by Cari Z
“What’s the trick?” one of them demanded, looking like he wanted to shake me and see if my secrets poured out of my head. “How’d you do it?”
“He’s a lucky charm,” Roger said expansively. “Some folks just got that shine to ’em, ya know?”
“Nah, I don’t buy it. There’s something goin’ on here. Phin!” he shouted angrily toward the door. “You giving this fucker a leg up? Delaying the games so he can look things up early?”
“You want to watch your damn mouth, Morris,” Phin growled. Any sane man would have stopped then, but this man had clearly lost his inhibitions. “Check your phone and see if I’m lyin’.”
“We don’t get service down here, you know that,” Morris snapped.
“Then leave and check it outside.”
“No! I want to know what kind of racket you have going with the rent boy and the hick.”
“Now, now,” Roger said companionably. “Ain’t no need to fight about this, guys. We can all be civilized here, right?”
In response, Morris threw his drink across the table at both of us. “Fuck you!”
Most of the beer hit Roger, who calmly wiped his face and took off his broad-brimmed hat. “Not a nice thing to do, throw the drink a man bought you back in his face.”
Morris’s friends were starting to lean back in their chairs, finally cluing in to the fact that things were going to go very badly. I set my hat aside as well―I liked that hat, damn it―and took off my stained jacket and waistcoat.
“I don’t play nice with cheats!”
“Luck ain’t cheatin’, and you coulda stopped betting at any time.” Roger rolled up his sleeves.
“Fuck you, you cow-fucking hillbilly piece of―” Morris’s insult was cut short as Roger snapped his long legs up under the table and kicked it, and everything on it, into Morris and his friends’ faces. I heard Phin groan and get up from his chair at the door, and I stood up and shook out my arms as I picked my target. Two seconds later, bedlam broke out.
There was something cathartic about being in a brawl. A one-on-one fight could be nerve-racking―there was an element of ego that came into play and made things personal. In a brawl, though, it was just you in a press of people, striking who you could where you could, and my betting buddy was clearly an experienced brawler. He was trading punches with two different men, his grin bloody and bright on his face. Phin was doing his best to sort things out, but that only lasted until someone broke a glass against his head. Then he became a rage monster that would put the Hulk to shame.
And me? I preferred to be a little more vicious, less about trading blows and more about kneeing people in the crotch and then following them to the ground with punches, because I’d learned to fight from my mother and she’d had no compunctions about teaching me to go for the jewels. My blood was pumping, fists were flying; I was finally lost in the moment, and it felt gorgeous. We slid around on spilled alcohol and broken glass and generally had a delightful time until one of Morris’s buddies finally lost his temper and pulled a gun, aiming vaguely at where Roger was still gleefully tussling with a couple of guys. A second later, a shot went off.
A second after that, I fell down.
Chapter Five
It wasn’t the impact of the bullet that knocked me over. It was me trying to move too quickly on the slippery, glass-covered mess of a floor. My shoes were pretty things, but the tread had worn off years ago. The bullet hit my arm, I jerked and slid and wound up flat on my ass, and after that, well―things got a little hazy for a bit.
I’d never been shot before. I’d been beaten until I was nothing but red blood over purple bruises, burned more than once with the business end of a cigarette, and slashed with everything from chicken wire to bowie knives. I was well acquainted with the sight of my own blood. But being shot was novel, and I stared in surprise at the perfectly round hole in my shirt, just above and outside of my elbow, as it slowly changed from white to red. Gravity pulled the blood down, staining my sleeve like a perverse Rorschach blot. I just stared and ignored the sudden furor around me, people yelling and Phin bellowing like a bull. I didn’t feel anything at all until long fingers turned my head and Roger’s blurry face swam into focus.
“Holy shit, you all right, boy?”
His words broke my fugue. Suddenly I could feel everything, and I was very not all right. My arm burned like someone had shoved a branding iron through it, and of course it had to be my dominant side.
