by Lee French
“What?” Bobby watched two men in dark suits get out of the car, then saw they wore sunglasses despite the darkness. He waved the guy off. “No, go on and git. I ain’t selling nothing.” When he saw two more suits step out of the SUV, he knew something had to be up. Guys in suits showing up to Christopher’s neighborhood couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Nobody just stands around here.” The guy didn’t seem nervous anymore.
Bobby waved the guy off and walked around the corner of the building, intending to hurry up the stairs to Christopher’s door.
“Stop.” The unmistakable sound of a gun cocking got Bobby’s attention.
Raising his hands, he stopped and turned around. “I ain’t selling nothing, really.”
“Who do you work for?”
“What? I don’t work for nobody. Who’n heckbiscuits you think I am?”
The guy gave him a flat, unimpressed look. “I’m the one asking questions.”
“I don’t got time for this.” Bobby had no interest in finding out what getting shot felt like. He burst into a cloud of dragons and sent them streaking upward, looking for a way inside Christopher’s apartment. That guy’s mouth fell open and he gawped, which Bobby considered to be better than shooting or screaming. The swarm noticed the suits huddled in a small group. One of them pointed to the porn shop, so he knew they had to hurry.
Desperate to get inside, the dragons found an open window. The horde destroyed the screen and poured through. He re-formed from the feet up in the room where Stephen and Christopher sat at a small table, talking. “Suits coming, out on the street. We gotta git, now. Sorry about the screen.”
Christopher’s mouth fell open, gaping at Bobby.
Stephen nodded. “We have five minutes for him to pack a bag?”
“Nope. More like one for him to grab his wallet. Can you fly him out the window or something?” Bobby checked out the window and saw the suits hurrying across the street. “They’re here, right down there.”
“Christopher, you have sixty seconds to grab whatever you need, then were leaving. Don’t bring your phone.” When Christopher didn’t move, Stephen slammed his hand on the table. “This is life and death.”
Christopher jumped with a squeak and scrambled to his feet. “Right. Money, I guess.” He hurried out of the room.
Bobby pulled the torn screen out of the window. “Can you get through this? You got them shoulders.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Can you grab some stuff outta the fridge for me? I ain’t got nowhere to stick it, and I’m already hungry.”
Stephen grimaced in distaste, but sighed and went into the kitchen. “What do you want to do with him? He doesn’t have any powers he’s aware of. I think its mental, but whatever it might be, he definitely can’t fly.”
“Christopher, you got a car someplace aside from right here?”
“Yes, I keep it at my parents’ house. Parking around here is a bitch.” He emerged from the bedroom with a small pack and frowned at Stephen rifling through his fridge. The doorbell rang. Bobby put himself between Christopher and the door.
“Ignore it. Where’s your folks’ place? Far?”
“A few miles.”
“We can take you that far.” Stephen slung his own pack, then he slipped in behind Christopher and grabbed him around the waist.
Christopher squeaked and his eyes popped wide and scared as Stephen lifted him off the ground and hauled him through the window. The swarm followed along behind them both.
“I feel like Lois Lane!”
“I’m more Dracula than Superman.”
“Whatever!”
Chapter 11
When they landed at a nice house in the suburbs, Bobby gave Christopher the directions to the place in Colorado. He avoided touching the other man and tried not to think about gay sex. In return, Christopher wrinkled his nose and took notes without commenting. He and Stephen kept the drop-off short, taking off again as soon as they could.
They struck for El Paso, figuring to stop for the day so Stephen could hide from the daylight. While he could turn his body to avoid burning, they had to worry about being seen. High enough to be invisible from the ground probably meant high enough to be seen from an airplane or helicopter. Best to play it safe.
“Dang, I’m starving.” These words spilled out of Bobby’s mouth the second he re- formed in an alley. They’d stopped once in the middle of nowhere so Bobby could devour the food Stephen swiped from Christopher’s fridge. By now, the sun had been up for nearly an hour, and he did his best to keep them in the shade of buildings as they walked through the city.
