Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

by Blake Crouch

  I said to them, "You might tell the nurse that a man just dropped off two babies, and that the mother of the little boy is a patient in this hospital."

  They stared at me, bleary-eyed, skeptical.

  I set the cardboard box on the magazine table, started for the exit, and as the automatic doors slid open, I heard the mother of the colicky infant say, "Oh my God."

  I drove back.

  Feeling so strange.

  So anxious to return to Luther.

  As the windshield wipers whipped back and forth and the van sped through the puddled streets, I kept trying to imagine Violet’s and Max’s reunion.

  When she woke, the nurses would be there.

  They would ask her if she had a son.

  She would say yes, why?

  They would ask her for the boy’s name and a physical description, and when Vi provided this, they would bring Max, now swaddled up in blankets, into her room.

  And Violet would burst into tears.

  Still in so much pain, but regardless she would sit up in bed, straining against the tubes and needles carrying medicine into her body, and reach out her arms to her son.

  And when she looked down at Max, her tears would star his little cheeks and she’d touch his face and whisper, Mommy’s here, little man. Mommy’s here.

  I ran through this scene several times, each one more emotional than the last.

  More touching.

  Violet happier.

  The nurses crying.

  Even a hardened doctor tearing up.

  Mother and child together at last, on their way to a complete recovery.

  But no matter how many times I played the moment in my mind, nothing changed.

  I couldn’t feel a thing.

  I only wanted to get back to the warehouse.

  Back to Luther.

  And all those beautiful things I could do to him.

  It was on that second day that something switched. The rage and power had tasted good up until now, but on that second day, they became irresistible. Took on the ecstatic, bottomless property of addiction.

  I felt joy at the sound of his screams.

  Comfort at the sight of his blood running down the wood or boiling on the electrodes.

  And there was no longer rage in what I did, only sadness.

  It had crept in but was now expanding, filling my lungs like a deep breath of oxygen, and I knew why it was there.

  One simple fact.

  Eventually...this was going to end.

  Luther was going to run out of blood and screams and die.

  After forty-eight hours, in the midst of trying to bring Luther back to consciousness with a packet of smelling salts, I collapsed…

  Revived on the concrete floor, no idea how long I’d been out.

  I sat up and yawned, struggling onto my feet.

  Luther was still unconscious.

  I stood there looking down at what I’d done to him, trying to feel something.

  For a moment, I wondered if he’d died, and this prompted only a remote sadness that I wouldn’t hear him in full voice again.

  It was like sunlight, that intense emotion.

  Something to counteract the emptiness.

  I could imagine craving it.

  I wanted to rouse him, but I was beyond exhaustion.

  I left him to sleep and wandered through the warehouse until I found something resembling a place to sleep—the backseat of a minivan or station wagon, still in its plastic covering.

  I curled up on the cushions and shut my eyes.

  Wondering, as sleep descended, what I had become.

  Orson and I are back at his cabin in the desert, only everything is different. We’re one. So linked we don’t have to speak. Every word, every emotion exchanged by thought.

  We’re walking across the desert at sunset, no sound but the impact of our boots crunching against the hardpan. I’m doing all the talking—all the thinking. Telling him that I finally understand, that I’m sorry. Everything he put me through, he did out of love. I know this now. He knew me before I knew myself. He tried to show me and I threw it back in his face.

  We finally arrive at the top of a gentle rise, the desert expanding around us—the view fifty miles in every direction.

  The evening is warm and the sun, now perched on the horizon, feels good in our faces.

  I love you, brother, I say, but when I turn to face him, I find that I’m alone.

  I sat up suddenly on the bench seat in a cold sweat, tears in my eyes, and my leg on fire, realizing I’d dreamed of my brother. Orson had often haunted my dreams since that summer in the desert eight years ago, but this was the first time I’d ever woke up missing him.

  Luther was awake. I could hear him moaning on the other side of the warehouse.

  I could barely walk, my right leg stiff and hot and the raw flesh beginning to scab over.

