Second Thoughts and Last Chances

 

By

Latikia

 

Edited by

The Old Fart

 

Copyright © 2007, 2008

 

 

 

Chapter 40

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“…that’s more like it!  I do believe we finally have the Doctor’s attention.  One more time Paolo, but I think a little additional amperage is called for, don’t you?”

 

…zzzztttzztttzzttttt…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…Peggy’s near death experience only served to aggravate and intensify my obsession with finding and killing Alex Chorney.

 

Jeff Harmon and the two men patrolling with him had been killed, apparently by the men who’d come to kidnap either Izzy or Belle.  None of us were ever sure who the actual target was.  Not that it mattered much to me.

 

We buried our people, my people, at Arlington, complete with all the bells and whistles.  Frankly, it didn’t help one little bit.

 

We interred Junior right there on the ranch where he’d died defending my family, and put up a small monument over his grave.  Izzy told me afterwards that she’d put my Medal of Honor in the ground with him, and I can’t say I disapproved.  He deserved it a lot more than I ever did. 

 

There was no doubt in my mind who’d been behind the attack.  But, once again, there was no proof to connect Chorney.

 

I butchered his mother anyway…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…zzzztttzztttzzttttt…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…came home early from work that day late in November of 2003.  Thanksgiving was only a couple of days away and the girls had been busy preparing for the big get-together they’d planned.  Every one we knew was coming; David and Anya Jones, Laurie and Nigel, Dr. Wills,  Sly and his new bride Angelica, two of Peggy’s colleagues from the clinic and two of Lilly and Izzy’s friends from the foundation.  

 

I’d have preferred we kept it just a simple family gathering, but they had other ideas and I’d been told to mind my own business.

 

Outvoted again.

 

I’d hung my coat in the front closet and dropped my briefcase on the desk top in my den, when I felt a sudden hot flash of lust and desire blast thru my senses.

 

The girls were moving around between the kitchen, pantry, wine cellar and dining room, and I couldn’t sense anything remotely resembling lust from any of them.

 

I walked out of the den, down the hall and stood in front of staircase that led to the second floor.

 

The sensations increased, drawing me towards the hot house.   The door was closed, as it normally was, to keep the heat and humidity out of the main house.  I opened it gently, careful not to make any loud or overt noise and stepped inside. 

 

Rows and rows of potted plants on neat and well spaced rows of waist high benches. 

 

I heard faint voices coming from the back.  Moving quietly, I made my way down the nearest row, taking care not to kick or step on anything that might be lying on the floor.  The voices grew slightly louder, and the emotions I’d been sensing grew more and more tangible.  Hormones were rising to a fever pitch.

 

“…what’s it feel like?” I heard Rosie ask breathlessly.

 

“…kinda tickles…uhghhh…hurts too...” AJ’s soft tenor replied gasping.

 

“It hurts?” Belle inquired, a little fearfully.

 

“…good kinda hurting…do it a little…faster…oh god!”

 

I crouched down and approached the sound of their voices as if I were back in the Iraqi desert.  When I reached the end of the row I snuck a peek around the end of the bench and nearly swallowed my tongue.

 

AJ lay naked on top of a small potting bench, Belle and Rosie on either side by his shoulders, running their hands over his bared chest and belly, while little Tink, wearing what appeared to be one of Peggy’s lab coats and a stethoscope looped around her neck, bent over his pelvis, was sucking diligently on his ten year old penis.

 

I’d never even imagined playing that kind of doctor when I was his age.

 

To say I was shocked would have been overstating the obvious.  Surprised?  No, not really.  There’d been plenty of indications over the years telling me that this was possible, if not inevitable.

 

Was I upset?  Fuck yeah!

 

Under different circumstances I’d have secretly been proud as hell.  What father wouldn’t be thrilled to know his ten year old son was getting blown?  But these were some very odd circumstances.

 

And it was my eleven year old daughter doing the blowing for fucks sake!

 

I was torn between a need to jump up and start hollering and the cold harsh realization that my own childhood had ended up in almost the same way.

 

Belle bent down and kissed her little brother tenderly on the mouth, taking his hand and guiding it up under her t-shirt.  It was then that I noticed that his other hand was moving around under Rosie’s skirt.

 

“…Tink, I want a turn too…” Belle whined plaintively, resting the side of her face against AJ’s forehead while he squeezed and fondled her budding breast.

 

I shook my head sadly and backed up silently.  Then I got to my feet and beat a hasty retreat out of the hot house.  Mindlessly I ended up seated at the desk in my den, my head held in both hands.

 

They loved each other, that much was clear.  And it appeared that their activity wasn’t one sided.  I supposed that was something to be thankful for.

 

What the hell was I going to do about it?  What could I do that wouldn’t make matters worse?

 

I’d have to tell the girls.  They had a right to know.  More importantly, from my perspective, I didn’t want to carry this alone.

 

I raised my head from my hands and looked around, my eyes landing on the phone set.

 

I picked up the receiver and began punching numbers.

 

“Hello?” the familiar voice answered.

 

“Hey Dad.” I said.  For the first time in my life, I felt a real bond between us.  For the very first time, I understood him…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“…this isn’t working.”

 

“Make it work!”

 

“I can’t.  The man’s in some kind of trance; either that or he’s a fucking masochist.  Either way, electro-shock’s not working.”

 

“You’re sure?”

 

“Does the man look like he’s about to spill his guts about anything?”

 

“Don’t take that tone with me Paolo.”

 

“…sorry…I’m frustrated is all.”

 

“Yes, well, join the club.  I suppose we’ll just have to go the drug route.”

 

“…not going to do any good as long as he’s unconscious…”

 

“These drugs are a little different than what you’re used to dealing with.  Once they’re in his system, it won’t matter.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…my life was coming apart at the seams.  There’s no nicer way to put it.

 

My job at the CIA had become a joke, even among my staff.  Since September 11th no one in power trusted much of anything that came out of the CIA.  Moles and spies were a fond memory.  There was even talk that the President planned to issue a directive eliminating my department.

 

I couldn’t muster up sufficient feelings on the subject to even give a damn.

 

My children were fucking like hyper-active rabbits.  My girls said we should just leave them alone and they’d grow bored in time.

 

I knew better.

 

I’d become a super-sized pain in the ass; distant, cold and uncaring most of the time…angry and violent in erratic bursts.  People avoided me as though I’d come down with leprosy; even the ones that adored me.

 

And to top it all off, I hadn’t been able to manage an erection in nearly seven months.

 

The girls were nearly forty and they’d become convinced, as a group, that my lack of interest had something to do with that approaching milestone.

 

They couldn’t have been more wrong.  It had everything to do with Alex Chorney, and my continued inability to locate his sorry ass…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“…easy does it, big fella…just a pinch…there we go.  See, that didn’t hurt, did it?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…two days before my thirty-sixth birthday I came home early.  Very early, even for me.  There’d been nothing requiring my attention at the office, and no one I wanted to talk to anywhere else in D.C.  Or who wanted to talk to me.

 

I felt a collective sigh of relief run thru the building when my helicopter lifted off to take me back to the ranch.

 

The flight back failed to ease any of the tension that had become my constant companion.  I’d been verging on a violent rampage for months, held back only by the daily ministrations of my girls, who’d taken my lack of sexual desire as a personal affront and challenge.  Not that their efforts had paid off, but I gave them a lot of credit for trying.  And I hadn’t forgotten what an orgasm felt like, so when I began to get irritated with their attention (and my lack of response) it was a simple matter to flood them with ecstasy.

 

I got out of the helicopter and walked slowly thru the muggy August swelter towards the front door.

 

Then I stopped dead in my tracks.  I couldn’t feel anything from the house.  No emotions of any kind.

 

I could feel Peggy’s horses off in the distance standing in the shade of a tall stand of trees; I could feel Sly and his men at the front gate and patrolling along the tree line.  But not a damn thing from the house…

 

 

 

 

 

 

“…he’s mumbling…what’s he saying?”

 

“Hard to tell…not again…or something that sounds like it.”

 

“Doctor, can you hear me?  Where is Lucifer?  Where is Lucifer?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…closed the front door behind me and stood unmoving for a long count of ten.  The house was eerily quiet, both audibly and emotionally.

 

I walked stiffly past the empty living room, eyes unblinking as I searched for signs of life.

 

…into the dining room…

 

…the kitchen…

 

…the entire lower level, including the hot house, was empty.  I headed for the staircase, and no sooner had I put a hand on the right side banister than I was hammered with a barrage of emotion.  Erotic emotion.  Powerfully active erotic emotions.

 

Familiar emotions.  I’d have recognized them anywhere.

 

Lilly, Peggy and Izzy’s emotions; each as familiar to me as my own pale reflection.

 

…and one other set that was completely foreign and unknown…

 

A flood of soothing warmth filled my veins…followed by a savage burning that made my tendons and ligaments feel as if they were being dipped in molten silver.

 

What the hell is going on?  I don’t remember this part… 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“…damn, it is getting hotter in here.  What’s up with the A/C?”

