Swift and the Black Dog

by Ginn Hale

  Jack glanced to Finch. The other man bowed his head, working his fork through his rice. A shamed flush colored his cheeks like he’d been slapped in the face. Jack felt like a shit for doing that to him. He wished he possessed the finesse to seamlessly shift the subject but that wasn’t in him. Instead he pushed on.

  “You couldn’t have been too old then. You remember much of the place?” Jack asked.

  “Some.” Finch stole a glance up at him and seemed to find reassurance.

  “I heard that the stables and kennels were huge.” Jack took another drink. “All I ever saw of it was after the palaces were sacked…. All burnt out. But I always did wonder.”

  “The kennels and hunting grounds were actually beautiful places. Big open fields for the horses. Giant runs for the dogs, and of course mews the size of townhouses where you could watch the hawks and owls flying.” Finch took a tentative bite of his rice. “I used to trail after my mom and help her feed the dogs.”

  “Yeah?” Jack thought of the tyrant’s bitch and the statue where he and Rachael had buried the ivory gun. Finch nodded. Some of the flush had faded from his face and he looked more at ease now. He sipped his beer and pointed to the pictures hanging on his wall.

  “There was one big black mastiff that I loved. Bess. I think I spent more time with her and her puppies than I did with any of the other servants’ kids. I used to wander all across the woods and wilds playing with her.”

  Jack stared at the photos, recognizing the joy and innocence of both the beast and the boy.

  “I didn’t really understand what the revolution was at first. I was nine when the fighting began.” Finch took another drink and stared at the suds sliding down along the inside of his glass before he met Jack’s eyes again. “By the end though, I knew what the Tyrant had been and done. My uncle hated him with a passion.”

  Jack nodded. By the end most people had hated the man. Though thinking back on it now, Jack wondered how much of that anger had stemmed from years of his seeming inability to secure the streets and ledges from the terror that Jack and his lot had relentlessly unleashed.

  “Just before the palace fell, my uncle managed to smuggle me back down to a friend of his on the Bone Ledge. Linda, actually. Three months after that the Tyrant was dead and the purges started.” Finch left off there and Jack understood why.

  He’d been at the palace back then and seen it for himself. A seat of honor had even been provided for him at the start of the purges. It had been then that he’d lost what few illusions he’d held about the moral superiority of the men and women filling the seats of power after the Tyrant’s death.

  They’d staged a few sham trials for newsreels, then ordered so many summary executions that firing squads had worked for months like assembly lines specially designed to turn out corpses. Every evening a fleet of garbage trucks had hauled away the bodies of maids, accountants, butlers, tailors, singers and nearly every other hapless worker unlucky enough to be deemed loyal to the Tyrant’s coin.

  Finch would have been sixteen when he was orphaned and every childhood friend he’d known had been dumped into the mass graves that now made up the public gardens of the Palace Ledge. Wasn’t any wonder he’d signed on for the three square meals and free bunk of a Ministry of Security recruit. Cradling a gun had probably been its own kind of comfort then too.

  Though, these days it was hard to find anybody who didn’t have a sad story if you dug deep enough. Still Finch didn’t seem the type to work that angle or want pity.

  “You’ve obviously done good for yourself,” Jack commented. “This is a nice place. Better than my lodgings, I’ll tell you that.”

  Finch indulged in a smile and looked relieved at the change of subject.

  “I’m part owner of the café.” Finch’s pride in the fact sounded through his voice.

  “Really? At your age?”

  “I’m not that much younger than you,” Finch replied, then he shrugged. “I didn’t have anything to spend my pay on and I knew Linda and her husband, Adil, could run a place like this in their sleep. It was a little rocky the first two years but now they’re doing great and I have room and all the board I could ask for.”

  “The food’s certainly fine by me,” Jack agreed.

  Jack helped himself to some onions. They tasted good, in a way that he could never make his own cooking taste. Sweet and hot. Perfect with the cheap beer. Across from him, Finch relaxed in his chair. He ate, sipped his beer and cast Jack one of those flattering smiles that warmed Jack deep inside.

