by Rob Thurman
Waving an acknowledging hand at me, he retreated farther up onto dry sand to put on his socks and shoes. As he tied the last laces with quick jerks of his fingers, he raised his head to look at me and opened his mouth. It was easy enough to make a general guess at what he was going to say. Let’s go or, knowing Michael, I don’t like to run. Running is sweaty and annoying. Whichever it was, the words didn’t materialize. The gun I pointed at him had them melting away.
He didn’t jump to his feet or lunge to one side, but instead he stayed frozen in place. His face smooth and calm, he mouthed silently, “Behind me?”
I gave an infinitesimal nod and fired a split second after he threw himself forward. The man behind him disappeared from sight, leaving nothing but an ominous dark spray on the sand. Dressed all in black, he had been crouched behind a low dune to blend perfectly with the background of night-shadowed beach grass—well . . . almost perfectly. As with most things in life, almost just wasn’t good enough. I had seen him. I’d seen the whites of his eyes gleam as he watched Michael . . . only Michael. Concentrating on your target is good; focusing on it to the exclusion of all else gets the back of your head blown into the sea oats.
Every time I thought we were safe—every goddamn time.
I didn’t have to tell Michael to run. By now it was more than second nature, for both of us. As was the taste of tin in the mouth and the adrenaline pulsing through the veins like an amphetamine poison—a familiar icy hand that clamped down on the back of the neck. It was like an old friend now . . . an old, hateful friend. I caught up with Michael and gave him a shove toward the dunes. There would be more there, I knew. There was no way around that, but fleeing down an empty beach was suicide. They would drop me in the sand. As for Michael . . . they would either kill or capture him, depending on whether Jericho thought him salvageable or not.
Killing would be kinder.
The grass, sharp as blades, beat at our legs. It stung even through my jeans as we fought for footing in our flight. And when I fell, it sliced open my palm with surgical sharpness. As I struggled to my knees, the hand that had erupted out of the sand to snare my ankle was joined by the rest of its owner. He matched the other one, with identical clothes and carbon-copy overconfidence. The night-vision goggles he wore would’ve protected his eyes from the sand, but they didn’t do anything to guard from the heel I jammed into them. With hands clawing at the now-shattered goggles, he flipped over onto his back with a strangled yell. Using his stomach as a spring-board, I took off after Michael. A crude and fast move, it was effective enough, judging from the sound of vomiting that followed me.
Michael had paused when I had fallen, and I hissed urgently, “Go. Go!” He ran on until a form came boiling out of the darkness to tackle him about the legs. Considering what Michael could do to him, the son of a bitch was brave to make the attempt. Considering the scream that came out of him, that label might be posthumous. But Michael hadn’t changed his mind about using his abilities to save himself. To save me he would break his own rules. For himself, it was still an emphatic no. The kid was too good for this . . . too goddamn good by far.
I reached them and tossed the limp attacker off Michael with one well-placed kick. “What did you do to him?” I grunted as I grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him to his feet.
“The same thing I did to that doctor, only this time I used my knee.” His hair a ghostly beacon, he rubbed a hand across his forehead. “They’re everywhere, aren’t they? It’s hopeless.”
“Only if we give up.” Hand still wound in his shirt, I towed him behind me into a haphazard speed. “And I’m not giving up on you, Misha. Now move your ass.”
We’d gone only a few more feet when a bullet kicked up sand at our feet. I missed the muzzle flash and fired in several directions. It was useless, and more bullets hit around us as we raced through the vegetation. We had no choice but to head back to the beach at the water’s edge. They’d formed a line between us and the house; there was no way around them. I didn’t know how long we’d last if we took to the water to swim down the coast, but I was afraid we were going to find out.
“Can you swim?” I demanded between panting breaths as we cleared the grass.
There was the glint of teeth as he smiled. “Theoretically.”
The repeat of his remark from one of our first escapes had a spurt of dark laughter locked in my throat. I only hoped his theory worked better in water than it did in cars. I hoped . . . God, I hoped I lived to see him swimming to safety. I hoped to see him grow to be twice the man I was. I hoped to see him happy and free.