“I suppose it seems ridiculous,” Stephen said as he adjusted the hood of his sweatshirt, “but I’m incredibly jealous of your…ability.”
Bobby plucked a half rotten apple out of a garbage can and looked it over. The other half was fine. “Says the guy able to carry a backpack.”
“To the guy who can eat regular food.” Stephen’s eyes tracked a woman passing not far away. She wasn’t especially attractive, as far as Bobby thought, but the other man wasn’t looking at her ass, or her chest. “I need to feed. I also need to not be charged with rape or any other form of assault.”
Bobby took a bite from the good side of the apple and followed Stephen’s gaze to a heavy-set middle aged lady. She pulled a wheeled basket of full cloth shopping bags behind her. Either Stephen had different tastes in women, or appearance didn’t matter much. Given this was about food, the latter struck him as more likely. “How ‘bout chomping on a guy?”
Stephen sneered with distaste. “It’s too much like sex.”
Bobby’s chewing faltered. “Oh.”
“And now you see my dilemma.” Stephen snorted. “No offense, but having you with me isn’t going to make this easier. We should make a plan to meet someplace later.”
“I’m gonna look for the crappiest part of town and bunk down with the homeless folk. Maybe hit a soup kitchen if’n I can find one.”
Stephen grimaced. “You want to stay with people who may very well rob you in your sleep?”
Bobby snorted. “So long as I don’t show I got any money, all of ‘em got more’n I look like I do. You might have trouble there on account of the pack, but not if it’s clear we’re running together. Risking two guys ain’t worth it.”
“Were you homeless?” Stephen put his hands up. “You just seem like you know how they think and operate.”
Shrugging, Bobby said, “I had some friends in school that were. Parents lost their jobs, and they didn’t have no place to go.”
“Ah. I’ll find you there, then.” They shook hands and Stephen jogged across the street, chasing after that woman. Bobby kept walking, grazing on what he found in garbage cans along the way. He checked with a couple in raggedy clothes under a highway bridge, and they pointed him in the right direction. The houses got progressively shabbier until he found a wide alley with weathered, beaten faces, shopping carts, and mounds of rags.
At the other end of the alley, he found an abandoned warehouse lot with shanties made of cardboard and garbage leaning against the building. Shopping carts full of stuff had been parked here and there, and they had barrels scattered around. Bobby guessed the cops left them alone so long as they didn’t squat inside the building.
He walked through the gauntlet, head down and hands in his pockets, listening to them try to ward him off. There were no drugs here, they said, no hookers, and no social services. Kids didn’t belong here. Get out while you still can. Go find a job, a girl, a life. If only things could be that simple again.
“You need a place to sit for a little bit, kid?”
Bobby looked up, expecting to find a man with disturbing, greedy eyes. Instead, the speaker turned out to be a thin, grizzled old man, bundled up in multiple blankets despite the warm weather. If he hoped for someone to take advantage of, it didn’t show. Besides, he’d get a lot more than he bargained for if he tried that with Bobby, or Stephen when he show
ed up. “Yeah, thanks.”
“You’re kind of young for a place like this.” He set out a ratty old cushion and gestured to it. As he withdrew his hand, he coughed and tried to cover his mouth with his elbow. Bobby saw a gob of blood on the sleeve when he pulled it away from his mouth.
“Just passing through.” Bobby shrugged and sat down. “Ain’t got enough money to stay someplace fancy. You know, with showers and beds.” He flashed the old man a friendly smile.
The man chuckled. It turned into more coughing and he hacked a dark gobbet of crap off to the side. “You have a name, kid? Mine’s Kurt.”
“Bobby. That’s a nasty cough you got, Kurt.”
“Yeah, it’ll kill me someday.” Kurt chuckled. “Where you headed for that you’re just passing through?”
Unwilling to reveal anything about his plans, Bobby shrugged. “Someplace else.”
“Mmhmm.” He offered Bobby a small packet of peanut butter, one with the seal still intact. “You’ve got unusual eyes.”
