Had my father’s voice not grown so low and deadly, I would have smirked at his choice of words. Talk about the kettle calling the pot whatever kettles called pots. But he was talking about Avery and he was sounding murderous so shit was getting real.
“Avery gave me the assignment months ago, just as you and the Ren asked him to. He slipped me the envelope but I had just finished Arjun and I was tired, so I put it away and then I was called in on Bologna.”
“Don’t give me that sad-sack bullshit.” Khan stabbed his knife in the air and although every fiber of my being was on edge, I didn’t even wince. “Goddamned fucking excuses. I don’t want to hear it. I want the Poocha strung up by her very precious legs, sliced up like the tasty piece of meat she is, and bled dry. That is your job, Dutch, your only job, the job you excel at when you put your mind to it. But here you sit, drinking my bourbon without having done the first bit of your work.”
I remained silent in his growing irritation. If thirty-seven years had taught me anything, it was to shut up and remain perfectly still when Khan Mathew got going on a rant.
“Do you even know the name of your Poocha?”
I shook my head no.
“And the Chinaman knows this?”
“No, Avery knows nothing. I’ve lied to him several times to get him off my back about starting the assignment. He’s completely in the dark, but has his suspicions that I’m going slow.”
Khan slapped the table in disbelief. “This is you moving slow?! And don’t answer that goddamned question—I don’t want to hear another fucking word out of your smug mouth. One more sound, and I’ll cut your tongue off myself and we’ll just have to sit here and see how long it takes to grow back.”
Khan glanced at James and the Keeper stepped outside the door, gestured, and returned with Avery. Or what appeared to be Avery. For the second time that night, I jumped from the table, toppling my chair as I reached for my bruised and brutalized friend, only to be stopped by an all-too-familiar machete. James sliced through the air with a quick and efficient flick of his wrist, opening my chest before I took two steps in Avery’s direction.
“Dutch!” Avery shouted as my shirt filled with red. “Stay back. I am perfectly fine.”
“You fucking bastard!” I grabbed my chest as I eyed James’s knife, knowing he had dipped Everlee in some demonic shit, poisoning his already deadly blade. The Gate had three sorcerers at our disposal, one specifically for the creation of spellbound blades. I rarely bothered with such items, but James loved them, especially when tipped with poison. My chest was on fire, poisoned for sure. As I opened the top buttons of my shirt to check the wound, all I could think of was ripping my skin off, tearing at it to put an end to the excruciating pain.
“James,” Avery hissed and moved in my direction, “what the fuck is wrong with you? Khan, control him for one goddamned second.”
I leaned against the back of a chair to steady myself as I studied the slash across my chest. It was gruesome and deep, my muscle was ripped, and I was going to need it treated but there was no fucking way I was letting anyone in this place touch me. I closed my eyes for a second, breathed deeply, and focused. Avery moved my shirt a little, took a look, and hissed under his breath, “Motherfuckers.
“You’re going to need this cleaned,” he stated the obvious. “I’ve got some stuff with me and can stitch you up. It’s not going to be pretty because I suck at closing wounds but it’s better than letting any of the fucks around this place near you.”
“Mr. Lu, you will kindly refrain from denigrating any of the ‘fucks around this place’ when you’re within my earshot,” Khan warned as he continued his meal, paying little attention to the fact I was standing in front of him practically sliced in half. “And Dutch, you will stop your crying over that cut. You’re a Keeper—it will heal.”
“What did they do to you?” I finally asked Avery.
“Nothing,” he lied, and I knew he lied because he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. “This is what happens when I let my guard down around my Poocha. She wasn’t quite as easy as I thought she was going to be.”
No, my father had done that to him as punishment for letting me take some time and go a little slower with my assignment and not push me to start the next round of killing, but mostly for loving me like a brother. He’d brought Avery here to remind me what he was capable of and to keep me in line.
“Join me, son.” Khan smiled warmly at Avery and offered him the seat across from me, then nodded to the staff to begin serving. “I had hoped to also invite the pink-haired one you two are so friendly with, but she was rather tricky to track down. Next time we’ll definitely have a seat for her at the table.”
Frist.
Khan knew about Frist and he let me know he knew about her and he let me know he’d let her live this time. Next time, he probably wouldn’t be so generous. One more reason to kill the motherfucker I had the misfortune to call my father.
“Dutch, sit down. I’m hardly finished with you.”
Avery and I met each other’s eyes, a brief exchange, and I swore he grimaced. I knew then we were witnessing the prelude as the terrible stuff hadn’t even begun. I took my seat and awaited my fate, holding my breath as fingers of fire spread through my body, the poison from James’s blade making one final run through my system.
“And don’t you dare get any blood on these chairs. I just had them redone.”
If I hadn’t been in such agony, I would have laughed at him with his ridiculous chairs and ornate candelabras and vintage china and heirloom silverware. It was all so goddamned Liberace and over-the-top, but right now my mind couldn’t even think how to put a laugh together, how to make the sounds, how to move the facial muscles. Instead I caught the attention of one of the servers and silently requested more napkins, then shoved them under my shirt to stem some of the flow from my wound, hoping I would last as long as necessary. Khan would kill me if I passed out at his table.
