“There was a time I couldn’t bear to hear that name because it brought so many memories back, none of them good, but then I realized that Player had saved them, Lana and Alena, so many times during their childhood. When the worst of the pedophiles came, pretending to be instructors, the ones we knew would hurt them or possibly even kill them, I could cover their bodies in the illusion of sores so they wouldn’t take them. And when I was too ill myself to protect them that way, when they came back battered, I could be their Player and transport them from the dungeon on the wings of music for a short time.”
“I think that all of you, growing up the way you had to, were lucky to find each other.”
His fingers never stopped moving. “I never thought of it that way. I suppose we were. I always thought I was lucky that I didn’t have siblings to be held over my head like some of the others did. Reaper and Savage. Preacher and Lana. Ice, Storm and Alena. Transporter and Mechanic. Sorbacov knew how to force them to do his bidding. Czar had six younger siblings. If he didn’t toe the line, Sorbacov threatened them all the time.” He ducked his head. “I think Czar took a lot of hits for me.”
“What does that mean?”
“When I was younger and we had to go to the dinners and bring the bombs I built, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to engage with the other children at the parties. Czar spent most of the time trying to cover for me so Sorbacov wouldn’t punish me after. He was afraid Sorbacov would kill me himself, or worse, give me to the kinds of men who enjoyed killing a kid for the pleasure of it.”
His blue eyes had gone from heat to ice. “Babe, this was supposed to be a good night. We’re not talking about this kind of shit. Let’s talk about your grandmother and how great she did today. She’s sick of being cooped up. I told her about the Floating Hat and said you and I could take her there for tea one afternoon and we’d go to Crow 287 for her birthday dinner. She really needs to get out of the house. We could invite some of her friends. Alena has a back room big enough, I think. If not, we can hold it at the clubhouse. She’d like that.”
Zyah burst out laughing, because her grandmother would lord it over everyone that she’d had her birthday party at a biker clubhouse or in the back room of Alena’s restaurant.
FIFTEEN
Gedeon loved the silence in his mind when he built things, especially bombs. Everyone left him alone. He could sit quietly outside in a little corner of the garden where it was mostly overgrown with tall heather grasses surrounding the bench and table where Sorbacov would place all the pieces for him to put together. Next to the equipment would be a cold cup of water. The water was always clean, from the spring. It tasted good, and he’d learned to sip at it and make it last. He’d tried to save it and bring it back with him for the others, but Sorbacov never allowed that, so he didn’t waste it.
On the other side of the table, lying across it, was the dreaded flogger. He hated that instrument. Sometimes, when he worked, Sorbacov would brush the leather strands over his back, up and down, almost as if he wanted to distract him. Gedeon would go deeper into his mind, hide himself there with the complicated calculations, with the way things clicked into place for him, the trajectories and patterns that made sense to his brain.
Nothing about Sorbacov made sense. There was no logic to him and his depravities. As a child, Gedeon had tried to find ways to please him, but there was no real way to do so. Pleasing Sorbacov didn’t earn rewards. Sorbacov liked to cause pain. He rewarded himself. Gedeon learned to read his moods, but that didn’t always mean anything either. It was better to just disappear into his own mind and build as fast as he could, making each object more and more complex. Building each faster than the one he had before.
The air felt fresh and clean on his naked body. Sorbacov didn’t give him clothes because he said he didn’t have use for clothes unless he wanted him to have them. He didn’t even notice he was shivering. He never minded the cold outside. The fresh air felt too much like freedom. He looked over the parts strewn on the table. The parts were completely different. He straightened, his heartbeat quickening. Something new. Something for his mind to work on.
Gedeon sat down on the cold slab, not even wincing. He didn’t look around to see if Sorbacov or anyone else was in the gardens as he normally would have done. At seven, he knew better. Czar would have given him a lecture for that, and if Reaper was watching him, that would be reported back, but he doubted if any of the others could have gotten out in time to watch his back. It was rare. Sorbacov kept a pretty tight watch on them all now, especially Player. He didn’t want to lose his prize bomb builder.
