Blood Ties

by Robert J. Crane

  Well, into a monster. An actual, literal monster.

  And one with a dangerous agenda that leaned toward some sort of revenge.

  What kind? Well, that was the question, wasn’t it?

  I settled back in my seat to try and contemplate it, but once again, I felt like I was up against a wall of unknowns. I couldn’t even guess his plans, because I didn’t have any idea what was in the realm of possibility for him. Unlocking my phone, I hurriedly made a call.

  “Hey, Mendelsohn, it’s me. I got the name of our Grendel. Call me back when you get this. He’s definitely a tech guy, and I’m definitely in over my head on this, but I think I’ve got the why.”

  I settled back, trying to war against my own lack of knowledge in this. I couldn’t hammer my way through this wall, though, and after a few minutes of letting my brain whirl, I fell asleep against the soft seat of the limo, without a thought left in my head.

  75.

  Friday

  Friday awoke pumped about the amazing day to come. It was going to be pure dynamite and totally kittens.

  But probably not both those at the same time, because dynamite plus kittens would be messy. In the worst, non-sexy sort of way.

  He vaulted out of bed as the frame protested his weight and movement with a violent squeal. “That’s right, bitch,” he said to the bed. “Take it. Take it all.” Then he slapped his own bare ass, grabbed his phone, and headed for the bathroom.

  Friday made it about halfway through his morning pee before he felt the need to do a spit take. So he pinched off mid-piss, filled up a cup of water, drank it, then spit it wildly on the mirror. For comic effect.

  “What the helllllll?” He grinned ear to ear.

  He’d gone viral.

  Mad viral. Crazy viral. From one end of the ’net to the other viral.

  “Hell yes.” He pumped his fist. This was great. Five hundred thousand shares of his post. Twenty million views.

  One point five million comments.

  “I’m glad you’re still out,” he said, talking down to his junk. “Because I’m going to need to touch you after this.”

  It was wilder than his wildest dreams. Just looking at the numbers was sick. Which post was this, even?

  Oh, the angry lesbians one. Made sense. Everyone loved lesbians.

  “So many new fans,” he said, just dwelling on those numbers. “They’re going get pumped over my new gym vids this morning. Time to get it on.” He flexed. So many possibilities. So many more people to push content to.

  His album was going to go quintuple platinum. Or whatever.

  Well, this was amazing. Just staring at those circulation numbers...the reactions...so much—

  Friday blinked. He’d scrolled to the first comment, the most Liked comment, and it was...

  Please stick your hand in your mouth up to the shoulder and then swell it to maximum size so your head will explode and we’ll be rid of you.

  “Well, there’s always a contrary opinion in every crowd,” Friday said. Why did that feel so...

  Wounding?

  “Whatever,” Friday said, shaking it off. He kept scrolling...

  We hate you. Please die kkthx.

  And scrolling...

  Kill yourslef and save us the trubble

  Wish you’d just kill yourself.

  Kill yourself.

  Please kill yourself.

  Kill yourself.

  “Oh,” Friday said, still scrolling.

  You are the worst person in the world today.

  I hope you fall off a building and land on your head so your ugly face smashes up inside that stupid gimp mask.

  Die. Just die.

  Have you tried drinking bleach and ammonia? You should. It’d help clean you up.

  “I don’t think that’s chemically smart,” Friday said. What was this curious falling sensation?

  Oh, right. His hopes and dreams.

  “They hate me,” he said quietly.

  Man.

  Maybe this day was not going to be kittens at all. Or maybe it really was kittens plus dynamite, in the worst, non-sexy way.

  Friday sat quietly back on the bed and kept scrolling.

  It did not get any better.

  76.

  Sienna

  Waking up sucks.

  Waking up to your driver kicking you out of the limo so he can go home and sleep? That’s marginally better, I suppose.

  It didn’t feel better, though, as I dragged my ass through the lobby, ignoring the early morning crowd of people in athleisurewear, taking advantage of the continental breakfast.

