“Just shut up,” Michael told his brother. “Do exactly what they say.”
Welcher grunted. “You should listen to him, Benny-boy. You’re not the one we want, anyway, so shut it.”
Michael remembered Welcher clearly from that day in the kitchen, with his head like a block of wood and his big, meaty fists. The smaller one, his cheeks as pockmarked as before but now sporting a glossy sheen of sweat, was Boyd. During their previous stop at the restaurant, both men had worn suits. Tonight, they wore black T-shirts tucked into jeans. Civilian outfits.
Michael began to shiver.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t hurt my brother.”
“Shut it,” Boyd said, pointing a finger at Michael. “It was you. You turned him off, didn’t you?”
Michael glanced at each man’s face, unsure what they were accusing him of. “Turned—turned who off?”
“Your uncle,” Welcher said. “I know what you did to him. I saw it that day in the kitchen when you were looking at him with those ment eyes, trying to read his mind.”
After a brief pause, Welcher continued. “We went ahead and did some research at the station. We know about your mother—your real mother, Claudia Cairne. They locked her up for being a ment, didn’t they? For being dangerous, like you.”
His mother. They knew about her, and about his telepathic attack on his uncle. Michael had taken these men for dumb grunts. How wrong he’d been.
Smack.
Welcher’s meaty hand swung into him, sending his vision reeling. Michael’s neck made a popping sound, and his cheek burned as if someone had smeared crushed glass all over it.
Boyd took over. “Answer the question, you little shit,” he said with the sneering, resentful voice of a man who’d been small all his life, who’d joined the FSD so he could get back at the world for picking on him.
“No,” Michael said. “It wasn’t me. I—I—I wasn’t…”
Smack. Harder this time.
His head spun again, and Michael found himself gazing at an extra-large can of tomato sauce on the shelf. A question filled his mind as if the blow had dislodged it.
Where were his parents?
“We know all about you, telepath,” Welcher said, crouching to better examine Michael’s face. Michael made eye contact with the man, but immediately regretted it when Welcher spit squarely into his eyes. “Don’t look at me, look at the floor. Or my shoes. Or down at your shriveled little dick. There we go. That’s better.”
Benny groaned. Michael kept from glancing at his brother in case it would provoke another beating.
“Answer the question,” Welcher said. Behind the bigger man, Boyd lifted a bottle of warm beer from a crate and tore off the cap. “Did you turn your uncle into a vegetable?”
Michael nodded.
“The truth,” Boyd said and guzzled down half the beer, smacking his lips afterward.
“Good to know,” Welcher said, easing back a little. “Now, we want you to undo it. You see, Mike, we’re up for promotion next week. Your uncle was going to add us to his personal staff. We’re talking a salary increase of almost two hundred million koles a year, you know what I mean? And the benefits—wow. The FSD looks after its own, I gotta tell ya. Not that you’ll ever live to find out.”
Two hundred million. Michael couldn’t believe it. The extra money was enough to buy a decent car, the kind that would turn heads on any street in the outer sectors. And that was on top of the man’s already-bloated salary, which was probably close to half a billion koles.
“Amen to that,” Boyd said, guzzling the rest of the beer and tossing aside the empty bottle. Plucking another out of the crate, he opened it with a hiss.
“Now, here’s what’s going to happen,” Welcher said, rising so he could glower down at Michael. The lantern was shining behind his head, casting his face into a dark, grimacing mask. “You’re going to come with us to the hospital and undo whatever the hell it was you did to your uncle. Then, once you wake him up, Boyd and I will bring you back here like nothing ever happened. We’ll even convince your uncle to go easy on you. But if you try to run, or if you say anything to anyone…”
“My parents,” Michael said. “Where are they?”
“You mean your aunt and uncle?” Welcher tilted his big head. “They’re not far, believe me.”
Boyd chuckled at this.
“I want to see them now,” Michael said, his voice trembling. “Please.”
