Second Thoughts and Last Chances
By
Latikia
Edited by
The Old Fart
Copyright © 2007,
2008
Chapter 38
The following morning I got out of bed early, long before Peggy woke up, put on my sweats and running shoes, went outside and began running laps around the outer perimeter of the property.
I’ve always enjoyed the silence of early morning; the stillness that envelopes the world just before sunrise. It reminds me, just a little, of the days before I could link.
With only the sound of my feet hitting the ground to distract me I was able to focus on nothing at all, slipping into that no-mind state that runners live for, thinking only of controlled breathing, steady rhythm and not tripping.
As I completed my third lap I caught a brief flash of motion, from the corner of my eye; a lone figure hurried up the drive and fell in a few yards behind me. The new runner struggled along, working industriously to catch up, and at times just to keep pace, fiercely determined in spite of not being able to make up any of the distance between us.
I smiled to myself as I sampled the emotions of the individual behind me. Strong willed, unrelenting, uncompromising and completely disinclined to surrender or admit defeat.
Stubborn and pig-headed. Definitely a chip off the old block.
By the end of the sixth lap she’d fallen nearly forty yards behind, and as I approached the completion of the seventh lap I could see her lumbering along up ahead of me and recognized the light blue running suit her mother had picked out not more than two months before. I stretched my legs and increased my pace, quickly closing the distance between us.
As we grew closer I shortened my stride and matched our rhythms, which wasn’t easy. Her legs were considerably shorter than mine.
I pulled up next to her and together we ran side by side for half a lap before she looked over and up at me.
“Don’t you…ever…get…tired…Daddy?” Belle gasped.
I smiled fondly down at my little girl.
“Sure I do. I just don’t let it stop me.”
We ran on together for another two laps as Belle struggled to find her stride.
Like most young children, she was accustomed to running in short frantic bursts, and like most young children, she had enormous stores of energy. Unlike most of her peers, by which I mean girls near her age, Belle enjoyed exertion. She liked running and jumping, getting sweaty and dirty, climbing trees, wrestling and even fighting. She was much larger and stronger than girls or boys her age.
My beautiful little princess was a natural born tomboy.
She struggled with the unfamiliar and uncomfortable effort involved in distance running. Muscles she wasn’t used to using screamed at her, urging her to stop. Pains in her shins, hips and sides tormented her, begging her to give up…or at least slow down.
The temptation to ease her suffering was tremendous. But as she pushed on against the pain, searching within herself for the means to go on, I remembered what it had been like when I first started. And I saw in her a reflection of myself.
I’d refused to give in to the pain, and she wouldn’t either. I couldn’t find it in me to belittle her effort by taking away the pain.
So instead I linked and tried to help her find what she was looking for.
I hadn’t known what it was when I was her age. I hadn’t known what it was when I was twice her age. I’d had to figure it out on my own. The very least I could do for my daughter was teach her a little of what I’d learned the hard way.
So I linked with Belle and went looking. I knew where it was in me and I figured if my baby girl had one as well it would probably be in the same general location.
And it was. Down in the depths, a tiny, insignificant little ember of flame, sheathed in absolute darkness and flickering with rebellious determination.
I cleared a path thru the dark that surrounded that little flame, exposing it for a brief instant. Belle’s subconscious mind latched onto it like a trap-door spider pouncing on a passing insect.
Once she found it, her breathing became less gasping and ragged and I could feel her body begin to relax. The strain in her legs faded and rather than chugging along like a steam train on an uphill slope, she began to lope, lengthening her stride and gradually, she pulled away.
I grinned and let her go. Her heart pumped steadily, her lungs expanded and contracted evenly and with little effort and I reveled in the wondrous exhilaration my daughter felt as she began to comprehend a fragment of her physical potential.
Pride filled my heart as she picked up the pace, charging along like one of Peggy’s horses, faster and faster, her heart pounding away like a kettle-drum as she vanished from sight.
I chuckled to myself, cleared my mind and reacquired my own stride.
By the tenth lap, the sun had just begun to come up over the trees, and Belle had lapped me twice, giggling with delight each time she flew by.
When I completed the tenth lap I circled around, jogged up the gravel drive and came to a stop at the front steps. I was stretching my hips and hamstrings when Belle came sprinting up and slid to a stop, huffing and puffing, her pretty face flushed, blue eyes wide and bright.
“That was fun!” she exclaimed.
“You’re pretty fast.” I noted, doing a few knee-bend/squat thrusts.
Belle nodded and began to imitate my stretching routine. “Sifu Nigel says that speed is important, but stamina wins fights.” Her face scrunched up a little. “What’s that mean, stamina?”
“Depends how you use it. To most folks it means staying power or endurance. How long you can do something. Distance running is very good for stamina. So is low weight-high repetition weight lifting, but you’re still a little young for that. Better stick to distance running for now.”
Belle nodded and continued to follow my actions as I pulled one ankle up behind me, working the large muscles of my upper thigh.
“Sifu says you have a lot of stamina.” she told me.
“He does, huh?”
Belle’s smile grew into a huge grin. “Uh-huh. He says you’re a great fighter.”
I smiled at my little girl. “Far be it from me to dispute an expert like your Sifu, but this time he’s wrong. I’m not a very good fighter. Nigel is much better at that sort of thing than I’ll ever be. That’s why I asked him to teach you. If I were any good, I’d have taught you myself.”
“But you do have lots of stamina, right?”
I grinned. “Yeah, I suppose I do.”
Belle grinned right back at me. “I heard Mommy and Aunt Lilly say you could go from morning till night. That sure is a long time to be running. How many miles would that be Daddy?”
I raised an eyebrow in her direction. My daughter’s blush brightened her dark complexion in a very appealing fashion.
I shook my head. “You girls really should stop eavesdropping on your moms’ conversations.”
Belle’s smile returned in full force. “But that’s how we learn the best stuff.”
I snorted and shook my head.
“Can I run with you again sometime Daddy?” she asked shyly.
I stood up, stepped up in front of her, dropped to one knee and kissed my little girl on the forehead. “You can run with me anytime, darlin’.”
Her arms went around my neck and she pressed her lips against mine; a repeat of Tink’s bird-like peck. Belle’s body shivered as we both felt a light electric buzz, and her eyes opened wide.
She stepped back and eyed me curiously. I smiled and touched my lips with two fingers.
“You buzzed me.” I said with a wink.
Belle giggled and pursed her lips. “You buzzed me first!”
I laughed and poked my fingers at her belly. “You’d better go get washed up for breakfast.”
