Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  “That you didn’t find the jewelry box. I wanted to recover it. It annoys me that there is information that could be inconvenient for me, floating around out there somewhere. That was one of the reasons I let you live so long. So you could solve that mystery for me, tie up that loose end.” He sighed. “But I’ll just have to let it go.”

  Bruno stared at the guy. King wore a noble, martyred look.

  “But before I dispose of you, I want input for my next generation of DeepWeave programming,” King went on. “The events of the past week have shown me the limits of my current programming. It’s frustrating, but I must be humble, learn from my mistakes. And you will help me.”

  “Humble? You.” Bruno grunted. “Right.”

  “Yes, Bruno. It baffles me that you, in spite of your disadvantages, in spite of your deprived upbringing, completely lacking in intellectual stimulation, you have come out ahead of my superbly trained operatives in every single encounter. Even your genetic siblings.”

  “What if I did? You got me now, right? Aren’t you satisfied?”

  “It’s not that,” King said. “Don’t trivialize. My operatives are missing a crucial component that gives you some mysterious edge. When I understand what that component is, I’ll synthesize it. It’s just a matter of creating conditions, be they environmental, chemical, what have you. I’m an artist, you see, and I will not rest until my technique is perfect.”

  Bruno stared into the guy’s eyes. Bottomless pools of madness. King was looking for a golden egg, and Bruno was the unlucky magic goose laid out on the slab. “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think it’s something you can synthesize,” he said. “You’re talking about intangibles.”

  “Nonsense,” King said. “An intangible is simply a thing that has not yet been adequately understood. I assume it has to do with human connection, relationships. I’ve already noted that operatives who bond with their podmates are more successful on every level. And I’ve created the conditions for passionate love. My operatives love me to distraction.”

  Bruno looked at the blank, slavish hunger in King’s creatures’ eyes. “That’s not love,” he said quietly.

  “You think you know what love is?” King laughed. “That’s funny. Love can be a strength or a weakness, depending on how the chips fall. Like Magda. She did superhuman things for you and for her unborn children. But you were her weakness, Bruno. I could have controlled her easily with you, if the Ranieris hadn’t started throwing their weight around. And Lily is your weakness, isn’t that right? Would you be here, facing certain death, if not for her?”

  Blood drained out ohis head, leaving him dizzy and faint. “Where is she?” he asked. “What have you done to her?”

  King patted his cheek again. “I’m afraid you’re in for a shock.”

  Part of him wanted to howl with laughter. As if anything could shock him now. The rest of him was frozen in fear for the one shock he could not face. “Wh-what?” he croaked.

  The door opened. A young woman burst into the room. Her excited babble didn’t penetrate. Then he saw the look on King’s face. It suddenly occurred to him that anything that could wipe that smile off that asshole’s face was something he was interested in hearing.

  “. . . at the airport,” she was saying. “They picked her up at the Newark airport, and they’re headed to Gaetano Ranieri’s house, right now! I checked the tags, and Michael Ranieri is there! Do you want me to warn him to get away?”

  King stared into empty space for a moment. “No,” he said.

  The young woman exchanged startled glances with the guy who did the computer stuff.

  “No?” she repeated.

  “No. We’re streamlining. My partnership with the Ranieris has ended, as of this moment. I no longer need them. Zoe, my bloodthirsty love—are you up to bringing a turf war to Gaetano Ranieri’s door, while Rosa Ranieri and the McCloud brothers are there?”

  Bruno’s guts flopped. The woman’s sunken eyes lit with joy. “You want all of them dead?”

  “All,” King purred. “Mow them down. I want carnage. Blood everywhere. But move fast. This is a fleeting opportunity. When you come back . . .” He gave her a seductive smile. “We will dine together.”

  Her face turned an unwholesome blotched red, eyelids twitching. “Yes. Yes, I’m on it.” She scrambled for the door.

  Melanie and Hobart turned to King as the door clicked shut behind her, their faces indignant and betrayed.

  The young man burst out, “Sir, excuse me for arguing, but are you sure Zoe is right for this assignment? Alone? The McClouds are extremely competent, and I’m not sure that she’s capable of—”

  “Trust me, Hobart. I’m streamlining in more ways than one.” He gave his minion a pat on the back. “Zoe’s usefulness has come to an end. That’s why I’m not sending backup. When she fulfils it . . .” He squeezed the young man’s shoulder, with a conspiratorial smile.

