“I’ll bet he did.”
“For getting you this close to killed, I should set you free when we get back,” Bronte said as she went to a giant old bed frame, its pieces stacked against a wall, unscrewed a thick-turned bedpost, reached in, and pulled something out.
“Without you, Bronte, I would wither and die, so do not consider condemning me to your notion of freedom.”
“Right, because you can’t be free if you’re dead. We’re both gonna die here, you know.”
“I beg to differ.” And he meant that for all deities in begging/prayer range.
At an ancient dressing table, she removed a drawer, slipped off the back to reveal a cubby with something shiny. She click, clicked the objects together and looked up at him. “Cartridges loaded. Can you shoot a gun?”
“There was a gun up here?”
She took a faded old jean jacket off the back of a chair, shook the dust off, and slipped it on. “There are lots of guns up here. Zachary Tucker, the elder, expected to die early and hard, so he hoarded some protection, little good the guns did him. Wanna see ’em?”
“The guns or the old man?” Must stop picturing Zachary on his way to the morgue. I heartily regret reading about death on earth.
“Not the old man,” Bronte said. “He’s worm food.”
“Worm’s meat!” Squawk. The sound came from the round attic window. Through it, an upside-down parrot stared in at them. “The finished product of which we are the raw material: Worm’s meat.” Squawk.
“That bird’s gonna get us in trouble,” Bronte said, “and I don’t think he’ll be any quieter if we let him in.” She went to the window and touched the gun to the glass.
“Puckin’ A!” The bird squawked and disappeared, leaving his calling card on the glass. “Didn’t poop on the girl . . .” they heard from a distance.
She set the guns on the table. “There’s an antique machine gun in that corner. But Zachary and I never played with it.”
“Played with? It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourselves.”
“Learning was a matter of self-defense.”
“Scary self-defense. Do you realize what you just did?”
“Scared the noisy bird away? This is a matter of life and death. I had to do something so he wouldn’t get us killed.”
“Because that’s how you were brought up. It’s always a matter of life and death here, isn’t it?”
She covered her heart with her left hand and raised her right. “Realizing that scares the daylights out of me, but I get it. I’m scared sick. I just held a gun to a bird. I wouldn’t have used it, but I’m guessing that’s how you get started in this game. You never plan to use it, but the day comes when you’re forced to, and you do.”
Both hands on her heart, she gave him a compelling look. “Do you still care about me? I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.”
Darkwyn opened his arms, and she came readily into them. She couldn’t love herself or her family, so she certainly didn’t love him, but she needed him, he told himself. And he was okay with that. “You’re not quite as ruthless as you think, because you figured it out on your own.”
“When you pointed it out. What would I do without you?”
“You don’t have to find out. We’re married.”
“Oh yeah.”
“So, do you think you could grab that evidence so we can get the bloody hell out of here?”
“Right.” She went to climb a table.
Darkwyn kept from reacting to her acrobatics, so he wouldn’t distract her and make her lose her balance.
On her toes, on the rickety table, she felt along the top of a beam and pulled down a book she blew dust off of. After hocking up a lung, she slid the book into a zipperless compartment that formed a false bottom on Zachary’s backpack.
Darkwyn admired her determination. “I take it you’ve been planning this?”
“Zachary has. His whole life. And I paid attention to his plans.”
She jumped off the table like an agile monkey. He watched her approach, stop in front of him, raise his T-shirt, and shove a gun in the waistband of his jeans.
Darkwyn swallowed. “Uh, I don’t like where that’s pointing.”
“I do. It reminds me how much power you have.” She pulled down his T-shirt to cover the gun and wrinkled his shirt at his waist to cover the shape of it. “Don’t worry, it’s a prototype, but it’s safe and shoots like a dream.” She slipped a watch on his wrist. “That’s the electronic safety.”
“Did Zachary invent it?”
“No, the inventor sent it to Sanguedolce to get backing. But the old guy threw it in the trash. Zachary later got it out and brought it up here. We tested it on the roof. You can buy them anywhere now. Somebody must have backed the guy.”
