by Hadena James
“No, you can’t kill him on principle,” Fiona whispered to me.
“Sometimes, I worry you might be a little closer to my personality than you want to admit,” I whispered back.
“I’m a six feet tall Amazonian. I do not need to be crazy to understand that you have a need to dominate certain types of jackasses.”
“Do you ever just want to grab an idiot and point out that you are bigger than them?” I asked her.
“Often.” Her face was contorted. It wasn’t really a sneer, but it was close. For a moment, I wondered if she was talking about me. However, her eyes followed the group with the narcissist. She’d run into a few crazies in her day and she was a tall, strapping woman who could probably bulldog a good sized steer. I’d kill her in a fight, but she’d get in a few good licks that would require some wound treatment. “I hate when you look at me like that.”
“Sorry, sometimes I cannot help but wonder how much damage you would do to me before I managed to kill you.” I shrugged. “I think you would fare better than a lot of men your size and not because of their gentlemanly manners.”
“We’ve done that, I lost,” Fiona reminded me.
“We both lost,” I answered, remembering how it felt to put a gun to my own head and consider pulling the trigger. I didn’t fear death. I didn’t fear pain. I couldn’t empathize with others. At times, I wondered how close I had really been to it. It hadn’t felt like a thought experiment or even the fault of the tumor in my head. The guy and his buddies disappeared into a bar with a picture of a pirate near the door. I shook my head. Maybe I did have a death wish. Weirder things had happened.
“No, we both made a realization, which is not losing,” Fiona answered. The guys had disappeared along with her wrinkled lip and narrowed eyes. “I realized I wasn’t big enough to bully you and you realized that you could in fact be a danger to yourself and others. In that manner, we both won.”
“How do you figure?”
“We’re both still alive.” Fiona popped a ligament in her shoulder blade. The sound was audible, even with the noise around us. I couldn’t argue with her. We had both survived, so that did amount to something. Worse, she was right. I was a danger to others and myself. Mostly, others, but if I was willing to put a gun to my own head, how could I possibly be expected to care enough about my fellow man not to kill them? That was a question for another day. It was too close to an ache that developed in recent months. I knew what the problem was. I was just unwilling to think about it. In many ways, my life would be easier if Patterson Clachan was dead. When he was dead, I knew my grandfather was a serial killer and I hadn’t had to think about what that meant for the rest of our lineage. Sure, my brother was a psychopath and a killer, but it wasn’t his original intent. There seemed to be some special thing about that idea, original intent that made a difference. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
“You’re making that face,” Fiona gently spoke as if afraid her breath moving through the air would send me into a rage.
“I cannot help it.” I pushed thoughts of Patterson, Eric, my father, my niece, and my nephew away. I wasn’t spending much time with either child, but now that I thought about it, I was spending less time with my nephew than my niece. This could be because I had even less in common with little boys than with teenage girls, but there was that nagging doubt again. That was the real problem with Patterson being alive and well in the Fortress, I was now filled with doubt about everything. My mother had known my grandfather, a serial killer, was alive and well. She’d even known about The Butcher stalking me and yet, she had kept it all to herself. I wanted to scream at her. However, even as a sociopath, I could not express rage against my mother. She was a woman to be reckoned with in her own right. She had married a psychopath, raised a psychopath, raised a female sociopath, dealt with Malachi who was also a psychopath, and could see past the serial killer in Patterson. She’d been dealing with crazy for a long damn time. If I had an outburst, it would be just another day in her world and I would not feel better afterwards. Few people could make me feel when I didn’t want to, and my mother was on that very short list. Everything I said would come back to haunt me at a later date.
“Still doing it,” Fiona again whispered.
“I think I just had a psychological breakthrough. Would you mind Tasering my mother?”
“Yes.”
“So would I and that is the crux of the problem.” I frowned at the street, which was becoming even more crowded. I wasn’t sure where all these people were coming from, but I was ready for them to return to their homes, wherever that might be.