  Hobart tentatively smiled back. “Ah, yes, I see. Of course.”

  “Of course.” Then he leaned forward and murmured a phrase into Hobart’s ear in a foreign language that Bruno could not catch.

  Hobart seemed to grow three inches taller, his eyes dilated, and his cheeks flushed, as Zoe’s had done. He started to pant. Disgusting.

  “Thank you,” Hobart said, his voice choked with emotion.

  Bruno’s hands jerked against the cuffs. Every significant piece of his life was being destroyed. Kev, Zia Rosa, Lily. Even Sean McCloud.

  King noticed him again. “Oh, you’re upset? About your great-aunt, your adopted brother? Don’t worry,” he coaxed, patting Bruno’s shoulder. “It’s not like you’ll be needing them anymore.”

  Bruno twisted to sink his teeth into the back of King’s hand.

  A hoarse shriek jerked out of King’s throat. A fist came flying, connected with Bruno’s face. His chair tipped, toppled. He careened in a slow arch, slammed to the ground, heacracking against cold tile. The world went wonky. A booted foot slammed into his thigh, then his gut . . . and the world swung and slid, pulling against his bonds as he slid this way and that. They were tilting the chair up, hoisting him into place.

  King stood before him, whacking his face. Blood flew from the guy’s fingertips. “Now where were we?” The mocking tone was gone. King was growling. “We were going to discuss your lady friend, right?”

  Bruno cringed. He’d lost it. He’d mouthed off, and he was going to pay. Whatever this monster had in mind as punishment, it was going to be bad. He just hoped it wasn’t Lily who paid. Let it be him. Not her.

  “There are some things that I think you might not know about your lover, Bruno,” King announced. “Most notably, the fact that she is one of my programmed operatives. One of the best, too.”

  That phrase had no effect on Bruno. It bounced right off his skull like a hard object, leaving him dazed, thick-headed, confused. Bewildered.

  “Huh?” he said, stupidly.

  “Hobart, set the video to play, please,” King said. “Show him.”

  31

  Kev killed the car engine with a jerk. “One more time, Zia, from the top. Keep the gun in your purse. Stick to the point. We talk about Bruno and the jewelry box. Only. Do not call Don Gaetano a pig. Do not call Costantina a whore. You go

  t that straight?”

  “But she is!” Zia protested.

  “We don’t have time for this!” he flared. “This is about saving Bruno, OK? You care about him, right? So you will be good!”

  Zia did the big hurt-eyes thing, and Kev turned away, drumming his fingers on the dash in a staccato tattoo. His feet twitched, and there was a stone-hard core of fear in his guts.

  Petrie and Sean were quiet, but he could tell that Sean was trying not to give in to nervous laughter, his standard coping device. If Sean got the giggles, Kev was shooting his ass up, no mercy.

  He flung the door open. “Let’s get this over with.”

  They marched through a big landscaped garden in front of the os
tentatious house, around a marble fountain surrounded by rosebushes. The fountain was silent and dry but for the dots of rain on the marble rim. At least it was gray. Sunshine would be an insult.

  Once on the porch, they rang the bell. An insultingly long amount of time passed, during which they were assessed by whoever was studying the security cameras. One was pointed right at them, mounted under the cornice of the porch roof. The door opened. A burly, dark middle-aged man peered out.

  “May I help you?” he asked.

  Kev opened his mouth. Zia blared. “I come to see Don Gaetano.”

  The man gazed at her blankly. “That would be my father,” he said. “I’m sorry, but he’s not well enough for visitors today.”

  “He’s well enough to see me,” Zia Rosa informed him.

  “Oh?” The guy’s eyes sharpened. “And you are?”

  “I’m the woman he shoulda married,” Zia announced. “The one who shoulda been your mamma. Tell him that, Michael.”

  The guy rocked back as if she’d hit him. The door slammed in their faces. Aw, shit. Great. “Zia,” Kev ground out. You promised.”

  “I didn’t call no one a pig or a whore, did I?”