Gedeon surveyed the parts, automatically sorting through them in his mind. He laid them out swiftly, moving them almost without touching them, his hands a blur, fingers directing them where he needed them to go. There was satisfaction in watching them do his bidding, watching them come together.
A shadow fell across him, and he felt the brush of leather on his back, drawing him out of the tunnel, the place so deep no one could usually reach him. He wanted to scream at Sorbacov, and he turned quickly, a scowl of pure annoyance on his face. He needed to build the bomb. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real; he had to figure it out. Why couldn’t Sorbacov understand that?
Sorbacov yanked him off the bench, his face that mask of sheer brutal glee, the one all the children feared the most. That was the one he wore when he wanted to show his friends his absolute rule over everyone. He flung Player into the grass on his hands and knees and began to whip him mercilessly with the flogger, hard, brutal strokes, driving him forward, all the while laughing as Gedeon crawled like a wounded animal until he bumped into legs. A fist caught his hair and yanked his head up. He found himself staring into mean, ugly eyes.
Meet my friend, Gedeon. Open your mouth wide. He’s rather big. But then, you’re going to be taking good care of me, and he’ll have to keep you from screaming while you do it.
Harsh laughter rang in his ears for what seemed an eternity. He remembered pain. Terrible pain. So much of it. Then he was on the ground, unable to move. Curled in the fetal position. The flogger hitting him over and over until he got up and crawled back onto the bench, bleeding, unable to sit, so he knelt up at Sorbacov’s insistence. Tears ran down his face, his throat swollen until he couldn’t breathe, and his hands shaking so hard he couldn’t pick up the cup of water.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the White Rabbit. The animal was life-sized. As big as Sorbacov. Just standing right beside him, in a three-piece suit, pocket watch in hand, frowning down at it. Why wouldn’t they all go away? He needed them gone. He wasn’t going to make it this time if they didn’t. He couldn’t take another round with Sorbacov and his friends. He just couldn’t, no matter what Czar said. He wasn’t that strong. Nothing was worth it.
He tried rocking back and forth, looking at his bomb parts, ignoring the White Rabbit. Ignoring Sorbacov. Ignoring everyone. Tick-tock. The watch kept ticking. Did Sorbacov think he could concentrate when he hurt so bad? When he couldn’t breathe? He made an effort to focus on the parts and began to put them together.
Sweat poured off his body, making his palms and fingers slippery. The White Rabbit took a sudden leap, and Sorbacov was there in the shadows instead . . . Behind him was something else. Something shadowy. Sinister. Another man. His breath caught in his throat and he began to fight. Not again. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.
Zyah shifted to her knees, rising above Player, calling to him softly, tears pouring down her face. Sharing his nightmares was pure hell. She didn’t want to see those vignettes of his childhood. At the same time, she wondered how he could be the man he was—the kind, gentle one who had gone into a bath shop to get her lotion so he could massage her feet for her—after what he’d suffered as a child.
“Honey, open your eyes. Right now, open your eyes and look at me.”
She could see the bench now, the one that little naked boy with all that wild hair sat at. He had already gone from a b
oy to a man. His back was to her, but she would know that broad back with those scars and that Torpedo Ink tattoo anywhere. That was her man. That was Player sitting at that bench.
The rabbit had morphed into a man right in front of her. At first Zyah thought she was looking at the devil. A handsome man wearing a suit, with a graying neatly trimmed beard and mustache to match his thick head of gray-streaked black hair. It was the black eyebrows and piercing eyes as he stared at the pieces of bomb material laid out on the table in front of Player that made her think of the devil. The man didn’t speak, but he held a pocket watch in his palm. It was gold, a vintage Russian pocket watch, quite unique.
She could see his features, although they were in the shadows. Murky. Player had told her that was because he was dead. He still gave her the creeps. He was so evil, she could almost believe that he could return to life.