“So now that I have the Chinaman and the Asshole together, let’s discuss where we stand and where we are headed and how we plan on getting there.” Khan sipped his wine and I marveled at how perfectly sane he sounded. My stomach flipped and clenched, knowing the crazy was right around the bend. “James, bring me that tablet over there”—Khan nodded toward the back of the room—“the silver one that contains the Asshole’s assignment.”
Khan did not look at me once while he spoke; caring for my state of being had never been one of his top priorities. Shit, it had never been a priority.
At all.
Ever.
James handed him the tablet and glared at me, the yellow of his eyes making him appear positively possessed in the candlelight. I wondered what my father saw in him, besides the whole deranged psycho business. Physically, they were the same, near replicas of each other, except Khan stood a good five inches taller and didn’t brood as often. Who topped and who bottomed, I couldn’t help pondering, the idea rather hilarious to my pain-addled brain.
“Wipe that fucking grin off your face, Dutch, or James will cut it off for you.”
Khan definitely bottomed.
“Avery”—Khan finally looked up from the tablet, his eyes hard as stone—“if I understand correctly, you gave Dutch his assignment almost nine months ago and then what?”
I started to speak but both Khan and Avery shot me looks.
“I left it at that,” Avery replied.
“Bullshit,” I interjected and was promptly ignored.
“Because after Arjun, I deemed it necessary to give Dutch a break. I understand the Ren wanted him assigned right away and I did just that, but there was never a discussion of him also needing to start working right away.”
Khan slammed the table with his fist. “And since when were you made Ren?”
“Never,” Avery replied, meeting Khan’s stare, not cowed at all. “I am not even in the running, but there are judgment calls I make in my role of oversight. I have done so for years. You have trusted
me to do so for years. In this instance I continued as I have always done, analyzing the case and rendering my decision, and this time my decision was to give Dutch some time.”
“Fucking brilliant.” Khan laughed, not at all amused.
“Khan, he is one of the best, but he’s not a machine. You must accept that fact.”
“He is a goddamned baby,” Khan spat. “Always wondering at the plight of the Keeper and the feelings of the Poochas, bemoaning his lot as heir to this seat of power and fucking that cunt Death, sticking his dick in her cold pussy every chance he gets.”
“All due respect, sir, Death is sexy as fuck,” Avery dared to joke.
“Said the faggot.”
“Takes one to know one.”
Khan shot Avery a look and for a second all the air sucked out of the room and we waited, for what, I couldn’t tell you. All I knew was that the room went silent, all movement stopped, and even the cups and saucers held their breaths.
“Fuck both of you,” Khan finally spoke as he swiped the tablet, pulling up an image that I couldn’t make out, that of my Poocha, I assumed. “Dutch, this is your Poocha, she is the best and I want her dead. Much like you,” Khan laughed at his own joke, glancing at James who managed a few chuckles himself. “She is young and has remained hidden from us for years, working in the shadows, thinking she is slick. She’s responsible for the reclamation of some of the most difficult and complicated Deaders, has a team of the most capable Alighters, and has been our top priority since her first success. She is a fucking thorn in my side.
“Her name is Juma Landry.” And here he held up the tablet. Juma’s face flashed before my eyes, Avery blanched, and I couldn’t tell you what else happened, because I couldn’t focus on anything, nothing made sense, everything went a little fuzzy and rather askew. Suddenly I was sixteen again and James was assigning me Kajal and she was being murdered before my eyes and I was powerless to do anything about it. This happened again and again and again. And if there was ever a sick lesson in symmetry, I was living it because what the fuck were Kajal and Juma if not one and the same? The only women I’d ever loved, the only women who’d ever gotten close to me, both of them Poochas, both of them my assignments.
The game of lives had taken on a whole new level of perversion, with Juma and me at its very fucked-up epicenter, fighting a battle I already knew from experience we could not win.
Fuck me.
Fuck her.
Fuck both of us and whatever forces of bullshit the gods used to bring us together, to get hints of each other that day in the subway station. I should have known then to stay the fuck away from all of that brown beauty. I should have known that whatever she offered was not in my cards, because everything she offered was beautiful and light and full of life and I was nothing but a cesspool of darkness and destruction and death.
“Dutch!” Khan barked, banging the table and blustering on as only he could do. “Pay attention to the goddamned words coming out of my mouth or I will make you pay attention.”
He continued going on and on about Juma, shouting and gesticulating and demanding, and if I’d ever wanted to kill him, it was that moment right then. But my motor skills abandoned me, I was useless and infantile, and so I did the only thing I could think to do.
I closed my eyes to his voice and the horrors of that palace and the violence of my existence.
I thought of brown skin and freckles and seduction. I smelled peppermint and lemons and desire. I saw beauty and laughter and hips made for fucking. I tasted love and understanding and time. I felt everything and anything and her.
