Blood and Fire

by McKenna, Shannon

  “Very good.” Her voice went low to a sexy purr. “Lots of stamina.”

  The camera cut to a moving shot that swirled around her, taking in King and the woman, his other servant. “I was so entertained,” Lily went on, with a light laugh. “We had quite the mad affair.”

  The camera flashed to King’s reaction, laughing. “ that’s funny,” he said. “You are unique, Lily.”

  She gave the camera that cold-as-glass smile again. It chilled him to the bone. “I’m gratified,” she said. “I live to please.”

  “I know you do,” King replied. “You’ve done very well, my dear. You’ve exceeded my expectations. I’m so pleased with you.”

  “I’m glad that you are,” she said, her voice oddly wooden.

  “In fact, after this is finished, I’ve decided to give you a very special privilege,” King went on. “A great honor. I’ve chosen you for the qualities of bravery and cunning that you displayed in this assignment. I am starting a new crop of embryos for the pods, my dear. And I have chosen to use your eggs—with my sperm.”

  The camera cut to Lily’s reaction. She looked dumbstruck. Tears glittered in her eyes. One of them flashed down her cheek.

  “Why?” she asked, her voice quavering. “Why me?”

  “Because you are so special, my pet,” he crooned. “Do you have anything you want to say to me, my lovely Lily?”

  She brushed the tears from her eyes. “I have to . . . to thank you,” she said. “What a gift you’ve given me.”

  King’s voice was soft. “I always reward loyalty and talent, Lily.”

  She sniffed. “I love you,” she said. “Just you. Only you.”

  “And you belong to me, Lily? Just to me?”

  She looked straight at the camera, her eyes blazing with raw emotion. “Yes,” she said. The camera cut to her stark, graceful profile. “All yours,” she added. The video flickered, disappeared.

  Bruno couldn’t breathe. He stared at the screen, eyes frozen wide. Hobart gave him a wide, unpleasant smile.

  “Yes, Bruno, that’s right,” King said. “She’s the chosen one. She reminds of Magda, you see.” He chuckled. “Not a coincidence, hmm? She reminded you of Magda, too! That’s why it worked so beautifully. I’ll be so glad to have her in my bed again. She is delicious, isn’t she? So affectionate, so uninhibited. But duty called.” He rubbed his hands together. “Finally things can get back to normal.”

  Bruno’s insides were a screaming hole. He fought the pressure. Hung on to himself. Who he was. What he knew. “That’s a lie,” he said, roughly. “You doctored that tape. You can’t fuck with me.”

  King looked over Melanie’s shoulder as she sprayed antibiotic ointment on his bitten hand and began to wind the gauze around it.

  He shook his head with a sad smile. “I can, Bruno,” he said. “You see, there are things you don’t know about yourself. Things that I altered in you twenty-four years ago. Let’s see if the preliminary command codes still work, after all this time.” He grabbed Bruno’s chin and spoke a harsh, guttural word that Bruno did not recognize and almost instantly could no longer remember.

  King stared at him, expectantly.

  What? Bruno wanted to snarl, but then he realized, horrified, that he could not speak. It was as if the nerves had been severed. He tried again. And again. Panic burst like fireworks inside him. He began to sweat. Cold chills racked his body. He fought his bonds, panting.

  King was chuckling. “They still hold! That’s wonderful. Listen to this, Bruno.” He declaimed a longer phrase, also in that thick language. “Now, try to move,” he urged. “Go on. Give it your best shot.”

  Fuck you, Bruno wanted to scream, to shake his head, to spit in the guy’s face, but he couldn’t. He was physically paralyzed now. He sagged in his bonds, his head lolling to the side.“My programming and medications back in those days were relatively primitive but still effective. It was an intensive learning curve for you. You were strapped into the programming device in a hypnotic trance for ten to fourteen hours a day. Did you ever wonder why your physical reflexes are so quick? Why learning martial arts came so easily to you?” The chair was tilting from Bruno’s weight, which was sagging to the side. King shoved him upright. “It was DeepWeave combat tapes. Remember that fight at the diner? Did you surprise yourself that night?” He stared into Bruno’s eyes and giggled. “Of course you did.”

