by Cole McCade
Look at me, those lights said. Admire me.
Admire the things I possess, to make up for what I lack.
Vin stood at the window of his hotel room—a room made all of lush silver-white brocade edged in gold and black—and gazed out over those lights. Were he anyone else, he thought, perhaps he’d be thinking of such things. Of owning things; of gathering possessions around himself and filling a home with them to create a place that reflected himself enough to feel as though he had some permanence on this earth. Rather than the impersonal coldness of a hotel room, things that never had and never would belong to him, things that were only waiting for him to make up his mind what he wanted to do so he would move on and make room for the next transient life that would pass through without leaving a single solitary mark other than the trash and detritus of their forgotten possessions.
Gabriel had his garage. Vincent had the house back in Venice, sprawling yellow stone dating back to the Age of Courtesans, too big for the brother he’d left rattling around in it. Yet if Vin went home to that lovely old house and the shimmering canals and that perfect scent of sun on stone and briny Mediterranean water that he thought of as home…he’d just be a ghost haunting the places where he used to belong, quietly wailing to make others aware of his misery.
He wouldn’t, couldn’t go back. Not when he felt as if his brother would be able to see the stains on him, the blood marring his flesh and turning him into a horror of a man. Vaughn would want to fix him, try to fix him, and then hate himself when he couldn’t. His brother was soft that way, and Vin wondered at the strange detachment he felt at that thought. As if the memory of Vaughn—laughing and golden-eyed and tan on the dock at the back of their home, sure-footed and fleet as he tied a gondola up to the house—belonged to someone else, something Vin only distantly observed without any real feeling.
Many PTSD sufferers exhibit a form of dissociation, Dr. Siebel had said, bordering on depersonalization and derealization. A separation from the self, as it were.
No—he’d made the right choice. To return home to Venice and look at Vaughn with a stranger’s eyes would be cruel. Let his brother believe he still had family left, somewhere out in the world. A brother who loved him. A brother who was capable of loving him.
But maybe…just…
Maybe.
His phone waited on the nightstand, crouching there like a spider. Gabriel’s spiders, these things that were nothing but all-seeing eyes and clutching legs and sticky webs waiting to snare him in memories. He turned from the window and sank down on the edge of the lush king-sized bed, and picked up his phone. Just make the call. Do it. Maybe it was exactly what he needed.
He scrolled through his contacts, pausing over Vaughn Manion, the little thumbnail icon of his brother so bright, white teeth flashing in a broad, cheerful grin. He remembered when they had been boys, Vaughn had been so surly; Vin had been the calm one, soothing his brother’s sullen temper and trying so hard to shield him when so many people hadn’t understood just how sensitive Vaughn was, how easily hurt, his prickly thorns just a defensive shield. That had changed when he’d gone to culinary school, discovered his passion, blossomed into a bright, happy young man who just…
Just didn’t need Vin anymore, leaving him spinning his wheels and looking for something to do when he was no longer a necessary part of anyone’s life.
The parishioners at the church needed you. They took Vaughn’s place, until…
Until.
Until he’d left for America. And then the military had needed him, his unit, the country that was his father if Venice was his mother.
Is that what is wrong with me?
That I do not feel needed anymore?
He pressed his thumb down over Vaughn’s name, and lifted the phone to his ear.
Near midnight in Crow City was early morning in Venice, and Vaughn sounded as bright as the rising sun as he answered the line. “Vincent!” He spoke in fluid Italian, and the sound of his mother tongue made Vin ache, his eyes closing. “It’s been too long. How are you?”
“I’m all right.” Another lie. More things he couldn’t say, not even to his brother. “Managing. You?”
“I’m good. Better than good. I got a promotion to Executive Sous Chef, and I’m thinking of ideas to open my own restaurant, and—” Vaughn trailed off with a laugh. “And all these little mundanities probably aren’t interesting to you. Sorry. I just…get so excited, when I hear you.”
