Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  The front door burst open, and Giuseppina Ranieri herself shot out, as if the house had forcibly propelled her. She wore a coat, held a big purse.

  “Oh, shit,” Kev snarled. “He’s gone!”

  “Gone?” Sean looked around, confused. “Gone where?”

  Kev waved his hand toward the old lady. “She would never leave him in her house unsupervised!” He burst out of the car and ran to intercept the woman. “Excuse me? Mrs. Ranieri?”

  She spun around, wild-eyed, brandishing a can of pepper spray. “Stay away from me!” she screeched, spraying wildly.

  Kev jittered and spun back out of range before he could get a faceful of the spray, and then lunged forward, nabbing the canister before she could plunge another one. “Just a quick word with you, ma’am,” he said. “About Bruno—”

  “So he was lying, then! He did tell his no good friends my number! And my address, too, eh? That lying little punk!”

  Kev had no idea what to do with that. “No, ma’am. We’re just his ride, that’s all. We wondered where he’d gone. Is he still in the house?”

  “I’ll call the cops!” she howled. “I’ll have you arrested!”

  Sean hung way back, watching.

  “Mrs. Ranieri, please, just tell me,” Kev pleaded. “Did Bruno find the jewelry box? Is he still inside looking?”

  “No!” she yelled. “There was no jewelry box! He just got that phone call, and out the back door he walks! As cool as you please, without so much as a word, or a good-bye, or even a thank-you! So rude!”

  “The back door? He went out the . . . oh, shit.” He and Sean exchanged horrified looks. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  He and Sean bolted as one for the narrow strip of lawn bordered by the neighbor’s chain-link fence at the side of the house. The old lady followed them around back, shrieking and swinging her purse at them.

  He tore through the back patio, the yard, through the breezeway, out into the alley. No sign of Bruno. He let the pepper spray canister drop to the ground, yanked out his cell, punched in the code for the phone Davy had given his little brother.

  They heard the ring tone buzz from inside Pina Ranieri’s kitchen.

  He and Sean stared at each other in grim dismay.

  “He left the phone?” Sean murmured, frowning. “Why did he leave the fucking phone?”

  “Because they ordered him to! Goddamn it. Goddamn it!”

  “Oh, and about that phone!” The breathless old lady caught up with them, her eyes bugging out. “He just walked away with my home phone! That phone cost me thirty-four dollars! I’ll have him arrested!”

  “Which way did he go, ma’am?” Sean asked.

  She just stared at him, squint-eyed. Sean smiled at her. “Just tell us, and we’ll try to recuperate your t go, OK?” he wheedled.

  She sniffed suspiciously, jerked her thumb to the right.

  They raced out, pounding down to the avenue. No Bruno. Cars zipped past in both directions on the busy street. He saw Sean pick up the phone out of a tuft of grass, hold it to his ear, give Kev a negative headshake. No line. Sean held the phone out to the sputtering old lady. “Your phone, ma’am,” he said politely. “Safe and sound.” He looked at Kev, his eyes full of dread. “Bro. Come here. Have a look at this.”

  Kev braced himself, and looked at the message on the van.

  Lily had to sorry

  “Oh, God. Bruno.” Kev sagged forward, his forehead against the filthy vehicle. And he’d thought he’d gotten his shit together. That he had Edie and his family, that everything would be fine at last. That he’d earned a little happiness, a little peace. That it would finally be OK.

  But no. The world was still able to tear new holes in him. It was so easy to just rip it all to pieces. Oh, Bruno.

  Sean’s hand closed on his shoulder. “Hey. Kev. I’m so sorry.”

  He couldn’t answer. Just tried not to fall apart.

  “Look,” Sean said. “This sucks, but we have to sharpen up and disappear before that crazy old dame really does call the cops.”

  Kev gulped, stood up, wiped his face. “Yeah,” he muttered.

  “So let’s go get your crazy Zia,” Sean said. “And hope that she has some really brilliant new idea for us. Because I’m fresh out of ideas.”

  They caused screeching protest by their choice to run through Pina Ranieri’s property again, but fuck it. The shrill sound was already fading, and it was the fastest way back to their car.