 

“…hear me, Doctor?  Where is Lucifer?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…climbed the stairs in groups of three and padded silently down the hall to the master bedroom.  The door was shut.

 

Fear gnawed ravenously at my guts.  I swallowed hard to keep down the bile that rose up my throat.  The skin around my mouth tightened and the hairs at the base of my neck stood on end.

 

I reached out a hand, twisted the knob, opened the door and walked in…

 

There on the bed, my bed, my rumpled and disheveled bed, were my girls.  Peggy on all fours, a blissful expression on her sweet, pixyish face as the young man I didn’t recognize banged his hips slowly against her bare bottom, Lilly and my sister were kneeling on either side of the stranger, their naked breasts pressed against his shoulders as they leaned into one another, exchanging a long, lustful kiss.  The young man didn’t appear to be paying much attention to any of them though; his body seemed to be on auto-pilot, hips rocking back and forth like clockwork while his mind was busy elsewhere.

 

Not again…please, not again.

 

Peggy looked up and met my eyes.  She sighed breathlessly, moaned and grunted a time or two and then smiled lopsidedly.

 

“Hey Daddy…mmmm—ohhh…wanna play with us this time?”

 

 

The burning inside my body increased a hundred-fold as the soothing warmth worked its way along the canals of my circulatory system.

 

Get me out of here!!!!

 

The sound of demonic laughter echoed thru my skull; rattling my teeth and stomping my brain.

 

…ahahahahahahaha!  Do me a favor Sparky and get ALL of us out of here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“…please tell me you’re seeing the same thing I am…”

 

“I don’t fucking believe it!”

 

“You don’t believe it?  I’m getting the hell out of here…”

 

“Stay where you are!  Is that…what the hell is that?”

 

“…the worst case of static discharge I’ve ever seen…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…the sound that emerged from my lips wasn’t coherent or recognizable.  But it matched the high tension snapping I felt occur within my body.  I tried to think—and couldn’t.  Tried to speak, to bellow, to rage---and couldn’t.

 

The feeling of betrayal overwhelmed me completely.  Loss, hurt, and devastatingly empty loneliness swarmed up and joined together in a mass of pain that, for one precious moment, robbed me of my sight.

 

But not my senses.  The sounds of passion, of damp skin against skin, sighs, moans, whimpers and heavy breathing, the scent of sexual secretions, of human sweat, of lust…

 

And most importantly, it didn’t take away their emotions and feelings.  And I feared nothing ever would.

 

My mind went blank as my vision returned, and once again I was confronted with the unbearable.  Blood flowed across my eyes, turning everything a muted crimson.  Flames licked at my eyelashes while tiny bursts of lightning danced across my thinly compressed lips.  Sounds became as severely muted as what few images I was still able to see thru the bloody veil in my eyes.

 

I turned slowly and walked out of the bedroom, the weakened sounds of their laughter and passion faded completely only after I’d descended the stairs and reached the front door.  For a brief instant I imagined hearing Lilly and Peggy’s voices screaming in the background, but that delusion passed quickly.

 

My hands were so slick with cold sweat that I couldn’t get a grip on the door knob.

 

A ragged, wounded animal scream tore past my lips—followed by a massive bolt of blue-white lightning that blasted the front door into a thousand splintered pieces.  I stomped thru the scorched opening, down the front steps, fumbled in my pockets and finally came up with my keys.

 

I climbed into my car, started the ignition and was slamming the door shut when I heard what vaguely sounded like my sister calling my name.

 

I wrenched the car into reverse, backed out in a hurry, threw it into drive and tore off down the drive towards the front gate.

 

Sly and four of his men were standing on either side of the heavy wrought iron gate when my car hit the barrier, ripping the two sides apart and throwing them wide.

 

The car’s front end crumpled slightly, but it wasn’t enough to slow me down and I spun out onto the road with the sound of squealing tires in my ears and the stench of burning rubber in my nose.  I hit the gas and barreled off down the road, not certain which direction I was heading.

 

Three minutes later the anger finally escaped, erupting with full force and in all its devastating glory.   I burst into flames.  The entire inside of the car filled with flames, and it consumed the upholstery, the dashboard, the carpet and my clothing in less than a heartbeat.

 

Thirty seconds later I reached a four way intersection and a moving van came tearing out of nowhere on my right and plowed into me, folding the car into a boomerang shape.  The car flipped twice, my head bounced off the driver’s side window, slammed forward against the burning steering wheel, and then the gas tank exploded with a dull thump.  A billowing ball of red-blue-green flame ripped the driver’s side door off its twisted hinges and I was shot out of the flaming wreckage.  I hit the ground like a lump of wet clay, smashed the right side of my face and forehead into a partially buried rock.  The very last thing I remembered was a small little voice in the back of my head asking:

 

“Daddy, what’s a wave?”

 

And then there was nothing at all…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘You remember now, don’t you?’

 

“Unfortunately.”

 

‘I’m sorry we had to do it this way…’

 

“No you’re not, so let’s dispense with the simulated sympathy.”

 

‘As you wish.’

 

“Always.” I snarled nastily.

 

‘You remember, but do you see?’

 

“Enough of the fucking mind games.  Say what you’ve got to say.”

 

‘What you saw is not all that you remember, is it?’

 

I gave it some thought, reviewing the freshly restored memories several times, trying to see what my subconscious was hinting at.

 

Anger, disappointment, jealousy and devastating betrayal threatened to overwhelm me, but I brushed them aside and concentrated on the memories.

 

From the removed perspective of hindsight they seemed somewhat…off kilter.  Almost as if they weren’t really mine.

 

‘No, the memories are truly ours.’ the luminescent me replied.

 

“No, not all of them.” I pointed out.

 

‘The warmth and the burning you feel…that’s happening now.  They’re side effects of the drugs you’ve been injected with.’

 

“You noticed something back in the bedroom that I didn’t.  What?”

 

‘Not a damn thing that you didn’t see or hear as well.’

 

“I’ve just about had my fill of your cryptic bullshit!”

 

‘Look who’s finally grown a pair!’ the darkness smirked.  ‘But only after we rescued your lily-white ass.’

 

“Will the two of you shut the fuck UP!  I’m trying to think!  Why am I having such a hard time thinking?”

 

‘Gee, I dunno Einstein…think it might have something to do with these assholes pumping half a gallon of drugs into our blood stream?’

 

“Did they now?  Well, we’ll have to see what we can do about that…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Doctor, I’ve just about run out of patience with you, so if you have any plans at all for the future I’d suggest you answer my question.  Where is Lucifer?”

 

I tried to sit up, but found that I was strapped down securely with a series of heavy canvas straps across my chest, belly, thighs, wrists and ankles.  I turned my head from side to side, but couldn’t see a damn thing.  The gauze bandages across my eyes, smelling strongly of disinfectant and burnt cotton balls, prevented any light from getting thru.

 

What’s a wave?

 

I smiled and licked my parched lips.

 

“A wave is transmitted energy.” I said.  “Apart from frequency, the only difference between light and sound waves is mathematical.”

 

“Fascinating as that may be…” the Voice began angrily.

 

“Link by sight, link by sound—what’s the difference?”

 

“He’s lost his mind.” a nervous voice near the door muttered.  “All that voltage fried his brain.”

 

I don’t need to see him?

 

‘You never did.  It was a self imposed limitation.  Like I told you before…we haven’t even begun to reach ours.

 

I lifted my head, reached out with my senses and found its source…

 

“You by the door; Paolo right?” I could feel his astonishment at being addressed.

 

“Uhhmm…yeah?” the man nervously replied.

 

I frowned slightly as the heavy straps cut into my chest and legs while I struggled to sit up. 

 

“Haul your ass over here and un-strap me, will you?  And get these fuckin’ wires off my balls while you’re at it!”

 

“Yes sir, of course sir, right away!”

 

“Tell your chubby little friend in the corner to lend a hand…I’ve got places to go and people to chastise.”

 

I turned my bandaged eyes towards the camera mounted in the far upper corner, followed the sound, linked and finally made the connection I’d been after for so very long.  That single sensation was more satisfying than anything I’d felt in what seemed like forever.

 

I smiled brightly, barred my teeth and licked my lips hungrily.

 

“Alex…you are in such big trouble.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The narrow shouldered man sitting in front of the rows of flat-top monitors shuddered at the look the man on most of those monitors was giving the camera.

 

The man standing directly behind him, sputtered momentarily, coughed twice and then made a visible effort of gathering his wits.

 

“Hello Ike.  I don’t suppose you feel like telling me where Lucifer is?”

 

The man on the monitors cocked his head slightly to one side and grinned.  It wasn’t a pleasant sight.

 

“I feel like keeping the promise I made you.”

 

“You promised me you’d kill Lucifer.  Lying sonofabitch!”

 

If anything, the expression on the pale long haired man became even more unpleasant and unsettling.

 

“I never promised to kill him, and you never asked me to.  You said eliminate Lucifer, and that’s exactly what I did.  No one’s heard from him since then, have they?  Especially not you!  And on the subject of lying…you’re a fine one to talk.  You’d have gone back on your word in a New York minute if Id’ve let you.”

