Click.
The girl blinked and looked down at the gun, wondering what went wrong. She had virtually no working knowledge of firearms, but she had done just what the boy had told her to do. After looking over the weapon for a moment, she discovered that the top could be slid back and she remembered the bolt action on her uncle’s hunting rifle. Grabbing the slide firmly, she was surprised how much effort it took to actually pull it back. But she knew it had worked when she heard the gun click loudly and the slide snapped back into place.
Unfortunately, she was not the only one who heard it.
“Huh? Wuzzat?” her uncle slurred as he lifted his head and opened his bloodshot eyes.
She gasped and snapped her arm back up, taking aim once more. However, she was all at once unsure if she could pull the trigger again. She felt like she’d used up all of her bravery the first time and now her hands were beginning to shake.
At first, he didn’t even notice the gun. “What the fuck are you wearing, you…” he trailed off once he realized what she was holding. “Hey! Where the fuck did you get that?”
She didn’t respond, and though she expected him to come at her, he only sat up straight in his chair and stared.
“You hand that over right now, you hear me?”
She still didn’t answer, but her hands began to tremble more.
“I mean it, young lady. You put that thing down before you hurt somebody!”
She didn’t make a sound, but her vision was beginning to swim and her hands slowly started to lower.
“That’s right. Just give your old man the gun…we don’t need to have any more problems tonight.”
With a single blink, her eyes cleared and the shaking vanished from her hands. She raised the gun once more as her eyes turned down into a furious glare.
“Wait…” he said. “What are you…no! Don’t—” But he got no further.
The sound of that first shot left a ringing in the girl’s ears, but she did not notice. The kick of the weapon slammed her elbows against her ribcage, but she did not notice that either. What she did notice was the blood coursing from between her uncle’s fingers where he clutched at his crotch.
Though his screams of agony were loud, they were dwarfed by the series of explosions that came next. One bullet entered his right kneecap. Another went into his hip. Two rocketed through his gut, tearing through God only knew what organs. Two more went into his chest. A final one decided to rest deep in his clavicle. Only one remained, and the girl seemed to somehow know this as she approached him. He stared up at her with wide eyes, his body trembling. His screams had stopped after the fifth bullet, but he was still very much alive, and she had come close enough to see the tears streaming down his cheeks, turning pink as they mixed with spatters of blood.
Then—as she stared into the dying eyes of the man who had tortured and terrorized her since before she could remember—she slipped the barrel of the gun into his mouth and pushed it past his front teeth, pushed it so it went over his tongue and scraped across his molars, pushed it until she could hear him gagging on it. Gagging the way he had forced her to gag more times than she could recall. Then, leaning in close, she opened her mouth to say some final words. She had thought so many times of what she would say to him if she had the freedom to say anything; she had dreamt up so many variations. But in their final moment, all that came out was a nearly inhuman snarl.
And she pulled the trigger one last time, gladly sending her uncle to the hell she was sure awaited him.
She stumbled backwards, quickly looking away from the gore. All that rage fell from her at once, leaving behind only a trembling numbness. Less walking, more wandering, she made her way towards the front door, the gun still clenched tightly in her left hand. A glossy sheen had slipped over her eyes, and she felt as though she was moving through water when she reached out to open the door. But when she swung it open, the sight of a person standing there snapped her back to reality. Moving on instinct, she raised the gun and screamed as she blindly pulled the trigger.
Click. Click. Click.
“Whoa, hey! It’s okay, it’s just me!” It was the boy from the church, standing there holding his hands out and thanking God that she’d already emptied the clip. Her eyes filling with tears, the girl stumbled out of the house and into his waiting arms. She buried her face into his chest and began to sob.
Feeling her slipping down to her knees, he went with her, holding her tightly as she cried against him. “Shhh…” he said and stroked her wavy hair. “Shhh. It’s okay now. It’s over. You did it, okay?”
Her sobs lessened after a time, but then she suddenly pulled back and looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “B-But I’m gonna get in t-trouble! Th-They’ll kill me when they f-find out what I d-d-did!”
The boy, however, was perfectly calm. “No one is getting in trouble. Just sit here a moment. I’ll take care of it.”
The girl watched as he stood and turned around to face the front door. He pulled it closed, then took a moment to look over the front of the house. Finally, glancing over his shoulder to where she sat on the grass, he gave her a smirk and a wink. “Watch this.”
Turning back around, he placed his palms on the sides of the doorframe. The girl’s tears began to subside, fear replaced with curiosity about what he could possibly be doing. And as she watched, an event the likes of which she’d never seen began to take place.
First, the very air around the boy began to…ripple. She blinked, initially sure it must be more tears in her eyes. But the rippling grew stronger, and it wasn’t until she started feeling heat coming from him that she thought of the air above a campfire. Then, from beneath the boy’s hands, the wood around the door started to glow. First dull orange, which quickly escalated into bright red. When that wood suddenly burst into flames, the girl gasped and shielded her eyes. And though she lowered her arms again only a few seconds later, the flames had already almost covered the front of the small house.
Stepping back, the boy blew on his hands as he gazed up at what he had created. But before long he turned to face the girl, who was still staring at the flames in disbelief.
