Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  Then Kev stretched out with a blanket and slept on the floor. And when Bruno had the nightmare, Kev woke him and did it again. Every night, for months. And bit by bit, it started to work. A night would go by, no dream. Then another. Bruno stopped freaking out in school, for the most part. He’d stopped getting straight D’s and F’s. He’d never gotten particularly good at sleep, being hyper by nature, but it was better. And finally, the dreams stopped altogether. He was cured.

  Or so he thought, until a couple of months ago.

  He could make a recording similar to Kev’s mesmerizing monologue, and hypnotize himself, as Kev had hypnotized him. Problem was, he suspected it was the force of Kev’s will that made the technique work. Kev had been a bulwark by his bed. No one messed with Kev.

  But Rudy knew damn well he could mess with Bruno. No lame guided visualization with waves crashing and birds chirping was going to change that. But what could he do? Call Kev, bleating for him to come home, tuck Bruno into bed? Whining to be rescued, like the zinged-out twelve-year-old dingbat he’d been when Kev met him?

  No. Grow up. Get a spine transplant. Get the fuck over it.

  He muscled himself into the shower and slumped against the tiles for support. Let the water beat down against his closed eyelids.

  Move your pansy ass, Ranieri. They ain’t payin’ you by the hour. He almost laughed. Tony, again. Made him nostalgic to channel the old guy’s brusque rudeness. Aw, hell with sleep. Kev would be back soon, for the wedding that Edie’s terrifying aunt was planning for Kev and Edie in a few weeks. He could talk to Kev between tux fittings, wedding rehearsals, dinners, showers and all that standard nuptial fluff.

  In the meantime, he’d face his monsters like a man.

  Brave words, dude. Brave words, an inner voice commented.

  So? he shot back. Shut the fuck up, or say something useful.

  He listened in the silence for more as he got ready, but surprise, surprise . . . the little voice said nothing further.

  2

  Lily Parr stared into her laptop. The taxi’s swerving on the bends in the highway was making her queasy, but she powered on. Nausea was nasty, but if she shut the laptop and closed her eyes, she’d have to think about what she was about to do. And the way it made her feel.

  She’d rather cram psych texts into her brain until there was no room for so much as a fleeting thought. After all, she had six years worth of studying to do in four short days for the grad thesis she was writing. A steep learning curve, but the guy who’d hired her to write it for him had forked over the 50 percent in cash she asked for up front this very morning, thank God, soed was committed. With that, plus the other fees she’d scraped together, letting utility bills slide and paying the minimum on her maxed-out credit cards, she’d covered the monthly fee for Aingle Cliff House, Howard’s private clinic. Assuming she didn’t need to buy anything frivolous, like subway fare or groceries, until some fresh fees trickled in. But once they did, she’d already be budgeting for next month’s check. She wasn’t sure what was left in the dark corners of the pantry, but she was going to get friendly with it this week. And who needed subway fare? She lived in Manhattan. She could walk. Her thighs could use the workout.

  She muscled her mind back to the screen. The trick was to keep her mind constantly applied, like a pen that did not dare leave the paper. If only she could forget she had a body. Just be a vaporous cloud. Things would be simpler. Talk about saving on the grocery bill. Her inconvenient body was the medium through which feelings made themselves known. She hadn’t been able to afford feelings since she was ten, but they never figured out that they weren’t welcome. Clueless.

  Ironic, to be writing a thesis in psychology. A crash course in the inner workings of the human brain, yay. That stuff belonged to the category of things that she could not afford to personally worry about. Like, for instance, the fact that a guy who’d paid another person to study for him, take his exams for him, and write his papers and his graduate thesis for him was about to graduate with a PhD, probably cum laude, thanks to Lily, and then go out to find work in the field of psychology, perhaps diagnosing or even treating people.

  Yep. She, Lily Parr, had made that scenario possible.

  Too bad. She pushed it away. She hadn’t chosen to do this. It just happened, and then it snowballed, and now she had no way out, not with Howard to take care of. The world was a shitty place, and she was sorry, but an ethical dilemma was another luxury she could not afford.