 

The man on screen sighed loudly as the two men on either side of the table he’d been strapped to finally released his restraints.  He sat up with a smooth motion, swung his legs over the side and stood up.  Not once did his eyeless gaze shift away from the camera.

 

“But putting all that aside, the promise I’m talking about is one I made specifically to you.  I was very clear.  Do you remember?”

 

Chorney sniffed derisively.

 

“It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t promise Doctor.  You’re not getting out of that room unless I personally release the locks.”

 

The pale skinned man reached up with both hands and ripped the heavy gauze wrapping from around his head.

 

The man’s left eye glared up coldly at the camera, while the right…

 

…there was no right eye.  Only a deep, dark, empty socket, crusted around the raw and ragged edges with dried blood and pus.  The right side of his face was mildly scarred, which gave him a menacing and malevolent expression, but the swelling was gone and the scars that ran from temple to cheekbone were an old dull white, rather than the fresh and shiny pink they should have been.

 

“Don’t do me no favors.  Just stay where you are Alex.  I’ll be there directly.”  The man with the scarred face, one eye and long white hair turned away from the camera for a moment, then stopped, looked back over his shoulder and smiled coldly.

 

“Watch closely.  See if you can spot the trick.”

 

The man who called himself Alex Chorney ripped the headphone off his head and tore the microphone jack out of the console with a practiced snap of the wrist.

 

“Get everyone armed and into the halls.  I want that room surrounded…NOW!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I turned to the men who still stood on either side of my torture rack.  One was called Paolo; he’d been the one who’d administered the multiple electric shocks as well as injecting me with Chorney’s drug concoction.  The other, the one I’d dubbed ‘Chubby’, was a complete non-entity as far as I was concerned.  Didn’t know his name, didn’t want to.

 

“Paolo?” I inquired.

 

“Y-y-y-es sir?” the medium sized wiry muscled thug with the Al Pacino features stammered.

 

“Go stand against the door, would you?”

 

“Okay…” he whimpered before shuffling over to stand facing the door, the bridge of his nose pressed firmly against the metal hatch.

 

I stepped up next to Chubby and looked down at the man.  His upturned face barely reached my shoulder.

 

“Stay close if you want to survive the next few seconds.” I cautioned the man with the round, dough-boy face.

 

I looked up and saw Paolo’s back.

 

“Paolo, turn around and put your shoulders against the door.” I commanded.

 

He did as I told him, but refused to look me in the eye.  I grinned openly.

 

“Paolo?  Look at me!”  The man’s head snapped up and when his eyes locked on my face his guts turned to water.  “…just not your day.” I said sympathetically then linked, filled the man with my pain, amplified a thousand times, and lit him up with a single directed bolt of blue-white lightning in less than the blink of my remaining eye.

 

Paolo went nova and blew the heavy metal door, along with half the wall supporting it, out into the hallway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Jesus Christ!  What the fuck have you gotten us into?” the man sitting in front of the monitors screeched, lurched up out of his chair and ran pell-mell for the door behind him.

 

Alex Chorney lashed out with a back-hand chop to the base of the narrow shouldered, wide hipped man’s skull and the lumbering techie smashed face first into the hard concrete floor, just inches short of his goal.

 

“Spineless amateur.” Chorney muttered under his breath as he kicked the man’s body to the side, clearing a path to the door.  He returned his attention to the remaining images on the active monitors.  Blacktower, and his overweight little shadow, walked out of the rubble and out into a clear section of the hall, where they were immediately confronted on two sides by several rows of gray/green jump suited men holding short barreled automatic weapons.

 

The explosion had apparently damaged all the microphones in the area, because there was no audio to go with the images.

 

Blacktower looked down at the little man beside him for a moment then appeared to ask a question.  The smaller man bobbed his head frantically, gestured rapidly with his hands and then went still.

 

“Just shoot him already!” Chorney seethed quietly. 

 

Nothing happened.

 

“What are you waiting for?  Shoot the sonofabitch!”

 

Blacktower cocked his head fractionally then twisted at the waist to face the nearest ceiling mounted camera.  Chorney inhaled slowly between his teeth, generating a brain stabbing high pitched whistle.  The dark socket on the right side of the man’s face was lit from within by what looked like a glowing ball of fire.

 

The tall white-haired man faced the group of gun toting men in front of him.  Chorney couldn’t tell what he said, but whatever it was didn’t take more than fifteen seconds.  The men lowered their weapons, turned around and walked away.  Blacktower then looked over his shoulder at the men behind him.  His lips moved briefly, and then the group behind him followed quickly after the first bunch, like little children in a grade school fire drill.

 

Blacktower’s portly little sidekick took off after the departing gunmen, leaving the tall man standing alone amidst the rubble in the hall.  He looked back up at the camera, wagged one index finger back and forth in a ‘no-no’ gesture, grinning all the while like a wolf then strode off out of sight.

 

“Guess she wasn’t crazy after all.” Chorney whispered to no one in particular.  The man sucked air thru his teeth for a second or two, turned around and headed for the exit.  “Time to get the fuck out of Dodge.”

 

He reached down for the door knob but his fingers stopped just inches shy of the dull gray metal handle and refused to get any closer.  No matter what he did, or how loudly he cursed, Alex Chorney could not force his fingers around the door knob.

 

He began sweating like a pig in a sauna.

 

Chorney tried slamming his body against the door, jamming his hip against the door knob, kicking with first one foot then the other, but no matter how hard he tried he could not make physical contact with either the door or the knob.

 

Sweat poured down his face and neck, stained his shirt beneath his armpits, and made the fabric stick to his chest and back.  He swore loudly and violently in several languages as panic and terror filled his body.

 

A large shadow appeared in the small chicken-wire window of the door and the veteran spy had to bite back a girlish squeal.

 

The door knob turned, squeaking ever so slightly, and the door slowly opened outward.

 

Chorney scuttled back quickly, crouching in a defensive stance, bringing his fists up in front of his chest.  He blanched, his heart pounding like mad within his chest, as he beheld the ivory white face; one pale grey eye glaring balefully at him while on the opposite side a writhing ball of red, yellow and brilliant orange exuded flickering tongues of flame that licked back and forth across the expanse of the bigger man’s snowy white eyebrow.

 

“What in god’s name are you?” he demanded in a pleading voice.

 

The tall white-haired man stepped inside the room and the door closed behind him with an audible ‘snick’.

 

“Inevitable.” the tall, long haired, flame eyed man rumbled.  “From the moment you assaulted my sister I’ve been inevitable.”

 

“I told you, it was just business.  It was never personal!” the older, smaller man whimpered.

 

He didn’t understand why he was reacting the way he was.  Alex Chorney had been in worse spots before, faced greater odds, and he’d always come out the winner.  Always.  He was smart, cool under fire…hell; he actually thrived under extreme pressure.  It was one of the many attributes that had made him such a good field agent.  That and being absolutely ruthless in the pursuit of his objectives.

 

“Maybe not to you; to me it couldn’t be more personal.  You drugged and abused my wife you stupid fuck!”

 

“What?  No…sister!” the trembling ex-CIA spymaster insisted.

 

“Didn’t tell you everything, did she?  Wife, sister; doesn’t really matter one way or the other…you attacked my family dumbass.  Doesn’t get much more personal than that.”

 

The pale man stepped forward so quickly and so quietly that Chorney couldn’t believe he’d moved.  He was suddenly very, very close. 

 

Blacktower lashed out with one long arm and backhanded Chorney across the jaw.  The blow lifted him two inches off the floor and sent him sprawling to the side where he landed on the prostrate body of his unlamented ex-employee.

 

“You killed my entire family!” Chorney screeched, scrambling to his feet and backing away from the slowly advancing mountain before him.

 

Blacktower smiled, a grotesquely unpleasant expression that only served to increase Chorney’s growing sense of terror.

 

“Did you really think you were untouchable?  Did you actually believe there’d be no consequences?  If so, you’ve got a bigger ego and a smaller brain than I would have imagined.  Either way, I don’t understand why you’re feeling so put-upon.  You’ve still got a couple of cousins left, and your sister and her children, they’re still alive.”  The big man looked down, lifted his left forearm and tapped the bare wrist with his right index finger.  Then he looked up with a grin; a cold, inevitable grin that set Chorney’s teeth to grinding.  “But not for much longer.”

 

The older man shrieked like an enraged chimpanzee and charged like a mad bull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Give the man his due; he’d aged well.  Alex Chorney…or Carlos Negron…or whatever name he was going by…was still in pretty good shape.  When I’d first encountered the man he’d looked to be in his late thirties; he didn’t appear to be more than mid-forties now.  Still strongly built, particularly in the upper body, still had the dark curly hair and  dark complexion that I remembered from our first meeting, although his hair was now heavily dosed with gray and his mid section had gotten a bit thicker. 

 

His eyes had changed though.  They’d been harsh back then, the kind of eyes you expected to see in the face of a professional boxer or hardened criminal.  Predator’s eyes.  They didn’t look like that anymore.  As he screamed and charged, his eyes were enflamed, bloodshot, wide and wild…the eyes of a madman who’d broken the tether of reality and was completely lost in his own little world.