“How does it work?”
“The watch has a built-in electronic safety that disables the pistol when it’s not within a few inches of it.”
“So when I’m wearing the watch, the gun works for me only?”
“Right. If you’re right-handed, wear the watch on your right wrist, and the gun picks up a signal from the watch, lights up green, here,” she indicated, “and it’s ready to shoot.”
“If somebody grabs the gun, but I’m wearing the watch?”
“That little light goes red and the gun won’t shoot. So Sanguedolce or one of his goons can take it away from you but they can’t use it on you. Of course, they’ll have guns of their own.”
“Great.”
She put a different kind of gun into her corset, neat between her breasts, and it didn’t show at all.
“Can you get it out?” he asked.
“I’m betting I’ll have time. Inhaling will help.”
He chuckled. “I’d like to test your theory in a bed, without bullets, and with lots of time.”
She sighed. “Me, too.”
“Bronte, don’t go taking any chances.”
“Not here, I won’t.”
“You already did. You could have fallen off that table and alerted your stepfather to our presence.”
He and Bronte turned on a dime to the unexpected chuckle behind them. “No need to alert Sanguedolce,” said a raspy voice. “He is waiting for his daughter downstairs.”
Three goons clicked their guns in sync.
What did the thugs do, fly in on silent wings? Eerie. They were not the same men as at Drak’s, of course, but all goons looked the same to him. “How did you find us?” Darkwyn asked.
Goon number one stepped forward. “Lightning struck a circuit on our security system, and when it came back on, voila, every screen showed a picture of you two kissing on the roof.”
Darkwyn knew then that they faced a double fight because Killian had alerted the mob to their presence.
“Such passion,” the goon continued. “Good to know you care so much about each other. We, in the business, call that leverage. And we thank you for it.” The thug bowed. “Miss Sanguedolce.”
Ugly secret, Bronte communicated telepathically. Sanguedolce adopted me. Do you wonder why I changed my name?
Darkwyn grabbed her hand, squeezed, and answered silently. We’ve already fixed that, Mrs. Dragonelli.
Don’t tell them.
Gotcha. “Whadda ya know?” Darkwyn said to the goons. “Cameras on the roof. You gorillas aren’t as stupid as you look.”
He got sucker punched for that.
That’s it, boys, make my dragon mad.
FORTY-SIX
As if they mattered not at all, Enrico Sanguedolce barely glanced their way as he and Bronte were brought to the mob boss’s inner sanctum, a room that might as well be papered and upholstered with hundred dollar bills. The man carried the stance of a powerful ruler, tall, straight, wide shouldered, if not robust, his hair a silver white, his heart as black as those of the Mighty Joe Youngs who worked for him.
Sanguedolce focused on stoking the fire in the hearth, probably with a solid gold poker, making the room about ninety degrees. That’s where he show
ed his age, his craving for heat in October.
Ignoring them, well, that was part of his job, Darkwyn figured. Being boss had to be all about control.
His goons were sweating, either from the temperature, or fear. Both good reasons.
Darkwyn figured the man needed fire to prepare for a perpetual stay in hell. He knew only that if Zachary lost his life, this man had ordered the boy’s execution. In the same way he’d ordered the death of the man whose name and soul Zachary carried.
Hit me again, Darkwyn silently begged, raising his arrogant chin. Get my dragon roaring. Even with his wrists bound, his dragon wasn’t half mad enough to come out on its own. Darkwyn, the man, found himself too numbed by profound worry over Zachary to instigate the transformation alone.
He also needed a cool head in this life-and-death situation, so maybe remaining human for the time being would be best. Still he couldn’t help poking the scum. “You live like a king, Sanguedolce. You’re touted in your own newspapers as a smart and generous man. Surely you can talk to your stepdaughter without every brute in the house holding a gun on us.”
Those guns went higher. The old man made a motion for his men to lower them. “At ease,” Sanguedolce said, making another motion for them to put the guns away.
The thugs obeyed—of course they did—and stood looking from him and Bronte to their boss, and back, legs spread, hands at the ready, about ten watts of brainpower between them, and not a one “at ease.”