  It was better than robbing banks, or dealing drugs. It really was.

  The last paper she’d been paid to write had been on ethics. Hah. But at least a false ethicist wasn’t likely to hurt anybody once he was unleashed upon the world. There had been some small comfort in that.

  Every month, she pulled together the eleven thousand bucks, plus her own cruelly pared-down living expenses on top of it, and forked the dough over to the professionals who’d promised to watch her father like a hawk twenty-four hours a day to make sure he didn’t kill himself.

  She’d put Howard in less expensive facilities before Aingle Cliff, and every time he’d managed to get his hands on some pills and swallow them. God knew how. But he’d been at Aingle Cliff for four years now. They’d kept him under control. So far, so good.

  Not that one could really describe the situation as “good.” Good in the sense of “not dead.” Everything was relative.

  So here she was for the monthly torture. Checkbook at the ready. Stomach in knots. Locking Howard up was all she could do. She couldn’t help him any other way. She’d almost killed herself trying when she was young and dumb. She knew about addiction, codependency, blah, blah, blah. She’d written papers about it, taken online exams. On behalf of others, of course. She knew the material. She got it already.

  Her presence was not a comfort to Howard. He never asked her to come. In fact, he begged her to stay away. Real egopumper, that one. Her own father, pleading for her not to visit him.

  So why did she feel compelled to visit every month?

  Her best friend, Nina, aocial worker who worked in a battered women’s shelter and knew self-destructive behaviors up and down, told her it was guilt that spurred her, but Lily didn’t buy it. Who had time for guilt? She was a floating cloud, a disembodied entity. Detached and cold, except when it came to Nina and a select handful of other friends, but Nina was the main one. Nina kept her marginally human. Not that she had time for a social life. No more than she had time for feelings.

  Bullshit, Nina said. Your feelings would roll over you like a tank if you let yourself feel them. You’ve driven them underground.

  Lily contemplated that grimly. And so? Denial was the way to go. Climb on the hamster wheel to pay off Aingle Cliff. Not a thought for irony or ethics. Swallow the bitter taste in her mouth. Do the jobs, pay the bills, write the checks. Get the tiger by the tail.

  Scramble to keep it from tearing her to pieces.

  Almost there. Lily snapped the laptop shut and stared at the imposing façade of Aingle Cliff House as they wended up the drive.

  Dumb name for the place. No cliffs to be seen. In fact, the place seemed to be situated in a bowl. Hardly a reassuring name for a facility where one stashed people with suicidal tendencies. The first thing Lily thought of when she heard the word “cliff” was a running jump, a long fall, and a splat at the bottom. But then, she was twisted.

  The cab stopped. She sat there, like a lump.

  “Uh . . . miss?” the cabbie prodded. “Are you, uh . . .”

  Lily dug out her wallet. “Can you come pick me up in an hour?”

  The cabbie agreed. Lily paid him, uncomfortably aware of how little money was left. She’d put it all into the check she was about to write and had barely enough to get back to the train station. Nothing left over for a tip on the outward-bound cab ride. Ouch.

  The cabbie pulled away. Lily’s sneakers crunched on the gravel of the path as she walked up to the imposing building. Patients were out on the ground
s, taking in the afternoon sunshine. Not Howard. Patients considered a danger to themselves were kept in a special ward. Howard was special, in that sense. He’d tried to kill himself eight times, maybe more. The episodes had started to blend together after a while.

  She’d been fifteen the first time she’d gotten home from school and found him blue-faced, barely breathing. If she’d gone to her after-school tutoring job that day as she’d planned, she’d have found him thoroughly dead. Which had, of course, been his intent.

  That day, she stopped calling him Dad. She was the adult, not him. Had been for years. Her mother had died the day she was born, so there had been no one to miss in the mom slot. It had always been her and Howard. Or Dad, as she’d called him in the old days. Before.

  But before . . . what? It still tormented her. It hadn’t always been like this. Dad had been a research physician, a sought-after expert in emerging IVF technologies, back in the good old days. He’d been a crappy cook and a worse housekeeper, but so much fun. Smart, funny.

