by R. L. King
It was all bullshit.
From where Ian sat, he could see the window to what had been his own second-story bedroom. He hadn’t spent much time in that room, preferring to get out of the house whenever possible to avoid the potential of running into Bobby alone. He wondered what they were using it for now, nearly three years after he’d fled. Had his mother insisted on keeping it for him, in case he decided to return, or had Bobby immediately repurposed it into something else—perhaps a storage room, or a place to display his rifles and his disgusting hunting trophies?
Ian gripped the wheel as a wave of nausea washed over him. His mother was dead now, so even if her wishes had mattered before, they didn’t anymore. She’d never have a chance to grow a backbone and stand up to her husband, to insist on bringing her older son back into her life.
Because that worthless son of a bitch Bobby had killed her.
Blake had done some digging, and gotten back to him shortly after he’d found out about his mother’s death.
“He killed her,” she’d said matter-of-factly, taking a seat across from him as he lounged next to the pool. Her voice held no more emotion than if she’d announced she’d had Chinese food for lunch.
Ian sat up, jaw clenching. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah. He might not have meant to, but I did a little checking into the police records, including hiring somebody to talk to a couple of the people involved. They had to investigate, of course—but Bobby’s family is apparently a big deal in that little town, and it didn’t take much for them to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘An unfortunate and tragic accident,’ the report said. I couldn’t find out if he bribed them, he had something on them, or they just naturally kissed his ass, but either way the whole thing got swept under the rug. He was right there front and center, blubbering at her funeral. The whole town showed up. Probably not because they cared that much about your mom, but because they didn’t want to piss Bobby off.”
As Ian pondered this and his anger grew, Blake smirked. “I found out one other thing, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Seems straight-arrow Bobby was seen in some place called the Buccaneer’s Cove earlier the day your mom died.”
“So?”
“So, you were right—this guy was a big noise in the church, and prided himself on being as righteous as a saint.” Her smile grew sly. “He made some excuse and they accepted it officially, but apparently everybody in town knows the Buccaneer’s Cove is the place you go when you want to…shall we say, indulge in a little illicit activity?”
Ian stared at her, replaying her words. “Wait. The Buccaneer’s Cove? Bobby?” Even as a kid he’d known about the place’s reputation—all the kids did. It didn’t make sense for Bobby to be there: as far as he knew, the only illicit activity his stepfather had been involved with had been knocking his wife and stepson around, and only in the privacy of their own home where nobody could prove anything.
“Hey, I’m just telling you what I found out.”
“Was he with anybody?”
“Didn’t say. Although somebody did recall seeing a woman in there nobody recognized, so you never know.”
Now, as Ian continued to sit in the car and watch the house, his conversation with Blake came back to him as if it had occurred yesterday. So Bobby—self-righteous, holier-than-thou community leader Bobby Tanner—had been cheating on his wife. Had she found out? Was that why he killed her? Had he done it before? Ian hadn’t exactly made an effort to keep tabs on his stepfather—usually he wanted to stay as far away from him as possible, so the only reason he’d keep track of his whereabouts was so he could avoid him—but he’d never seen any indication of infidelity.
That didn’t matter, though. As angry as Ian had been at his mother for not taking his side against Bobby, some part of him still loved her. And now she was dead. He wondered how she must have felt, lying on that bathroom floor. Had it been quick? Had she suffered? Had she been unconscious as her life bled away, or had her last sight on Earth been Bobby Tanner’s florid, bulgy-eyed face looming above her?
He checked his illusion, crafted to make him look like a generic sixteen-year-old boy of the type who fit right in here, then got out of the car and closed the door. Part of him wished Blake were here with him, but it was better this way. This was something he had to do on his own.
His feet crunched in the light snow as he headed up the flagstone walk to the door. It was only a little after seven—not too late for a visit. He’d checked—his little half-brother Mikey was away tonight, staying over with his grandparents. He did that more often now that his mother was dead.
