It was worse than anything I’d ever felt. It was worse than the upir blood. It was worse than being beaten naked in a bathtub, doused in cold water, and kneecapped. I’d experienced both of those things, I could speak with some authority. This thing, whatever it was, had wrapped my organs in barbed wire, the hooks turned inwards to press against liver, lungs, heart and stomach. It hadn’t been my imagination: the parasite was alive. It was intelligent, and its wordless communication was crystal-fucking clear. “Don’t try that again, punk.”
There was nothing to do except wash the wound, stitch it up, and move on. My trembling anger grew with every tied off piece of nylon. This thing was inside me. Sergei had put something inside my body, and I couldn’t get it out. Not even Jana was able to do that to me. She’d been able to get under my skin, but not in the literal sense. Carmine’s bombastic arrogance had never gotten to me. Compared to Jana, he’d been a carnival side-show villain, a coward and a liar. He hadn’t put anything into me that I hadn’t been able to purge.
I remembered Sergei, smiling while Vera drew his oily orange blood from his dead veins. I remembered her walking towards me, limbs jerking with ancient rigor. A flood of images, bodily sensations, and wordless emotions invaded like poison. Even if I gave up on magic and fled to Europe tonight, I would never be free of Sergei. I would think of him every time I drew breath. Cursing, half-blind with sweat, I pulled the bloody gloves from my hands and plunged them under a stream of icy water, trying to wash the taste of violation from my mouth. It was bitter. Like burned wax.
I bound up my new injury, got properly dressed, and slumped out into the clubhouse. Zane was in bed, and there was no one in the garage except me and Binah. My suitcases and bags were there, lined up in a row and waiting to be sorted, except there was nowhere to sort them to. I was still homeless, technically, though I now had money. Cash, bank cards – assuming my accounts weren’t wiped clean – credit cards, which had almost certainly been abused. I could probably still afford a hotel, and plane tickets, for that matter, but duty plucked at me like needy fingers. The video had affected me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. The dirty business of coke and racketeering was one thing. Everyone that was in that scene were adults who knew exactly what they were getting into. But children? Little girls? These people had never been my brothers.
My breathing was labored as I slumped to the floor and determinedly sorted through the Occult texts rescued from my study. I lingered over the Red Book for a few bittersweet minutes, calming myself with the illustrations while I thought over the decoding process. I’d start with the simplest English Bible gematria first. On the off-chance that the sigils were drawn by a Charles Manson-wannabe, their default language was going to be English. Bible code was based on numerology, so I got a notebook, sketched the sigils from memory, and got to work.
Theories on what had happened to the murdered couple gathered slowly over the course of the day, as I buried my anger and pain, researched code patterns and tried my hand at breaking a few of them. The problem with gematria was that it required significant context and deduction to translate the numbers correctly. The number 557 had multiple possible translations, and depending on whether you did it in Hebrew or English, it could mean anything from ‘Christ the Lord’ to ‘Detroit Lions’. It was the reason that Bible code conspiracy existed – confirmation bias was a real danger in this line of study.
Binah meandered up to me at some point and climbed into my lap to sleep. I was dozing when she startled upright, growling, just as the lock turned in the door to the outside. I looked up, bleary eyed, as Jenner entered.
“Hey Rex.” Jenner was back in her trademark black jeans and spiked leather jacket, a pair of articulated leather gloves hanging from her belt. She was tense, and she looked tired. “You look like shit. John, Michael and Ayashe want to talk.”
“When?” I set my book aside.
“Now,” Jenner said. “It’ll take us about twenty-thirty minutes to get to the museum. Ayashe works just north of Manhattan. John and Tally both work at the Indian Museum. We’ll go together, and you’ll ride with Zane.”
My joints were throbbing, my skin aching with fatigue. I shut the book with a sigh. “It’s only been two nights since you hired me on. I took a bullet in the gut during the raid last night, my cat needs her abscesses lanced, and I am in no way ready to report any progress.”
“Too bad,” she said. “There’s too much that needs explaining, Rex. No one’s happy to know that our kids were kidnapped by your friends in the mob.”
