by S. N. Graves
“Grateful? I built Colfter Industries. Made it what it is. Been running it since before you found your dick, you sniveling little—”
“Running it right into the ground.” The years and accumulated karma had not been so likewise kind to the man sitting across the desk from Arles. Time hung on his stepfather like a visible account of his crimes, each glaring liver spot a scarlet letter for his corrupt acts and the vile life he’d led because of them. Arles stared into those spots, connecting them in his mind with bitter relish as they began to tremble and quake with Marx’s flaring temper.
Marx slammed a fist into the desk, sending brutalized paper clips hopping in all directions. “Colfter is mine.”
“The corporation is Colfter Industries, Father. I’m the only Colfter in this room.”
“You weaseled it away from me. Don’t expect me to play grateful for the crumbs some spineless little rat leaves me.”
Arles sighed. His stepfather’s yelling had an unnatural calming effect on his own desires to be hostile. If Marx Donavan wanted to cower, he’d certainly give him something to fear, but if Daddy preferred to lose his cool so early in the negotiations, Arles was more than willing to recline in his overpriced chair and revel in the ease of it. “The only investment you’ve been responsible for that is still in the black is the AnyTown project. And that only because of back-alley dealings you know I’ve never supported. On moral grounds.”
“What do you know of morality?”
“I know it’s immoral to steal from a dying woman, Father. I know that. It was my mother’s company, and her father’s before her. I’m the only one here with a moral leg to stand on.” Arles reclined again, ignoring the chair’s whine as he forced it to rock back past its designed limit.
“You can’t take Colfter from me.”
“I have. It’s done. Was always just a matter of time. You knew that.”
Marx slumped, his shoulders hanging heavy in his tailored suit. He shook his head, playing the part of the old man to the very extent of his skills as he buried his face behind age-worn hands. If one didn’t know better—if Arles didn’t know better—it might have inspired a hint of pity or a pang of guilt for putting one so soon to leave this world through such distress.
Arles had no pity to give the man—was fresh out. He sat forward, his long fingers slipping around the edge of an ornate golden-framed image screen on Marx’s desk. He had no doubt the gold was real, but the excess of it barely reached his notice. Instead he focused a little too longingly on the three young girls in the image trapped within that golden cage. They’d grown up well. “They’re lovely. How are they?”
“My daughters are no concern of yours.”
“Why, Father, my sisters are every bit my concern.” He traced a single face with the tip of his finger; the other two figures in the image faded into the background. “They look happy. Well, two of them do, anyway.” Marx made a grab for it, and Arles jerked the frame from the old man’s reach. The motion swiveled his chair again, spinning him until his stepfather was at his back.
“They are not your sisters.”
“I’m well aware.” Tears welled in his eyes, blurred his vision. The wet sting obscured the youngest girl in the photo who held the center of his attention, her arms wound tightly around the mangiest mutt he’d ever seen. It had been so long since she would even speak to him.
“You are no son of mine.” Marx had said as much before. The man could add all the spit and venom to the words that he wanted; it wouldn’t increase the hurt. In fact, Arles had found the wound had long gone. “You’re a piece of trash that came along with your mother. Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed.” It wasn’t what Marx had said that set his teeth clenching together so fiercely his jaw ached, not really. Rather it was the reminder of his mother and how she too had been fool enough to buy into Marx’s bullshit. “I’m not one of your little girls. You can’t get in my head, Fath—”
“Do not call me Father!”
“I’ve always known, you realize? That you married her only for what she could give you. Even as a boy I knew what you were.” When he swiveled about again to face the man, he’d erased all trace of emotion from his features. He set the image back on the desk, though a purposeful inch or two from its original place.
“Just tell me what it will take, Arles.” Marx hurried to right the photo, driven by some compulsion that amused Arles more than it should have. “What do I have to do to get you to crawl back under your rock where you came from and leave this family alone?”
“Tell me what you’ve done with Sammy.”
“Still at this, are we?” There was a definite snarl there. Arles was sure he saw a slip of the man’s decrepit facade in his warning tone. “Go to hell.”
“I heard recently she’s taken ill again. That’s strange, don’t you think? The other two girls are so healthy. Of course, they’ve put some serious distance between you and them, haven’t they?”
“She’s fine. My girls are none of your business.”
“Poor Sammy, always in the hospital. Even with all the money you have, that you have stolen from me, you can’t keep her well.”
“Money.” Marx’s voice was back to booming levels in a matter of breaths. “That’s all you’ve ever cared about, isn’t it? That’s all you think about. You take this company from me and you destroy all of us. The whole family.”
“But I’m not part of this family, remember?” Arles rode his chair in dizzy circles like some little boy reluctantly taking a lecture from his ill-tempered daddy. “I’m just the obstacle between you and what you want most. Always have been.”
“I was a father to you. And this is how I am repaid. I sent you to the best schools. You never wanted for anything.”
“I wanted my mother. How about that? I wanted a real family.”
“You wanted my girls, you sick little bastard. From the moment your mother brought you into our lives, that’s all you’ve ever wanted.”