“Not really,” I said through gritted teeth, clapping my free hand to the wound and then groaning at my own stupidity, because that hurt. “Fuck.”
“C’mon now, let me see it,” Roger said, reaching for my arm. I pulled away, and he looked at me sternly. “You’re gonna need medical attention one way or the other, Cillian, and this ain’t my first rodeo. Now let me see your arm.”
“What?” I still felt argumentative, but I did let go when his fingers prompted. “You’re a doctor and a cowboy now?”
“Not a doctor, no. I was a medic back in my army days, though.” He prodded the wound, and I hissed at him, but he ignored me. “Looks like it went clean through, but it’s not like you’ve got much flesh to spare. Lucky it missed the joint.”
“Yeah, lucky me. I feel so lucky,” I agreed sourly.
“You told me you were lucky earlier, Cillian. I’m minded to believe it, after what just happened. Or maybe you’re just lucky for me―that son of a bitch was trying to shoot me. I dunno how the bullet hit you instead.”
Phin appeared, bald and fierce and terrifying. His ruddy skin was smeared here and there with blood, and I didn’t even want to think about the state of his knuckles.
“He gonna live?”
“The bullet missed the major artery, but he should be checked out by a doctor,” Roger said as he casually shredded the other arm of my beautiful shirt and turned it into a makeshift bandage. “We need to get him to a hospital.”
“No hospitals; we can’t afford the questions,” Phin said. “And neither can he,” he added when Roger opened his mouth. “Gunshot wounds are too obvious. We can’t play this off as anything else, though, and it would be dangerous to let Cillian loose in a hospital anyway.” Phin got his shovel-like hands under my back. “Time to stand up, lad, y’ready?”
“Don’t I look ready?” I snarked, then whimpered as Phin hoisted me unceremoniously to my feet. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else, someone sick, because they trembled and swayed like I was coming down off of a bad trip.
“Dangerous how?” Roger demanded, getting under my good arm and helping to hold me up. “He couldn’t harm a fly, way he is right now.”
“Not fighting dangerous,” Phin said as he led the way to the door. We had to detour around several prone bodies; Phin hadn’t been fucking about. I could barely tell that the guys were still breathing. “He doesn’t need to be usin’ his talent right now is all. The more people he’s around, the harder it is to make sure he stays in control of it. Mac!” he yelled out the door, and a moment later, the guy who’d been washing the wall earlier appeared. “Help these two upstairs, someplace he can lie down. Siobhan’s already called for the doc.”
“Move fast, lads,” Mac said, making room for us. “The cops are on their way.”
“Bloody fuck…” Phin muttered.
“Any dead?”
“No, he’s the worst of it.”
The conversation continued, but I didn’t really follow it any more. There were stairs, a trip down the alley, the brick walls as red as my own blood in the light of the setting sun, up more stairs, and finally into a dark room with a leather recliner that Roger did his best to dump me into gently. He was panting like a dog by the time we got up there.
“Thanks,” I grunted, shifting around so I was on my side, away from my wounded arm.
“You won me close to ten grand. A little help’s the least I can do for a friend like that.”
I chuckled. “We’re not friends. You were convenient, and I was
lucky for a while. That’s all there is to it.”
“Not for me,” Roger said staunchly. “Man takes a bullet for me, he’s my friend after that, like it or not. You mighta saved my life.”
“I made the trouble for you in the first place,” I pointed out.
“That little brawl? That was no trouble; that was fun, boy. Hell, back in Texas, we’d call that a warm-up! Nobody ever needs to die in a bar fight, as long as the dumb fucks keep their weapons out of it.” He shook his head. “Damn fools, the gamblers here.”
“People care a lot about their money.”
“People need to remember that money ain’t the most important thing,” Roger said. “It’s important, I grant you, but I bet some of those dumb fucks downstairs wish they’d just walked away instead of escalating things. That bouncer was breakin’ bones.” He glanced at his watch and sighed. “My plane’s come in, and I can’t keep my missus waiting much longer before she comes lookin’ for me.” He leaned toward me. “Give me your arm, Cillian.”