Welcher shrugged at Boyd. “Give him what he wants.”
Boyd dropped his unfinished beer into the crate and crossed the room to the walk-in refrigerator, where he pulled the door open in one massive sweep. He disappeared into the fridge and came out a moment later, dragging a chair along its two back legs.
Michael’s mother was strapped to its rickety wooden frame. She was alive, dressed in her cotton pajamas, eyes rolling with fear. Her face was deathly pale, her lips purple around the filthy rag they had used to gag her.
“Oh my God,” Michael said. “Mom.”
“God can’t help her,” Welcher said in a cheery voice. “But you can.”
Whistling, Boyd proceeded to drag Michael’s mother back inside the refrigerator. When he came out again, he was rubbing his hands together from the cold. He kicked the heavy door shut, cutting off her moans of terror.
“Your dad’s in there, too,” Welcher said. “If they stay too long, it won’t be good for their health. You already realized that though, didn’t you?”
Michael swung terrified eyes over to Benny. His brother was gazing at the floor and drooling. He appeared to be only half conscious. Then, to Michael’s surprise, Benny lifted his head, glared at Welcher, and uttered a single word.
“Fascists.”
Smirking at Benny like he was glad to accept the challenge, Boyd picked up his half-empty beer bottle and brandished it.
“You want to say that to me again, kiddo?”
“Boyd,” Welcher said. “Just wait, will you?”
“Little brat,” Boyd said, lifting the bottle over his head.
“No,” Michael screamed.
It was over in a second. Boyd sliced a diagonal line through the air with the butt end of the bottle, shattering it against Benny’s face. Michael closed his eyes as shards of glass tickled his right cheek. He heard a loud clack followed by a meaty thump, opening his eyes to see that Benny had toppled onto the floor, still bound to the chair.
The bottle had cut a gash across his neck, just under the line of his chin. He struggled against the handcuffs binding his wrists together behind him, whimpering as blood puddled on the floor. An artery had been severed; Michael could tell by the way the blood was pulsing out of him.
“No,” Michael said, and then he began to sob. “Benny, oh, Jesus, Benny.”
Now do you want my help?
It was the voice from the other night. Dominic.
Yes! Michael said, shouting through a pair of invisible lips that had torn open inside his mind.
Benny let out a gasp, his body settling and his head coming to rest on the floor, his eyes open and blank.
“No,” Michael kept saying, “No, no, Benny, wait. Wait a minute!”
He could hear Boyd snickering. The man was laughing as the blood poured from Benny’s neck.
Rage boiled inside Michael’s chest, constricting it so his entire rib cage felt like a fist getting tighter and tighter. His heart reached a furious, pounding beat. The bridge of his nose wrinkled.
He was snarling.
“You killed my brother,” he said in grating whisper, the voice not his own.
“What are you gonna do about it, kid?” Boyd said, pointing a finger at Michael while grinning at Welcher. “Check him out, acting tough all of a sudden.”
Michael turned his attention to Welcher, who was shaking his head at Boyd in disappointment. He saw a string—almost invisible, but it was there—vibrating in the core of Welcher’s brain. It was foggy, as if the skin and bone of his forehead had gone
semi-transparent. Just like all the other times Michael had seen that string.
Then the fogginess disappeared, and he could see it more clearly than ever. Perfectly clear.
A tickling sensation slid along Michael’s face, through the grooves on either side of his nose—a feeling like a wax pencil drawing lines down his cheeks. Blood dripped onto his boxer shorts. He squeezed his eyes shut at the sudden sting.
“What in the hell?” Welcher said, his face contorting in utter shock.
Boyd lost the smile as he studied Michael. “Well, look at that. His eyes are… bleeding?”
Both men had strings now—thin, delicate threads dancing and trembling inside their heads, waiting for Michael’s whisper to tickle them exactly the right way.
“Open your throat with the bottle,” he told Boyd, his voice quiet and calm.