Vin smiled faintly. “No. It’s all right. I like your little mundanities. I like to hear your little joys.” And yet even if it was a relief, to hear Vaughn sound safe, sane, whole…relief was the only thing Vin could bring himself to feel. He was a dry well, searching for the love that used to fill him, as if he could tap into Vaughn’s warmth and pour it into himself. He struggled for something to say, struggled to find those normal pleasantries, questions, the kind of things he would ask without thinking if he were in a safe, sane, whole place himself. “How is the house?”
“Dusty. Empty. It’s not the same without you and Nonna. When are you coming home?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Vin deflected, when what he meant was I can’t stand to see you. “They’ve still got me seeing a therapist, and I’m not supposed to travel.”
Vaughn made a soft, worried sound. “It’s that bad? Vin…are you really okay?”
“I am. I promise. It’s just paperwork and bullshit. I have to go to a minimum number of sessions before they’ll sign off and let me off the hook. All procedure.”
Vaughn’s silence said he didn’t quite believe him. Then, “Still. The house is too empty without you.”
“Then it’s time for you to find a wife and fill it up with children. Are you seeing anyone?”
“A few dates here and there, but with my hours it never lasts.” Vaughn laughed ruefully. “The last girl called the kitchen my ‘jealous other woman.’”
“It’s always been your first love affair.” Something twinged in Vin’s chest; he thought it might actually be his heart, struggling to beat. “Do you remember when you were six—”
“—and Nonna came in the kitchen at dawn,” Vaughn finished. “And found me covered from head to toe in flour. I’d tried to make scones and just ended up making a mess of that old house.”
“And when you tried to wash it off, you just made dough.”
“All over myself!”
“And I had to drag you upstairs and shove you in the bath like a naughty puppy.” Nostalgia was a heavy weight on his chest, a rock pressing down on his sternum. “You were white all over, just flaking everywhere—”
“And then I—I—”
Vaughn broke off with a rolling, hearty laugh, struggling to speak yet nothing came but gasps and chuckles. Vin tried to join in, but his mouth didn’t want to move. He couldn’t make his lips curve upward, and when he breathed in to laugh all that came out was a sigh. He closed his eyes and let himself fall back against the bed, just listening to the sound of his brother’s laughter and wishing for…for…
He didn’t know.
Maybe to feel like he was part of the world Vaughn occupied, instead of a shade looking through the numbing veil of death that was only waiting to catch up to him.
This was just a holding period, he realized. He hadn’t died in Sangin, but death had seen him. Marked him. Counted his hours and his days, and promised in a whisper sweet as a kiss against his ear that it would come for him, and every moment from this point on was nothing but borrowed time that meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
Vaughn trailed off, his hitching gasps loud over the phone, and he exhaled a low, amused sound. Vin said nothing; quiet stretched between them, expectant, waiting, before Vaughn said, “…Vincent?”
“I’m here.”
“You’re quiet.”
Vin closed his eyes. “I know.”
He could almost see his brother in this moment: searching, struggling, trying to find the right words, wondering what it wa
s safe to ask, his lips parted and yet like a gun cocked and trigger taut with no ammunition in the chamber. Then: “Are you okay? Really. Tell me the truth, Vin.”
“Yes,” Vin lied, and every time he told that lie he hated it more and more. “I’m fine.”
Then he ended the call on Vaughn’s questioning voice, tapping the screen and dropping it on the bed. If Vaughn didn’t ask him anything else, Vin wouldn’t have to lie again.
Wouldn’t have to risk hurting his brother, when that seemed all there was left for him to do.
He opened his eyes and stared at the subtle mosaic patterns on the ceiling. Vaughn had sounded so…so happy. So fulfilled. As if he had a purpose, a reason for being, and Madre de Dio more than anything he sounded like Vin had been right.
His brother didn’t need him.
No one needed him.