Thirteen
Making a psychological breakthrough is not as refreshing as most people believed. If anything, it pissed me off. I could express my feelings to my mother. She would empathize with them, and she might even give me a good explanation of why she kept the secret of The Butcher from me. However, I found it almost impossible to express anger to my mother. She had dealt with so much that I didn’t feel I had a right to burden her with my anger. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a lot of emotions to draw from. I wasn’t disappointed. I wasn’t sad. I was angry and hurt. For years, I had thought some psychopathic serial killer had been stalking me, toying with me, until just the right moment to pounce on me from the shadows. In a way, that was a correct analysis, but this pouncing hadn’t been to kill me. Patterson’s descriptions had been testing the waters, seeing if I was going to walk the same road he had. When he pounced, it had been to build a relationship. I hadn’t known how to react then and I still didn’t. Normally, I would go to my mother or Nyleena for advice, but they were obviously biased in Patterson’s favor, which was why I was so pissed off. The jury was stacked and I hadn’t even started my opening statement.
For a long time, I forgot why we were hanging out near an old wall that marked the start of the French Quarter. It wasn’t until Caleb Green showed up that I remembered there was a possible serial killer on the loose from years earlier. Green arrived in a patrol car. He had a short sleeve plaid shirt over a white T-shirt that said something about fairies and ketchup. When he wasn’t working as an FBI agent, Caleb Green wore odd T-shirts. They weren’t wrinkled like Xavier’s, but they had similar sayings, pictures, and puns on them. Xavier and I dressed pretty closely, except that I almost always wore black T-shirts and Xavier let a little color in his wardrobe. Meaning the three of us could swap shirts on the weekend without anyone being completely sure who owned what. We were in a field where even casual wear was polos, making us stand out. I’d seen Gabriel in T-shirts only on holiday weekends. Lucas didn’t own a T-shirt and Fiona liked button downs. Malachi wore khakis and dress shirts even when he was lounging around.
“Nice shirt,” Xavier commented as Green joined us.
“Xavier,” Green nodded. “Well, I’m officially on loan to the SCTU for the duration of this case. What do we need to do?” Green turned to Gabriel. I forgot that when it came to catching bad guys, Caleb Green was all about business. There was no finesse. I didn’t know if he had always been this serious or if working for Malachi had made him this way. I’d hunted with him before and he was an excellent field agent, a qualified doctor, and a psychopath. Having a psychopath on staff was always handy.
“We’re going bar hopping,” Gabriel informed him. “I need someone who can pass as normal to go with me and it can’t be a girl.” Gabriel took off his over shirt and handed it to Lucas. This left his shoulder holster and belt holster exposed. The guns were matte black, but still had a shine to them that wasn’t exactly a reflection of light. He passed both holsters to Lucas. Caleb Green began to do the same. Finally, Gabriel gave up his Taser. I had bought them all super Tasers. They were technically illegal, but since the law didn’t exactly hinder us, we were allowed to have them. We were working on getting them for the VCU, but it involved a lot more red tape. I personally knew that this model would drop a psychopath, Hell, it would probably drop a very large dinosaur.
“Ace and Fiona wi
ll be inside, but not with you,” Lucas began to fill him in. “Xavier and I will be outside, close by, watching, in case something happens and you give the girls the slip.”
