by Rhys Ford
“I’m just so damned tired,” he mumbled through his fingers.
“Here.” Sionn nudged his shoulder and passed over a wide, thick towel. The man had changed out of his wet shirt, throwing on a tank top instead. “Coffee’ll be done soon. I’ll go dig up some clothes for you.”
“Thanks. Let me sit here a bit first. I’m kind of shaky. It’s fucking cold.” Damien used the towel to get as much of the water out of his hair as he could. His hat was somewhere in Sionn’s Jeep, probably lost beneath a pile of Finnegan’s T-shirts and some water bottles.
Looking up at Sionn was probably something his nerves could have done without. It was bad enough to see the man bend over tables. Up close and personal was a breathtaking torture. No, Damien moaned into the edge of the towel, he didn’t need to see Sionn’s muscled chest under the too-thin gray fabric or his powerful arms bunch up as he grabbed a laptop from a nearby black-lacquer side table. The man’s body radiated heat, and Damien shuffled farther back into the couch, needing some distance.
“I want you to tell me what happened,” Sionn said softly. He opened the laptop, powered it on, and waited for it to cycle up. “Everything, okay? I’ll take down some notes, and we’ll go to the cops together—”
“Oh hell to the no,” Damien shot back, shaking his head. “No cops. Are you insane? Suppose that guy knows a cop—”
“Were you always this paranoid?” Sionn’s eyes flickered with amusement at Damien’s scowl. “My uncle is a cop. A captain. The guy that showed up to take your statement… you know, the one you skipped out on… he’s kind of an uncle too. I know the cops. They’re going to protect you. I’ll protect you. Now start talking to me, Dee. Why do you think someone shot at you?”
Sionn meant what he said. Damien could see that. Even as worn out as he was, he could hear the sincerity in the man’s rough, accented voice. They knew nothing about each other, but here he was, promising shit he probably couldn’t deliver, because Sionn was probably the type of guy who rescued dragons from maidens and helped trolls with their goat infestation.
After what seemed like an eternity of running, Damien was just too fucking tired to take another step. Taking a deep breath, he plunged forward, falling into the scary nothingness of the unknown and hoping beyond hope that Sionn would catch him before he hit bottom.
“First off, my name’s not Dee.” He took the laptop out of Sionn’s hands, ignoring the scrape of the man’s fingernails against his palms. “Here. Hand me that. I’ll show you something.”
A quick search brought up the Skywood fire, and he turned the screen around for Sionn to see, tapping at the ruins of the institute in the picture. The man read through the article, his eyes flicking down the screen, and when he finished, he gave Damien an odd look.
“This place… it’s a mental institution?” Confusion trampled deep lines into Sionn’s handsome face. “Why?”
“Because my real name is Damien Mitchell and I supposedly died in a car accident… along with some other guys in my band.” Damien took a deep breath, pushing himself past the rusty grief that welled up every time he thought of Dave and Johnny. “That place is where somebody—I don’t know who—stuck me. Then a guy showed up to take me out. Problem is, I don’t remember a lot from what happened before I woke up there. And I sure as fuck don’t know why that guy is trying to kill me.”
THE old woman’s blubbering was getting on his nerves. He’d spent less than an hour with her, persuading her to tell him about the man she’d rented the attic space to, but either she was stupider than she looked and really didn’t know anything about Mitchell—something he’d thought impossible—or she was holding out on him from some sense of loyalty. He doubted the loyalty and would have been amazed if the woman actually had any idea about the concept. No, she was something cheap and disposable, much like any other dried-up whore on the far side of her life, and stuck under a billow of dingy gray hair and nicotine stains.
Even an hour was too much time to waste on her, but Parker had hopes. Slim, but still hopes she’d know something to lead him to Mitchell.
And like other women in the past, she’d disappointed him as well.
She’d also infuriated the hell out of him. Being duct-taped to a chair and beaten with a blackjack didn’t seem to do anything other than make her piss the floral housecoat she wore over her flabby, old body, and Parker hissed, stepping clear of the urine puddle soaking into the room’s cheap acrylic carpet.
