THIRTEEN
THE MORNING AFTER his conversation with Doctor Riley, Frank Mason sat up in bed and surveyed the landscape of flesh sleeping next to him. He pulled the sheet back and watched café au lait skin rise and fall, stretch and sweep over hills and valleys. He noted how the skin darkened in the creases at elbow and knee, how the eyelids, though clean of makeup, held a delicate purple tint. Full lips pursed and mouthed the discourse of some dreamed conversation. Beautiful land, lithe and strong, warm, always willing; land Mason owned. He might have smiled at this sight another day, but not this morning.
Mason swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked out the window. It was a couple of hours after dawn and sun washed the grounds. He squinted into the white light, too harsh for his pale eyes, and walked across the room to the mirror. He turned and twisted, scrutinized for flaw. His body was still his own, hard and muscled, shaped from an adolescence of labor and violence. He was one of the lucky ones, a man who could go for weeks without exercise then tone up after a single workout.
A voice creamed from the behind him, “Mmm, nice ass.”
Mason didn’t turn. He disappeared into the walk-in closet and reappeared a minute later dressed in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. At the window a young woman stretched, luxuriating in the sunlight. Mason glared. “Tie, get away from the window.”
She turned away from the glass, smiled sly and sweet. “Come back to bed if you want to get me away from the window so bad.”
He raised an eyebrow.
Tie dropped her eyes and moved away from the glass. She slipped into a silk Seungono draped over the end of the bed. “Where you off to so early on a Saturday?”
Mason stepped into a pair of loafers. “My boy’s sick.”
That’s right, his majesty had a son. Tiesha was always forgetting that. As little as Mason mentioned the boy she couldn’t be blamed. Meant she would have to wait tables at the restaurant today, though, and that sucked. She worked for Mason, either as his waitress or his mistress. As far as she was concerned the second of the two gigs was far better. Tie let the Seungono fall open, exposing high breasts and a tight belly. She reclined on the bed, positioned back on her elbows so her flexed abdominals would rise and ripple. He loved her six pack. “Sure you won’t hang around a while?”
Mason snugged his heel into the other shoe and glanced up, caught by the glow of her skin. It was good land. The boy wasn’t going anywhere. He could hardly be considered there at all. Horton was watching him, or Sinclair if Horton’d finally given in and gone to bed. Tie flexed her stomach, the skin darkening in the valleys between muscles. And whatsherface the nurse, Emma something, would be coming on shift soon. Mason walked over the bed. Tie smiled.
Pounding from outside the bedroom door, frantic, fierce.
“Mr. Mason!” Finch.
Mason turned away from the bed. “Cover up.”
Tiesha’s lower lip tucked behind her front teeth as she mouthed fuck and closed the Seungono.
Mason yanked open the door. He didn’t need to ask his bodyguard if the intrusion was something important. All the servants knew better than to cause a floorboard to creak outside of Mason’s bedroom door let alone knock on it on a Saturday morning. He noted a diamond of sweat at Finch’s temple. An acrid waft surrounded him, not excreted by the man himself, but attached to his sports jacket like smoke from a bar.
“Go,” Mason said.
“Jeremy, sir,” Finch started, then cast a glance over Mason’s shoulder. Mason’s bitch was masturbating through the Seungono, staring at Finch, her lips bent in a fierce smile. Finch looked back at Mason, lowered his voice. “Mister Mason, you should probably come see, sir.”
“Don’t make me guess.”
“It’s Sinclair,” Finch started, glanced at Tiesha again. “He’s uh…”
“The boy hurt him again?” Mason checked a smile.
“He’s dead.”
“Let’s go,” Mason said, brushing past his bodyguard.
Finch spared Mr. Mason’s personal fuckcretary a last glance, gave her the finger, and followed his boss. They pounded from one wing of the house into the next, Finch wondering for a moment what might happen to a person should he get in the way. He got an image of a freight train crashing through a compact car stalled on the tracks.
They rounded a corner into a short hall. A closed bedroom door stood at the end. Both men’s noses wrinkled at the miasma of feces and human chemicals hanging outside the door. Mason stopped, listened for the usual cacophony of screeching and laughter, singing.
