Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  “Jealous?” Kev’s voice cracked. “Of Bruno? That is so fucked up!”

  Sean struggled up to his feet. “It’s true, I guess,” he said. “I wanted so bad to find you, all those years. To have that connection again. And don’t get me wrong, I was glad when we found you. Ecstatic, even. But you’re just so . . . so damn polite.” He sounded puzzled and exhausted. “I just wanted to get through the Plexiglas wall.” He waved his hand towards Bruno. “You don’t block him out. Just us.”

  “He’s had you for his brother for about as long as we did,” Connor said from behind them. “And it seemed to count for more.”

  Kev shook his head. He tried to climb out of the pit, but the edge collapsed under his knees and sent him slipping down again.

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” he said, his voice halting.

  “You don’t have to.” Davy looked embarrassed. “We shouldn’t have done this to you. We know it’s hard. It’s OK. Forget it.”

  Kev ignored him. “The Zen thing. The calm thing. Back after what happened with Osterman, I couldn’t talk, or sleep, or think. My brain wires were cut. I was trapped in a nightmare. I damped my feelings all down, or I would have gone nuts. I don’t have a manual off switch for that. I can’t just stop doing it on command.”

  “OK, fine,” Connor said hastily, holding up his hands. “Please. It’s OK. You don’t have to harrow yourself all up for—”

  “Shut up!” Kev barked. “You asked for it, you get it!”

  “Uh. Yeah.” Connor subsided, cowed.

  “I did miss you guys!” Kev stared at each brother in turn. “I just couldn’t get a grip on what I was missing. I was scared shitless but didn’t know of what. I wanted to run, but I had nowhere to go. I was a mess. Chilling out . . .” He waved his arms. “It was a survival thing. I didn’t mean to freeze you guys out. But calm was the way I had to be. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t glad to find you.”

  Sean pressed mud slime out of his long hair from between his fingers and flung the goop, grimacing. “What about him?” he asked, glancing at Bruno. “How’d he get to be exempt from the big freeze?”

  Kev looked at Bruno and let out a snort. “You guys need to understand something about Bruno,” he began.

  Oh, shit and yikes. Bruno braced himself and waited.

  “Bruno saved my ass,” Kev announced. “I would never have learned to talk again without him. I would never have made it at all without him. So if you give a shit about me, you owe him. That’s all.”

  Bruno was startled and moved. “Aw,” he said to break the embarrassed silence that followed. “You’re warming the cockles of this coddled, ungrateful punk’s hear

  Kev slanted him a speaking look. “Zip it, Bru.”

  “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” Sean’s habitual cheerfulness was rising back up. “Something tells me Edie’s exempt from the big freeze, too. Maybe the glaciers are starting to shrink. Who knows?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re jealous of her, too?” Kev looked hunted.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up,” Sean snapped. “I love you, man, OK? I missed you. Is that so hard to take? Does that scare you so damn bad?”

  Kev looked away. “No,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t scare me. I missed you, too. All of you. It was a really long eighteen years.”

  Bruno looked at all four men in turn. Seconds passed. Nothing.

  His disbelief grew. That was it? That was all? Oh, for the love of Christ. These guys were emotional retards, every last one of them.

  “And now it’s over,” he prompted, loudly. “And that’s great, right? Are we OK now? Everybody happy? Can we move on?”

  Connor looked like he wanted to tell Bruno to shut up again, but he swallowed it back with some effort. “Amen to that,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Davy agreed. Loquacious, as always.

  “So we’re done?” Kev looked at Sean. “Do I still need to rip off a limb to show you that I care? You really put me in the mood.”

  Sean’s grin flashed white against the grime on his face. “I’m OK.”

  Kev turned his gaze on Con and Davy. “How about you guys? Knee to the groin, anybody? A couple of broken ribs? Anyone?”

  Connor and Davy both looked like they were trying not to smile.

  “No, thanks. We’re good,” Connor said politely.

  “All right! Group hug!” Bruno held up dripping, muddy arms. “C’mon, you guys! Hug ’em, Kev! Loosen up, everybody! Feel the love!”