Belle blinked a couple of times, gave me a big grin, turned and ran up the steps, flung open the door and disappeared into the house.
I got to my feet and followed her in.
The lower level of the house was alive with sounds of early rising, high pitched, vainly trying to be quiet voices. I waved at Rosie and AJ as they chased one another around the living room, and barely avoided being run over as Tink rushed in to join them.
The upper level was, by comparison, absolutely still.
My bedroom door was still shut, so I eased it open and moved in as quietly as I could, which is pretty damn quiet. I closed the door and turned around to find Peggy sitting up in bed, arms crossed beneath her breasts and a miffed expression on her face.
“And where have you been, young man?”
I smirked at her motherly tone and pulled the damp sweatshirt up over my head and tugged it off.
“I went for a little run.” I told her, shook my head and sent hair whipping around my face and shoulders.
“Little run…you were out there for over an hour. It was cold here, all by my self in this big bed.”
I chucked the sweatshirt towards the pile of wet clothing that lay near the hot tub, ran my eyes up and down Peggy’s exposed upper body before locking my gaze on her breasts. Resting on her crossed forearms, they appeared rounder, fuller and even higher up on her chest than usual, and her light pink nipples were most definitely larger and harder than normal.
“So I see.” I cleverly replied and wiggled my eyebrows.
“Don’t change the subject.” she insisted.
I walked over to the bed, sat on the edge of the mattress, leaned down and gave Peggy a ‘good morning’ kiss.
Her nipples stiffened even more, almost painfully so. “Didn’t know I was.” I said once I pulled away.
Peggy smacked her lips for a moment, realized what she was doing and stopped abruptly.
“Well you were. Now, as I was saying before you crassly changed the subject; you left me all alone. That wasn’t very nice. What if something had happened and I needed you? You didn’t leave a note or anything.”
I smiled, put my hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back down against the pillows. Then I laid down, head and shoulders across her torso, my long hair splayed over her belly and right shoulder.
I rolled my head to one side, planted a kiss between her breasts then another and another, moving gradually to her left nipple which I captured between my lips and began sucking on.
“You knew where I was.” I said around the hard little nubbin, once I had it securely between my teeth.
Peggy sighed softly and ran one hand thru the hair at my temple.
“No I didn’t. I can’t feel you, remember?”
I started to laugh, and bit down a little bit harder than I’d intended to. Peggy squealed; half in pain, half with pleasure. The hand in my hair tightened into a fist and pulled my head closer to her chest.
I let her nipple slide from between my teeth, flicked it once with my tongue and exhaled softly.
“You think I didn’t notice you flashing your tits at me from the window every time I ran around the back? I have very good eyesight you know.”
“Well most men would have stopped what they were doing and drooled, or whistled…or something. You just kept right on running. Don’t you love me anymore?”
I lifted my head and looked up. Peggy stared back at me with a sad, pouty expression.
I smiled tolerantly, shook my head and chuckled. “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that. Annoying as all get-out, but persistent.” I put my head back down between her breasts. “Still…don’t push your luck. My being in love with you and lusting after your body might not be enough to save you.”
“Save me from what?” she asked eagerly.
“Ask Izzy. She knows.”
Peggy giggled, caressing my head and hair. “Oh, that.” She was silent for a time, except for a faint murmuring as her fingers combed thru the tangled mop my hair had become. “How come you don’t treat me and Lilly like you do her?”
My brow furrowed. “Because neither one of you is her. You like what you like, Lilly what she likes and Izzy what she likes. None of you like all the same things, and you sure as hell don’t react the same way. Even when the three of you are working together, when your intentions and objectives are similar, you’re still different. You may not be able to see it, but I can feel it. I think it would be insulting if I tried to treat you guys alike.”
“Maybe we’d like you to. Ever think of that?”
I placed the tip of my index finger on top of her left nipple, just barely making contact with the crinkled surface, moving it around back and forth just enough to stiffen the softening flesh, which had begun to relax and withdraw. Peggy shuddered slightly and squirmed beneath me.
“Of course I have.”
“Then why haven’t you ever done it?”
“Why haven’t I what?” I teased.
Peggy lightly smacked the back of my head with her fingers. I retaliated by closing my thumb and index finger over her swelling nipple and pinching.
Hard.
Peggy squeaked and kicked her legs. “Hey! That hurts!” she protested with a whimper.
I twisted her flesh and kept up the pressure. “Izzy and Lilly like it.” I informed her.
“That’s not what I was talking about.”
I lifted my head and grinned at her. “I know.” I released her nipple, ducked my head down, put my lips on her breast and kissed the abused area.
“Remember those things I told you yesterday?” I asked.
Peggy shivered again. “Kinda hard to forget.”
I smiled to myself and kissed the rock hard little nubbin that capped her breast once again.
“Not like the usual kinds of things I say to work you up, were they?”
“No.” she admitted.
“You guys talk to each other about our sex lives, I mean the times when we’re not all in the same room, right?”
“Well…yeah.”
“Comparing notes, as it were?”
“It’s not like that…” she began. I put my right hand on the mattress next to her and pushed upright.
“Hey, I don’t mind. Really. I’m just saying, there probably isn’t much you guys don’t know about each other. On the other hand, there’s a lot I don’t know about the three of you, because I don’t get to sit in on those sessions. I know what you like when I do it, because I can feel it, and conversely I know what you don’t like for the same reason, but only at that moment. And I remember those things, so I either will or won’t do them again based on what I felt at that single moment in time. What I don’t know are things you might like to try.”
I sat all the way up and gazed admiringly at my little sweetie. “I know I tend to go overboard with this protective thing, but it’s not something I can just let go of. I don’t want you to get hurt and I sure don’t want to be the one who hurts you. So…I suppose that means I’m not ever going to be as sexually adventurous or aggressive as you girls would like. And I’m sorry about that, I really am.”
Peggy’s expression softened and the look she gave me was a mix of compassion and sorrow.
“Just come out and say it, would you?”
I raised one eyebrow then let it drop and shrugged slightly. “Alright. If you want something in particular, something kinky, you’re just gonna have to tell me.”
Peggy grinned widely, reached up with one hand and put her fingers against my heart.
“Most of that stuff from yesterday sounded pretty good to me.”
“Most?”
Peggy blushed. “I don’t want my butt to glow in the dark, thank you very much.”
I shrugged again. “Okay. I only threw that bit in ‘cause I like it. It’s such a sweet, spankable little butt.”
“Pervert.” Peggy laughed and tugged at my chest hair.
I bent down and licked the tip of her nose. “I’m not a pervert; I’m a connoisseur of fine female flesh. I know a good thing when I taste it, and I’ve always been partial to fresh Peggy.”