Silence. Blood pulsed in his ears.
Mason reached out for the doorknob, stopped, turned to Finch. “Where’s Emma? Where the hell’s the goddamn nurse?”
“Morning off, sir. Not due for about another hour.” Finch stared at his boss. “I already thought a’ that. She ain’t seen nothin’, Mr. Mason.”
Mason nodded and pushed open the door to a room from hell. The stench from the hall crystallized and spiked up Mason’s nostrils. He brought the back of his hand to his nose, his eyes watering, but not enough to block out the sight of Sinclair in the chair by the bed. His head was slumped over his chest, his pants around his ankles. He’d been gutted, slashed from pelvis to sternum. A rope of shiny intestine sprouted from the soupy mess of Sinclair’s torso and wound around the body, lashing him to the chair. A puddle of cooling fluids congealed at his feet.
The bed was empty.
Mason scanned the room, but Jeremy was nowhere in sight. He hissed over his shoulder at Finch, “Get in here and close that fucking door.”
Finch came in, locking the door behind him. He stood next to Mason, staring, transfixed by the savaged corpse. “Jeremy was gone when I got here,” Finch muttered. “The door was locked when I found Sinclair.” He choked back an upsurge of bile.
“Of course it was. I had it fixed so it only opens from the outside unless you have the key.” Mason glared at his man. “You know that Finch.”
Finch couldn’t look away from the ripped-open body. “I, uh…Yeah, of course.”
“Find him. Check the bathroom, the closet.”
Finch took a moment to comprehend the order, its risks. He moved over to the bathroom door, automatically reaching into his jacket.
“Finch.”
He turned to Mason. “Sir?”
“If you shoot him...”
Finch scowled down at his hand as if it had tried to betray him. He redirected the five-headed Judas from his holster and put it on the bathroom doorknob. He opened the door a crack and reached his hand around the doorjamb, fumbling for the light switch. Finch imagined his fingers, white and vulnerable on the other side of the doorjamb. He thought about the sharp objects that might be in the bathroom. He thought about the boy’s teeth. He found the switch, flicked it on and began to push the door open the rest of the way. A hand clamped down on his shoulder and his entire body clenched, a single drop of urine soaking into his boxers.
“Get out of the way,” Mason spat and shoved Finch to the side. “Pussy.” He pushed into the bathroom, slid the shower curtain and checked the cabinets under the sink. Nothing. Mason moved back into the bedroom, noting the rough zigzag of the wound on Sinclair’s corpse, and walked to the closet. Finch backed into the corner by the desk, waiting for the leap, the capering crazy child covered in blood. Mason whipped open the closet door and pushed aside the boy-sized suits, associating expensive snake-skins. Nothing. Mason turned around and swept the room with his eyes. “The fuck is he?”
Mason left the closet door open and stood over Sinclair. He tipped his head to the side, studying what must have been his son’s handiwork. Well, not his son perhaps, but whatever was in him. In a way, Mason wished Jeremy really was capable of something like this. Not only was Sinclair bound to the chair with his own viscera, his cock had been removed. Although, removed was a rather civilized way to descri
be the ragged hole where the man’s genitalia should have been. It looked as if Sinclair had been savaged by an animal with a purpose. If a bear could be in the Business, this is how it would send a message to a rival. Mason chuckled. Maybe he’d buy one and look into training it.
Finch looked up at his boss. Jesus, he knew Mason was hardcore and all, but who could stand over a scene like this and fucking laugh? The smell alone, shit and stomach acid he guessed, was enough to make Finch wonder if anything would ever be funny again.
“C’mere a minute, Finch.”
Finch moved, but it took some will to get his legs to carry him over by the bed. He glanced over at the tossed sheets, a leopard pelt of stains. Looked like a road kill had been dressed out where the kid had lain for the past few days. The restraints were cast to the side, undone but intact. Someone either let the kid out, or the restraints just opened up on their own. Finch looked away, focusing on Mason’s back as his employer bent to get a look at Sinclair’s face.
Finch asked, “You don’t think Sinclair would’a let the kid up, do you?”