  He waited for Bruno’s response. “Oh, how funny—you’re still locked! One moment. Let me think . . .” He blinked. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I couldn’t remember the code to free you? You’d stay like that forever. I could make you do anything at all, you know. Put a gun to your head, pull the trigger. Mutilate yourself. Stop breathing. The power of DeepWeave as I have conceived it is tremendous.”

  Bruno stared at him. Air sawed between his parted lips.

  King slowly pronounced a phrase. A racking shudder went through Bruno’s body. He tried to speak. A scratchy croak came out.

  “Bruno, think back to your first encounter with Lily at the diner,” King said. “Remember Lily saying the phrase ‘you’re my champion’?”

  Bruno coughed as he heard the words echo in his memory. Lily’s lilting voice. The image of her, bent over her coffee in that black wig, her lips vivid scarlet. That was his memory, private and precious, and he didn’t want it to be fodder for this guy’s crazed agenda. He didn’t want it soiled and dishonored. But he had to know. “What if she did?”

  “It was a command phrase, Bruno,” King said. “Programmed into you years ago. I linked it to images of your mother. You were in a phase of development where you continually fantasized about rescuing your mother from monsters. And you dreamed about saving your mother from her attackers for years after her death, no? The perfect setup.”

  Bruno’s jaw ached. He refused to answer. His only defiance.

  “Knowing that phrase would trigger all those powerful childhood emotions, I arranged for those emotions to transfer onto Lily. And then, of course, you consummated your sexual relationship immediately.”

  Bruno clenched his teeth.

  “The sex act that I commanded her to perform with you reinforced the programming. From then on . . .” He tousled Bruno’s hair with his bandaged hand. “You were her slave. My poor boy.”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “You’re lying.” But even as the words left his mouth, he remembered those words she’d spoken in the diner. How they made him feel. She’d spoken them again, in the cabin, he suddenly thought. On that wild, incredible night. Soaring emotions, searing sex, right after she’d pronounced it . . . like a ceremonial vow.

  All those feelings, all just because he had been programmed . . . ?

  No. He shook his head. “It’s a lie. Why mount those huge attacks? Why not have her drug me while fucking me? She had opportunities. There was no reason to risk your people like that, if Lily was—”

  “That was a miscalculation,” King said gravely. “I wanted you alive, for the purposes of my research, ad I wanted to perpetuate the fiction that Lily was an innocent victim under your protection for as long as possible. Had I known how difficult you’d be to subdue . . .” He shrugged. “By all means, I would have done as you suggested and had Lily take you out herself. Live and learn.”

  “No.” Bruno just kept shaking his head, but King was laughing. He’d felt the impact of the barbs as they hit. He knew he’d won.

  “I have some things to attend to right now, Bruno, but I see you are upset,” King said. “If you like, I could pronounce a phrase that will put you into a deep sleep, until I choose to wake you. What’ll it be? Sweet oblivion? Or would you prefer to writhe in agony in a locked room, contemplating how you doomed yourself for the sake of a traitorous bitch like Lily Parr?”

  The words exploded out of him. “Go fuck yourself.”

  King chortled. “Ah, Bruno. Why am I not surprised. Just like your mother. You don’t know when to stop. Hobart, Julian, take him away.”

  They cut t
he bindings, fastened his legs to his hands. The hood swallowed him, drawstring pulled choke-tight. They dragged him somewhere. A door opened. He was flung onto a wooden floor. The door scraped shut. Locking mechanisms turned, clicked. He tried for oblivion himself, by sheer force of will, but his brain, flash-fried on stress hormones, didn’t have that setting available.

  Which left him with only writhing agony as an option.

  32

  Kev hit the floor. He saw Petrie lunge across Zia Rosa’s lap. The picture window was shattered, glass everywhere. Coffee table, too.

  Kev looked around for Sean across the carpet strewn with demitasse cups, spattered co

  ffee, broken cookies, shattered glass.

  And blood. Costantina sprawled next to the upended metal frame of the coffee table, mouth gaping. Her throat was a raw, bloody mess. Blood pooled behind her head. Her tangle of knotted gold jewelry was like a red wet noose around her neck.

  Sean poked his head around the couch. Their eyes met. Zia was yelling. Kev could barely hear it. Deafened by gunfire. The yelling was a good sign. At least she was alive. Petrie still lay across her lap, hand pressed to his side. His hand was red. Ah, shit. Not a good sign.

