by Rhys Ford
An access card on the Jaguar’s key chain opened the gate, its flat matte panels folding back wide enough to let him through, then closing behind the vehicle once he was halfway to the house. He got out to open the garage door, then backed the Jaguar in. A black Porsche roadster took up half of the cement slab, its once pristine paint speckled with a fine layer of dust. After shutting the garage, Parker turned the dead bolt switch, preventing its opening from the outside.
He’d left the door to the garage unlocked when he’d been there last. The knob turned in his hand, and the heavy frosted glass inset door swung open easily. Behind him, the Jaguar rocked on its tires as the passenger in its trunk fought to get loose. Parker wasn’t worried. He’d disabled the Jaguar’s internal trunk release with a quick shot to the spring mechanism, and if the man could work himself free of the layers of duct tape and zip ties, he’d be unable to undo the Kryptonite lock and chain connecting him to the car’s metal frame.
“Yeah, asshole.” Parker sneered at the Jag’s trunk. “You’ve got maybe two feet of chain. See how far you can fucking run.”
The house smelled musty, and after shutting down the alarm system, he moved slowly through the place, soaking in its rich furnishings and expensive art. It was too fussy for his tastes, although he liked the surrounding forest. The cold was a factor against it. His Southern-bred bones longed for a warmer clime, and he was fond of hunting, not something encouraged in the San Francisco hills.
He stopped in the kitchen long enough to fill a glass with water and pop another painkiller. While the swelling in his face was down enough for him to see, the tenderized skin throbbed every time he took a breath, and his stitches yanking every time he turned reminded him of what Mitchell’s best friend did to him. Another twinge took him, and Parker clutched the glass, riding it out. The pain was a good thing. He’d use it to push himself when he had time to deal with his ex-boss. With any luck, the man would eventually understand the suffering he’d gone through for such little reward.
With the pain pill swallowed and washed down, he resumed his tour. The chateau’s lower floor could have fit at least ten of the single-wide he’d grown up in, maybe more if he had time to figure the space out. There were parts of the house he’d not gone into. Avoiding the wine cellar had seemed like a good idea. He didn’t want to tempt himself to sit down and play house, but it seemed like a sin to let the place molder.
A wet bar in the study was another temptation. No crystal decanters with cheap-ass booze lingered on faux silver trays. Instead, a selection of prime and rare liquors took up three shelves behind the bar, each bottle spaced out and washed by a row of track lights set into the ceiling. He spotted an old Irish whiskey sitting among the others, and his tongue moistened at the thought of its peaty roll.
Murmuring to himself, Parker left the bar behind. Mixing a shot with the pill would be stupid, but the aching in his body wasn’t backing down from the painkiller. Spending an hour slung low in the Jaguar hadn’t helped his side any, and moving through the slightly chilled air in the house was making his face hurt more. “Maybe I’ll empty that before I go. Seems stupid to waste it.”
The floors were either high-gloss wood or polished marble, and the furniture ran to light hues or flashy embroidered spindly chairs he would be afraid to sit in. Overhead spots lit up the artwork on the wall, most of the canvases merely ugly splotches of color stacked under long darker lines or chopped-up segments of text overlaid with silkscreen prints of famous buildings. He stood in front of one square piece set in an alcove and stared at a duck constructed out of pieces of flags and covered in a heavy yellow shellac. Parker picked it up, liking the heft of its base if he had to bash someone’s head in, but the papier-mâché quality of the duck was iffy at best.
“Nope, not my cup of tea at all. God, this crap is ugly. Why do rich people spend their money on this shit?” Parker put the duck back and sniffed, finding a familiar hint of chemical in the air. “Ah, smells like soup’s done.”
Taking one last look around, he decided the large-screen television was fairly nice, and there were enough flashy knickknacks around that no one would notice if a few went missing. He made a mental note to get a rental truck from the city and strip the house when he was done, then walked upstairs to the chateau’s master suite.
The chemical scent was stronger there, nearly overpowering Parker. He worked a few of the windows open and headed into the suite’s bathroom, where he’d left his experiment.