  I’d gotten hours of sleep last night, yet somehow I felt worse than if I hadn’t slept at all. When the elevator doors closed on me, I saw in the stainless steel reflection that I did not, indeed, look particularly good. My hair was mashed up on one side, kinked and frizzed. My eyes were bleary and half-closed.

  I looked about like I felt, then. Suddenly I regretted passing on that continental breakfast, because a lone rumble of hunger reminded me that my last meal had been a glass of milk the evening before.

  The elevator dinged open, not on my floor, and an older gentleman started to get in.

  “Going up?” I asked.

  He glanced at me for a second before answering. “No, I’m—oh, damn.” He shook his head and stepped back out, casting a wary stink-eye over me as the door closed.

  I couldn’t blame him. I’d seen how I looked after all. I’d looked better after Grendel killed me that first time.

  As I waited for the elevator to slowly climb, I pulled out my phone. As the screen flared to life, I saw I had...um...

  About five thousand notifications.

  “When did I put you on silent?” I asked the empty elevator. Must have happened during my meeting with Brittle Bruce. I counted a hundred and fifty(!) text message alerts.

  75 were from Shaw.

  22 were from Director Chalke.

  13 from Agent Holloway (that sack of ass).

  10 from Agent Hilton.

  The rest were from a wide variety of acquaintances, including Gravity, a couple of neighbors in New York I’d gotten to know, and some other agents of my acquaintance from the bureau’s main office in NYC, as well as a couple from my NYPD contacts. Glancing at them, I noticed a common theme:

  Friday had once again shat the bed.

  Shaw’s were the most colorful. He’d started out with very basic, “Hey! Call me!”-type texts last night. As the night went on they seemed to follow the pattern of the five stages of grief. Hard to say where he was now, but it felt like he’d somehow looped back to ANGER, because his latest text was a torrent of creative rage, verging on profanity but pulling back just before he got there.

  I let out a low moan. I was already tired enough; like I needed to deal with another Friday crisis right now. Just as my case was starting to actually develop into something serious.

  Dialing back Shaw, I figured I’d take a few minutes and soothe his worried soul before moving on to the next task in my investigation, which was trying to find some ways to even up the odds when next I clashed with Michael Bermudez, aka Grendel.

  Shaw answered on the first ring. “Where have you been?” The tension in his voice wouldn’t have been out of place if he’d been mid-colonoscopy. With no anesthesia.

  “It’s been a long night,” I said. “But I finally figured out who Grendel is—”

  “Have you seen this shitstorm we’re in thanks to your Guy Friday?”

  I felt personally attacked on that one. “Hey, I’m not the one who made an ‘approved backup’ list and told me not to deviate from it while we’re facing the biggest, meanest, most murderously dangerous meta I’ve ever fought, okay? I may know him, but you’re the one who backed me into a corner to take his help.”

  “Have you seen what he did?” The strain in Shaw’s voice ratcheted up.

  “No, I was busy solving a case,” I said. “And I hav—”

  “He posted something last
night that went viral,” Shaw said, plowing right over my progress report. “A homophobic screed against lesbians.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, that is obviously very bad—”

  “Do you have any idea the hell this is kicking up?” Shaw asked, sounding like he was about to unleash on me with his singing voice. It was probably pretty smooth. Maybe not right now, with all the rage he was feeling, though. “I’ve been called this morning by Senators. Congresspeople. Chalke’s talked to the President—”

  “Good grief, what did he say?” I asked, my curiosity naturally piqued. “Something appropriately moronic, I assume?”

  “I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” Shaw said.

  “Okay, well, I’m kind of in the middle of solving this Grendel thing—” I started.

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “There is no solving right now. You are now officially in damage control.”

  “Uh, what?” Somehow I’d made the entire journey to my room without even realizing it. Must have gotten involved in the conversation to the point where the world blotted itself out. I didn’t even remember the elevator dinging. “I’m trying to catch a dangerous murderer—”

  “This takes priority,” Shaw said.