She sighed softly, pulled me down using her handful of chest hair and locked her arms around my neck. I shifted around, pulled my legs up and laid out full length on the bed, resting my full upper body on the tiny woman below me.
In the mean time I felt Izzy and Lilly enter the room behind us. There was a slight, but audible, ‘click’ as they shut the door.
“Hey you two, get a room.” Lilly said, her voice full of warmth and amusement.
“Go away, Ike’s seducing me.” Peggy suggested with an insufferably pretty and self-satisfied smile on her face. Her lips where right next to my ear, and no sooner had the words left her mouth than her tongue started delving deeply.
I moaned quietly and shifted the majority of my body on top of hers, burying her beneath me.
“Looks more like you’re seducing him.” Izzy said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
Peggy’s tongue slithered out of my ear, leaving a trail of saliva in its wake.
“He said I taste good.” she gasped breathlessly.
I chuckled and nibbled at the edges of her delicately elongated neck. “Soft and warm, sweet and sexy, tasty and ticklish.”
Peggy sighed loudly and squirmed beneath my bulk.
“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but your office just called Ike. The helicopter is on the way, so if you two plan on getting busy, you’d best get busy.” my sister informed us, punctuating her words with a quick smack of her hand across my backside.
Peggy pouted. “But it was just starting to get good!” she complained. “I could feel a poem coming on.”
Lilly chuckled. “You need an anatomy review.” Izzy laughed when Peggy stuck her tongue out at them.
I made my move, covering her mouth with mine, trapping her tongue between my teeth, pressing my chest down hard against her breast, driving those hard little nipples deeper into my chest.
Peggy moaned loudly and began bucking and rocking her hips, clutching with one hand at my hair, with the other at my shoulder, trying to pull me even closer.
“Damn boy, what did you do to her?” Lilly asked with a grin.
I released the tongue from between my lips, lifted my head and stared deeply into Peggy’s half open eyes.
“Trust me, this is nothing. When I get back, then you’ll really see something.”
I pushed up off of Peggy’s twitching body, pried her fingers out of my hair, got off the bed, stripped off my sweats and headed into the bathroom for a shower. Peggy was still clutching at the empty air above her when I closed the door behind me.
I wiped the steamy condensation off a portion of the mirror above the sink, picked up a disposable razor, bent slightly at the waist, and for the first time in almost a year, broke down and actually took a long overdue look at the reflection before me.
Long wet hair, a couple of shades darker than when dry, pulled back behind my ears; smooth pale skin stretched tight over high cheekbones; beard and stubble covered long sharp-ish jaw and chin; snowy eyebrows arching protectively over characterless gray eyes; a sharp eagle’s beak of a nose…
I dropped the razor, put my hands down on the outer rim of the sink, and simply stared at the man in the mirror, who returned the favor with a nauseatingly intense expression. He didn’t appear to be any more pleased with what he saw in the mirror than I was.
The gnarled, heavy vein on the side of my head, long, thick, darkly blue/purple and visible from the edge of my hairline all the way down my neck where it vanished beneath my clavicle, throbbed in time with my heart…slow, steady and relentless.
There was more muscle on my shoulders, my neck was a little thicker and my chest might have been slightly wider than I remembered, but apart from that, and the collection of misshapen scars I sported, it was the same young man who’d spent endless hours staring at me following Carlie’s death.
There seemed to be a touch more warmth, of humor, and perhaps even a lingering trace of humanity, lurking behind his features; emotions I knew for a fact hadn’t existed back then. But other than that, he was the same.
I was still the same. All those years gone by, all the things I’d seen and done…and I was still the same.
I narrowed my eyes and looked closer; examining him the way I would potential prey, looking for things that weren’t exactly right, that were out of place—things that were just plane wrong.
No…not the same. Not quite.
It’s the little things that give people away. Twitches, flinches, hesitations and hitches.
The fella in the mirror, he didn’t have any of those sorts of indicators. He didn’t give the slightest suggestion that there was so much as one damn thing going on behind those mind-numbing, chilly, heartless, reptilian eyes of his.
Too much of one thing, not enough of another, or a total absence of anything at all…that’s another thing to look for—to feel for.
It’s not always about asking the right questions. There are times when questions, or even words, are totally wasted and unnecessary. Sometimes words only serve to get in the way, obscuring the facts, the reality…the Truth.
That fella in the mirror, he didn’t give away anything at all. And that made me suspicious. What was he hiding? What didn’t he want me to know? Or was it that he wanted me to think there was something he didn’t want me to know?
That way madness lies.
I tried to blink and found that I couldn’t. I couldn’t force myself to stop looking at the man in the mirror, not even for a second.
I reached out with my empty right hand, index and middle fingers leading the way, to trace the outline of his face—to see if he was as unreal as he looked.
“How long are you gonna stare at yourself?” a soft, curious voice asked from behind me. I hadn’t even felt her approach, so intent had I been on the face in front of me. I jerked my hand back from the surface of the mirror, like a child caught reaching out for something they knew they weren’t supposed to touch.
“As long as it takes.” I replied. My voice sounded distant to my ears, as if I were speaking from a very long way away.
“To do what?” my sister inquired.
“To figure out what he’s keeping from me.”
“Ike?”
“Hmmm?”
“Ike!” she snapped, raising her voice sharply.
“I don’t like his eyes.” I commented absently, ignoring her outburst. “There’s something not quite right; something going on in there that he doesn’t want me to know about.”
I don’t know why I did it. In retrospect it was mind-bendingly stupid. There was no reason to do it, no reason to think I could do it. By all rights I shouldn’t have been able to. Still, should haves hadn’t applied to me for so damn long I’d pretty much stopped thinking in those terms.
I linked with the image in the mirror.
I felt him link with me.
It shouldn’t have been possible. All the rules I’d devised over the years to explain my abilities to myself and others said it wasn’t possible.
We linked. And the emotions immediately began to flow. The dam hadn’t cracked, it hadn’t broken…it was gone. Nothing stood between me and my reflection; no shields, no barriers, no defenses, no nothing.
Just me and him, each one’s eyes locked on the other; eyes that blazed fire from one orb, blood chilling rationality from the other.
Images, impressions, vague whispers of things we’d seen and heard long-long ago, flashed across the screen of our minds. Things we barely remembered remembering. People long since dead spoke, moved, laughed, cried and lived again. People that looked suspiciously like us, people who weren’t even remotely similar. People I’d never met, places I’d never been, never seen, never heard of, came to life. Memories of other people’s memories were reborn in the fertile ground of our memory.