“Do you have any idea how much these shoes cost?” He wasn’t expecting an answer. Not through the strip of silver tape he’d finally affixed across her sunken cheeks. “What is it with your kind and ruining my shoes? It’s like you can’t help yourself. It’s why you can’t have nice things.”
Looking around the apartment, Parker shuddered, seeing his trailer park childhood in its furnishings. Doe-eyed children gazed out at him from velvet paintings on either side of an ancient television, its weight barely held up by a damp-swollen particleboard entertainment center. A musky-smelling floral couch took up most of the living room, its puffed fabric upholstery covered by a yellowed, bubbled plastic slip. The plastic creaked as he sat down across from the woman, and Parker sighed, feeling cracks in the cover pinching at his tweed pants.
“Has everything in this place fallen to shit?” He gingerly inched closer, wincing at the tugging along the backs of his thighs. Parker hooked his hands into the rungs between the chair’s legs and yanked the woman forward, jerking her across the carpet. “Now, since you have nothing to say to me, let’s get to the interesting portion of this afternoon’s entertainment.”
It was easy enough to find the television’s remote, tucked away into a magazine rack much like the one his mother once had. Parker turned on the box and flicked through the channels until he found something he liked. The old woman quivered, her eyes rolling up to their whites as he turned up the volume until the tiny apartment bounced with the sound of a game show, its clacking, spinning wheel and scantily clad hostesses brightly smiling through pounds of makeup while they showed off household items Parker couldn’t have been paid to take.
“There we go.” A contestant began to jump up and down on the screen, her large breasts bouncing nearly out of the tiny sundress she’d worn to the studio. Studying the knives he’d found in the woman’s kitchen, he selected the first he’d sharpened, a slender, long blade made of hammered German steel.
“Now, this is probably the finest thing you own,” Parker murmured, sliding the flat of the blade across her wrinkled cheek. “And here you were using it to cut lemons for your vodka.” She gurgled again, and he cocked his head, trying to make sense of her frantic bleating.
Patting her leg, Parker smiled reassuringly and began to carve away the skin on her face.
Chapter 6
Shove me into a corner
Strip me of my pride
Lay me down on a bed of nails
Pry me open up wide
Show me the way to Hell
Keep me from Heaven’s Gate
Break my heart so I can’t love
Leave me alone in your black hate
—Nail Me In
HE DIDN’T know what to think. Hell, if Sionn were honest, he was seriously thinking about calling up anyone with a PhD in crazy and handing Dee—no—Damien over for further study. But the man made a convincing argument.
Just with his face alone. And the story he told was incredible, starting with the feel of crumpled steel around him to a fire that led to his escape. Woven into the tale was an unknown puppet master whose blond simulacrum seemed bent on ending Damien’s life despite all of the effort to keep him alive.
Someone had to have put a killer on Mitchell’s tail. Especially since the shooter now seemed to have followed Damien to San Francisco.
The Internet was a fantastical place. It resurrected the dead, flickering pixels forming pictures of a man who’d been mourned by his fans. He’d never really followed Sinner’s Gin. He knew their music but c
ouldn’t have pointed out anyone in the band, but the man sitting next to him had pretty much irrefutable evidence he’d been who he said he was.
But it’d been the tattoo down the man’s spine that kicked Sionn’s brain into high gear.
Damien stripped off his shirt and bared the single most irrefutable piece of evidence he had of his existence to a man who’d kissed him senseless, then let him go.
But oh, that ink.
The tattoo was a piece of Sinner’s Gin legend even a casual listener would have known. Used as the cover sleeve on the band’s second album, Damien Mitchell’s back had been splashed all over magazines and music feeds. Having it displayed in front of him was like finding a pair of cairn-terrier-chewed, red-sequined pumps in his luggage.
Shocking, unexpected, and oddly familiar.