A frisson of fear slid down Zyah’s spine. It wasn’t the first time she’d observed this scenario in Player’s mind, and it wasn’t the first time she felt as if someone else were actually in the room watching them. She looked around carefully. Every corner. The ceiling. Looking into the shadows. She remembered the way Player, as a child, that first time when he was creating the illusion of the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland characters for the other children, had looked so alertly and suspiciously around the basement, as if he knew something or someone was watching them.
Something was in the room with them, and she wanted Player one hundred percent aware, because whatever was staring out of the darkness seemed malevolent.
Player. Look at me, now. I need you. Open your eyes and see me. No one else. Not your past. Not the bomb. Not Sorbacov or the White Rabbit. Someone is in the room with us. Look at me and then look around. They can’t know we can communicate like this. Honey, please wake up. She poured herself into him. Into his mind, flooding him with her.
There was a brief moment while her heart pounded and whatever seemed to be in the room with them stared at them like some bloated spider waiting for the moment it could pounce.
I’m with you, baby. He sounded rough, but he didn’t suddenly open his eyes and look wildly around. He lifted a hand to her face, shaping her bone structure, as if reading her by Braille. He lifted his face to hers, brushing a kiss on her lips and then wrapping his arms around her tightly, his head on her shoulder.
Zyah felt his heart pounding, the aftermath of the nightmare. She felt his breath catch, but he didn’t make a sound.
The drawing. Your grandfather’s drawing. I’m going to lie down, and I want you to sit back slowly against the headboard with me. Look at the picture. Just glance at it.
Zyah didn’t want him to let her go. First the White Rabbit had been standing in front of the picture, and then Sorbacov had been directly in front of it, where the White Rabbit had been. She felt his arms slide away from her, although one hand stayed in contact with her as he slowly started to sit up. She moved with him to the headboard, so they both faced the drawing her grandfather had made so lovingly for her grandmother.
The White Rabbit was completely gone, Player’s illusion morphed into his alternate reality. Sorbacov’s blurred image became so faded he wavered and was transparent. Where his face had been, in the center of the picture, eyes stared at the two of them, looking eerie, as if they actually peered out of the drawing itself, or through Sorbacov’s wavering, ghostly body.
Zyah held her breath. Those eyes lifted to look around the room, at her. This was becoming far too real. The eyes wavered, grew transparent, just as Sorbacov had, and then slowly faded away. For a moment, she could have sworn, the frame on the picture rolled in a weird circle and then righted itself.
She gripped Player’s arm, her nails digging into his skin. “That was insane. And very scary. I need a cup of tea. Or maybe a drink.”
“Let’s have a drink of whatever Hannah sent us and get out the notebooks. Each of us can write down what we remember and then compare notes. Czar said we’d figure it out faster that way, and we’re going to have to figure this out.”
“At least the bomb didn’t start ticking.”
“I hadn’t started building it.” Player pushed back his hair. “I hate that you have to go through this with me, Zyah. And I hate feeling Anat could be in danger. That thing staring at us was all too real, and it sure as fuck felt real.”
“It was,” Zyah confirmed in a low voice. She shivered as she reached into the drawer of the end table to remove the notebooks and pens she’d stashed there so they’d both have something to write in. “Something was in this room with us, Player—it wasn’t the first time.”
Was that the terrible dread she’d been feeling throughout the evening? She pressed one hand to her churning stomach. Had Sorbacov really been so evil that he’d found a way to come back from the dead? Was that even possible? She shivered again and moved closer to Player. His body was always hot. Always. Most of the time he felt like a furnace. She needed that heat right at that moment. Something evil had found its way into their home. A trace of its presence lingered behind.
“It’s gone, Zyah. After you write down what you felt and saw, think back to the first time you felt the presence and write down anything you can remember about that night as well. Even what I was dreaming.”
She leaned into him, rubbing her face against his shoulder. “I hate that anything like that creature might share knowledge that is just ours.”
“He doesn’t. He isn’t part of my past.” Player spoke with absolute conviction.