Ian rang the doorbell—the familiar, cheery sound made his insides clench again—and waited. This is it. No going back now.
The door opened after a brief wait, and there he was. Bobby Tanner. “Yeah?” he asked, eyeing Ian’s illusionary disguise with no recognition. “Can I help you?”
Ian took him in. He didn’t look much different than he’d remembered: tall, beefy, with the kind of body you got when you used to work out, but now found excuses not to. A visceral fear shuddered through him—this was the man who used to strike terror into him when he was younger—but it faded quickly. Ian had grown three inches since he’d run away, and even though he still wasn’t quite as tall as Bobby, he was a lot closer now.
Besides, height and weight didn’t matter anymore.
“Mr. Tanner?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “Did you need something? I don’t recognize you.”
“I’m new in town. They told me at the church that you were in charge of the boys’ youth group.”
The suspicion drained away, and Bobby’s shoulders relaxed. “Oh. Right. What’s your name, son?”
“John, sir.” Ian deliberately pitched his voice a little higher, adopting the earnest tones of a squeaky-clean teenager.
“Good to meet you, John. Not really sure why you didn’t call instead of stopping by, but that’s okay. I wasn’t doin’ much tonight, so I have a few minutes to chat with you about the program. Come on in.”
Ian entered the house, showing no recognition even though every bit of it looked familiar to him. His mother apparently hadn’t changed much of the décor since he’d left, and Bobby probably couldn’t have been bothered. Decorating the house was “women’s work,” after all, and he had too much to do dicking around at his store with lumber and screws and whatever else he did. Other than looking a little dusty and smelling a little sour from lack of airing, the place was just as Ian remembered it.
Bobby led him into the living room, where a big-screen TV was showing a basketball game. “Can I get you something? A soda? Coffee?”
“No, thanks, sir. I’m good.”
“Have a seat.” Bobby resumed his spot in his big brown recliner, the same way he’d done every night when Ian had lived at home. That recliner was his and his alone—nobody else was allowed to sit in it. Jessamy had a matching one, but it was nowhere in evidence now.
Ian didn’t sit. Instead, he stood near the sofa and continued watching Bobby.
“Er…you said you were new in town.” Bobby shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “Your folks just move here?”
“Actually, my mother used to live here.”
“Used to—”
“Yes.” Ian kept the illusion up, but let his voice shift back to its more familiar tone. “You might remember her—Jessamy Woodward.”
Bobby’s eyes widened. His gaze sharpened as he looked more closely at Ian, but clearly he still couldn’t pierce the illusion. “I—don’t get it, son. What do you want?”
“You knew her, didn’t you? Jessamy?”
“Listen, kid—whoever you are, I think you should get the hell out of here.” Bobby rose from the chair, and now his face looked more familiar to Ian, smoldering with the leading edges of anger.
“Oh. Right. Of course you knew her. She was your wife, wasn’t she?”
“I don’t k
now who put you up to this, but this is your last warning—get out, or I’ll kick you out.” He raised a large hand in emphasis.
Ian didn’t budge. “You don’t recognize me, do you, Bobby?”
“What—?”
“I’m not surprised. I do look different nowadays. Maybe not quite this different, though. Hold on—let me see if I can help you out.”
He dropped the illusion and spread his hands to give Bobby a good look. He’d deliberately worn a tight T-shirt and snug-fitting, artfully-ripped jeans to show off his physique, and had the white-blond tips on his spiky dark hair touched up before he left California. When he was living at home, Bobby would have killed him if he’d dressed like that; he wouldn’t have been brave enough to do it anyway, though, since back then he’d been terrified of someone discovering his secret.
Now Bobby was gaping at him in shock. “What the…hell…?”
Ian smiled. “Calm down, Bobby. I’m just here to talk…for now. You recognize me, don’t you?”
“It’s you.” Bobby’s shock turned to anger. “So now you come crawling back here? You’ve got balls, kid.”