They were real, they were true, they really had happened; I could feel that. Just not to me. And I remembered them.
More and more emotions made the trip across the bridge of our link. More and more images gave birth to thousands, millions, of memories, of lives lived, journeys taken, paths followed…some abandoned in frustration, some out of necessity, some cut off before their time, a rare few even to completion.
I remembered. I couldn’t stop remembering.
The pains of birth, the joys and sufferings, the sorrows born of losses uncountable, the grit and grime, glory and grandeur of so many individual and related lives and deaths.
I watched them being born, growing, giving birth to others, living out their lives and dying…too many to count.
And the feelings…
Oceans, mountains, generations of raw and unfettered feelings.
Back and forth they came and went, traversing the bridge we’d built between us with wild abandon, exalting in the opportunity to live again; to pass on to someone, to anyone, the fact of their existence. To not be forgotten.
Tears flowed from my eyes, turning to hissing steam as they exited the flaming eye, to droplets of ice as they fell from the other. A single tear for dozens of lives relived and remembered.
My body shuddered as the flow increased. I took a deep breath and with a monumental effort crushed the links between myself and the face in the mirror.
He grinned at me, the wise-ass, winked and then the mirror shattered. Fragments of broken glass came flying at my face; some long and sharp, most tiny and even sharper. They sliced into my head, face and upper body like a crashing wave of razor blades.
I never blinked, just stood there, rooted to the spot and accepted the pain. Welcomed the pain.
It was mine and I knew it. Not someone else’s, not a memory of pain, but mine, fresh, immediate and real. It was good to know I was still capable of feeling my own pain.
Izzy stepped up behind me, shoved one hand between the towel around my waist and the skin of my back, ran it down between the cheeks of my ass and clamped down hard around my free swinging testicles.
“Ike! You’d better quit whatever the hell it is you think you’re doing or I’ll…”
I stood full upright, turned my head and unblinking emotionless eyes on my sister.
“Or what?” I asked.
Izzy exhaled loudly and squeezed. “Is this going to be a regular thing with you now?” she asked. “It was bad enough having to listen to him when there were two of you. This new version isn’t much of an improvement.”
“This is who I am. You might as well get used to it.”
“What if I can’t? What if I don’t want to?” She squeezed even harder. The pain below my cock and in the pit of my stomach grew in magnitude. Nausea rose up into my chest and throat, threatening to expel the previous evening’s meal. Real pain. My pain.
I ignored it. “Do what you feel you have to, but right now, if you’re smart, you’ll let go of my balls.”
“Only if you stop acting like a madman.”
“I’m as sane as I ever was.”
Reluctantly my sister let go of my balls and backed a step away. But she didn’t retreat, and the look on her face told me she wasn’t afraid.
That was good. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me. Didn’t want any of my girls to be afraid of me.
I turned my eyes back and saw myself in the mirror, the unbroken mirror above the sink, and saw my uncut, unbloodied face looking back at me.
As sane as I ever was.
Fuckin’ symbolism!
“There’s a meeting in
“They’re all standing around in little groups talking, not unlike a cocktail party, when a solitary figure walks up. They all stop what they’re doing and turn en mass to stare at the interloper.
“ ‘Hi. How ya’all doin’?’ he says. ‘We’ve never actually met, but uhmm…I’m God. Thanks for watching the store while I was away. I appreciate everything you tried to do—but you can all go home now. I’ll take it from here.’
“What do you suppose happens next?” Dr. Wills asked me.
We were sitting together in the den of his house, he in an old rocking chair, me facing him on the edge of an antique Victorian wing-back chair.
Wills had retired to an estate he’d purchased in upscale
North Roland Park
North Roland Park was a three hour drive, on a good day,
from
He hadn’t been at all surprised at my arrival. He knew I was coming.
“How’ve you been, son? Had a lot of folks come calling recently, wanting to talk about you.” he said upon greeting me at the front door.
“So I hear.” I replied. “That’s why I’ve come.”
He nodded and ushered me in, guiding me into his den. Along the way he introduced his housekeeper and personal assistant before sending them away, leaving the two of us alone in the cluttered room. He sat in the rocker and gestured at the chair across the way. He felt…oddly different. There was a kind of fuzziness to him, to his entire emotional state. Almost as if a part of him weren’t there.
“Sit down Ike. No need to stand on formality.”
I sat. “What are you trying to do to me, old man?” I asked pleasantly.
He smiled. “Still blunt and straight to the point as ever.”
I didn’t smile in return. “You’ve been talking out of school.”
“Not at all.”
“He knew.” I said coldly.
“I assume you’re referring to the President. Of course he knew. I told him.”
“You don’t consider that talking out of school?”
Wills sighed. “It was necessary. You might not see it that way, yet, but it was necessary. Son, you’ve no idea how long it took me to find you. The years I spent searching, sifting thru newspapers, federal and local records, tracking down rumors. How many people I had investigated, hoping…praying…that they might turn out to be the person I was looking for.”
“You’re right, I don’t. And frankly, I don’t care. What I do care about is people I’ve placed my trust in going about spilling their guts to every Tom, Dick and President about me. That I do care about.”
He held up a hand.
“Do you honestly think you could do what you’ve been doing these past few years and not attract any attention? Especially the things you’ve been up to this past year? Son, they’re not nearly as stupid as you seem to think.”
“In most cases they’re even more stupid than I think.”
“No, my boy, they really aren’t. What they are is confused. They see what’s going on, and they’re pretty damn sure you’re the one responsible; they’re just having a little difficulty reconciling cause with effect. At least the majority of them are. There are one or two though who’ve made the connection. And they didn’t need my help to do it.”
“Like the President?”
Wills nodded. “You might not think it, based on the past couple of years, but there was a time when I seriously considered making that man my successor.”
“I find that very hard to believe. The man is morally bereft. He was born to be a politician.”
He shook his head and smiled. “You’d have had to have met him thirty years ago, when I first did. In many ways the two of you are quite similar. Oh, not physically, of course, but he was once a cocky, good looking, highly intelligent young man. He was bright, motivated, ambitious, passionate about ideas and ideals. Women were drawn to him in much the same way they’re drawn to you. They still are.
“What he truly lacked was an aggressive nature, which I considered absolutely necessary. And then of course there was his lack of morality. It’s a sad fact of human nature that half the population preaches morality, while quietly doing whatever the hell they like, and the other half believes it to be the residue of a feeble-minded philosophy. Our President is one of the latter and always had the morals of an alley cat. Self-preservation, self-promotion and physical gratification were more important to him. He was, as I’m sure you know by now, sensitive enough, but for some reason he wasn’t cognizant of his ability. Most depressing of all, from my perspective at least, was the fact that his ability was roughly equal to my own; not at all what I’d been looking for. Unfortunately, he was, for a very long time, the best prospect I had.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How many others like us have you found over the years?”