Figuring that refusing a gift would be taken poorly, Bobby accepted the packet and opened it. “Yeah, I guess. So folks tell me, anyhow.”
Kurt nodded and went quiet, his eyes glazing over. A commotion at the other end of the shantytown broke the silence. Bobby looked up and saw Stephen with his gloves on and hood pulled up, stalking down the line, a swagger to his steps. It made him look like a seriously bad dude who stepped out of a comic book and any second now, he’d pull a sword to start battling ninjas or werewolves. The locals reacted like scared puppies.
Bobby stood up and got Stephen’s attention with a two-handed wave. “Where’d you learn to walk like that?”
Stephen smirked. “Nightmares.”
With a short and a shake of his head, Bobby gestured for Stephen to sit with him. “This is Kurt, he’s being decent.”
“Hi, Kurt, I’m Stephen.”
Kurt nodded absently, still staring at nothing. His head kept bobbing until he watched Stephen sit down and focused on him. “I’ve seen eyes like yours before.” His voice sounded misty and distant.
“Oh yeah? Where was that?” Odd that he hadn’t mentioned it before, but Bobby figured he might as well see where this led. The guy probably saw a poster with elves on it and had lost enough marbles to believe it had been real.
Kurt shook his head violently and started coughing again. More blood smeared onto his sleeve. “Top secret. They’ll fire me if I tell you, Aaron. I want to tell you, but I just can’t.”
Stephen and Bobby both blinked in surprise at the response and looked at each other. Covering his mouth to shield it from Kurt’s view, Stephen whispered, “Keep going, sounds worth pursuing.”
Keep going, he said. Bobby rubbed his face and tried to think about how they did this kind of thing on TV. “Can’t you even say what kind of work it is?”
Kurt shook his head and looked pained. “Someday, you’ll understand. They have to keep it a secret, son. Sometimes, the government keeps a secret to protect us, because the knowledge would get people killed, a lot of people.”
“I wouldn’t ever tell anyone, you know that. I just…I want—” Bobby paused, forcing himself not to fill the space with ‘um’ and ‘uh’. He took a flying leap and guessed that when Kurt said ‘son’, he meant Aaron had been his actual son’s name. “I want to know about what you do, about who you are.”
Tears formed in Kurt’s eyes, his face filled with pride. “I know you do, just— When you’re older— If you really want to know about this, you’ll have to get yourself into the Army and be able to get the highest possible security clearance. The project is called Maze Beset, remember that, but don’t ask for it by name. Tell them you want to work on the same program as your old man, they’ll understand.”
Glancing over at Stephen, Bobby saw the vampire’s mouth hanging open in shock. His own seemed to be doing the same thing, and he snapped it shut. Kurt worked on a secret military program where he saw eyes like theirs, a long time ago. How long ago? It couldn’t have been recent. He reached over and shook Kurt’s shoulder gently. “Kurt, wake up, man, you kinda drifted off there.”
“What?” More coughing produced a little splat of black stuff on the ground. “Huh?”
“How long you been out here, Kurt?”
Kurt took a deep breath and shook his head. “Years and years.”
“You sound like a pretty smart guy, though. How’d you wind up on the streets?”
Kurt hunched in on himself and said nothing for several long seconds. “It was a car accident,” he whispered. “Belinda— My wife. She didn’t usually drive, but it was my retirement party. I drank more than I should have. They said so long as I kept my mouth shut, everything would be fine. I could just be with my wife, we could do the things we never got to do because of my job. We were going to travel, see the world. But she was dead, they killed her. It should have been me. I ran for it, ran for my life. Such a coward.”
Bobby put his hand on Kurt’s shoulder, trying to be friendly and supportive. “How long?”
“I don’t know.” Tears spilled down his cheeks and he coughed more. “I was sixty. Twenty years ago, maybe.”
Twenty years on the streets would wear anybody down to nothing, even someone fifty years younger. Bobby frowned and thought about Kurt’s son, a man whose mother died and father disappeared. “What about Aaron? Where’s he?”
Kurt shook his head, too busy crying and coughing to answer the question. Bobby put his arm around Kurt’s shoulder, wondering if the hand of God sent him to this particular man at this particular time.
“Kurt,” Stephen said gently, “can you just tell us your last name?”
He managed to rasp out “Donner”. Another minute or so later, he said, “God forgive me, I see her eyes in my nightmares. Your eyes.” An especially harsh coughing fit wracked his body and Bobby held on. He and Stephen looked at each other behind his back. From his taut expression, Bobby figured they must be thinking the same thing: ‘her eyes’. Were they all siblings after all? Could ‘she’ be their mother, their real mother?
They sat with Kurt while he slowly calmed down and fell asleep, probably exhausted by the memories and coughing. Bobby felt ready to collapse himself, from watching and from not sleeping enough last night. “I’m about to fall over, too.”
Stephen yawned. “Yeah, I at least need a nap.” The two of them, neither talking about what they just learned, moved Kurt under his crude little shelter in case the weather soured. He had enough space so long as neither of them stretched out, so both stayed under it with him, falling asleep without issue.
When Stephen woke Bobby up later, Kurt lay dead.
Chapter 12
“That’s Camellia’s place.” Stephen gave a jerk of his head to indicate the tiny beige faux-adobe house with the flat roof as they approached it. The tiny front yard had rocks instead of grass, some scraggly weeds and cacti poking through it here and there. All the houses on this block had the same small income, southwestern feel. No garages here—some of the driveways had beat up old cars in them, but hers didn’t.
“It’s dark.”
“Some people sleep at night. It’s after ten.”
Bobby’s stomach growled. “No wonder I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.”
“So’re you.”
“Touché.”
Stephen rang the doorbell and knocked, tamping down the grin Bobby provoked. Neither had anything in particular to say while they waited, so they stood there in silence for a solid minute. Stephen hit the doorbell again, and they waited another minute or so.
“Don’t think she’s there.”
Stephen peered in through the front window. He rattled the doorknob and found it locked. “We should break in and take a look around.”
“What?” Bobby’s brow jumped up in shocked surprise. “We can’t do that. It’s her house.”
“How else are we going to be sure she hasn’t been grabbed already?”
“
But—”
Stephen cut him off with a roll of his eyes and a wave of his hand. “If she’s there but just sleeps like the dead, we apologize and explain we were concerned she’d been grabbed. If she’s not there, but there’s no sign of anything nefarious, we wait for her to get home and do the same. Honestly, Bobby, did you really think you’d manage to always find people at home when you happen to get there?”
Bobby opened his mouth to protest again. Given their purpose here, what Stephen said made sense. He shut his mouth. Momma was pretty clear about messing with another person’s house. Sure, he’d broken a few laws in his youth. It’d all been about spray paint and messing around, not stealing or smashing things, or hurting people. Except…he stole a car a few days ago, along with a radio, a baton, and a few other things. As far as lines to not be crossed were concerned, this horse had already run out of the barn at full speed. “Okay, fine,” he sighed. “I don’t know nothing about breaking into a house, though.”
“Are you implying that I do?” Stephen chuckled. “Well check for an open window, and if there isn’t one…” He shrugged and paced around the house without finishing the statement.
If there wasn’t one, they were screwed, because he didn’t have the first clue how to pick a lock. Bobby stayed by the door, looking up and down the street to check if any neighboring curtains twitched. All the other houses had the lights off, except two with the gentle glow of television bleeding around the drapes. He saw no sign of movement.
Half a minute later, Stephen came around the other side of the house. “Nothing. She doesn’t have very many windows. It’s even smaller than it looks, too. From what I saw, it’s a bedroom, a bathroom, and the rest is all one space. Mom would have a fit at the sight of the kitchen. It’s smaller than her closet.”
Bobby snorted. “Okay, smart guy, so how do we get in, then?”
His eyes still on the house, scanning up and down it, Stephen paused and pointed up. “Can you get a dragon into that?”