by Cole McCade
And fountaining from the first man’s mouth as Vin slammed into him, shoulder driving hard into his gut, doubling him over and sending him to the ground. He was dead before he struck the lush carpet. Vin caught his skull in both hands and twisted with a satisfying crack, sharp and leaving the man blank-eyed and twitching in his last pathetic throes as pretty pretty crimson bubbled past his lips.
The woman screamed. “Don’t!”
“You fucker,” the other man snarled, and pain bloomed in a hard, slamming thud against the back of Vin’s skull. He reeled forward, caught himself, rolled away—moving on instinct, time still passing in slow-motion and carrying him forward with trained reflexes that had saved his life time and time again. He surged into a crouch and dove behind the bed for cover, moving blindly when his vision was reeling with black spots and something hot and sticky and wet matted to the back of his neck, skull ringing and on fire. He shook his head sharply, struggling to clear his eyes.
Then another red muzzle-flash. A sneering, thick-lipped face, twisted with rage and yet alight with a kind of glee, too, the kind that came with power over the helpless, power wielded in the cold dark shine of a gun and the assurance of superiority in a world that gave it to certain people by default. That glee reflected back the burst of gunpowder igniting, a bright red flash.
Pain rocked into Vin’s gut, a heavy thick impact like a punch only for it to burst, radiating out through him in wet star-feelers, electric and spreading everywhere like it was in his veins. And he felt everything now with a hideous clarity, every emotion, every loss, every twist of agony in his struggling body as he collapsed across the carpet, staring dully at the girl’s wide, frightened, tear-filled eyes as she screamed and screamed and screamed. Her eyes looked so much like Serafina’s, he thought, and wondered if he was dying or if this was simply the pain of a heart breaking, grieving, drunk on the terrible bitter wine of loss.
The girl sobbed, reached for him.
His eyes closed.
And everything went black, and sank blissfully farther and farther away.
* * *
PURGATORY CAME IN GRAY-WASHED FLASHES: faint bursts of pain, then darkness again, alternating in and out until it was a strobe lighting occasional glimpses of walls, of street lamps, of concrete streets and car seats and shadowed, moving figures that spoke in a language Vin didn’t understand. He thought he laughed, at one point, as he wondered vaguely if Charon had modernized, and replaced his ferry with a late-model sedan—for surely these were devils, ferrying Vincent to his judgment and either eternal torment or eternal rest.
He didn’t think he deserved rest.
Yet it came in increasing periods of blackness: freedom from the pain, as he sank into the dark again and again, and finally didn’t come back up. Somewhere he was aware of the sounds of cars, not so very far away, rolling through some dark highway of the damned but growing quieter and quieter, fewer and farther between, further and further away. The pain was a grinning thing crouched on his chest, a weight pressing him down, the only awareness of his body a dull hot knot of agony; his arms and legs seemed to have vanished into a kind of thick, lethargic mist.
Deep down, he knew this wasn’t purgatory. Wasn’t any kind of afterlife. He wasn’t dead yet, but he was getting there, and he thought the grit under his back was pavement. He’d been dumped in the street to bleed out, because that was the ending of a Greek tragedy: the hero dead, the damsel sacrificed, and if he tried to save himself he would only bring down the wrath of gods older and more vengeful than the one who had stopped answering his prayers years ago.
He wanted this, he thought. Just like this. One last burst of bright scarlet emotion to remind himself he was human…and then an end to it all. Quiet. Peace. A darkness where he could no longer feel pain, no longer feel loss, no longer feel anything at all.
He’d earned this, both with his suffering and his failure.
Mi benedica, padre, perchè ho peccato.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
A soft sound scuffed close by—too close. Right next to his head, the noise oddly loud, painfully so. He winced, and forced his eyes open. The light of street lamps spilling into the close walls of the alley nearly blinded him, searing…until someone bent over him, blocking them out.
Through hazed vision and trembling lashes, he glimpsed a pale, lined face, narrow and graceful, with dark eyes and a soft, full pink mouth below the strangest, most whimsically curling moustache Vin had ever seen. Dark hair fell across a high, smooth brow that wrinkled in confusion as the man tilted his head, blinking quizzically at him.