Gabriel needs you, he tried to tell himself, but no—no, he didn’t. He and Gabriel were probably better off away from each other; they were echo chambers of each other’s broken misery, and there was nothing Vin could do for Gabriel. Every time he looked at Gabriel Hart, Vin saw only the evidence of his own failure in the pain Gabriel suffered; in the fact that Gabriel was the only one by his side, so many beloved faces absent. Gabriel’s pain should be Vin’s pain. Everything Gabriel carried with him should be Vin’s to bear, his atonement for the lives he’d failed to save.
He caught his rosary between his fingers and lifted it up to look at it framed against the ceiling, the tiny molded wooden Jesus chipped at the edges with the marks of hand carving. One of Vin’s first acts after he’d taken his vows had been, along with the other novitiates, to carve and polish this rosary, one bead at a time. It had been meant to give them time to reflect alone on their dedication to God, but Vin had seen it for what it really was:
The last chance to ask themselves if this was what they really wanted; if they were ready to give themselves to these small and seemingly meaningless tasks for hours on end, a life of service and contemplation in which every small thing done might not see fruition in this lifetime, but was still a part of a greater plan that would one day see its culmination in the salvation of souls who might never know who Vincent even was.
“Was this part of Your plan?” he whispered bitterly. “Is Serafina’s death part of Your plan? Is Gabriel’s misery part of Your plan? What is there for me, in Your plan? Do You mean for me to suffer with Hell on earth to earn my place at Your side?” His mouth pulled down until his face felt like pain carved into stone in ancient runes. “You wish me to suffer? You wish me to experience pain?”
He pushed himself up and ripped his shirt off, tossing it to the side, then yanked the rosary over his head. He balled the cross up in his fist, the wooden beads trailing in a loop like a noose. The round edges bit into his palm; he gripped tighter, then snapped the beads over his shoulder, lashing as hard as he could.
The rosary beads bit into his skin in a sharp snap like a line of bee stings rippling down his shoulder blade. He barely felt it, the pain less real than the memories of agony graven into his skin, and he closed his eyes, grit his teeth, and did it again—harder, as hard as he could, sucking in a hissing breath as those stings became a burn, building up over and over again and searing deeper each time he lashed the beads against his back. There was a satisfaction in this pain, satisfaction and something bitter and hateful, something cruel and terrible and right. Something that said this was what he deserved, for his crimes. The punishment of the Opus Dei of old, the mortification before Christ, offering his pain as willing punishment for his sins.
Yet this pain felt not like punishment, not like humility.
It felt like vengeance, like spite, like pleasure. Like spitting in the face of God, and trying to buy answers in his own blood.
“Is this what You wanted?” he demanded, curling forward and snapping the beads as hard as he could, until his wrist cracked and ached, until the sound of the beads striking his flesh was as sharp as the slap of a palm against flesh. “Is this suffering enough for you?”
Another crack. Another harsh line of pain, burning down his back like fever. Another satisfying lash of sensation that bordered on masochistic pleasure, curling deep in the pit of his stomach. He choked on a shuddering cry, whipped himself again—
Only for the tension of the beads, stretched taut in his hand, to go lax. The rosary snapped, the waxed string holding the beads together breaking apart; beads tumbled loose and spilled down his back, rolling down his spine to gather on the bed around him. Breathing hard, he let his arm fall, limp, staring down at the cross in his palm, the serene face of Christ looking up at him, flanked by thin lashes of cord with a few stubborn beads clinging to it. This thing he had made, slaved over for loving hours, hand-crafted with every piece of faith in him, broken.
As broken as he.
* * *
LONG INTO THE NIGHT, VIN gathered every bead that had spilled from the rosary, searching every corner of the room until he’d found each of the fifty beads of the five decades, and each of the interspersing large beads for the mysteries between. The original had been threaded on a fine, slim woven cord of fine black horsehair; in the absence of horsehair, Vin used his own hair, clipping off a slim lock of nearly three feet of platinum hair and selecting the nine strongest and smoothest, before braiding them into a strand of pale gold, three by three. He lost hours, threading the beads and crucifix onto the braid. And with each, he said his Hail Mary, and searched for peace:
Ave Maria, piena di grazia, il Signore è con te.