It seemed amazing that the accident that left the man in front of him dead to the world somehow did not touch the elaborate, brilliant tattoo etched into the man’s skin. A kirin pranced on, untouched by the damage done to its wearer. Surrounded by maple leaves caught in fall coloring, the dragon-deer snarled with a fierce pride from its canvas. In the flesh, the creature’s crimson and emerald body practically vibrated with movement on his pale skin, its tail and mane a fiery flow of orange and golds curving along the lines of the man’s body. Its backward arching horn, an unexpected antlered prong in Sionn’s mind, sprang forth from the kirin’s skull, a pearly splay of wealth among the already rich ink.
When Damien shed his shirt and turned to display his tattoo, Sionn was left almost speechless.
Almost.
It was certainly proof. Compared to the album cover, nearly irrefutable, especially since the guitarist had a spray of beauty spots over his right shoulder identical to those of the man in the photo.
“Fuck me, boyo. You’ve got to be him.” He nearly didn’t want to say it out loud. The man sitting across from him was dead, his body torn apart by chunks of steel and rubber after an awards show, but the tattoo… and that face… were crystal clear evidence the world had been subject to a vicious and cruel prank. “You’re Damien Mitchell.”
Mitchell looked older, wearier, as if he’d racked up more than a few years of living in the time since his supposed death, but when Sionn compared the man to the images and videos he’d pulled up, there was no denying who Sionn had in the loft with him.
“Maybe,” Damien gave Sionn a wry smirk, one that hinted of whiskey and sin. “I can’t… remember shit. If there was any fucking time I’d wished someone would have published an unauthorized biography, it’s right fucking now. I need like a Damien Mitchell for Dummies right now, with what’s left of my brain.”
Stripped of the cowboy hat and shrouded lies, Damien Mitchell was too much sex and sin for Sionn to take. His long-lashed eyes and strong cheekbones were no match for the man’s sinful mouth. And when Damien’s laugh exposed his broad white teeth, Sionn could only imagine what it would be like to have the man’s canines sink into his nape while he was spread out under Damien’s tall, muscular body.
While the kirin appeared to emerge unscathed, the same couldn’t be said about its wearer. Damien’s scars were visible when he raked his fingers through his hair. They were angry looking, nearly ropy from long stitches, and scarlet pink. A thicker scar ran down his chest, the skin pulling in at the sides when he moved, the remnant of some surgery Damien couldn’t remember. Patches of skin along the man’s sides were marbled, as if he’d been burned or dragged across concrete, but Damien couldn’t tell him much about those either.
It was as if his entire life prior to Skywood had been shredded, and he was trying to piece together something solid out of the strands, taping things up in the hopes that something… anything… would eventually make sense. And then he could go back to being the man he thought he’d been in the past.
The coffee did little to stave off Damien’s exhaustion. One moment he was murmuring something about his band; then Sionn heard him snuffling, fast asleep in the curve of the couch.
He’d maneuvered Damien around until the man was lying down, and the soft knitted afghan his aunt’d given him one Christmas had been tucked up around his too-slender form. Either the blanket was too warm or Damien felt confined because, after pulling it up over Damien’s body for the third time, Sionn left it pooled around the man’s slim waist.
“Suppose I should be happy you’ve got it over your legs at least,” Sionn muttered over the laptop screen at the sleeping guitarist.
Another peek under his lashes gave Sionn a mouthwatering view of the young man’s firm shoulders and lightly muscled back. The dip of his spine created a shadow along Damien’s long torso, and Sionn’s mind wandered off with his tongue, leaving him to wonder how the man’s skin would taste in the back of his throat. Biting his lower lip, Sionn used the pain to refocus his attention to his reading, ignoring the erotic smell of slightly sweaty boy and the idea of coffee-flavored kisses.
“Whatcha reading now?” Damien’s voice was rough, clotted with sleep and fatigue.
“About you and Miki St. John.” Most of what he’d found on the Internet hinted at a deep relationship between the men, and Sionn wondered if he was going to have to hand Damien over to a lover.
His heart tore a little at the thought. There was something endearing about the pain-in-the-ass guitarist. Since he’d laid all his cards out on the metaphorical table, Damien seemed lighter, bantering back at Sionn’s comments with a sly teasing.
