by Rhys Ford
Half an hour later, he’d begun to regret his need to walk off his energy. The cold crept in to strangle the city, and the once-promising sun slipped back behind a veil of threatening gray clouds. He turned around and headed down one of the alley cut-throughs, hoping it would shave off some walking time so he could grab two cups of coffee before begging Sionn to let him back in.
Something about the surrounding brick walls and battered green dumpsters made Damien’s feet stumble, and he dropped his pace to stand in the middle of the narrow space. There was definitely something about the alley that grabbed some part of his brain and held on, sinking its fingers into his thoughts until he was shaking from the want of knowing.
Even the crackle of thunder off in the distance didn’t jolt him from the spot, and Damien turned on his heels, taking in his surroundings. The cement beneath him was stained green from years of runoff and algae, and the blackened grout between the weathered brick of the buildings’ walls shone white in spots from halfhearted, futile scrubbing near some of the doors. The space felt closed in, barely wide enough for three people to walk side by side, and what little sun able to reach between the tall buildings had been replaced by the alley’s encroaching shadows.
Several white-painted wooden signs hung over security gates and green metal doors, most covered with dark red han zi to identify the businesses they belonged to. Above him, windows were being closed as residents living in the tiny apartments above the main street woke for the day and found the cold too much to take.
Behind one of the metal screen doors, someone was beginning to cook. The sound of food hitting a sizzling wok was soon followed by the aroma of garlic and seared meat. Somewhere close by, someone was speaking Cantonese loudly, a harsh and scolding patter answered by a softer, grumbling voice.
He padded forward, drawn to a single fire escape hung above the restaurant’s back door, unable to take his eyes off of the seemingly innocuous black metal grating. It was all so… familiar, tugging at him until a throbbing hooked through the base of his brain and traveled up into his eyes.
“I know this place.” It was too fucking familiar. Something about where he stood called out to him, and Damien skimmed his fingers over a rust-speckled iron ladder leading up to the platform above him.
Some hopeful soul had great plans for a flower bed, a long burnt-orange ceramic box filled with yellow and violet pansies. A pink plastic bin sat on its side, probably to avoid it filling with water during the season’s heavy rains, but Damien wasn’t really seeing what was there.
Instead, he saw the alley in his mind, in the dead of long ago night when he’d been broiling in his own anger.
There’d been a club he’d just played at—Dino’s. It’d been a shitty gig, with a couple of guys he’d played with before, but nothing had gone right. The drummer showed up drunk, and the bassist was out of tune for most of the set. Half an hour into the show, the manager yanked the power from the stage, and they’d been left there, standing in the reverb of their dying strings.
He’d walked out. Packed up his guitar and left the club, too pissed off to demand payment for what was probably the worst fucking set he’d played in his entire life. Instead, he’d stepped out the back door, simmering with an anger hot enough to melt glass, and stalked down the alley toward a destiny he’d never even imagined having.
There was no sign of the singer, not in the shadowy darkness of the alley’s feeble lighting, but the voice—that voice—snared him in a golden web he couldn’t break through. Even through the heat broiling his thoughts, the raspy pour of want and blues filled him with something indescribably beautiful, and Damien knew he wanted… needed… to write for that voice.
Instead of a plastic bin, there’d been a mongrel of a boy, barely old enough to be left home alone, much less possess the kind of sorrow Damien heard in his singing. Unable to do more than stand there, frozen to the cement, Damie listened to a voice someone stole from heaven and gave to a skinny, dark-haired waif leaning against the brick wall of a Chinatown fire escape.
“He was singing… Joplin.” Damien turned quickly, drinking in his surroundings. Glancing back up, he only saw pink plastic and bobbing flower heads, but then… back then… there’d been a suspicious-eyed, lanky teen with a bee-stung mouth and a filthy attitude born of hard street living. “He found me on a staircase of steel, nowhere near Heaven, a Devil making a deal. Come on down, son, my Satan said with a grin, Come with me and we’ll make Sinner’s Gin.”
