"I brought some stupid psychic to the mayor for questioning. Weird one this time."
"She say anything illegal, this weird little psychic?"
He ran his gaze over Bridget thoughtfully, trying to ferret out more without raising her suspicion. She'd used a female pronoun. He hadn't.
"Illegal enough," he said. "Took me all morning."
"Huh." Bridget turned away, deliberately he thought. "Why you? You aren't a bounty hunter, and I'd think it wouldn't take the Pale General to bring in a little slip of a girl."
"Why do you think me?"
She didn't answer for a long time, instead she rattled through the drawers, pulling a couple of cans out from the cupboard and setting them on the sideboard. When she spoke, she made a great effort to appear busy as she did so, almost to deflect the power of her words.
"You murdered her."
He wasn't fooled by her deflection. She hated what he did, what he'd done to keep them both safe when he knew war was coming.
"You never complained before."
"Because what you're doing now isn't necessary."
"So it was all right when it meant our lives, but it's not okay now."
"You know it's not all right. There's no reason for killing anymore."
He snorted. "There's more reason for it now than there ever was. At least before there were some people who were..." He trailed over the thought, trying to decide what the proper word was.
"Good," she said.
"I wasn't going to say that."
"You should have. It's the right word. Now everyone left is just supremely fucked up."
She'd always had a nasty habit of making him feel ashamed. "So what does that make you?"
She quirked a delicate black brow. "I did say everyone," she said. "I stand by it."
"And me."
She stuck her tongue into the corner of her mouth, and he knew she was trying to form her response.
"Yes."
"Yes, you stand by me, or yes, you mean that I'm fucked up too."
She made an effort to smile. "Why can't it be both?"
He smiled with her, letting her relax, letting her believe that she had successfully detoured conversation into safe territory. He hated to do it to her, but it was for her own good. When her shoulders let go of their tension and the tiny crow's feet around her eyes had smoothed out, he blasted her with the accusation.
"You've been to her," he said.
She whirled to the stove, testing the knobs. "Why do you say such a foolish thing? I don't need a psychic."
"Because I didn't tell you the psychic was a girl."
She faced him, then. "Since when is visiting a psychic illegal?"
"When the psychic is a religion-monger."
"And how was I supposed to know that when I went?"
"What did she tell you?"
She chewed the inside of her cheek. "Foolishness mostly."
"Same foolishness she told Henrik?"
She twisted her hair into a bun behind her head and drilled him with a black-eyed stare. "Are you interrogating me? Arresting me? Because I'd like to see that. I'd like to see you pick me up and cart me off and run your knife across my throat."
Her flinty eyes were sharp enough as she regarded him that he winced as though she'd cut him with each word. "After all I did for you, Ezekiel. You would do that to me?"
That she'd used his full name meant he'd gone too far. It was time to let go. He had enough--plenty, actually--to tell him what he needed to know.
"Don't be ridiculous, Bridget. A baby brother doesn't go about arresting his own sister; he gets other men to do that."
She picked up a can from the table and let it fly. It only missed him because he ducked, and he whacked his head on the table for his trouble. He came up with his brow furrowed, furious at the pain shooting down his skull.
"Don't you laugh at me," he said, pointing at her. "Don't you dare laugh. I hate it when you do that."
He watched her bite down the laughter trying to escape, pursing her lips together in an almost prim fashion. When she got control of herself, she did exactly what he thought she would in the first place. She offered him a small tidbit, just enough to prove herself innocent, but not enough to incriminate the girl.
"I don't even know if she's there anymore; filthy little urchin surrounded by the worst dregs of new Earth you can imagine." She tucked a black lock of hair behind her ear. "I can't imagine she's even still alive."
Chapter 8
Surrounded by the worst dregs of new Earth. Ezekiel knew exactly where to start looking.
Bridget wasn't stupid enough to try to seek the psychic out again, and so it took him weeks to track down what he thought was the worst parts of the Eastern part of the supercity. That end had taken the worst of the action and most of it lay in rubble and ruin. He dressed as a vagrant each morning he went out, doing his best to blend in so that if he happened across the little mung accidentally, he wouldn't scare the living Jesus out of her.
Plenty of prostitutes, spitters, and general derelicts, but no one selling religion on a street corner. His feet were getting sore from pounding the broken pavement and he was beginning to believe that the psychic didn't exist. And then one afternoon months after he'd started looking, as he sat on the step of the survivor's station pouring bad coffee down his throat, he saw an old man staggering up the sidewalk toward him, a look of utter amazement and fear on his face. Ezekiel stood as the man drew close, and put his hand out to stop him.
"You look like you could use a drink," he said.
The old man waggled his head, but said nothing. Shock, Ezekiel figured. And not much could shock a person these days. Not unless it was something out of the ordinary.
"What's got you so spooked, old man?"
The gent looked back over his shoulder but said no more, When he tried to press on, Ezekiel let him by. He stood for a long moment, his jaw seesawing back and forth as he considered how close he might be. He was damned lucky, he knew, to have come this close in the first place. Might be nothing, but could just as easily be something. And he was getting sick of traipsing through the devastation for a woman that might not exist.