Of course, none of that was going to happen. If God existed, he didn’t seem to be listening. Did he ever? Instead of God, it could be there was only inescapable fate. And fate seemed to like things tidy. What began on the beach should end on the beach. What was born in blood and pain should die the same way. God might be ignoring this particular sparrow, but fate was watching with lascivious interest. It couldn’t fucking wait to see what went down next.
That would be me.
I heard my thighbone break. The sound was so clear. The snap of a tree branch underfoot; the cracking of ice in a spring thaw—I heard that, but I never heard the gun that fired the bullet. And I don’t remember falling; I knew only that I was lying on the ground with the taste of sand in my mouth. I couldn’t feel my leg. There was a slow warmth spreading across my skin, but no feeling . . . no pain. Not yet. Shock took care of that. It also took care of my thoughts. They moved in staggering circles as my hands made vague motions in the sand, trying in vain to turn me over.
“There you are.”
The gloating voice was fatally familiar. I pushed up again as my brain convulsed desperately to grasp what was going on. This time with a leg that was worthless deadweight, I managed to turn onto my back and braced myself, barely, upright on my elbows. Where was he? There was nothing but darkness and a leering moon that all but blocked out the sky.
“All I wanted to do,” the voice floated on, “was to make others like me. With a few minor improvements of course.” There was a laugh rich with mock self-deprecation. “I do get so lonely.”
Jericho. It all came back; a river of fetid knowledge—fear, rage, and despair. The only hope I had left was that Michael was in the water. I didn’t see him. He had to be swimming away—he had to be. As for me—I was dead. It was inevitable. I had seconds, maybe minutes, before Jericho killed me, but if Michael made it out of here, then death was something I could live with. That would look good on a T-shirt. Death was something I could live with. The bile black humor twisted itself onto my lips before a spasm of coughing sent sand from my lungs. “Come out, you son of a bitch,” I rasped. My gun . . . Where was my gun? It had flown from my hand when I fell. Surreptitiously I felt beside me, running fingers through grit for the comforting feel of metal. It was over for me; I accepted that, but my last breath would be spent trying to take Jericho with me. “Come out,” I repeated. “What the hell are you afraid of?”
“Certainly not of a common thief.” He materialized out of a mass of night and moon shadows. He was a shadow himself, lit only with lunar streaks along the planes of his face. “You took my Michael. You took my property. Cheaters never prosper, haven’t you heard? And neither do thieves.” He hadn’t lost his gun. It was still securely in his hand and trained on me.
“Thief? You’re the one who stole him. Stole a little boy,” I spat. “Did you think you could just take him and walk away?”
“Steal? I didn’t steal him. Like any good baker, I made him from scratch.” The grin that carved across his face was as brilliant and cold as the moon overhead.
He wasn’t making any sense. None. The man was insane, but I would listen to his psychotic ranting until the end of time if that gave Michael more of a chance to escape. “How did you find us?” My hands still searched futilely for my weapon.
“A friend.” He crouched down well out of reach and rested his gun hand on his knee. “An old, old fr
iend who sold you a sad, sad story. I hear you’ll let him know when the article comes out. Could I get a copy? Since it is about me, it seems only fair. I could frame it for my office.”
I should’ve felt stupid. I didn’t. I felt worse. It was idiocy that couldn’t be equaled; it was carelessness miles beyond criminal. Bellucci had spun his tale of righteous anger, betrayal, and redemption, and I had swallowed it all like a spoon-fed baby. I’d watched the person who had no doubt planted the tracer on our car and my only thought had been regarding the ugliness of the wet dog she’d been carrying. It hadn’t once crossed my mind that Jericho needed a confederate in the legitimate science world. What better way to get access to cutting-edge new developments that had yet to see the light of the published world? Bellucci was the perfect silent partner. He could feed Jericho information, equipment, and get a nice slice of make-your-own-assassin pie. Even better, he could write outraged refutations of Jericho’s work and show himself to be Jericho’s most devoted rival. If anyone investigated Jericho, where would they go first?
Right.
Jericho’s early-warning system had been our downfall. “College pals,” I said bitterly. “Colleagues. And now you torture children together. Isn’t that . . .” The pain started. I was talking and breathing, and suddenly that was over. A malevolent butcher set up shop and went to work carving my thighbone into a thousand sharp-edged ivory knives. I gasped raggedly for air, then pushed through the black wave that washed over me. “Isn’t that . . . too . . . much togetherness?”
“You bore me.” Dismissive, he stood and walked close enough to kick the foot of my injured leg. As kicks went, it wasn’t much. Fairly gentle, more of a hard tap than anything, it was nevertheless enough to have the salty copper of blood flooding my mouth. “I thought you must be clever to have gotten this far, but close up . . . I simply don’t see it. Although removing his tracking chip wasn’t completely idiotic.” He tilted his head as if truly considering the exact measurement of my stupidity. “Surprising such a thought would occur to you. But even more of a mystery is that Michael stayed with you. He’s not much for killing, more’s the pity, but I fully expected him to take his leave of you quickly enough. Surely he wouldn’t have balked at a short coma for his kidnapper.”
My tongue almost refused to cooperate, numb from where I’d bitten it to keep from screaming in pain. “Not a kidnapper.” My hands fisted in the sand felt like the only thing holding me to consciousness. “He’s mine.”
“Yours?” The bass of his voice was colored with derision. “And here I thought he was mine all this time. Pray tell, dead man, how is he yours?”
He still didn’t know? He still hadn’t figured out who I was? “I’m his family,” I snarled weakly. “His family, you bastard.”
“Oh really?” The curve of his mouth was ripe with superiority and an amusement I couldn’t understand. “And how do you figure that?” He held up a hand and took a few steps back. Blood did tend to spatter a long way. “Never mind. I haven’t the time or inclination to play this little game.” Raising his voice slightly, he called out, “I see you, Michael. I’ve seen you watching all along. It’s all right, you know. Watch all you like. I rather enjoy the thought of your watching your ‘savior’ die. You can watch at my side if you wish.”
No. Damn it, no. He listened when I told him to run. He always listened, but then he always came back.
“Michael.” He drew the name out cajolingly. “You cannot deny your Maker, boy. If history has taught us nothing, it has taught us that.”
I didn’t see him. I twisted my head back and forth desperately. Maybe Jericho was wrong. Maybe he was doing this to torment me, to make my final moments as wrenching as he could. That was all it was; it had to be. When I finally brought my eyes back to those glossy black ones, I tried hard to hold on to that hope. It wasn’t easy in the face of the poisonous dark gaze fixed on me as I labored to sit upright in the sand. I wasn’t going to die lying flat in the sand, as if I were just waiting for it.
“Shy, that one,” he mused. “An odd quality in death incarnate.”
“He’s not.” I knew that as well as I’d ever known anything. “He’s not death.”
“Death enters through a thousand doors.” The gun extended toward me. “He’s only one. In time I’ll have all one thousand. And when all my doors open on the world, I alone will hold their keys.”
Then he fired.
The waiting is the hardest part. You learn that from nearly day one. You could be a child waiting for a cookie or a shiny new bike, or a cavity-ridden teenager waiting and dreading the jab of Novocaine with a needle that has no end. You could ask one of a million people waiting for outcomes both good and bad, and they would all tell you the same thing. Anticipation is a bitch; everything else is downhill. Is that true or not? I didn’t know, because what I expected, a bullet to the chest, didn’t happen. But God, I wish it had.
Time didn’t freeze. My life didn’t riffle before me like the pages of a badly drawn comic book. None of the clichés held true. My heart didn’t even have time to pound at a faster, more agonizingly painful rate. By the time you hear the gunshot, it’s too late for that. The bullet has already found its mark. If you’re the one hit, a beating heart may be a moot point. If you’re not the one cradling lead, a living heart isn’t what you want anyway—not anymore.
I looked down at the armful of deadweight, almost puzzled. So, it was God after all, not fate. It was God, and his sparrow had fallen from the sky to rest broken in my lap. Strands of bleached hair were cool against my arm, as cool as the liquid flowing against my chest was warm. The bullet had entered his back and exited his chest to rest in my shoulder. And the blood—the blood was everywhere. It flowed like a river out of him and onto me. I could even smell it on his breath—his shallow, fading breath.
“How could you do something so stupid?” I choked, the words ugly with anguish. “How could you do something so goddamn stupid?” His eyes were only colorless shadows in the moonlight, but I saw him in there still. Aware, he was with me, but beginning to drift away—far away. “Misha.” I rested my forehead on his. “Why?”
“For my brother,” he said simply.
The whisper brushed against my cheek and I watched as the life—the light—began to spill from his face. His skin went so transparent that dark lashes were a brutal contrast when they came to rest—and stayed at rest.
Jericho had known where he was. Charging him would’ve been futile. Instead, Michael had charged me. He’d thrown himself in front of me to take the bullet—my bullet. I pulled him close and blocked out the smell of blood with the scent of shampoo in his hair. Green and herbal, it took me from the beach to an endless field of grass and clover. It was a place without the stink of copper and the fly of fatal lead, a place without despair.
“Isn’t this annoying?”
There was the hiss and purr of sand under approaching shoes. Obviously, he’d overcome his distaste of wearing his victim’s blood, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t open my eyes as he came. I didn’t care. I’d found what I was looking for. After all these years, I’d found it. Damn if I was going to watch Jericho end it all.
“All my time wasted. All the delayed graduations, not to mention moving the entire Institute. Then there’s the money lost.” The footsteps stopped. “But nothing compares to the inconvenience. Nothing approaches the arrogance of your thinking you could interfere in my affairs.” The muzzle of his gun pressed hard against the top of my head, digging into skin and flesh. “My work.”
“Pull the trigger already, Frankenstein,” I said without emotion. “Just fucking pull it.”
I felt the air ripple as he leaned closer. “I should take you with me. You remember that examination table in the basement? I could take you apart on one just like it, piece by piece. I could make it last days, weeks if I wanted. No constructive purpose of course.” The laugh hit my skin with an unnatural heat. “Simply for fun. No?” The metal moved to my forehead as I remained
silent. “That’s all right. This is fun as well.”
This time I heard the shot. It rang gray and sharp as a titanium bell. I felt the muzzle disappear from my head and I wondered at how easy it was; so very easy. There was no pain; no degrading of consciousness. I could still hear the roar of the waves, could still smell the leafy scent of Michael’s hair. I even felt the ground shudder as a body thudded against it.
“Stefan? Son?”
I opened my eyes to see a face that was a near mirror image of mine. Lines of age, a scattering of white hairs in the black, it was me at sixty. Strange, considering I’d just died at the age of twenty-four. At least I thought I had. “Dad.” I licked dry lips. “Dad, what—what are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass apparently.” He holstered his gun and crouched down beside me. “What the hell is going on, Stoipah?”
My eyes left him to fix irrevocably on a fallen dark figure. Barely three feet away, Jericho sprawled in a boneless huddle in the sand. Lids only half closed, he stared blindly at nothing. His chest didn’t move and the white of his teeth was obscured by blood, inky black as the sky above. Anatoly’s shot had blown out the majority of his throat; he would’ve died instantly. He must have fallen on his gun, because there was no sign of it. And that was no good. I needed it—needed it badly.
“Give me your gun,” I grated.
Eyebrows pulling into a confused V, Anatoly said gruffly, “He’s dead, Stefan.”
“Give me the goddamn gun.”
With no further argument, he shrugged and slipped it into my hand. I cradled Michael with one arm and emptied the clip in Jericho’s head at point-blank range. The shape of his skull changed to something misshapen and horrific. Now the outside of the son of a bitch reflected what lurked underneath.