Chimera

Chapter 28

The beach house was mostly as I remembered. It was a little shabbier, with a few areas of peeling paint and warped wood, but otherwise it was the same. A sprawling affair on stilts, it looked identical to the majority of the houses up and down the coast. There was an outside shower to spray off the sand and salt and a deck with chairs of weathered wood to watch the sunrise over the dunes. The ocean itself was hidden behind those same swells of sand and could be seen only from the windows on the second floor. You could hear it, however, no matter where you were . . . inside or out. I’d spent the majority of my life listening to the sound. In many ways it had been one of the few constants. Maybe now I could learn to enjoy it again.

“Can we go see?”

I dropped my duffel bag by the stairs leading up to the house and gave Michael a shrug and half smile. “Why not? It’s definitely worth seeing.” The Institute hadn’t been too far from Miami, but that didn’t mean Michael had had the opportunity to see the ocean—not that he remembered.

Leaving Zilla in the car, he took off toward the dunes. I zipped up my jacket against the biting wind and followed with less enthusiasm. When I crested the slope, slipping and sliding with every other step, I wanted to turn away from the sight. Gray water under a gray sky; it wasn’t like that day. That day had been all blues. Blue overhead along with crashing waves the color of a million shattered marbles was what I’d seen then. Gray or blue, it was all the same. It was where I’d been the moment life had fallen away beneath me. Sitting on my horse’s back as the water soaked my jeans, I had watched blue meet blue as water met sky. I’d watched that instead of watching Lukas, and . . . here we were.

It was why I lived in a condo on the beach. I wouldn’t let the impulse to close my eyes defeat me. I lived by the ocean; I swam in it, because I wouldn’t let myself forget. I didn’t deserve to. Seeing the waves fall was the same as seeing Lukas do the same. I wanted to look away, this time as all times, but I didn’t.

And because I didn’t, I was lucky enough to see Michael’s expression. He stood on wet sand in brine-soaked shoes and stared without blinking. This time water met sky in his eyes. I draped an arm over his shoulder. “Big, huh?”

“Big,” he agreed softly.

We stood for a long time in the presence of that which should’ve made me feel very small. It didn’t. Standing next to Michael, I suddenly felt big, and as whole as I’d ever been. In a place that echoed the beginning of a nightmare, the nightmare finally ended. And it felt right that it happened that way, an inevitable circle.

After a while the cold drove us back to the house. Inside the smell of damp and must wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected, but I still cracked a few windows. As I worked, Michael roamed about exploring. He would stop here and there to peer at a framed picture or pick up a seashell collecting dust, although even that wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe Anatoly had a cleaning service come in once every few months to keep the place from falling apart. Being what he was didn’t change the fact he’d respected Babushka Lena and, in turn, would respect her treasures. “Pick a bedroom, Misha,” I prompted. “There’re four of them upstairs.”

He looked up from the abstract pink and purple curl of abalone shell nestled in the palm of his hand. “I get my own room?”

He sounded like a five-year-old, simultaneously thrilled and apprehensive at the prospect. If he was afraid, I didn’t blame him. Jericho had decorated many of my dreams in the past week and a half, propelling me from a sweat-soaked sleep with my hand searching desperately for my gun more times than I cared to admit. And Michael had ten more years of that evil bastard to contend with than I did. The things that he dreamed of I couldn’t even begin to guess. If he wanted to bunk with me until he was ninety, I wouldn’t hold it against him.

“Maybe,” I answered noncommittally. “Tell you what. You take a look. If two of them are in good-enough shape, then take the one you want. If only one is livable, then sorry about your luck, kiddo. You’ll be stuck with me for a while.” That left him an out. If he found only one to be acceptable, we would go with that and there would be no embarrassment on either side.

“Okay.” Carefully placing the shell back in a cloudy glass bowl, he headed for the stairs. It was circular, a wrought-iron monstrosity that showed the red bloom of rust. At the top and out of sight, he called down, “You know you’re not half as clever as you think you are, but . . .”

It had been obvious all along that my college psych classes were sadly lacking compared to the ones he had been exposed to, but I kept on trying. Yeah, I kept on trying, and I kept on getting shot down, I thought ruefully. “But . . . ?” I prodded, flipping the switches to check the lights. The utilities had been kept on all these years in the name of Babushka’s long-gone gentleman friend. It was just one more way of keeping the place untraceable. “But what?”