And as I stood on the cusp of the reality of Juma, I remembered: I entered this world of horrors and grotesqueries at sixteen and had spent twenty one years ensconced in the bosom of Dante’s seventh circle of hell. The dark shit of my life flowed through my veins and ruled my soul—I was evil and vile and worthy of nothing but suffering and torment. I deserved this family of thieves and torturers, of monsters and sadists, for they were what I was doomed to become; they were me, I was them, we were The Gate.
I was a fool to think anything else.
And so for once in my life, in my father’s presence, in the face of his scorn and disgust, I manned up, straightened my spine, and accepted my fate: Dutch Mathew, Keeper for The Gate, heir to a throne of horrors.
But trust that shit was going to be on my motherfucking terms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JUMA
I never planned to be that girl
she of the star-crossed love and burning desire
I would see her in the hallways at school
and scoff at her silliness
girl, please
control yourself
I would see her at a soccer game
cheering her man
instead of being out there on the field
dribbling the ball
outrunning the defender
scoring the winning goal
I would see her in the café
waiting
I would see her in the library
trying to focus on her Russian
because there was an exam the next day
and she wanted the best grade in class
but he wanted her attention
I would see her make excuses
for his rude behavior
his boyish antics
and wonder
when does she get to be girly?
I never planned to be that girl
she of the star-crossed love and burning desire
Then I saw you
And I don’t know if I’m that girl
but as I sit here and wait for you
hours
dolled up like you asked
wearing the dress you bought
I kind of understand her
and I kind of hate her
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DUTCH
“I will do whatever you want, I will perform my duties with the utmost professionalism and every assignment will be completed in a timely fashion. I will attend your meetings and oversee your Keepers and accept and embrace the reality that is The Gate. I will become the son you wanted Veda to be, I will make you forget the son I am, I will don the crown of the Prince of Kowdiar Palace. I will embrace the Ren, I will learn your ways, I will accept my birthright and step into your shoes to lead The Gate. I will kill more Poochas than anyone has ever killed, I will slaughter any Alighter who crosses my path, I will even bring an end to Death.
“What I will not do, now or ever, nor will I allow anyone else to do, is kill Juma Landry. I trade my soul for the safety of hers.”
Khan laughed but I did not and eventually his amusement died in his throat and the room fell into an anxious silence.
“For some reason you believe this is a negotiation.”
“Not at all, Khan.” I addressed him as he deserved—he was no father figure, he was a tyrannical monster. “This is an attestation, witnessed by my brother, Avery Lu, and your longtime lover, James Sussex. You need me to take your place among the Ren and lead The Gate; it’s the only way our family maintains the control and power we’ve enjoyed for more generations than anyone can count, it’s the only way another family—the Raets or Marquezes or Pons—doesn’t step in and steal what has been ours forever. I don’t give two fucks about that power or this organization and I sure as hell don’t give a shit about running The Gate.
“What matters to me is her. Nothing else. Just Juma. She lives and I am yours.”
“You were always mine,” Khan scoffed.
“I was never yours,” I countered.
And that was the truth. He knew it, I knew it, everyone knew it. Khan had hated me since the day I was born because even then I spurned his affections for those of my nanny. I never needed a thing from him as a child, and never sought his advice as an adult. I was the one person in his life who did not tremble and grovel and shake in his presence. He could not control me with fear, bend me wi
th violence, manipulate me with horror. And so he despised me like no other.
“It does not work like this,” Khan finally replied, his bluster diminished, his fury ever-present. “I cannot save some and kill others.”
“It works however you decide it works, we both know this, so make it work that she is forever safe, removed from our lists, and forgotten, then do with me however you wish.”
Khan shook his head. “I cannot allow her to continue these acts of reclamation. It’s unheard of, the number of Deaders crossing back, all led by her. Unless she stops doing what she does so well, unless she ceases any and all reclamations, I cannot agree to your terms and guarantee her safety from The Gate.”
“She will stop,” I assured him.
He studied me and I knew he wondered as to Juma’s hold over me. In any other situation I would fear for her life, but I had played the chip he so desperately sought, ensuring her safety. She was no longer of consequence to Khan. He had me, and thus had The Gate. There was little else that mattered.
“And you will start.” He smirked.
“And I will start.”
My life was never salvageable, I was born into this shit and was going to die having it poured down my throat, stifling and suffocating me. I couldn’t save myself, it was never an option. But I could save her, and if my life was worth anything, it was worth hers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
DUTCH
I wanted nothing more than to speed through the streets, hit the portals, and be gone, far away from that house of horrors and its evil chieftain, back to New York and Juma and that dress and our dinner date, which now seemed like such naiveté, a plan made up of whim and je ne sais quoi by a guy I was for all of two seconds. But such was not my luck. Instead, I suffered through the remainder of Khan’s meal, watching him savor his dessert when he knew I was fading fast, the poison of James’s blade making it difficult for my body to heal at its normal pace. I did the only thing left to do: I continued requesting napkins to soak up my blood and prayed for reprieve.
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