“Well hullo there,” he said, his voice rolling, ringing, resonant. “What do we have here?”
CHAPTER FIVE
THIS WASN’T PURGATORY.
This was Hell.
Only in Hell were the damned forced to relive their worst moments over and over into eternity, suffering the torment of their judgment again and again—and only in Hell would Vin be back in that stinking room again, back in that blood-drenched charnel house while hands held him down and pain plunged into his belly in a molten red-hot poker. Everything was black; he couldn’t open his eyes, the backs of his eyelids pulsing with the bloody red of agony, and he couldn’t see his assailant but he knew that touch, that slimy coarse touch and if he could open his eyes that sallow pockmarked face would be leering down at him with that crooked tooth turned all wrong, hanging like a broken shutter over a shattered and darkened window.
He tried to fight back, but he couldn’t move; his limbs were granite, and his body wouldn’t respond. Drugged. They’d drugged him this time. It was the only explanation for the darkness, his body’s refusal to answer his demands, the clouded muddle of his senses. He heard voices, but the voices were wrong; not the harsh, mocking gutturals he was accustomed to, but something deeper, lyrical, soothing. For a moment, a hand rested to his brow. That…didn’t make sense.
But then he was slipping away again, and no matter how he fought to cling to consciousness it eluded his grasp and left him empty.
* * *
WHEN HE WOKE AGAIN, IT was to the feeling of soft sheets against his back and a throb of pain in his rib cage, moving to the beat of his heart and rolling in tandem to the throb at the base of his skull.
The room came to in a slow blur, details resolving one at a time, but he knew the moment he opened his eyes he wasn’t back in that torture chamber in Sangin. The light in that horrible room had been harsh and white, pools of it against the dark; the light here was soft, golden, and he thought lamplight, candlelight, a honeyed luminescence that made him ache for the polished wood of old and weathered pews gleaming beneath the golden light of wall sconces. But he closed his eyes again when even that light proved to be too much, making his retinas ache. The scent, too, was wrong; that dark place in his memories smelled like rotting flesh and coagulated blood, while around him was the scent of warm, melting wax and…
Pumpkin spice?
His hand flew to his chest before he could stop it—and closed around his rosary. The kick-start jump of his heart calmed. Still there. Still whole. Still his, that chain of beads holding him in one piece, wrapping him up in their cord.
He forced one eye open again, waiting until his pupil adjusted to the light before opening the other. More details came clear: cream-colored curtains pulled into elegant gathers over windows that bled dark with night. A canopy bed beneath and around him, piled with cream linens worn soft to the touch by age and use, the bed’s pillars draped in tatters of French lace. Mannequins stood in the corners and tucked into little nooks, draped in gaudy costumes that had gone stiff and begun to fade from ill use. Lamps with shades of golden glass sat on the nightstands. The walls—old wood, turned dark by time—were plastered with faded posters, their edges curling, the bold, brassy text promising every sort of wonder imaginable, many centered on a tall, stick-thin, flamboyantly dressed man with a curling moustache, oddly familiar. Even in faded photographs the man’s flourishin
g gestures made him seem always in motion, a sort of cheerful energy that vibrated through the captured lines of his being.
Odd.
Vin tried to sit up, then winced and settled, peering down at himself. His shirt was gone, replaced by a wrapping of gauze bandages around his chest and waist, lumpy on one side with a gauze pad underneath, right over that living throb of pain. A faint stain of pink had started to soak through the layers of white. He touched the bandage, then flinched as the faint scrape of fine fibers shot through him with the same uncomfortable intensity as teeth on unglazed ceramic. When he curled his hand against the back of his neck, under his hair, those same fine fibers pulled on the flesh underneath, his nape bandaged. Gritting his teeth, he sank back against the soft, cushiony pillows and looked up at the ceiling through the thin film of lace.