There was a pause and then, “Thanks.” Footsteps creaked overhead as he hurried away from the stairs and toward the bedrooms. He wouldn’t want to get caught up in a wave of gooey emotion or anything. God forbid. I allowed myself a small grin and headed back out to the car for our stockpile of groceries. We’d switched roles, Michael and I. When we were kids, he’d been the open one. Every emotion he felt he wore on his face, so clear and bright that it couldn’t be missed. Hell, you would know what he felt before he knew himself. I’d been more like our father in that respect and, to be honest, I still was—aloof, a little distant. But not with Michael. He needed to know how I felt, and he needed it pretty badly. It was the only evidence he’d been able to accept so far that I considered him family . . . no matter what he considered himself. Photos and stories were suspect, but emotion couldn’t be faked. Michael was too damn smart not to see through anything that wasn’t completely genuine.

Turned out he picked out two bedrooms for us. I wasn’t surprised, and I couldn’t have been any damn prouder. What did surprise me was the pang of separation anxiety I felt. I was worse than any overprotective mom waving good-bye to Junior on the first day of kindergarten. But I bit my tongue and stood in the doorway to watch as he shook out the sheets. Apparently the cleaning service had skipped this bedroom. Dust billowed in huge clouds and I waved a hand in front of my face. “Sleeping on a bare mattress isn’t that bad.” I coughed. “Maybe you should give it a try.”

Blond hair sticking up in dusty spikes, he shook his head. “No. I’m done with sleeping in cars and going to the bathroom in bottles. No bare mattresses either.”

“Aren’t you the picky one? Wanting clean sheets and real bathrooms. You’re like a little girl.” I ducked as the sheet was snapped in my general direction. “I never did teach you to write your name in the snow, but we’ve got a whole shitload of sand out there to practice in.” Another fierce snap of the sheet expelled me from the room.

That evening I made my first home-cooked meal in months. In the condo, I lived mostly on takeout. Natalie had managed to get me involved in cooking despite myself—mainly by threats or promises. Both involved kissing, soft touches, and the occasional brisk swat to my ass. Needless to say, after Natalie had her wicked way with me, a Cordon Bleu chef had nothing on me in motivation, if not talent. Since she had left, I’d done much less cooking, but you never really forget how to make a tuna casserole.

Michael regarded the steaming pile of cheese, fish, and crackers on his plate with a dubious frown. “What’s wrong with hamburgers? I like hamburgers. And pizza.”

“This is healthy.” I didn’t know what they’d fed him from that place before I snatched him, but the kid now had a love of junk food that was passionate, if not borderline obsessive. I sat down at the kitchen table and dug into my helping. “Growing boys need healthy food once in a while.” I knew it was true. I’d read it in a magazine.

Spearing a chunk of cheese with his fork, he stretched it out from the plate in a near-foot-long streamer. “Healthy. Useful in grouting tile maybe, but healthy?”

“And what do you know about grout?” I grumbled, taking a bite and swallowing. It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that good either, but it rose above the grout standard.

“There’s a book in the bathroom.” He moved his fork in a different direction, snapping the cheese like an old rubber band. “And lots of fuzzy green grout.”

It was another black mark against the not-too-accomplished cleaning service. A haphazard dusting seemed to be the best they could do. “Eat your food or the next thing I fix will be fuzzy-grout casserole.”

With a long-suffering sigh he stuffed the forkful into his mouth and chewed with such grim resignation that I may as well have served him fried roadkill. “You know, I could learn to cook. Just to help you out. A way to thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“Yeah, you’re a real humanitarian, pizza boy,” I scoffed. “Now eat.”

Before he finished with the meal, I knew more about the clogging effects of cheese on the heart than I cared to. But the next time we came across a cheeseburger or loaded pizza, I was sure I would hear about nothing but the glowing health benefits. After dumping the dishes in the sink like true bachelors, we set up camp on the couch and turned on the TV. Without cable there were only three channels and two of them were full of snow. We were living in the dark ages here. I skimmed through them, then switched off the television in disgust. “Hang on. I think there might be a checkerboard in the closet.”

A checkerboard and books on bathroom repair were the sum total of our entertainment here. I didn’t mind the change from the bright lights and greased poles of Miami. I didn’t mind it at all. The closet was stocked with boxes and broken vacuum cleaner attachments, but I sifted through it to find the red and black box. Beneath it I found a photo album, one that had belonged to Babushka Lena. I hesitated for a second, then piled it on top of the checkers box. Placing them on the table next to the sofa, I sat down and lifted the album into my lap. “I know you’re not much for photos.” I moved over until I was shoulder to shoulder with Michael. “But I thought you might want to see some of me when I was less frightening to the naked human eye.”

He cocked his head doubtfully at me. “Less frightening? I’m not sure I can picture that. Are you sure they’re really you? They can do amazing things with computer effects.”