“He’s not the other man who was there that day?” Zyah asked tentatively. Player rarely directly addressed his actual childhood with her, and she hesitated to bring it up unless he did. She’d seen enough that she didn’t think talking about details unless he wanted or needed to was necessary. On the other hand, his past was entirely private, and no intruder should have any part of Player. He’d already had so much taken from him.
“No. That man is dead, Zyah. He would be like Sorbacov, a shadow, no more.” He was writing in the notebook and didn’t look up.
“You’re certain he’s dead?” she asked. “Sorbacov’s friend? You know for a fact that he’s dead?”
“Yes, baby. I know that for a fact.”
She wasn’t going to ask him how he knew it. “This was a shadow,” she persisted. The room was dimly lit. There were shadows everywhere, and she didn’t understand why Player wasn’t as shaky as she was. She went still inside and turned her face up to Player’s, her eyes on his. “Player. Look at me.”
His gaze flicked from the notebook to her, and she flinched. The blue was a glacier. Burning, yes, but so cold it was burning blue. Scary blue. She was looking at something in him that could be . . . deadly. Deliberately, she blinked, but that expression didn’t go away.
“Player.” She whispered his name in a kind of despair.
“I’m right here, baby.”
She shook her head. “No, you’re not. You’re letting them drag you back there. You’re letting them swallow you with their darkness. You were out of that.”
He threaded his fingers through hers and pulled her fist to his chest, pressing their locked hands over his heart. “I’ve never been out of it, Zyah.”
His voice was very quiet. Tender. That black velvet that whispered over her skin and broke her heart in so many ways. He brought their hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. The sensation caused her stomach to do a slow somersault. He rubbed his jaw along the back of her hand so she could feel the slight growth of his beard over her sensitive skin. At once, a thousand butterflies took wing. She was so susceptible to him.
“There’s no getting out of what was done to me. They had me for years. You see glimpses and you’re sick inside. I try to protect you, but when I’m asleep, I can’t. I tried to walk away from you, give you up, but I’m not that strong. I’m so in love with you I can’t think straight. But you have to know, if you accept me, if you want me with you—in your life, in your bed—you have to have all of me.
You have to know who you’re going to bed with, Zyah. I don’t want you waking up one morning and saying you had no idea.”
She couldn’t stop looking into his eyes. She could see what they’d shaped him into. That cold man capable of things she’d caught glimpses of later on. Not just the building of the bombs. The man who could lie on a floor and shoot a gun blindly and hit his target accurately. A boy, a teenager, sent out to kill grown men for his country, who did so without hesitation. He sat next to her, showing her he was still there, inside that gentle man who had massaged her feet and legs so thoughtfully when she was tired.
“What am I going to do with you, Player?” She honestly didn’t know.
“That’s the question, isn’t it, baby?” He indicated her notebook. “Have you written down your impressions while they’re still fresh? I’m about done. While you’re writing, I’m going to make us a couple of those refreshing drinks. Hopefully, that will make us both feel a little better.”
She didn’t like him moving away from her, even just to slide out of the bed and pull the beautiful basket filled with items from the Floating Hat to him. Instead of writing down everything she’d observed, or thought she saw, she kept her eyes fixed on Player. That feeling in the pit of her stomach was still there, a dark dread that just wouldn’t go away.
She didn’t want to lose Player, and there was a deep fear that she could. She knew, from the little she’d seen of the glimpses into the members of Torpedo Ink’s past, that they didn’t like to take their eyes off one another. That was why they often traveled in pairs. Now she really understood. She felt as long as she could see Player, nothing could happen to him.
She watched him mix the liquid with water into the glasses and then come to her dressed only in loose-fitting drawstring pants that rode low on his hips. He looked disheveled after his nightmare. A little wild. He came around the bed to stand on her side in order to give her one of the tall, hand-blown goblets. It was beautiful, just like the man. Sometimes she felt overwhelmed with love for him—and fear for him.
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