The words came easily, the music flowing through him and into his fingers. He’d laid down the notes for Miki’s song… that moment when he’d looked up and told the oil-splattered street rat that they were destined to take the world by storm. He’d laughed at Miki’s fuck off and talked to him through the metal grate, urging him to take a chance on a crazy, pissed-off guitarist with nothing to lose.
Damien wasn’t prepared for the headache when it hit, nor for the rush of blood bursting from his nose, but the tide of memories overwhelming his senses made him want to dance, even as he was driven to his knees from the pain.
THE morning was ripe with possibilities.
While most people abhorred the rain and cold, Parker found it satisfying, a balm on any ruffled feathers of his soul. It soaked into his skin, plastering his clothes against his body, hugging him with its cold embrace. He took a moment to stand by the gate, hidden from the camera sweep by the building’s outer brick wall.
Those few seconds before he stepped into a planned job were the best. Anticipation rippled through him, and he shivered, reveling in its sensual pleasure. Checking the fit of his latex gloves, Parker snapped the bands and bounced a step forward, testing the off-brand sneakers he’d bought for the job.
The knives he brought with him were ground-down throwaways he’d stolen from a swap meet vendor nearly two weeks ago. Cheap steel, they would only hold their edge for less than half an hour’s work, but they would be enough. He wasn’t planning on keeping to just one, especially since there’d been three paring knives in the bundle he’d dropped into the paper bag of clothes he’d brought with him to mask his theft.
If he got to all of the people on the list his employer gave him, he would need to get more blades. That alone was enough to make him hard. This time, he thought as he checked his camera for the security code he’d been sent, he would go for something expensive, maybe even a specialized edge. A few random killings with that knife and the cops would be off sniffing at a serial murderer, taking any heat off of him.
Breaking in was easy enough. People placed a lot of faith in small pieces of metal and bolts to keep the unsavory away, but those were simple to thwart. With a long piece of steel hooked into the lock, the tumblers fell under Parker’s twisting slide and the deadbolt clicked open. Poised, he stood silent, waiting to see if someone had been near enough to hear the lock shift, but no footsteps came toward the door, and no one called out to see who was there.
“Grab the tape feed,” he murmured to himself as he slid into the house. There’d been a rough schematic of the residence, detailed enough for him to pinpoint where a server hummed away in a pantry, saving the video feeds from the three cameras set up on the outside perimeter. If he couldn’t pull the drive out, he’d have to be happy enough with destroying it somehow. “Maybe they’ll have a can of peaches I can pour into it. Sugar is hell on electronics.”
From the looks of the place, it was empty, but Parker knew better. Somewhere in the echoing rooms his target waited for him, unaware and peaceful. A few beeps, then the security panel flashed, giving him a green light to continue.
“Excellent.” He almost kissed the box, then thought better of it, not wanting to leave behind any trace of his entry. He closed the door behind him, relocked the deadbolts, and took a deep breath, savoring the moment anew. “Ah, time to get to work.”
He pulled one of the knives from his jacket, drew it out of its newspaper coffin, and walked softly through the front room. Little sounds gave life to the
place, wood floors sighing as they breathed and the rattle of an air conditioning unit set someplace on the roof. Filmy curtains wafted against tall windows, driven by the artificial wind coming through vents set near the high ceiling.
THE old woman left him feeling dissatisfied, an itch left unscratched under his skin, and Parker struggled to figure out the why of it. Lying in a rented motel room after the dusky-skinned whore he’d hired left, he’d smoked the last of the woman’s cigarettes, pulling cheap smoke into his lungs as he played with his softening penis.
Everything about the kill should have worked for him. It should have driven him to a height of sexual release without him needing to satiate himself with a common hooker, but instead, he’d left the hostel and sought out one of the many streetwalkers roaming the area.
The knife work was orgasmic, a soft, sticky peeling back of flesh from bone, but the experience was lacking something. With the rather bored yes-oh-Gods from the whore’s painted mouth still ringing in his ears, Parker jerked upright, suddenly realizing what was missing.