Boyd’s eyes flew open. He blinked three times, then lifted the bottle he’d smashed across Benny’s face and started sawing at his own neck with it. He didn’t slice the skin the way a person might do with a knife. Instead, he ran the sharp angles of glass across several times—up, down, diagonally—forming red lines that parted like tiny mouths opening all over the skin, releasing bloody spittle first, then a pulsing geyser of blood.
“Boyd, stop. What are you doing?”
Welcher smacked the bottle out of Boyd’s hand, but it was too late.
Boyd staggered, eyes staring at nothing. The front of his shirt was dark red, almost purple, with blood. He slumped against the wall and slid down, throat hissing and bubbling as he tried to breathe.
Michael watched the whole thing in silence, feeling oddly detached. He recognized the existence of two people inside himself, one watching the other—one afraid, the other maniacally cruel and totally in control.
A name whispered across his mind: Michael Cairne.
His true name. A name that brought death.
Eyeing Welcher’s strong hands, Michael was about to whisper another command. “Pluck out your own eyes,” sounded right—when suddenly the door to the basement burst open. Michael turned his head slowly to watch the stairs.
That bastard Dominic had no reason to be here. Michael had this under control. He would take care of these men by himself, with no one’s help, no one’s interference. These men would die. He would taste their fear while he did it.
Welcher shot a look up the stairs, tugging a pistol out of the back of his pants. As he got ready to fire, Michael caught another glimpse of the string dancing wildly in the man’s head. It was time.
He was about to issue a command—a “death whisper,” he thought to call it, when Dominic flew down the stairs, moving so fast he was little more than a streak.
He split into three people at that moment. Or that was how it seemed.
One version of Dominic tripped Welcher, knocking him flat on his back. Another snatched the gun out of his hand and tossed it aside, while the third took a needle out of his jacket and began to prep it.
It was all a trick—a stupid trick.
Michael breathed fiercely as he struggled to pinpoint Dominic’s presence. It was too difficult, and that made him angry. Dominic would go down with them. He would die with these men.
Control yourself, came Dominic’s mental voice.
Michael roared, his teeth bared. Welcher was still alive, clutching a wound in his chest. Dominic had stabbed him. He’d tried to take the man’s life when it was Michael’s to take and no one else’s.
Die, Michael told Welcher with a voice that reached outward from the core of his mind, dissolving all reason.
The big man began to jerk and shake. A moment later, his life blinked out. Michael felt it go, like a terrified spirit being sucked into hell. He would have laughed were he not so annoyed by Dominic’s presence. Death had become a delicious thing, and Michael wanted more.
Die, he told him. Put the knife through your heart.
Oh no you don’t.
Dominic lifted the needle, then stuck it into Michael’s arm.
“No,” Michael screamed. “You’re just like them. You killed Benny!”
Dominic smacked him across the face. When he pulled his hand back, Michael could see blood on it. He had cried blood. That explained the pink tinge in his vision, or maybe that was just the color of rage spreading through him, growing and growing.
Michael opened his mouth to let loose a howl of anger but was distracted by hundreds—no, thousands—of tiny strings shivering all around him. He could see them through the walls. There were two in the refrigerator and one in Dominic’s head, but there were countless others, too—outside the restaurant, down the street, in the surrounding buildings and alleys, floating everywhere like dust motes sewn into the still air. Everywhere except in Benny’s head, where one should have been.
Mom… Dad… What’s happening…
Michael, control yourself!
One by one, and then by the dozen—and finally by the hundreds—Michael slashed at the tiny strings with his mind, unable to stop even as Dominic shook him.
“Stop it, Michael. Get a grip!”
Someone was growling like an animal, and Michael realized it was his own throat making that sound. He, Michael Lanza—no, Michael Cairne—was grinding his teeth and breathing through his mouth like a beast. His hands and fingers felt like claws. He wanted to scratch out Dominic’s eyes. Bite into his throat.