“Funny. You’re a funny guy. Bet you scored an F in that class,” I said sourly. I riffled through the book and stopped at one I recognized of myself. About two years old, I was trying to ride the family dog. Lying across his back with my arms around his furry neck, I was bare-ass naked and grinning like a loon. “The traditional naked-butt baby picture. A favorite of grandmothers everywhere.”

“I do pity the dog. He probably never recovered from the trauma.” Michael’s finger stroked the glossy surface. “What breed was he?”

“A mutt, Lab with a dash of Saint Bernard, I think. I cried like a baby when he died.” I elbowed him and added, “Tell anyone that and I’ll have to kick your bony butt.”

So underwhelmed by the threat that he didn’t even feel the need to roll his eyes, he reached over to turn the page himself. “Who’s that?”

“Our . . . my mom.” She’d been caught in the act of nothing in particular. The only occasion was a trigger-happy kid with a new camera, namely me. I didn’t recognize the background—a slice of muted wallpaper and the leaves of a potted plant. It wasn’t the kind of thing a young boy paid attention to. Mom was looking over her shoulder at me, startled but with the merry and indulgent smile that rarely left her face. She had always been so happy. I’d wondered more than once over the years if she knew what her husband did for a living. How could she not? She was a grown, intelligent woman; after years of marriage she simply couldn’t be that blind. Yet . . . somehow I thought she was. It could be I didn’t want to believe she wasn’t as picture-perfect in her purity as I saw her to be as a child. And it could be the sun rose in the east and set in the west. With the incredibly obvious bit of psychoanalysis out of the way, I just looked at the picture—looked at it and treasured the feeling it sparked in me. I might be a thug and worse, but damn if I hadn’t loved my mother.

Pale blond hair caught in a loose French braid and high Slavic cheekbones joined with blue eyes and porcelain skin. She wasn’t a beautiful woman; she was more than beautiful. The cheekbones were a shade too sharp, the eyes a little too round, and the mouth overly generous. But it all came together in a shining whole—much like it did in Michael. His features weren’t as much like our mother’s as I remembered; time had changed him from a male copy of Anya to his own distinct person. His eyes were more almond shaped and his mouth not as wide, but he had the same inner . . . hell . . . light, I guess you’d say.

“She’s pretty.” He looked as if he wanted to touch the photo but pulled back his hand before he made contact.

Maneuvering it free of the protective plastic film, I handed it to him. He started to shake his head, but I wouldn’t let him refuse, pushing it into his hand. “Keep it.”

“But . . .”

“I know, kiddo. You don’t have to say it,” I said patiently. “She’s not your mom. But she was a great mom, the best, and I don’t mind sharing.” I knew Michael wouldn’t accept anything less than rock-solid evidence, something that couldn’t be denied—like Anatoly, he’d want to see the DNA results. One day when our situation cooled down I hoped to get that for him. But that could be years and until then it was going to have to boil down to a leap of faith. Unfortunately, that was the one thing the Institute had been ill-equipped to teach.

Still, he did take the picture. Resting it carefully on his knee, he asked, “What about the one of you and the dog? Whenever I have trouble sleeping, I could use that to laugh myself into unconsciousness.”

“All right, you snide little punk,” I growled. “Just for that you get to see Babushka Lena in a bathing suit, all five yards of it.”

Over the next half hour, we made our way through the rest of the album and Babushka fulfilled my threat, showing up several times in beachwear that had been outdated even in the fifties. It was one of Lena’s early albums, put together before Lukas had been born. The majority of the pictures were of a preschool me wreaking havoc. Only in the last pages did I start to age upward . . . five, six, and finally seven. And in the very last picture I was shown sitting on the edge of a hospital bed. With an awkward armful of blanket and baby, I looked wary, amazed, and not a little horrified.

Michael studied the slightly yellowed window to the past with a blank face. Then, almost reluctantly, his lips curled. “Nice button.”

I shook my head and gave a combination groan and laugh. “Mom made me. You should’ve seen the matching shirt she wanted me to wear. Luckily her water broke in the gift shop and I escaped with my dignity.” The button pinned to my thin seven-year-old chest was blue and white with the traditional I’M A BIG BROTHER written cheerfully across it. “Mostly.”

Before he could point out how far from the truth that was, I changed the subject with a suggestion. “Want to take a run on the beach?” I hadn’t been able to keep up my usual exercise regimen the past few weeks, and that wasn’t good. When you’re on the run for your life, you need to actually be able to run.

“In the dark?” Michael glanced over at the slice of plum-skin dusk peeking in under the blinds.