He’d lucked out that his employer’s taste ran to the extreme, because the four-person hot tub in the master bathroom was exactly what Parker needed. The waterline in the tub had dropped some since he’d been there last, but it’d been set on a low heat, and he’d wondered if the temperature would be hot enough to do the job.
By the long shank bone bobbing up and down on the surface of the chemical soup he’d left behind, Parker decided he had to declare his project a rousing success. After rolling up his sleeves and tugging on a pair of pink rubber kitchen gloves, he reached into the tub and dug around in the smelly liquid. He grabbed at something round floating by, hooked his fingers into an edge, and pulled it up slowly, careful not to splash any of the frothy water onto his bare arm.
And stared down into the empty eye sockets of Phillip Damien Mitchell’s skull, his former employer’s older brother and his first San Francisco kill.
The sodium carbonate had done its job, far better than Parker’d expected it to. Stripped clean down to the bone, the skull retained most of its teeth, or so Parker thought until he examined it more closely. At some point Mitchell had implants drilled into his jaw, replacing his original set with rows of perfect brilliant whites.
“How much did that cost you? Your teeth?” Parker asked the skull, then turned it over in his hands, checking its bony plates. The lower jaw was somewhere in the soup, and he would have to dig it out later, but for right now, what he’d found would be good enough. “Did you use your son’s money? That’s what started this all, isn’t it? Your son’s money. You and your brother got greedy, and you were hoping to suck him dry like a tick.”
He set the tub to drain and ran hot water over Mitchell’s de-fleshed head, pulling off a stray tendon from its jaw juncture, then picking off any scraps of meat still clinging to the bone. Satisfied it was safe to touch, he stripped off his gloves, then used one of the bathroom’s enormous towels to dry the skull off, wiping his hands as he went. Working seemed more of a help than the painkiller. He’d felt nothing as he cleansed Phillip Mitchell’s skull, but once he was done, the throbbing pinpricks were back.
A final check on the hot tub satisfied him that the drain was sucking down any gelatinous bits but leaving the smaller bones behind. He was willing to risk losing the fine pieces of the hands, but the jawbone and any loose teeth were his priority. There was too much to do still. He wanted to get started on his next project. Drowning the pain in booze or pills would have to wait.
“You were my first million dollar kill,” he informed Mitchell’s hollowed sockets, bouncing the skull in his palm. “I want to save you.”
Parker took the steps downstairs two at a time, invigorated by his success. He left Mitchell’s skull on a low glass table in a lounge area, headed out to the garage, and lovingly ran his hand over the Jaguar’s trunk. The pounding from the rear end continued, weaker than when he’d come into the house but still with a good amount of fury. Leaning over, Parker rested his cheek against the sun-warmed metal, stroking the Jaguar’s smooth paint, and whispered softly, hoping the man inside could hear him.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to let you out in a few minutes,” he crooned, thumbing the release button on the Jaguar’s key fob. The tiny click of the trunk unlocking sounded loud in the enclosed garage, and the thumping from inside stopped, replaced by a thin, keening whine. Sighing contentedly, Parker continued to stroke the car’s metal, taking a moment to dream of the things he had planned for the man who’d threatened to have him killed. Taking one fina
l breath, Parker inhaled the sweet smell of the man’s fear coming up from the enclosed space, a taint of hot urine mingled with the new-carpet smell of the Jag’s interior.
“Oh, Mr. Mitchell, it’s time you and your brother got reacquainted,” Parker sang softly, lifting the trunk lid slowly so he could view his bound prisoner. “Wait till you see what I’ve got in store for you. And then, your nephew and I… we’re going to do this all over again, because while two heads might be better than one, three really are a matched set.”
THE warehouse was quiet once again, and Damien breathed a sigh of relief once the door closed behind Kane’s flame-haired mother. He’d liked her. He did. But he was pretty certain she was part octopus. Every time he or Miki turned around, she’d been there with her arms outstretched, cuddling one or both of them to her before they could protest.
Not that he would have protested, because he’d spotted the teary glint in her eye with each embrace, and her warm cooing over Miki did funny things to his stomach.
No, he sucked it up and let her do what she wanted, suddenly understanding how the tiny, fey-like woman had her enormous sons and husband wrapped around her dainty little finger.