“Come on, we need to go before the fire attracts attention,” he said as he offered her a hand.
Numbly accepting it, she rose to her feet. Her eyes still not moving from the flames, she said in a weak, nearly inaudible voice, “How did you…” and then she fell forward, collapsing into the boy’s arms and finally dropping her firearm to the ground.
He held her against him with one arm as he knelt to pick up the handgun, which he tucked into his belt. Then he scooped her into his arms, cradled her close, and carried her away from where his flames were devouring her past.
The boy never looked back. Instead, he gazed down at the girl in his arms. Her wavy blonde hair cascading over his forearm. Her lovely, almost angelic features. Her white shirt all spattered with blood. In a flash of young teenage knowledge that hinted at the mind of the man he would someday become, the boy came to the sudden realization that she would grow to be both unbelievably beautiful and undeniably deadly.
In that brief moment he wondered if he had done something right…or horribly wrong.
FOUR
I
“A little melodramatic, don’t you think?” Lita said, eyeing Jonas as she slipped her handgun back into her belt.
“What can I say?” Jonas replied, folding his arms across his chest and throwing her a sheepish grin as he sat back on the couch. “I like to make an entrance.”
“As I recall, you’re better at exits,” Lita said, giving him a sidelong glance before turning towards Rain and Alex. “At ease, gentlemen. I know this guy, unfortunately.” Rain gave her a short nod and leaned against the wall just inside the door. Alex shifted his stance nervously, waiting for some sort of introduction.
At first, nothing came but silence as Lita went to a tiny desk under a window at the back of the living room. She dug a box of matches out of one of the drawer
s and started making her way around the room, lighting candles here and there.
“Sorry for the darkness,” she said offhandedly. “This place doesn’t have electricity. Normally I’d just open the curtains.” She glanced at Rain. “Anyway,—Alex, Rain—Jonas.” She breezed through the introduction, not looking away from her illuminating work as she moved into the kitchen, which was barely a room of its own. It was just an open C shape of three counters to the left of the front door. A long hallway extended past it to two bedrooms and a bathroom. The kitchen itself contained a small wood stove and a sink, but no other appliances.
The place barely looked lived in.
Alex approached Jonas and extended a hand, which the man received and shook vigorously with a courteous smile. Jonas then looked to Rain, but was only greeted with a turned-away gaze as Rain lit a cigarette and maintained his position against the wall.
Lita slapped the box of matches down on the kitchen counter. “Did I say you could smoke in my apartment?”
“No,” Rain said matter-of-factly as he flicked some ash into a nearby candle.
Jonas smirked, waiting for a reaction from Lita, but she only rolled her eyes and leaned against the counter, crossing her arms.
Standing by the end of the couch now, Alex frowned and placed a hand over his stomach, and everyone heard the growling noise that emanated from it. Lita actually chuckled a bit.
“Christ, kid, you sound like you’re about ready to take someone’s arm off,” she said in a lighthearted tone. It was the first time she had spoken to him in such a way, and it made Alex smile.
“I skipped dinner,” he said, his cheeks flushing.
“Well, I can’t say I have much around here. Usually I just eat at the diner down the road. But let’s see…” Reaching up to one of the cabinets, Lita rustled around the near-nothingness inside for a moment before finally pulling down a glass jar stuffed with chunks of jerky and a wooden box half-full of plain crackers. “There you go, kid. Have at it.” Alex thanked her quietly and tried to attack the food as politely as possible.
Lita freed her hair from its ponytail and ran her hand through it with a relieved sigh. “The spare room is the first door on the left, bathroom at the end of the hall.”
Rain nodded and continued smoking as he looked Jonas over, sizing him up. Jonas did the same in return.
“You don’t look familiar, Rain,” he said, tilting his head. “You got a last name?”
“Moonshadow,” Rain said and flicked off more ash into the candle.
“What the hell kind of name is that?” Jonas asked with a chuckle.
“What kind of name is Jonas?” Rain retorted, annoyed.
Jonas’ smile disappeared. “I was named for my father. He was a colonel in the Chicane Militia.” He leaned forward then, resting his elbows on his knees and interlacing his fingers. “I believe a man’s father can tell you a lot about what kind of man he is. What was your father like, Rain?”
Alex’s eyes dropped to the floor, but Rain’s remained locked with Jonas’ in a silent stare. Lita glanced back and forth between them a couple of times, then finally said, “So should I leave while you two have it out? You could piss all over the walls while you’re at it.”
Rain dropped his cigarette into the melted pool of wax around the candle’s wick, then turned away and headed down the hall, where he slipped into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Alex sighed. “I should probably turn in too. It’s been a long night.”
Lita nodded, and Alex turned away. However, before leaving the kitchen, he paused at the end of the counter and turned back slowly. First glancing to Jonas, then looking to Lita, he said, “Thank you for being nice to us, and for letting us stay here, Lita. Nobody ever helps us. And Rain, well, he doesn’t like people. But I try to, and since you saved my life and all, that kind of makes you my friend.” He paused, glanced once more to Jonas, then looked down to the floor. “My only friend,” he added quietly.