  They’d been close. They’d had their own special schtick. Lily and Dad, comedy duo. The two of them against the world. Watching classic horror movies on Saturday afternoons, playing cards, choffing Chinese food. Sunday picnics in the park, with deli sandwiches, Mint Milano cookies, and Snapple.

  And then it all went to hell, when she was about ten. Abruptly, Dad had stopped working and started sitting around the house in his barobe in a bourbon-soaked stupor. It got worse. Progressed to harder drugs. Sometimes she’d wake at night and find him on his knees by her bed, tears streaming down his face. Freaked her out, big-time.

  Lily signed the guest book and headed to the administrative office, where she wrote out her monthly blackmail payment to her deepest fears. She exchanged bland chitchat with the staff, and when she could think of no other earthly reasons to procrastinate, she headed into the elevator and went up to the fourth floor. Howard’s ward.

  The fourth-floor ward was guarded. She exchanged smiles with the security guy. He unlocked the door and waved her in.

  She jerked back as Howard’s door opened. Miriam came out, one of Howard’s nurses. Not Lily’s favorite, though the thought was unworthy. Miriam Vargas was a light-skinned black woman, supermodel gorgeous, with bee-stung lips and a body that was sexy even in baggy scrubs. Though that wasn’t what bugged Lily. Miriam was just too bouncy for Lily’s mood. It grated on her. Made her feel like a stone-cold bitch, being annoyed by mere friendliness, but there it was.

  Miriam flashed spectacular teeth. “Lily! How are you?”

  “OK.” Lily tried to return the smile, but it was a purely muscular effort. “How is he doing?”

  Miriam’s smile faded. “He’s been a little agitated for the last couple days. I planned to talk to Dr. Stark about it when he comes in today. He may need to have his meds reevaluated. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you, though! You’ll perk him right up!”

  Hah. Lily was not about to argue with that supposition today. She let out a sharp sigh and went on in. The room was pleasant, with a nice view of the wooded grounds, but Howard wasn’t looking at the view. He was hunched up on the bed, hugging his knees. Rocking.

  Alarm bells jangled inside her. That obsessive rocking had often preceded his suicide attempts. “Howard?” she asked gently.

  He looked up. His pale, wasted face was wet, eyes streaming.

  “How can you forgive me, Lil?” he asked.

  Lily suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. Howard didn’t need any snotty attitude from her to compound his misery. She sank down near his bed. “I already have forgiven you,” she said, wondering if it was true. How could she know, if her real emotions were in hiding?

  Aw, hell with it. It was true enough, she decided. Howard was forgiven. By executive decision from on high, and feelings had no part in the decision. This was not a democracy. This was fricking martial law.

  But in any case, Howard was shaking his head. “No,” he said hoarsely. “You couldn’t. Ever. If you knew.”

  She let out a silent sigh. “Knew what? Try me.”

  Howard’s lank gray hair had gotten long, and it flapped against his sunken face as he waved his head back and forth. “Please,” he begged. “Please, don’t ask me that, Lil.”

  Around and around, like always. She knew this song by heart. There was the plea for forgiveness, the heebie-jeebie-inducing hints, then the coy retreat. “OK,” she soothed. “Whatever. It’s all good.”

  “No. That’s just it. It’s not good. It’ll never be OK.” His bloodshot eyes were wide and desperate. “I can’t stand it anymore. It’s like my chest’s caving in. It’s breaking my bones. I can’t breathe anymore.”

  Lily gazed at him, helpless. She’d written papers on abnormal psych, on Jungian symbolism, on Freud. She’d studihe esoteric knowledge of all the world’s great religions. One might think she’d know how to unravel Howard’s ravings, or have a clue as to how to comfort him with a little lofty wisdom. But her brain wasn’t really wired for that slippery, subjective stuff, though she invariably got good grades in it. Or rather, her clients did. She took a tiny bit of secret pride in all those A’s.

  In her heart of hearts, she was practical, nut-and-bolts Lil. No funny stuff, no woo-woo, no rabbit tricks, no fluff. No excuses, either.