  He didn’t have time to answer before the door jerked open again. This time a much older man stood there, a guy in his eighties. Thickset like his son, but balding, with pitted skin and heavy jowls. He peered through horn-rimmed glasses with a scowl that knit his bushy brows.

  “Rosa,” he said. “It’s you.”

  “Ciao, Gaetano.” Her voice rang out. “Nice to see you looking so fit.”

  “You’ve looking well yourself, Rosa.”

  An elderly woman, small and stringy thin with a pouffy coif of hair dyed white blond and lots of bling, appeared behind him. “Who on earth is . . . oh. It’s you. My God, Rosa. You got so big.”

  “Ciao, Tittina,” Zia Rosa replied. “You shrunk.”

  “Nobody calls me Tittina anymore,” the other woman said.

  “Not for the last sixty years. I never liked it. I’m called Connie now.”

  “Call yourself what you want,” Zia said. “I know who you are.”

  “Zia,” Kev hissed. He gave her arm a warning squeeze.

  “You haven’t introduced your friends, Rosa,” Don Gaetano said.

  Zia Rosa flapped her hand in their direction. “The two blond ones are my nephews,” she said. “The other one is a friend.”

  “So.” Michael gave them a smile. “What can we do for you folks?”

  Zia Rosa ignored him. “I need to talk to you ’bout something important,” she said to Gaetano. She paused. “You gonna invite us in?”

  Don Gaetano stepped back, with ill grace, and gestured for them to enter. Zia Rosa stepped into the towering foyer, which had a three-story ceiling with vast solarium windows and skylights on the top. From an iron brace about fifteen feet up, a huge wrought iron chandelier hung, full of electric candles, all of which blazed in the day’s gloom.

  “Ehi.” Zia Rosa stared up at the chandelier. “That’s Nonno’s candeliera. The one from the salone in the country house, back home.”

  “It certainly is.” Costantina’s voice was triumphant. “Gaetano and I went to Brancaleone on vacation nine years ago. I brought it back.”

  “Who said you could have it?” Zia Rosa demanded.

  Costantina bristled. “Who said I couldn’t?”

  “Zip it, goddamnit, Zia,” Kev hissed. “Focus!”

  “Come into the salone,” Don Gaetano said, waving them into a lavish living room furnished in blazing white with touches of gold, bronze, and beige. Don Gaetano seated Zia Rosa at one end of a couch and looked at the rest of them. “Sit down, all of you,” he said, dropping into the chair nearest Zia Rosa. “Connie, could you get us some coffee? And some of your delicious pitta ’nchiusa?”

  Costantina flounced out of the room, muttering to herself. Petrie declined to sit, situating himself behind the couch. Sean stood beside him. Kev checked out Michael Ranieri, who had also stayed on his feet. He stood behind his father, rocking on his heels, hands clasped behind him. No doubt fondling the pistol under his shirt, Kev figured. A fair enough guess, since he himself was doing the same thing.

  “This ain’t a social call,>

  “Oh, but you have to taste Connie’s pitta ’nchiusa, Rosa,” Don Gaetano said. “They’re unbeatable. Just like Nonna used to make.”

  Zia Rosa let out a grunt. “Whatever.” She opened her purse and dug around in it until she pulled out the crumpled envelope, the one that held Tony’s letter. “We’re here to talk about this.”

  Don Gaetano stared at it, grimly. “I heard about Tony’s passing.”

  “Figured you would,” Zia Rosa said.

  “I thought the whole thing was finished,” he said heavily.

  “I told you.” Costantina was in the entryway, laden with a tray. “I told you she’d screw you over first chance she got.”

  “Mamma, please,” Michael snapped.

  Zia Rosa gave Costantina a slit-eyed look, then turned her gaze back to Gaetano. “I thought it was over, too,” she said. “I woulda never done anything with this letter, Gaetano. Not if you left us alone. But that bastard’s got my boy again, hear me? Same son of a bitch as before. You leaned on him twenty years ago, and we got him back. I need you to lean on him again. ’Cause if they hurt him . . .” She slapped the letter against her hand. “This goes out. All the copies, like Tony said.”

  Connie marched over to the couch and set the tray down on the glass coffee table with a rattling thump. She poured a dollop of espresso from the pot into each of the seven cups. There was a heap of something that looked like tarts, with gleaming candied fruits and nuts in their centers.

