Tormented

by Robert J. Crane

  “Yep,” J.J. said levelly, “you’ll be giving me a bureaucratic enema if I don’t do work that’s plainly out of my job description. I bet that’s going to be so much fun. It’ll probably smell like Hai Karate and failure, given—”

  “Stop being a smartass and work the problem,” Phillips said, but his voice was already fading.

  “Reed, I’ve got to go,” J.J. said and for the first time, he hung up on me without another word.

  I looked over at Scott, who was nodding his head with a slightly amused expression wrinkling the corners of his mouth. “Sounds like the new boss is a real joy to deal with.”

  “He’s under pressure,” I said, absentmindedly defending him.

  “He’s not exactly being David Bowie and Queen about it,” Scott said.

  “No, it’s not nearly that musical,” I said, racking my brain. “We’ve got no leads, a cold trail …”

  “Hrm,” Scott said. “Whenever I was in these situations, having to do this kind of agent-type stuff, I’d always ask myself, ‘What would Sienna do?’”

  “And then you’d go kill ten people and call it a day?” I snarked, running fingers through my hair in utter frustration.

  “Heh,” Scott said. “If all your leads are played out, maybe we should re-examine the ones that came up dry the first time?”

  That triggered a faint hope in me. “We talked to this guy’s mom yesterday, but she was pretty unhelpful, all pissy to me and Augustus.” I frowned. “And I think she might kinda be a racist. Maybe she’d respond better to your charm than mine.”

  “Yeah,” Scott said, nodding along, “maybe she’s more interested in the ‘rugged, good-looking’ type than pretty boys.” He flashed a grin at me. “I could take a try at talking to her, I guess.”

  “All right, then,” I said, and shifted the car into gear, pressing the accelerator hard enough that it jerked us both back in our seats. I was prepared for it; he wasn’t, but he laughed anyway. “Let’s go gigolo you out to an angry, frightened mother and see if it gets her to roll over on her baby.”

  34.

  Sienna

  I didn’t wait long in the entry to Shorty’s before someone came over to check on me. It was Brant, who popped his short-haired head over the railing and looked down at me from above, all quizzical and surprised that someone was darkening his door in weather such as this, I was sure. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, brow knitted in surprise at my appearance. “And looking like the abominable snow woman, no less.”

  “You’ve got my car,” I said. “It was not exactly a summer hike to get here, either, let me assure you.”

  “Your appearance proves that,” he said, waving me up. “Either it’s snowing to beat the band outside, or you were standing under the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man when he got flash fried.”

  “What is with all this Ghostbusters talk?” I asked. “Is it because of what’s going on? Also, I could go for some marshmallows right now.” I shook out of my coat. Little chunks of ice that I hadn’t even known were there came off in sheets as I did it. I left a pile on the floor suitable enough to mix a whole pitcher of frozen margaritas. “Or anything, really.”

  “Well, good news for you, then, because I have food and abundant time to cook it,” Brant said, disappearing behind the railing. “Apparently, flash blizzards are somewhat bad for business. Who would have thunk it?”

  “Oh?” I brushed more of the ice off my coat, but by now it was sloughing off in liquid form. I stomped my boots while I did it, dislodging even more of the white stuff I’d waded through to get here. “Gee, am I your only customer today?”

  “No,” he called back, already almost to the bar, “you’re the second.”

  “Who was the first?” I asked as I came up the ramp, finally sure that I’d gotten about as much of the snow off of me as I was going to. I paused at the top of the ramp as I caught sight of a familiar ponytail of dark hair attached to a feminine figure seated at the bar. “Oh. Her.”

  “Yes, her,” Sarah said, not bothering to turn around on her barstool to look at me when she spoke. “It was either hunker down over here when the storm came blowing in, or sit in the clinic staring at the walls without so much as a TV to break the monotony.” She finally turned her head enough to glance at me. “I know it’s hard to believe I chose the non-solitude option, but here we are. It was probably the promise of food that swayed my vote, honestly. I forget to pack my lunch one day …”

  “And this, of all days,” I said, hanging my coat on one of the pegs mounted on the nearest booth. Given the weather conditions, I was unlikely to forget it when I left. I realized now that Brant was nowhere in sight. “How about that humidity, huh? Absolutely muggy.”