  But oh, Christ, how she hated to see him suffer.

  She reached out to touch his hand. It was ice cold. “So lay it down, Howard,” she suggested. “Tell me what’s bugging you.”

  Howard’s clammy hand twitched in hers. “It’ll put you in danger.” His voice was a thread of a whisper. She had to lean down to catch it. “They’re listening, Lil. They’re always listening. If I tell you, they’ll know. They’ll come for you.” His scratchy voice broke off into a hacking cough, eyes rolling to the right, the left. “They’ll kill me. They’ll kill both of us.”

  She patted his hand. “No, they won’t. Not here,” she assured him. “You’re safe here.” God knows, she paid enough for him to be.

  Howard’s hair flopped again. “No. Nowhere is safe,” he insisted. “You’re my little girl, Lil. I can’t do that to you. My first responsibility was to you. Always to you. That was the reason for . . . for all of it.”

  Lily winced. Responsibility, her ass. His drug binges had made her feel orphaned ever since she was ten. Let it go, Lil. “I’m not little anymore, Howard,” she said. “I can look out for myself.”

  “Don’t think that. Ever. We’re all still in danger. Magda warned me. She said they’re listening. Even now, after all these years.”

  “Magda?” That was a name she’d never heard. In fact, she’d had no idea Howard had visitors at all, other than herself. He’d isolated himself from the rest of the world decades ago. “Who’s Magda?”

  “Magda Ranieri. They killed her,” Howie whispered.

  A chill started around the small of her back, fluttering nastily upward. Visits from dead people. Not a good sign.

  “Howard?” she said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  His hand tightened, grinding her fingers together. “Magda tried to stop them,” he burst out. “She wanted me to help, but I was so scared, Lil. For you. We were trying to get proof. But they found out.”

  “Proof of what, Howie?”

  “Of what I’d done, for him. I swear, Lil, I didn’t know what he was planning. I didn’t know he was a . . . a demon. And by the time I understood, it was too late. I had you to think about, and he—”

  “He? Who is he?” she demanded, her voice getting sharper. “And who the hell is this Magda Ranieri?”

  “Don’t say the name so loudly!” he hissed, with unexpected force. Then his mouth started shaking again. “They killed her, Lil. In front of me. They beat her to death. They told me you’d be next if I . . . if I . . .” His voice choked off. “I still see it. Whether my eyes are open or closed. All that blood. I can’t stand it anymore. I tried to kill myself so you’d be safe. No reason to punish me if I’m dead, right? But I wa
s never man enough to finish the job.” His voice choked off. His hand shook.

  Lily squeezed his fingers, trying not to shiver.he torment in Howard’s eyes was very real. Whether the events that caused it were also real was unlikely, but that did not make his pain any the less.

  And this did not feel like rambling. This felt . . . genuine.

  She stared down at him. She’d written papers for future health professionals about PTSD in combat stress, or victims of rape or other attacks. And Howard was so terrified of blood. He had been ever since she could remember. Could this be . . . ?

  No. It couldn’t be. This was mental illness. Years of systematic drug abuse that had worn holes in his brain. She would not fall for this. She was a grown-up. She knew better.

  But even so. Howard was detailing the contents of his delusions, which he’d never done before. Dr. Stark, Howard’s psychiatrist, always complained about the fact that Howard refused to do talk therapy. Maybe Dr. Stark could use this information to treat him. Lily couldn’t waste this opportunity, no matter how much it was creeping her out.

  “Who is this Magda to you?” she repeated. “Tell me more.”

  Howard shook his head, but he kept talking, as if some desperate part of him was breaking loose of the cage of his fear. “Magda keeps coming to me,” he moaned. “She says, find her son, and tell him. But I can’t. You could find him, Lil.”

  “Who? Me? Who’s Magda’s son? Tell him what?”

  “Shhh!” he hissed, dragging her hand closer so that her butt slid from the hard chair. She perched on his bed instead, bending to hear his croaking whisper. “You could tell him. He has to lock it. With the key. It’s the key to everything. Her son will know when he sees it.”