  Briefly, Jack indulged in the peace and ease of the moment. How good would it be to have a whole life like this?

  Then his gaze caught again on the pictures hanging on the wall. That happy boy and his huge mastiff stared back at Jack. He knew that animal. Jack turned his attention to Finch.

  “Are you going to tell me how you really got your hands on the ivory gun?” Jack asked.

  “I told you,” Finch replied but he stole a telling glance to the photos. “I went poking around in the mud and just found it.”

  Jack scowled and considered Finch.

  “But what got you poking around out there?”

  “I…” Finch frowned, his gaze shifting into a distance that Jack couldn’t see. “You’re not going to believe me.”

  “Well, that’s my problem then, isn’t it?” Jack responded.

  Finch picked up his beer glass but then put it back down.

  “I was evacuated just like I said. I woke up in the middle of the night and Bess was there beside me.”

  “The Tyrant’s mastiff?”

  Finch nodded.

  “She was standing over my sleeping mat. I knew she’d been killed and that I had to be dreaming but she seemed so real…. I got up and she led me out to the courtyard and lay down. I hardly noticed how hard it was raining, I felt so happy that she was with me again. But when I reached out to pet her, my hand sank through her into the mud. The gun was just there.”

  Finch picked up his beer again and this time drained it. “She’s come to me a few other times since then. Led me to lost things or missing people. She kept one boy who we pulled from the river from freezing. Laid down on him… though none of the other guys with me seemed to see her.”

  “Well, fuck….” Jack stared at Finch.

  “It’s the truth. I know it sounds crazy—”

  “Not crazy.” Jack cut him off. “Sounds like you’re a wizard.”

  “What? No.” Finch protested. “It’s Bess. She’s the one—”

  “She’s your Way,” Jack told him. “You work your magic through her form because deep inside you, she symbolizes something important and powerful to you.”

  It made sense now, how the gun had come to Finch and how Finch had known exactly where Jack would go. Neither luck nor chance was at play here, but the subtle magic of a young man who didn’t recognize how powerfully he compelled the world around him to his will.

  No, Jack thought, Finch didn’t compel anything. He wasn’t a tyrant or a revolutionary. He found what was lost and with a modesty that made him unaware of even his own power.

  “Wouldn’t I know, if that were the case?” Finch’s tone sounded somewhere between argument and question.

  “Wizard’s Ways aren’t like what they show in the films,” Jack replied. “It’s not like we sit down and decide. I didn’t think to myself, I’m gonna work magic by smoking and being kicked through a six-story window. My Way just came out of that.” Jack considered Finch’s unconvinced expression. “You know Haddad, right?”

  “Haddad, the Hawk.” Finch brightened, clearly relieved not to be discussing himself anymore. “Of course, who doesn’t?”

  Jack nodded. Of course everyone knew Haddad—except almost no one had really known the gentle, deeply religious boy he’d truly been. Posters and propaganda had transformed him into a stoic, bearded man flanked by blood-soaked birds of prey. The images probably would have made Haddad’s pacifist mother cry—if she’d lived to se
e them.

  “Well, let me tell you something you probably don’t know about him. Before they were torched by the Fireguard, Haddad’s family raised temple pigeons. Haddad loved the things. When he first discovered he was a wizard it was after the fire, when he was homeless and starving. All of a sudden pigeons started flapping out of his coat to bring him bits of food and keep him warm. Like you, Haddad didn’t believe that the birds were actually part of him—his Way of using magic. He thought they were the ghosts of his family. Wouldn’t be convinced otherwise, by anyone.” Jack sipped his beer, savoring the edge of bitterness, and then went on. “But later, when the fighting turned ugly, Haddad…changed and so did his birds.”

  At the time Jack had been delighted to see all those white, cooing little birds molt into blood-spattered monsters with beaks like knife-blades and steel scythes for talons. He’d been so delighted in their violence that it hadn’t even occurred to him that the change in Haddad’s Way reflected a much deeper break in the youth himself.

