by Lee Roland
“Madeline,” Hildy screamed after me.
I kept up the pace until a quick turn told me no one followed. I slowed.
A black SUV pulled up to the curb beside me. Étienne.
“You need a ride?” he asked through the open window.
“Yes.” I opened the door and tossed my stuff in. I climbed in and closed the door behind me. I snatched Spot off my shoulder and held him in front of me. “Damn it. Why did you do that?”
I glanced in the side mirror. Still no pursuit. “I suggest we leave—now,” I told Étienne.
“Why the hell do you have that thing? Is it—”
“This is my pet iguana. His name is Spot. But right now, I have a few other names I’d like to call him.”
Étienne stared at Spot, then at me. He shrugged. “You always surprise me. I take it that Spot misbehaved.”
“He took a shit on Eunice.”
“Eunice. That’s the big one with an attitude?”
“You know her?” I was surprised. I hadn’t introduced them.
“Only by reputation. She beat the holy hell out of two of my men the other night. I’m sure they deserved it, but they’re out of commission for a few weeks.”
“That’s Eunice.”
“They’re your friends? Those women?”
“I’ve known them a long time.” I hedged, not sure if I wanted to claim them as friends.
Étienne chuckled. “She and the other one . . .”
“Other one? Lillian? Or Hildy?”
“Not Hildy. I know her. They’ve been walking River Street at night, beating up pimps. And I hear some Bastos are missing.”
“Uh . . . I didn’t know about that.” Oh, damn. Couldn’t they lay low?
Étienne seemed unbothered. “You have someplace you have to be, or do you want to ride with me?”
“I’ll ride. I’m still looking for my man.” I looked askance at him. “You seem to be around a lot. Are you following me?”
“I like to keep track of you. I have lots of fun with you. However, I suggest Spot behave himself in my vehicle. I am armed.”
Spot chirped and huddled closer to me. I wasn’t distracted by the joke. Étienne was following me. I just didn’t know why.
Étienne turned around and headed back north. As we passed the pawnshop, the door stood open but a huge industrial fan blocked it, blasting the air in the shop onto the sidewalk. A couple of men started to walk by but they backpedaled and rushed away when they caught wind of the scent. I hunched down in the seat. Étienne grinned.
He drove north, then turned into the Barrows. He didn’t speak for a while, but he frowned as if deep in thought.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Silence filled the car. “Before I tell you, you have to promise to trust me.”
I paused. My curiosity got the better of me. I had absolutely no reason to trust Étienne. Yes, he had taken a bullet for me, but he was being shot at, too. “Trust is a lot to ask from a stranger. At least in the Barrows.”
“I know.”
He eyes turned from the road to stare at me.
“I’ve found Kenny, and I’m taking you to him.”
Chapter 31
Something twisted inside me. For a moment, I saw that hateful murderer’s face, felt my mother’s terror. Her agony. I heard my father screaming as they— No. I wouldn’t conjure these images now. The battle that went on in my mind and body shredded me. I swallowed my nausea, but my muscles trembled. I could not move. Control makes me stronger, I recited over and over in my mind. Control permits intelligent action . . .
Slowly, one at a time, I closed the doors of my memory.
What would happen when I killed the man? Who would I be? What would I be? I’d never asked those questions when I killed the first two. Why ask them now? Had the years at Justice changed me that much?
The Portal. I had to remember the Portal. My killer had the Portal. It was why I had been released from Justice in the first place. And Aiakós. If he obtained it, what would happen? Kyros and the others, how would they get home?
My mind churned with questions, possibilities—and dread.
“Madeline?” Étienne’s voice carried concern. You’d think he actually cared for me. Étienne had his own plans and I didn’t know what they might be.
“I’m okay.”
“I’m not sure I should take you to him.”
“Why not?”
“You seem disturbed. What will happen when you see him?”
“I’m going to kill him.” My heart thumped in my chest.
Étienne kept to the ruins, often driving around obstacles onto the sidewalk. Finally, he made a turn and stopped in front of a building. Like most in the Barrows, it once had another use. People had called it home. It stood two stories—it had probably been an apartment house—with windows on the second floor.
Étienne opened the center console and lifted out a brown paper bag. We got out of the car and I followed him inside to a hall with floors that creaked ominously under our feet. The stairs leading to the second floor had missing steps and no railing. He went to a door on the right and knocked.
“Kenny. Are you there?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He opened the door and we went in. The odor of an unwashed body hit me first.
A man sat on a dirty cot staring at the wall.
“Kenny?” Étienne spoke with soft concern.
The man jerked, eyes wide in terror—until he saw Étienne. Then he smiled as if his best friend had arrived. He didn’t even see me.
Étienne handed him the bag. “Here now. Go slow. Don’t spill it this time.”
“Okay.” Kenny accepted the bag. He smiled at Étienne like a boy smiling at his father.
This time, he had said. Étienne had been feeding him on a regular basis—like I fed the creatures in the Barrows. Did he pity Kenny? Obviously, he’d known where the man was all along and hadn’t told me. This was my man, my killer—or the shadow of my killer.