“So, my daughter, you wear a mask? Why now?”
“Always. I wear it always to hide, because I’m ashamed to be your stepdaughter.”
The old man clenched his fists.
The situation suddenly felt like a standoff, until a Monet flew from the wall to reveal a dumbwaiter behind it, open, and occupied.
“Zachary!” Bronte gasped.
“Don’t move,” the boy snapped, halting Bronte’s instinctive step in his direction. “Don’t turn your back on them and don’t block my targets.”
“Why didn’t you stay out of sight?”
“For Mom.” ’Nuff said. Zachary focused on Sanguedolce. “Hey grand-killer, did you miss me? Call your bozos off, or I’ll show you everything I ever learned growing up here. I’ve got an arsenal, complements of Tucker, your old record-keeper, who personally showed me this rabbit warren and taught me its every secret. Yeah, I know, he died as I was born. Think about it. Meanwhile, if you hurt Bronte or Darkwyn, I have toys enough in here to make Castello Sanguedolce implode.”
“You would implode with it,” the old mobster said, paler and looking more fragile by the minute.
Zachary sneered. “I would go happily, if I took you with me, though I think we’ll go in separate directions.”
“You sound bold for a twelve-year-old.”
Zachary said something that one of the goons identified as Italian and it made the old man gasp, stagger, reclaim his balance, and step back. His gangsters looked a little green around the gills, too.
“I didn’t know you could speak Italian,” Bronte said.
Zachary raised his eyes Bronte’s way, straight and serious, and his take-no-prisoners look said it all. In those eyes, Darkwyn saw a hardened old man protecting the boy who shared his soul, the boy who shared his enemy. That had surely been old Tucker scaring the crap out of Sanguedolce by using his own language against him, and didn’t the old man do a great job.
“Rico,” Sanguedolce pleaded.
“I hate that you named me after you,” Zachary said. “The thought makes me sick.”
“You are only a boy, you don’t know your own mind.”
“You made a joke,” Zachary said.
And quite funny, Darkwyn thought, considering the fact that the boy practically had two minds, his own and old Zachary’s.
“No joke here, though,” Zachary continued. “I’ve got stink bombs, tear gas, triple tasers, faithful old guns—my favorite’s the machine gun—and bright, shiny high-techs. Every one you ever threw away.”
“Rico,” Sanguedolce said again, unable to mask his plea, faking a cool that the twitch of his fingers belied. “Why do you turn on your grandfather like this? Look around you.” He indicated the room. “This is all yours. The purest of golds, marble from Italy, lapis lazuli and malachite from Russia’s Ural Mountains, French bronzes, Japanese pottery, the riches of the world, my boy. It will all be yours, if you stay.”
Zachary laughed as he pulled his Fangs backpack around to his lap.
One of the bozos made a move.
The boy grabbed something that filled his hand and held it out there like a threat. “Another move and I pull the cap.”
Bronte caught her breath. “Zachary Tucker, are you playing with a hand grenade?”
“Zachary Tucker?” Sanguedolce’s hands were stricken as if with a palsy.
Young Zachary looked amused, Darkwyn thought. As the boy flipped open his backpack, yellow smoke rose from inside, bright tendrils, a familiar whistle accompanying it, unmistakable.
“I think the kid’s got a bomb,” one of the thugs shouted, and four out of five gorillas hit the floor, though none of them saw the smoke.
The fifth remained standing and shook his head at their stupidity.
“The Sanguedolce dynasty ends here,” Zachary said, as Jagidy flew from the backpack to smoke test the occupants of the room, invisible to everyone but the three of them.
Sanguedolce failed, of course. His smoke rose thick, and black as hell. The goons smoked black, too, except for the fifth, the one still standing. He tested yellow, which meant he was safe, aka not evil, aka on their side.
A plant. Probably, RCMP.
Darkwyn had never appreciated Jagidy’s smoke testing more, until the pocket dragon got distracted by Bronte’s cleavage and hit a wall. It made Darkwyn wonder, again, how Zachary got here, and Jagidy became the obvious answer.