But it wasn’t Mother Mary’s voice who answered him, late into the dark hours when the night took on that particular strange, cool quality as if the entire world were caged in smooth stone walls and every small sound resonated with their echoes. He was just tying off the end and testing the rosary’s strength with a last whispered Ave Maria when a woman’s shriek came through the walls, muffled, followed by a heavy thud. He stilled; that shriek rippled through him in a sharp rush, a shrill touch on his skin, as if her voice were nails against the chalkboard of his flesh.
Don’t interfere.
He knew the rules of Crow City. Of places like Crow City. In the darkling hours, people minded their own business. Even heroes looked the other way, or they would add to the body count. Some things took place in the black and heartless hours that were never meant for the light of day, and one way or another left no witnesses.
Another thud. Another scream, higher and higher, breaking into a shrill, choking sound.
“Get off me, you—”
A crash. The wall behind the headboard shook hard enough to rattle Vin’s bed. A snarling male voice followed, shouting things Vin couldn’t understand, English slurred and sneering. He closed his eyes, his heart thumping hard, his fingers curling around the rosary until smooth wood and the hard edges of the crucifix bit into his palm. His pulse ratcheted up high, and suddenly he was there again: surrounded by the scents of gun oil and sand and blood and fear, the sun beating down its ruthless golden hammer, mouth full of grit, high-pitched whistling in the air and the screams of frightened civilians spurring him to move.
Serve and protect.
Semper fi.
He grit his teeth and told himself again: ignore it. Don’t interfere. Mind his own business before he got himself into the kind of trouble he couldn’t get out of. Nothing he did would change anything. And he wasn’t that man anymore: the soldier, the protector, the hero.
He wasn’t.
“Stop!” the woman screamed, sobbed, and he was out of the bed and across his hotel room before he knew he was moving. Out into the hall, with its silver-threaded black carpet, a dark river like a road into Hell and he was willingly walking down it toward the beckoning dark. Something was inside him, something foul and dripping with latent, trembling violence, and that something lifted his hand as if it possessed him and rapped his knuckles against the door of the adjacent room.
The crashing stopped. The woman’s sobs came through the
door, huge and gasping. Male voices muttered, before one of them shouted through the door, “Fuck off!”
“No,” Vin said simply, and kicked the door in.
Polished wood crashed and splintered; the doorframe ripped, the lock breaking out of its setting, and the door slammed open. The seconds fell into a slow-time beat, each individual moment lingering with a dreamlike precision that he remembered from Afghanistan. From those instances when everything could change in seconds, and each second was a year, lived in crystalline clarity. In those few seconds he took in the room: a woman on the floor, barely a girl, her red satin dress ripped up to the waist, her fishnets torn, the roll of cash tucked into her garter marking her trade. Blood smeared down her inner thighs, her underwear ripped, and her eye and jaw were swelling and purpled, her lip split and running blood down her chin, mingling with the tears that stuck her rippling red-gold hair to her cheeks.
Two men stood over her. Two men he already knew didn’t belong here any more than Vin did, white men in the world of the hinóno’éí, their suits expensive, their features crude and blunt. They stared at him, one hastily stuffing himself away and clumsily zipping his trousers. Vin understood, then, what had been happening. Understood that these men thought a roll of bills and the woman’s slim, soft fragility were permission to do as they pleased. Understood that they had bought this woman not to slake their desires, but to feel powerful, and to lord their power over her with the sneering assurance that she would never tell because no one would believe her, or care.
I care, Vincent thought, and suddenly his gray world had color again.
Red.
The red of a flapping tongue as one man barked “Get the fuck out!” The red of a muzzle flash as another whipped a handgun out and fired—but Vin was already moving, darting in, riding the red of his rising temper, a crimson wave that lifted him up and propelled him forward with a fury that lit him up inside and gave life to the dulled emotions that had buried themselves beneath that numbing filter but now exploded out of him in a snarl. Red, such lovely red, filming his vision, filling his world.