  Not that they had a clue what they were hurrying for, anymore.

  29

  Lily stumbled as Zoe dragged her down the corridor. “No, really,” she said. “You look like shit. What happened? Did you get the flu?”

  “Shut up.” Zoe jerked Lily

  off her feet. She thudded down to her knees on the cold, hard floor, with a gasp of startled pain.

  “But it was only a week ago or so since I saw you, right?” Lily persisted. Zoe looked wrecked. Stress would weaken her further, and if there was one thing Lily was good at, it was driving people nuts.

  “You looked great up at the cabin,” she went on. “Couldn’t help but notice, even though you were trying to kill me. You looked pretty fine the day you killed my father, too. Killing seems to agree with you. But you look like crap now. You must have lost twenty-five pounds. You shriveled. What is up with that?”

  “I said, shut up!” Zoe’s voice was cracking around the edges as she jerked Lily upright, making her sore shoulder joint blaze.

  “You ought to get that jaundice checked out,” Lily barged on. “Liver function issues really trash your complexion.”

  “Shut . . . up!” Whack. Zoe whacked Lily across the face, slamming her into the wall, from whence she bounced down to the floor. Lily huddled there, her hand pressed against her throbbing facespa>

  Zoe bent at the waist, hands braced on her thighs, and stared at Lily. She panted, jaw sagging. A muscle twitched prominently in her bony jaw. Everything showed in her face—veins, tendons, bones, all in sharp relief, like a skull that had been dipped in yellow wax.

  Zoe squeezed her eyes shut, eyelids twitching. Veins pulsed visibly in her temples. She dug into the pocket of her cargo pants and yanked out a small envelope. She peeled the sleeve of her shirt back with her teeth. Small sheets of paper covered with red dots fluttered to the ground. A dot was already stuck to her wrist. As Lily watched, she peeled the last dot off one card and stuck it in the crook of her elbow.

  She sagged back against the wall, breathing hard. Then she reached down, keeping narrowed eyes on Lily, and scooped up the rest of the fallen papers. She tucked them back into the envelope.

  Her breathing was slower, veins no longer popping out on her forehead. Her crisis was passing. So Zoe was some kind of a junkie. How very unsurprising.

  “What the hell is that stuff?” Lily asked.

  Zoe’s purplish lips stretched in a sneer. “Mama’s little helper.”

  “Would you give me one?” she blurted, for no reason she could fathom. “I could use some help.”

  Zoe let out a short, contemptuous laugh. “One dose of this stuff would kill you. You’d die of convulsions on the spot.”

  “But it doesn’t hurt you?” she asked.

  “I’m different,” Zoe said loftily. “We’re a different order of beings. You wouldn’t understand how profoundly we’ve been changed.”

  “Deformed.” The word popped out.

  Oof, Zoe’s boot connected with her belly and jackknifed her into a moaning vee. “Mind your manners,” Zoe said. “Get up.”

  Lily struggled up. Zoe jerked her arm, twisting until Lily squeaked and writhed into a pretzel shape to ease the pain, but there was no escape. The pain jangled on through every nerve.

  She shuffled, dragging her feet until Zoe yanked open Lily’s door and flung her inside. Slam went the door. Click, clunk went the locks. Lily huddled, curled into a ball. She crawled to the wall, shook her hair down in a tangled veil, itchily aware of the camera’s constant regard.
She touched the bottom of her bare foot. Peeled off the grubby piece of paper stuck to it. Stared at it, behind the veil of her hair.

  One of Zoe’s drug patch papers. A full one. It held sixteen of the little red dots, four rows of four, and a protective sheet of plastic film on top. Lily held it concealed in the palm of her hand, palm down.

  She had no clue what to do with it. At least she had a suicide tool, but that had never been an option in her mind. She’d always been so angry at her father for trying it. But things looked so different now.

  She started to cry. In shock, that she’d scored even that tiny victory. Terror, at the thought of daring to use it to defy them. Grief for her father, fear for Bruno. Too many reasons to count.

  She curled up, clutching her prize, and gave into the storm.