Sanguedolce took another step toward Zachary, taking their attention from the pocket dragon.
“The hand grenade is the least of your problems,” Zachary warned. “Not another step, old man. I changed my name. I disowned you. No family loyalty here, but plenty of brainpower.”
“We will see how good the word of a boy is, shall we? Lorenzo,” Sanguedolce said. “Take my daughter’s backpack, give it to Guido, and you take her away. Lock her up, you know where, and stay with her. Don’t touch her and don’t hurt her, yet.”
Darkwyn communicated telepathically. Bronte, best behavior. We’ll fetch you, soon. You still have your gun?
I have the gun, but Zachary?
I’ll take care of him. My dragon’s ready to take over when the time is right.
Bronte raised her chin. Take care of yourself, too.
I will. I hope you’ll be safer this way.
And more afraid, she admitted.
I know. He didn’t dare tell her he was scared, too, that he couldn’t save Zachary. As long as Bronte and the boy ended up safe, nothing else mattered.
Lorenzo disappeared with Bronte while fury radiated off Zachary in waves. He must be listening to his soul memories not to protest. Or he waited until Bronte was safe away from here.
Meanwhile, after losing Bronte’s escort, they were down to three gorillas and a good guy. The odds were getting better.
Guido, the tallest and dumbest of them, searched Bronte’s backpack, as told. In half a minute the book of evidence came out. Sanguedolce took it, leafed through it, said something in Italian, and had the hoodlum drop the book in the fire.
All this way for nothing, Darkwyn thought, but Zachary didn’t so much as blink at the destruction of his evidence. “Now what?” Darkwyn asked.
“Now, my men, they are going to beat the crap out of you. My daughter and grandson, they will sleep in their own beds, tonight. Tomorrow, they will agree to my terms, I promise you.”
“If they do not, are you going to kill the boy? A child?”
“I wouldn’t be the first,” Zachary said. “Old Zachary’s wife, Gina, died pregna
nt.”
Sanguedolce straightened in surprise. “Gina? What do you know of Gina Fioranelli? She died years before you were born.”
“Gina Fioranelli Tucker. How did you force her car off the road?”
“I never need to know the details. I am not a . . . how do they say . . . a . . . micromanager.”
Zachary charged from the dumbwaiter—bad move—and beat on the mobster, likely for the sake of the old man inside him. “Murderer!”
The mobster reared back and slapped the boy across the face.
Darkwyn roared, his claws came out, his body weight shifted, and with one swipe, his tail took out the entire row of gorillas behind him. Strike!
FORTY-SEVEN
The old man’s hands shook, his balance none too steady as he backed toward the door, and away from the dragon suddenly stalking him. “You’re not real,” Sanguedolce said.
Zachary laughed. “Why, what do you think you see, grand-killer? You look scared, like you’ve seen a ghost. Is it my mother? Or is it all of them? Every man, woman, and child, you ever killed. Now that would be scary.”
Sanguedolce peeked around his dragon form and toward the room at large, focusing on his thugs. “Do you not see a dragon?”
Although they’d backed practically into the next room, so far back as to be laughable, they shook their heads in collective denial. The cop, however, wore a speculative expression, but he did stand with the thugs—as far away as he could get.
Dragon or not, Darkwyn had never wanted to laugh and kill a man at the same time. Well, to be truthful—to himself, at least—he had never before wanted to do either, though as a Roman warrior, he’d had a similar job.
Zachary stood right beside him, Darkwyn noticed, and acted as if he didn’t exist. Smart. “You doing drugs old man?” the boy asked.
Darkwyn had never seen Zachary’s bitterness, then again, he might be radiating the bitterness of both man and boy.
“No drugs.” Sanguedolce shook his grizzled head. “Nothing but an old man’s medicine.”
“So you admit to fallibility,” Zachary said, “and hallucinations.”
The mob boss raised his chin and stopped backing away. “I do not hallucinate. A reaction to my medication, this . . . aberration,” he said in his fiercest mob voice. “Means nothing! I send the anomaly to hell.”
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