“The moon will be out soon. There’ll be enough light to whip your skinny ass into shape.” Dumping the album onto the table, I stood. “I’ll grab my shoes.” When I came back down the stairs, I pretended not to notice him slipping two pictures into his jeans pocket. The first would be the one of Mom I’d given him, and I felt safe in betting the second was of a petrified boy holding a wet baby.

We walked along the water’s edge until the moon rose high enough to reveal the dips and swells in the sand. Quicksilver light made the sand glow an oddly brilliant gray, and our footprints shadowed hollows of inky black. The moon itself was huge, the pumpkin-sized globe you seemed to see so much more often as a child. The glitter of the stars faded to pinpricks beside its brilliance. Blowing out a breath that curled and steamed as white as the breakers, I called out to Michael, “You ready?”

He was about twenty feet ahead of me, looking out to sea as the water washed over pale bare feet. I’d told him it was too damn cold, but what did that mean to a kid who couldn’t remember ever seeing the ocean or feeling it on his skin? I let him enjoy the moment and trusted in his common sense to stave off frostbite.

Waving an acknowledging hand at me, he retreated farther up onto dry sand to put on his socks and shoes. As he tied the last laces with quick jerks of his fingers, he raised his head to look at me and opened his mouth. It was easy enough to make a general guess at what he was going to say. Let’s go or, knowing Michael, I don’t like to run. Running is sweaty and annoying. Whichever it was, the words didn’t materialize. The gun I pointed at him had them melting away.

He didn’t jump to his feet or lunge to one side, but instead he stayed frozen in place. His face smooth and calm, he mouthed silently, “Behind me?”

I gave an infinitesimal nod and fired a split second after he threw himself forward. The man behind him disappeared from sight, leaving nothing but an ominous dark spray on the sand. Dressed all in black, he had been crouched behind a low dune to blend perfectly with the background of night-shadowed beach grass—well . . . almost perfectly. As with most things in life, almost just wasn’t good enough. I had seen him. I’d seen the whites of his eyes gleam as he watched Michael . . . only Michael. Concentrating on your target is good; focusing on it to the exclusion of all else gets the back of your head blown into the sea oats.

Every time I thought we were safe—every goddamn time.

I didn’t have to tell Michael to run. By now it was more than second nature, for both of us. As was the taste of tin in the mouth and the adrenaline pulsing through the veins like an amphetamine poison—a familiar icy hand that clamped down on the back of the neck. It was like an old friend now . . . an old, hateful friend. I caught up with Michael and gave him a shove toward the dunes. There would be more there, I knew. There was no way around that, but fleeing down an empty beach was suicide. They would drop me in the sand. As for Michael . . . they would either kill or capture him, depending on whether Jericho thought him salvageable or not.

Killing would be kinder.

The grass, sharp as blades, beat at our legs. It stung even through my jeans as we fought for footing in our flight. And when I fell, it sliced open my palm with surgical sharpness. As I struggled to my knees, the hand that had erupted out of the sand to snare my ankle was joined by the rest of its owner. He matched the other one, with identical clothes and carbon-copy overconfidence. The night-vision goggles he wore would’ve protected his eyes from the sand, but they didn’t do anything to guard from the heel I jammed into them. With hands clawing at the now-shattered goggles, he flipped over onto his back with a strangled yell. Using his stomach as a spring-board, I took off after Michael. A crude and fast move, it was effective enough, judging from the sound of vomiting that followed me.

Michael had paused when I had fallen, and I hissed urgently, “Go. Go!” He ran on until a form came boiling out of the darkness to tackle him about the legs. Considering what Michael could do to him, the son of a bitch was brave to make the attempt. Considering the scream that came out of him, that label might be posthumous. But Michael hadn’t changed his mind about using his abilities to save himself. To save me he would break his own rules. For himself, it was still an emphatic no. The kid was too good for this . . . too goddamn good by far.

I reached them and tossed the limp attacker off Michael with one well-placed kick. “What did you do to him?” I grunted as I grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him to his feet.

“The same thing I did to that doctor, only this time I used my knee.” His hair a ghostly beacon, he rubbed a hand across his forehead. “They’re everywhere, aren’t they? It’s hopeless.”

“Only if we give up.” Hand still wound in his shirt, I towed him behind me into a haphazard speed. “And I’m not giving up on you, Misha. Now move your ass.”

We’d gone only a few more feet when a bullet kicked up sand at our feet. I missed the muzzle flash and fired in several directions. It was useless, and more bullets hit around us as we raced through the vegetation. We had no choice but to head back to the beach at the water’s edge. They’d formed a line between us and the house; there was no way around them. I didn’t know how long we’d last if we took to the water to swim down the coast, but I was afraid we were going to find out.

“Can you swim?” I demanded between panting breaths as we cleared the grass.