  Kev pointed to himself, gestured toward the foyer. Pointed to Sean, then toward the shattered picture window. Sean nodded.

  Kev writhed on his belly over the rug. Don Gaetano lay on his side, each breath a labored whimper. Flecks of blood spattered his lips and chin. He clutched his gut, his hand dripping. Shot in the belly, and it looked like he’d taken one in the thigh, too. Kev was sorry, but he kept on crawling into the foyer. Couldn’t see out the windows this low, couldn’t tell how many assailants there were, where they were shooting from. He slithered up the stairs to the first landing, peeked between the banister slats, through the high, towering windows.

  He saw nobody on the lawn. He kept looking, waiting . . .

  There! A spot of green, shifting and moving against the rosebushes in the fountain. Darting behind the door and coming this way. Kev clambered up onto the banister, poised himself. Leaped into empty space. He caught the huge wrought iron candeliera, hung on like a monkey. It swung through the air like a pendulum, creaking madly, the bolts sunk into the wall straining. He willed m to hold.

  He careened in wide, lazy arcs, trying to drag himself up into a ball. In the other room, he could just barely see Sean crouched near the picture window. His brother peered past the drapes swaying in gusts of wind. He looked up, shook his head. Kev jerked his chin at the door.

  Sean positioned himself, drew his weapon. The candeliera’s swinging was slowing, but it creaked and cast a moving shadow. Slower . . . slower. Swaying. Kev held his breath. The handle turned.

  The barrel of an assault rifle preceded the guy into the room—no. Not a guy. They were slender, brown female hands that held the M4. An emaciated woman in combat gear, a drab green cap on her head.

  She looked up to see what the shadow was. Bam, Sean squeezed off a shot. She stumbled back, and rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, pumped more rounds into the living room. Kev prayed she hadn’t hit Sean, Zia, or Petrie, but he was airborne now, heading for the killer like a sack of cement—

  Thud, he hit her. They slammed to the ground together.

  Kev had his Beretta 8000 under the woman’s jaw before she could recover. She was dazed and unresisting. Sean scrambled in on his belly.

  “That’s the one who came at us at the cabin,” he said, yanking plastic ratcheted cuffs out of his pack. “I saw her through the scope. Are there more?”

  “Don’t know yet. Didn’t see any.”

  Sean fastened the woman’s hands behind her back. Then her feet.

  “One more look,” Kev said. “I take the door, you the window?”

  Sean nodded. He crawled on his belly back to the living room while Kev edged closer to the gaping door. On his feet. Back to the wall.

  He spun, Beretta at the ready . . .

  No one there, just the wind, sighing, whipping the trees. He took a step out onto the porch. A nondescript white Volvo sedan idled on the street. No backup. She’d come alone? What the fuck?

  Sean had come to the same conclusion in the living room. They met at the couch. Michael Ranieri was stretched out behind the couch, a hole in his forehead, blood fanned on the wall behind him. Don Gaetano was dead, too. His eyes stared up, blank.

  They eased Petrie off of Zia Rosa, brushing the shards of glass off the white leather so they could slide the wounded man to lie full length on the couch cushions. Zia looked fine, underneath him. Wild-eyed, gulping for breath, but not hit. Petrie had taken the bullet for her. Amazingly, it hadn’t gone right through him and into Zia. Maybe it had bounced off one of his ribs.

  Kev ripped open Petrie’s shirt and hissed with dismay. Big hole, leaking fast. Sucking sound at each labored breath. The bullet had punctured his lung. He was conscious, eyes open, teeth gritted. Sean was digging into his kit, yanking things out.

  “I told you that habit of yours was dangerous,” Kev said. “The curiosity thing.”

  Petrie flashed him an eloquent look.

  “Zia, call the ambulance for him,” he told her.

  Zia grabbed her purse, smeared with Petrie’s blood, and dug for her phone. She gabbled into it, giving shrill orders to the emergency dispatcher. He left her to it, and he and Sean worked over Petrie together.

  The first flush of adrenaline was easing down, and under it was grief, fury, frustration. The only people whonown the name and location of the fucker who held Bruno were all dead.