  A sound jerked out of Davy that might actually have been laughter as he looked at the foully mud-slimed Kev.

  “Keep your distance, man,” he warned. “You are disgusting.”

  “Aw, what’s a little mud? You guys are so repressed,” Bruno complained. “Those sticks, rammed up your butts. Hurts to watch!”

  Connor turned to Kev. “How do you stand him?” he asked.

  Kev propped his hands on his knees to spit out mud, laughing. “I have no idea. Dad would have knocked us all upside the head if he’d overheard this conversation.”

  “True,” Sean said. “But Dad was no poster child for psychological and emotional health. Being schizo, and all.”

  “How about Tony?” Bruno offered. “The drill sergeant exmafioso, who shot guys in the head and plugged holes in the ground with them?”

  “Our role models.” Sean’s voice was sentimental. “They made us the men we are today. Doesn’t it just give you a warm, fuzzy feeling?”

  Bruno’s chest jerked with laughter. He braced his arm on the new lip of the hole where the mudslide had begun. He tried to drag his thighs up out of the sucking mud—

  And stopped.

  A human skull stuck out of the new muddy wall of the pit. It was held in place by plant rootlets and thick clods of earth. It looked at him sideways, grinning around a mouth full of dirt and stones.

  As Bruno watched, it detached itselfrom the mud wall and rolled gently down the muddy slope, right into his hand.

  He lifted it up, took a look. The jaw was no longer attached, but there was no mistaking that missing left eyetooth and the gold in the top molars. He’d seen those gold teeth a lot, when the guy had been screaming his beery breath into Bruno’s face.

  There was a hole in the forehead between the brow protrusions.

  “Hey, Rudy,” he said quietly.

  “No way.” Lily breathed the words out, horrified. “Your heart?”

  Sveti, the waif-like girl who was hosted by Tam and Val to go to school in America, nodded from her perch on one of Tam’s sofas. “Yes, my heart, my liver, my kidneys, and corneas, and other things.” Her lilting voice had a faint Ukrainian accent. “They saved me just in time. Nick, Tam, the McClouds, and Alex, too. There was big fight. The heart transplant patient was in next room, waiting for her new heart.”

  Lily noticed the butter cookie in her hand. Heart shaped. She put it down on her napkin, her appetite gone. “So, ah, what happened to her? The heart transplant patient? Did they prosecute her?”

  Sveti’s dark lashes swept down over the violet shadows around her dark eyes. “No. She died. She was only fifteen. She couldn’t wait anymore. She was gone by the time police came.”

  Lily’s belly contracted. “That’s awful.”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Sveti said quietly. “She could barely speak. It was her parents who would have killed me to save her. And the people who took me, and Rachel and the others.”

  “Rachel?” Lily’s eyes widened, and she looked at Tam. “You mean, your Rachel? Your little girl? She was . . .”

  “Held captive by organ traffickers, yes.” Tam’s voice was hard. “Rachel was two, three. Bought from an orphanage like a pound of meat. An orphanage which has since closed, its operators nowhere to be found, or else they would be dead. I would see to it. Personally.”

  “Most of children were like me, though,” Sveti added. “Children of people who had offended the Vor.”

  Lily shivered in spite of the wa
rm sweater and the hot tea. “Are the people who did this all in jail?”

  “Some are dead. Nick and Becca killed the Vor and some of his people. The others are in jail, and I hope they stay there forever.”

  “Me, too,” Lily said, with feeling. “What about the parents of the girl who needed the heart?”

  Sveti’s mouth flattened. “They got off free. They pretended they did not know organ donor was still alive. They were very, very rich.”

  Lily considered that. “They’ll pay,” she said.

  Sveti shrugged. “By having lost their daughter? They would have lost her anyway. But never mind. I try not to think about them. I work, I study, I plan future. I take exam tomorrow to test out of first year in university if I am lucky. I have better things to think about now.”

  Lily gazed at Sveti, who was staring out at the ocean. Two entire walls of the huge room were floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on miles of desolately beautiful shoreline in both directions and a sea of tossing conifers. Sveti stared at it without seeing it. The girl seemed both so young and so old. Slaving at two different jobs in Seattle to save money for school. Studying all night long. A shadow hung over her in spite of her youth and beauty. Lily knel about shadows, and hard work.