“Were the two of you—” Sionn struggled to find a word that didn’t sound like he was a jealous middle school boy. “—together?”
“What? Like did we fuck each other?” The look of horror on Damien’s face was priceless and went a long way toward quelling the whispering jealousy brewing in Sionn’s belly. “Are you fucking kidding me? Dude, he’s my brother.”
“You sure?” Sionn tapped his temple.
“Yeah.” Disgust roiled through Damien’s expression, and he burrowed under the blanket, leaving only his face showing. “Seriously. No. He’s like….”
Damien’s face softened, his eyes unfocused as he spoke.
“Miki’s… he’s someone I knew before I even met him. And this crap with my brain, it’s like I’m meeting him all over again. There’s something between us, you know? Something we are together.” Damien sat up slightly, a tug of a smile on his mouth. “He’s a bit fucked in the head, but we… match, you know? He needs taking care of, and fuck, he hates that. And we fight. God, I can remember some really good fights about stupid shit, but it’s okay. Because when we’re done with the mad, he laughs at me. No matter what shit I pull, he’s there, backing me up.”
“He sounds like a good friend,” Sionn murmured.
“He’s… Miki.” Damien shrugged off the sentiment, but Sionn could see the emotions rising up from somewhere deep inside the other man’s soul. “Miki finds the words inside of me. Everything I can’t find… he does. He makes me… better than who I am. He made me think of someone other than myself.”
“You can say that? Even not knowing everything about your life?”
“Yeah, I can.” Damien’s devotion was clear, a path he’d set down in immovable stones, and Sionn felt a wave of envy. “Sinjun’s the first person I’ve ever cared about… other than myself. Without him, I’m shit, Irish. He’s my little brother. I’d die for him. Again. Hell, I’d stay dead for him if it meant he’d have a good life. Anything for Miki. Anything.”
“Then we’d best get you straightened out there, boyo.” Sionn nudged the man’s leg with his bare foot. “I read up a little bit on memory loss. Guessing by the scars on your noggin there, you had a rough time of it after the accident. Did they tell you anything about it?”
“I’ve got all my brain. And I can remember stupid things like how to read or use chopsticks. But people? Yeah, not so much.” The guitarist leaned back and yawned, his teeth a white U in the dark of his mouth. Sionn spotted a divot on his tongue, either from an injury or a piercing. It was
gone in a flash when Damien stretched his arms out and buried back under the blanket, warding off the cold. “The doc at the nuthouse said I’d probably regain a lot of my memories if I worked at it. Fuck if I know how you’re supposed to work at remembering shit. I thought maybe if I headed down here and found Miki, he could… you know, jump-start me.”
“Good way to put it.” He cocked his head, studying the man next to him. “So what’s got you worried?”
“Suppose I’m a lie, Irish. I can’t put that out of my head. That… maybe… everything is a lie. What then?”
“No matter who you are, we’ll deal with it.” Sionn reached across the couch and cupped the other man’s face. Brushing a light kiss over Damien’s mouth, he caught the sigh poised on the man’s lips on his tongue. “You and I together… we’ll deal with it. I promise you, a rún. I won’t let you go into this alone. I won’t let you fall.”
“WHERE have you been?” The man on the other side of the phone pulled on the leash he thought he’d attached to Parker’s neck. “Is it done?”
The asshole sounded smug, and if Parker closed his eyes, he could almost see the man’s beefy face redden as Parker’s fingers tightened around his throat.
“Not yet.” He drawled the words out, sipping at the espresso a vivacious waitress had placed in front of him not more than a minute before his phone rang.
The rains drove the packs of tourists normally clogging the walkways inside, and Parker luxuriated in the sheer joy of being able to sit under the awning of a café’s patio and pass the time. The coffee wasn’t too bad, nearly inky enough to be considered Middle Eastern, but the bread he’d been served was dry. Sending it back seemed like too much of an effort, but he was hungry, and the loaf seemed to be the least offensive thing on the menu.