  “Goddamnit,” he exploded. “Just a name, before that bitch started shooting. Just a goddamn name, that was all I asked!”

  “Calm down,” Sean said quietly, his hands busy.

  “Why? How can I? That’s it!” he snarled. “The last thread I had to grab on to. I have no other trace! None! What the fuck do I do now?”

  “You’ve got her,” Sean said, jerking his chin over his shoulder, toward the bound woman lying in the foyer.

  “The bitch is useless, Sean! These fucking nutcases self-destruct! She’ll rip her own tongue out or explode in my face if I start to lean on her!”

  “Having hysterics will not help,” Sean said, taping the bandage into place. “We have her. We’ll use her. We’ll think of something, we’ll improvise. Christ, I hope that ambulance hurries up. I’ve done everything that I can.” He looked around. “Say, where’s your crazy Zia?”

  “Oh, fuck. No.” Kev looked around the ravaged room. No Zia. “I’ll go track her down.”

  He sprinted through the first floor. Formal dining room, enormous kitchen, breakfast nook. Teak-paneled personal office. Huge game room, with pool and Ping-Pong tables. Swimming pool behind the house. No Zia Rosa.

  Back through the foyer. He leaped over the bound female shooter, who panted motionless on the floor, and sped up the curving staircase.

  He found Zia in the master bedroom, which was white and gold and pink, full of baroque swirling like the frosting on a cake. A room fit for a Hollywood diva of the thirties. Zia sat on the end of the pillow-strewn white satin bed, clutching an inlaid jewelry box on her lap. She stared up at Kev, eyes wide and stricken behind her glasses. Tears streamed down, mixing with the blood spattered on her face.

  Terrified hope jolted through him. “Oh, God, Zia. You found it?”

  Zia Rosa looked lost. “We played together with this jewelry box when we were little, Tittina and me.” Her voice was almost childlike. “We played with it. With our dolls.”

  Kev sank to his knees in front of her. He took the jewelry box from her and opened it. It was heaped with gold chains, rings, brooches.

  He dumped them out onto the bed in a tangled, glittering pile, and shook the empty box. Something shifted inside. His heart thudded.

  “There’s something in here.” He felt for the sliding panel. Sure enough, it slid open. But Bruno had the key.

  “Nonna taught us to sew together,” Zia went on. “How to make the blessed animal c
ookies, for Natale. We were best friends back then, Tittina and me. And now . . . Dio. Poverina.”

  He grabbed her hands. “I’m sorry. But we just can’t do this now.”

  Zia Rosa ignored him. “That picture of Magda that I have in my wallet? Just like Tittina, when she was little. Just like the little girl at the baby store. The one with that bitch nurse.”

  “Zia, we have to hurry—”

  “I shoulda known about those two, but they were so nice, you know? Her husband, too! He even come running back to give me my phone after it fell in the baby’s stroller! Aw, so sweet of him, I thought, to go to all that trouble, eh? Who’d have thought they was both killers? With those beautiful bimbi? Nobody woulda thought that!”

  Kev went rd as the picture shifted in his mind. New shapes, new possibilities, new scenarios. “Wait. Zia, those people at the baby store . . . they handled your phone? When you weren’t watching?”

  She blinked as she tried to remember. “I suppose they did. It dropped in the stroller. He found it and ran it back to me in the parking lot. Ouch! Kev! Don’t squeeze so hard!”

  He let go of her hands, his heart thudding. “Sorry, Zia. Where’s your phone right now?”

  “Downstairs, in my purse, on the couch,” she said. “Why? You need to call somebody? What’s wrong with yours?”

  “They loaded software on your phone, Zia. Or a tracking device, or God knows what.” His voice shook with excitement. “That’s how they’ve been following us, catching us. With your phone!”

  She sucked in air. “O Dio! I’ll flush the thing down the toilet!”

  “No, no, no! It’s all we’ve got to link us to Bruno! We’ll use it!”

  “How?” She flapped her hands. Her voice cracked. “How?”

  “Who the fuck knows? I’ll come up with something. Just listen to me. We’re going downstairs. I’ll take the jewelry box. I’m going to say, loudly, near your purse, that my phone’s out of juice, and I’m going to borrow yours. You can call us using Petrie’s phone.”