  “It’s thick,” Sarah said, turning back to the bar. She had a martini in front of her again, and she took a drink as I sat down in the stool two down from her, leaving one empty between us so as not to crowd either of us. She eyed me, and I wondered if I hadn’t left enough of a gap. “How are you doing?” she asked, with about as much enthusiasm as if she’d been compelled to ask by some outside force.

  “Ripped open my hand again,” I said, expecting her to display … I dunno, surprise? Amazement? Sheer professional interest?

  She gave me none of those. “Oh, yeah?” She looked over at my outstretched hand for a moment. “You should probably run some water over that.”

  I blinked at her careless reply. “Maybe you are like my doctor after all.”

  There was a flash of annoyance in her eyes before she replied, utterly dismissive. “Well, I’m not your mother.” She took a minute to settle down, then, with her hackles a little less raised, asked, “Do you want some stitches?”

  I felt a sting that was unrelated to my hand. “No.”

  “What are you two lovely ladies talking about out here?” Brant asked as he emerged from behind the curtain to the kitchen.

  “You,” Sarah said pointedly. “Go back in the kitchen, we’re establishing a comprehensive list of your faults and need a few more years to compile it properly.”

  “Ouch,” Brant said, holding his hand over his heart like he’d been wounded. “Listen, Sarah, I know you’re worried about Jake, but that’s no reason to take it out on the rest of us.”

  Her eyes smoldered so hot I thought they were going to burn the air around her as she turned a fiery glare on him. I was no shrinking violet, but I would not have enjoyed being on the receiving end of that one, not remotely. “So,” I said, trying to defuse the tension for once in my life, “how long is this going to last? Any bets?”

  “Satellite TV went out this morning,” Brant said glumly. “Short answer—no one knows.”

  “Yay,” I said with a modicum of sarcasm. “This is getting better and better all the time.”

  “Had any more of your telepath attacks?” Brant asked, fingering the curtain separating us from the kitchen like he wanted to retreat.

  “Yeah, I had one just as I was leaving the cabin,” I said, drawing a look of surprise from Sarah. “Same old boring story, though—‘Get out,’ all spooky and rumbly. Very high on drama, low on anything actually scary.”

  “What does it take to actually scare you?” Sarah asked. I could tell by the way she asked that she was serious.

  It was my turn to shrug. “I’ve gone nose to nose with some of the most powerful people in the world. What does it take to scare me? A lot, I guess. More than dark faces in the mirror and a deep voice from the shadows.”

  “I bet,” she said, looking at me like she was thinking deeply about it. “Would losing the people you care about move the dial for you?”

  “There aren’t many of those left,” I said breezily. There really weren’t. Ariadne, Augustus, and … maybe Reed, depending on how much of an ass he was being at any given point.

  “Hmm,” Sarah said, turning back to the bar. “What about you, Brant? What scares you?”

  “The English,” Brant said without missing a beat. “You just never know w
hen they’re going to invade your homeland.”

  I blinked at him. “Yes. I suppose that has been a persistent fear around here since that whole business in 1812.” I looked at Sarah. “What about you? What scares you?”

  She pursed her thin lips and took a long drink of her martini. “Anything happening to my kid, I guess.”

  I’d forgotten that Jake said something about having kids on the ride over on the ferry. “How many do you have?”

  She shot me a quicksilver look, eyes flashing with something like anger. “Just the one. The highly ungrateful one.”

  “Okay, then,” I said, backing off from whatever nerve I’d touched. I could have sworn Jake had used the plural when talking about his kids; but I supposed maybe he had more than she did. I sniffed the air. Something was cooking, and it smelled good. “Hey, Brant, are you making …?”

