Chimera

Chapter 16

Five hours later, I nearly lost my brother again.

It was in a public restroom. Forget the eye-watering stench of the flowery disinfectant that was worse than the smell it was meant to cover up. Ignore the tile colored a puke green that made your stomach heave and gave you a desire to check the bottom of your shoes. Concentrate instead on puffy white feet, one in a cheap loafer, one bare and twisted to the side. Take a look at those as they show beneath the stall door. White, white skin splotched with purple veins and resting in a puddle of blood so fresh that the warmth of it steamed against the icy tile.

Yeah, take a good look. Here’s someone in the wrong place at the worst of times, much like Michael found himself. I couldn’t know exactly what that felt like to him, but I could hazard a guess. His stomach would be stretched comfortably full with a mystery-meat hamburger and an order of fries that would’ve foundered an elephant. I would bet he stopped at the mirrors over the sink, still startled by the blond hair that flashed at him from the corner of his eye. Maybe he looked at his reflection and tried, despite himself, to remember a young boy with the same blond hair. Or maybe he just groaned at the bleached mop and cursed me under his breath.

I’d take three to one on that second option.

With the door shut behind him, he didn’t see the man who slapped an Out of Order sign over the universal little stick man that made the bathroom safe for penis-carrying men everywhere. He didn’t see it, but I did. And that was something they did not expect. They waited until I was around the corner buying Michael another apple pie with a chocolate shake to chase it down. It wasn’t the brightest move on their part. My body may have been around that corner, but my mind wasn’t. I hadn’t kept Konstantin alive, no matter how temporarily, by standing around with one thumb up my ass and the other in an apple pie. Jack fucking Horner I was not.

The sun hit the plate glass that lined the boxy building at the exact angle for a clear if phantom reflection of the rest of the so-called restaurant. My eyes were glued to it as I handed over a five to the cashier. As I paid, I’d seen a veritable parade of the full bladdered. There had been a pudgy old man in high waters and a white belt who’d entered the restroom at an urgent clip. He was followed by a man in jacket and jeans, and then by Michael. My brother now took any and every opportunity at a toilet without leaves and bark.

I didn’t think much of the guy in the jacket. We were well into northern Florida by now and it had cooled into the forties and fifties. A jacket was the rule here, not the exception as in Miami. It was when the second man, denim jacket and baseball cap, taped the sign on the door with the speed and panache of Houdini that I immediately realized just how many guns one could hide in those jackets. The bastards had traded in their khakis, forsaking the Gap for Wal-Mart.

They’d found us. In one damn day, they had found us— again.

Leaving the shake on the counter, I shoved the boxed pie into my pocket and walked to the bathroom. In a bit of sleight of hand of my own I’d pulled my gun from the small of my back and hid it against my leg as I moved. Considering that I planned on making one helluva commotion when I passed through that door, that concealment would buy me only seconds at best before the cops were called. But those few seconds could mean the difference between getting away and being stuck behind bars as Jericho walked out of the police station with Michael. It might be with real government ID, bought and paid for, or with the expertly forged kind. Either way, they’d be gone. It took ten years to find my brother; I doubted I would be able to find him a second time. And that was making the rainbow fantasy assumption I’d live out the week to even try.

Jericho wasn’t that stupid and neither was I.

I kicked open the door hard enough to rip it from one hinge. There was an immediate reaction, in front of me and behind.

If life had taught us anything in the past few decades, it was that you could die violently in a public place long before you’d win the lottery. Psychos were everywhere. These fast-food fans were at the top of their class on that news headline. To the back of me I heard fish patties and cheap plastic prizes hit the floor as lunch patrons stampeded. Good for the herd. If the aerosolized fat in the air didn’t kill them first, they just might survive.

The bathroom was fairly large. There was more than enough room for the two men to keep a safe distance from Michael. In the confines of the Institute he’d been obedient, but now he was an unknown. He’d gone along with his rescue and then ignored Jericho’s demands to return with him. They may have thought he’d been confused, inexplicably gone rogue, or simply transferred his submission to me. It could be that I’d already been identified as his brother and his sudden stubbornness could be pinned there.

The speculations didn’t matter. The two of them weren’t about to let Michael get close enough to make contact with them—no way, no how. They had him blocked into a corner by the urinal. He had his arms folded with his hands tucked tightly out of sight. He had even less desire to touch them than they had to be touched. His life was at stake, yet he was desperate not to take the life of anyone else. That alone proved that Jericho, despite all his efforts, hadn’t tainted him. Couldn’t taint him.