“Not all that many, I’m afraid.”
“How many?”
“Perhaps twenty. Only a couple of them were even aware that they were different from other people.”
“Did you know about Tim?”
“Tim?”
“Arthur Davenport’s nephew. The boy I burnt to death on our driveway nearly eight and half years ago.”
Wills frowned. “Yes. I knew about him. He was even more mentally unstable than you were purported to be. I never considered him a viable option. And I had no idea that Arthur was aware of his ability.”
“Charline?”
“Your sister-in-law? No. She never showed up on my radar.”
“How about Peggy?”
Wills was thoughtful for several seconds. Then he nodded. “Yes.”
“You sent her there. To the hospital…to me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked, puzzled and angry.
He shrugged. “To see how you’d react; to test your strengths and weaknesses, one against the other.”
“What the hell did you think would happen? She could have killed me, or I her. What were you thinking?”
The tall, emaciated old man shook his head. “Ike, Peggy never posed any significant threat to you. We both know that. You, on the other hand, were something of an enigma in that regard. With only your military record to go by, I really wasn’t sure how you’d react to a direct challenge. Not from an individual with abilities similar to your own. It was important to find out.”
“You set me up to kill her!” I snarled.
He shook his head. “That was a possibility, I won’t deny it. But you didn’t, did you? She attacked you with, as I understand events, naked aggression. You could have killed her; you could have lobotomized her and turned her into a vegetable or driven her insane. You might have simply ignored her and the threat she posed to the other patients on the ward. You made none of the obvious choices. Instead, you chose to repair a damaged mind, to heal a savaged soul. Son, you took an empathic maniac and did what no one else on earth could have; created a fully functioning human being, showing compassion where none was deserved, understanding where none was expected, and sympathy where none was warranted. That’s when I knew you were the man I’d been looking for.”
He stared rocking slowly, back and forth, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on mine.
“Before I ever set eyes on you, I’d dug up every scrap of
information there was to be had about Ike Blacktower. Every report card you ever got, every person
you’d ever talked to or that knew your name, every book you ever checked out of
a library, every member of your family going back a hundred years. I knew all about you and your sister. I knew about Vickie Carter, Ricky Cruz, about
Carlie, about Harve and the
desert. I had people watching you all the
way thru boot camp, monitoring your work with the CID, and when you shot and
killed those two men that day in
I shook my head. “I still don’t understand why?”
He stopped rocking. “I had to be sure, of course”
“Of what?”
“That you were the man I suspected you might be. Quite frankly, it was imperative that we determine precisely what you might or might not be capable of prior to approaching you directly.”
Flames blossomed from my eyes. Wills flinched but didn’t look away.
Then he related his little story of the meeting in
“What do you suppose happens next?”
I shrugged, waiting for the punchline.
“Are you familiar with Arthur C. Clarke?” he asked.
“Sci-fi writer; wrote the thing with the monkeys and the thigh bone.”
“2001. Yes, that’s him. He’s also rather famous for something else. A quotation. Atheists love it, deists despise it. He said, ‘It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.’ ”
I nodded. “Voltaire said something similar, ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’ ”
“Similar, but the perspective is about one hundred and eighty degrees off target. Clarke would have understood and agreed with my motives and goals. Voltaire would not.”
I stared at the man. I thought he’d have been beyond that sort of foolishness. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I almost wish I was.”
We stared at one another for several very long seconds with out so much as an audible breath to be heard.
“What’s in it for you?” I asked.
My old mentor and boss frowned. “Not a damned thing. Look at me son, really look at me.”
I linked and examined him.
My eyes glazed over as the flames damped down.
He nodded slowly. “How long have you known?” I asked him.
“Almost a year now.”
His body was riddled with tumors. They were everywhere. Limbic, circulatory, nerve…all his systems and major organs were infected. His blood contained heavy concentrations of morphine. No wonder he’d felt fuzzy.
Without thinking I extended a hand, leaning towards the man in the rocker.
He rocked back away from me. “Ike, no!” he exclaimed gently.
I stopped moving, lowered my hand and frowned.
“Please, I can help you.” I pleaded softly.
The old man smiled fondly, but shook his head.
“That’s the primary reason why I chose you. For all the pain and suffering you’ve endured in your young life, you’ve somehow maintained a level of compassion that, in my experience, is unrivaled.
“Your young ladies have kept in touch, on and off, in the years since my retirement, providing me with updates on the children, themselves—and you. They informed me earlier this year about your…marital difficulties.”
I snapped the link abruptly. My emotions got away from me for an instant, and they must have been something to see, because Wills’ expression went from fond approval to conciliatory in a flash.
“I’m afraid there wasn’t much in the way of wisdom I could offer. What I did tell them was that their best course of action was to stick together and wait for your better nature to exert itself. I’ve never encountered an individual more willing to suffer for what he wants than you. And I know you want them. There’s no doubt in my mind that you love them, probably more than is good for any of you. But that is who you are. I also happen to know that each of them fervently believes that the sun rises and sets on your whim.”
“I doubt that very much. But even if it were true, that still wouldn’t qualify me to run this, or any other country.”
“No. You’re quite right. What qualifies you is the combination of that compassionate nature along with your stubborn insistence on thwarting the power structure. Our system is so entrenched and well established that no other single individual stands a chance against it. But you do. You’ve proven over and over again that you, and you alone, are the only one able to make the system do what it’s supposed to. I’ve seen it, and now the system has recognized it as well. They’re also aware that short of eliminating you, they’ve no choice but to bring you in with them. They haven’t a chance of surviving otherwise.”
I leaned back. “Soooo…”
Wills nodded. “So I nudged the President. He thinks making you Inspector General for life was his idea. It wasn’t all my doing of course; your fiddling with his cabinet was what really forced their hand.”
“And what does he get out of this little charade?”
“Very little. He thinks he’ll be hamstringing the next President, saddling whoever wins with a metaphorical sword of Damocles poised over their head, with himself as the thread holding you aloft. And while that isn’t remotely true, his believing so acted as an added incentive. He also imagines that by bringing you into the power structure, they’ll have an easier time of swaying you to their way of thinking. I’m also sure he believes you’ll be at least moderately grateful to him personally as well.”
I snorted dismissively.
