by J. R. Ward
“Thank you,” Syn said as he went over and picked up one of the discarded bladders of mead.
“For what?”
As Syn sniffed the open neck, he grimaced and knew he would ne’er drink such. Ever. The memories that came with the scent made him cringe. Tossing the empty aside, he went to find another, sifting through the discord.
“Getting the female when you did,” he said. “I would have died.”
“She came on her own.”
Syn looked up with a frown. “How did she know then?”
“You saved her life. Did you think she wouldnae come see about you?”
“She should have stayed away.”
“She had the choice to or not only because of you. She told me what you did. She saw your sire in one of his moods, on the verge of their property. You drew him away. She was home alone with her brother. Fates know what would have happened.”
Syn grunted, for he couldnae speak any further of her, especially as both he and his cousin knew exactly what his sire would have done to such a delicate beauty.
Leaning down, he at last found a bladder that was half full. Lucky. His father rarely left them with anything in their confines.
“You saved her life,” Balthazar said. “She saved yours.”
“Not a fair swap,” Syn said as he took the cork out of the neck. “Not by any distance at all.”
Walking around, he poured the strong, fermented alcohol out, the smell making him choke. Since his transition, his senses were painfully acute, and his body did not feel like his own. He was so tall, his limbs flopping about, his feet too large for even his sire’s old shoes, his hands broad and long-fingered.
He didnae know what his face looked like. He didnae care about that.
“What are you doing?” Balthazar asked.
Syn paused as he came up to the feet of his mahmen. “Why did he keep her here? He didnae care for her.”
Even as he asked that of someone who wouldnae know, Syn himself had the answer. The remains were a visceral reminder of why doing what he was told was his only chance for survival. His sire had had to ensure Syn’s submission. There were many nights and days when the male was too drunk to be able to forage for food. He needed to be attended.
And he had wanted to be obeyed.
Syn murmured something to his mahmen and then he proceeded to pour the mead upon her, the dark liquid sinking into the layers of blanketing that surrounded her skeleton.
When he had emptied the bladder, he tossed the thing upon the pallet.
“Are you burning this down then, cousin?”
Dearest Virgin Scribe, he couldnae stand the stink of the mead. It took him back to nights he had been smaller. Weaker. Glancing behind himself, he saw a broken chair and remembered how he had been thrown into it, his little body splitting the arm and one of the legs.
At least his full set of teeth had come in during his change. His father had only knocked out the little ones.
Syn turned to the fire and picked out one of the logs that was alit. “You need to leave.”
Balthazar frowned. “Were you not even going to say goodbye to me?”
“You need to go.”
There was a long pause, and Syn prayed that the male didnae fall victim to emotions that were best left unexpressed.
When his cousin merely stepped out, Syn looked around one last time. Then he tossed the burning log onto his mahmen’s remains. As the flames flared and spread quickly, he thought of the heat that had torn through his body during his transition. He remembered little of what had happened with any clarity, but he recalled the heat. That and the snapping of his bones as they had grown inches in the course of hours.
He couldnae believe he had lived through it. Or that that lovely, generous female had fed him from her vein until just before dawn. With the approaching sunlight, she had had to go so that she wasnae caught in such deadly illumination. Balthazar, meanwhile, had strung up tarping around the shelter to shield Syn as the transition had continued, his body maturing to its current, unfathomable size.
He had been so weak after it was all over. He could remember lying with his cheek on the hoof-trodden, packed earth, and feeling as though he would never cool down. But eventually, as the sun had gone behind the horizon and the day’s warmth faded, so too had the burn within his torso and limbs.
When he had finally emerged from the shelter, he had braced himself to see the blood of his sire, blood that Syn had shed, the gore and the remains all that was left behind of his father. There was none. It was all gone, as if it had never been. He had asked Balthazar if he had smelled the burning during the daylight. His cousin had said yes, he had.
And after that, Syn had recovered herein this hut for the three days and nights.
Now, as flames flared further and began to spread, Syn closed his eyes and said his goodbyes. He knew not where he was going. He knew only that he couldnae stay in the village for one more night. He had no possessions and only his feet to carry him forth. But there were too many ghosts here, too many… people, here. He needed to find a destiny away from who his father had been and what he had done to the male as a result.
The village would know all by now. The female would surely have had to explain why she was gone for as long as she had been whilst feeding him through the change. And as for Syn’s father? The male’s brutish presence would not be mourned, but it would be very much of note.
Syn stepped out of the hut and—
Balthazar was standing just outside the cave, the reins of two strong horses well laden with supplies dangling in his hands.
“I’m coming with you,” his cousin said. “I may not be through my transition yet, but I am fast of hand and smarter than you. You will not survive without me.”
“I have already survived much and you know this,” Syn countered. “I shall be well enough.”
“Then just let me go with you. I need to get away from this place, too.”
“Because you’ve already stolen from everyone in the village and there are none who are not wary of you?”