He threw the rest of the coffee and the paper cup to the side and headed down the street. He had to go two blocks before he saw her. A tiny slip of a girl as Bridget had said, but with a mouth on her that could get a prostitute hot.
He suffered a strange ache deep in the pit of his stomach the first time he saw the girl. If he didn't know better, he would swear he'd met her before. Watching her gave him an incredible sense of déjà vu, the way she moved, the quirk of her head. The sassy, almost spit-fired way she responded to her johns.
She didn't look like the typical psychic. There was a card table off to the side, yes, but it had seen better days. So had the girl. Even from this distance across the street, he could see that her cheekbones strained against the skin, that the jeans had holes in them, that the only thing she cared about was earning enough money to feed her habit. And she had a habit; that much was evident. She fed her body less often, he had the feeling.
Even so, that weird little thing that stirred inside his belly made him sit across the street and watch her. He pulled his overcoat closer around him, jerking up the collar and hiding his face within it. Then he eased the toque down to cover his brow so that he could peek out from beneath it without drawing attention to himself. It was because he needed to be sure it was her that he sat there, but there was no harm in enjoying the show.
She left within an hour, packing up her card table and fishing into her pocket to extract what looked like a small square of paper. So she was a spitter then. Not nearly so dangerous as the Beast might think. Maybe he had it all wrong. Maybe this wasn't the girl. No one had mentioned that the psychic had a taste for godspit. With a sigh, he rose to his feet and trundled back off home, thinking he'd come back the next day and watch her from inside one of these broken-down apartment buildings. He'd come as a horseman then, an
d folks would have no choice but to let him in.
The second day he arrived before dawn, and when she came a few hours later, she looked as though she had been beaten up. She had a shiner on her left eye that swelled her cheek enough that he could see it from the window across the street. Some kind of bastard had obviously taken advantage of the poor thing. Maybe stolen her godspit, assaulted her. He felt his fingers clench into his palms as he imagined that waif being rammed into with no care for her well-being. And thinking about that frail body naked and vulnerable made him imagine her beneath him, straining for pleasure, blissed out by his touch alone.
"Fuck, Eazy," he mumbled to himself. "Get a grip." It had been a while since he'd planted his cock inside anyone. Too long obviously if he was fantasizing about that poor wretch. He shook the image free and waited.
She wasn't shy about approaching her johns, but there was nothing really overtly religious going on either. No standing on a soapbox, no carrying placards. She simply approached people one by one and when they refused her, she went doggedly back to her table and waited for another passerby.
He had it wrong. All he was doing was wasting his time watching a stupid young woman trying to sell a made-up experience for enough money to buy a fix. He'd already made the Beast wait a couple of long months, and he couldn't afford to make the man wait any longer. He'd already heard rumblings about some of Henrik's lovers escaping the city. It was just a matter of time before either the Beast or Kat decided to bring Bridget in.
It was the thought that Bridget might have purposely led him off the trail that got him to his feet. What if Bridget was the psychic instilling the religious fervor? What would he do then?
Deflect, that's what. If it was Bridget, he'd deflect attention away from her. Give them someone else until he could secret Bridget away to safety, making her promise to stop inciting belief.
He didn't bother to secret himself down the stairs, and when he got to the front step, he took a moment to stretch his arms and breathe in the air. It was a shame, really. But the girl was as good as any to decoy. He'd almost miss looking at that blonde head and listening to that sassy come on. Maybe he'd keep her home with him for a few days until he was sure he needed a patsy after all. Maybe he'd just walk over there..."
"And what will you do with her?"
At first, he thought he'd said it aloud, but it wasn't his voice. It was coming from somewhere to his left. He glanced sideways to see two heavily tattooed grease balls in rapt conversation. They looked like the kind of guys who would have injected black-market steroids into their cocks during the days before the god had come. They looked like the kind of guys who would give a girl a shiner.
One of them emitted a low whistle and shook his fingers over his heart. "Same thing as last night, homie. That was one sweet piece of ass," he guffawed.
Ezekiel cleared his throat, getting their attention. "All ass is sweet if you ask me," he said, looking them over with a cold smile, waiting for them to realize what he was.
"You said a mouthful, brother." The first man took in Ezekiel's black watch cap and leather duster.
A quick incline of his head before Ezekiel left them to round the corner, but he waited there for almost two hours before the vermin came around behind him. It took two minutes to slice into their mouths, ripping into their cheeks with his knife.
"Try to laugh now," he said and left them bleeding on the sidewalk. Bastards were lucky he'd left them with their throats intact.
Two hours after that, he found himself in the spitters' den, begging Sasha for a petite blonde.
"I'm always willing to oblige," Sasha said through pursed lips, working red lipstick onto his mouth. "You know that, Eazy."
"Then what's the trouble?"
Sasha smacked his lips together and threw a hand on his hip. "The trouble is your too damned picky." He pinched the nipple of the small blonde that stood next to him, trying to elicit a profitable reaction from her. She didn't so much as squeal or giggle.
"Well, I told you petite. This one is too tall."
Sasha waggled his head up and down. "Oh yes, yes, of course she is. And the last one was too busty."
