They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy
Page 24
She took a swing at me, but I was easily out of her reach.
"When you feel like you can walk with my help, Holyfield, we'll head outside."
"You left London, too," she said.
My blood iced at what I knew she was about to say. Fucking buttons, man.
"The fuck're you talking about, Tracey?"
Her eyes practically rolled back like a shark smelling blood in the water. "You know what I'm fucking talking about. You left, the same as I did. I didn't see you trying to stop Jurgen and the others from killing everybody they could. You walked away."
"Motherfucker, so did you. You went first, and you left me there."
"Yeah, because, according to you, I'm an unremorseful bitch monster, which I'm fucking not remorseless because I fucking apologized about Will and gave you his cut, but you did the same thing I did in London, so what does that make you? But anyway, I just shifted away back to my parents' house. Done. You, though, you had to crawl out of the city, seeing the shit Jurgen and the others were doing every bit of the way. Did you stop and help anybody? Did you just watch people die? And you're going to stand there and pass judgment on me? Fuck you. You know what you did, Mr. Perfect. Put Agent Red and Kamikaze and whoever else you want to up against the death toll in London that you let happen. Or that fire you set in your town. How remorseful are you for all that?"
I muttered out, "Just let me know when you're ready."
She knew she had me by the balls with that London stuff, but since I didn't try to fight against her, it didn't satisfy her. She tried to attack me again, launched herself out of that chair and to get her arm around my side and make a play for the knife, but she was hobbled by what they had done to her, and I shoved her hard to the floor.
Then the tears started going down her face. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she cried. "Look what they did to me. I just want to go to my home and get in my bed. That's all I want. I want to be out of here, and I want to feel safe. I just need someplace safe."
I blew smoke out the side of my mouth. Anger, logic and outrage hadn't worked, so now she was trying to play me with sympathy. I looked her dead in the eye. "Tracey, you think that's going to work on me? How long we known each other? You're getting arrested. They have agents that're counselors who can help you out. You might get the ass-kicking you need, too."
"Jesus Christ, I'm not faking this," she pleaded.
"Smells like bullshit in here, Trace."
"You're an asshole," she tried to snarl but just ended up crying more.
I sighed smoke. "Yeah, I know." I tried to put my arm around her, but she swatted it away.
"The fuck is wrong with you? Don't touch me." Exhaustion had caught up with her. Silvy had pushed her too far. She wiped the tears off her face. "Why are you going into custody?" she asked. "You've still got your fire, go, get out."
I sucked down smoke in a deep breath. "Name me one damn thing I've solved with that fire shit. 'Cause I sure can't think of one. Come on, you ready to go? We'll go together."
The metal building came apart at the seams, completely disassembled like in town. I put my hands up in surrender right before the telekinetics grabbed us both. A group of agents put us at gunpoint, shouting about Smythe's Law. Tracey had shut her eyes, probably picturing someplace safe, still trying to shift away.
Three guys dragged her to her feet, a few more closed around me, and the telekinetics let us go. The towel that had been stuck to Tracey's ass fell off.
"Hey, take it easy on her," I told them. "They kept her prisoner."
They put my hands behind my back.
"What's your name an' power?" a cop with an accent and a bleeding forehead asked me.
"Donnie Guillory. Das Biest von Feure. Pyrokinesis."
"Good man. Makin' it easy for me."
They asked Tracey the same question but she didn't answer.
"She's Tracey Miller," I spoke for her. "Teleporter, responsible for the deaths of Agent Red and two Posters named Kamikaze and Splode."
"Shut the fuck up, Don," she yelled as they dragged her out. "I wasn't even a willing part of this. They tortured me and controlled me, and you think I need to go to prison for that? They controlled me from the beginning!"
"That's bullshit, Trace. And you got, what, fifteen, twenty years of shit built up before this? You need to go. I'll see you at your trial. I'll be the one testifying against your half-an-ass for murder."
"I hate you, Don. You're a fucking asshole!"
The accented guy, my arresting officer, read me my rights. I nodded and said nothing, and he searched me and took my smokes and Rosemary's badge. I made it easy for them.
I called out to Tracey: "Hey, Trace. You were right about Will. He did have a choice. He could've said no."
She went from actively resisting to just limp in her officers' hands, making them drag her like a kid in the grocery store. "Fuck you, don't talk to me," she said. "You're going to rot in prison, and I'll shift right out."
"Jesus, just calm down, Trace."
She thrashed and kicked, and they finally hit her with sedatives, and she went limp for real.
After that, everything moved pretty fast.
Cops had apparently taken over the tent city pretty easily because the clueless, shit head Posters looked ten times more fucked-up than the uniformed ones. While the pieces of Bob's building were formed into makeshift holding pens them, a medical team went to work giving Ibn Meghar CPR, and trucks and semis rolled in to load up and haul away the incarcerated.
"I want a lawyer," was all I said to my AO when he asked me what had happened. No way in hell was I stupid enough to spill my guts to some guy I didn't know from Adam from some law enforcement agency in another damn country. I did tell him, though, "Just make sure everybody working the scene is careful on that foundation. There's some kinda generator that could kill us all under it."
A shout went up, and cops pulled an older male with no pulse out of sheet metal lean-to in a corner of the building. Earle and Two-Stroke were already dead, so it wasn't hard to figure out who had been hiding like a little bitch in the corner while he had his hand up Meghar's ass. Medics brought in defibrillator paddles to shock Bob back to life, but the machine wouldn't charge up to administer it, so they couldn't revive him. Fucking shame.