Gabriel was wearing a T-shirt that he’d borrowed from me, making it a little tight on him. However, it was almost perfect. Peeking out the bottom of the shirtsleeve was a very intricate tattoo that hid a nasty scar, far worse than any physical injury. It was his ex-wife’s name and she had shot him, repeatedly. He hadn’t died and he hadn’t pressed charges, going along with her story of thinking he was a burglar, but he and I both knew better. She had meant to kill him, and yet, he loved her so much, he had just picked up and walked away from his entire life, including his children, so that their mother wouldn’t go to prison. In theory, it was noble. I wasn’t sure how it worked in reality. I didn’t have enough experience in that department to make a judgment call. Caleb Green, now also without guns and over shirt, had tattoos as well. However, his were a little more revealed. As a matter of fact, Caleb Green had a three-quarter sleeve that told a story, if you knew how to read it. He’d seen some strange things in his day. Like Lucas and Xavier, he had a military background. Unlike Lucas and Xavier, he wasn’t a SEAL. He was a Ranger. He’d been a part of a peacekeeping mission to an area where the peace could not be kept. He had encountered crazy generals and warlords, but his accomplishment of capturing killers was what had caught the FBI’s attention. War-torn, poverty-stricken regions breed serial killers like bacteria. Of course that didn’t explain why the US was such a breeding ground for serial killers, but most researchers were beginning to believe it was a lack of hugs. Since there’s really nothing to be done with that information, it was filed away in a compartment of my brain for use at parties, should I ever need a conversational icebreaker, or I could verbally assault parents with that information to make them feel like lousy parents.
The bar we were headed to was down the street a block or so. Not close enough that the patrons were likely to see us changing into our non-gun-toting apparel, but close enough that we could walk there without looking terribly weird. I was dressed for it in a black T-shirt and very lightweight leather jacket. My jeans were standard blue jeans, but when mixed with my Gogol Bordello T-shirt and steel toed and steel sole Doc Martens, I looked like I belonged. A little makeup would have completed the effect, but I wasn’t in the mood to go full out. Fiona looked a little bit more like a tourist. Her undershirt was pink with a long sleeved green button up over it. She didn’t have on Doc Marten’s or any other type of boot. She was going to look out of place. I considered this for a moment. I stopped the group and took Lucas’s black shirt from him. I forced Fiona out of her green one and replaced it with the incredibly baggy black one. I glared at Xavier. His T-shirt was black with a Nirvana logo on it. It even looked like it had been bought during the 1990s. I didn’t know if people still knew who Nirvana was, but a decade or so ago, they had still been popular with the goth/industrial crowd.
“Don’t even think about it,” Xavier said to me.
“She doesn’t look like she belongs in a dark, creepy club. She looks like she belongs on a yacht. That’s weird considering she’s walking in with me.” I looked at my shirt and realized it had a fairy on it. The fairy was doing something very naughty with a deer. “Humph, too many fairies.”
“What?” Xavier said.
“Green and I are both wearing fairies on our shirts. That’s at least one too many fairies,” I commented.
“Does that mean I get to keep my shirt?” Xavier asked.
“No, give it up,” I told him.
“It’s an original!” He protested. “Her tits are going to stretch it out.” I glared at him, unmoved by his plight. The shirt looked like it had lived in a clothesbasket for the last year. Fiona’s breasts stretching the fabric were the least of my concerns.
“Good, it will get out some of the wrinkles,” I told him. “This one is an original too. You do not see me keeping it wadded up in a heap.”
“Yours is incredibly vulgar and if we weren’t about to go into a night club, we’d be having a talk about whether you could wear that to work or not,” Gabriel answered.
“Noted,” I told him, keeping my attention on Xavier. Xavier sighed and began to remove his layered clothing. He tossed Fiona the shirt. Fiona caught it and stared at it as if waiting for it to turn into a snake.
“His shirt will not kill you for an hour,” I told her. She grimaced and looked around.
“Where exactly am I supposed to change?” She asked.
“Here,” I answered.
“On the street?” She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Stand behind Lucas, no one will see,” I pointed out. I’d put my trust in hiding behind Lucas to change clothes any day. I could completely hide behind him. I wasn’t sure about Fiona. She was taller than I was.
She made a guttural noise that said all sorts of things without being intelligible and moved towards some shadows. Gabriel and Green went down the street. Xavier and I stood sentinel near Lucas. Fiona changed clothes. The shirt was a little tight through the chest, but everyone was having a bad wardrobe day and I wasn’t a member of the Fashion Police, so I didn’t actually care.