"She was. A woman with double D cups can't exactly be called petite."
"And the one before that?"
"The eyes weren't right."
"Picky."
"I want what I want, dammit," Ezekiel said. "I'm paying."
"You never pay, my friend," Sasha drawled." Listen, I'm a busy proprietor; I have money to make and you're keeping me from it. Take this one. Turn the lights off. Take her from behind. Just take her."
Ezekiel looked her up and down, and finally grabbed her by the leash. He wasn't gentle about it when he dragged her down the corridor into a semiprivate room, the only one he could afford until the mayor paid him for the last three religion-mongers he'd brought in during the last three weeks of his search for the elusive psychic.
Several men were taking turns with a woman old enough to be their mother. Something about the woman's face made Ezekiel's stomach recoil.
"Take that spitter and get out of here," he said to the men. It didn't take but a quick glance at his cap for them to decide to yank their toy for the night out of the room, leaving Ezekiel alone with his own entertainment.
He looked her over, taking in the way her luscious hips were too wide, the way her full breasts would obviously spill over his fingers. She had blonde hair, yes, and she was slight enough that in the dark it wouldn't matter. He had no doubt that she would do exactly and everything he wanted. But the only true thing she had going for her was that she was a spitter.
"How long since you used?" he asked her. "And don't lie. I'll know."
"Twelve hours ago," she said.
"So you're coming down?"
She nodded, the fair hair settling around her shoulders.
"How badly do you want a smear?"
Her fingers twisted together in front of her. "Pretty bad."
"So you'd do anything, anything to get your fix?" He waited, almost forgetting to breathe, knowing what her answer would be, but still afraid that it wouldn't be the right one.
He thought there'd be some fear in her face when he asked her that, but there wasn't. She had long made peace with the things that kept her high. He didn't want to think about what some of those might be.
"I'm selling myself, aren't I?" she said.
"Turn around," he told her. From behind, he could pretend that smooth skin and tight, heart-shaped ass belonged to any girl he pleased. Sasha was right. But then, Sasha was always right.
She was dry when he entered her, but he pushed on anyway. She opened to him after several thrusts, and he found a frantic sort of rhythm that did more to make him feel desperate than relieved. If she felt any discomfort at his size when he took her, she made no sound. All the better. He didn't want to hear her voice. It would never be right like the eyes weren't right or the hips weren't. He squeezed his eyes shut, telling himself the little bit of pain was cathartic for them both. A penance of sorts.
And yet when he was able, finally, to envision that certain, haunted face as he thrust deeper, the penance didn't feel quite so accurate.
It felt more like absolution.
Chapter 9
Theda slipped through a dozen more of Ezekiel's lifetimes as she lay in her tank, barely aware of the cushion beneath her, the darkness, the isolation. They moved like memory cards, flashing so fast, she was never sure she was watching the same incarnation until some visual cue told her, and even then, she often wasn't sure.
She watched him as Cathrin choose to marry a cruel man -- herself as Erich -- in Trier because he was the first to understand she wanted pleasure as much as he did, she walked with Ezekiel through a lifetime where he herded children onto a train toward incinerators, knowing fully what end they would face.
She even fell with him from some spacious, glittering paradise to the hard darkness of Earth. That lifetime clutched at her throat the most, nearly suffoc
ating her, and in her trance, she felt her tears over that lifetime, but it was the last one from just weeks earlier that drained her.
He'd felt a connection with her when he'd first seen her. He'd wanted her. But even as she slogged through the muck of her psyche to true awareness, she understood that there was something deeper than just a lifetime they spent together in Trier. It wasn't some sort of karmic retribution that attracted them to each other. They had a bond that surpassed the flesh.
He'd tried before to get her to walk through all of the lives she'd shown him, but she'd refused. He knew the kinds of things she would discover if she let it in, but he wouldn't force it on her. Now that she'd seen it all, it was too late because the knowledge was useless. How long would she have before the Beast came for her and martyred her in front of the entire world to prove how much power he had over religion?
Ezekiel had understood that even before he'd seen her the first time. He knew exactly what plans the Beast had for her. He'd done his best to protect her from it. She wished she could reach out and touch him one last time, tell him how grateful she was, how much she loved him.
Thinking about him made her wonder what kinds of things he was reliving or seeing as he lay in his tank. No doubt getting some sort of reboot, turning him back into the person he was. She hoped for his sake that was possible. Better he lived the rest of his life as the Pale Rider than to spend the rest of it running from the Beast.
Bridget. His thoughts had been as much about his sister as they'd been about her. And if Theda understood his last few weeks correctly, he'd believed Bridget had been one of the people she had given a vision to. In the early days, she'd certainly been pretty messed up. If Theda didn't remember the woman, she'd at least understand why. She never focused on her clients' faces, or even cared what their lifetimes showed. She had one clear focus only: godspit. So long as they paid enough for her to bliss out at night, she gave them their ride of a lifetime. Why not? Breath was cheap, time too. She could re-vision folks till the god came again. Godspit: that was precious.
Theta Waves Box Set: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3) (Theta Waves Trilogy) Page 42