  To this day, Jack wasn’t certain if it really had been an assassination at the end of the revolution or if Haddad had simply gone to the burnt out remnants of his parents’ temple-house and slit his own throat.

  “He didn’t want them to be, but those birds were him,” Jack said at last. “His Way.”

  “I can see how that might be true for Haddad,” Finch conceded. “But I’m not—“

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to out you to anyone,” Jack said. “You can make what you will of what you’ve been given. Call it what you want. Your Way or just sheer luck. You decide for yourself. That’s what we all do.”

  Finch seemed to consider Jack’s words as he studied the chapped knuckles of his hands.

  “You really think that I could be—that I am—a wizard?” Finch lifted his head to meet Jack’s gaze.

  “As much of a wizard as I am,” Jack replied. “But that doesn’t have to mean anything more than you want it to. You’re still the same man.”

  “Like you?” Finch smiled slightly.

  Likely better than me, Jack thought but he nodded. Finch appeared to take comfort in the comparison. Jack did too, a little. Had things been different, maybe he could have been the sort of upstanding man that Finch imagined him to be—that Finch actually seemed to be.

  Music from a neighboring theater drifted in and Jack realized that it would be dark soon. Already, sunset colors backlit the drape hanging over Finch’s fire landing.

  The ivory gun waited in the tin box on a shelf, but there were still a few hours until Jack would have to go and keep his promise to Rachael.

  A little time still to enjoy what last pleasure he could.

  Jack stood. “Why don’t you show me what else we have in common?”

  He took Finch’s hand and drew him to the neat sofa-bed.

  Chapter Seven

  Jack had anticipated something quick and off-handed, like any of the boozy blowjobs he’d enjoyed in bathrooms and alleys. A little fun to fill the time, maybe make him feel alive, but nothing serious or sweet.

  Only he wasn’t drunk enough for that unconcerned fumble for his fly. He felt far too clear-headed and too aware of Finch as more than a well-built lay. He had too much of an idea of Finch as a man—as a human being.

  The few moments they bent together, unfolding the couch into a bed, seemed both foolish and friendly. The springs squeaked and squealed.

  “Doesn’t get unfolded often, I take it?” Jack commented. Finch flushed and Jack felt like an ass. But then Finch tossed one of the cushions at Jack’s head and hit him square in the face.

  “No. You are among the esteemed few to merit the trouble of bringing up the stairs.” Finch replied in a facetious tone and yet Jack didn’t think he was lying.

  “I better be worth the trouble then, yeah?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, you better,” Finch said, laughing.

  Then he dropped to the edge of the bed to pull off his boots and socks. His bare feet struck Jack as strangely exposed and intimate. For the better part of a decade, Jack hadn’t bothered with beds or full names, much less the odd little striptease of removing his clothes. He’d fucked standing up and with his boots on.

  The music drifting from nearby theaters lent a dreamy tempo to the quiet of the room. Jack watched as Finch unbuttoned his crisp uniform shirt and hung it neatly over a chair back. He pulled his undershirt over his head, exposing the muscular expanse of his bare chest. A single fine white scar slit through his dark body hair. It looked neat and surgical, the result of an appendectomy maybe.

  Nothing like the ugly coils of burns marring Jack’s right arm or the jagged and puckered contortions carved into Jack’s body by knife blades and bullets. The two of them might have only been seven years apart in age but in comparison to Finch Jack felt like a broken old man.

  Finch glanced up at him and a wave of nervousness came over Jack.

  “You’re a looker, that’s for damn sure,” Jack said.

  Finch didn’t ask but Jack read the concern in his expression. Then Finch reached out and caught Jack’s belt loops and pulled him closer. He unbuckled Jack’s belt and opened the front of his pants with a quick certainty. Jack’s erection jutted up at Finch’s smiling mouth and Finch obliged, making Jack feel good and wanted.