“They were never my friends.” I stuffed Nicolai’s folder into my shirt and got to my feet, fighting the twinges in my back and torso the growing ache from the still-raw incision across my stomach. “And we don’t know if they kidnapped them. Even if they did, they might have been hired by someone else. Contract work is a big deal.”
“Well, consider this your chance to demo your theories.” Jenner jerked her head towards the door. “C’mon. Mason and Zane are waiting.”
It wasn’t raining today, but the sky was low and sullen. Zane was standing beside his rumbling motorcycle, warming the engine as he fastened his helmet and pulled his gloves on. His black jacket was plated over the shoulders and down the arms like samurai armor. His helmet was barely bigger than a dog-bowl, worn with a black skull-face mask that covered nose and mouth. The bike was an enormous matte-black beast of a machine; the decal on the side read Big Cat Crew.
“Hey Rex.” He glanced at my stomach, nose working, but he didn’t say anything as I drew up. Instead, he handed me a heavy jacket not dissimilar to his own, but without patches. It felt like something that wouldn’t have been out of place on a medieval battlefield. There were metal plates welded into the shoulders, and armor in the elbows and forearms. “Time to pop your chopper cherry.”
“Come now. You’ve managed not to be crass for the entire three days I’ve known you.” I glared at him as I pulled the jacket it on and zipped it up, then accepted the full-face helmet that Zane offered me. The jacket was a good fit, but the helmet was tight and claustrophobic. I lifted the visor and left it there.
“Then please, Mister Rex, excuse my impropriety.” He arched both eyebrows, but he was smiling.
“Impropriety?” I sniffed. “You must have one of those word-a-day calendars. That’s how you feign an education.”
“My dad’s a university professor, if you absolutely have to know.”
“Let me guess: Pickup Truckology at the University of Detroit?” I changed my gloves for the gauntlets he passed over.
He rolled his eyes. “Dean of Economics at George Fox University, asshole.”
I paused for a moment, arms crossed. “Explain to me again how you ended up in a biker gang?”
“No.” He patted the rear seat. “Butt goes here, feet go on the pegs and don’t come off. You’re gonna have to hold on to me. Lean with the bike when I turn, don’t scream in my ear, and we’ll be good.”
Just as I was about follow his lead and settle on the rear seat, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and twisted to look back at the clubhouse. It was Binah, trotting out of the formerly closed door towards us. I tapped Zane’s shoulder and pointed. He rolled off the throttle a little and looked across, as perplexed as I was.
The little cat, back to normal after the insufferable trauma of her bath, broke into a limping trot as I attempted to extract myself from the bike. I wasn’t even halfway off when she jumped up onto the front of my trousers and clawed herself into position on my shoulder.
“How’d she get out here?” Zane called back over the din. “We shut the frigging door.”
“Where there’s a way, there’s a Siamese who is too clever for her own good.” I sat back down, unzipped the jacket, and tried to silently communicate my intent as I bundled her into the front of it. To my surprise, she didn’t complain. Her unheard treble purr shuddered against my ribs, silenced by the growl of Mason’s motorcycle as he roared past us.
Zan
e shook his head and slung himself onto the saddle with the casual ease of an experienced rider, while I used the pegs to perch uncertainly on the rear seat. It put me crotch to tailbone with this relative stranger, who leaned back comfortably as he righted the bike and revved the throttle. The machine stirred like a rolling storm underneath us, rumbling with a deep throated growl. The sound was blue and sweet on the deep notes, red and sharp-tasting on the high. I kept my hands off the vibrating surface at first, but as Zane righted the bike and kicked off the stand, I risked touching the seat. The deep bass purr of the machine traveled through my fingers and straight to my teeth, deep enough to be pleasurable instead of painful.
“All set, Rex?” Zane had to practically shout back to me.
“I think so.” Gingerly, I transferred my hands from the seat to his waist. It felt somewhat perverse to be touching him while sitting on the rumbling motorcycle.
Jenner’s bike snarled and popped as she turned and pulled up beside us. Her getup was no less intimidating than Zane’s, and her brilliant red and black bike was only slightly smaller. “Come on, ladies. Time to get moving.”