“Not a chance. I think Sinclair probably knew better after the boy threw him the other day.” Something in Mason’s voice was not unlike pride. He put the palm of one hand on the corpse’s forehead, as if taking its temperature, placing the other on Sinclair’s chin.
Finch couldn’t help himself. “What’re you...?”
Finch almost took a step back as Mason looked over his shoulder at him.
“Looking for his cock,” Mason said. He pushed with both hands and Sinclair’s jaw let go with a stiff crunch. Mason peered inside, “Nada,” and let the head fall. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants legs. He muttered something to himself.
“Sir?”
Mason looked up. “Oh, I was just thinking. I would have stuffed it in his mouth.”
“Oh.”
Mason smiled at his bodyguard. “Don’t break a sweat over it, Finch. The kid’s not going anywhere. I don’t know how the fuck he managed to get out of the room—.” A light came on behind Mason’s eyes. He bent and rummaged in the pants pockets around Sinclair’s ankles. He stood up. “Took Sinclair’s room key. Smart for a kid, isn’t he?”
Finch was beginning to resemble a sentient piece of cheese. “Sure.”
Mason put his hands on his hips. “Well, he’s not getting out of the house without the system code. Doors won’t even open from the inside.”
“You think he might have gotten that outta’ Sinclair too?”
“S’good question.” Mason squinted down at the body. “Nah, I don’t think he did. Sinclair’s a mess, but he’s a fast mess. He was unzipped and sopranoed but doesn’t look roughed up.”
“Like you’d do if you was tryin’ to get some information outta’ someone.”
“Yeah. Whatever happened, happened real fuckin’ fast. Which makes me think,” he scanned the room. “Sinclair probably had a blade and the kid got it away from him.” He looked again at the rough-edged vivisection job on Sinclair. Could the kid have done this with this bare hands? Image of Sinclair hurtling across the room. “Maybe not, though.”
Finch looked back at the empty bed, the stains, the smell. He thought of that smile and the strength it would have taken to kill a big fucker like Emile Sinclair. Finch’s face drained. There was a psychotic monster-boy in the house armed with a knife. “Shit,” he said.
Mason chuckled again. “Yeah.”
Finch knew what was coming. His boss was about to order him to go look for the kid. He sighed a deep, shaking breath and looked down at his shoes.
A pair of white hands shot out from under the bed and grabbed his ankles. Finch yelped as steel fingers dug into his flesh and yanked him off his feet. His back slammed the floor and the air rushed out of his lungs with a hoof!
Jeremy exploded out from under the bed, carelessly scraping the skin off his shoulder blades on the bottom of the bed frame. He giggled wildly but it was muffled, his lips shut tight. The boy wriggled over the prostrate Finch, leaving a trail of steaming waste. He straddled the bodyguard’s chest and clamped a hand on Finch’s forehead, the other on his chin just as Mason had done with Sinclair. Jeremy forced open Finch’s mouth and leaned in. He hummed, “Mmmblah,” and spat something into Finch’s mouth.
Mason stepped forward and shouldered the boy off Finch with all his might. Jeremy grunted low and bovine with the impact and released a vile belch. He slid across the floor, the hyper-adrenalized strength spent. He lay on his side, limp and staring.
Finch rolled over and clawed a shriveled, bloodied chunk of flesh from his mouth. For a moment he just looked at it laying on the floor, his face a wrinkle of question. An instant later his eyes and his mind reconciled and he retched all over Sinclair’s severed penis. Still vomiting, Finch attempted to crawl toward the door, slipping in his own mess. He fetched up against the knob. He had a set of keys in his pocket, but panic blanked his mind. Finch pulled himself upright and started to yank at the knob as if he couldn’t understand why the door wouldn’t work.
Mason looked at the creature on the floor. It gave him a lazy smile, a line of bile drooling from the corner of its mouth. “I’m going to call someone,” Mason said. “To get rid of you.”
Jeremy rolled over on his back, his fingers scrabbling over his distended tummy. He rubbed and caressed, transcendence warping his already alien face.
“Mmm,” he crooned. “Templar.”
At the door, Finch’s mind broke and he began to shriek.
Sins of the Fathers Page 28