  I limped over to Luther, sprawled on the gurney but looking better than I would have imagined. I’d hurt him, but inflicted no broken bones, no life-threatening puncture wounds. My greatest fear had been losing him prematurely.

  "You’ll never guess who I dreamed about," I said.

  "Who?"

  "Orson."

  He managed a weak smile.

  "He’d certainly be enjoying this."

  "I know," I said. "That’s what worries me. Do you think you can stand?"

  "You haven’t even come close to hurting me."

  I walked over to the control panel, pulled open the bottom drawer, and took out a stainless-steel Spyderco Harpy that looked more like a talon than a knife.

  Back at the gurney, Luther looked confused as I unbuckled both ankle restraints and one of his wrists.

  "What is this?" he said.

  I was walking away from the gurneys, out into the middle of the warehouse floor.

  When I stopped and turned around, he’d already unbuckled the last restraint and was painfully prying his skin off the electrodes.

  He finally broke free and swung his legs off the gurney.

  Naked, tall, pale, and covered in cuts, burns, and bruises.

  He looked monstrous.

  "What is this?" he said again.

  I reached into my pocket, took out the Harpy I’d liberated from the control panel drawer.

  Now I held a knife in each hand.

  I swung my right arm back and sent the knife sliding across the concrete, until it finally collided into Luther’s bare feet.

  "I can barely walk," I said. "And you aren’t so pretty yourself."

  "Yeah."

  "I’d say we’re evenly matched."

  "Not even." He knelt and lifted the Harpy off the floor, opened it with a subtle flick of the wrist. "I’ll fucking take you apart."

  "Then let’s do it," I said, opening my blade and starting toward him. "One of us has to die."

  Epilogue

  HE doesn’t know how long he’s been chained up in darkness.

  He barely remembers his own name.

  Almost all of the time, he is cold.

  All of the time, he is thirsty and hungry.

  There is no day or night here, down in this cold, dank room in the basement of the factory. He thinks he may have been here for months, but it could be longer. Much longer. He fears that his mind has lost the ability to reason time. That years may have passed.

  His beard is six inches long.

  He is skin and bones.

  The slash he received eons ago is now nothing more than a raised scar across his abdomen, and he fingers it obsessively, constantly replaying the knife-fight like a piece of botched choreography.

  Every other day, his captor brings a pitcher of water and a plate of food.

  Several times, he was asleep when the food arrived and awoke to find a giant rat feasting on his meal.

  The first three times, he shooed it away.

  The fourth, he crushed it and ate it.

  His former life only visits him in dreams—bright, vivid, blue-
sky dreams.

  He has long passed the point of wanting death and he couldn’t effectuate such a plan regardless. He is forced to wear a helmet to prevent braining himself. The few times he’s tried to starve himself or go without water has resulted in force-feeding. In one paining session, his teeth were removed so he couldn’t bleed himself to death.

  His captor has informed him that he intends to keep him alive for twenty years, and while he feels certain that his body will last, he wonders about his mind. Already, it is breaking down. To know and understand that you’re going crazy is perhaps the worst brand of torment he has ever withstood. He’d rather spend a year in the gurney.

  And so he is essentially a soul trapped in an earthbound body.

  His approach to living could almost be described as Zen.

  The ten square feet where he eats and sleeps and shits is his world.

  He has an intimate knowledge of the cracks and fissures in the concrete beneath him—studies their patterns like the word of God.

  The space beyond his length of chain has become as mysterious and unreachable as the universe.

  Occasionally, screams trickle down from the warehouse several floors above, but mostly, there is only silence and darkness.

  Recently, his captor brought down an antiquated typewriter and ten reams of paper.

  A sick joke, but more and more he’s considering writing if for nothing more than the diversion of something new to pass the hours.

  He talks to Orson all the time.

  He tells himself stories that he may one day write.

  In the strangest of them all, none of this is really happening. He’s just a character trapped in the twisted story of a semi-famous writer who lives on a lake in North Carolina. He keeps trying to finish the story. To write in some weakness in the chains, some error in judgment on the part of his captor that might allow him to escape, but nothing ever seems right.

  At last, on the story’s hundredth incarnation, he arrives upon the answer.