One of the bastards aimed a peculiarly shaped pistol at Michael’s chest as the other pointed a gun that was completely familiar and completely lethal. The explosion of sound that was the door shattering had their heads whipping around. Michael’s eyes, as empty of emotion as his face, rose to meet mine. “I think I should’ve waited for the tree,” he said with darkly forced cheer.

Hopefully, I’d be able to remind him of that later. For now I slammed a foot into the back of the first man’s thigh before the startled expression had time to register on his face. Catapulting across the room, he crashed headfirst into the stall, but not before he’d pulled the trigger of his weapon. A dart flew through the air and hit the tile next to Michael’s shoulder. That’s why I hadn’t recognized it. It was some sort of tranquilizer gun. Jericho would take Michael out permanently before he’d risk exposure, but if he could recover him alive, safely and secretly, that could only boost his profit margin.

The second kidnapper was turning, attempting to shift his gun in my direction. He did come close; I’ll give him that. A definite A for effort, but I doubted that was much consolation. I fired the Steyr, and a bullet in his chest bowled him over backward. A fine red spray flew from his mouth to dot the white porcelain of the sink. I didn’t know if he was still alive or not, and truthfully I didn’t have time to wring my hands over it. The one who had cracked the stall like cheap cardboard was trying to climb to his knees. I could’ve shot him in the back easily enough. But the words I’d said to Michael came back to me: It’s not what you can do, but what you choose to do.

I chose to beat him senseless.

Grabbing a handful of his short brown hair, I cracked his skull repeatedly against the tile until he stopped twitching. It was the lesser of the evils. Unconsciousness and a fractured face beat death hands down . . . from the point of view of the spit-bubble-blowing vegetable anyway. From my perspective, leaving any of Jericho’s men alive wasn’t exactly in my best interest, but that was the price you paid to walk the path of the righteous. Yeah, world’s biggest frigging humanitarian, that was me.

“Come on, Michael,” I rapped. “Let’s go.”

Inscrutable gaze on the fallen men, then on me, he flowed past me as insubstantial as a ghost. I followed behind him, my shoes flattening fries into greasy yellow skid marks. The restaurant was empty, but the glass doors were still swinging and people were sprinting through the parking lot. Taking Michael’s arm, I held him back and moved ahead of him as we reached the doors. “Stay behind me.” I scanned the lot with sharp, hard eyes. “And if I go down, run.” I tightened my grip on him. “Okay? Run like hell and find a Saul Skoczinsky in Miami. He’ll help you.”

He pressed his lips together but reluctantly nodded when I gave him a quick prompting shake. “Don’t go down,” was all he said.

I’ll do my best, kiddo, I thought silently. And then I hit the door and the ground running. Michael shadowed my every step. People were all over, running or starting their cars to careen over curbs. It would be nice to think we blended in with them, but the guys inside had spotted us quickly enough despite our cosmetic changes. I didn’t have any reason to believe we’d be any better off exposed in the bright noon sun. We bolted between parked cars, their colors streaking in my peripheral vision like those of a bad abstract painting. Within a few steps I had to shove one hero wannabe with a hunting knife out of my way. He landed on the hood of a shiny Ford T-Bird and slid across the ice-slick wax job to drop out of sight on the other side. I kept going without missing a step. His good luck was our bad luck; we were halfway home when disaster struck. The sound of the gun firing came as I was already falling. A searing pain tracked across my side as the world rolled from beneath my feet. And then, despite my silent promise to Michael . . .

I went down.

Thrown backward, I landed on the asphalt as the back of my head kissed the metal of a car door. Spots blossomed red and black across my field of vision, but I could still see the figure that slithered out from under the car opposite me. Cold black eyes measured me with sterile detachment. Jericho rose to his feet with a fluid grace that belied the brutal car accident of the previous day. There wasn’t a mark on the man, not a goddamn scratch. I’d seen the blood on him; yet now he stood, whole and unwounded. It was disorienting, as if this were allaB movie and we were suffering a serious hitch in the continuity. Keeping a sleek semiautomatic pistol centered on my abdomen, he observed with a dispassionate charm, “Naughty. Naughty. It’s not wise to take what doesn’t belong to you.” His scrutiny didn’t flicker for a second from me as he raised his voice slightly. “Move, Michael, and I give him a scalpel-free lobotomy. That may or may not matter to you, but the two bullets that follow will be yours. One in each knee. You know from class that shattered kneecaps never heal quite the same.”