 

I could relate.

 

Thing was…he was still inhabiting my world, and I wasn’t going to tolerate his presence much longer.

 

Alex closed quickly; we weren’t all that far apart.  I braced my feet, shifted my hips, shoved my right arm out and opened my hand like a crossing guard.  His chest and the flat of my hand met and I shoved up, lifting him off his feet and slammed him down hard onto the bare floor.

 

I knelt next the man, the flat of my hand wide across his chest and listened to the air rush out of his lungs.  He flailed about with his arms, desperately trying to grab hold of some part of my body.  I smacked his hands and arms aside, leaned down and glared into his face.

 

“I know you’d like nothing better right now than to kill me, but that just ain’t gonna happen.  You’re going to die soon Alex, but not before you answer a few questions, and not until you’ve suffered a whole lot.  So…” 

 

I linked with the man, added an additional ring over the simple one I’d implanted earlier.  Over the one that had kept him from leaving the room until I arrived.  Alex stopped flailing, his arms fell lifelessly to the floor and his entire body went just as limp.

 

“…first I want to know who hired you to kill Lucifer.  Then I want to know who’s been hiding you from me all these years.  And lastly, I want to know how you knew I’d be out on that road the day your people took me.”

 

He didn’t want to tell me.  He really didn’t.  He fought the compulsion as hard as anyone ever had, and with greater success.  He held out for a good four seconds.  And then, because I made him love me, he told me everything.  Names, dates, places, account numbers, safe houses, addresses, phone numbers, local and foreign contacts and go-betweens…he gave it all up.

 

I nodded when he’d finished, smiled gently and patted the man with the adoring eyes on the chest. 

 

“Okay.  One final question before we get to the good stuff; where the hell are we?”

 

“Twenty seven miles north west of a little town called War.  West Virginia.” he said worshipfully.  I despise hearing that tone coming out of anyone’s mouth, even his.  For some reason it grates on my nerves like nothing else.

 

I smiled coldly and smashed both of the man’s rings with a single emotional burst down the link.  Disgust…pure, undistilled disgust, amplified ten thousand times.  He screamed like a little girl, and the sound echoed madly about the room for twenty long seconds.

 

It was a good start.

 

The madness returned to his eyes, along with a healthy amount of hatred and rage.  He tried to launch himself up at me, which isn’t that easy to do while laying flat on your back, but he tried.  I shoved my hand back down on his chest and held him down with all my weight.

 

“When I killed your Uncle—and it was me who did it, not some hired assassin—I used a little trick that I’m now going to demonstrate on you.  Thing is…he went quick.  I blew his neck out from under his head.  It was nearly instantaneous.  I doubt he felt much of anything.  You, on the other hand, are going to feel everything.”

 

I climbed inside his body, scanned his vital functions and then unleashed my feelings on the man.  All my feelings.  Years and years of stored up hubris, hatred, rage, anger, loathing, disgust, shame, fear, frustration, anguish, revulsion, repulsion, aggravation, paranoia, helplessness, gloom, misery, panic, sorrow, mortification, contempt and wrath.

 

My feelings, no one else’s.

 

In part I was extracting vengeance for what he’d done to Izzy and Peggy, but only a small part.  This was about me.  He’d attacked me; no one attacks me and gets away with it.  No one.

 

His skin began to explode, one cell at a time.  I don’t think he even noticed at first.  But that’s only to be expected; most of the top layer is already dead.  But as I got past the first layer into the living tissue, that’s when the real fun began; screams were only the beginning.

 

 

 

 

I carried Alex’s bloody carcass draped over my shoulder into the building’s canteen—the largest single room in the building complex, or so I’d been told by the chubby man who’d been assisting my torturer Paolo.

 

They were all there, all the men and women who’d been party to my capture, imprisonment and torture.  Lined up against whatever flat surface they could find, watching me and my luggage.

 

I walked into the center of the canteen and gently lowered Alex onto one of the long lunch tables.  His body made a kind of sloppy, sloshing sound as it impacted the table top.

 

He was still alive, though just barely.  I’d left his skull, spine and ribcage intact, but the rest of his skeleton had suffered the same fate as his skin; exploded one cell at a time.  His bodily functions had tried to shut down on five occasions during our little four hour interlude, but I’d become quite proficient at keeping death at bay.  I’d finally learned the truth about my abilities, about how they worked.

 

They worked because I wanted them to.

 

I still had no idea why I was able to do the things I could, but that really didn’t seem terribly important.  I could, that was the main thing.

 

Alex was alive and in considerable pain.  I looked down into his eyes.  Dull, hopeless and pleading.

 

“One more trick to show you and then it’ll be all over.” I whispered to the man’s bloody, skinless, horror mask of a face.

 

I stood up, flexed my shoulders and looked around.  Men with automatic weapons still slung over their shoulders, barrels resting at their hips, men and women holding styrofoam cups half filled with coffee, tea, water or some other liquid, men and women holding clipboards to their chests; every last one staring at me with love and adoration, waiting expectantly for some…any command from me.  Waiting to obey without question.

 

Feeling their absolute love made me ten times queasier than looking at Alex’s limp, skinned and nearly boneless body.

 

Time to clean up my mess.  And test a theory.

 

“Gather ‘round, people.” I called out.  “Get as close as you can.”

 

They moved in on me like a mouth closing around a succulent morsel.  In moments I could barely move my arms, but I noticed that as hard as they tried to press in on me, something seemed to hold them away. 

 

It was odd, because I could feel them pressing in from all around, but there were no actual bodies touching mine.

 

I looked to my right and then to my left…and saw their faces staring back at me.

 

Them.

 

Both of them; one dark as a moonless midnight, the other as pale and translucent as the best Hollywood CG special effect.

 

You didn’t think we’d miss your big moment did you?

 

“Yeah, I kinda did.”

 

You wouldn’t even be here without our help. the darkness groused.

 

“I suppose not.”

 

And not one word of thanks.

 

I snorted, linked with everyone in the room except for the outermost ring, burst into flames, filled them hyper-amplified emotions, exploded their bodies and then lit up the spray that filled the air with blue-white fingers of lightning.

 

The world around us exploded into a bright white ball of plasma.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stood there quietly amid the rubble, watching as the fires slowly died out around the three of us. 

 

I wouldn’t say I was exactly surprised to be alive, but I hadn’t been all that sure my theory was right.  It had been a logical deduction, based on years of accumulated cause and effect data, but still…just a guess.

 

Pretty good guess though, as it turns out.

 

The remaining walls collapsed like dominoes and fell in on themselves as forge-fire weakened steel girders finally surrendered their strength, folding up like plastic straws held over a candle’s flame, while at the same time cinder blocks and concrete buckled and then melted away like a sand castle hammered repeatedly by relentless waves of water. 

 

And while the cacophonous clatter of crumbling concrete was moderately cheering, I personally preferred the nerve jangling pop-crackle-hiss of dripping body fat as it splattered on what remained of the, now oven hot, stone foundation.  The sickly sweet scent of roasting flesh wafted invitingly about on the breeze, causing the inner lining of my nose to tingle and twitch.

 

I sneezed violently.

 

“Fuckin’ stupid waste of life.” I muttered, wiping beneath my nose with an index finger.

 

‘Better them than us.’ the ghostly me declared impersonally.

 

Couldn’t disagree with that.  Wasn’t even remotely tempted.

 

I made a very slow 360 degree turn, opening my senses fully; reaching out, scanning, observing…searching…absorbing. 

 

“Olly-olly-oxen-free!” I whispered beneath my breath.

 

There was the dark me, as close as my innermost desires…I felt the full force of his insatiable lust and desire, his driving ambition, searing passion, un-quenchable fury and limitless anger.  It was like standing next to a living furnace.  Then there was the translucent me; just as close and as much a part of me as my fondest memories.  Thoughtful, patient, calculating and shrewd…easily as driven, equally as ambitious, but behind those drives lay vast stores of unwanted emotion…compassion, trust, concern, joy…love.

 

I reached out to the limit of my eye, searching, delving, gleaning…hunting. 

 

Nothing else was alive in the immediate area, which I judged to be some two square miles, apart from some trees, various other forms of vegetation, and a few small animals that were seeking cover off in the distance.

 

I reached out even farther, farther than I ever had…farther than I’d ever imagined I could, out beyond the limits of my sight.  Not just sensing, not just feeling…actively reaching out, not simply absorbing, but beckoning, calling, hunting.  I’d never tried to find just one distinctive set of feelings among the hundreds of thousands that were all around me.   I’d never had a reason to try.  This time I did. 

 

I was moderately surprised at how easy it was.  There was no real effort involved, just desire.  I wanted to…so I did.

 

Farther and farther out in all directions; down into the earth, up into the sky…tracking, scanning, pursuing, stalking; gliding in and out of other living creatures, feeling, tasting and living their emotions, reading their lives at precisely that moment.  At first there were only a few hundred…then more and more and more; thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of individual emotional clusters.  I was them, and they quickly became me.  I’d done something similar once before, when I was thirteen, and at that time the incoming rush of emotions had overwhelmed me, causing something close to a nervous collapse.  This time things were different.  I was different.  I knew who and what I was.  This time there was no loss of identity, no loss of self.  I was in complete control, maintaining a conscious barrier, a filter, between myself and the vast ocean of their pulsating, clinging, cloying, tedious and nauseously annoying emotions.  The fucking worms had no idea how idea just how pathetic they really were.  I knew.

 

Did I ever.  Weak, worthless, sad and sorry little worms.  Just crawling around on the face of the planet waiting for a more worthwhile creature’s foot to come crashing down and grind them to paste.  Unreliable, untrustworthy and utterly expendable…I took a deep breath, tasting the sweet smoky, syrupy scent of fire seared long pig on the back of my tongue.

 

And then…there you are!

 

Gotcha, you little fucker!

 

I stopped turning, pulled my feelings back and took another long, slow breath.

 

I raised my arms and lay them firmly across the shoulders of the two figures standing beside me, clasping them fondly.

 

“I can’t begin to tell you guys how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.” I said.

 

The darkness turned his flaming features towards me, reeking of disbelief, suspicion and superheated blacktop.  I grinned at him in return, radiating good will and honest affection.

 

The ghostly me flashed a curious and, I thought, somewhat poignantly sympathetic look.

 

‘But…?’ he asked.

 

“Time to go home.” I said softly.  I inhaled deeply, linked swiftly with the pair and absorbed the both of them back into myself.

 

Of course it was nowhere near as easy as that sentence might make it seem.  Not even close.

 

They didn’t go willingly.  Oh, they most surely did not!  They fought with all the power, strength and emotion that each one possessed.  The area around us, once a large institutional/prison-like collection of grey buildings, and then a rubble strewn battlefield, rapidly became a gaping, oozing, blistered wound on the face of the earth.  Concrete and steel melted and ran like water, dirt and mud caught fire, burning and smoking like lava.

 

Eventually I stood alone, naked as the day I was born, in the middle of a smoking crater nearly one hundred yards wide.  Not one single sign of modern man’s presence remained in the now hellish wasteland that spread out around me.

 

I exhaled loudly, breath steaming from between my lips as if it were a cold Virginia winter morning rather than a hot and muggy August evening somewhere in West Virginia.

 

I really do appreciate all the help, but my life and my power belong to me…and only me.

 

I was willing to share my self with them, but that was pretty much the limit.  Besides which, gods don’t much care for competition.

 

I reached out once again, re-located the person I’d found earlier, locked on tight to those specific feelings and emotions, fixed their location, relative to my own, firmly in place and smiled a cold, cruel smile of anticipation. 

 

I climbed up out of the smoking crater, brushed the ash and grit from my legs and feet, and began jogging towards my goal.  Long, loping strides, designed to eat distance without overly tiring my body.  Not that it mattered…my body would do what I told it to.  It always had and likely always would.  No, I wanted to take my time and use that time to good advantage.  I had plans to make, schemes to foil, revenge to anticipate, relish and enjoy.

 

It was my turn to go home.

 

 

 

 

The sun had set by the time I sighted the little town’s first outlying buildings.

 

The road, the only paved road I’d come across in three hours of running, was two lane, weathered, cracked, broken and pitted.  It had seen better days, but I’d lay money it couldn’t remember when that’d been.

 

The road had twisted and turned thru the hills like a snake with no sense of direction, but opened out before me, putting on display the little town of War, West Virginia, population (according to the vertically challenged sign with the wood tiled half roof posted on the outskirts) 789.

 

War. 

 

Who in their right mind names a town War?

 

I’d never heard of the place, but then again, there were a lot of places I’d never heard of.  Still, I had a pretty good idea where it was relative to where I wanted to be.

 

I continued running down the road towards the town of War.  Before long a single large building came into view.

 

WAR-Room---Roadhouse the sign above the ramshackle barn-like structure proudly proclaimed, brilliantly under-lit by a string of dimly flickering white Christmas tree lights.

 

I slowed down and made my way cautiously thru the makeshift parking lot, taking note of the wide variety of vehicles parked out front. 

 

Trucks.  One tons, half tons, quarter tons, one old Peterbilt semi and even a dilapidated five ton dump truck, but there wasn’t a car anywhere to be seen.

 

I did however see three large motorcycles next to what I think was supposed to be a hitching post.  And playing in the dirt next to one of the big hogs was a half naked little kid.

 

Tousled straw blond hair stuck out in all directions, framing a lightly sun burnt face sprinkled with a splash of freckles across the nose.

 

The kid looked up as I emerged from between a pair of rusted half ton pickups with bales of hay in the bed of one and bags of what smelled like shit in the other.

 

Boy or girl, I couldn’t tell, but the kid’s light blue eyes grew very large as I approached and headed directly for the steps leading to the front doors.

 

“You kain’t be goin’ inside there mister.” the kid’s feathery voice rose up from ground level.

 

I stopped walking and looked down.  “Oh yeah?  Why not?”

 

“Yer nekked.” the kid said reasonably.

 

I nodded, crouched down on my heels, hands on my thighs and looked into the kid’s face.

 

“Is that why you’re out here?  ‘Cause you’ve got on almost as little as me.”

 

“Naw.  My ma comes here most ever’ night, ‘ceptin’ Sunday.  She works here sometimes.  I’m jest waitin’ fer her to come out.”

 

“Your mother leaves you out here every night while she’s inside?”

 

The kid nodded and got to his/her feet.  Skinny, but didn’t appear to be malnourished or abused.  The only piece of clothing on display between the two of us was a pair of torn and dirty little kid sized faded blue jean shorts.

 

“What’s your name kid?”

 

“Nathan.  Nathan DuPree.  What’s yer’s?”

 

“Ike.”

 

“What happened to yer clothes?” Nathan asked.

 

“Burned up.”

 

The skinny little boy gave me a disbelieving look.

 

“Well, if I can’t go in without pants, do you know where I could find something to wear?”

 

The boy gave me a childishly wicked smirk and leaned close.  “One a Ma’s boyfriends keeps some stuff in the side boxes on his ‘sickle.”  The boy twisted around, his hips still towards me but his shoulders rotated around impossibly, and he pointed at one of the three motorcycles behind him.  “This’n right here.”

 

He swung back around.  I envied the kid his flexibility.

 

“Might even fit.” Nathan offered as an afterthought. “He’s a purty big feller too.  Maybe not so tall, but close.”

 

I tilted my head to one side and gave the kid a quick link/scan.

 

“You thirsty Nathan?”

 

“Yeah.  But I ain’t got no money, so I gotta wait till ma brings me sumthin’.”

 

“Tell you what, you come with me and I’ll get you a drink.” I said, rising upright.

 

“Don’ go fergettin’ ‘bout what ah told you mister.”

 

“Ike, Nate, my name’s Ike.  Right, the pants.  Really that big a deal, huh?”

 

“Ma says this ain’t a nice place.  That’s why she makes me wait out here, so’s I don’t get hurt.  There’s some down right nasty folks ‘round these parts, she says.  Go in there like that and you’ll get hurt, sure as spit.  Say, ya ain’t one o’ them big city pre-verts ma’s always goin’ on about, are ya?”

 

I chuckled quietly.

 

“No.  Not a pre-vert.  Not the kind your Ma’s talking about anyway.  People’ve been staring at me funny all my life, so I guess somewhere along the line I just stopped worrying about why.”

 

“Well, you are kinda funny lookin’ I s’pose, but I seen worse.”

 

“Oh yeah?  Like who?”

 

“Ma’s boyfriend.  He’s got a red snake tattooed on his pecker and tiny rings hangin’ from his titties.”

 

I grinned and shook my head.  Laughter escaped from between my lips while I strained to keep a straight face.

 

“How old are you Nathan?”

 

“Eleven and a half.”

 

I nodded.  Not a bad age; old enough to have come face to face with the ugly side of the real world, but young enough to still have and believe in dreams.

 

I moved around the boy and put my hand on the seat of the vehicle in the center.  “This one, right?”

 

Nathan grinned and nodded his head.

 

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t much like your ma’s boyfriend?” I asked.  Not waiting for a reply I hooked my finger tips under the edge of the hard case saddle bag on the left side of the big Harley’s rear wheel and gave a short, sudden, violent wrench.  The lock surrendered immediately and the lid popped open with a snapping noise.

 

Inside I found a pair of badly faded pair of old jeans that were about two inches too short and three inches too big in the waist but, as we used to say in the army, ‘close enough for government work’.  Lucky for me, there was also a raggedy old military style green belt stashed beneath the pants.

 

As I pulled the pants on and threaded the belt, I looked around—sensing, feeling, absorbing and restocking; my eye lingered briefly on the front of the barn-like building.

 

“Your mother’s right about this place…it’s not nice.  There’s some mean folks in there.”  I turned away and looked back down at the boy.  “Still, none of ‘em half as mean as me.”

 

The boy cocked his head to one side.  “Ya’ll seem nice enough to me.”

 

“Seeming isn’t the same as being.  But I won’t hurt you; won’t let anyone else hurt you either.”

 

Nathan grinned a cocky little half-smile, as if to say he could damn well take care of himself thanks just the same.

 

What he did say though caught me by surprise.  “How come yer buzzin’?”

 

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

 

He shrugged loosely, shoulders, arms, neck and head all moving in a discordant dance of body parts that only adolescents and professional clowns seem capable of.

 

“Yer buzzin’.  I felt it afore ya got here, ‘n it got louder ‘n louder ‘n there ya were.  Felt it mostly, but fer a minute or two I could’a swore I heard it.”

 

“I wouldn’t worry about it.  Only very special people can feel that buzzing.  You’re only the third person I know of who can.  Now, all this talking’s made me thirsty.  What say we go get that drink?”

 

The boy nodded and followed me up the steps to the front doors.  I yanked hard on the handle and pulled one of the doors open, exposing the two of us to a violently loud blast of raucous music and raised human voices.

 

I stepped inside and Nate trailed along behind, sticking close to my right hip.

 

The door slammed shut behind us like a thunder clap and every eye in the joint turned immediately in our direction.  Seconds later every voice went silent; the only remaining sounds were from the poorly amplified music coming from a beat-up old CD jukebox in the far corner playing what I think was the tail end of ‘Bad to the Bone.’

 

The music died down and I heard someone say “Well I’ll be gawddamn!” rather louder than I think they’d intended, because a massive feeling of embarrassment followed right on the heels of the comment.

 

I put my hand out and rested it on Nathan’s head, guiding him forward.

 

The big building had, along the right hand wall, an old fashioned saloon type bar, complete with brass rail foot rest.  A man, short, stocky, late middle age and bald as a cue ball with faded tattoos covering his exposed arms from wrists to shoulders, stood next to a fairly young woman, who didn’t look all that much different from the boy at my side except that she was taller by a foot, heavier by maybe forty pounds and had a Harley Davidson symbol tattooed across her rather expansive chest.

 

Nathan and I moved up to the bar, which, even though at least twenty-five feet long, was pretty will lined with bodies and no one looked like they were planning to make room.

 

The rest of the open area was filled with ugly, scared, unvarnished circular tables surrounded by equally unimpressive looking chairs; the chairs were mostly filled with moderately well dressed people in jeans and overalls, checkered shirts, straw cowboy  hats and dirty baseball caps.

 

The place stank of stale beer, cheap bourbon, old vomit, gasoline, oil and human sweat.

 

It felt even nastier.

 

I kept a frosty smile off my lips only thru an act of extreme will power.

 

I stepped up behind two tall, rawboned men who had shifted closer together, closing off the only relatively open space at the bar, put a hand on each man’s shoulder and shoved, jamming them abruptly into whoever was standing next to them.

 

There was a lot of cursing, flailing of arms and drunken stumbling.  I leaned down, caught Nathan up under his arms and lifted the boy, sitting him down on top of the bar.  Then I slapped my hand down on the surface, creating a loud THUD.

 

“I’ll have a beer and a bottle of whiskey and give my friend Nate two of whatever he wants.” I said, keeping my tone neutral.

 

The old man behind the bar gave me the hairy eye-ball.

 

“Son, ah don’ think ah want yer money.”

 

The frosty smile crept across my lips and took up residence.

 

“Who said I was gonna give you any?  What’ll you have Nathan?”

 

“Kin I have a beer too?” he asked with a mischievous grin.

 

“You can not!” the woman behind the bar hollered.  She moved over to stand facing the boy’s back.  “Nathan DuPree, how many times have I told you not to come in here, and what have I told you about talking to strangers?”

 

The boy shifted around so he could look down at the woman.

 

“He ain’ no stranger.” the boy protested.  “This here’s my friend, Ike.”  Nathan swiveled his head and looked at me.  “Ike, this here’s my ma.  Her name’s Kate.”

 

“Nathan, this man’s white as a sheet, missing one eye, hair longer than any woman I know; he’s wearing one raggedy-ass pair of jeans and got no shirt or,” the woman jumped up and with her hands on the bar top lifted herself up and over so to look down at my feet, “shoes…he ain’t got no shoes either.  How much stranger do you think someone’s likely to be boy?”

 

Nathan looked up at me.  I shrugged.  “She’s got a point kid.” 

 

There was a long pause and then he said, “So, kin I have a beer or not?”

 

I smiled at the boy, warmly for the very first time.  If only I’d had half this kid’s self confidence when I’d been his age…who knows how things might have turned out?

 

“Sure, why not?”

 

“Told ya…I ain’t takin’ yer money.” the stocky old man repeated.

 

I fixed my eye on the barkeep and leaned in.  He got a good look at the empty socket and backed up.

 

“Told you I wasn’t plannin’ to give you any.” I rumbled.

 

A heavy hand landed hard on the space between my shoulder and neck, and as the fingers dug deeply into the muscle, a voice behind me snarled, “Those look like my pants, snowball.”

 

Nathan tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the eager anticipation off his dirt smudged face.  His mother looked as if she’d just been slapped.  The old bartender simply looked resigned.

 

I eased back from the bar, turned my head slightly and glanced at the barely visible fingers.  Then I looked up and around.

 

The hand was attached to a rather hairy arm, which was, in turn, attached to a rather hairy body.  Nathan had been correct in his evaluation, the man wasn’t quite as tall as me, but he made up for the difference in bulk. 

 

Heavy arms and shoulders, thick neck (what I could see of it that wasn’t hidden behind the shrubbery of his full dirty blond beard), barrel chest and expanding belly. 

 

His eyes were small and piggy, his forehead was wide and high, announcing to one and all that, before many more years went by, his hairline would be in full retreat.  His cheekbones were scarred as were his eyebrow ridges and the skin across his nose.  All in all, this was not a good looking human being.

 

“I ask’d you if those were my pants.”

 

I felt a thin layer of frost coat my eye.  “No you didn’t.  You said they looked like your pants.  Then you went and said something really stupid.”  I let my eye fall to the hand on my shoulder briefly.  “Tell me, cocksucker, just how fond of this hand are you?”

 

I thought it had been quiet before, but that was nothing compared to the complete absence of sound that was silently screaming at the top of its lungs in a frequency so high even dogs couldn’t hear it. 

 

Someone must have unplugged the jukebox, ‘cause I didn’t hear a damn thing apart from the asshole behind me wheezing like an old steam train.

 

I shifted my gaze over to the boy perched on the edge of the bar.  “Is this the cream-puff you were telling me about?  The one with nipple rings and an earthworm drawn on his dick?”

 

Covert snickers and guffaws filled the silence, along with more than a few gasps and an ‘oh-shit’ or two.

 

I turned my head and eye back around to face the hairy brute.  He tensed up, shifted his left side back an eighth of an inch and pretty much telegraphed to one and all that he planned to knock my head off with a single punch.

 

So I smiled widely, linked and fed him about five miles of agony.

 

The man’s eyes rolled back into his head, his mouth opened wide, shrieked like a new made castrato and dropped to the floor, landing very hard on both knees before keeling over onto his left side, still keening away.

 

I turned all the way around, leaned back on the bar with my elbows and let my eye roam over the patrons.

 

They were pretty much the kind of crowd you’d expect to find in a small town roadhouse; farmers, miners, storekeepers, bikers, young, middle aged and old drinkers and partiers looking to temporarily drown the memories of their hum-drum existence.  And more than a few of them were in the process of working up the nerve to come at me.

 

I knew how to drain the piss and vinegar out of ‘em real quick.

 

“Someone give this asshole a knife.” I suggested, kicking the writhing body at my feet for emphasis.

 

One of the younger biker types stepped forward cautiously, pulled a good sized toad-sticker from a sheath behind his back and dropped it, point first, into the wooden floor next to the large man, then stepped back quickly.

 

I cut the pain to the man on the floor, knelt down next to him, slipped a ring into him, plucked the knife out of the wooden plank it was stuck in and slapped the haft firmly into the man’s left hand.

 

“Now, do me a big favor.  Go outside and shove this knife up your ass.”

 

The man stared at me blankly for an instant then nodded, rolled onto his hands and knees, got upright and headed for the door Nate and I had just come in.

 

“Before you go, leave the keys to your bike.  I’m gonna need a way to get home.”

 

He fished his keys out of one front pocket, tossed them to me and then continued outside.  The door slammed loudly behind him.

 

I smiled coldly, returned to the bar and glared at the bartender.  “My friend and I are still waiting for our drinks.” I said flatly.

 

He hurriedly filled our order and Nate slurped his beer loudly while his mother stared daggers at me.

 

Right up to the second the screaming from outside started.  Fear and terror instantly permeated every person in the joint except for me and Nate.  The boy was amused.

 

I twisted the cap off the whiskey bottle and downed the contents.  Lowering the bottle to the bar top, I picked up the beer in front of me, raised it towards the boy sitting next to me, and then took a sip.

 

“You’ve got a gift Nate.  A very rare gift.” I said when I put the beer down.

 

“What?  The buzzin’ thing?”

 

“Yep.  I’m guessing you can feel things that other people can’t, right?”

