Rob Thurman - Chimera

The only time, as if its happening just once made it better. I tried to find something to focus on, something normal in a world that so unexpectedly was anything but. “My name.” That was something and a good something at that. “You said my name.”

Eyebrows now several shades darker than his hair winged skyward. “And?”

“It’s a first,” I grumbled. “Let me revel, all right?”

“You’re awfully easy to please.” He pulled at the bottom of his new shirt bearing the logo of a popular sports team. We’d purchased the purple and gold long sleeve jersey at the drugstore. He’d given me the same dubious look then that he was giving me now. “Are you sure you’re a mobster?”

“Ex-mobster.” It bore repeating, so I repeated it. “Ex.”

“Where are we going then, Mr. Ex-mobster sir?”

Where were we going? It was a good question.

I was rapidly racing down my list of options. The first had been to get away scot-free. That was profoundly optimistic, I know, but one can hope, right?

Wrong.

The second possibility was one that had been lurking in the back of my mind well before we raided the compound. And I’d exercised it the night before last by calling Dmitri with the intention of finding a place to hide. He could’ve steered me to a safe house. Michael and I would have disappeared in the hairy bosom of the family for as long as it took. Konstantin, however, had managed to bring that plan to a crashing halt. Even dead, the man had the ability to bust the balls of everyone around him.

“There’s a house,” I said slowly, turning over the thought in my mind. “It’s in North Carolina. It belonged to a friend of Babushka.” A gentleman friend as our grandmother Lena had said with pursed and moral lips, I remembered with wry affection. “He left it to her when he died. Nobody knows about it now but Anatoly and me. I think that’s our best bet.”

“I bow to your superior judgment,” he offered with suspicious blandness.

The kid was smart. God, was he smart. He was also a world-class smart-ass; far drier than I, but a smart-ass all the same. That had changed from our long-ago childhood, but I didn’t mind the dig. We Korsaks were known for our mouthy quality. At least, to be more honest, I was. Regardless of our shared sarcasm genes, it was also another step down the road of recovery. It was a road that would probably never end for Michael, but that didn’t matter—not as long as he kept making the journey.

“You come up with a better plan, kid, you let me know.” Keeping my eye on the road, I leaned over and snagged the bag beside his leg. “Here. Read one of your books.” I had directed him to pick out a few at the store. He had chosen three: a murder mystery, a Western, and a horror novel, to my surprise. I would’ve thought his life had been horror enough. Maybe in comparison, the novel would be a mild scare . . . a dark fairy tale. He chose the Western and began reading with one knee propped on the dashboard.

The cover was emblazoned with the typical square-jawed hero in a Stetson. On horseback he stampeded a herd of mustangs through a rocky arroyo. None of them had Annie’s flirty ways or Harry’s black-tipped ears. “Horses, huh?”

His eyes flickered sideways at me, almost with resignation. “I’ve dreamed of horses. All my life.”

That straightened me in the seat instantly. “You know what that means?” He’d carried a memory with him. Jericho . . . the Institute . . . Neither had been able to take his past away from him, not completely. “Michael . . .”

“It doesn’t mean anything.” He turned his attention back to the book and turned a page.

“Doesn’t mean anything? Jesus, Misha, if you were going to remember anything, that would be it.” It was a huge part of when he had been taken. “How can you explain that away?”

“You’ve seen what I can do.” He kept his eyes on the paperback. “Why do you think it stops there? Seeing something that doesn’t belong to me, dreaming it—how is that any harder than turning someone’s internal organs into liquid meat?” Turning a page, he read on.

Michael might think he didn’t believe, but if that was the case, why had he told me? Why indeed. Heartened, I was about to turn on the radio, when without warning my thoughts took off on a tangent—a highly unpleasant one. I’d asked him when I’d first rescued him why they were training him, what their purpose was. He hadn’t answered me then; he didn’t have to now.

Trained to kill, but not as a spy. He was given a deadly ability, but not to use as a last resort. A normal boy had been warped into an engine of destruction, pure and simple.

“You’re a weapon,” I said quietly, my smile long gone. “A living weapon. They tried to make you into the ultimate assassin, didn’t they? You and all the kids. Assassins who don’t need knives or guns. For sale to the highest bidder.”

He raised his hand and shaped it. Pointing an index finger at me, he dropped the hammer with a softly muttered pa-pow.

And he didn’t raise his eyes from the printed page to look at me, not once.

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.