There was the glint of teeth as he smiled. “Theoretically.”

The repeat of his remark from one of our first escapes had a spurt of dark laughter locked in my throat. I only hoped his theory worked better in water than it did in cars. I hoped . . . God, I hoped I lived to see him swimming to safety. I hoped to see him grow to be twice the man I was. I hoped to see him happy and free.

Of course, none of that was going to happen. If God existed, he didn’t seem to be listening. Did he ever? Instead of God, it could be there was only inescapable fate. And fate seemed to like things tidy. What began on the beach should end on the beach. What was born in blood and pain should die the same way. God might be ignoring this particular sparrow, but fate was watching with lascivious interest. It couldn’t fucking wait to see what went down next.

That would be me.

I heard my thighbone break. The sound was so clear. The snap of a tree branch underfoot; the cracking of ice in a spring thaw—I heard that, but I never heard the gun that fired the bullet. And I don’t remember falling; I knew only that I was lying on the ground with the taste of sand in my mouth. I couldn’t feel my leg. There was a slow warmth spreading across my skin, but no feeling . . . no pain. Not yet. Shock took care of that. It also took care of my thoughts. They moved in staggering circles as my hands made vague motions in the sand, trying in vain to turn me over.

“There you are.”

The gloating voice was fatally familiar. I pushed up again as my brain convulsed desperately to grasp what was going on. This time with a leg that was worthless deadweight, I managed to turn onto my back and braced myself, barely, upright on my elbows. Where was he? There was nothing but darkness and a leering moon that all but blocked out the sky.

“All I wanted to do,” the voice floated on, “was to make others like me. With a few minor improvements of course.” There was a laugh rich with mock self-deprecation. “I do get so lonely.”

Jericho. It all came back; a river of fetid knowledge—fear, rage, and despair. The only hope I had left was that Michael was in the water. I didn’t see him. He had to be swimming away—he had to be. As for me—I was dead. It was inevitable. I had seconds, maybe minutes, before Jericho killed me, but if Michael made it out of here, then death was something I could live with. That would look good on a T-shirt. Death was something I could live with. The bile black humor twisted itself onto my lips before a spasm of coughing sent sand from my lungs. “Come out, you son of a bitch,” I rasped. My gun . . . Where was my gun? It had flown from my hand when I fell. Surreptitiously I felt beside me, running fingers through grit for the comforting feel of metal. It was over for me; I accepted that, but my last breath would be spent trying to take Jericho with me. “Come out,” I repeated. “What the hell are you afraid of?”

“Certainly not of a common thief.” He materialized out of a mass of night and moon shadows. He was a shadow himself, lit only with lunar streaks along the planes of his face. “You took my Michael. You took my property. Cheaters never prosper, haven’t you heard? And neither do thieves.” He hadn’t lost his gun. It was still securely in his hand and trained on me.

“Thief? You’re the one who stole him. Stole a little boy,” I spat. “Did you think you could just take him and walk away?”

“Steal? I didn’t steal him. Like any good baker, I made him from scratch.” The grin that carved across his face was as brilliant and cold as the moon overhead.

He wasn’t making any sense. None. The man was insane, but I would listen to his psychotic ranting until the end of time if that gave Michael more of a chance to escape. “How did you find us?” My hands still searched futilely for my weapon.

“A friend.” He crouched down well out of reach and rested his gun hand on his knee. “An old, old friend who sold you a sad, sad story. I hear you’ll let him know when the article comes out. Could I get a copy? Since it is about me, it seems only fair. I could frame it for my office.”

I should’ve felt stupid. I didn’t. I felt worse. It was idiocy that couldn’t be equaled; it was carelessness miles beyond criminal. Bellucci had spun his tale of righteous anger, betrayal, and redemption, and I had swallowed it all like a spoon-fed baby. I’d watched the person who had no doubt planted the tracer on our car and my only thought had been regarding the ugliness of the wet dog she’d been carrying. It hadn’t once crossed my mind that Jericho needed a confederate in the legitimate science world. What better way to get access to cutting-edge new developments that had yet to see the light of the published world? Bellucci was the perfect silent partner. He could feed Jericho information, equipment, and get a nice slice of make-your-own-assassin pie. Even better, he could write outraged refutations of Jericho’s work and show himself to be Jericho’s most devoted rival. If anyone investigated Jericho, where would they go first?

Right.

Jericho’s early-warning system had been our downfall. “College pals,” I said bitterly. “Colleagues. And now you torture children together. Isn’t that . . .” The pain started. I was talking and breathing, and suddenly that was over. A malevolent butcher set up shop and went to work carving my thighbone into a thousand sharp-edged ivory knives. I gasped raggedly for air, then pushed through the black wave that washed over me. “Isn’t that . . . too . . . much togetherness?”