Arles snorted. His spinning in the chair slowed, but he continued the deliberate round-and-round just to spite the man who’d beat him blue for the same action many times as a boy. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but it still seemed to irk the old man enough to be worth doing. “I was a child.”
“To hell you were! You were a snake then and you’re a snake now.”
“Really, Father, first I am a weasel, then a rat, and now I am a snake.” The sigh was long and dramatic, and he ended the chair’s motion long enough to deliver his reply with as much straight-faced bewilderment as he could manage. “You exhaust me with your pronouncements. I’ll never meet with your approval if you keep changing your expectations of me.”
“You insufferable ass—”
“See!” He gave the chair one final violent spin before rising from his seat to lean over the desk, both palms placed firmly on its smooth surface. “How am I supposed to keep up?”
“There must be something to satisfy you. Something you want from me. Otherwise you wouldn’t bother with this personal visit. You’d have one of your lackeys sent down to do your dirty work.”
“Perhaps I just enjoy causing you grief.” He flashed his teeth, malevolence masquerading as a grin.
“I’d almost believe it, but I know you. What do you want?”
Arles canted his head thoughtfully, and gave the playful pretense of having to put some thought into the words that followed. “You said it yourself. I’m here for Sam.”
Marx didn’t speak for a long time. Not to tell him to go to hell or even to open barter. The silence made Arles’s smile grow absurdly wider. Even he would admit he looked a bit like the rabid dog when he permitted the malice inside to touch his face.
“No,” Marx finally said. “She won’t do it. I won’t make her.”
Arles allowed his features to shift back to something less crazed, and scooped up that precious picture of his stepsisters once more. “Well, now, let’s be truthful. You can make her do a lot of t
hings. Just not the one thing that really matters to you. Not yet, but soon, I’m guessing. Unless someone gets in your way. Again. That seems sort of my job, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t. Play dumb. Play old and feeble and win her through sympathy. That’s the game plan, right?”
“She’s afraid of you. With good reason.” Marx’s lips peeled back from his teeth threateningly as he gave Arles a long, appraising survey. “She thinks you’re a monster. A disgusting man. Nothing you can do now will change her mind.”
Arles’s smile wavered just a bit. He gave the image in his hand one last look, then spiked it onto the desk so hard it sparked and hissed as parts of the fractured screen sprayed out all over Marx. “Here is the deal, Daddy. She’s mine…and while she’s mine, you get to keep limited lordship over the company. I can’t have her distracted with ideas of you living under a bridge and handing out blowjobs for sustenance. So you keep the job, and you keep the other two girls, for now, and you count yourself lucky I’m only here for Sam.”
“She doesn’t want you!”
“Did I mention I’m not alone? Not this time. You can’t win this. Not against me. And especially not against me, and all of them.”
The old man’s hands stilled in their furious attempts to right the now shattered image display, stilled completely as he became calculating ice. Arles knew him well enough, knew he was running the options in his head, and knew it was only a matter of moments before he had his answer, if not his woman.
“You call her, get her down here now, and convince her to leave with me any way you have to, or I call my family. That is a terror you know you don’t want gunning for you.”
* * * *
“You know I don’t like guns, right?” Alex turned the weapon over in his hands, studying it like a spider caught between his fingers.
“Quit being such a little Nancy. It’s just a few interconnected pieces of metal. It don’t bite.” Jesse steadily fieldstripped one of the many weapons laid out on the table as he voiced his disapproval. He took the gun apart as if it were held together by Velcro—a bunch of quick snaps and he was done. It was amazing how Jesse managed to hit every cowboy cliché without even trying, from the low-hanging Stetson hat he wore to the beer he chugged periodically while working. The man was everything Alex wasn’t. Except for short—that was a shame they shared.
Jesse wiped his hands on his jeans, leaving grease stains behind that would have sent Alex to the showers instantly and on a panicked search for a change of clothes. Why did being a man seem to mean being filthy and poorly dressed? Ugh, no way he was getting gun grease on his shirt.
Setting the gun down, he pulled a piece of the old newsprint covering the hotel table out from under a stack of others and brought it to his lap. He stared at it a moment, wondering how practical it would be to wrap himself in it like a mummy before starting again on the gun cleaning. A glance at Jesse’s scowl put him off the idea fast, so instead he lifted the crinkly paper and tucked it into the neck of his silk shirt like a dinner napkin.
“Seriously?”
“What? I’ll never get grease stains out of silk.”
“Well, maybe you should wear something a little more durable.”
Alex picked up the gun from the table. “Like denim or whatever dishrag material your shirt is made of?”
“You watch yourself, boy. Bullets go through newsprint, you know.”
Alex suppressed a growl. “I like my clothes. It’s not my fault I don’t own anything befitting gun scrubbin’.” Trying on Jesse’s accent left a horrid taste in his mouth.
“Keep runnin’ your yap. I’ll have your daddy put your narrow ass on a train and you’ll be home by morning.”
“Oh, would you? Please?”
“You’re the one who asked to be more involved. Now you’re involved.”
“Not at some sleazy hotel picking at gun guts. I don’t even like guns. I want to be out there. With the rest of them. Doing what we do.”