He almost planted his claws into Dominic’s mind—the invisible ones he had used to sever all those strings—but he was enjoying the fearful expression on the man’s face. The time came, finally, to taste his death. Michael reached out with the weapon his mind had become, the invisible blade he could strike as easily as if he were breathing a whispered word…
Then the drug kicked in.
“Fucking finally,” Dominic breathed as Michael’s eyes slid shut and he fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 15
“He killed them all, Blake. They’re all dead.”
Michael wanted to ask, Who? Who’s dead?
He was in a moving car, sprawled out in the backseat, fully clothed. Yellow lights swished by as Dominic drove with a cell phone pressed to his ear. With a groan, Michael rose a few inches to inspect his clothes. Someone—Dominic, most likely—had dressed him in a pair of black sweatpants, sneakers without socks, and a hooded sweater with no shirt underneath.
Dominic glanced at him, speaking into the phone, “He’s awake.”
Michael tried to sit up, but a dizzy spell forced him back down.
Dominic said, “Uh-huh, fine,” then snapped the phone shut and tossed it into the front seat. “That was way too close.”
“Who’s dead?” Michael said in a voice barely above a croak. He was parched.
“What?”
“Killed them all, you said. Who—who died?”
Dominic kept silent. Michael remembered his mother being pulled out of the refrigerator, then being dragged back in, and Benny having a bottle smashed across his face and lying there, bleeding all over the floor. And his father—where had his dad been through all of this?
He sat up suddenly. Pain flashed in his skull, making him wince. “My brother,” he said. “My parents… in the refrigerator.”
“Your parents are dead, and so is your brother. Trust me.”
Michael closed his eyes. “Did I kill them?”
Dominic kept silent. Police sirens wailed from the next avenue westward, and Dominic flinched at the sound.
“Tell me,” Michael said, on the verge of tears now. “Did I kill them?”
“Your brother would have died from his wound, but your mother and father—they were killed by the attack.”
“Attack?”
“The one in your brain. You had an episode, Michael. That’s what it’s called, and the more of them you have, the harder it’ll be to remain yourself and not become the mindless killer they programmed you to become.” He braked suddenly, and Michael almost flew out of his seat. A shiny luxury vehicle—the sort driven by b
ureaucrats to show off their high stature within the government—rounded the corner and started heading in their direction.
Dominic gripped the steering wheel with an audible creak, driving slowly and watching the car until it disappeared farther up the street.
“Spiteful bastards,” he said.
Michael observed his surroundings more carefully, and then it hit him. They were driving away from the restaurant. He would never see Benny again, or his mother and father. He had killed them. Those strings had been the life threads of his family, and he had sliced them apart, leaving them there to die.
“Who else is dead?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Dominic said. He glanced at Michael in the rearview mirror. “We’re crossing the border. I don’t care if I have to kidnap you. You’re coming.”
“More people died,” Michael said. “I could feel it.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Hey, look at me.”
Michael stared at those eyes in the mirror, one of which was still almost swollen shut.
“You didn’t ask for this, but now you have to deal with it.”
They turned onto a small side street. A car waited for them in a lot at the very end. Shiny enough to reflect the dull-orange glow in the sky, the car had surely come from the well-lit core of the city where the Fatherland Security Department had its headquarters. Sleek, black, and solid, it had a rectangular face and a chrome grill. A ministry car.
“You lied to me,” Michael said, kicking the seat in front of him. “This was a trap!”
Dominic reached back and grabbed hold of Michael’s ankle. “Settle down, kid, or I’ll break it.”
His grip was like a metal clamp. Michael calmed, more from a feeling of hopelessness than from any fear of bodily harm. He suddenly didn’t care if the man snapped his ankle—maybe then he would feel something besides despair.
Dominic released him with a frustrated sigh.
“It was only a matter of time, anyway,” Michael said, gazing out the window at the brick walls. “They’ll throw me in the Tank where I belong.”
Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series Page 10