“You bore me.” Dismissive, he stood and walked close enough to kick the foot of my injured leg. As kicks went, it wasn’t much. Fairly gentle, more of a hard tap than anything, it was nevertheless enough to have the salty copper of blood flooding my mouth. “I thought you must be clever to have gotten this far, but close up . . . I simply don’t see it. Although removing his tracking chip wasn’t completely idiotic.” He tilted his head as if truly considering the exact measurement of my stupidity. “Surprising such a thought would occur to you. But even more of a mystery is that Michael stayed with you. He’s not much for killing, more’s the pity, but I fully expected him to take his leave of you quickly enough. Surely he wouldn’t have balked at a short coma for his kidnapper.”

My tongue almost refused to cooperate, numb from where I’d bitten it to keep from screaming in pain. “Not a kidnapper.” My hands fisted in the sand felt like the only thing holding me to consciousness. “He’s mine.”

“Yours?” The bass of his voice was colored with derision. “And here I thought he was mine all this time. Pray tell, dead man, how is he yours?”

He still didn’t know? He still hadn’t figured out who I was? “I’m his family,” I snarled weakly. “His family, you bastard.”

“Oh really?” The curve of his mouth was ripe with superiority and an amusement I couldn’t understand. “And how do you figure that?” He held up a hand and took a few steps back. Blood did tend to spatter a long way. “Never mind. I haven’t the time or inclination to play this little game.” Raising his voice slightly, he called out, “I see you, Michael. I’ve seen you watching all along. It’s all right, you know. Watch all you like. I rather enjoy the thought of your watching your ‘savior’ die. You can watch at my side if you wish.”

No. Damn it, no. He listened when I told him to run. He always listened, but then he always came back.

“Michael.” He drew the name out cajolingly. “You cannot deny your Maker, boy. If history has taught us nothing, it has taught us that.”

I didn’t see him. I twisted my head back and forth desperately. Maybe Jericho was wrong. Maybe he was doing this to torment me, to make my final moments as wrenching as he could. That was all it was; it had to be. When I finally brought my eyes back to those glossy black ones, I tried hard to hold on to that hope. It wasn’t easy in the face of the poisonous dark gaze fixed on me as I labored to sit upright in the sand. I wasn’t going to die lying flat in the sand, as if I were just waiting for it.

“Shy, that one,” he mused. “An odd quality in death incarnate.”

“He’s not.” I knew that as well as I’d ever known anything. “He’s not death.”

“Death enters through a thousand doors.” The gun extended toward me. “He’s only one. In time I’ll have all one thousand. And when all my doors open on the world, I alone will hold their keys.”

Then he fired.

The waiting is the hardest part. You learn that from nearly day one. You could be a child waiting for a cookie or a shiny new bike, or a cavity-ridden teenager waiting and dreading the jab of Novocaine with a needle that has no end. You could ask one of a million people waiting for outcomes both good and bad, and they would all tell you the same thing. Anticipation is a bitch; everything else is downhill. Is that true or not? I didn’t know, because what I expected, a bullet to the chest, didn’t happen. But God, I wish it had.

Time didn’t freeze. My life didn’t riffle before me like the pages of a badly drawn comic book. None of the clichés held true. My heart didn’t even have time to pound at a faster, more agonizingly painful rate. By the time you hear the gunshot, it’s too late for that. The bullet has already found its mark. If you’re the one hit, a beating heart may be a moot point. If you’re not the one cradling lead, a living heart isn’t what you want anyway—not anymore.

I looked down at the armful of deadweight, almost puzzled. So, it was God after all, not fate. It was God, and his sparrow had fallen from the sky to rest broken in my lap. Strands of bleached hair were cool against my arm, as cool as the liquid flowing against my chest was warm. The bullet had entered his back and exited his chest to rest in my shoulder. And the blood—the blood was everywhere. It flowed like a river out of him and onto me. I could even smell it on his breath—his shallow, fading breath.

“How could you do something so stupid?” I choked, the words ugly with anguish. “How could you do something so goddamn stupid?” His eyes were only colorless shadows in the moonlight, but I saw him in there still. Aware, he was with me, but beginning to drift away—far away. “Misha.” I rested my forehead on his. “Why?”

“For my brother,” he said simply.

The whisper brushed against my cheek and I watched as the life—the light—began to spill from his face. His skin went so transparent that dark lashes were a brutal contrast when they came to rest—and stayed at rest.

