The Glassbreaker Goes Home (The King Henry Tapes), page 4
“And Mom, outside of the cooking?”
“Love me some Ronnie Ward. But you can off your little sister whenever you want. I’ll even help.”
Val didn’t buy it. “Christmas is your little apprentice already and you just need to admit you like her being around, especially all of her questions. You like teaching, especially if the pupil can keep up with you.”
“Never,” King Henry grumbled. “Done too much of it already. Look how Ultra 2015 turned out.”
“Evil little cheats,” it was Val’s turn to grumble.
“Winners. We call them winners. Could’ve joined my team, but all of you ganged up on me, didn’t you?”
Val’s eyes narrowed in a glare. “Did I ever forgive you for that one?”
He shifted on the bed to peck her lips. “You always forgive me.”
“What a foolish woman I am . . .”
“Still smarter than me.”
“Going with flattery over changing the conversation this time, are we?”
He could take a hint that flattery was currently off the menu and slipped out of range before kissing turned to biting. “As for your London apartment . . . as nice a place as a lowly apartment can be. Still, it’s a shame that for all we tried we never sent that loft bed off its mountings and down to the floor, ain’t it?”
She was amused by the idea. “Is that what you were trying to do?”
“You weren’t?”
“No, I held back quite a lot last week actually. I was more worried those Guild members guarding the door might think we were being attacked. It was quite a racket as it was . . .”
“Your eyes rolled back into your head and your nails buried a quarter of an inch into my shoulders was holding back, was it?”
“My peak is almost unreachable,” she informed him with some quality false bravado. “You might get me there one day, if you keep trying . . .”
“The room going to combust when I do?” he edged towards very dangerous ground.
“We’ll see,” was Val’s only coy answer. She stood back up from the bed, going over to the closet and opening it with equally daring bravado. Inside was an assortment of hung up t-shirts and jeans, plus a pile of old shoes on the floor. Still nothing much interesting about it, but Val hummed contently to herself as she flicked through the shirts.
Metal band. Wrestler. MMA star. Another wrestler.
“As I said: nothing interesting in this whole house. Not even smart enough to tell it to go fuck itself.”
She kept shifting through the shirts, eyes sparkling with mischief. “John Cena? Really? So very disappointed in you right now. Stone Cold Steve Austin or the Undertaker are acceptable, but this? Blasphemy! Wait . . . is this . . . is this a Miz shirt?”
“I was poor, it was on discount.”
“You hand in your BAMF badge, mister!”
“Ya know, it’s not like I went through your panty drawer any time we stopped by in Palo Alto. You probably got like My Little Pony panties or something you’re hiding from me.”
Instead of stopping her, his complaints only drove her to new heights. “Speaking of which: this is a fourteen-year-old King Henry Price’s room . . . so where is the porn stash?”
Their eyes met. King Henry feeling like prey and Val a cat with a big, fat mouse. I’m in love with the devil, he realized, even the vampire wouldn’t do this shit to me. Would’ve ate me, like every other day, but she wouldn’t have emotionally tormented me with my old porn stash!
With a grin, Valentine started feeling for vents or hidden compartments in the closet.
“Ya know,” he tried again, “it’s not like I went looking for your girl’s-first-vibrator any time we stopped by in Palo Alto. Bet it was pink.”
She checked his bedside table, including underneath it.
“This is . . . this ain’t fair,” King Henry decided. “This is . . . if I was even normal poor I’d have had a shitty school laptop or something to visit websites and get malware like all the other boys, rig the thing to explode if your girlfriend even touched the keyboard. But no . . . I was mega-white-trash poor . . . means I had to steal magazines from the ShopsMart, means I had to do shit old school and had physical evidence to leave behind. Ain’t fucking fair, Fate, ya hear me? This time you’ve gone too fucking far!”
Valentine reached under his bed, blond eyebrows rising when she found a hole ripped in his box-spring.
King Henry grabbed her wrists tight before she could go any farther. “Val, I don’t know if our relationship is ready for the things fourteen-year-old-me did to Milfs and Muffs Special Issue #69. If I have to . . . I’ll use physical violence to save us from your curiosity.”
Valentine’s irisless eyes glittered as she studied every inch of him, sitting there, nervous and vulnerable to his past. “Curiosity always does get the both of us into trouble, doesn’t it?”
“To be fair—also got us a couple of promotions. But, yeah . . . usually some troublesome shit.” Her neck tilted, begging for more contact, so he leaned down to kiss her solidly, no holding back.
When he pulled back, she licked her lips, eyes closed. Too bad, I like them eyes unfocused after a kiss, means I done my job.
With her wrists released, she pulled herself all the way up into his lap. Long legs dangled along the edge of the bed. Them things are just . . . dangerous. So were her arms as they clasped about his neck. It’s a thick neck, it’ll hold the weight of her just fine. Them eyes opened again.
“Love ya, Val.”
Her turn to peck his lips. “Love you too . . . despite the fact you’re a John Cena fan.”
“It was on—”
“A Miz shirt!”
“To be fair, his wife is really hot. Also: on sale.”
“Yes, that’s your excuse, but I think I’ll need receipts to prove it,” she decided.