Wills smiled. “I
passed along to the President some of
what I know about you, not all. At the moment he believes you to be
moderately stronger than he is. No one knows
precisely how much stronger. I know you
better than anyone in
The corner of my mouth twitched. When were people going to stop thinking they knew me?
“As far as the President knows, you’re just very young looking man with a talent for convincing people to agree with your point of view. They believe you want the same things they do, and they imagine you can be bought for roughly the same price.”
“Like I said, stupid.”
He shook his head. “No, merely blinded by a limited perspective. We’re all products of our times, Ike. They believe and think the way they’ve been trained to.”
Wills frowned. He considered his next words carefully.
“I knew your grandmother.” he said finally.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Your mother’s mother, Carmen. Carmen Harper.” Wills sighed. “She was a beautiful woman, looked rather like your sister, but considerably smaller. And her mind…dear Lord, I wish I had the words to describe the depth and complexity of her mind. Douglas Macarthur used to impress people with his facility for pulling obscure facts and details out of thin air. The man was truly phenomenal in that respect. He had nothing on Carmen. She made him look like an idiot savant. There wasn’t a subject under the sun that lady didn’t know something about.”
I shrugged. “I never knew her. She and her husband died years before I was born. A boating accident on the Amazon.”
Wills’ frown deepened. “Accident my ass!” he growled vehemently.
I shook my head fractionally.
“My boy, every family has its secrets, and not all of them get passed along from generation to generation.” He took a deep breath. “I understand you’ve been looking thru the CIA records, looking for information on the first Director of Internal Security.”
I nodded. I’d made no secret of my curiosity on the subject.
“You won’t find any, because I destroyed all of them a very long time ago. To date there have been a grand sum total of three Directors of Internal Security at the CIA. You’re the third, I was the second; your grandmother was the original.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say in reply.
“Eisenhower appointed her in 1953, after the CIA became convinced that the KGB was incorporating so-called psychics into their espionage networks. He figured that if there were any truth to the rumors, your grandmother’d be the one to sniff ‘em out.”
“And why would he think that?”
“Your mother never told you about Carmen?”
I shook my head. “Not specifically. I don’t think they were all that close.” I closed my eyes for a moment and sifted thru my memories. “All she told me was that her mother worked for the government during the Korean War, and that she and her husband died on a boating trip down the Amazon. I always assumed the cause was malaria or some other exotic disease.” I opened my eyes.
Wills nodded and began rocking. “She did indeed work for the government during the War. Carmen was a medical researcher at the end of World War II, a rather unique occupation for a woman in those days. She specialized in shell shock cases; what eventually came to be called ‘battle fatigue’. She had an undeniable gift for dealing with mental cases of that type. A few of her colleagues, those that weren’t jealous of her success, joked among themselves that she must have been a mind reader. In 1951, Carmen began working with soldiers and airmen who’d been captured and held by the Chinese, those suspected of having been ‘brainwashed’. That’s how she came to Eisenhower’s attention. He got hold of her case studies and was so impressed with her patient’s recovery rate that he insisted on meeting her in person. Afterwards he was even more impressed. So impressed that he created a special department within the CIA, just for her.”
“Could she read minds?”
“No, I don’t believe so. At least I don’t think she could. Carmen never claimed she could. But she was highly empathic, that I do know. Her ability was much stronger and more…flexible…than my own. She could link without touching.”
“Fascinating,” I deadpanned, “but tell me, what, apart from phantom KGB psychics, made Eisenhower create Internal Security in the first place?”
Wills shrugged. “I don’t know. I have my suspicions of course, but neither one of them actually came out and told me. If I had to guess though, I’d say it was partly in response to political pressure over the Red Scare, and partly from Eisenhower’s own concerns about Russian infiltration of the CIA.”
“Why the CIA and not the FBI?”
He became aggravated. “Hoover. Hoover had the FBI completely under his personal control. Most of the politicians as well, including Eisenhower. There was no way to force him to accept an independent agency within his operation.”
“Okay, why did she pick you to be her successor?”
Wills smiled thoughtfully, sadly, regretfully. “We grew up together. Carmen’s father was my uncle.”
“Holy shit.” I hissed.
“Our families weren’t terribly close, but Carmen and I were. I was an only child and Carmen actively despised her own siblings; for some mysterious reason the two of us always got along rather well. She was the sister I never had and I…” He waved his hands in lateral circles, as if digging thru the air for answers, “I was never quite certain what role I played in her life. Cousin, brother, friend, companion, confidant, sidekick…I never really knew, and she never felt the need to clarify matters for me. Carmen was a unique woman, a magnificent woman; brilliant, driven, energetic, curious, beautiful—lord she was beautiful! But she could also be cold, distant, and incredibly tactless. Your grandmother was famously intolerant of stupidity, and not the least bit shy about sharing those views with the objects of her scorn. On top of which she had a temper that terrified rabid dogs. For such a small woman, she was, when she wanted to be, unimaginably intimidating.”
He sighed long and hard. “Within weeks of her appointment she’d run roughshod over half of Washington’s power elite, including J. Edgar Hoover. Eventually, the pair of them, Hoover and McCarthy, tried to force your grandmother to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee.” He chuckled. “She went to the FBI and forced her way into Hoover’s office. It must have been one hell of a meeting because by all accounts it lasted just under eleven minutes, and the quality of curses and shouting supposedly matched what you might have heard on a busy day at the Baltimore docks. The end result of which was that HUAC’s subpoena was withdrawn and that was the last direct contact our department had with FBI until Hoover died.”
Wills’ face took on a bizarre mix of remorse and pure animalistic hatred. “Four years after that meeting Carmen and her husband were killed. It was no goddamned accident either. The boat and the nine people on it were blown to bits. The explosion was so devestating that it took us the better part two years to reconstruct what happened. I couldn’t prove it then, and I can’t prove it now, but no one will ever convince me that cross dressing troglodyte wasn’t the one responsible for her death.”
I sat watching him rock back and forth, his eyes had long since lost focus; Wills was wandering the shrouded halls of his past.
“She loved Stephen dearly. I’ve no idea why. Your grandfather was—how can I put this…he would have made a terrific house-husband. He was a passive, considerate, kind and extremely gentle man. Highly intelligent in his own way, I suppose, but hardly the equal of the woman he married. She completely dominated their relationship. She dominated all her personal and professional relationships. He worshiped her. I worshiped her. There was nothing either of us wouldn’t have done for her…and she knew it. Far too many men felt the way we did, and she was well aware of that as well. Carmen enjoyed the attention, she thrived on it—she also confessed to me on one occasion that she considered it a terrible personal weakness.