Damien’d left Miki to deal with the two Irish men as they watched rugby. The singer had declared the couch corner his, stretching out his strained knee to the left, and claimed the space on his immediate right for the dog. When Damie kissed his best friend good night, Kane was eyeing Dude, obviously intending to kick the terrier off so he could take over the space next to his lover.
They’d spent dinner listening to the Morgans tell stories about when the men had been young teens. Sionn as an adjunct Morgan wasn’t spared, and Connor drolly informed a gleeful Damien of the time when they’d gone swimming in a too-cold river in Ireland, only to lose their clothes to a pack of thieving cousins.
Kane’s walk-of-shame up the stone path to their grandmother’s house had been done naked and in a wind brisk enough to curl up their burgeoning manhoods. They’d played a match of rock-paper-scissors to see who would get their clothes, and Kane lost. Squaring his shoulders, he’d marched down the lane, undeterred by his nudity, and strolled casually into the parlor. After pleasantly greeting the priest and his assistant who’d come for tea, he headed upstairs and went straight for a hot bath, leaving his brother and cousin to shiver in the cold outside.
“None of this all for one and one for all shite with the Morgans and Finnegans,” Sionn’d chuckled. “It was cover your tackle, head on in, and take no prisoners. The bastard wouldn’t even throw us down a pair of sweats from the upstairs window. Connor and I had to face God’s men with our knickers off and our asses bare.”
He and Miki nearly died there on the couch, first from laughter then from Kane’s ominous threats to shut them up if they didn’t stop chortling. Once dinner was over, Damien’s skin began to feel too tight, and he’d bumped around the room until Sionn captured him in a hug and told him it would be okay if he fled.
Holed up in their bedroom, Damien spread out a few of the notebooks he’d taken from Miki’s stash. Most of the pages were covered in notes, lyrics, and half-scribbled passages his best friend had floating around in his head. Every once in a while, an illustration popped up, a curl of smoking skulls or zombie cats chasing giant lizards scrawled across rows of blue lines.
Damien turned on the small amp he seemed to be dragging from one room to the next, plugged in his old Fender, and listened to its familiar hum when he touched its strings with the tips of his fingers. Connecting a pair of Beats Pro headphones into the amp’s audio, Damien used his other hand to slide them over his head, then grabbed a pencil and began to read.
It was hard going. So much of Miki’s loss was fractured, his thoughts too edged with pain and grief. Working forward, Damien saw the roller coaster of Miki’s emotions, dipping down into a depth of worthlessness he’d never wanted for his friend and then soaring up in the later books when he recalled happier times for the band. One of the newer notebooks, a red moleskin thumbed to a thick bloat from ink and finger oils, held a softer time for Miki’s heart. And a whisper of a lover pushing his way into a darkness Miki never could quite escape.
“Yeah, I know how you feel, Sinjun,” Damie murmured, wiping at his face. Miki’s words echoed the resonant thrum in his soul when Sionn was near, and damn his best friend for finding the words to the music he could hear in his lover’s Irish rumble.
Damien picked up the Fender, found the beginning in Miki’s words, and began to spin out the notes tucked in between their lines.
IT WAS nearly midnight when Sionn ventured into the bedroom he shared with Damien. The space was bare of any excess furniture, holding only a dresser and a bed with a pair of side tables that held mostly lube and a phone charger. Despite a designer’s intent to fill the warehouse with elegant furnishings, neither Damie nor Miki liked having too much around them. A dresser held some of their clothes but the majority of Damien’s things remained boxed up in a small room Miki’d left them in.
He paused at the doorway, taking in the beauty of the man sitting on their unmade bed. Damie’s dark hair was held against his head by a pair of studio headphones, a long black fringe brushing down his forehead to cover the deep blue eyes Sionn had fallen into more times than he could count. Damie’s bottom lip was chapped, chewed away to near blood in one spot, and his teeth worried at the mark as his fingers flew over an electric guitar’s strings muted by the headphones Damie wore.
Dressed in torn jeans and an old Sinner’s Gin T-shirt, his shoulder blades pushing the fabric up into small wings on either side of his spine, Damien took Sionn’s breath away.
And as if sensing his lover was there, Damien looked up, his face open and vulnerable, with his soul peeled back by the music he’d found inside of him. Sionn knew he’d be lost without him.