 

He shrugged eloquently.

 

I smiled fondly at the boy.  “It’s okay.  I understand.  I bet you’re pretty good at remembering things too, yeah?”

 

The boy shrugged again, but his expression and emotions told me I was dead on.

 

“It won’t be easy, but you’ll learn how to use your gift, and when you do, I want you to come see me.  I’ve got the perfect job waiting for you—if you want it.”

 

“Job?  He’s not even twelve years old!” his mother cried.

 

Ignoring the woman, I kept my eye focused on the boy, who watched me with equal intensity.

 

“What kind?” he asked.

 

I grinned.  “Hunting spies for the CIA.”

 

He cocked his head slightly and gave me a disbelieving look.

 

“Come see me after you graduate from High School.  The job and I will be waiting for you.”

 

I linked with everyone in the roadhouse, slapped rings into all of them and informed the lot that from now on their main purpose in life was to look after my new buddy Nate.

 

Then I gave Nate my address at the CIA, along with my office phone number and extension…had him repeat them back to me five times to be sure he got them right.  I also told him that if he ever ran into any trouble, he should call me.

 

And then I gave him a ring of his very own.

 

I’d learned my lesson.  I was done being stupid.

 

Then I got directions on the quickest way back to Virginia, instructions on how to operate my new motorcycle, said goodbye to Nate and left the bar.  I stepped out into the parking lot and spotted the huddled body of a large man with an Arkansas toothpick shoved up his ass a few feet from the three bikes at the hitching post.  He was still alive, but bleeding out pretty quick.  I walked over, put my hand on the back of his head and turned him to ashes.  Then I got on the middle Harley, started it up, turned on the headlight and took off down the road.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WV-16 to VA-61, past Tazewell to VA-19, down Route 52 past Bland, got on I-77 then onto I-81, to I-64, past Waynesboro, around Charlottesville, past University Heights on US-29 and then on to Rio.  It took me the best part of one day to get as far as Rio.  Got stopped twice by the Highway Patrol, once by a Sheriff outside of Waynesboro, and had a minor incident while filling the gas tank in Charlottesville…none of which resulted in anyone getting killed.

 

As I got closer to the town of Rio, I restored the mirror effect I’d use on Lilly back during our visit to LA, throwing a heavy wall of reflective feelings around myself; in effect making myself emotionally invisible.  Knowing how sensitive Peggy and Tink were to the vibrations I generated, I put three towns worth of stolen emotional power into the effort, as well as a huge amount amplification.  I was going home, but that didn’t mean I wanted to announce it.

 

I ditched the motorcycle on the side of the road some twenty miles from the back edge of the ranch’s property line and started jogging.  The sun gradually sank down into the tree line behind me, casting long amber fringed shadows across the forest floor, including the elongated ethereal figure that jogged on ahead of me; seemingly more eager to get where it was going than even I was.  The amber faded, shadows multiplied and grew fat on the waning sunlight, and the only sound to be heard for hundreds of yards was the rhythmic crunching of dried leaves each time one of my feet landed.

 

Darkness claimed the forest; dim light became dusk, dusk became dark and dark turned into pitch black.  I kept on running.  An even, steady, long rehearsed and never forgotten loping pace that chewed up and spit out miles like a pitcher spat sunflower seeds.

 

I knew exactly where I was going.  I could feel it…feel them.  I knew just where each one was, and precisely how far away from me they were.  I felt them growing closer each time one foot lifted up and the other came down.

 

I could feel Peggy’s hopeful puzzlement, her eager anticipation.  There was no doubt in my mind it was her.  And no more than three feet from her was Izzy; doubtful, fearful, worried and, if anything, even more eager than Peggy.

 

Lilly wasn’t with them.  I estimated that she was most likely standing outside the house, watching the moon come up; hoping against hope that Peggy’s feelings were accurate, and deathly afraid that they were.

 

If she knew even one tenth of what I’d figured out, then she had every reason to be afraid.

 

Gods like betrayal even less than they do competition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stood in the trees behind the house for about an hour, just watching.  Watching and sensing.  I wanted to be certain who all was in the house, and where they were.

 

Lilly had been out on the deck when I arrived, standing motionless, arms clasped beneath her breasts, head moving in long slow sweeps from one side to the other and back again.  She’d gone back into the house a few minutes after I got there.

 

Sly and his men…along with fifteen additional men I wasn’t as familiar with, but eventually recognized as having been among David Jones’ people…were all over the grounds in wide ranging patrols.  They were packing some serious heat; Uzis, AK’s, street sweeper shotguns and two of them were toting Browning Automatic Rifles.

 

Nice to know they’d taken my disappearance seriously.

 

They never laid eyes on me.  Never got close.

 

Once I was sure where everyone in the house was, sure that they wouldn’t be moving anytime soon, I darted out of the trees and sprinted for the sun deck.

 

Across the yard, up onto the deck, hand on the doorknob…turn…

 

Nice of Lilly to leave it unlocked for me, but not the smartest move she could have made.

 

…inside, thru the short hall, past the laundry room, into the main foyer, up the stairs, down the hall to the very end and into the bedroom on the right.

 

I left the lights off, closed the door, took a seat on the bed and waited.

 

I didn’t have to wait long.  Couldn’t have been more than thirty-five minutes.

 

The door opened and a lone silhouetted figure stood framed in the doorway.  A hand reached in towards the light switch on the left, but halted mid way.

 

Mild surprise filled the gangly figure, followed by—of all things—a rush of relief.

 

“Welcome back Dad.”

 

“Close the door AJ.” I commanded quietly.

 

The thin shadow figure shook his head slowly.  “Won’t do any good.  They’re already on their way up.”

 

I sighed softly.  “I know.”

 

“Can I turn the light on?” he asked, his light tenor giving hints that it wouldn’t be long before it matured into something approaching a baritone.

 

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

 

“You can see in the dark?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Exasperation streaked thru my son.  “Is there anything you can’t do?”

 

“He can’t sing worth a damn.” an amused female voice from the hallway behind my son proclaimed.

 

AJ’s lips curled up at the corners as the light in the doorway behind him was nearly eclipsed by the new arrival.

 

“He can’t fly either…can you Daddy?” a second, more girlish, voice inquired.

 

“Don’t think so.” I replied flatly.

 

“Too bad…that would be so cool!” the third quasi-womanly voice exclaimed.

 

“Even better than catching fire!” the second concurred.

 

“Enough!” I growled and stood up.

 

Unease and…defensiveness…filled all four of them.

 

“Get in here, close the door and turn on the light.” I commanded.

 

AJ moved forward three steps and his sisters followed, spreading out behind him; Belle directly behind him, Rosie on Belle’s right, Tink on the left.  Tink shut the door and flicked on the light.

 

I could feel as well as see the shock on their faces when they got a good look at my face.

 

“Oh!” Rosie gasped, and covered her mouth with the hand that wasn’t holding her most recent sketchbook.  Belle frowned, got very angry for an instant, and then throttled her feelings.  Tink smiled brightly and waved one hand from side to side, apparently unaffected by my appearance, while AJ looked as though he’d just had an epiphany.  My son’s eyes went wide then narrowed slowly as he nodded his head in the affirmative to some question that only he’d heard asked.

 

“You got him then?” he half asked, half stated.

 

We stared at one another for a few seconds.  “That was the plan, wasn’t it?” I asked.

 

AJ shrugged. 

 

“The best laid plans…”

 

In height my son was stuck between Tink and Rosie and dwarfed as they all were by Belle, yet somehow he managed to give the impression of being completely in command of their little group.  The youngest, and nearly the smallest, person in the room and by voice alone he came within a hair’s breadth of changing my mind.

 

“How old are you AJ?”

 

“Almost eleven.” he replied, puzzled by the question.

 

I blinked once, lit the flame in my empty eye socket and smiled.

 

“If you want to see eleven, you will never ever try that on me again.”

 

All four of them joined hands.  The strength of their love for one another was considerable.  I could feel it throbbing like a heartbeat, pounding against my body, shielding and protecting them.

 

I wondered if they felt the same sort of sensation when their mothers and I were together.

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Dad…try what?”

 

I sat back down on his bed.  “One of the great things about being able to feel people’s emotions is that I can always tell when I’m being lied to.  Don’t ever do that again either.”

 

I held up my hands and showed them the tiny lightning bolts that danced from finger to finger.  I put the fingers of both hands together, steepled them, placed my elbows on my knees and the joined index fingers against my lower lip.

 

“Now then…let’s start from the beginning, shall we?  Whose idea was it?”

 

Silence reigned supreme for long, drawn out seconds.  Then Rosie spoke up:

 

“It was me.”

 

“No it wasn’t!” Belle exclaimed harshly.  “It was my plan and you know it.”

 

“Don’t listen to them, Daddy.  It was all my idea.” Tink said interrupting her sisters.  The three of them began arguing with each other, but not once did they unclasp hands.

 

“That’s enough.” AJ said gently, and the three girls immediately quieted down.  He maintained eye contact with me and gave me a lopsided grin.  “Girls.” he said and shrugged.