King Henry nodded at the room, nervous again. “And the rest?”
“My opinion as a Recruiter?”
Another nod.
“At your shop, you’re in every inch of the place. Being down there . . . I feel so close to you. I love the smell, the way you’ve never been able to remove that odor of freshly dug dirt from how you excavated the room. I love the little bits of paper you’ve stapled to your workstations with notes no one else seems to understand, the way design files almost burst from your cabinets, and the bits of half finished experiments that you find in every spare drawer. But what I really love is standing above it and knowing you’re down there. The noise—there’s always some bit of metal clanging or anima building up . . . sometimes you even feel a thump against the floor and every time it makes me smile imagining you dropping some brick on your foot.
“But here . . .”
She sighed painfully before continuing, “There’s just . . . emptiness. It’s the room of a boy hiding. From his family, from his friends, from himself more than anyone else. He hurt too much to make any real effort. What he really wanted was to strike out and no one would see it here, so he struck out everywhere else, at everyone else. Here . . . he just wanted to be alone and be silent and not have to think about all the possibility he was wasting. Part of him knew what was inside, how powerful and strong he could become, but . . . it was easier not to care. Easier to have blank walls. Easier to just . . . think of this as the place where he slept. Nothing more . . . surely not a home.”
“Sounds right,” he grunted out through a thick throat.
“I’m sorry,” Valentine apologized. “That was too much . . .”
“I asked, Val. Ceinwyn would’ve been proud of that assessment. Bet she even has something similar written in my original file.”
“I love you,” she told him again.
“Yeah, we keep using that word now, don’t we?”
There wasn’t a bit of fear in her face. “I want to make a home with you, King Henry. We said this would be the Only Try that matters and I still believe that, I’m still in. Susan’s wonderful and I know you’ll help her. I like your Dad too. He seems like a man who’s trying extremely hard to be a good person.”
“Yeah, he is. Now. Got that in common with him, I suppose.”
“I can’t know what he was like when you were a child, King Henry,” Valentine said, maybe a little frustrated to have that potential empathy impossible to contemplate. “He seems so gentle now, especially with Susan . . .”
“Whipped me right here plenty. Not every day, not every Sunday even, but . . . enough. I did deserve some of it. Like to tell myself that a hundred years ago no one would’ve blinked an eye. Most of it was . . . he was drunk and the excuses to hit me got so easy. Work or bills or JoJo backtalking him. I took so many damn whippings for her and . . . or Mom . . . too many Bad Days in a row and just . . . Dad couldn’t take it. Those we almost turned into a stage show. Me getting whipped and him whipping. Our release. Maybe we hoped she’d hear it . . . wake up . . .”
There were no words, so she only put her head carefully on his shoulder, waiting.
“Same room, same house, filled up with so many bad memories, why should I try to cover them up with decorations? Ghosts in these walls and hopefully our necromancer don’t start blabbing to them when someone asks her to pass the salt. But you’re right . . . Dad has changed. Maybe not as much as I have, but . . . he’s a better man, a different man than the one with that belt. So . . . new life, here we go.”
Still no response.
Hard response to come up with on the spot, King Henry could admit. Val was good, but she wasn’t that good.
“Peter Ward ever spank you?” he asked just so he could hear her voice.
“No. I was a disgustingly well-behaved child with incredibly progressive parents, one who only occasionally earned a five or ten minute timeout. Mom spanked me once, I forget why. I think . . . did I dump something into the toilet?”
“So you’ve always liked potty humor then?”
The lips that found the side of his neck were twisted in amusement. “Whatever it was, I’m not sure which of us cried harder afterwards. Far too much drama and pain for the Ward family, so it never happened again.”
“I suppose in Australia they lose so many babies to spider bites and dingoes that they have to be protective of you,” King Henry forced himself to joke some more.
“Shhh. You’ll make my accent come out.”
“Only when you get really angry. Or . . . well, when I’m hitting all the right buttons.”
“A skill for which I am thankful you excel at, King Henry. One day you’ll push me to the peak, promise. You can do it, Champ!”
“If the room don’t combust on us, what are the odds of you bursting out into the Australian Nation Anthem?”
“I’ve never been very good at remembering lyrics.”
“Or maybe like the Crocodile Hunter theme song?”
Valentine pulled back, no smile on her face now. As serious as spilled blood, she declared, “I stayed through the Geo Realm and Obadiah Paine and waged war at Eureka for you. I’ve seen your family and whatever they were, whoever is missing, if they’re part of you, they’ll do.”
“That just proves you’re crazier than I am, Val.”
“And a few days ago I washed your underwear for the first time; I think I’ve got this.”
“Well . . . if you’ve done that, then I guess I can show you the rest of the house,” King Henry decided with one of his own rare smiles. “But if you start looking for any other porn stashes, this whole relationship is off.”
* * *
King Henry couldn’t ever remember having a dinner this extravagant at Shithole Price.
It wasn’t even finished and it was already . . . impressive.
Know the last time he called anything at Shithole Price impressive?
Never. The answer is fucking never!
They used to throw barbecues, he remembered that . . . barely. Way back before the Bad Days. