by Peter Clines
Unfortunately for Leandra, she had work to do, and that meant pleasure would have to wait. She didn’t bother to get dressed before sitting down at her work station. A small USB drive caught her eye, and Leandra found herself smiling once more. Fox always delivered when it counted. Without a second thought, Leandra plugged the USB drive into her computer.
The smile stayed on Leandra’s face as she looked through the files. Fox had done good. The USB stick had schematics and blueprints for Hildeman’s newest R&D projects, the locations for those projects, and even better, Hildeman’s bids for several upcoming government contracts. Leandra could do a lot of good with that information and make a lot of money.
She kept the locations of Hildeman’s R&D facilities up on one screen and pulled up a list of contractors on another. Anti-Matter had been a joke. Good for her needs at the time, sure, but not enough of a threat or challenge for what she'd need next. Besides, it would look suspicious if he showed up at a Hildeman facility after attacking one of her places tonight. Not that the man could break out of jail with a seven-man team and fifty pounds of plastic explosives to help him out. “Hmm, maybe Omega would be up for some paid destruction? He always seems to like putting on a show.”
“Omega can be a tough nut to put down. You sure you got the juice to do that safely?” Fox’s voice came from the couch, putting the lie to her earlier appearance.
“Definitely. Especially if I add this mass driver that Hildeman has been working on.” Leandra brought the device’s blueprint up as she spoke.
“Just like that?”
“Well yeah. It gives me a chance to build and test how they did it, and then I can fix it, improve it, and modify it for my own patent. I've got everything I need here to build it, and if Hildeman complains or tries to file a motion, that virus you put on their system will make it look like they stole from me and not the other way around.” Leandra grinned to Fox. “Easy peasy.”
Fox laughed and stretched out on the couch. “See, that’s what I don’t understand. If you had me working the building, why’d you bring your fight with that doofus in there?”
“Plausible deniability on where the target was. Besides, now when the city contractors fix the building up as part of the insurance rules, I can get more eyes in on what they’re doing. Keeps us isolated and in the know. Which reminds me, that woman who was here earlier, Katy Pierce? I need you to take care of her before she gets too close.”
Fox stood and then leaned against the back of Leandra’s chair, letting her hand run through Leandra’s hair as she spoke. “You’ve got to be the worst super hero in the world with the shit you pull.”
“I'm providing a service. The fights are real, and those thugs would have attacked somewhere else if not for me. I'm minimizing the damage they do and keeping it all under control. People should be thanking me for that, not trying to expose it like a crime.”
“Right, and all the theft, sabotage, and corporate espionage that goes along with it. Just icing on the cake, right?”
Leandra grinned and looked up to Fox. “Of course, you’ve gotta take opportunities where you find them. It’s the American way.”
Crooked
Lee Mather
Leon Lighte watched the swirling snow. It was almost pretty when the streetlamps caught it, but in truth, this was a callous deceit. Winter was death, and Leon knew it. He despised the cold. He felt it worse on the left side—always the left side. Even beneath the woolen scarf and the thick hood covering his face, his cheek ached where the muscles slackened beneath his drooping eye. Soon, the numbness would come, and his arm and leg would stiffen beyond use, frozen like this place.
Leon noticed his footprints in the alley between the houses. They wouldn’t do.
No traces, he thought as adrenalin kicked in.
He focused on the snowdrift, maybe three feet deep, piled on either side of his trailing prints. He cleared his mind, ignored the cold. It wasn’t as natural as breathing yet, but it was getting easier by the day. He felt ready. He forced himself to reach out although his arms remained perfectly still. Suddenly, the snowdrift shivered and then shifted, collapsing over where his footprints had been.
No traces.
Satisfied, Leon turned his attention to the floodlight above the back door to the house. A ghostly tentacle emerged from his chest. It twisted through the night until it penetrated the cover of the lamp and wrapped around the bulb. He visualized an intense pressure and smashed the glass. Leon sagged, and the tentacle dissipated, swallowed by the falling snow. He walked to the back door, gave a cursory glance at the neighbor’s house to ensure nobody saw, and scrutinized the glass panes. There were no alarm points. Not that it mattered. House alarms were child’s play.
He steadied and delved inside the door’s mortise lock. Invisible fingers reached inside it from somewhere deep within him. He aligned the barrels and slid the locking mechanism apart.
Leon drew a wobbling breath. It was more tiring than he remembered, but part of that was the cold. He almost leaned on the door for support but stopped in time.
No traces.
A thought and the handle depressed. The doors swung open into darkness.
Leon hesitated. He considered Dale Howard and his square jaw and tousle of blond hair. Then Willa. He felt unexpected regret until anger closed around it like a steel fist.
He stepped inside Dale’s home.
#
Leon wheezed, sweat sticking his shirt to his back. His breath was gray mist. Willa’s house was a few hundred yards up the hill, a shadow beyond the snow. It was almost six weeks since she asked him to leave. Not far, he thought grimly although the pain in his legs didn’t agree. The house might as well be on the other side of the world.
He managed the hill and noted the black saloon with opaque windows, parked on the corner nearest Willa’s. His eyes lingered on it, wondering…
Leon clenched his teeth, continued on, grateful for the scarf, the Wellingtons, the mittens, and his thick winter coat. In his jacket pocket was a trinket from Dale’s. It was an old habit, keeping something from every burglary he did for Jimmy. They were his good luck charms.
I’ll have earned a cigarette when this is done.
Smiling bitterly, Leon approached Willa’s door. The hike wouldn’t have been a problem for a normal 35-year-old, but it was for him. It took him close to a year following the stroke to learn to walk again.
He paused and gathered his breath. The house glittered like it was caked in a skin of diamonds, and the garden was buried beneath a white shroud. Willa’s home was still, picturesque, a photo on a Christmas card. He remembered snuggling Willa on the couch, the warmth of their bodies as one.
A callous deceit.
His world ended in that house.
Leon pretended to reach out his right hand, his left close to useless with the cold. It was for effect just in case any of the local curtain twitchers were paying attention. He hid, always hid.
The door opened, and he stepped inside the house and quietly slid it shut. He stayed in the porch, removed his scarf and his coat, and shook snow from himself. He was about to start a monumental struggle with his boots when he noticed the unnatural cold. His stomach fell away. This was it. He limped into the living room and saw through the arch leading to the kitchen. Pale moonlight shone in from the patio doors and cast the room in an eerie glow. One of the doors was broken with shards of glass scattered on the tiled floor. Snow drifted in from the yard, and the thin net curtains flapped in the breeze.
Leon felt strangely afraid. He hobbled to the door and traced footprints in the snow leading to and from the house. There were longer marks, like something had been dragged across the yard, and worse, a thin spatter of blood stained the snow. He dizzied, slumped against the wall. He thought maybe it would have come to a head here—but no. They’d taken her. Daggers stabbed his brain.
Not now, he thought. Not another stroke for Christ’s sake.
&nb
sp; His left side tingled. He wobbled, told himself they were simply echoes, the phantom symptoms that haunted him on occasion.
“It’s been a long time, Lightfingers.”
Leon stiffened, recognizing the voice. He still faced the garden, faced the blood. He fought for calm and then twisted his head slowly, glancing into the kitchen where he noticed each of the knives had been removed from the sharpener.
“Marek?” The words tasted bitter in Leon’s mouth.
The Polish Cleaver stepped into the kitchen from the shadows. Leon turned to him.
“You look…as handsome as ever,” Marek said, reaching into his jacket. He brought out a cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag. The Pole smirked, his eyes cruel.
Leon straightened as best he could. “Where is she?”
Marek laughed. The Pole always looked like he knew something nobody else did, like he was the smartest man in the world.
“You stole from Jimmy. Not a good idea.”
Leon didn’t answer. Marek was older than him by ten years or so, but he was fit and strong and dangerous—maybe 6’4” and 17 stone—and most probably armed. Leon shrugged off the tension, and two tentacles left his chest to circle the Pole. Marek took another drag of his cigarette, oblivious as Leon searched his person. The spectral fingers found the gun first and then the machete, hidden beneath the Pole’s long jacket in custom-made holsters. Leon gripped the cold metal of both but resisted the urge to turn them on Marek. He held them in case he needed to protect himself. Granted, it would be easier if he could control people as he could control the lock to a door or break the bulb in a light or move a pile of snow in the street. But it didn’t work like that. Flesh and bone, anything with a will, was beyond him. God knows he tried on Willa enough times.
“Are you here to kill me?” Leon asked, testing his psychic ability as he talked. His will held firm.
I’m getting stronger. I’m ready.
“Jimmy would be here himself. You know that.”
Marek’s smile oozed contempt. Leon had seen that look a thousand times on a thousand faces—the look afforded to cripples. But never from Willa. She used to see past his scars, used to look at him like he was a man. Yet she still ended it. Maybe if she knew what he could do? Maybe if any of them knew?
“Jimmy wants to see you. He wants the money you took when you ran. £30 grand.”
Leon shivered, wondered how much Marek knew. The words stuck in his throat at first.
“Willa…was pregnant…a boy.”
Marek paused. Leon noticed the smirk falter albeit briefly.
“Jimmy won’t care. He wants his money.”
Jimmy wants to make an example of me more like, Leon thought darkly. There could be no chinks in Jimmy Delvita’s armor. Too many scumbags out there to take advantage if he ever showed weakness. The Mouth of Truth, as he was known, never did. Jimmy was a veteran of the first Gulf War. A war was where a man like Jimmy belonged, atrocities and all.
Leon nodded to the broken door.
“It’s messy. Someone might have seen.”
Marek shrugged. “It don’t matter. The Filth won’t touch Jimmy. He owns half of the law. The rest are shit-feared of him.”
“Where’s Willa?” Leon asked, stubborn.
“She’s at Jimmy’s by now. Weasel Kep took her.”
Leon’s psychic arms disintegrated. He stared at Marek, horrified.
The Pole grinned. Kepner, thin-faced and ugly as a weasel, was a specific type of bastard, a rapist who didn’t care what he stuck it in. Rape was one of Jimmy’s favorite weapons. Man, woman, or child.
Marek finished his cigarette and threw the butt onto the wooden floor. He ground it with the spurred heel of his cowboy boot.
“We talk too much. You coming, or do I need to bring you?”
Leon nodded, limped forward. Fear coursed through him as he tried to center himself and conjure more tentacles. Nothing happened. All he could think of was Kepner’s thin face, leering over Willa.
Marek seemed to recognize the change in him
“It’s you Jimmy wants—perhaps he won’t hurt her if you play ball.”
Leon nodded weakly, not believing Marek for one second. He raised his hands, his left as high as it would go.
#
“Sixteen years,” Marek muttered. They were the first words spoken in almost an hour. “Sixteen years is a long time.”
Leon stared out of the window into fluttering snowflakes.
“You didn’t ask how I found you.”
Leon shrugged.
Marek put his foot on the gas. They were in Manchester now, and the roads were clearer than the hills of Sheffield where Leon had fled to.
“Somebody talked.”
“Someone always does.”
Marek smiled. “They didn’t leave a name. Don’t know why. Who cares if a cripple holds a grudge?”
Leon watched the snow. Jimmy would care soon enough. He trembled then, remembered how his concentration slipped when Marek told him of Willa. If he couldn’t control his power, he was as good as dead. His stomach suddenly became a nest of vipers.
“Sixteen years with Jimmy-–you were a kid when your father went down.” Marek sighed. “You’re not the only one to get a girl pregnant, y’know. But a father and son—that’s special. You became Jimmy’s son. And you threw it back in his face.”
A father and son—that’s special. Leon remembered the beating that fractured his skull and caused the stroke. He had no anger left for his old man. There were others ahead in that line. His father was just a drunk who died in prison. In some ways, he pitied his old man; in other ways, Leon owed him everything. It was during the six months in hospital when Leon felt the change, when he understood he could move things with his mind—when he realized his will could become tendrils snaking through the air that only he could see, that only he could control. On one hand, the thrombosis ruined him, but on the other, it was like the bleed unlocked something greater. He became more than his broken shell—more than man. Nobody ever knew. Not even Willa.
Leon scoffed aloud.
Marek gave him a curious look.
“I have a boy myself. Maybe I understand why you ran.”
Leon shifted, where the pain felt fresh. He kept his eyes on the city streets. Men in hoodies, women with blueing legs in impossibly short skirts. Around here, the children of the night belonged to Jimmy.
“I ran…because…I couldn’t protect him…from himself. I didn’t want him to grow up near men like you.”
“All men are like me,” Marek laughed. “You would be too, Lightfingers, if that bleed in your brain hadn’t made you half a man. You’re a neutered dog. Look at the world. The difference between you and me is I still have my cock and bollocks. I can fuck whatever I please.”
Leon stared at his distorted reflection in the wing mirror, his eyes wet and stinging.
Half a man.
Marek didn’t speak for a long time. But suddenly, he did.
“There was no sign of any kids at your place.”
There it was.
Leon blinked, felt tears hot on his cheeks.
“She told me afterwards—when I couldn’t change her mind. By then, we’d already run.”
Marek cursed beneath his breath.
Leon used to tell himself he understood. She couldn’t risk having to wipe two arses, mine and the kid’s, was what he used to think. A callous deceit.
“You were a boy when you had the stroke? Seventeen? Jimmy never cared. You think that bitch would’ve gotten rid of your kid if you’d stayed with him? No chance. You were someone. You had respect.”
Leon held his tongue. Respect. He remembered the highs, the sensation of feeling alive when he took from weaker people, but he never had respect. He was always the cripple.
The car skidded as they headed into the suburbs, and the snow clung to the wheels with more determination. Marek ignored the slippery surface, p
ut his foot down.
“You were nobody when he found you. He made you somebody, took you from burgling houses to breaking bank vaults.”
Leon sighed. The truth was somewhere in between. Once Leon understood what his stroke made him capable of, no lock or vault could keep him out. He could get inside any place, never needed tools. Back then, Jimmy made his money from smaller jobs, and Leon was always there to oblige. Over time, the Mouth of Truth used his earnings to suffocate the city. These days, the drugs, the whores, the protection rackets, they all belonged to Jimmy.
Marek cursed again, shook his head.
“And now…well, we both know how this ends.”
Leon’s hands shook. He had to get it together, or he was in big trouble. He witnessed Jimmy serve justice on a number of occasions. Leon was there when Jimmy tortured Price, when he cut bits off the copper’s 4-year-old daughter, when Price wept and gagged as bits of severed flesh were forced down his throat. That was just one time. There were so many tales about Jimmy. They spread through the city like shivers along a spine.
The black saloon jerked as Marek brought them to a skidding halt outside two tall gates.
“Maybe…” Leon searched for his courage. “…maybe…I’ll take everything from Jimmy this time.”
The Pole stared at Leon like he was mad. “You fucking idiot,” he muttered.
Leon couldn’t speak.
#
It was 4 am when the gates of Jimmy Delvita’s estate opened. A security camera tracked them with a brilliant red eye as Marek drove inside the Mouth of Truth’s stronghold.
Leon slipped as he climbed from the saloon. He grabbed the roof to keep his balance. Marek grinned when he saw Leon struggling to stand.
Half a man, Leon thought bitterly as he steadied himself.
His heart thumped as he surveyed the country house looming darkly before him. It had been a long time. Jimmy was in there somewhere, waiting. Some said the Mouth of Truth possessed supernatural powers, but Leon knew this was bullshit. Jimmy was grotesque, but there was nothing demonic about him. He was simply the worst of man.