The last thing he remembered was the girl, staring at him with those wide, wet eyes that had seemed to ask why? Why would you do something so stupid? Why for me? before there was nothing but darkness and pain. He’d been shot, his body dumped, left for dead.
And he’d killed a man.
Not an enemy combatant. Not even someone who’d attacked him. The moment he’d heard the girl screaming some dark demon had risen up inside him, a possessing spirit that didn’t ask if murder was right or wrong, didn’t whisper to him of God’s teachings and thou shalt not kill. He’d broken that one a long time ago, and forget the moralizing and theorizing that it didn’t apply to righteous killing; theory meant nothing when the ground ran red and stained hands trembled and clenched and the stench of blood would never go away.
Besides. He wasn’t sure what he’d done had been righteous. It had just been impulsive, stupid.
And it had felt good.
That girl…she’d never asked for that. He didn’t know why she did what she did, if she’d chosen her line of work or fallen into it through hard times or some other impetus that pushed her hard enough to propel her life in that direction, but it wasn’t his place to judge her. No—it wasn’t her he’d cast his judgment on. The moment he’d seen the blood on her thighs and the marks on her face and the tears in her eyes, he’d judged and sentenced the men standing over her without a second thought. And when he’d felt the crack of breaking bone, the particular strange mixture of a body going at once heavy and light as the will to hold it up vacated along with the weight of a soul…
He shuddered and closed his eyes.
What was wrong with him?
He needed to see Dr. Siebel—even if he didn’t think Siebel would help. He was the only option the VA offered, but his cold, quiet detachment made Vin feel like an experiment and did nothing to ease his soul. He had the funds to find his own therapist, but didn’t think he had the fortitude left to move from one calm, assessing stare to the next, dashing the broken pieces of himself up against the wall of their analytical dissection, until he found one who didn’t make his skin crawl, who didn’t make him feel weak for needing a confessional chamber for the modern age. Maybe he really was hopeless.
Are you?
Or is there some part of you that enjoys being this way?
Did you smile, when his eyes went blank?
Soft tread outside the door. The creak of a hinge. Vin stilled, but didn’t open his eyes. Old training; don’t give away that he was awake. For all he knew the man who’d shot him had dumped him off somewhere to let someone keep him alive until he was ready to ask who the fuck he was and why he’d come barging in like a fucking fool. He didn’t think because I felt like it would go over well.
But this wasn’t a mob flick—Vin had always hated those Italian stereotypes—and there would be no interrogation. He cracked one eyelid open just enough to watch the man who entered the room; he was tall, slim as a reed, with a liquid ease and languor to his movements, almost hypnotic. Long, almost skeletal hands curled around the edges of a tray; that pumpkin spice smell was stronger, mixed with the bitter, refreshing crispness of black tea. He was in his mid-forties, perhaps early fifties, but with the quiet elegance of one committed to aging gracefully; his salt-and-pepper hair swept across his high, smooth brow, and Vin recognized that curling, smooth moustache from the posters—and from his pained fever-dreams.
The man in the alley.
He didn’t look like a criminal. Like he was in any way associated with the one who’d shot Vin at all. He had a quiet mildness to him, and a glitter to his dark, slightly angled eyes that spoke of kindness and secrets kept with a sort of whispered glee. He was strange, Vin thought…strange, but essentially harmless.
Harmless didn’t mean Vin had to trust him.
He closed his eye again, but the man made a soft clucking sound. The covered dishes on the tray rattled—closer, bringing with them the proximity of the man’s warmth. “I’ve spent almost a day watching you unconscious. I know when your breathing changes, young man.”
Vin almost snorted. He hadn’t been called young man in at least a decade. But after a moment he sighed, opening his eyes and turning his head to look up at the man. He was rewarded by a warm, full-lipped smile, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“It’s lovely to see you awake,” the man said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I have a hole in my chest.” Vin curled his fingers in the sheets and struggled to push himself upright, but his arms were blocks of unresponsive wood; he managed to lift himself a couple of inches before pain dragged him back down again, its hooks in his flesh and tugging insistently. He sank back against the sheets, biting back a curse. He couldn’t stand this. There were no shackles on him, but he was just as trapped as he’d been in that Sangin torture chamber, and he’d never wanted to live that again. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want?”