  She glanced around at the others. Liv was there, Sean’s wife, stretched out on a chaise lounge, and Tam, sipping a mug of tea, a cross-legged pregnant Madonna holding court in the middle of one of the couches. Edie sprawled on the floor by a big, low wooden coffee table, her head propped on her elbow, doodling in a sketchbook. Her dark hair made a pool of swirling waves on the sand-colored carpet beneath her head.

  The sun was low in the sky, and she’d heard stories from each one of those women that would have curled her hair if it had not already been frizzed by coastal humidity. Evil geniuses wielding horrific mind-control devices, slavering mafiya vors, organ thieves, mysterious psychic powers, stolen babies, whee-haw. It was hard to take it all in.

  She blew out a breath. “If you guys were trying to make me feel like my problems are trivial, you have almost, almost succeeded. The difference is that your horror stories are all behind you. I can’t tell you how much I envy you all that small but important detail.”

  Tam nodded. “Can’t blame you. But look at us. All in one piece. Living proof that you can get through your horror story, too.”

  A chill shuddered through her in spite of the fire on the hearth. Afternoon was winding down to evening. Still no word from Bruno. Just texts from Kev saying that the excavation was proceeding and no attacks yet. Bruno had no time to hold her hand while he dug up the skeletons of his mother’s killer. Give the guy a flipping break already.

  Val appeared in the doorway, holding Liv’s squirming son, Eamon, in his arms. He cuddled the baby as he strode in, nuzzling the blond curls as he approached Liv’s chaise lounge.

  “He’s showing off,” Tam said. “The nonverbal message is, look what a real man I am in touch with my feminine side. Look and drool.”

  A dimple quivered in Val’s lean cheek as he passed the baby to Liv. “He woke up from his nap and wanted that substance that only you can provide,” he said.

  Liv took him with a smile and opened her sweater. The baby fastened onto her breast with hungry suckling piglet sounds, gripping with fat little fists, eyes closed in a state of divine bliss.

  Val turned to Tam. “Rachel woke from her nap, too,” he said. “She’s in the kitchen with Zia Rosa. Making biscuits.”

  Tam harrumphed. “That woman is going to kill us with food.”

  “Yes, but we will die happy and fat,” Val said. “There are worse ways to go. She is preparing osso buco and roasted rosemary potatoes. And speaking of food, how long has it been since you ate lunch?”

  Tam’s eyes were golden slits. “An entirely appropriate interval.”

  “Eat a cookie,” he commanded. “You need the calories. The obstetrician said so. Remember? Last Tuesday, at the ultrasound?”

  “Don’t fuss,” she said.

  He chose a pink-frosted star. “You are accustomed to starving yourself. Your perceptions about food are not reliable. Eat a cookie.” He pressed a cookie into her hand and curled her fingers around it.

  “I ate a perfectly adequate lunch,” she said. “I said, don’t fuss.”

  He crossed his arms, defiant. “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll break both your legs,” she warned.

  “Bah,” he scoffed. “That is nothing. Bones knit together. You know that better than anyone. Eat a cookie for Irina”

  A strange look flashed across Tam’s face. “We talked about this,” she said. “Please don’t call her by name. Not yet. It’s bad luck.”

  “It’s all right,” he said softly. “Our luck is good now.”

  “Don’t push it,” she said.

  He considered that. “I will not push it if you eat the cookies.”

  Tam rolled her eyes, lips twitching. “So it’s cookies, plural, now?”

  “To buy my compliance, yes,” he said. “Two.”

  “One,” she countered. “I will not be bullied. Get out. This is a hen party. No one with a penis is invited. Except for Eamon. He can stay.”

  Val looked hurt. “You mean, you do not want to hear the tale of my valiant fight to save you and Rachel from the forces of evil?”

  “Out.” Tam leaned over her belly and gave his hip a shove.

  “Two cookies,” he repeated, backing out of the room.

  Tam took a bite of the cookie after he left. “He’s very nervous,” she explained to Lily, patting her belly. “We lost a couple, before.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lily said.