  She set the pot on the tray with an angry thud and straightened up. “Well?” she snapped at them all. “Come and get it before it gets cold. Don’t tell me I made the damn coffee for nothing.”

  Kev sighed. The last thing he wanted to do with his gun hand was hold an espresso saucer with his pinkie in the air. He snagged a cup from the tray and downed the swallow of throat-scalding brew in one gulp, no sugar, nodded his thanks to the lady of the house, and took up his previous post, social duty fulfilled. No way were they going to make him eat one of the cookies. He had his limits.

  Sean followed his example, and Petrie, too. Zia took her own sweet time, stirring in sugar lumps. She took one of the pitta ’nchiusa, looking at it from all sides, sniffing it before taking a cautious nibble.

  Costantina watched intently as she chewed. “Nonna’s recipe. Just like hers, isn’t it? The trick is the wine you put in. Has to be a real good Calabrese red, or it don’t work worth a damn.”

  Zia Rosa chewed, making no sign of having heard her cousin’s words. She swallowed. Sipped her coffee.

  “I don’t need a cooking lesson from you, Tittina,” she said.

  “Let’s get back to the subject, shall we?” Kev said, before the red-faced Costantina’s head had a chance to explode. “The letter? The guy who took Bruno? Can you give me a name? That’s all I want.”

  And he would get it before he left. If he had to take those two guys apart chunk by bloody chunk.

  Don Gaetano cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “A lot of years have gone by. Things have changed. I don’t think it’ll be possible to—”

  “I got this goddamn letter, Gaetano.” Zia Rosa’s voice began to shake. “I swear to God, I’ll send it. And if you have me whacked, the lawyer sends it. And you will go down.”

  “Bullshit, it don’t,” Zia Rosa said. “I bet you’d rather spend your golden years in your fancy house, gobbling Tittina’s pitta ’nchiusa than sitting around in cell block C eating red beans. You can’t shit me.”

  “You don’t understand what my father is trying to say,” Michael broke in, his voice reasonable. “Times have changed. We just don’t have the same kind of clout with this person that we had eighteen years ago.”

  “That’s no problem,” Kev said, his hear
t thudding. “Just give me his name and his address. I’ll take care of the clout myself.”

  Michael and Gaetano gave him a stare. He returned it.

  “The name, please,” Kev said. “Give it to me. And we’ll leave.”

  Zia Rosa put down her coffee cup with a clatter. “Tittina. Did you steal Nonna’s jewelry box from Madga’s apartment after she died?”

  Oh, Christ, no. Kev cringed, inwardly. Zia’s timing sucked.

  Costantina thrust out her chin. “How dare you accuse me!”

  “You did!” Rosa spat the words out. “It’s true, eh? Eh?”

  “I wouldn’t call it stealing!” Costantina yelled. “I’d call it salvage! The no-good trash next door would have stolen it, or it would have ended up in the garbage! And it should have been mine to begin with!”

  “Nonna gave it to me,” Zia Rosa shot back. “Not you!”

  “But I was older!” Costantina’s face had gone purple.

  “Yeah, and you was also a nasty lying little troia who couldn’t keep her panties on!” Zia Rosa snarled.

  “It ain’t my fault nobody ever wanted to get into yours, brutta zitellaccia!” Costantina shrieked back.

  Things degenerated from there. Kev cursed. He was about to grab Zia to drag her out the door—

  And the room exploded in gunfire.

  “Hobart? The video, please?” King prompted his servant.

  Hobart went to the computer pad. He tapped it and held up the screen in front of Bruno’s face.

  “This is Lily’s debrief,” King said. “The whole thing would take hours. I selected a couple of highlights to illustrate my point.”

  The sound was tinny, but he would know Lily’s soft voice anywhere, even distorted by the tweeter and rough with exhaustion.

  “. . . all I know, he was already screwing other women. He’s a ladies’ man. He’d boff anything female with a pulse. And he’s attractive. Who could blame me?”

  “Oh, no one, my dear.” It was King’s voice, coming from behind the camera. “Was he good?”

  Lily froze for a moment. A smile curved her lips. Bruno had never seen that smile, or that strange, hard glitter in her eyes.