Jericho had known where he was. Charging him would’ve been futile. Instead, Michael had charged me. He’d thrown himself in front of me to take the bullet—my bullet. I pulled him close and blocked out the smell of blood with the scent of shampoo in his hair. Green and herbal, it took me from the beach to an endless field of grass and clover. It was a place without the stink of copper and the fly of fatal lead, a place without despair.

“Isn’t this annoying?”

There was the hiss and purr of sand under approaching shoes. Obviously, he’d overcome his distaste of wearing his victim’s blood, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t open my eyes as he came. I didn’t care. I’d found what I was looking for. After all these years, I’d found it. Damn if I was going to watch Jericho end it all.

“All my time wasted. All the delayed graduations, not to mention moving the entire Institute. Then there’s the money lost.” The footsteps stopped. “But nothing compares to the inconvenience. Nothing approaches the arrogance of your thinking you could interfere in my affairs.” The muzzle of his gun pressed hard against the top of my head, digging into skin and flesh. “My work.”

“Pull the trigger already, Frankenstein,” I said without emotion. “Just fucking pull it.”

I felt the air ripple as he leaned closer. “I should take you with me. You remember that examination table in the basement? I could take you apart on one just like it, piece by piece. I could make it last days, weeks if I wanted. No constructive purpose of course.” The laugh hit my skin with an unnatural heat. “Simply for fun. No?” The metal moved to my forehead as I remained silent. “That’s all right. This is fun as well.”

This time I heard the shot. It rang gray and sharp as a titanium bell. I felt the muzzle disappear from my head and I wondered at how easy it was; so very easy. There was no pain; no degrading of consciousness. I could still hear the roar of the waves, could still smell the leafy scent of Michael’s hair. I even felt the ground shudder as a body thudded against it.

“Stefan? Son?”

I opened my eyes to see a face that was a near mirror image of mine. Lines of age, a scattering of white hairs in the black, it was me at sixty. Strange, considering I’d just died at the age of twenty-four. At least I thought I had. “Dad.” I licked dry lips. “Dad, what—what are you doing here?”

“Saving your ass apparently.” He holstered his gun and crouched down beside me. “What the hell is going on, Stoipah?”

My eyes left him to fix irrevocably on a fallen dark figure. Barely three feet away, Jericho sprawled in a boneless huddle in the sand. Lids only half closed, he stared blindly at nothing. His chest didn’t move and the white of his teeth was obscured by blood, inky black as the sky above. Anatoly’s shot had blown out the majority of his throat; he would’ve died instantly. He must have fallen on his gun, because there was no sign of it. And that was no good. I needed it—needed it badly.

“Give me your gun,” I grated.

Eyebrows pulling into a confused V, Anatoly said gruffly, “He’s dead, Stefan.”

“Give me the goddamn gun.”

With no further argument, he shrugged and slipped it into my hand. I cradled Michael with one arm and emptied the clip in Jericho’s head at point-blank range. The shape of his skull changed to something misshapen and horrific. Now the outside of the son of a bitch reflected what lurked underneath.

As my father retrieved his gun from my hand, there was the stir of moving figures around us. It was Anatoly’s men. Jericho’s were either bodies cooling in the grass or long gone. “Have them cut off his head,” I said harshly. That was what was done with vampires, although he was worse than any undead movie monster. Jericho wasn’t coming back this time, not unless he could grow a new head. “Cut it off before they dump him.”

“Stefan . . .”

“Cut it off!”

“All right. Whatever you want. We’ll decapitate the bastard. The boys will enjoy the overtime.” Two of the men, vaguely familiar, drifted up at his snap and dragged off the body.

I felt something in me break at the sight, something hard and dark and bitter. It cracked and shattered beyond repair, and I wasn’t sorry to see it go. Pressing a hand to Michael’s back, I felt the blood seep through my fingers. “Misha?” Nothing. “Dad, we need . . . We need help.” It was the voice of a child, not that of a seasoned thug or newly minted killer. It was the voice of a teenage boy begging his father to make it all right. Please, this time make it all right.

“I’ve already sent Aleksei for a doctor. Stefan, what have you gotten yourself into?” He maneuvered out of the crouch to sit beside me. From the corner of my eye I vaguely noted that the white in his hair was more prevalent than the last time I’d seen him, the shoulders a hair less broad.

I ignored his question. I didn’t have the kind of time or coherence it would take to explain all of it. “I was looking for you,” I said distantly, because everything was distant now—everything except Michael. Lifting him higher in my arms, I could feel his breath against my neck; slow, so slow.