  It was an exercise in self-control. The agonizing, sweatpopping kind, never a talent upon which he had particularly prided himself. The driver of the bronze BMW, who’d confided that his name was Julian, had pulled over after ten blocks or so, offered him a bag to put over his head, d htold him to lie down in the backseat.

  Bruno stared at the bag dangling from the man’s hand. Black, lined, drawstring at the border. He’d as soon lie down into his own grave. After a few seconds, Julian just shrugged, pulled out his cell phone, held it up to his ear.

  Oh, no, no, no. Bruno promised to be good. He put on the bag and lay down on the seat. The new-car leather stink made him queasy. He was claustrophobic anyway, and not being able to see or breathe fresh air made him frantic. It would have been easier to bear if he’d been bound with rope, duct tape. But it was just fear that held him.

  The car got on a highway. He tried to estimate the time, but anxiety skewed his perceptions. The best he could figure when the car got off the highway was more than one hour, less than two. Julian had tuned into Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” at high volume. The melody of the bouncy, shrill violins grated on his nerves like a car alarm.

  After fifteen minutes, the car stopped, the window whirred down. Some muffled conversation, a shiver of cold air, and off they went again. The car moved at a sedate pace. It came to a stop. Doors, popping.

  He was dragged out by more than one set of ungentle hands. Three people, from the sounds. Someone jerked his hands back, put the plastic cuffs on, yanked them tight. Sounds echoed, hollow and booming. Indoors, but the air was still. Very cold. A big garage?

  They gripped him from either side, dragging him off his feet however hard he scrambled to keep his feet underneath him.

  The first tract was a well-sprung wooden floor, and then he was shoved into a smallish elevator. A sliding cage slammed shut. It was so small, one of his captors had to stand right in front of him. He caught a whiff of perfume. One was a woman.

  The thing made a surprising amount of jerking and grinding as it went up. Antique. He was in an old building. The elevator didn’t go far. One floor.

  The door dragged, clanged. They shoved him out and into another long corridor. Finally, a door opened, and he was shoved through it so hard he tumbled to his knees and then onto his face, without his arms to brace him. They dragged him through the room. His butt connected with a chair seat so hard it jarred his spine all the way up to his skull. They fastened his bound hands. Then his feet to each chair leg.

  The hood was jerked off.

  He sucked air into his starved lungs in wheezing gasps, blinking away tears from the influx of light.

  He was in a large room. Several people were arrayed before him. Julian was there. The knife-wielding ghoul bitch from the videophone call. Another guy, too. Young, white, bland. All of them had a strange look in their eyes. Fascination. And focused, concentrated hatred.

  Another guy stepped into the floodlight. Bruno struggled to bring him into focus. Big, tall, backlit by the powerful light. The man grasped Bruno’s chin between his thumb and forefinger. His face swirled in Bruno’s vision. That smug smile, those glinting eyes. Did he know this guy?

  “Bruno,” the man said. “Finally.”

  Bruno convulsed at the sound of his voice. The guy grabbed his chin and yanked his face up into that helpless, supplicating child-awaiting-punishment posture.

  The question building inside him for the past three days burst out. “Where’s Lily?” he yelled. “What have you done with her?”

  The man gave his cheek a slap. “One thing at a time. Look at me.”

  His eyes stred from the light. Tears ran down into his nose, a wet, ticklish flood, creeping down. He had no way to wipe his face.

  It felt so fucking familiar. He wanted to scream, thrash. He got a grip on it and stared right back. “Yeah?” he said, belligerently.

  “Do you know me?” the guy asked.

  Yes. Yes. His gut knew, but his head still couldn’t nail it; the how, the when, the who. “No. Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?”

  Another stinging slap. Whap. “Don’t play dumb,” the guy said. “I know you’re not stupid. Look again. And dig deep.”

  Terror swelled. He did know this man. The memory was locked in his body, in muscle and bone. He felt small, confused. Wanting his mother. So angry. Couldn’t move. Struggling against restraints until the needle stung his arm and paralysis took him. And that face, so pleased with himself. That deep, horrible voice, setting his every hair on end—

  “DeepWeave sequence 4.2.9 commencing,” the guy said.