  “I put on some breakfast for you,” he said with a smirk. “Unless you’d like to take your keys and drive back to your lonely cabin where you can sit in the dark and talk to ghosts or telepaths or your mirror or what have you.”

  I sighed. “I think I’m going to be here for a while.” I took another look back to the windows outside, barely visible over the railing that looked over the ramp. I couldn’t even see the street beyond. There was nothing but white outside. “No TV, huh? Anyone got a deck of cards?”

  35.

  Benjamin

  Benjamin was huddled against the passenger window of the car, forehead against the glass, sweating even though the air conditioner was set at what he considered a reasonable temperature. His palms were wet and his mind was spinning, stuck in a rut of a very different kind than he had been over the last few days.

  Now it was no longer about denying the monster, or denying that things had happened. No, now he’d shifted. These terrible things happening, there was no way to close his eyes to them any longer, nor ignore that—that voice that broke in every now and again, harsh and low. The police were after him; those metahuman cops were on his trail as well, no denying that.

  No, now his mind was stuck in an entirely different place, a perfect spin of chaos punctuated by two poles: “I can’t have done this” and “But I must have done it.”

  And at somewhere on the other two points that made up that particular compass came the alternating thoughts of, “Well, if I did it, it must have been an accident,” and the absolutely mad, “They clearly all damned well deserved it.”

  The last one scared Benjamin immensely. It was hot, raw, red, violent, and caused his breath to smoke out of his nose when he reached that point in the train of thought. He had just about come around to it again, too, when he felt a hand land on his shoulder, jarring him out of this particular feedback loop.

  “It will be okay,” Anselmo said again in that heavily accented voice. “As I told you before, you need no longer be afraid.”

  “But they’re coming for me.” Benjamin’s voice sounded small even to his ears, a whimper in a hurricane.

  “But they will not get you,” Anselmo said. “You have seen what my friends can do, what I can do. We have shepherded you safely from right under their noses. You watched me hurt one of them when they came to take you, did you not?” Anselmo’s fingers kneaded the knots in Benjamin’s shoulders. It was … rather nice. “I will not allow them to harm you. Trust me.”

  In spite of the scars, in spite of the fearsome visage, Benjamin believed that Anselmo believed that. The man had a certain conviction that Benjamin found intensely refreshing. It was a confidence of a sort that Benjamin had never once felt in his entire life, and the scarred man projected it effortlessly. “Okay,” Benjamin said, rather limply. He felt as though all the emotion had drained out of him, as though he were grey, near death from emotional bleedout.

  The jangle of a default ringtone sounded in the car, and Anselmo fumbled to raise the phone that he’d had in the cup holder to his ear. “Pronto,” he said. His eyes flashed in surprise as a female voice burbled on the other side of the connection. “Hmmm. That is predictable.”

  “What?” Benjamin asked before he could stop himself.

  “Mr. Treston has found himself a new partner, and they are heading in a direction that suggests they will visit your mother’s house,” Anselmo said. “It is of no consequence, of course—”

  All that grey, mental pallor fled in a hot instant for Benjamin. He flashed through to yellow and then red in short order, saw what seemed like flames dance from his eyes as that voice broke loose—

  at my house

  aGaIN?

  how dare they—

  A strong backhand lashed Benjamin in the jaw, smacking his head against the window hard enough to jar him, but not break him. He squealed in surprise, hand flying instinctively to where he’d been struck, and turned his eyes in surprise to Anselmo, who was staring at him with the phone clutched to his neck. The Italian brought the car to a screeching stop and stared at him, hard eyes peering out of a scorched face. “Do not do that.”

  “Do what?” Benjamin cried out, holding his jaw.

  “Do not whimper and cry like a girl in that voice,” Anselmo said. “The first lesson of being a man is that you must act like a real, true man, not these wimpy girls and—what do you call them now? Metrosexuals? Pfah! They have to wax their genitalia until they find the pubic hair that bleeds, their manhood is so small! The girls of olden days in my country had bigger balls than these pansies that walk the street in their skinny jeans.” Anselmo spit. “You are not to be one of them, not any longer.”