“Stephen raised their daughter pretty much on his own. Carmen didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. She lived for her work. Whatever project she was involved with on a given day was, for her, the most important thing in the world.”
“Why did she pick you to succeed her?” I prodded gently.
“She knew me. She trusted me to do what she wanted. Trust was, in those days—in most days—very hard to come by in Washington. I was an outsider, I was family…and she knew from childhood on how much I loved her.”
He shook his head suddenly and his glassy eyes cleared. “I met Stephen twice, both occasions prior to your mother’s birth. I never met her; never knew or cared what happened to her until your military records came to my attention.”
“You thought I might be like her. Like my grandmother.”
“The possibility crossed my mind. After all, she and I had similar abilities. There was a chance you, or one of your siblings, might as well. I’ve got to tell you though; you weren’t at all what I expected.”
I crossed my legs. “I hear that a lot.”
“You don’t look at all like her. You don’t look much like Stephen either. You’ve got his height, but that’s about it. I suppose you take after your father’s family. Your temperaments, yours and your grandmother’s, are similar, but only superficially. You’re better at holding your temper than she ever was, though it’s clear enough that yours is just as violent. You both have first class minds, but I’d have to give her the edge on you in that department. Carmen, however, was a grand master of manipulation and you are most definitely not. She could convince anyone to alter their most cherished views and opinions on any subject. You, on the other hand, couldn’t manipulate your way out of a wet paper bag.”
“I hate being manipulated, why would I want to do it to others?”
“It’s what people do. It’s what humans do.”
“You’re saying I’m not human?”
“Am I? My opinion couldn’t matter less. Your thoughts on the subject are far more relevant, and probably far more incisive and interesting. Now, as I was saying, you can’t manipulate for shit. Don’t take that as a criticism, because I certainly don’t intend it as one. You see, one of the few things I truly disliked about your grandmother was the way she constantly manipulated people. It was second nature to her and she did it to everyone, including me. Perhaps she couldn’t help herself. Perhaps it had something to do with the times she grew up in. Either way, it came close to destroying our relationship on more than one occasion. Numbering highly among your many admirable qualities, my boy, would be that in all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never so much as attempted to manipulate anyone. And I think I know why.”
“Oh?”
“People manipulate when they’re in a position of weakness. It’s a way to get what they want when they’re incapable of getting it for themselves. As far as I’m able to judge, you’ve never truly been in a position of weakness.”
I frowned and considered his words. As with most things, it all came down to point of view.
“We all want things we can’t have.” I temporized.
“We’re not discussing the rest of humanity, we’re talking about you. So, name me one; just one thing you want that you can’t see yourself having.” he shot back.
I could have given him several. I decided not to say anything.
He waved a hand, as if brushing a fly aside. “It really doesn’t matter. I mention it only as a way of emphasizing my point, which is that you’re nothing like the rest of us, including myself and your grandmother…or Peggy for that matter. And unless I’m very much mistaken, that difference is becoming more and more apparent, even to you. Son, my abilities are extremely limited, my empathic sensitivity barely exceeds the boundaries of this room, and yet I felt you coming this way half an hour before you got here. An inaudible vibration in my bones, similar to the first time you and I shook hands, but drastically more concentrated and powerful.”
I sighed and told him about my trip to the west coast.
At the end his eyes were wide with barely contained excitement. “Millions?”
“Every single living soul for miles around.” I confirmed.
“Incredible!”
“Annoying.” I said dismissively.
“How can you stand having so many emotions at the same time? Doesn’t it…bother you at all?”
“At first.” I shrugged. “I got used to it.”
“Incredible.” he repeated.
“Doc, it’s not wonderful. I used people to blow up a fucking building!”
“Yes, yes,” he said dismissively, “but do you know how you did it? Could you do it again if you had to?”
“Are you sure you used to be a Bishop?”
“Ike, in those days I was very young, very devout and terribly naïve. I gave up on religion the day after I came to work for your grandmother. She showed me how the world really worked. That in the battle between good and evil, evil nearly always wins.”
“I’m not god.”
He smiled. “I never said you were.”
“I have no intention of being king, emperor or President either.”
His smile never faltered. “Your recent actions say otherwise.”
“I was being attacked by my own government. I got angry.”
“Understandably. But you stopped. You were, by my estimation, more than three quarters of the way to a complete takeover of the government and then, for some inexplicable reason, you stopped. Why?”
I sighed. “Peggy called me a fascist.”
Wills’ face went slack for several seconds, and then he broke out into explosive laughter. Great heaving, hacking, tears running from the corners of his eyes laughter.
“Of course you’re a fascist. You’d be a damn fool if you weren’t.” he said, once he got himself under control.
I stared at him thru narrowed eyelids.
“You find the term offensive?” he asked, curious.
“Don’t you?” I countered.
“Can’t say I do. Fascist wasn’t always a derogatory term you know. It got a bad rap during the Second World War. The sixties sullied the term beyond redemption, but by itself it’s no worse than capitalist, or liberal. It’s just a word.”
“Just a word.” I growled. “It’s more than that, and you know it. Words personify concepts as well as emotions. Powerful concepts and emotions. Without them demagogues couldn’t exist.”
“Demagogues are manipulators.” he pointed out.
“According to you, my grandmother could have been a great one.”
He nodded. “Easily. Had she been so inclined, which thankfully she was not, she could have been truly dangerous. Regardless, you aren’t her. For one thing, you lack her ambitious nature.”
“I have ambitions.” I protested.
“Such as?”
“Like being left alone.”
He shook his head. “Never gonna happen. Not now. If you’d turned me down when I first offered you a job—who knows how things might have turned out? It’s far too late now. And for that I am truly sorry. I did you a great personal disservice.”
“But you’d do it again, wouldn’t you?”
“In a New York minute.”
I glared at him. “I can make them leave me be.”
He looked at me sadly. “Doing what you suggest would only serve to proclaim that you are what you claim you’re not. Besides, in the long run it wouldn’t accomplish anything. If you were on your own, you might, might stay free for a time. But it’s no longer simply a matter of getting our government to leave you alone. What about the rest of the world’s governments? They know about you as well. Maybe not to the same degree, but you’re still a marked man. Staying with this government provides a certain amount of protection, of warning, that you wouldn’t have on your own.”
He watched my face, eyes flickering up and down, side to side, searching for indications of what I was thinking.
“But you’re not on your own anymore, are you? It’s not like it was in the beginning. There are a great many people depending on you now, aren’t there? You’ve built a small kingdom for yourself in the middle of this government. What will happen to them if you take off?”
I scowled and brilliant yellow/orange flames danced before my eyes.