We entered the club and I instantly remembered why I no longer frequented these sorts of establishments. The lights twirled and danced around us. The music beat against my head in an unsteady rhythm that my mind detested. My nose was already burning from the strong bitter scent of patchouli, jasmine, lavender, and sandalwood. I instantly wanted to leave, to run away before the lights, music, and smells brought on a massive migraine. It was already starting, a whisper of heartbeat in my ears. I wasn’t sure I could handle an hour inside the building.
Dancers on the floor moved to their own beat, ignoring the music. Goths and old people were the only folks on the planet that could dance slowly to fast music. While I hated everything inside the club, if the music had been a few notches lower, without the sickening smells and strobing lights, I might have been willing to groove a little. I recognized the song and knew the lyrics. I wasn’t a huge Souxie & The Banshees fan, but I loved this song.
Twenty minutes into it, I felt the first wave of real pain. It splintered the music in my head. My vision dimmed. My heart rate increased. My breathing shallowed. Water filled my eyes and I began to hyper-salivate. There are different types of migraines and different types of reactions. I was going to get a scent-induced migraine, similar to the one I got when I was forced to deal with Fiona’s sage burning. Fiona grabbed my arm. Her lips moved, but the sound was lost in the cacophony of sound being produced by my heart.
We exited just in time for me to vomit. I missed a woman’s shoe by mere centimeters. She cursed at me. Fiona held my arm. I didn’t look at her; I didn’t need to. She understood I was in a weakened state. She also understood how vulnerable this made me and how dangerous I could become because of it. She probably understood it better than anyone else did.
Fourteen
The hot air felt good on my face. I didn’t mind the smell of decaying botanicals or fried foods that hung over the French Quarter. It was actually somewhat of a relief. The migraine had abated some already. The needle entered my skin and fire rushed through my veins. The heat seared through my brain and I felt my face flush. My heart ached as the blood vessels throughout my body constricted. One day, I was going to have a heart attack from migraine medication. Each time the vessels constricted, the heartache became a little more intense. My brain was trying to force itself to concentrate on counting in Russian. If I could focus on something difficult, the side effects were less noticeable. I was almost to 100 when the pain subsided in my chest. My blistering hot hands rubbed my face. It didn’t quite feel like me doing it.
“Fucking incense!” I let myself slide to the ground. Somehow, I’d been moved several feet down the sidewalk from where I had thrown up. The migraine that had been kicking my ass was now a hum. Sometimes, good drugs work wonders, but not that fast. I looked at my h
and and it felt very far away. Xavier had double dosed me. Whatever triptan had been in the syringe had been mixed with a narcotic. I wasn’t sure whether to hug him or shoot him, both were good options.
“You good?” Fiona asked.
“Groovy,” I answered and then considered it. I didn’t use words like groovy, ever. Whatever narcotic was in that syringe was amazingly bad for me.
“Oh no.” Lucas hoisted me up. “Can you walk?”
“Probably,” I answered and attempted to put one foot in front of the other. I stepped on my own foot and would have fallen if Lucas hadn’t been holding me.
“What did he give her this time?” Fiona asked.
“A very low dose of Sumatriptan and a hefty dose of oxymorphine. She hasn’t been admitting it, but the Sumatriptan is starting to affect her heart. Plus, we have been discussing using different types of meds for different triggers. Scent triggers seem to respond better to narcotics than Sumatriptan. Light triggers and food triggers are still a DHE situation, but we are working to get away from that. Lack of sleep earns her a huge dose of benzodiazepine.” Lucas informed us. Oxymorphine and I do not always get along. Actually, most narcotics and my body have a way of disagreeing. I was reacting surprisingly well, but I couldn’t find Xavier or my feet. Both were a problem.
“Smart,” Fiona said. “Is she of any use to us now?”