Kenny carefully opened the bag and lifted out the food—sandwiches wrapped in paper. His hands shook. Stringy hair fell across his face as he gulped large bites of the sandwich. Then he raised his face and chewed, eyes closed, with an expression of simple pleasure—or a prayer of thanksgiving. Ragged clothing, bare feet, this vicious murderer had the mind of an abused child, grateful for any crumb of kindness thrown his way.
Étienne turned to me and smiled. “He’s all yours.”
Was this the killer who had strangled and raped my mother? Who had tortured my father? The face was the same, even though the expression was horribly wrong. The hands clutching a simple sandwich were the same hands that had wrapped around her throat and squeezed.
One part of me was urged on by the demand for vengeance. I drew my knife. I wanted him to fight me. I wanted him to know how much he’d hurt me.
I stepped toward him.
“Mmm . . .” He bit off more of the sandwich.
The scar burned, but my mother’s demand that I kill warred with the logic that told me he would not know why he was dying. He would die as a child, asking why I’d hurt him, why I was killing him. Would that give me peace?
I don’t know how long I stood there. Some decisions are easier than others. This was not one of them. As I watched him eat, I knew the man who had raped and strangled my mother and killed my father would not be punished for his crime—at least not by me. I sheathed the knife. Part of me cried out that I was a fool, but another part knew I was a better human being for it. I’d probably regret the decision later.
“You think I could ask him some questions?” Information in lieu of a bloody death.
Étienne tensed. Only for a brief second, barely noticeable. “I don’t know if he can answer, but you can try. Try not to upset him. If you aren’t going to kill him, that is.” I detected a warning there. Étienne had brought me here but had no intention of allowing me to kill. He’d simply tested me. I’d deal with that later.
I knelt in front of
Kenny. I didn’t want to tower over him. He was eating the last of the sandwich Étienne had brought him carefully, smiling with pleasure, savoring each bite.
“Kenny?”
He froze.
I smiled and tried to speak gently. “Hi, I’m Madeline. I’m a friend of Étienne’s. Could I talk to you for a minute?”
He slowly began chewing again. He nodded. I thought he had recognized me on the street, but I think he was simply responding to my body language, my intent. He’d run because in that moment I had a murderous aura around me that terrified him.
“Kenny, I’m looking for something. It’s a pretty jewel—black with little lines of gold running through it. Do you remember it?”
He slowly nodded. “I remember.” He stuffed another bite of sandwich in his mouth. “It’s gone. I’m glad. Burned, burned me. Made me hurt inside.”
Excitement filled me. Was I close to at least half my goal? I kept a neutral expression on my face.
“Where is it now?”
“It was pretty.” He slowly smiled, looking even more childlike. “I carried it for a long time. Then it made me come here. I hate it.”
For a fraction of a second, his face became the face of a true killer, the face that haunted my dreams. The image crashed in my mind of him leaning over my mother, his hands around her throat as she struggled to breathe. I fought the urge to kill again. Kenny had paid for his transgression—not the ultimate price, but a living death of sorts.
Kenny looked up at Étienne, then back at me. “I did what she told me. She drove us there. I splashed her with the stuff first. I choked her good. I made sure she was dead before I took it off. Then I ran away. For a long time.” He leaned forward and rocked back and forth, arms crossed over his stomach as if his meal had turned to poison. “Hate her, HATE HER!” The last words came out in a scream.
At first, my mind couldn’t process what he said. She drove us. Who? Surely not a common thief. It had to be someone with power, someone with something to gain from stealing the Portal—or allying herself with someone who needed it.
My fragile control shattered. I jumped to my feet, but before I could draw a knife, Étienne was dragging me out the door and onto the sidewalk.
I fought him, twisting. Had I not been almost out of my own mind, he wouldn’t have been able to hold me. I stopped struggling. He released me and I dropped to my knees. There on the sidewalk of a dead city, I did what I had never done. I cried for my parents. With great, heaving, racking sobs, I cried for everything I had lost. I had gained the knowledge that the men who killed my parents were lackeys, hired hands, and nothing more. I still had no idea who was really behind all of this. I don’t know how long I went on with my belated mourning, but when I came to myself, Étienne was crouching beside me.
I had chosen not to kill. My mother would haunt my dreams again, but I would deal with it. For the millionth time, I asked myself: How could she not have defended herself against someone else’s potion?
Étienne helped me to my feet and walked with his arm around me as we went back to the SUV. He didn’t start the engine when I climbed in. I was still shaking. Spot patted my arm with his tiny paw and made soothing noises.
“Your iguana seems rather intelligent,” Étienne said.
“Yeah. He is.”
“So, have you made friends with all of those things in the ruins?”
“I’ve met them. I wouldn’t call them friends.”
“Will you talk about it?”
I used my shirtsleeve to wipe my eyes. “Why? So you can tell Aiakós and he can kill more of them?”
“How do you know he kills them?”
Didn’t seem like a secret to me. Aiakós was his employer, after all. “He told me the night I met him.”
“What do you think of him? Aiakós?”
“First impression is that he’s incredibly dangerous. Volatile, deadly.”
Étienne didn’t disagree with me.