“I heard. That’s why I came to the house. We were in town getting some supplies, but I’ve been staying here for the past few days.” That explained the odd pattern of superficial cleanliness. “I knew you’d eventually show up here if you were in trouble.” His hand touched my leg and came away stained with blood. “I also heard about Lev,” he said with a smile etched out of ice. “My good and loyal friend Lev. I’m sorry to say that in the future, retirement isn’t going to agree with him.” Wiping his hand on his pants, he touched Michael’s arm. “And who is this?”

“Lukas.” It was a bizarre lightscape of ebony and silver that surrounded us. I shouldn’t expect him to recognize his lost son in those conditions, but unrealistically enough I did. “It’s Lukas. I found him.”

“Stefan. My God, Stefan.” He leaned back in shock, wiping blood and sand absently on his pant leg. His hand shook. In all my life I hadn’t once seen his hand shake. “Stefan,” his response bleak and implacable, “he’s not your brother.”

It stunned me, that he didn’t see it . . . didn’t believe me. “He is,” I countered sharply. “He’s Lukas. I know my brother. It’s him.”

“Ah, what an esportet.” He ducked his head to rest it in his hands for a moment; then he raised his face to me. It was a mask, a jangled combination of sagging grief and ruthless angles. “Stefan, you saw him. I looked up as we were getting in the car. Your face was in the window. You saw.”

I saw?

I saw. . . . God, I had.

I had seen it.

How could I forget that? How could I forget the small figure swathed in a blanket? Blond hair showing beneath a flap of wool, the thin arm hanging limp. Hours after my brother had disappeared, I had looked out my bedroom window to see my father riding away with his body cradled in his lap.

I remembered the weeks after Lukas’s disappearance being hazy, distant. I just hadn’t remembered precisely what had triggered those layers and layers of shock. I thought it had been Lukas’s being taken in front of me. I was wrong.

“When you . . . forgot, I thought it for the best,” Anatoly offered with a thread of pain even he couldn’t hide. “No one could know inside or outside the business. No one, and you were young, hurt. . . . You might have said something.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I buried him with your mother, in secret of course. I let the police go on thinking he was still missing. I let everyone go on thinking that. Because if anyone knew how he had died, they would know whom to come to when I put every one of those bastards into the ground. Which is what I did.” Satisfaction was a cold comfort, but apparently he still embraced it. “The entire Gubin family paid for what they did to Lukas. Every last one of them, from grandfather to the last son.” And no one was the wiser. No one came to arrest Anatoly and none of the other vors, Mafiya bosses, came looking for a vigilante father out of control. “And in the years after, you didn’t seem to want to remember. You refused to remember.”

Nothing more than a snatching gone wrong. It was a common way to negotiate between rival factions. Lukas had died on that beach. I should’ve known it from the sound his skull made when it hit the rock. I should’ve known. His kidnapper had probably dumped his body not far from the beach when he realized Lukas was dead—when he realized my brother was dead. My brother . . .

Michael’s breath hitched and slowed even further. Lost to the world, he felt light in my arms . . . insubstantial as a ghost. Lukas’s ghost, long gone. “Misha, I’m here,” I whispered, but his eyes remained closed.

The eyes . . . and then came another memory, this one not as old. It was a sickening flight back to a dark hallway and a little girl named Wendy. There had been something about her eyes, barely seen in the dim light of the hall. When I’d told Michael that he had Lukas’s eyes, he’d gone still—distant and still. And when he’d talked about his friend John’s resemblance to their captor, he had said that of course his eyes were different from Jericho’s. Of course. Why hadn’t I picked up on that? All the children had bicolored eyes. It had to be an unforeseen result of the genetic manipulation. I couldn’t believe Jericho would’ve wanted such a visible marker on his product if he could avoid it. Assassins should be anonymous.

I’d pointed out to Michael that he had my brother’s eyes, and he had known it wasn’t the proof I thought it to be. He’d kept trying to tell me and I’d kept cutting him off. Or he’d cut himself off . . . because wouldn’t it be nice to believe it was true, for a little while, before ruthlessly dragging himself back to reality? But in the end it hadn’t mattered. When it came down to the wire, he hadn’t been able to deny me.

I’d told him over and over. I’d inundated him with stories and so-called evidence he didn’t want to hear. I’d given him a life and a family he had never asked for. I’d given him a hope he didn’t even know he wanted, a hope he didn’t know he desperately needed. It was up to me to decide if what I had done would save him or destroy him.

Michael believed now. And, by God, so would everyone else.

“He’s my brother,” I said with finality. Where the hell was that doctor?

“Stefan, what is this dream world you’ve concocted? This fantasy? What are you thinking?”

“He’s my brother,” I repeated flatly. “He’s my brother and your son. And if you ever say he isn’t or do anything to cause him doubt, I’ll walk away and you will never see me again.”

“Stoipah, what . . .”

“Never.”