“This is what we do. Before you get a gun in your hand, you have to learn to respect it. No one on this team wants you armed and ignorant. The instant you saw trouble, you’d be all flailing arms and spraying bullets.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“That is a subject very much up for debate.”
Alex looked at the gun for a long moment. “Why can’t we at least stay with Arles? He has a nice place. Clean sheets, a bathroom you can turn around in without having to back up first. Why do we have to stay in this roach bucket?”
“Arles has his own can of worms he’s sifting through. We’re just here to back him up.”
“It’s a woman. What kind of backup can we possibly provide?”
Jesse snapped the gun back into order and rubbed a soft cloth over its metal flesh, then waggled the weapon at Alex. “All the help he needs.”
“What, are we gonna shoot her? That’s one hell of a dangerous courtship. Has he tried just sending flowers?”
The gun twirled in Jesse’s hand and was suddenly cocked and aimed right at Alex’s nose. Alex looked down the barrel, and then to all those teeth Jesse flashed in a vicious grin. A grin turned all the more unsettling by the deep scars that raked up the side of the man’s face. “Keep it up, pup, and you can forget about the train. Daddy’ll be shipping you home in a shoe box.”
It was a little early in the night for threats, even if he knew they were empty. Jesse was only two beers in. Alex’s shoulders slumped. Okay, so maybe he could do with a bit more work, a bit less whine. He set the gun down and slipped a hand into his pocket, then pulled his long red hair back and tied it into a ponytail on top of his head, ignoring Jesse’s snort of disgust. It was bad enough he was going to have grease all under his nails. No way was he getting it in his hair too. Jesse could kiss his ass.
He picked the gun up and turned it over in his hands a few times before giving a section a good tug. Just like he’d seen Jesse do a hundred times before. It didn’t budge. He turned the gun again, but just as it hit him he was now looking down the barrel like an idiot, Jesse reached across the table and smacked the nose of the gun away from his.
“Boy, are you that stupid? You tryin’ to get your head blowed off?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this!”
“First you make sure all the safeties are engaged.”
He looked it over, pushed in the little levers. Check.
“Then you take out the magazine, and make sure there ain’t any bullets in the chamber.”
That step took a bit longer. He had to figure out how to eject the magazine, and then—the slide snapped closed on the tip of his finger. It was much harder to continue following Jesse’s verbal cues after that, what with his injured finger in his mouth and all. “This sucks. Guns are stupid.”
“Says the kid sucking on his finger.”
“It hurts!” He popped his throbbing finger from his lips and dropped the last two pieces of the gun onto the table. “And I’m not a kid.”
“Then stop acting like one.” Jesse scrubbed a hand over his tired face, then picked up another gun from the lineup. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you. You can’t fight. You scream and run at the sight of anything with fangs or claws. You can’t even help with prep. Alex, really, you should be at home with your computers and accounts. I’m sorry, son, I really am. You’re just no good in the field.”
He stared back at the man for a moment, resisting the urge to continue sucking his finger. “I can do things. I can do a lot of things.”
“Yeah, the gadgets and wires and hacker shit.” Jesse ripped the magazine from the gun in his hand. “A monkey could be trained to do that.”
“Then why don’t they have you doing it?” The finger went back between his lips, despite the overly sweet smile he put on.
“That’s it!” The gun smacked against the table as Jesse’s hands emphasized his words. “You’re just tryin
g to piss me off to get out of this, aren’t—” It smacked again, but this time the boom that followed cut all berating short.
Alex fell forward, the back of the chair exploding behind him. It took a moment for the pain to hit, for the ooze of red soaking the newsprint to make sense.
“Oh…shit.” Jesse set the gun down and slowly got to his feet, then reached across the table to push Alex’s sagging body back in the chair. “And…yeah, that’s why you always make sure the safety is on.”
The world crashed in on Alex, the light above the table searing through his eye sockets as he reeled from the stabbing pain mushrooming in his shoulder. Jesse lunged to catch him but missed as the chair toppled, dropping him onto the stained rug. He had a moment to be angry, a moment to be disgusted—there was no telling what foul, unmentionable things coated the carpet his face was now smooshed against—just a moment to be aware of his body responding against his will, and by then it was too late. His bones cracked, his clothes twisted and tore, and in an instant he was staring at black-and-scarlet paws coated in the goopy red that still gushed from his shoulder.
He scurried away from the pile of clothes—ruined despite the newsprint napkin—and launched himself under the bed.
“Great, just great.” Jesse kicked at the clothes pile. “You’re going to get dog hair and blood on everything, and your dad is going to kick my ass.”
Alex’s growl was a trill of annoyance. He wasn’t a damn dog.
Jesse chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You ain’t a dog. But with that rubber band in your hair, you kinda look like a pissed-off Pomeranian. It’s cute. We should take some pictures. You know…just as soon as you stop bleeding everywhere.”
II
“I killed him, Jerr.” The whine in Sam’s voice grated her nerves, but at least she wasn’t sobbing anymore. Even when her vehicle allowed her to ride hands-free, and she didn’t need to see the road to get to where she was going, the tears in her voice had initially confused the hell out of the electronic navigator. Luckily she’d caught the error and course corrected before she ended up in Timbuktu.