And why not? Michael didn’t need to walk to be able to kill. A kid in a wheelchair—who would possibly suspect him when the president of Timbuktu dropped dead of a heart attack while shaking his hand?

Head and ears ringing, I slid blurry eyes toward Michael. He’d seemed unafraid when trapped in the restroom, as cool and calm under pressure as any soldier. But that stoicism had fled. I knew he feared Jericho. As far as I could tell, that was the only thing he did fear, but dread of Jericho wasn’t the emotion I was seeing now. “You’re hurt.” His face was as translucent as wax paper. “You’re bleeding.”

“Misha.” The 9mm was still in my hand that rested on abrasive concrete. It would take more than a bullet in the ribs to make me turn loose of that. A cop didn’t give up his gun and neither did I. Often enough it was all that stood between you and a headstone, for both the law-abiding and the somewhat less so. I was still in the game; I still had a chance to save my brother . . . no matter how small an opportunity it might be. “Misha, ubegat. Nemedlenno.” Run. Now.

Michael might have had language classes out his well-educated ass, but I was hoping Jericho was too preoccupied with playing the baneful God of Genetics to pick up your average Slavic dialect. Once again luck deserted me.

“He takes one step, preyatel, and I blow his foot to a thousand splinters of bone.” He held out his free hand to his side, waiting with arrogant assurance for Michael to take it. It was then I noticed it was artificial, an artistic prosthetic detailed down to the fingernails and perfectly matched skin color. It explained how he was willing to let Michael clasp it; it wasn’t flesh. It wasn’t vulnerable. “I don’t believe you want that,” he continued deliberately. “I can use a temporarily damaged piece of goods, but I’m not at all sure you can.”

He didn’t know. He had no idea that Michael was my brother. How could that be? Years had passed, but the man had to guess that the family of even a much altered, long-renamed Lukas would still be looking for him. He couldn’t think that we’d just give up—even if one of us had.

Anatoly might have moved on, but I never had. In all the time that had passed, I hadn’t stopped trying to take care of my brother. That hadn’t changed. From then until this very moment, it hadn’t changed. “Misha, it’s okay.” My lips curled in encouragement as the blood spread on my shirt. “Now keep your promise.”

I don’t know what Jericho expected would happen. I didn’t even know what I expected, not really. But I knew what I hoped, and Michael didn’t let that hope die. He didn’t let me down.

He ran.

It diverted Jericho’s attention for the briefest second. I saw the flicker of disbelief cross the spare profile. Although Michael had refused to go to him days ago in the van, he still expected the boy to obey him. He couldn’t believe that all the manipulation and all the training hadn’t tamed Michael’s inner core. He simply couldn’t believe it. And when I shot him . . .

He believed that even less.

I wasn’t able to lift my hand to fire. He would’ve seen the movement even before I made it. So I didn’t move the hand; it wasn’t necessary. My finger was enough. At that angle the best shot I could make was his leg. Crimson spurted from his shin and there was the flash of pearly white bone as he screamed. Hoarse, deep, and full of fury, it was the cry of a wounded predator. I’d watched enough Discovery Channel to know that only made him less predictable and a damn sight more dangerous.

Grabbing the door handle behind me, I lurched to a crouch. His gun was still pointed at me and I could see him pushing aside the waves of agony to focus on his target. I found mine first.

Gutshot isn’t the best way to go. The pain of a torn stomach leaking flesh-searing bile doesn’t begin to cover it. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. For Jericho, however, I wished I had the time to send another slug in there to keep the first company. The close wail of approaching sirens told me that while it was a pleasant thought, it might not be practical. I had to get out of there . . . in one goddamn hurry.

The second time I’d shot him, Jericho had fallen onto his back. This time he had lost his gun, using his hand to try to stem the blood oozing from his stomach. The frozen stare had turned into one glossy with hate. Words, sharp and grating, were pushed painfully between clenched teeth. “I’ll . . . kill you.” Sucking in a breath, he closed his eyes and grinned with all the warmth of a toothy skull. “And if . . . I don’t . . . Michael will.”

Then again, how long did it take to pull a trigger?