“Now, now, lad, settle down.”
The man sank to sit on the edge of the bed; despite his height, his weight barely indented the mattress. He radiated heat like a furnace, until even across the foot of space separating them he nearly burned Vin’s skin. Or maybe that was blood loss, sucking the vitality from his body to leave him cold, already half a corpse.
The man leaned over him, and gently eased the pillows behind his back to help him up, until Vin could brace his shoulders against the headboard and lean half-upright with the pillows supporting his aching body. His slightly hazed vision came clearer when the man plucked his glasses from the nightstand—sitting next to his phone, and Vin imperceptibly relaxed when no captor would let him keep his phone—and eased them onto his face, perching them on the bridge of his nose.
“There.” The man offered a faint smile. “You’re in no shape to be flexing your testosterone at me right now. Honestly, boys like you act like broken wild animals. You’d bite the hand trying to pull the thorn from your paw, if I let you.”
Vin scowled. If he argued, he would only be proving him right. “How did I get here?”
“That’s a question I only have half the answer to, dear boy.” The man clucked his tongue and folded his hands in his lap. “I was closing up shop for the night and found you lying out by the dumpster like someone had tossed you out without half a care, poor thing. So I brought you in and bandaged you up, even if I may have given you a few more bruises getting you here. I do apologize, but you’re quite heavy.” He chuckled, almost to himself, but there was something shrewd and thoughtful in black, deep-set eyes as he studied Vin. “That bullet wound and the blunt force trauma to the back of your skull gave the distinct impression that a hospital visit would have brought questions you’d not be particularly keen to answer, lad.”
Vin searched his face, considering. Turning over answers, options. Silence might seem suspicious, but sometimes saying the wrong thing—even the wrong lie—was more so. And even if this man might be offering him the kindness of the good Samaritan, that kindness would change to fear, then accusation if he knew he was harboring a murderer.
“I was shot,” Vin said neutrally.
“That is generally how bullets become lodged in one’s rib cage, yes,”
came the tart response, paired with an arching sweep of a brow. “Luckily blood loss left you unconscious for the worst of it.”
“Not all of it. I remember…”
Pain. The lance of pain digging inside me, and all I could smell was blood. My blood, and I wonder now if I did not in my fevered dreams hear my own wild and tortured screams…
The man leaned over him, concern making soft creases around his mouth. “You remember what?”
“Pain,” he said, and looked away from those searching eyes. “I had thought I was dreaming. Dreaming a memory.”
“Are your memories full of such anguish, then?”
The compassion, the worry in the man’s rolling voice cut deep—and suddenly, Vin wanted to tell him. With one simple question this stranger made Vin want to speak in ways he could never speak to Dr. Siebel, because Dr. Siebel saw him as a problem to be solved and was only looking for the single loose thread he could pull to unravel Vin, spool out his threads and stitch them into something that fit the pattern Siebel wanted to see.
This dark-eyed stranger, with his flourishing, graceful movements and a face like a time-worn ivory sculpture, asked because he cared enough to pick a broken rag of a man up off the street and take him into his home.
It must be weakness and blood loss addling his senses. To spill himself in such a way to a stranger, even one who had a strange, kindly, coaxing allure about him…
No.
Vin set his jaw, and looked down at his bandaged chest again, tracing the gauze lightly and careful not to press down too hard this time. That faint pink spot hadn’t spread, but he didn’t want to make it worse.
“How bad is it?” he deflected.
The man watched him discerningly; his sigh, when it came, was a thing of resignation and acceptance. “You were lucky. The bullet nicked a rib, and deflected to embed in muscle tissue without hitting any vital organs or major arteries. It was a somewhat deep wound, but I was able to extract the bullet without doing any damage even if no doubt the local anesthetic I had on hand was not hardly enough to keep you from the pain. I’m terribly sorry for what you must have suffered, even unconscious.”