’t. The simple question brought the enormity of what had been done to them front and center once more. “We are twenty-four,” he finally said. He heard sadness etched into the words and hoped Kale didn’t notice.
“Wow, really? Damn we’re old. Hey, didn’t we promise each other we were going to get drunk and laid on our twenty-first birthday?”
“We’re a little late for that. I’ve already gotten drunk and laid. Not necessarily in that order.”
“So chicks go for the blind thing, huh?”
Cross couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips. “You’re still a pig, Kale.”
“What’s your point? Hey, come on. I’ve been locked up for the last decade. My experience with the opposite sex has been, shall we say, limited.”
An unwanted image of Tanya seducing a sixteen-year-old Kale slammed into Cross’s brain and every trace of humor he might have felt vanished. He knew Kale felt it too.
“It was my choice too, you know. It’s not like she raped me.”
Cross heard defensiveness in his tone. “I know.”
“I don’t think you do. I know what you think about it. I can feel what you feel, remember? The disgust, the anger. I feel that.”
“But for her, not for you. Can’t you understand that?”
“You weren’t there. She was the only person I had contact with. She made it that way. I realize that, but it doesn’t change the fact she was my jailer and my salvation in one package. She made me fall in love with her, so I would do anything for her, and I very nearly did.”
They were both shivering now. Cross could feel Kale as he sat bunched up next to him, but neither moved just yet. “What did she want from you?”
“The same thing she wanted from you. The only difference was, she had a lot longer to try and get it from me.”
“Tell me.” Cross knew the answer, he also knew Kale needed to say it. He needed Cross to forgive him for the sin of trying to survive.
“She wanted me to do the things she told everyone I did. She wanted me to push people to do terrible things. Sometimes to themselves. Sometimes to other people. I refused and then she killed them anyway, in front of me – told me I was to blame for their deaths. She would leave their bodies inside my cell for days. Desensitization, she told me.
“That was bad. I would have nightmares they were still alive and talking to me. I could smell them, you know? She told me she would kill you if I didn’t do what she wanted. But I could always find you, up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “I knew you were okay. When she saw that wasn’t working she started a more primitive, but effective method of getting me to cooperate with her.”
“The beatings,” Cross guessed.
“If you want to civilize it, you could call it that, but yeah pain is a very reliable persuader.”
“You gave in?” Cross wouldn’t blame him if he did. He couldn’t say he wouldn’t have done the same after only a few weeks at Tanya’s hands.
“Once.” The admission cost Kale. Cross didn’t need to see to know the pain Kale was in. “She wanted me to push someone. She wanted me to have him kill someone else.” He paused and Cross knew he was collecting himself.
“He was just some guy, I never saw him before. She hadn’t given me anything to eat for days, kept me awake, and increased the beatings. She promised me it would all stop if I just told the guy to go home and kill his wife. She said I wouldn’t be to blame, I was only the one who told him to do it.
“Even then I knew that was bullshit, but I was tired and hungry and hurt. So I did it. I pushed the guy. He did exactly what I told him to do. He went home and he beat his wife to death because I told him to. Tanya had it recorded.
“After that, Tanya was obsessed, but I swore she would kill me before I ever did that again.”
Cross could feel the torment Kale had been in, the guilt that still ate at him every day. The conflicting emotions he still had for Tanya. “How old were you when this happened?”
Cross could feel Kale shrug, a quick up and down movement of his shoulders. “Maybe nineteen or twenty.”
“She wore you down, Kale. You weren’t thinking clearly.”
“I was thinking just fine.” Now Cross heard anger in his voice, anger at himself. Cross would have preferred that anger directed at Tanya.
“I was thinking if I do this one thing, I can eat, I can sleep, and I can stop wondering if someone’s going to beat the crap out of me in the middle of the night. I understood what I was doing, Cross, and someone died because I wasn’t strong enough to say no to her one more time.”
Tanya was very good at her job and Cross very much wanted to hurt her. “You’re strong enough now, aren’t you?”
“Doesn’t bring that guy’s wife back.”
“Always move forward,” Cross reminded him. “So, now we figure out how to stop her. For good, right?”
He felt the slight hesitation. It was barely discernable, but he felt it. Even after everything Tanya had done to him Cross was certain Kale still had feelings for her. He didn’t need to confront him with that fact, Kale was aware Cross knew. There were no secrets between them. What Cross knew, Kale knew. It’s how they were made, it’s what they were always meant to be. They were each part of the other.
“I can’t help it,” Kale said. His voice revealed his shame. “I don’t know if I could bring myself to hurt her.”
Cross understood. As horrible as it sounded, he could see how it must have been. Kale, young, alone, starved for affection, attention and Tanya as beautiful as she was deadly, grudgingly giving him both in small quantities until he was desperate for more. Kale would have done anything for Tanya.