The moment lingered, a soft, whispering thread tangling between them as Sionn padded into the room. Pulling the headphones off, Damien tilted his head back for a kiss, and Sionn tasted the wild of his lover’s spirit in the fierce touch of their lips. Damie set the guitar down on the floor next to the amp and looped the headphones over the amp’s handle, then gave Sionn a lopsided grin.
“You taste like beer.” Damien stole another kiss, smacking his lips as if Sionn were a fine wine. “And more of your uncle’s pork rinds. Did you and Kane save us any, or are they all gone?”
“Nope, there are at least four more bags,” Sionn promised, climbing onto the bed. He pushed Damien back onto the mattress and covered his lover’s body, pinning him down. “Is that why you love me? Because my uncle Donal makes you chicharrónes, Damie boy?”
“Well, yeah.” Damien sneered playfully, reaching down to cup Sionn’s sex through his jeans. “And this. This is a big incentive.”
“Big, huh?” He crooked an eyebrow up, wrinkling his nose at Damie’s play on words.
“Enormous,” the man whispered, squeezing again. “But mostly, it’s the chicharrónes.”
“Fecking bastard.” Damien fought him a little, but Sionn eventually won out, stripped off the man’s T-shirt, and tossed it aside. His jeans were more difficult, the job made harder by Damien’s laughter and squirming. “Stop moving. I’m trying to sex you, here.”
“Yeah, you’re fucking romantic.” Grousing, Damien stilled and let Sionn slowly pop the buttons loose on his fly. Bending over the man’s waist, Sionn laved his lover’s exposed skin as he worked his jeans open.
“Ah, I like it when you don’t wear underwear. It makes doing this so much better,” Sionn whispered, then bit into the tender triangle of skin he’d revealed. Mewling, Damien jerked up, his knees coming up slightly under Sionn’s weight. “Ah no, a rún, you stay there and let me drink you down. The taste of you is better than any pint I’ve ever had on my lips.”
A thatch of silken ebony hair peeked up from Damien’s crotch at the next undone button, and Sionn parted the denim, exposing the base of his lover’s slender cock. Its root was flushed pink,
straining and slick under its prison, and Sionn kissed its curve before working his fingers under the shaft to free it.
“Irish….” Damien’s mewl turned rough when Sionn’s mouth found the end of his cock, a harsh hitch fluttering his breath. Swallowed down to his base and trapped beneath his lover’s weight, Damien could only dig his fingers into Sionn’s shoulders, his nails creasing Sionn’s pale skin. “Fuck, you look so damned good doing that.”
Sionn didn’t know how much longer he could take having the taste of Damien’s skin and sex in his mouth without having the man’s heat around his own cock. Leaving Damie splayed out on the mattress, he fumbled to reach a bottle of lube, nearly dropping it on the floor. He lobbed the lubricant into the sheets, grabbed Damien’s waistband, and tugged his jeans off the rest of the way, snagging them for a moment on the man’s slender feet.
“God you’re trouble even when you’re just lying here,” Sionn muttered, but he kissed Damien’s anklebone to apologize. The near giggle he got thrilled him, and he grabbed the man’s other foot, nibbling at the taut tendon above his heel until Damien began to beg.
“Dude, stop. Come on, no fucking tickling. Shit, I’m going to pee the damned bed.” Kicking, he nearly took out Sionn’s nose, and he dodged out of the way, stroking at the spot he’d left nearly soaking wet. The fingers Damie used to coax music out of steel and wood now tangled into Sionn’s hair, yanking him up in an almost painfully tight grip. “Get the hell up here so we can get busy.”
“Aye, and here I thought you were a songwriter. The poetry that comes from that beautiful mouth of yours could make an angel weep.”
Damie growled and tugged again, insistent and needy. “Sinjun’s the fucking poet. I just carve the music out from his words.”
Chuckling, Sionn made his way up Damien’s long legs, stopping to kiss a small scar on Damie’s knee before nibbling up a pale stretch of skin on his thigh. Damien’s cock was already weeping its want, and Sionn cupped its silky mushroom curve into the hollow of his tongue and lapped around the slit, catching the pearly trickle in his mouth.