  “Beg pardon?!” I couldn’t quite keep my surprise at bay on that.

  “He’s damaged the reputation of the bureau with his comments,” Shaw said. “It’s a firestorm here, and in Washington. The press are all over us.”

  “Look, I’m not condoning...whatever it is he said, because Friday talks enough stupid shit that I’d never, ever, defend his position,” I said, my brain whirling fast. Somehow I’d woken up from dazed to alert in the moments since unlocking my phone to check the messages. “But we have an actual, murderous, devastatingly evil meta tearing through the Bay Area. How does making apologies for Friday’s dumbassery take priority over that?”

  “You have good reflexes,” Shaw said, so smoothly I was sure he’d anticipated my response and prepared this in advance. “You can juggle.”

  Somehow I felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders right now. And if not the world, at least the J. Edgar Hoover building. “I’m not sure this is a thing you want me to juggle, okay? If Friday doesn’t dash a ‘sorry’ letter out in the next 72 hours, some folks might be rightfully offended. If I don’t stop Grendel, people will die. I’m not saying I won’t work to address the Friday problem, I’m just saying that maybe we need to prioritize—”

  “You need to listen to me!” Shaw exploded. I guess his colonoscopy had hit an interior wall. “The bureau is not pleased.”

  “Meaning Chalke is not pleased,” I filled in the blank for him.

  He didn’t stop to acknowledge that. “We look like backward, bigoted numbskulls thanks to your external hire!” Shaw was building a fine head of steam and I didn’t feel I could stop him just now. “You need to find him, and get both your sorry asses on a conference call now. We need to take steps to address this immediately, if not sooner.”

  “Can’t get much sooner than immediately,” I snarked.

  “This is your priority, Nealon,” Shaw said, all heat gone. He was just gravely serious at this point. “Do you understand me?”

  “Get Friday, get on a call,” I said, parroting it back. “So we can fix this mess. Yeah, I got it.”

  “Good. Call me back when you’ve located him.” And Shaw hung up.

  I wanted to drop down on the bed, but I didn’t. “Sonofabitch,” I muttered, instead, and put aside my seemingly endless fatigue to go knock on Friday’s door, hoping that maybe—just maybe—if we worked quickly, we could solve this problem and get back to work on stopping Grendel.

  77.

  “Friday?” I hammered his door. “Friday, are you in there?” It rattled in the frame, echoing up and down the hotel hallway.

  “Go away,” came a small voice from inside.

  I paused in my hammering, unsure of what I’d heard. “Friday, is that you?”

  “Please,” the small voice came again. “Just leave me alone.”

  “I wish I could,” I said, “but I can’t do that. I need to talk to you. Like now. Immediatemente. Post haste. Extremely soon—”

  The door opened, and Friday stood there before me—

  And he was...tiny.

  “What the actual eff...?” I stared at him. While he was a little taller than me, his muscles were nearly nonexistent, like he’d been on a hunger strike for six years. There was more meat on a hamster’s leg than his.

  “I’d really like to be alone right now.” His voice was soft, so soft, lacking that hard, Bale-Batman gruffness that he seemed to apply as liberally as I might add hot fudge to a sundae.

  “And I’d love to let you be alone and whatnot,” I said, “but we have a problem.”

  He was still wearing his mask, but he’d hung his head. “I did something very wrong, didn’t I?”

  “Apparently,” I said. “Though I’m unclear on exactly what it was. Shaw just tore a strip out of my ass, told me to collect you and get on a conference call so we can do damage control on this, uh...mess.”

  “Okay,” Friday said, hanging his head. “Let me get my phone.”

  “Right,” I said, and he went over to the dresser and slid open one of the drawers. He pulled out his phone, holding it like it was toxic, clutched between thumb and index finger. He walked with slumped shoulders, and I tried to remember a time when I’d seen Friday so...

  Glum.