I was just groggy enough to extend it without asking why, but startled when he uncapped a pen and began writing on the inside of my forearm. “Foreplay, finally?”
“Aw, you wish,” Roger shot back. “Here.” He scrawled a second line beneath the first and then recapped his pen. “That’s my contact info. You need help, you call me―day or night. If you can’t get me, I wrote down my secretary’s number too. She’ll answer as Ace Industries.”
“Ace…” I looked up at him, suddenly confused. He took the phone from me and stuffed it back in my pocket as I stared and then checked to make sure my bandage was still uncomfortably tight. “Your company is called Ace?”
“Childhood nickname. I never quite outgrew it,” Roger said as he stood up. “I mean it now, Cillian. Don’t let your pride get the better of ya.”
“I won’t,” I said blankly. Ace…I wondered suddenly if I hadn’t mistaken my Ace of Cups earlier. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure, boy. Apart from the shootin’, this was a real pleasant way to spend the day.” He ruffled my hair and then straightened his hat―how he was still wearing his hat after the day we’d had, I didn’t know, but there it was―and headed out the door.
I drifted for a while, wanting to think but not quite able to. Shock. It was a weird thing. I could handle all sorts of pain and privation and keep going, but one little bullet wound and I was fainting like a corseted Victorian on a hot summer day. It was so tempting just to close my eyes and sleep, and I’d never been one to resist temptation. The darkness behind my own eyes beckoned, and the deeper I got, the less I felt the throbbing pain of my arm. I could just―
“Cillian!” Warm hands gripped my own, and I was pulled out of the welcoming black and back into the bright, painful world of the waking. Marisol stared down at me, her expression a mix of worry and fury that was very familiar. “Cielito, honest to Goddess, I thought you might be dead! You!” She let me go and rounded on Phin, who took a step back. “You let him get shot and then you leave him here alone and then you summon this damn meth cooker to tend to him! What it wrong with you?”
“He wasn’t alone when I left him, and I had my own mess to clean up,” Phin said, scowling at her. “At least he’s a real doctor, Mari.”
“Who is addicted to his own drugs as well as who knows how many illegal ones!”
“It’s not like you could do the doctoring, woman. A bullet wound can’t be cured with a bundle of sage and some chanting!”
The tall black-suited man in the background slid around them and crouched next to the recliner, opening the briefcase he’d brought along. I recognized him as the go-to doctor for “unmentionables” on Colfax and tried to relax as he loosened the bandage to take a look. His face was ascetically thin, fine-boned and high-cheeked, and he worked with brisk disregard for my pain. That worked for me. I didn’t need any more coddling.
“Straight through,” he murmured. “But I need to clean it before closing it. Chew and swallow this.” He handed me a Valium, which I took, cringing at the bitterness of it as it went down. He injected something numbing into my arm and got to work.
Fifteen minutes later, I was stitched up with half a liter of orange juice swimming in my stomach. The doctor had taken off after being paid by Phin, leaving me with a pocket of antibiotics and painkillers that were definitely not over the counter, and Marisol was still furious enough to spit fire. She chewed me out for being an irresponsible bastard, chewed the doctor out even though he wasn’t there, and then went back to Phin, who endured it stoically this time.
This could take a while. I groped awkwardly for my phone―learning to use my left hand instead of my right for the foreseeable future was going to be tough. My fingertips brushed something ragged. I recognized the feel of a wad of bills and smiled dopily to myself. Roger had left me with cash―a lot of it, apparently. Guess he really did feel bad. I finally got my hands on my phone and opened up my email. There was one from my mother, the PDF copy of Modern Parapsychia that featured my interview. I opened it up, skimming through the other articles as I went to indulge in reading about myself.