“Why do you work for him?” I asked. “You know a lot about me. Maybe you should give a little in return.”
Étienne didn’t reply right away, maybe deciding how much and what to tell me. When he did speak, he sounded steady. “He was hiring. Clark was in charge. Aiakós isn’t stupid. He saw and gave me a promotion. He told me what he wanted and I started building the security force.”
Too deliberate, too casual. He was leaving a lot out.
He abruptly changed the subject. “Would you like to see what I do to earn Aiakós’s money?”
“Sure.” I needed to hide from Eunice for a while. Take my mind off the confusion still twisting within me.
He laughed, reached over and ruffled my head like I was a kid.
Kenny didn’t have the Portal. He’d apparently stolen it at the behest of someone, maybe a witch. He hated witches, but he didn’t specify one in particular. I needed to go back to Abigail. I didn’t believe she had taken the Portal. She had saved me, after all. But maybe she could help me find it.
I couldn’t deal with Abigail just yet, though. I needed more time to think.
Chapter 32
We didn’t go far. The building where Kenny hid was only a block from a light industrial area. My sense of direction told me we were on the northern edge of the Barrows, close to the Earth Mother’s magical prison walls. The ruins remained, only the area between buildings spread out into parking lots and other wide expanses of asphalt and bare ground. How odd. I would have thought Aiakós would prefer his little army closer to keep an eye on them. I said so to Étienne.
“Oh, he does. But I’ve refused. My men work for me. I don’t want Aiakós to meddle with that. Best to keep my distance.”
“And Clark?”
“Clark, I’m forced to accept. He is Aiakós’s spy. His job is to watch me.” He grinned. “He’s not very good at it, either.”
“Is Aiakós mad about me cutting on him?”
“I guess not. He laughed when Clark complained.”
I shuddered.
“You fear Aiakós. You should. Why don’t you fear Michael? You climb into his bed.”
“Not without body armor and a stunner.”
Étienne laughed, spontaneous and genuine. I had to wonder, though, had he followed me last night, too? The Barrows was a relatively small place with lots of eyes on the streets. Étienne with his security force probably owned some of the observers.
I didn’t tell him that Michael had given me everything he was, freely and honestly. We’d sealed our connection with sex powerful enough to bind us beyond escape. What would it take to bring it to love? I still didn’t know.
Étienne drove to one building where two men in gray fatigues stood by a single door. Like those around it, the building was a tall warehouse with a small boxy office tacked on to the front.
“Do your men know about the Drows in the ruins?” I asked.
“Drows?”
“Yeah. Like Spot. And the thing that tried to kill Michael.”
“Drows. That’s a good name. Yes, they know.”
“Do they kill them?”
“Not on my orders. Most of those are farther south anyway. I encourage the men to stay away from that area.”
“Could Spot come in with me?” I cupped a hand around the little lizard. “I hate to leave him out here in the sun, and if he flies, someone might be tempted to use him for target practice.”
Étienne lifted an eyebrow and stared at me and the little Drow on my lap. He laughed. “Will he behave?”
“Sure.” I glared at Spot, who had the grace to act humble.
“Okay. I don’t let these guys play with guns much anyway. Some of them are . . . volatile.”
“Volatile?”
“Ex-cons, most-wanted by some agency. But a few mercenaries, too. They’re better.”
“You don’t hire smart ones?”
“Of course. A few intelligent men are necessary. The rest are men who will take orders. Smart ones might try to take over. Like I did with Clark.”
When I climbed out of the SUV, I sat Spot on my shoulder. He made an easy fit with his wings folded and his tail draped loosely around my neck. Not comfortable, but not awkward either. It would slow me down if I had to fight, but I didn’t expect that.
The two men in gray fatigues stood up straight when Étienne approached. The office rooms appeared barely used, but when he opened the door to the main warehouse, that didn’t appear to be the case there.
A bleacher had been set up on one side of the building, and not far away I saw something familiar. A practice mat. Some men sat on the bleacher and others crowded around the mat, where two combatants struggled with each other. The men watching laughed and hooted, cheering the opponents on.
Étienne led me toward the bleachers, where the men quickly moved aside for us. I quickly counted twenty-six. All wore gray fatigue pants and T-shirts.
Étienne leaned back, relaxed, with his elbows on the bleacher seat above him. I sat beside him, not relaxed at all. Spot, perched on my shoulder, talked softly in my ear. I wished I understood his chirps and clicks. I’m sure his observations would be interesting. The men stared at me, some with interest and others with the blank faces of men who guarded their emotions well. Some appeared patently stupid while many had eyes that said they were far more intelligent than they wanted to announce to the world. All were well muscled and physically fit. Not surprising, since an area across the floor had more workout equipment than the Archangel.
The struggle on the mat was going nowhere, with the two opponents locked in each other’s arms, neither able to move. Neither could gain the advantage.
A man approached Étienne. He was older, dark-skinned, and had gray sprinkled in his close-cropped hair. He had a powerful, stocky body and intelligent eyes set in a smooth face. His right hand was twisted though, with the knots and crooks of severe arthritis, something I’d seen many times when I’d volunteered at nursing homes as a teenager.