  Jack kept himself from clenching fistfuls of Finch’s thick, dark hair like a man desperate not to be thrown. Instead, he stroked Finch’s head, felt the softness of his hair and at the same time shuddered as ecstasy sparked up and deep down the length of his dick.

  Afterwards, when he had come down Finch’s throat, and should have been done with the other man and this place, Jack found himself dropping down onto the bed. He kissed Finch’s mouth, tasting himself amidst the spice and heat of Finch. He pushed Finch back and returned the pleasure he’d been given. Finch gasped and groaned with pleasure, thrusting and clutching at Jack with a flattering abandon.

  Then they lay together.

  Jack drifted but didn’t sleep. He allowed Finch to ease away his clothes to stroke and caress him. It had been so long since anyone had bothered to treat him like this. So long since he’d allowed it.

  But then, he didn’t suppose he’d live long enough after tonight to feel like he’d made a fool of himself over a few kisses and caresses. He could afford a brief romantic indulgence.

  Jack wrapped his arm around Finch and hugged him to his side. He breathed in the scent of Finch and himself, which saturated the sheets and filled the air, and he felt oddly calm.

  Bright colored theater lights flared and flashed outside, casting a diffused glow through Finch’s drapes. A little spotlight fell across Finch’s hip and another lit Jack’s right shoulder. A cat yowled off key to the melody piping up from some dancehall.

  They fucked and held each other.

  Belatedly Finch remembered that he had to set his alarm. He and his friends planned to deliver the warrant of the Minister’s arrest first thing in the morning, before word could get out. He didn’t ask Jack to join them, but simply lay down with him and fell asleep in his arms.

  Jack waited until he was certain Finch wouldn’t wake. He eased himself out of the bed, dressed and found the ivory gun. Then he stepped out onto the fire balcony and was away on the rising wind.

  Chapter Eight

  The wind howled and thunder drowned out the shouts of the alarmed security men. Teams of them fired into the crashing clouds. The muzzle flash of their machine guns sparked like cheap firecrackers as blinding bolts of white lightning tore through the steel gates surrounding Peter’s stately home.

  Jack watched from the rooftop as the grand theatrics of the storm drew more guards from the house. Shadows and wind lent the illusion of forms to clouds and each man on the ground seemed to see Jack up in the lightning. They emptied their guns and screamed into radios for more ammunition.

  Jack exhaled a final breath of smoke, drawing the blue streams around his fingers. Then he crushed out his cigarette.

  He
eased himself down the slate tiles to the eaves and then dropped to an ornate balcony. Two stone gargoyles glowered at him, but the pin tumbler lock gave way easily enough. Jack let himself into a large, dim bedroom. The vague forms of naked figures loomed from picture frames on the walls. Jack padded past the immense empty bed and its disarray of twisted silk sheets. Full-length mirrors stirred with Jack’s reflection and his own face scowled at him through the gloom as he passed dozens of gilt-framed looking glasses.

  Jack slipped out into the hall where light flared from cut crystal fixtures overhead and glinted off more silvery mirrors.

  Two doors down a guard stood but his attention was obviously absorbed by eavesdropping on the orders shouted from behind the door he defended. A voice rose over the noise of the storm outside and Jack knew it at once. Peter snapped annoyed commands into the hiss and crackle of a radio. The guard sighed and rocked on his heels then he started to turn in Jack’s direction.

  Jack took him fast and could have killed him with a gesture. Should have.

  But he looked so young, so scared.

  Like a fucking idiot, Jack thought of Finch and paused.

  Pale-faced and gaping, the guard fired off a single round. Jack felt the bullet kick into him like the blow of a sledgehammer.

  There was where sympathy for an enemy led.

  Wet heat seared down Jack’s ribs but the pain of the bullet wound hadn’t hit him yet. The guard’s hand squeezed around the grip of his pistol but Jack didn’t give him a second chance.

  Brilliant volts exploded from Jack’s hands, slamming the guard through the door and dropping him to the woven carpet in a steaming heap. Lights all down the hall burned out and the air crackled with bursts of wild electricity.