Something about aligning chakras, something about opening the third eye, something about some rich guy angering the Icelandic government by moving a sacred site―literally moving it, the ground, the rocks, the trees, everything―from Iceland to America…huh, weird. The only picture was of a shipping container flanked by two bodyguards dressed in military fatigues and carrying very illegal submachine guns―P90s, I thought. There was something kind of familiar about one of the guys, but my eyes were blurring by this point, and I could barely keep them open.
“We need to get him home,” Marisol said with a sigh.
“I’ll bring a car around.” Phin left, and Marisol touched my cheek.
“Cillian? Are you ready to go?”
“So ready,” I muttered.
“Can you stand up?”
“Sure.” She helped me to my feet, and amazingly, I stayed there. My arm felt sore but not brutally painful, and I stared at it in awe as I slowly bent and straightened it. “Wow. It still works.”
“Yes, you little idiot, it does,” Marisol snapped. “Come on now, we have to get downstairs.”
“No, no more stairs!” I moaned. Maybe I was a little high at this point, or just stupid from blood loss. “I hate stairs.”
“Oh, me too, but you’ve got to handle them anyway. Come on.” She gripped me like iron around my arm and led the way down to the street. Phin had his own car pulled up, and it didn’t take long for us to get the few blocks back to Marisol’s place. The two of them got me upstairs and into bed after making me take another antibiotic. Once they were gone, I was on the verge of sleep. Such good, good sleep. I was so tired I knew I’d be unconscious fast. I relaxed, closed my eyes, and let the drugs and the pain and the stress carry me off to sleep. I hoped I’d be too tired to dream.
Instead I saw him, over and over again, his beautiful young face twisted by shock and fear as it vanished into a pool of blackness.
Chapter Six
Dreams were always a problem for me, but dreaming of him was the worst. I’d made a lot of bad decisions in my life, poor choices that couldn’t be explained away with youth and stupidity, but the things I did with him were far and away the most shameful moments of my life. I could try to excuse it by saying I’d been a captive, trying to escape before the patriarch of that twisted family lost patience and did away with me. I could say my mother had failed me by not letting me know about the danger that was coming before I tumbled into it, head over heels. I could say he should have been the one to bear the shame, since he had technically been free while I’d been the one imprisoned. All of that would be lies, though―awful, facetious lies. The truth was, I’d seen an opportunity in Sören’s eyes, and I took it.
I’d never witnessed anything like that in another fate since, a moment of teetering where my own actions would make a significant change in another person’s destiny. I’d never seen it
before that, either. By the time I’d realized what was going on, it had been too late to turn back. I might as well have shoved Sören down the lightless hole I saw in his eyes myself. The only thing I knew―knew completely, uncontrovertibly―was that he was dead. He had to be dead. There was nothing left to see. The vision ended in the dark, with all his fear and confusion and helpless anger consumed by…
I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know, but my mind wouldn’t let go of it. The painkillers kept me under for a long time, and every second of it was a misery, because every second of it was with Sören. Worst of all, it wasn’t just the end that replayed in my mind. I remembered every minute with him, from the first halting, shy glances to the heat of his fumbling, eager embrace. I remembered every moment of seducing him, turning him to my purpose and sealing his fate in a way I hadn’t understood then and hadn’t cared to. He’d been a means to an end, and it wasn’t until the end came that I’d realized what a goddamn idiot I’d been.
I woke up with a headache and a hard-on, which I glared at before stumbling to my feet and heading to the shower. My arm hurt―it hurt like hell―and I swallowed another painkiller and antibiotic before turning on the hot water.
“Cillian!” Marisol banged at my door. “You better not get that wound wet. Come here, let me wrap it.”
Oh, for the love of… I stared down at my crotch. Nope, still there. Whatever. I’d leave the door mostly shut and just hold my arm out. She could deal.
I opened the door a crack and saw Marisol, hair pulled back into a messy bun and wearing nothing but a purple sarong and her slippers.
She tapped the doorjamb with a box of plastic wrap. “Come on then, let me see it.”
“Hang on.” I tried to turn myself so I could stick my right arm out the door while still concealing the rest of me, but extending it was harder than I’d thought it would be.