  I couldn’t think of one, other than maybe when he’d told me about Vlad/Hades gripping his soul so tight he felt like he was going to die, and not having the words to express that feeling other than sheer terror.

  We walked back to my room and I dialed Shaw as we did so. “Got him,” I said.

  “Great, I’m conferencing you in,” Shaw said, and the phone seemed to go dead, but didn’t hang up.

  A moment later, a great staticky burst blew in my ear, and I yanked the phone away from it. “Are you there?” Shaw’s voice came, tinny and small, through the speaker.

  “Yeah,” I said, not bothering with speakerphone, because Friday and I were metas and could hear just fine. “We’re both here.”

  “Good.” Director Chalke’s strident voice cut through the call. “Your...subcontractor...is there, then?”

  I’d just said that. Friday didn’t answer, so I did it for him. “Yes. He’s right beside me.”

  Friday was still hanging his head, looking at his shoes. His entire ensemble looked way overgrown on him without his muscles.

  “I hope you realize the giant mess you’ve made, Agent Jacksen,” Chalke said. She sounded surprisingly calm about the whole thing, but there was no shortage of recrimination in her tone.

  “I’m sorry,” Friday said, just above a whisper.

  “What was that?” Chalke asked.

  Friday inched a little closer to the phone. “I said ‘I’m sorry.’”

  “‘Sorry’ is not going to cut it,” Chalke said, clipped. “Not for this. Your actions have reflected extremely poorly on the bureau, making us look just as backward as every negative stereotype people have of officers of the law. We are trying to transform this agency into a forward-looking bastion of integrity in law enforcement, and there’s no room for bigotry in our halls.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling like I ought to say at least a little something on Friday’s behalf. “That’s fair. A good aim. I would like to say, on Friday’s behalf, he seems genuinely contrite about his error—”

  “I am so sorry,” Friday mumbled into the phone. “I said something really stupid. I’ll apologize. Just tell me what to say.”

  There was a moment of silence, then a smooth voice cut in.

  A very...familiar voice.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that. It’s so much easier to defuse these things when you have a subject who genuinely wants to make amends,” the man said, and my spine tingled a little bit because...yeah, I knew that voice.

>   Russ Bilson.

  Cable news commentator. Political organizer.

  Oh, and Washington, DC’s biggest slimeball.

  78.

  “Bilson?” I asked, just to confirm what my gut had already told me.

  “None other,” Bilson said, and I could feel the smugness ooze over the phone. I’d become very familiar with it listening to him on cable news during the years of my exile. He’d bashed me every single night on every forum available to him, usually without anyone taking up my defense on the other side of the argument.

  “I didn’t know you worked for the bureau,” I said, feeling my face contract into a steely mask. Even though he couldn’t see me, I felt a compulsion to keep my emotions on a tight leash around him. Trust Bilson? Hah. Only as far as I could throw the Hoover building. Lucky it was already on my shoulders.

  “In times like this,” Director Chalke cut in, “the bureau employs outside crisis management firms like Mr. Bilson’s.”

  “Huh,” I said. “And I thought you were just a lobbyist.”

  And backroom-dealing slimeball, I didn’t bother to add. He probably picked up on it anyway, based on his chuckle.

  “When it comes to image and messaging, I’m the pro from Dover,” Bilson said. That smile. I was so glad it wasn’t a video-conference because I shuddered and my fists clenched. “Right now, thanks to your pal Mr. Jacksen, the bureau has a very large imaging and messaging problem. The image is, ‘We’re a bunch of backward, bigoted good ol’ boys who tell anti-gay jokes in our musty locker rooms.’ And the message is, ‘we hate gay people.’”

  “That’s a lot to apply to a whole bureau based on whatever the hell Friday posted on Socialite,” I said, rubbing my face with my hands. “Which I still haven’t heard.”

  “It was a question about why lesbians are angry,” Friday said quietly. “You know, what we were talking about yesterday.”

  My jaw dropped a little. “You posted that online? In the name of...WHY?!”