  Bruno convulsed once again, violently. His body jerked as if electricity juddered through it. The heavy chair rattled, shook. “Oh, shit. No.”

  “Yes,” the guy said. “Yes, it’s coming to you now, right?”

  Bruno wanted to deny it, but it was flooding back in sickening waves. “The dreams. You’re that guy who talks in my dreams.”

  “Do I?” The man’s eyes sparkled. “I’m delighted to know that the programming went so deep, even in the experimental stages of my research. Remarkable, considering how short a time I had to seed it.”

  “Seed . . . what?” It took him a few tries to get his throat calm enough to choke the words out. “P-p-programming?”

  The hand on his cheek petted him. He couldn’t stop shaking his head no, even though memory was flooding back. “You’re the guy Zia Rosa told me about. The one who kidnapped me from Mamma when I was seven. And then Tony leaned on Michael Ranieri to get me loose.”

  The man’s face tightened. “I will always regret that,” he said. “I should never have given in to pressure. At the time, the Ranieris were a vital source of my research funding. But this is no longer the case.”

  “But what the hell did you want with me?” he exploded.

  “Oh, Bruno. You were my inspiration,” the guy said, patting him on the shoulder. “You sparked a new line of research that has yielded fantastic results. You are my shining star, Bruno. My sine qua non.”

  “What in the flying fuck are you talking about?”

  Smack, the guy whapped him again, on the temple. “Don’t be vulgar,” the guy lectured. “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t care what you like,” Bruno said.

  The man pinched Bruno’s cheek until his thumbnail sliced into flesh, stinging. “You will learn to care,” he said. “It’s time you learned.”

  Bruno sucked in a ragged breath at the pain. “Who are you?”

  “Oh, Bruno.” The man sounded peevish. “I tested your intelligence when you were a child. I don’t know how much of that potential you’ve realized in adulthood—probably a fraction—but I know you’re capable of answering that question unassisted.” He released Bruno’s cheek, his thumbnail smeared with blood. “If you need a name, call me King. Now put it together. What do you see?” He gestured at Julian. “Addhat to what you learned from Petrie, about the genetic makeup of my lost operatives.” He clucked his tongue. “Terrible waste. You can’t imagine the time, training, and money I invested in those young people.”

  But Bruno was still fixated on Julian. “How old is that kid?”

  King turned to the
boy. “Tell him, Julian.”

  “I’ll be seventeen in two weeks,” the young man announced.

  Mamma had been cold in her grave a year before this kid was born. Bruno shook his head again. It was data he was afraid to crunch. Conclusions he didn’t want to face. But the mental process ground along without his conscious volition. He fidgeted against his bonds and felt the crackle of paper in his jacket pocket. The autopsy report.

  It popped out at him, like a fun house goblin in the dark. “The ovary,” he blurted. “You stole my mamma’s eggs! You pervert!”

  “Ah!” King began to clap. “Here’s a glimpse of the Bruno I saw twenty-two years ago. All that potential. Like a nuclear furnace. It broke my heart to see how you turned out. All that potential down the sewer. All that was left of my pride and joy was a foul-mouthed punk with no aspirations that I could see other than seducing as many women as possible. No guidance, no discipline, no vision!”

  Bruno listened to the guy’s bitching, searching frantically for connections. “What the fuck?”

  King cut himself off with a wave of his hand. “Excuse my rant,” he said. “It’s been a sore subject for me for decades, and I—”

  “Oh, God.” The realization burst painfully in his head, like popping flashbulbs. “Lily’s dad. That’s the connection! He was an IVF researcher, right? He made embryos for you. Out of Mamma’s eggs!”

  “Excellent, excellent!” The man beamed. “Yes, that’s what Howard did for me. He harvested the ovum and made me dozens of viable embryos. I paid him very well for the service. He was brilliant, you know. He’d developed preservation techniques ahead of his time. Those embryos are still viable to this day. Amazing.”

  Bruno stared at Julian. This boy was his brother, his mother’s son, with that blank stare. Born after she died, twisted and deformed. Never knowing Magda Ranieri’s love or protection.

  “You bastard. You cut open my mamma and stole her children,” Bruno said. “How did you get away with that?”