by Rhys Ford
The birds in question were definitely teal, bordering on a neon blue only found on stripper-joint signs and tik-tik cabs. They looked like every other chicken I’d ever seen except for their color. Then I remembered Jonas telling me something about one of his kids experimenting with a chemistry set behind their chicken coop and swearing to Hecate that he miscalculated the ingredients when he blew off the sidewall.
The Wyatt ranch was now the proud owner of a flock of teal hens, a brilliantly hued purple rooster, and an eight-year-old enrolled in witch school.
It was a great place to be a kid, I suppose. There was lots of land and a very tall chain-link fence to keep out most of the wildlife that lurked in the tall woods surrounding the back acres. The main house was large and grew with each child—a room tacked on here and there with little regard for order—but it was the kind of place people liked to gather in. A couple of trailers behind the house doubled as an office for the farm and guest houses for people staying any length of time.
A covered walkway connected a longhouse the family used for a dining room when everyone could get together for a meal, and its walls retracted up into hidden pockets when the weather was good. There was enough lawn to hold a baseball game if you didn’t mind a shoe or a large rock serving as a base, and the sandy pit next to the longhouse was big enough to mold an army of dinosaurs attacking a sand castle or play a set of volleyball.
The place wasn’t glamorous—not like the palace grounds at Balboa—but there was always food in the kitchen, soup on the stove, and hot water when you needed to shower. I’d licked more than a few wounds at the Wyatts’ ranch and probably would again in the future. Its welcoming air was both soothing and uncomfortable. I never knew what to do or say around people as affectionate as Jonas, his spouses, and his children, but they never pushed at me. They left me to make whatever overtures I wanted.
Okay, maybe not the kids, because like all kids, they were little assholes who had to get into anything and everything I was doing. Kaia and Rhianna wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace because they had to know everything about the world around them.
But the chickens would take a lot of explaining, and knowing Dempsey, he wouldn’t have the patience.
“Yeah, they’re blue. And don’t think this gets you out of talking about that stogie you’ve got poking out of your pie hole.” I ground my teeth and leaned forward in my chair—anything to stop the gurgle in my belly. “And what’s with you staying here at Jonas’s place? I’ve got a perfectly fine guest room, and it’s right next to Medical—”
“Because you’re working and doing runs.” He let out another puff of smoke, and the wind carried it toward me. I always hated the skunky, harsh smell of them, but a part of me didn’t mind. “They’ve got that trailer out behind the house and hot and cold running food. Besides, I like yelling at his kids.”
“But—”
“I don’t care how close you are to Medical, kid,” Dempsey snapped, giving his head a slight shake. “I’m not going to go back there. Don’t plan on it. You heard the quacks. I don’t have much time left, and I’m not going to spend it being hooked up to machines just so they can press my lungs out for one more breath. I want to sit out here on this porch, choke to death on cigar smoke, and burn a hole in my liver with cheap rotgut gin. There’s no saving me now, son. And you’re just going to have to wrap your tiny little brain around that.”
I wasn’t ready to think of my world without him in it. Maybe it was selfish or I was being naïve, but the time seemed way too short. Like I hadn’t been given long enough with the asshole who’d threatened to sell me because I was pretty but also taught me how to shoot a moving target while hanging out the passenger-side window of a Chevy truck on a rough country road.
“I’m not ready to give up the fight,” I argued. My throat tightened around a mash of anger and helplessness, and my voice caught on the jagged bits of pain that punctured my words. “There’s got to be something we can do. Someone we can—”
“What we’re going to do is, you’re going to go out on runs, and I’m going to sit here and slowly die.” Dempsey shut me down. “It’s what we’ve been doing these past few years. It’s just that you haven’t been paying attention. I’m tired, son. So I’ll be telling you things that I probably should’ve told you before, but I’ve never been one to sugar someone up, least of all you.
“I am a mean old bastard, always have been. I spent my life being the best fucking Stalker there ever was. I took chances. I risked everything. Hell, I was even willing to risk the people who went on runs with me. Doing a job with me meant there was a good chance you weren’t going to come home in anything but a body bag, and that was okay with me. A few people like Jonas and Sparky stuck by my side—not because I’m a good friend of theirs, but because they’re better people than I am.” He took another drag of his cigar and held in the puff until his lungs spat it back out. “And then there was you.”
“I owe you everything,” I muttered, working my hands around the once-cold bottle of beer I’d left unopened. “I can’t pay you back for everything you’ve done for me. There’s no fucking way I can even come close to….”
I choked. I couldn’t get anything out. The teal-blue hens were blurred behind a sea of tears I couldn’t shed. There was no crying in front of Dempsey. I’d learned that a long time ago. I’d been brought up hard, probably harder than a lot of people would’ve liked, but he was all I had. He was the reason I still lived, and I owed him for every breath I sucked in from the moment he took me on.
“Don’t get sentimental, not for me. I did my best by you. You turned around when I got too old and broken to do the job, and you carried me. So any debt that you think you owe me was paid off a long time ago.” Dempsey hawked a bit of spittle out and then flicked a piece of tobacco from his lip. “People might disagree with how I did my job, but nobody could argue I was the best there was. Thing is, I’m human. We break down and die. I knew with being who I am, the only legacy I would leave behind was my reputation as a Stalker. That was good enough for me until I got you.