 

An image of my son at five flashed across my mind, and I nodded.

 

“Rose figured out what was bothering you.  She’s really good at reading people that way.  She told us about it and we decided the only way to get you to stop being such a pain in the butt was to give you what you wanted.”

 

“Excuse me?” I asked.

 

“Come on Dad…you haven’t been yourself for a really long time.  It wasn’t like doing calculus or anything.  Two plus two is all.  You couldn’t find the guy who hurt Aunt Izzy and Peggy, so we did it for you.  Rose told us what we needed to do, Tink found out how to get in touch with the guy, Belle came up with the plan and the four of us got you where you had to be, in the right frame of mind.”

 

I shifted my gaze from all of them onto Tink alone.  “You found Alex Chorney?”

 

She smiled brightly and nodded.

 

“How?  Laurie couldn’t find him with all the resources of the NSA.” I said.

 

Tink grinned.  “I’m better than Laurie is.  Even she says so.”

 

“How?” I repeated.

 

“I hacked the Interpol databases, which led me to Russia, which led to China.  Their government security databases were a lot harder to get into.  Layers and layers of protection, but I beat ‘em…and there he was.  It took two months, but I found him.”

 

I nodded absently.  Tink was the smartest person I knew, even if she was only twelve.

 

“Okay, so you found the guy and offered him my head on a platter.  Then what?”

 

AJ frowned.  “Rose said the only way they could take you was if you didn’t know they were there.  Belle figured the only way that was gonna happen was if you shut off your powers, and the only way we knew of for that to happen was if you were so mad you wanted to hurt our moms.”

 

I raised my eyebrows.  “And you came to that conclusion how?”

 

Belle smirked.  The first active facial expression she’d shown since entering the room.  “Daddy…give us a little credit.  We’ve been hearing stories from our moms forever about you and them…they talk about you all the time, especially when they don’t think we’re listening.  But we always listen.  We know what happened the night you left us…and why.  We’re not little kids anymore, and we’re not stupid.”

 

“I’ll concede that you’re not little kids.  The stupid bit is still open for debate.”

 

Belle frowned, Tink pouted, Rosie blushed and AJ flushed with repressed anger.

 

“We decided the best way to make you lose control and shut yourself down was to show you the one thing you were most afraid of.” he said callously.

 

“Complete betrayal.” Rosie said in a small, sad voice.  “It was the only way.”

 

“How?” I asked after a long pause.

 

“I learned how Mom tricked you that time you were playing tag.” Tink explained.

 

“You can do that too?”

 

She smiled shyly and nodded.

 

“So who took the emotions from your mothers?” I asked.

 

“I did.” Rosie replied.

 

“Uh-huh…okay, and the image I saw?”

 

“That was me.” AJ said smugly.

 

I nodded.  “You can project mental images…sure, why the hell not?  And Belle?  What did you do?”

 

Belle shrugged.  “Kept it all in balance, juggling the emotions and images, keeping them under control so everything appeared real.  And kept our emotions shielded so they wouldn’t get in the way and ruin things.  You’re hard to fool, but we’ve done it before.” she said and blushed.

 

I nodded again, parted my hands and ran my fingers thru my hair, brushing it back behind my ears.

 

I stood up slowly and crossed my arms over my chest.

 

“Impressive.  Really…  And if I weren’t so fucking pissed off I’d probably be proud as hell!” I snarled.

 

Collectively they backed up a step.  I advanced a step and they retreated, still hand in hand.

 

“You tricked me into thinking your mothers were cheating on me, and betrayed me to my enemies who, thanks to my loving children, tortured, drugged and damn near killed me!”

 

“No one can kill you.” Tink blurted out.

 

“You don’t know that.” I rasped.

 

“You can’t die if you don’t want to.” Tink insisted.

 

“You don’t know that.”

 

“Sure I do.  Mom died and you brought her back to life.”

 

“That does not prove your point.”

 

Tink smiled at me, her heart full of love and understanding.  “Sure it does.  You didn’t want her to die, so she didn’t.  And if you don’t want to die, you won’t.  You wanted to kill the man who hurt Aunt Izzy and mom…and you did, didn’t you?”

 

I stared blankly for a moment then blinked a time or two.

 

“Didn’t you?”

 

“I’m glad he’s dead.” Rosie said unsympathetically.  Sweet, mild, sensitive little Rosie.

 

“Me too.  Do you feel better now Daddy?” Belle asked.

 

“He will, once he calms down.” AJ predicted.

 

“Happy Birthday Daddy.” Tink offered hopefully.

 

“Happy Birthday!” the other three chorused in unison.

 

I took a deep breath, held it for a second and then exhaled silently.

 

“Thank you.” I relented, and then they released one another’s hands and the girls rushed forward and threw their arms around me.

 

I hugged and kissed each one in turn, shook hands with my son and moved to the door.  I opened it a fraction, stopped, turned around and looked back at them.

 

“Try to keep the moaning, and your emotions, down from now on, would you…you’re not nearly as good at blocking powerful feelings as you think.” I said.

 

Their expressions of embarrassed surprise were almost enough payback.

 

Almost.

 

While they were busy attempting to look innocent, I fitted each one of my children with a ring, smiled, wished them goodnight and exited my son’s room.

 

Betrayal—and competition—they exact a price, from all of us.

 

I padded down stairs and headed for the kitchen.

 

My three girls were waiting for me in the dining room.  I got mobbed, kissed, hugged, fussed and cried over.  They had a hundred questions, which I tried to answer while getting something to eat.  The first real food I’d had for as far back as I could remember…this time.

 

Eventually that particular hunger was satisfied.  The girls rushed me upstairs and proceeded to satisfy our remaining hunger.

 

It was two in the morning by the time they’d exhausted themselves and fallen asleep scattered haphazardly over the surface of our bed.  I got up, pulled on a pair of fresh pants, wandered downstairs to the den, called the office and left a voice mail message for my assistant Eric.  There was somewhere I need to go, and he was going to start the ball rolling by scheduling an embassy visit.  Then I left a message for Laurie at the NSA.  I was going to need language lessons.  Long past time to put my talent for mimicry to use.

 

I was sitting at my desk, fingers idly running over the empty socket of my right eye and the fading scar tissue that decorated the side of my face, when the girls came down looking for me.

 

“It’s over, right?” Lilly asked out of the blue.  I knew what she meant.

 

“Alex is dead, yes.”

 

“That’s not the answer I was looking for.” she countered.

 

“I know.”

 

“What now?” Izzy demanded.

 

I smiled fondly at my girls.  “Just one or two loose ends to tie up.  Nothing much.”

 

“How much nothing much?” Peggy inquired.

 

“One little trip ought to do it.” I said cryptically.

 

Lilly rolled her eyes, Peggy looked intrigued and Izzy looked ready to chew nails.

 

I held up both hands in surrender.  “You can come along, if you like.”

 

“You mean it?” my sister asked.

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“What about the kids?” Lilly wanted to know.

 

“I think they’re old enough now to look after themselves for a couple of weeks.”  As long as Sly and company are around to keep an eye on them, I didn’t bother to add.

 

More hugging and kissing followed.  We drifted back upstairs, changed the sheets on the bed, climbed in and the girls piled in, around and on top of me as usual.

 

We lay together in comfortable silence for several minutes.

 

“I found someone to take over my CIA job.” I whispered into the dark above Peggy’s head.

 

“Planning to retire already?” Lilly asked, rubbing her cheek against my left shoulder.

 

“Not just yet.  He won’t be ready to start OJT for about seven years.”

 

“Something to look forward to anyway.” Izzy muttered on my right as she snuggled in closer.

 

“Are you going to get a glass eye?” Lilly wondered.

 

“Don’t think I’ll have to.  Couple of nights with you girls ought to fix me right up.”

 

“Does it hurt very much?” Izzy wanted to know.

 

“Not much.  It’ll pass.”

 

A few more minutes of blessed silence, then:

 

“This trip of yours…where are we going?” Peggy asked.

 

I chuckled.  “Thought we’d go look for a really good Chinese restaurant.”

 

All three were puzzled by my answer, but they were also very tired, and their need for sleep won out over curiosity.

 

While they rested, I lay still as a vibrant surge of absolute love coursed thru my body, running over, in and around every centimeter of my insides, ultimately pooling within my empty eye socket.  It’s an odd sort of sensation, an eyeball re-growing itself.  Not exactly unpleasant, but strange none the less.

 

Who knows, might not take more than one night.

 

Anyway, it gave me time to plan my next move.  Something unexpected.

 

Yes, Alex Chorney was gone, but his employers weren’t.  If they’d come at me before, they’d come again.  I wasn’t going to give them a second chance.

 

I might have reservations about taking over the government of my own country, but I’ve absolutely none about taking over theirs!

 

Guess I want to be Emperor after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The End

 

 

 

 

(I want to express my appreciation and gratitude to ‘The Old Fart’, not only for his excellent editorial skills but for his extreme patience in dealing with a very slow writer, and to Alias X for posting the story because I’m too damn web-stupid and lazy to do it myself.  Thank you both.)