The shadow guy appeared on the scene to yell at the medics who'd had to bring a lifter in just to do the compressions on Meghar's dense chest. He barked at them and turned to all of us and trotted out some clear English, "Who. Did. This? Show me who did this now."
None of the cops said anything. The Apaches casually drifted over to us.
I looked up at my AO from where I sat on the ground. "I'll go talk to him."
"Shut the fuck up, Guillory."
DeltaBlue passed overhead with a "Yeah, shut the fuck up" to me.
He set down on the cracked foundation, his palms open at his sides, not looking at all confrontational. Whatever he and the shadow guy said to each other, they were quiet about it. DeltaBlue nodded and bowed a little and walked steadily toward me.
His voice came over the cops' radio. "Why isn't anybody getting Guillory on a truck yet? Get him on a fucking truck with the lights on now."
They pulled me up off the ground as the medical team zipped Bob's corpse up in a heavy black body bag. They dropped him when they picked him up the first time, and I got a good laugh. I hoped somebody recorded it and would put it on the Internet. On a loop with like that Benny Hill music and some sound effects and shit.
The last glimpse I got of Tracey was her laid out on the ground, unconscious from the sedatives, her mouth wide open. Somebody with a medical kit cleaned her wounds.
Blue barked at me, "Eyes front. You do that to her?"
"No, man. I pulled her out of there."
"Oh, well, good job, hero. You saved a wanted criminal and killed Ibn Meghar. You know what you just did to foreign relations? You got any idea?"
"I fucked it up?"
"You fucked it a
ll up, that's right. Like a blind boy with his first hooker. I don't guess you want to tell me why you did it?"
I just said, "Lawyer."
"Yeah. That's what I expected from somebody like you."
The cops cleared out an idling armored car full of other Posters so I would be solo in the truck.
DeltaBlue did another search of me for weapons himself before he put me in. "I'm gonna be flying over the truck keeping the light in here from throwing shadows," he said, giving me some thorough patting, "Nobody's going to be able to get at you, you're safe. Now, you try any shit, however, and it'll be the last shit you try. You got me?"
"Yeah, shits everywhere, hey, is Lee okay? Guy named Stagga Lee?"
Blue looked like he was about to say something smartass but said, "Yeah, he wants to turn state's evidence. Wonder where he got that idea. He's in rough shape, but he's writing out a full confession right now. Some dreadlocked fool is too."
Blue brought out the steel cuffs, and I put my hands behind my back. "I think Silvy's off-site. Are you looking for her?"
He tightened them up on me. "Don't worry about her. We know our job. For some reason I'm sure you wouldn't know anything about, she threw off a psychic backlash everybody in the Western hemisphere felt and half could pinpoint. They got a team rolling on her right now. But you don't know anything about that, right?"
"Lawyer," I replied.
"Right."
Blue had me sit down and locked the doors up.
I leaned back and put my head on the thick armored wall. Christ, I needed a cigarette. The armored truck dropped into gear and lurched forward. It would be back to Washington and on to Stone Pass for me. I would be all over the fucking news again, too. I put all that shit aside. Fuck it, man, at least I would get some peace and fucking quiet in my cell. No more fucking bullshit from people for a while.
I shut my eyes and stretched out on the hot metal floor. I had nothing left. I was just spent.
I noticed a pack of cigarettes in the corner of the truck, bouncing around on the floor with every bump. My brand, too. One of the cops must have thrown it in for me. Very un-asshole of them. Although, they did it with my hands cuffed behind my back, so it might have been a straight dick move to screw with me.
"That's entrapment," I said to no one and melted through the chain links on the cuffs. Das Biest von Feure was back in retirement, and I deserved a fucking smoke to celebrate.
The pack was brand new, unopened. I slapped them against my palm. Fucking weird. I had opened that pack I found. The pack I found in Tracey's room. My brand. Right when I wanted them. Just like now.
I stopped slapping the pack.
No fucking way. There was no fucking way. Those assholes had been full of shit. No fucking way had that set-up or the fucking universe code bullshit done anything to me. Uh-uh.
But Tracey couldn't teleport, the cops came in right as I was ready for them, Bob was dead, Silvy was fucked, the defibrillator wouldn't charge, I got put in a truck by myself when I wanted peace--holy fuck.
I threw the pack aside and shut my eyes. I didn't want a cigarette. No fucking cigarettes.
I opened my eyes, and the pack was gone.
God.
Dammit.
Copyright 2011 R. D. Harless, All Rights Reserved
Kindle Edition
St. Agatha Press
Cover by Bill Guidry
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Connect with the Author on Twitter @rdharless
And at rdharless.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 5
Chapter 2 14
Chapter 3 22
Chapter 4 26
Chapter 5 36
Chapter 6 43
Chapter 7 54
Chapter 8 60
Chapter 9 71
Chapter 10 81
Chapter 11 86
Chapter 12 91
Chapter 13 100
Chapter 14 108
Chapter 15 116
Chapter 16 131
Chapter 17 141
Chapter 18 147
Chapter 19 159
Chapter 20 168
Chapter 21 177
Chapter 22 186
Chapter 23 192
Chapter 24 201