“Some people thought I should have put a bullet in the back of your head. They told me you were brain damaged, not much better than one of those damned black dogs, but there was something about the way you fought to live. In a lot of ways, you reminded me of me.” He shot me a look, his broad mouth quirked into a wrinkled grin. “I knew I had to break you of… well, maybe not break you but discipline you in a way so you understood what you were doing wasn’t any good. Break’s the wrong word. You had a wild, strong spirit in you. You were bleeding out your back from the iron they put inside of you and starved nearly as close to death as any cat bastard can get without actually dying, but you were ready to take a piece out of anybody who came near you. And as much as I hated the elfin—and God in heaven how I fucking hate your people—I had to respect you for how much fight you had inside of you.”
“Dempsey—”
“No, you let me get this out. Because I’m stoned off my ass on what the doctors gave me, and I don’t give a shit what I say at this point.” He slapped at my hand when I reached for him, nearly knocking the cigar out from between his fingers. “I took you in because I knew people—other people—they would try to civilize you. That’s not what you needed. I knew that you needed every single little bit of fight you had in you, because I knew eventually the people who lost you were going to come looking for you. And you needed to be ready for them.
“What I didn’t expect was… I didn’t expect to care about you. I never imagined I would get scared about you dying on a run with me. Until one day when some asshole at the Post asked me how come I didn’t sell you on a street corner because you would make me more money than us going after a pack of ainmhi dubh.” He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed down his thick throat. “Took five men to pull me off of him. Took another five to pick up his teeth off the floor. And I remember screaming through the red haze around me that nobody talked about my son like that
. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a whore, but it’s a choice people make on their own. It’s not what a father does to his kid.”
I couldn’t see anymore. Hell, I couldn’t breathe. My tongue was swollen with everything I needed to say, but nothing could get my words loose. My chest was tight, and the pounding was either my heart or my fear at realizing that Dempsey was at the end of his line, confessing to everything he’d never told me because he was that much of a bastard and he’d done his best by me.
“One thing you should know before you go out on that run with that Sidhe lord—”
“I can’t go on that run.” There was no possible way I would leave him behind. Someone else could do it. Somebody else could drag Ryder and the remora Sebac sent down. “You’re—”
“Dying? Yeah, I fucking know that. I’ve known that for months. Even with everything you and everybody else have thrown at this shit that’s eating through me, it’s going to win. Death always wins, at least for guys like me. And well, everybody else you know… except for those bastards in Balboa.” He took a long swig of his beer and contemplated his smoldering cigar. “You’ve got to start knowing your own kind, Kai. I’d be the first one to tell you not to trust them, because they’re duplicitous bastards for the most part, but there’s got to be a few of them in there that are okay. I’m hoping Ryder is, because you’re gonna need allies who live longer than the likes of me. So, you’re going to go on that run, and you bring those people home just like I got you.
“Of everything I’ve done as a Stalker—every job people thought I couldn’t do—the best thing that ever came out of this life was you.” He chuckled. “I was the best Stalker of my time, and you’ll continue that. Because as good as I am, you’re a hell of a lot better.”
“I’m only what you made me,” I argued. We were always combative, and even then, as Dempsey flagellated his soul to bloody strips, we were going to fight about nothing and everything. “I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. I know you want me to go on that run because we don’t back out of contracts—”
“No, we don’t.” His growl frightened the chickens away from the porch and sent them scattering back to the yard. “I taught you better than that.”
“I just don’t want to….” With everything Dempsey said and the emotions he turned up inside of me, I was having a hard time getting past the decades of gruff backhanded compliments and sarcastic rejoinders. “I don’t want to go on a run and come back to find you dead. It’s not like I haven’t seen death before—”
“Hell, you and I have waded through some fields of death together,” he snorted.
“Yeah, we have.” I bit my lip, trying to find the end of my thoughts to grab on to something to say, anything that made sense of the chaos inside of me. “I don’t want you to die without me, old man. I know you’re going to spit and swear at me as you go, but you should know I’ll always have your back. I’ll always be there. And even if you don’t want me fighting this, I’m going to be damned if I’m not there at the end. Because no matter what you say, I owe you fucking everything, and you taught me better than to turn my back on a friend.”
“You and I are friends, boy. You’re my legacy. I’m proud that you’re a better Stalker than I am. Everything I’ve done won’t be forgotten, because you’re there, fighting anything in your path that tries to stop you or make you small.” Dempsey saluted me with his nearly empty beer bottle, his eyes pale behind water-sodden lashes. “No matter how you look or what blood is in your veins, you’re my son, Ciméara Dempsey Gracen. And on top of that, you’re the best damned man I know.”
Seven
THE FIRST thing Ryder said to me when I opened the door to let him in was “I want to drive.”
To the uninitiated that sentence coming out of Ryder’s mouth would probably seem like an innocuous request, but I knew better. I knew him better. It was the initial act of defiance, the first shot fired in what would prove to be a long, bloody rebellion. I took it as it was meant to be taken—as a clear challenge to my authority.