Lita furrowed her brow, not really sure how to receive that. “Don’t sweat it, kid,” she said in a standoffish tone. “Go get some rest. Take the grub with you.”
Alex smiled, grabbed the food, then nodded to Jonas. “It was nice meeting you.” Jonas nodded in return, and Alex headed down to the room himself and disappeared behind the closed door.
II
Lita pushed her hands up into her hair briefly, then dropped them down and shook them out with a heavy sigh, as if washing herself of that last bit of conversation. She then looked to Jonas and her face suddenly dropped all emotion, becoming purely business.
“Drink?” she asked.
“Sure,” he replied.
“Vodka okay?” She headed to another cabinet and pulled down a full bottle, as well as a couple of glasses.
“Fine by me. You got any ice?”
“Fuck off.”
Jonas chuckled, then stood and stretched with a groan. “Jesus, take long enough to get home? I’ve been sitting here almost all night.”
“Stopped for a swim,” Lita said dryly. She poured each of them a full glass.
“Sorry?”
“Forget it.” She brought the glasses over and handed him one before plopping down on the end of the ragged brown sofa.
“Okay…well anyway, what’s the story with those two?” Jonas asked. He tipped his head toward the hallway and sipped his drink. “When did you start taking in strays?”
“They gave me a ride home and needed a place to crash. Seemed like the decent thing to do,” she said, then put away a third of her drink in one gulp.
Jonas curled his mouth to one side and gave her an incredulous look. “You never do ‘the decent thing.’ Anyway, I wasn’t aware you made a habit of slumming with vampires.”
“He’s…” Lita began, her eyes drifting off somewhere, not really focusing on anything.
“Attractive? Yeah, maybe in a ‘look at my manly scar’ kind of way, but the cuddling afterwards might really leave you regretting it in the morning.”
“…different,” she finished, her eyes snapping back to meet his. “But I didn’t drag my ass all the way back here to discuss who I do and don’t let stay in my spare room, so you wanna sit down and tell me what this is all about?”
“I figured it was obvious,” Jonas said as he sat down at the other end of the couch. He took another sip of his drink and set it on the coffee table.
“Not really,” Lita replied, “All your letter said was to meet you here.”
“I have a job for you.”
Lita took another chug off her drink, slammed it down on the table, and stood. She went to the front door and opened it, then stood out of the way as she held it and stared at Jonas.
“Oh come on, you don’t even want to hear what it is?” he asked, not moving from the couch.
“Not really, no.”
“So that’s it, huh? Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Jonas sighed and looked around the room. “Do you actually like living like this? Holed up in some shitty apartment you barely make it home to three times a week? Working for scraps so far out of town that nobody will recognize you?” He shook his head. “You could make so much money.”
Lita glared at him. “One job isn’t going to put me in the lap of luxury. It’ll just be money spent in a couple of months.”
“What if one job could? Enough money that you could retire—for real this time—and do whatever you wanted?”
“No job pays that well.”
“This one does,” Jonas said. He reached down to where a brown messenger bag sat on the floor, leaning against his end of the couch. From it he retrieved a file folder which he dropped onto the coffee table. “Come take a look. If you’re still uninterested, I’ll be on my way.”
Lita stood there with the door ajar for some time, thinking. She started absentmindedly chewing on the inside of her cheek, but caught herself and stopped. Finally, with a sigh, she tipped her head towards the door. “C
ome with me. Grab my drink.”
Jonas stood, picking up both their glasses and the folder. “Where we going?”
“Away from prying ears.” She ushered him out into the hallway and closed the door.
III
“You’re not worried they might take off with your stuff?” Jonas asked as Lita led him through a door at the end of the hall and into an empty stairwell.
“Nothing worth stealing. Besides, the elevator’s right out there, and they’re sure as shit not going out the window.” She paid a quick glance up the stairs and down over the railing, then lowered her voice as she looked back to Jonas. “So what’s the score?”
Jonas flipped open the file folder and held it out to Lita, who set her glass on the flat wooden banister and took it from him. “The job’s in Chicane. A teenage girl. That going to be a problem?”
“Are we talking thirteen or nineteen?”
“Fifteen, I believe. Pushing sixteen.”
“Fifteen…” Lita murmured as she thumbed through the folder. It contained mostly op data, including the floor plan to a very large building that seemed familiar but she couldn’t quite place. “What are the details?”
“Her name is Amelie, and she’s the daughter of Richard Lamoureux, Lord of Chicane.”
Lita paused and turned incredulous eyes to Jonas. “You’ve got to be fucking me.”
His face was firm, even. “I’m not.” Then, reaching for the folder, “But hey, if this is too heavy for you, I can—”
Lita swatted his hand away. “Don’t try to pull that reverse psychology mindfuck bullshit on me, Jonas. I’m just saying that I’ve seen the High Palace. That place is like a goddamn fortress.”
Jonas sipped his drink and nodded. “That’s why my employer needs someone of your particular…infiltration expertise.”
Lita looked down to the folder for a moment. “Your employer…” Her head shot back up, eyes narrow. “Cleric isn’t involved in this, is he?”
The Crimes of Orphans Page 6