“I do. And a lot more.” Ian took a step forward, shifting to magical sight. He’d never looked at Bobby’s aura before; it was pale orange, currently billowing with muddy red agitation, confusion, and growing anger.
“What do you want?” Bobby demanded. “Get the hell out of my house. You gave up your welcome here when you ran off, you little fag.”
“Oh, nice.” Ian took another step forward, his smile widening. “You know, Bobby, it used to be that word bothered me. It hurt. I was so scared you’d find out about me, it was almost a relief when you did. Except for the beating part, of course. The part where you put me in the hospital and got away with it, and the part where you were going to ship me off to a camp where they’d pray the sin out of me. Those parts were no fun. But that word? Doesn’t bother me at all anymore. I’m gay, and I’m not ashamed of it. I like myself now. Which is probably more than you can say, isn’t it, Bobby?”
“Get out of my house. I’ve got nothing more to say to you. Go back to whatever sinful life you’ve made for yourself, and leave me the hell alone.”
“Right…you don’t have to even pretend to care about me anymore, now that Mom’s dead, do you?” Another step forward, past the sofa now. “Let’s talk about Mom, shall we?”
Bobby began inching sideways in the direction of an end table near his recliner. It had a phone on top of it, and a single drawer.
Ian chuckled. “No, no, Bobby. You’re not calling anybody, and don’t even try getting to the gun in the drawer.” At Bobby’s look of shock, he shrugged. “It was just a guess, but I know how much having guns always made you feel like a real man, so I’d say it was a pretty good one.”
With a roar, Bobby lunged toward the table.
Ian sent him reeling back into the recliner with a flick of magic. “You just don’t listen, do you, Bobby? Now sit down and be a good boy, okay? We’re going to have a little talk, you and I.”
“You son of a bitch! What did you do to me?”
“You wouldn’t approve, trust me.”
“How did you—” Bobby struggled to get up, fighting against some unseen force. “What are you—”
“Let’s talk about my mother, Bobby.”
Bobby continued to flail, but eventually gave up when he couldn’t push past whatever was holding him down. His eyes bulged, his face red and blotchy with his increasing rage. “What about her?” he snapped.
“She’s dead. And you killed her.”
“What? Damn you, let me up!”
“Fine. But if you try to go for the phone or run away, it’s back in the chair for you.” Ian released the spell.
“What are you?” Bobby spluttered, erupting out of the recliner and nearly falling face-first to the carpet as the force holding him down vanished.
“Not really important. You don’t care about me anymore, you said. And that’s fine. I don’t care about you either. You’re a piece of shit who likes to beat up people weaker than you are, and I get that. I was ready to just call it quits, go our own separate ways. But then I found out you killed my mom.”
“I—what the hell are you talking about? That was an accident!” Bobby’s gaze cut sideways toward the table, but as yet he remained where he was.
“That’s what the reports say,” Ian agreed. “But come on, Bobby—you might think I’m a worthless fag, but even you have to admit I was never stupid. I know how much influence you’ve got around here—you and your dad. That’s why you brought us back here in the first place, back when you married Mom. So you could be in control and nobody would question you. What did she do, Bobby? How did she piss you off enough so you finally snapped and killed her? Did she find out you were sleeping around with somebody at the Buccaneer’s Cove?”
Bobby’s eyes, if it were possible, got even wider, and the blotchy red patches grew. “Like hell she did! I wasn’t sleeping around with anybody! You don’t know anything, boy! I wasn’t sleeping around. She was!” His eyes narrowed, and he pointed a meaty finger toward Ian. “She was the slut, you pathetic little piece of shit. You know who I caught her with? That slick Limey she used to shack up with when she was in England. Your worthless father! That’s who!”
Ian went still.
He’d been watching Bobby’s aura all along, and although it continued to flare red, his latest pronouncement hadn’t altered it.
Was Bobby telling the truth?
Had his mother rekindled a relationship with his unknown father, right under Bobby’s nose?