  Tam acknowledged her words with a nod as she chewed. “To be honest, we can’t quite believe we’ve gotten this far,” she said. “I never thought I’d have kids. I wasn’t the type. Then Rachel happened. And I had some organ damage from the poison in that incident that I told you about, so I thought probably nothing, in terms of babies. Which would have been fine. We have Rachel, and she counts for three. But voilà, here she is. Our little surprise.” Her face tightened. “So far.”

  “How far along are you?” Lily asked.

  “Twenty-eight weeks.” Tam petted her belly, wincing. “Ouch. She’s a wild thing today. But I like her that way.”

  “Twenty-eight weeks,” Lily said. “That’s almost home free, right?”

  “Almost,” Tam agreed. “Almost.” She leaned to grab another cookie but couldn’t reach them over the bulge of her belly. Edie sat up and passed a green-frosted four-leaf clover to her. “Here,” she said. “For luck. I thought you didn’t want two cookies. After all that carrying on.”

  “Oh, I’ll probably eat four more. I just say no to him on principle,” Tam confided. “If I give in to him at all, he becomes insufferable. Basic Val management.” She lifted her cookie, as if toasting the women in the room. “To luck.” She took a bite, frowning as she chewed, and directed her next words at Edie. “But wait. You’re psychic. What are you, clairvoyant? How can you believe in luck if you can see the future?”

  Edie shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m a big believer in luck.”

  “Maybe Edie should do a drawing for Lily,” Liv suggested. “She could use some new fonts of information, don’t you think?”

  Lily fidgeted. Edie’s tale had been as harrowing as any of the others, what with her and Kev’s struggle against the mind-control freaks, but the psychic part was hard for her to swallow. She was pragmatic by nature. “Please don’t take this personally,” she said to Edie. “But I just don’t know how useful that could be for me. I don’t really believe in that psychic stuff. I’m very sorry.”

  Edie patted Lily’s knee. “Don’t be,” she said. “I’m not hurt.”

  “You’re not?”

  Edie licked all thfrosting off her fingers before she answered.

  “Think of it this way,” she said. “If you were watching a sunset, and you were with somebody who had been blind since birth, and this person sai
d to you, ‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t really believe in pink, or orange, or scarlet, or purple, or violet,’ would you take it personally?”

  Lily pondered that. “I don’t know. Are you saying that I’m blind?”

  “Not at all,” Edie said. “But if you’re not tuned to that frequency, how could you be expected to believe that it exists? What’s real for me is still real, whether other people believe in it or not. It used to be so painful when people didn’t believe me. But not anymore.”

  “That’s just because finally you’re getting regularly laid,” Tam pointed out, wisely. “Changes your attitude about so many thing.”

  Edie snorted with laughter, spraying cookie crumbs.

  Lily watched the women giggling, thinking about the sunset. Imagining what it would be like to have never seen it. How these events might be changing her. If love might be able to change her, too. How it would feel to really let it unfold. What she might see, hear, or believe.

  She didn’t want to be so defensive, so suspicious and cynical. She was never going to get out of this maze if she insisted on blocking out the light. Sveti was watching her, her eyes so wise. A smile was forming on the younger girl’s face, transforming it from wanly pretty to beautiful. Lily smiled back. The idea matured into a resolution.

  She turned to Edie. “Will you do a reading on me?” she blurted, interrupting what they were saying. “Or, um, a drawing, I should say?”

  Edie and Tam looked at her blankly. Edie collected herself. “Ah, of course. I’d be happy to. You have to promise me something, though.”

  Lily braced herself. “And that is?”

  Edie looked like she was choosing her words. “Sometimes I see things people don’t want to face. I can’t control what comes out of my pencil. I’m just warning you. That you might not like . . . whatever it is.”

  Lily let out a sigh of relief. That was doable. “No problem,” she said. “I’ve had practice lately dealing with dislikeable things. A bad psychic reading, hey, what’s that compared to being shot at?”

  “You have a point,” Edie said, but she still looked uncertain.

  “Don’t worry,” Lily assured her. “I won’t blame you.”