  A character returns unexpectedly to the warehouse and saves him.

  As the story closes, he’s lying in a luxurious bed, drifting in and out of sleep.

  He hears approaching footsteps and smiles.

  Because the covers are warm.

  Because he feels no pain.

  Because those footsteps belong to Violet.

  She’s coming to nurse him back to health.

  Momentarily, she’ll be through the door.

  And she’ll sit on the bed and feed him from a bowl of steaming soup, and when she’s finished, crawl into bed with him and run her fingers through his hair and whisper that he’s safe now. That the pain is behind him, behind them both, and in this warm, soft bed—everything that matters.

  AFTERWORD

  So when can you expect the end of the Andrew Thomas/Luther Kite saga?

  I’m good friends with thriller author J.A. Konrath, and our writing has covered many of the same themes of good and evil. I love Joe’s Det. Jack Daniels Series, which showcases his own unique, disturbing take on the serial killer genre.

  In 2011, we concluded our Serial series with SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT, a double-novel we wrote that brought together every major character from Konrath's work and my work, including Orson, Luther, Andy, Violet, Jack Daniels, and numerous others.

  Then Joe approached me with a simple, yet unique, idea: Wouldn’t it be fun to have Jack and Luther square off in a full-length novel that was also the conclusion to both of our series? I was all for it. That novel is STIRRED, which we’re currently writing, and it will be released at the end of 2011.

  If you’re new to my books, or Joe’s books, and want to get caught up on the entire history of our shared Crouch/Kilborn/Konrath Universe before reading STIRRED, here is the order they go in, along with the characters they spotlight:

  ALL CAPS = Novels

  Italics = Novellas and Short Stories Contained within SERIAL KILLERS UNCUT

  A Watch of Nightingales by Blake Crouch (1969, Orson Thomas, Andy Thomas)

  A Day at the Beach by Blake Crouch (1977, Luther Kite, Maxine Kite, Rufus Kite)

  A Pitying of Turtle Doves by JA Konrath and Jack Kilborn (1978, Donaldson and Mr. K)

  The One That Stayed by JA Konrath (1983, Charles Kork, Alex Kork)

  A Night at the Dinner Table by Blake Crouch (1984, Luther Kite, Maxine Kite, Rufus Kite)

  Cuckoo by Blake Crouch (1986, Luther Kite, Rufus Kite)

  SHOT OF TEQUILA by JA Konrath (1991, Jack Daniels, Tequila)

  A Wake of Buzzards by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn (1991, Orson Thomas, Donaldson)

  A Brood of Hens by Blake Crouch (1992, Orson Thomas, Luther Kite)

  A Glaring of Owls by Blake Crouch and JA Konrath (1993, Orson Thomas, Luther Kite)

  A Murder of Crows by Blake Crouch and JA Konrath (1995, Orson Thomas, Luther Kite, Charles Kork)

  Bad Girl by Blake Crouch (1995, Lucy, Orson Thomas, Luther Kite, Andy Thomas)

  DESERT PLACES by Blake Crouch (1996, Andy Thomas, Orson Thomas, Luther Kite)

  The One That Got Away by JA Konrath (2001, Alex Kork and Charles Kork)

  LOCKED DOORS by Blake Crouch (2003, Andy Thomas, Luther Kite, Violet King, Sweet-Sweet & Beautiful)

  An Unkindness of Ravens by Blake Crouch, JA Konrath, and Jack Kilborn (2003, Luther Kite, Alex Kork, Charles Kork, Javier Estrada, Kiernan, Isaiah Brown, Donaldson, Mr. K, Swanson, Munchel, Pessolano, Jack Daniels, Tequila, Lucy, Clayton Theel, Barry Fuller, Sheriff Dwight Roosevelt)

  WHISKEY SOUR by JA Konrath (2004, Jack Daniels, Charles Kork)

  The One That Didn't by Blake Crouch and JA Konrath (2004, Luther Kite)

  FAMOUS by Blake Crouch, (2004, Lancelot Blue Dunkquist)