“What have you done to me, old man?” I snarled.
“Merely put you in a position where you can accomplish what your grandmother and I could not.”
I waved one hand in imitation of his own dismissive gesture. “Fuck that! You think I give a shit about your dreams? About the dreams and ambitions of a woman I never met?”
“Ike,” he began cautiously, “this country, your country, is in trouble. Your grandmother saw it coming long before I did. She used to say that the American people behaved like a bunch of spoiled upper class children; busily pissing away the inheritance their parents and grandparents struggled generations to create for them. An ungrateful gaggle of imbeciles. She believed that, at some not too distant point in the future, the Republic would collapse; that the ensuing chaos would completely destroy this country, and might well take the rest of the world down with it.”
“So what? The dung heap of History is replete with tales of fallen nations and empires. Another tossed on the pile won’t alter the nature of humanity one iota.”
“We’re not discussing abstract philosophical concepts here son. We talking about the country you were born in. About the country you fought and bled for.”
“Bullshit! My country wasn’t in danger when I was sent off to war. I…we…fought for another country. For their fuckin’ oil!”
“You fought because your elected leaders decided to send you to fight for another country’s oil.”
“Fuckin-A they did. So how do you figure I owe them anything?”
“If you do nothing, then nothing will change. One day soon there’ll be another war, there always is, and your children could well end up fighting for no damn good reason.”
Flames exploded around my head, snapping and cracking like whips. Wills’ eyes expanded to twice their normal diameter.
“No one’s sending my children anywhere.” I grated between clenched teeth.
Wills nodded sharply, his eyes fixed intently on mine, like a rat caught in the gaze of a cobra.
“Fine, your children will be safe. What about everyone else’s? Who’s going to save them?”
I stared at him, a tall, gray haired, stooped, sick and dying old man, struggling to remain calm in the face of…of me. He wasn’t afraid. The drugs coursing thru his veins probably had more to do with his relaxed posture than self-control or innate bravery. He wasn’t afraid, but he was worried.
And feeling smugly confident as well.
A bracing blast of artic cold shot thru my body. It began at the base of my skull, ran down my spine and extended its ice-like tendrils into my arms and legs, fingers and toes. The fire in my eyes faded, the blaze around my head vanished, replaced by the rapidly spreading wintry feeling in my head.
“You sneaky old bastard.” I rasped.
He watched me closely; his body relaxed a centimeter at a time, while the expression on his face remained unchanged.
“I hate being manipulated.”
“You’re blue.” he announced breathlessly.
I stared unblinking, taking note of every twitch, every throbbing pulse of the large arteries on either side of his wrinkled neck, every hand tremor, eye flutter and nostril flair. I counted his pulse, tracked his blood, his heart beat and the electric discharges between neural dendrites.
At the same time I went over every word that had passed between us, every phrase, every intonation, every shift and change in body language.
“You’re my cousin.” I countered.
He nodded.
“You brought up my grandmother as a way to forge a connection between you and me, beyond what already exists.”
“Did I?”
I ignored his weak diversion, thinking quickly; recalling conversations between my Granddad and mother, mother and father, mother and Izzy, father and Ivan, between me and my girls, individually and as a group. Names, places, dates and events began to appear in my mind like a high speed diorama. Pieces began dropping into place, creating a final picture that in no way improved my mood.
I blinked once; the slick sensation of ice sliding over ice caused a twitch at the corner of my mouth, which in turn created a faint sound of ice cubes cracking.
“We’re all related.” I rasped, exhaling a puff of cold carbon dioxide into the air.
Wills stared at me blankly for three seconds…and then he smiled.
“So that’s it. Anger is hot, logic is cold. Symmetrical incorporation of thought and emotion.”
“Wills and Harper on our mother’s side, Blacktower and Ravenwood on Dad’s. Lilly’s father was a Ravenwood and Wills, her mother a Driscoll and Harper. And Peggy…”
“Do you have any control over the process, or is it dependent on your emotional state?”
“…poor Peggy. Driscoll on one side, Blacktower, Wills and Van Luten on the other.”
I broke my focus from the internal images I was watching and returned my full attention back to the old man blathering on before me.
“How long have you been aware of this?”
He looked completely lost for several seconds. “Excuse me?”
“How long have you known about the connection between our families…between me and my girls?”
“Five years, give or take. It took quite some time, determining who Peggy’s mother was, and then even longer establishing her mother’s parentage.”
“Five years.”
“Give or take.” he re-qualified.
“And you’re only
bringing it up now? Were you afraid I might find the subject too
onerous?”
His face slackened and paled. “I believed it might adversely affect your relationships.” he said softly.
I sat forward on the chair and smiled as snow flakes began to fall around us.
“Cousin, I’ve been in love with my sister since I was two. We began fucking like bunnies when I was twenty-two. She’s the one who insisted we bring Lilly and Peggy into our little relationship. So what makes you think that our being related to Lilly and Peggy would in any way alter my feelings for them?”
Wills tore his eyes away to look around the room, mouth hanging open as he watched snow fall from the ceiling and build up in small drifts on the furnishing and floor.
“Dear God.” he gasped, shivered from the increasing cold then collected his wits. “I wasn’t referring to your relationships with them; I meant theirs with you.”
That was an aspect that hadn’t occurred to me. I took several nanoseconds to absorb and analyze the various permutations which presented themselves, and eventually—perhaps five milliseconds later—acknowledged that there was a more than trivial possibility he’d been correct in his judgment.
“Very well.” The snow flakes ceased to fall. “I’m still a bit pissed off with you though. I don’t like it when people fuck with my mind. Not even in a good cause.”
“Duly noted and understood, I assure you.”
“Good.” I said, feeling low levels of warmth returning to my various extremities. I flexed my fingers for a moment or two then leaned forward, extend my right arm, shoved my palm against his chest, created a link and blasted a city’s worth of positive feelings, backed by the scourging light of my tiny little internal flame, into his body, incinerating each and every tumor within his body.
Wills’ body stiffened, his eyes rolled back into their sockets and his mouth opened in a silent scream of agony.
I leaned in close, keeping my hand firmly pressed against his chest, pushing him farther back, rolling the man and his rocking chair into a nearly horizontal attitude.
“How can I impress upon you the severity of the sin you’ve committed; the enormity of your gaffe? I don’t think words alone are going to be sufficient to the task, do you? No, in this instance, words just won’t do. The cost of your transgression is going to be very high; I’m putting a lean on your life.”
I smiled faintly, and continued to pour emotions into his tired old body.
“You can die when I’ve no further need of you, and not one goddamned second before.”