There was a pause. “Yes. Exactly. Where do you think I got these steeds?”
“From the squire?”
“Aye. He didnae care for them well enough. They are better off with us.” As one of the horses stamped a hoof as if it agreed, Balthazar held out a set of reins. “So what say you, cousin?”
Syn didnae reply. But he took what was offered to him.
As he mounted up, Balthazar did the same. Smoke was rising from the hut, and the crackling of the fire within made the horses twitch. Soon, the blaze would eat through the thatched roof, and orange flames would lick their way out of the cave, reaching up to the heavens.
He had turned the horrible and sad home he had known into a pyre for his mahmen, and somehow, that seemed fitting.
Before they reined off, his cousin said, “Are you not going to say goodbye to the female before you go?”
Syn pictured her in that meadow before all had transpired, running free with her brother, her laughter rising, like the smoke was doing now, up to the stars.
“We are even, she and I,” he said. “It is best to leave things with this resolution.”
Spurring his horse forth, he knew he loved her. And that, more than anything else, was the real reason he didnae go unto her family’s land. It was also the true reason he was departing the village.
When you deeply cared for someone, you did what was best for them. His father had taught him that lesson by lack of example. So the kindest and most necessary thing for Syn to do was to leave the now.
And ne’er darken her doorstep ever again.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Mr. F sat gingerly on the bus seat, staring out the cloudy window as the gentle rock of the loose-cannon suspension lullaby’d him and the other four people riding the route out to the suburbs. Rain was falling, a soft, winsome dew drifting out of a dove-gray sky, and as the piss-poor aerodynamics of the public transport wicked the moisture dow
n its injury lawyer advertising wraps, the water coalesced in rivers over the slick topography of the glass.
When his stop came, he got to his feet and shuffled down the center aisle. No one paid any attention to him. The other passengers were on their phones and not because they were talking to someone on a call, their heads tilted down, their eyes locked on little screens that provided them a virtual world vitally important yet made of less than air.
As he disembarked, he envied them the manufactured urgency of the useless information they were sunk into.
Mr. F had real problems.
There was no one waiting in the Plexiglas bus stop, and he cautiously ambled away from the pitiful shelter, his boots treading over the sidewalk that eventually took him by some small-scale apartment buildings. The units were short stacks of three and four stories that were split in mirrored halves, and only some of them had dedicated parking lots. These dwellings soon gave way to neighborhoods of small houses, and Mr. F continued as his feet took lefts and rights on their own.
When he arrived at the untended-to fake-Tudor he’d visited days before, he noticed that there was a new flyer in the mailbox, something orange. He imagined it was for a lawn service. Maybe a roofing company. Pavers looking for work, perhaps. It was the kind of advertisement that would have showed up at his parents’ house back when he was young, back when he didn’t have to worry about adult things. Not that he had done much of that sort of worrying when he’d reached adulthood. He’d always thought he was better than all that average Joe stuff. He’d been convinced he was going to be a rocker à la Kurt Cobain. A real badass poet with a pocketful of guitar riffs.
Reality had proven to be so much less inspirational—although he’d lived up to the drug standard, for sure.
And now he was here.
Going through the garage, he stomped the rain off himself, leaving a dark splatter on the cement floor. Inside the house, he took a moment to focus. Then he started rifling through cabinets, closets, and drawers. He opened them in the kitchen. In the downstairs half bath. In the built-in shelving of the family room and in the front hall. He went upstairs and opened them in the master suite, and the two bedrooms, and the full bath that was supposed to be shared at the head of the stairs.
Anything he found, he put in an empty box he’d taken from the hall closet.
Back on the first floor, he set the box down on the dusty kitchen counter, and before he did an inventory, he went into the basement. Nothing there except for a washer and dryer, three paint cans that were open and dried up, and a box of Bounce dryer sheets that had mouse turds in it.
In the kitchen once again, he sifted through his bounty. Two sets of Ford-branded car keys, only one of which was accompanied by a remote—which suggested the other vehicle was an older model. A house key that, when he tried it in the front door and the back door, did not fit the house. An autoloader with no bullets. A magazine that did not match the gun. A pair of handcuffs with no key. Four cell phones that were out of juice and did not have chargers.
The laptop and the book he was already familiar with thanks to his first visit here.
Plugging the laptop in, he got nowhere. No power in the socket. No battery life left. It was probably password protected anyway, and there was nothing he could do about that. He had the IT skills of… well, a junkie.
Mr. F put both palms on the countertop and leaned into braced arms. Hanging his head, he felt the remnant aches of the internal injuries the Omega had given him and thought of the do-nothing H he had shot up under the bridge. The two realities formed a north and south pole, his existence trapped and rotating on the axis between the pair.
Taking the book with him, he found a spot in the living room on the unvacuumed rug. As he settled his back against the wall, he opened the cover of the book.
The words were dense, made out of small letters that were squeezed in tightly, like commuters on a morning train. His eyes refused to focus at first.
The sense that he had to find his way in this new prison he’d ended up in was what made him start to absorb what was on the page.
In the Omega’s world, the only asset Mr. F had was himself.
* * *
Jo parallel parked her Golf across the street from the police barricades and the news crews that surrounded the Hudson Hunt & Fish Club. Getting out, she frowned up at the drooling sky and put the hood of her windbreaker over her head. On a jog, she crossed to the other side of the road, and skirted the crowd that had gathered. As she shuffled behind a newscaster with a camera rolling on him and a microphone up to his mouth, Jo was glad she could cover her face. No reason she needed to be seen here.
The front entrance of the concrete block building was a no go and so was the side door where, according to the news conference that had been held at nine a.m., the assassinations had occurred. Three were dead. Gigante, his bodyguard, and his chauffeur. Gigante had been shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the throat, his body found slumped in the back seat of an SUV registered to his cement company. The chauffeur had been shot once through the forehead and then folded up and stuffed into the rear compartment of the vehicle. The bodyguard had been shot twice and collapsed on the ground just outside the open passenger side door in front.
Jo camo’d herself in the crowd of spectators and checked her watch.
Five minutes later, McCordle came out the side door of the building. When he caught her eye, he nodded over his shoulder, away from the commotion.
Holding her bag against her body, Jo jogged past the hair salon next door and went down its length, her breath tight in her chest. As she came out around the rear, McCordle was stepping free of the barricade, and he double-checked the parked squad cars before striding up to her.
“Let’s go over here,” he said, leading her back out of sight by the beauty parlor.
“I’m surprised you wanted to meet me here,” she whispered. “Are those the crime scene pictures?”
When she pointed to an envelope tucked under his arm, McCordle nodded and gave the thing over to her. “Listen, we need to talk.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
He took her arm and squeezed it. “I’m serious. One of our sources says that Gigante may have put a hit out on you.”
Jo frowned. “But I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Gigante’s dead.”
“The hit man working the contract isn’t going to worry about that. He’s going to want his money and he’ll get paid by the family only when you’re… you know.”
“Dead. You can say the word. I’m not afraid of it.”
“You should be. This is no joke.” When there was a shout, McCordle put himself between her and the noise. After a minute, he started talking again. “It’s only exciting on the outside, Jo. On the inside of a situation like this, people get hurt, even if they’re innocent.”
“Do you know who the hit man is?”
“Not yet. My source is looking into it—and maybe something will show on the tapes.”
“So the FBI hasn’t turned them over to the CPD yet.”
“My department is putting every pressure we have on them. In the meantime, you need to be very careful—”
“You said ‘may have,’ though. A hit on me is unconfirmed so it could just be a rumor.” Before McCordle could lecture her some more, she cut him off. “About the scene here. What have you found out since nine a.m. this morning?”
“Forensics didn’t get anything in the SUV that wasn’t expected. No fingerprints apart from Gigante, the bodyguard, and the chauffeur. No foreign hair samples. They’ve got the bullets and the casings, but there’s no gun.”
“Who called the murders in?”
“Passerby.”
“I know, but your captain didn’t give the name during the news conference.”
“It’s a minor so we’re not releasing it. It was a seventeen-year-old going to a six a.m. athletic practice. He was on his bike. He said he always cut through the alley on his way to Jeffers
on High in the morning, and he called the situation in without taking pictures and posting them on the internet. All is not lost with this younger generation.”
“Has Frank Pappalardo released any statements about all this?”
“We’re bringing him in for questioning. But no, and he’s not going to say a word. He’s old-school.”
“But this is the payback. For Johnny Pappalardo’s murder. Right?”
“Looks like it. And this is why I’m telling you, you’ve got to be careful. You have my cell phone number. You call me if you see anything suspicious around you or the paper or where you live.”
“Speaking of which, did you find any cell phones in the SUV?”
“Jo. Are you listening to what I’m saying?”
“Yes. Any cell phones in the SUV?”
McCordle glanced over his shoulder like he was cursing in his head. “There was one found. We’re not sure who it belongs to, but it’s not Gigante’s because he was known to hate them We’re getting the texts and photographs that were on it.”
“What happens next? Does Gigante’s crew put a hit out on Pappalardo’s hit man?”
“Jo, will you please—”
“I don’t get a lot of time with you. I need to get these questions in. What about payback for the payback?”
“It’s probable. These things roll downhill until one of the higher-ups calls a détente meeting. It’s going to be a tennis match of dead bodies before it stops, though, especially with Gigante’s son in the mix. Junior’s going to want to avenge his father.”
“Has he given any kind of statement?”
“Jesus, are you even listening—” When she just stared at him, he muttered. “Junior has had nothing to say. And given that he was being groomed by his father, it’s likely he’ll let his gun do the talking.”
“Will he take over here in Caldwell?”
“There’ll be a power struggle first. Then we’ll have to see.” McCordle glanced toward the scene again. “I gotta get back. Promise me you’ll call if you—”