“She couldn’t scream. Damn it, I needed her to scream.” He cursed himself for tearing a strip of duct tape off the roll and putting it over the old woman’s mouth and nose. There’d been a fear of someone hearing him work so he’d taken precautions, but in doing so, he’d been left only with the snick of meat falling away and then the final gurgle of her blood draining down into the tacky carpet.
He wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time.
SIONN was practically frantic by the time he found Damien.
He’d woken up and known he was alone. Something about the loft had shifted, a stillness that left him unsettled. Telling himself the man was in the bathroom, he lasted three seconds before he got up off the couch and found the loft empty. The guitar by the door reassured him somewhat, but the note left for him brought the cold panic back to his belly.
“Someone’s trying to fucking kill you, Cowboy.” Sionn yanked on a pair of sneakers over his bare feel and grabbed a thick sweatshirt to ward off the incoming rain. “Have you forgotten that?”
Despite the storm, he had to fight through people on the sidewalk, slowing him down. Cursing Damien under his breath, he passed by the coffee shop, hoping beyond hope the lanky musician was waiting in line for a morning fix.
There were a lot of people behind the glass, but none of them were pretty-mouthed, long-legged trouble in jeans.
If fear had a taste, it was remarkably like fried copper, crawling up from his twisted belly and into his throat. His saliva thickened on his tongue, and Sionn spat onto the street to get rid of the foul tang. Picking up his pace, he jogged up a nearby hill, wondering how long of a walk Damien thought he’d needed or if he’d even gotten farther than a few feet before he’d been taken.
There were too many ways for a man to die, and Sionn’s brain seemed to flick through each and every one of them. His mind became a slideshow of terror, snapping quickly through its cycle, pausing at some of the more grisly options as if the first imagining wasn’t enough.
He’d almost missed the alleyway. Its narrow opening was hidden behind a rack of umbrellas, set out as lures for tourists unwilling to give up their vacation because of a storm. A mirthful laugh snapped his head around, and Sionn took a few steps back and stared at the man on his shins with his arms spread out, welcoming down the pounding rain.
Sionn was too big to get through the space between the rack and the alley’s side wall, and he pushed it aside, ignoring the shop owner’s outraged shouts over the clatter of the umbrellas hitting the walk. Sprinting up the long alley, he nearly slipped on a pile of spilled cabbage leaves, and his hand stung where he used it to grab at the uneven brick wall for balance. A sharp twinge of pain snapped in his thigh muscle, but he barely felt it. Only fear from seeing blood on Damien’s upturned face and the shuddering tremors going through the man’s body resonated in Sionn’s mind.
It took Sionn only a few seconds to get to Damien, but it seemed like a forever made out of jagged glass in his mind. He grabbed Damien’s arms, yanked the man to his feet, and stared down at the blood, smearing it away with his fingers as he tried to find any cut or wound on Damien’s face.
“What’s going on about this?” Sionn heard himself sliding into Gaelic, cursing the rain and the blood on his hands. “Damie boy, what’s happened? Are you okay? Talk to me, damn it.”
The blue eyes Sionn’s heart had fallen into and drowned blinked, and Damien’s grin grew even wider. “I’m fine. I’m fucking fantastic.”
“Come on, we need to get you out of this rain. You’re soaked through down to the bone.” Sionn bent down, hooking his arm behind Damien’s waist. The man was freezing, no hint of warmth in his body. Sionn’s fear returned, filling him with dread. “Let’s get you home.”
Damien staggered to his feet, legs buckling when he tried to take a step. Shaking off Sionn’s support, he gestured behind him. “You see back there? About a block down is Shing’s—”
“Yeah, I don’t eat there. The food’s shitty. Come on, I can help—”
“Fucker deserved what he got,” Damien muttered. “But see, I remember! I fucking remember this alley and that place… shittiest chow fun I’ve ever had, but Miki worked there. That fire escape… that’s where I found him.” His smile grew wistful. “Where he found me.”