He still would.
“You don’t have to hurt her. I wouldn’t ask that of you. All you have to do is not stop someone else from doing what needs to be done.” Cross felt Kale’s pain at the thought of Tanya being hurt, but he knew Kale understood.
“She told you she wouldn’t hurt me if you did what she wanted. She lied to you. You have to know that. She used you.”
“I know.”
The admission changed nothing. “We’ll get through this, Kale, me and you. I think we’re overdue on some good luck for a change.”
“We move forward,” Kale said.
“Forward,” Cross agreed. They sat in silence for a moment. “Could you do something for me?” Cross said.
“Name it.”
<
br /> Cross wasn’t sure if he really wanted to know, but then curiosity won out over caution. “Charlie showed me the truth, which memories were fake, but not everything is clear. They all seem real to me.”
“You want me to tell you which ones are real and which ones are fake?” Kale said.
“Yeah, do you mind?”
“Lay it on me, man.”
“Okay. You already told me the tree house was real. What about camping? I remember Mom and Dad taking us camping somewhere when we were little, maybe six or seven? There was a campfire, tents, marshmallows, fireflies in mason jars – the works.”
“Sorry, man, never happened. I wish it was true. I think I would have liked camping, but no, that one was implanted. Tanya would’ve never let us out of the department for that.”
“Damn, really? That was a great memory. What about Dad? What about Gabriel?”
“What about him?” Kale’s voice changed. The subject of Gabriel was obviously not one he wanted to talk about. “Let me make this easy for you, Cross. Gabriel wasn’t a father. He said it himself to me more than once. All he was to us was a biological donation. Half of our genetic code. To him we were never anything more than an experiment.”
“He told me he loved me. I think I remember that.” Cross knew how that must have sounded, but even with Charlie’s help, the memories and the truth were difficult to sort out in his head.
“He told you whatever would get him what he wanted at the time. A nice memory of the perfect family kept you docile, kept you in line. That’s all they wanted.” Kale’s anger was obvious. Cross felt it too.
He sighed. “Okay, we never went camping and Gabriel flunked parenting 101. What about our mother?”
“She was the real deal, or as real as they let her be anyway. Maria did what she had to do to survive and to protect us. But I don’t think she fully understood what the government intended to do with us. To her, we were always her children first. She protected us the best she could, and when they took that control away from her, she couldn’t take it anymore.”
“She killed herself,” Cross said.
“The bastards killed her just as surely as if they pulled the trigger.”
“She called you her wild child.” Cross smiled at the memory.
“And you were her thinker. ‘Always thinking, Cross, always thinking.’ She used to tell you to stop thinking so much and just enjoy life, do you remember?”
“I remember.” He was quiet for a long while after that. Cross remembered his mother’s eyes, they were dark and gentle, her quiet laugh and the way she would kiss each of them on the forehead when she put them to bed at night. He didn’t want to know if those memories were real or not. He chose to believe they were and moved on.
“One more,” Cross leaned back against the steps and angled his face toward the night sky. He closed his eyes, not that the view changed – black was black, but it helped him think. “I remember us sneaking out at night. We would lie on our backs with our hands behind our heads and stare up at the stars. We would look for the constellations, Orion, Ursula Major, Cassiopeia, and The Seven Sisters.”
He could almost see it again in his head, the night sky a velvet drape with the stars set like sparkling jewels within it. The Milky Way, Andromeda, the entire universe there just for them. The perfect backdrop for two little boys with impossible dreams. “We would tell each other the plans we had for the future. The things we wanted to do, the things that meant so much to us. It almost diminished their importance by putting it into words, – but we understood. We told each other everything under those stars.”
Cross turned toward his brother, his blind eyes open. “Please don’t tell me it didn’t happen. Tell me that much, at least, was for real.”
Kale’s voice when he spoke again was quiet. “Yeah, Cross, that one’s real. I remember it too. Many a great scheme was planned, looking up at those stars.”
“I wish I could see them, just one more time. It’s funny the things you miss when you know you’ll never see them again. Most of the time I’m okay with it, but if I could have my eyes back just for one moment, my real eyes, I would want to see the stars again. I always wondered if they were really as beautiful as I remember them, or if time warped what I see in my mind.” He let his head roll back and opened his eyes as if he were looking up at that star-filled sky. “Are the stars out tonight?”
“Yeah, they are,” Kale said.
He sat up straight when he heard Kale move. “Just stay there like that.”
“Why?” Cross was more suspicious than concerned.
“Trust me. Just do it.”
Cross leaned back against the steps again and let his head loll. His weight on his elbows and his legs splayed out in front of him.
Kale sat behind him on the top step, one leg on either side of Cross. “Just relax. I think I remember how to do this.”