  Break You by Blake Crouch (2004, Luther Kite, Andy Thomas, Violet King)

  BLOODY MARY by JA Konrath (2005, Jack Daniels, Barry Fuller)

  RUSTY NAIL by JA Konrath (2006, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)

  SNOWBOUND by Blake Crouch (2007, Javier Estrada)

  DIRTY MARTINI by JA Konrath (2007, Jack Daniels)

  Truck Stop by JA Konrath and Jack Kilborn (2007, Donaldson, Jack Daniels, Taylor)

  Serial by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch (2008, Lucy, Donaldson)

  Killers by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch (2008, Lucy, Donaldson, Luther Kite, Kurt Lanz, M.D.)

  A Schizophrenia of Hawks by JA Konrath and Blake Crouch (2008, Luther Kite, Alex Kork)

  AFRAID by Jack Kilborn (2008, Taylor)

  DRACULAS by Jack Kilborn, Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson, (2008, Clayton Theel, Kurt Lanz, M.D.)

  FUZZY NAVEL by JA Konrath (2008, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork, Swanson, Munchel, and Pessolano)

  ABANDON by Blake Crouch (2009, Isaiah Brown)

  CHERRY BOMB by JA Konrath (2009, Jack Daniels, Alex Kork)

  TRAPPED by Jack Kilborn (2010, Taylor)

  ENDURANCE by Jack Kilborn (2010, Sheriff Dwight Roosevelt)

  SHAKEN by JA Konrath (2010, Jack Daniels, Mr. K, Luther Kite)

  Lovebirds by JA Konrath (2011, Lucy, Donaldson)

  STIRRED by Blake Crouch and JA Konrath (2011, Jack Daniels, Luther Kite)

  RUN by Blake Crouch (2013, Kiernan)

  Thanks for reading!

  Blake Crouch

  BONUS FEATURES

  Interview with Blake Crouch by Hank Wagner

  Originally Published in Crimespree, July 2009

  According to his website, Blake Crouch grew up in Statesville, a small town in the piedmont of North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000, where he studied literature and creative writing. He currently resides in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Crouch’s first book, Desert Places, was published in 2003. Pat Conroy called it “Harrowing, terrific, a whacked-out combination of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy.” Val McDermid described it as “An ingenious, diabolical debut that calls into question all our easy moral assumptions. Desert Places is a genuine thriller that pulses with a
drenaline from start to finish.” His second novel, Locked Doors, was published in July 2005. A sequel to Desert Places, it created a similar buzz. His third novel, Abandon, was published on July 7, 2009.

  HANK WAGNER: Your writing career began in college?

  BLAKE CROUCH: I started writing seriously in college. I had tinkered before, but the summer after my freshman year, I decided that I wanted to try to make a living at being a writer. Spring semester of 1999, I was in an intro creative writing class and I wrote the short story (called “Ginsu Tony”) that would grow into Desert Places. Once I started my first novel, it became an obsession.

  HW: Where did the original premise for Desert Places come from?

  BC: The idea for Desert Places arose when two ideas crossed. I had the opening chapter already in my head... suspense writer receives an anonymous letter telling him there’s a body buried on his property, covered in his blood. I didn’t know where my protagonist was going to be taken though. Around the same time, I happened to be glancing through a scrapbook that had photographs of this backpacking trip I took in Wyoming in the mid 90’s. One of those photographs was of a road running off into the horizon in the midst of a vast desert. My brain starting working. What if my protagonist is taken to a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, by a psychopath? What if this cabin is in this vast desert, and he has no hope of escape? That photograph broke the whole story open for me.

  HW: Why a sequel for your second book? Affection for the characters?

  BC: It was actually my editor’s idea. I was perfectly happy walking away from the first book. But once she mentioned it during the editing of Desert Places, I really started to think about where the story could go, wondered how Andy might have changed after seven years in hiding, and I got excited about doing it. And I’m very glad I did, because I would’ve missed those characters. Even my psychopaths are family in some strange, twisted way.

  HW: Of all the reviews and comments about your books, what was the strangest? The meanest? The nicest? The most perceptive?