“Great, you can tell me all about it… once we get you warm, love.” Sionn began to wonder if Damien was drunk. The man wove his hands in the air and leaned heavily on Sionn’s arm. Sniffing at Damien’s breath turned up nothing but the whiff of blood on his skin and the stink of city rain.
“Fuck, you’re going to get us killed here, Irish,” he grumbled when Sionn slipped on the same cabbage leaves that nearly brought him down before.
“I know you’re too cold. We’ve got to warm you up. You’ll get sick.” The shivers hit Damien again, and the man rocked uncontrollably in Sionn’s arms. “Shite, love, there’s not enough meat on you as it is.”
“Dude, you don’t understand what this means.” Damien’s fingers twisted in Sionn’s shirt. “I kind of know where I can find Miki. I was looking in the wrong places. The damned warehouses are off someplace near Russian Hill. I just need to find them. I know where the fuck I am—here, this place. This is where we—I—began.”
“And what does that mean, Damie boy?” Sionn was afraid to hear the answer, and he continued to push Damien along, hoping to lose the man’s words in the rain. It was a futile hope. He heard every whispering syllable… every aching word twisting a knife into his heart.
“It means I can go home.”
Chapter 8
You’ve danced around us for far too long
Hooked your fingers into my soul
You flirt and wink, pulling me along
What you want us to be
Just ain’t going to last
I’ll take a sip of your mouth
Then I’ll be walking out fast
—No Good Johnny
“I FUCKING hate lima beans.” Damien grinned up at Sionn’s bemused face. Cupping the Irishman’s cheeks, he pushed his palms in until Sionn’s mouth puckered up. “I mean, I really fucking hate them. Isn’t that great?”
He couldn’t remember the last time he actually ate one, but the graininess on the roof of his mouth was distinct and… green. The taste triggered something else, a flash of fluffy trees and oily orange gloop. Giddy, he bent forward and kissed Sionn full on the mouth, making smacking noises against his lips.
“And broccoli. I hate that shit too. Especially with that fake cheesy crap on it.” He laughed and flung himself back onto the bed, pulling out of Sionn’s grip. His wet hair hit a pillow with a splat. “And fake peach anything. Like those fruit roll-up things. I fucking hate those.”
“Stop wiggling about, Damie boy.” Sionn grabbed his foot and tugged a sock up over his cold toes. “We’ve got to get you warm.”
He was freezing; he had to give Sionn that. It was cold all th
e way down past his chest and into his spine, spreading out and gripping his limbs, making him clumsy. The shivers hit before they’d gotten to the street corner, and he’d barely been able to put one foot in front of the other. Sionn nearly carried him the rest of the way, his thickly muscled body feeding its warmth into Damie’s icy skin.
Damien would have been ashamed of the hard-on he got from Sionn’s hands roaming over him, but it seemed like the only warm spot on his whole body. Of course, his cock should have had the decency to soften a bit once they’d gotten inside and Sionn began stripping the wet clothes from his body, but it had other ideas, poking its head up as if to see what was going on. No, being too cold to keep his teeth from chattering like a rabid Chihuahua definitely cut into the possibilities of pulling down Sionn’s pants and exploring what he found there.
Mostly because he was afraid his jaw was rattling too much and he’d bite something off he’d want inside of him later.
God, he remembered sex.
Miki aside, sex was possibly the single most fantastic memory sparking through his aching brain.
And he wanted it with Sionn.
There was something about Sionn that hooked into a part of him he couldn’t identify, and Damien wanted to steep himself in the man’s warmth, bask in his smile, and most of all, lay naked under the man’s rough hands.
Instead, he was lying down on the man’s bed with damp hair and all of his blood currently dancing a happy dance in his cock.
Those hands were now gone, tugging at the quilts under Damien’s legs. He tried to pull them up, but his knees responded too slowly to be much help. Sionn muttered at him to stay still, sliding his hands under Damien’s ass to roll him up and then back down again. After covering Damie with heavy blankets, his fingers brushed Damien’s forehead, sweeping a damp piece of hair out of his eyes.