He placed one hand on either side of his head. Cross felt Kale’s fingers placed all around his skull, just the tips of them touching him.
Like a door being opened in a dark room, light flooded in. His dark world went nova. His eyes involuntarily squeezed shut at the assault, but then gradually the light dimmed, he opened his eyes little by little.
He was looking out at the night. He was looking out at this night. Cross looked through his brother’s eyes and the light from countless stars set in the black velvet of the sky looked back at him.
It wasn’t like he remembered it at all. It was better. The universe stretched out forever in that clear, cold November night. He could see Orion the Hunter, and the seven sisters clustered together for warmth, or protection. He saw the wispy swath of the Milky Way as it stretched into forever.
He saw two little boys planning for dreams they couldn’t possibly know would never come true. It made him sad, but mostly it made him grateful. He had gotten his one chance.
“Thank you, Kale,” he whispered. His voice thick with emotions he had trouble putting a name to.
“Shush,” Kale told him. “I’m freezing my ass off here, so just shut up and look for as long as you want.”
Cross shut up, and in the brilliant dark, two brothers stared up at the night sky and silently spoke the secrets of a lifetime worth of stolen dreams, while the stars bore them witness and kept their confidences.
Chapter 37
DESPITE KALE’S PROTESTS that he was fine, Jude had re-started IV fluids and antibiotics on him. His fever was down and he looked more comfortable. Cross had gradually released his control of Kale’s pain as Kale regained his strength. Now Cross was beyond exhausted. He was dozing in a chair next to Kale’s bed until a voice in his head woke him. At first he thought it might be a dream, but he heard it again after he woke.
I need to see you.
No dream. Cross recognized the voice. He closed his eyes. Get out of my head, Gabriel.
I have something of yours I’d like to return.
After a moment of confusion, Cross realized what Gabriel wanted to give back. He could feel her presence through the mental connection his father had made.
Niko.
She misses you.
Where are you?
Outside the south 4th street station in Williamsburg.
Cross’s heart rate jumped. That was the abandoned subway station the underground used to come and go. If Gabriel had tracked them here, the entire underground was in danger. Gabriel seemed to sense his fear.
Tanya has no idea where you are. Or even where I am for that matter. I came on my own. I’m unarmed and alone. Just see me. Please, that’s all I ask. Let me say my piece and then you can do what you like to me.
Gabriel was right, Cross would be a fool to trust him. But he had Niko. Damn it. Trap or not, Cross owed it to Niko to at least try to get her back. But he was making a mistake. Cross felt that in every fiber of his being.
Stay where you are. If I sense anyone with you, I swear I’ll kill you before they take me.
Fair enough. I’ll wait for you.
/>
Cross touched Kale’s head and hoped he wasn’t putting everyone he cared for in jeopardy for a dog. No, that wasn’t fair, Niko was far more than just a dog to him.
He couldn’t feel any deception in Gabriel’s words, but the bastard could be clever. Perhaps clever enough to convince his son he was telling the truth when he was actually setting him up for an ambush.
Cross had regained enough of his strength that he was able to use his sight to navigate the twists and turns of the dark empty tunnels. It took him about twenty minutes before the exit burned a bright hole in the dark. A soft whining followed by a happy, frantic barking told him Niko knew he was there. No need for stealth. Gabriel would know he was there as well.
Cross entered the light and saw Gabriel trying to restrain Niko. His normally calm and composed guide dog was straining at the leash. Cross gave Gabriel a quick glance and then squatted down to Niko’s level. Gabriel released the leash and Niko leapt at Cross.
She nearly knocked him over but seemed to remember her training at the last moment. Rolling over, she gave Cross her belly and whimpered with excitement. He hugged her, rubbed her belly and told her how much he had missed her. He was almost as excited as the dog.
“She missed you terribly,” Gabriel said. “You can see me? Ah, a gift from your new friend.”
Cross didn’t bother to reply to that. He realized Gabriel knew about Maizey. He took a strong hold on Niko’s leash. There was no way anyone was taking her away from him again. “What do you want Gabriel?”
“Is Kale all right? I know what Tanya had done to him. I would have stopped it if I could have.”
“If you knew where I was, you know Kale is here and I’m betting you know exactly how he is. Stop wasting my time. You said you needed to talk to me. So talk.”
Gabriel leaned against the brick wall behind him. Cross realized it was the first time he had seen the man since he was fourteen. Time had not been a friend. The dark hair he remembered had thinned and turned white. It surrounded his head like a fuzzy halo. His eyes were clear, but held a deep sadness. Or maybe it was guilt. If there was any justice in the world, Gabriel had paid for keeping his sons imprisoned. For trying to kill one and using the other.
Paranormal After Dark: 20 Paranormal Tales of Demons, Shifters, Werewolves, Vampires, Fae, Witches, Magics, Ghosts and More Page 106