Had she finally gotten up the courage to leave Bobby, and he’d caught her before she had the chance?
Bobby, taking advantage of Ian’s momentary lapse in attention, lunged toward the end table. Before Ian could stop him, he wrenched the drawer open and pulled out a large blued-steel revolver, leveling the barrel at Ian’s chest.
“Now,” he said, “sit your ass down on that couch while I call the cops. I don’t care if you’re my stepson, or what the hell you did to get me to let you in here, but all your pansy ass is gonna see is the inside of a jail cell.” He jerked the barrel. “Come on—give me a reason to shoot you. They’ll never convict me.”
“You did kill her,” Ian said softly, ignoring the gun pointed at him. Before this, he hadn’t been entirely convinced, despite Blake’s words. Now, though, as he watched his stepfather’s aura, he knew it was true.
“It was an accident.” Bobby sidestepped toward the phone, never moving the gun from Ian. “She fell and hit her head.”
“But you made her fall, didn’t you? You said you caught her with somebody—”
“—with your father.”
“—with somebody. Did you confront her about it? Did you make her slip? Did you even try to get help when there was still a chance?” Ian took a small step forward.
“Don’t move!” Bobby yelled, waving the barrel. “Stay where you are! And so what if I did? She was a slut, just like she always was! I thought I’d made a godly woman out of her, bringing her back here where people live right, but I should have realized—once a slut, always a slut. She deserved what she got. It was God’s will! That’s why she ended up with a queer son: God was punishing her for her sins! And now she’s burning in Hell where she belongs!” His voice pitched higher as he went on, and at the end it boomed through the room. His hand settled over the phone receiver, but then fell away as his other hand tightened on the gun. “And maybe I should just send her rotten son to join her.”
Ian used magic to wrench the gun from his hand and throw it across the room. His cheeks grew hot as his own rage grew. “You fucking bastard. You murdered my mother, and you dare to talk to me about sin?”
Bobby’s eyes, as they tracked the gun’s course, were so big now the whites were visible all the way around. “You—you—” he spluttered. “You’re—an—abomination!” He flung himself forward, his big hands grasping for Ian’s neck.
/> Ian hadn’t necessarily meant to do what he did next. He hadn’t come to Bobby’s house with the intention of doing it. But as his stepfather came toward him, his face alight with mad rage, something snapped inside him. All those years of beatings, of fear, of psychological abuse, of watching this man treat his mother like a servant and a punching bag instead of a valued partner, came crashing back to him all at once. He might have been able to put aside what Bobby had done to him, but his mother had never asked for any of this treatment. All she’d wanted was to find someone to love her, and someplace she could be happy. And this man had taken all that from her.
This man had taken Ian’s mother from him and destroyed her, long before he’d stood by and watched her die on a cold bathroom floor.
Ian hadn’t meant to do it, but he didn’t hesitate. He allowed Bobby to come in, to get inside his reach and lock his hands around his throat. But before his stepfather could begin to squeeze the life from him, he gripped the man’s arms, held on tight, and pulled.
Blake had told him before that black mages could kill—that they could do what was called “ashing,” drawing so much energy that the person wouldn’t just get tired, but would be literally consumed by the process. They’d become nothing more than drifting ash, and all their life energy would flow into the mage. Ian had been disgusted by the idea—he didn’t want to kill anyone—but she’d assured him it wasn’t necessary for magical functioning. “It’s just something you can keep in your pocket as a last-ditch option,” she’d told him. “If you ever need to do it, it’ll come naturally. Part of being a black mage.”
And it did. He didn’t think about his unease at her words, and the times he’d wondered if she’d ever actually done it herself. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. All he thought about was the feeling of Bobby’s life force screaming into his body, lighting up his nerves, hitting him with the kind of ecstasy he’d never experienced before. There was horror, too, and guilt—what am I turning into?—but even that couldn’t stop him from pulling and pulling until there was nothing more to pull.