If I didn’t nip it in the bud, we would have minor tussles that would eventually lead to outright dismissal of my orders. I couldn’t have that, not on a run and not in my personal life. If I let Ryder move the line, he would continue to pick it up and shove me back until I found myself trapped in a cage I’d woven for myself simply by remaining silent.
So I immediately crushed his dreams of anarchy and domination.
“No.”
He made another run at it and brushed against my chest when he walked through the open door. “I need to be able to drive around the city, and with you in the passenger seat—”
A quick glance outside confirmed my suspicions. Ryder had never learned the word subtle. From what I could see, none of the Sidhe had. The accounts of their armies’ progress in war zones and battlefields during the conflict that followed the Merge read more like the historical accounts of the British invasions of nearly every territory they glanced at. The elfin traveled in caravans, set up elaborate tents and temporary domiciles, even sometimes built roads in places they would stay for longer than a week. They were one tea lady short of resembling a comedy skit featuring a gnawed-off leg and condemning accusations against innocent mosquitoes.
Ryder’s car was further proof of the Sidhe’s inability to do anything short of extravagant. Low-slung and sporting a silver-blue chameleon paint job, the roadster he’d parked in my driveway probably cost more than all the warehouses on the cul-de-sac combined. It was powerful, fast, and totally impractical to take on the gritty terrain of San Diego’s understreets.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how quickly that car is going to be stripped down for parts as soon as we lose sight of it.” I calculated the price of the tires—numbers so high for chunks of steel-reinforced rubber that my nose was about to bleed. “Hell, maybe they’ll wait till we leave.”
“It has an alarm,” Ryder replied as he smoothed down the crisp T-shirt he’d worn for our trip to Duffy’s place, “and a defense system as well.”
“Well, maybe you’ll be lucky and they’ll be sarcastic thieves, and they’ll leave them behind for you in the middle of the road to mock you.” I came back inside and grabbed my leather jacket. “We’re taking the truck. And if you’re lucky, I’ll let you ride shotgun instead of tossing you into the back.”
I WASN’T really in a talkative mood. Last night with Dempsey had stripped me raw and peeled me down to my marrow like one of Thor’s goats. But I didn’t feel resurrected when I woke up in the morning. There were still broken bits and parts of my soul scattered about the place, and I hadn’t picked up all the pieces when Ryder knocked on my door later that afternoon. I’d spent the day cleaning weapons and working on the Mustang, anything to keep my hands and mind busy and focusing away from the black masses that were eating Dempsey alive.
The trip into San Diego’s understreets was exactly what I needed. It was like a homecoming—familiar and dank and with a whiff of rotten sewage spicing the air. We’d lived in a lot of ghettos and shanties during my early years with Dempsey. Most of our money went for equipment and a seemingly never-ending supply of whiskey, so I’d grown up hard and dirty, with a hint of mean layered on top of whatever morals Jonas and Sparky tried to instill in me.
But there was always Dempsey. He wasn’t the father figure most people would have wanted. Some of them thought that the way he brought me up bordered on abuse or maybe even crossed into it. I usually told those people to fuck off. They had no idea of the countless days I’d spent marinating in pain, when with each passing week, a newer, more creative form of torture was introduced to my already-fractured body.
I never went hungry with Dempsey. He never beat me until I couldn’t see or carved my kneecaps out from my legs. He would slap the back of my head or shoulder when I did something stupid and grumble a lot about how much I ate, but he was always the one to refill my plate. He handed me my first gun and gave me a living by sponsoring me into a trade
that most people couldn’t handle, much less thrive at.
Dempsey made me more than a survivor—he made me a man. He laid down a framework for others to help fill, but in the end, he’d taught me that you don’t leave family or friends behind.
Even if all that was left of them was pieces of meat, you brought them home and raised a glass to who they were. I just… wasn’t ready to raise a glass for Dempsey. But it didn’t look like I was going to have much choice.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Ryder asked as we slipped into the shadowed tunnel that marked the entrance to the understreets. The lights of the covered road turned the truck’s cab blue and silvered Ryder’s features. I saw a bit of Alexa in his mouth, and the angle of his eyes reminded me of the twins, connecting his blood to mine. “Maybe if I can bring some healers down from San Francisco—”
“He isn’t going to go to any more doctors. Dempsey’s done.” I cut Ryder off. “Don’t think I didn’t try. He’s tired. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”
I didn’t know how other people dealt with impending loss. Sure, I’d been in situations where I knew someone was going to die in the next few minutes or even seconds. That was just how a Stalker’s life was. I’d known people—some of them I even called friend—who spent their last couple of breaths telling someone to take a message home or to make sure someone else knew how sorry they were for something they’d done. I’ve seen death come so swiftly for its next soul that the body didn’t even have a chance to react, and I’ve sat a long vigil, bloodied and bruised from a run gone wrong, waiting for the Grim Reaper to make his rounds.
The timeline I’d been given with Dempsey was shaky, but I’d been reassured up one way and back down the other that he’d be there when I came off of the run for Duffy. He might even be around for the next ten runs. No one knew. It all depended upon him and his willingness to do what the doctors told him.