The tackle of a speeding whirlwind made the question moot. Michael hadn’t run quite the distance I’d hoped. Arm wrapped tight around my waist, he dragged me along with a strength I wouldn’t have believed was in his slim frame. I was still tempted to take another shot at Jericho . . . the last shot, but as it was, I was lucky to stay upright even with my brother’s help. The bullet wound in my side was taking a backseat to the throbbing in my head. From the dizziness, nausea, foggy vision, it was safe to say I’d bought myself a pretty good concussion when my head had hit that car door. The simultaneous desire to puke and lie on the ground to die wasn’t too helpful in keeping my eyes open for Jericho’s flunkies, but I gave it my best shot. As we moved, from behind I could hear a choked, ugly laughter. Jericho was laughing. Through an agony that should’ve killed anything more coherent than a scream, the son of a bitch was laughing.

The sound was unnaturally chilling, the throaty cackle of a hyena muzzle deep in warm entrails. Trying to block it out, I picked up the pace as best as I could. “I told you to run,” I grunted. “If you think that’s running, you can kiss a track scholarship good-bye.”

“I guess I’ll have to depend on my brain, not my legs.” His breath was fast but even against my jaw. “And I did run—just not very far.”

“Kids these days.” I could see our car. It was barely fifteen feet away. As far as I was concerned, it may as well have been fifteen miles. “They never listen.” My legs buckled as the muscles went from rubber to water. How Michael kept me upright I didn’t know. I had to outweigh him by a good fifty pounds. Add one-twenty to that and deadweight became a very real concept to a skinny teenage boy.

Savagely biting my bottom lip to the salty taste of copper, I straightened and ordered legs I couldn’t feel to move faster. No one was more surprised than I that they actually obeyed. As we fell against the driver’s door, I was already digging in my jacket pocket for the spare key I’d found tucked under the sun visor. Pulling it free, I tried to ram it into the lock. It was more difficult than it seemed as twin images spun lazily before my eyes. Double vision is less fun when it’s minus the alcohol.

Michael snatched the key from my hand and slid it home. Flinging open the door, he stretched a hand to unlock the rear before trying to shove me into the backseat. I grabbed the edge of the door frame and resisted with a growl. “What the hell are you doing?” Icy sweat beaded my forehead and I swallowed convulsively. “You’re all about the theory, remember?” I slurred. “You can’t drive us out of here.”

“Yes, I can.” The next push was more forceful, not to mention more successful. I lost my grip and tumbled in. “I’ve been watching you.”

Oddly enough, I didn’t find much comfort in that. And I knew of a driving instructor whose leg still ached in rainy weather and who would probably agree wholeheartedly with me. Slamming my door shut, he climbed into the driver’s seat. Two seconds later we were hopping curbs with the rest of the rabbits. Monkey see, monkey do might not be the best learning tool out there, but at least we were in motion. I couldn’t guarantee the result would have been the same if I’d been behind the wheel.

As it stood now, I was hanging my head over the floorboards and trying my damnedest not to be thoroughly sick. The nausea was a living, breathing creature clawing its way upward without mercy. Air disguised as ground glass burned my nose and throat as a vise tightened on my head with every heartbeat. I still had the gun clenched tightly in my right hand, but my fingers were losing their grip. They slowly unlocked and the Steyr dropped onto the rubber mat below. I let it. I’d half forgotten what it even was. Something as familiar as my own face had suddenly turned so foreign as to be unidentifiable. That and the warm dribble against my neck and cheek had me blinking in confusion. “Is it raining?” I didn’t need to see the puzzled look of worry that Michael shot at me over his shoulder to know it was a stupid question. Raining? Sure, because it rained inside cars all the time.

The hand I put to the back of my head came away red—poppy red like Natalie’s freckles. Long-gone Natalie and long-gone Lukas; they were two of a kind. Squeezing my eyes shut, I clutched desperately at the raveled edges of consciousness. No. Not gone. Here. Lukas was here, and he needed help—my help. He was in trouble, and this time I could do something about it. This time I wasn’t a boy trapped under a dead horse . . . even though I could feel the sand beneath me, the sun hot and liquid on my head. Sucking in a breath that didn’t seem to want to go down, I opened my eyes and raised my head to see blond hair haloed by oscillating red and blue lights. It was Lukas . . . just as I remembered him.

“Lukas?”

The car jerked to the left as the blazing lights careened off to the right. I went with them, pulled along in their wake until I was lost. They flew around me, brilliantly glowing butterflies. I soared with them long and far until I sailed off the edge of the world. Beyond that, it’s been said, can be nothing good. Beyond the end, I’ve heard, lies only the abyss. Beyond can be only darkness and monsters.

Big deal.

I’d already lived through both.