  “Oh-okay,” Benjamin said, nodding along helplessly.

  Anselmo glared hard at him. “Do not sit there, nodding your head like one of the sheep in girls' clothing. Does this anger you, this thing that they do? Going to see your mamma?”

  “Y-yes,” Benjamin said, nodding along, dragging up a little emphasis from deep within. “It … it positively enrages me.”

  “Then do something about it,” Anselmo said and slapped him again, lighter this time. “Direct your rage to revenge, in the way of a man. Do not sit here and steam idly, like an iron. I will let you know if my pants develop wrinkles and I need that from you.” He touched Benjamin on the chest, delicately. “You have fire within. I know you have let it out, but it has been the petulant screams of a small girl, pushed on the playground by a boy she craves. A man does not do this craven thing. A man goes in the direction of what he wants. He does not hide his intentions like a woman hides her genitals. He proudly displays what he has to offer and goes at what he wants directly.” He made a motion, a gesture of grabbing himself. “Do you see what I mean?”

  “Uhh … I think so?” Benjamin asked, staring at him.

  “Not now, Cassidy,” Anselmo said into the phone, with more than a shade of irritation, “men are speaking. You will wait.” And he hung up the phone, tossed it into the cup holder, and grasped Benjamin’s face with both of his hands, cradling it. “Listen to me, son. You have been babied your whole life, yes?”

  “I … no,” Benjamin said, mildly offended. “I’ve—”

  Anselmo thumped his ear with a simple flick. It hurt enough to draw a grunt of pain from Benjamin. “Do not argue. You live with your mother still? And you are grown man, yes? And it is not because she needs your care?”

  “… no,” Benjamin grunted. The last flick had hurt badly enough that he wanted to cry.

  “Then this is the day that you grow up,” Anselmo said and brushed his hair back from his eyes. “This will be the day that you find your—” He pointed to Benjamin’s groin. “Those. Si?”

  “Well, at the risk of sounding utterly ludicrous …” Benjamin said as Anselmo let him go and turned back to the wheel. “How do I do that?”

  “It is very simple,” Anselmo said, putting the car back into motion. His scarred hands grasped hard on the wheel, and Benjamin saw the sign as he headed west on Interstate 394 toward the western metro. “You find what your opponent cares for most … and you rip it screaming from his grasp.”
>
  36.

  Sienna

  I had this feeling in my gut like the sun was sinking low in the sky way too early, as if sundown for me meant a swift end to the day. It shouldn’t have mattered, should it? It wasn’t like colonial times, when I’d have to light a lantern in order to proceed with my life, but seeing the white outside gradually turn darker over the course of twenty minutes was … disconcerting, especially when my own sense of time made me think it was far, far earlier than it appeared to be judging by the light.

  “What time is it?” I asked, sitting on my barstool, my breakfast/lunch done.

  Brant pulled his wrist up and looked at the leather-bound monstrosity with the big clock face on it. “Seven o’clock.”

  “That can’t be right,” I said and turned back to look outside. “Where’d the day go?”

  “Buried under the snow, probably,” Sarah said. She hadn’t really spoken since our last exchange, and I didn’t think that was necessarily a bad thing.

  “Huh,” I said as the door behind us opened again, “that went fast.”

  “Tends to happen when you’re sleeping it off ’til noon and then fight your way through ghosts and a snowstorm,” Brant cracked.

  “Gah,” a young man’s voice came from the door, “it’s dropping like feathers in a pillow fight out there.” The clomp of heavy boots resounded through Shorty’s and I saw the hat before I saw the rest of the guy that came in. It was the lawman’s hat, that big-brimmed, quasi-cowboy thing, with a snow-covered star sitting right on the top of it. What his name? Zebulon?

  “Z!” Brant shouted out to him as he entered. “What’s going on?” His voice sounded funny again, like he was letting his words lilt.

  “Well,” Z said, his steps driving snow off his boots and onto the floor, “it’s pretty much turning into a whiteout. Other than that? Nothing. Been quiet all day around the office.”