We rumbled slowly down the gravel to the road, and then we took off with enough torque that my teeth stepped back in my head and my stomach lifted into my throat. My hands flew to Zane’s waist, lifted off with alarm as I realized I’d grabbed him, and resettled as we turned the first corner and roared off down the street.
"Press up!" He yelled back. "Hold on properly! You’re throwing me off!"
He was right: my awkward weight was making it harder for him to turn on the wet road. I pressed against his back, sandwiching Binah between our bodies. My face was burning hot against the tight padding of the helmet… at least until we reached the Expressway, picked up speed, and began to fly.
I forgot about our incidental intimacy as we screamed over the Brooklyn Bridge, buffeted by a ripping tunnel of chill, damp wind. Without the shell of a car to insulate me from the world outside, I was acutely aware of the smell of the city, the rising breath of eight million people and billions of other living things, the surge of life and motion contained within the sprawling stillness of New York. My pain and fatigue receded as I straightened in the saddle and craned my head to watch the sky kiss the sea far below, the wind whistling through the gap between helmet and visor. It took my mind off the meeting and the parasite and the children and my pain. For the first time since Vassily and Mariya had died, since Zarya had expired her last on the end of a sacrificial knife, my mind was perfectly still.
Zane was solid and relaxed under my hands, warm even through layers of leather and cloth. Now and then, I caught hints of his cologne on the wind, and I could imagine what it would have been like to ride with Vassily like this, his arm wrapped around my waist, or my arm around his as we tore up the road. It occurred to me then that Zane was the first person I’d willingly touched since Vassily expired in my arms… and my wonder ebbed with a growing sense of formless, frustrated confusion.
Vassily would have been jealous beyond reason or sense if he’d seen me like this, pressed up against a man he didn’t know, someone who was not our mutual friend. It was inexplicable, but suddenly, I’d never felt more like a traitor in my life.
Chapter 18
The Museum of the American Indian was a sepulchral Neo-Classical sarcophagus in no way designed to showcase the diversity of Indigenous American history. Everything was white, as if in emphasis, and two distinctly European female sculptures flanked the intentionally intimidating archway. Like a church, it was open to the public on Sundays. At eight in the morning, it was a ghost town.
We parked the bikes off the road near the base of the stairs and clambered off. Binah wiggled out of my jacket and perched on my shoulder as I pulled my helmet off and hung it. As soon as it was off, she wrapped her tail around my face and peered at the nearby trees with interest.
“Fuck, I hate this place,” Mason grunted. He hitched his belt up. “Gives me the weebies.”
I studied the stairs and the open doors beyond them, running my tongue over my teeth. The Smithsonian ran this museum, which meant it was a Federal building. “Do any of you happen to have a pair of sunglasses I could use?”
All three Tigers pulled out a different pair of shades from a pocket somewhere on their person. Jenner was the closest, so I accepted her pair with a nod and slid them on, taking a moment to adjust to the change in light. They were mirrored aviators that would have done Hunter S. Thompson proud.
Zane stayed out by the bikes, keeping an eye on them while Jenner, Mason and I went inside. We were pulled up by security at the door. Before we reached the gate, I lay a hand on Mason’s arm and gripped his sleeve. He looked down in confusion, but didn’t protest.
One of the guards held up a hand, which I nearly bumped into. “Sorry, but animals aren’t allowed in here.”
I adjusted my glasses, and then felt out for Mason’s elbow. “She’s a service animal.”
He looked at my glasses, then the hand gripping Mason’s jacket, and then back to the cat. “I ain’t ever heard of a cat for the blind.”
“She’s an All-Seeing Eye Cat,” I said. “Mister John Spotted Elk is expecting us.”
Binah began to purr, tail lashing down my back.
“Uhh…” The guard looked between the three of us, and then stepped back. “Please just walk through the detector, sir.”
Mason and Jenner had to nearly strip off to their underwear to make it through the metal detector, but we were eventually admitted into the bare and sterile foyer beyond the checkpoint. There was no one at reception. Fortunately, Jenner knew the way: Spotted Elk’s office was upstairs, reached by an elegant spiral staircase that led up behind the main theater.
Talya was waiting for us beside the door in her brown skirt and pale yellow blouse, clasping and unclasping her hands. She jumped a little when we rounded the corner, and then flushed. “Thank goodness. Ayashe isn’t here yet, but John and Michael are waiting for you inside.”
“No worries, kitten.” Jenner kissed cheeks with her, and then Mason did the same. Talya glanced shyly at me before she rubbed her face against his, and then stepped back before opening the door for us.
The room beyond was beautifully appointed – gothic interior, red carpet, mahogany desk, glass-fronted bookshelves, and a small private display of unsigned Native American objects. Michael was examining them, meandering between two of the cases. He was dressed somewhat more nicely than he had been at the meeting, changing out the baggy jeans and basketball jersey for a neutral charcoal suit and a large golden Ankh pin. I wasn’t sure what he did for a living, and there’d been no mention of it.
Spotted Elk was perched on the sill beside the window, smoking a seaman’s pipe out into the breeze. He was dressed for work: nice cream suit and loafers, a bolo tie, his graying hair pulled back in a short ponytail. There was still something about his bearing that didn’t match the ostentatiousness of the room, a blue-collar manner that clothes could not conceal. An auto mechanic in Brooks Brother’s clothing.
“Hetep Hena Ten Jenner. Mason.” Michael turned to us as we entered, his hands folded behind his back. “John and I would like to talk with Rex alone before Ayashe arrives and we discuss matters as a group. Do you mind?”
“No worries. Come on, big guy. Let’s go and loiter on Federal property.” Jenner punched her partner lightly in the waist, and turned back the way she’d come. Mason gave us a flippant salute and followed her out without a word.
I took off the glasses, and waited until the door closed. Spotted Elk turned on the windowsill and dropped down the three or four inches to the ground, the pipe still jammed in the corner of his mouth.
“Take a seat,” he said, dropping into his own seat behind the desk. “The chairs are as uncomfortable as they look, but that’s the Government for you.”
I grimaced, and coaxed Binah off my shoulder as I complied and took the edge of the nearest chair. My thighs were still shuddering from the motorcyc
le ride, so I couldn’t hold the position for long. My familiar turned restlessly in my lap, fixing Spotted Elk and Michael with a baleful eye.
“This is your familiar?” Michael took his place beside Spotted Elk, not deigning to sit. “Her condition speaks of terrible abuse.”
Spotted Elk held out a work-worn, calloused hand. Binah replied with a hiss and a striking paw, claws extended.
“Indeed.” I gathered her against me. Binah growled, tense and wary in my arms. “She is also feeling somewhat antisocial.”
Spotted Elk smiled ruefully and sat back, rubbing the fresh red welts on his fingers. “No wonder. Looks like they roughed her up pretty good.”
“I don’t imagine she has much love for strange men.” Michael didn’t even try to pet her.
“She and I are alike in many ways,” I said. “We are here for business. What did Jenner tell you about our findings?”
“That you found child pornography in your old apartment.” Spotted Elk looked over at me. His eyes were as dark and patient as a horse’s: gentle, wary, and anxious. “That Duke lost control and the change took him over… and that you got carried away with your magic.”
They thought I’d used magic to blow the apartment? Well… if they thought I was that powerful, I suppose that was in my favor. Sort of. I rubbed Binah’s ears, massaging the tension out of her scalp. “They deserved it.”
“That is questionable,” Michael said. “Because now they cannot talk.”
I grimaced. “Kir was talking before Duke lost control.”
“So we heard,” John replied. “You had no knowledge that this filth was taking place in your home?”
Was everyone going to ask me that question? “No. I ever only really knew the business of my unit.”
“What business was that?”
Even after everything that had happened, I couldn’t tell them. Talking about some of the ins and outs with the likes of Jenner and the Tigers was one thing, but when it came to people like John Spotted Elk, self-proclaimed good guys tied up with the Feds, the business of the Organizatsiya was the Organizatsiya’s business alone.
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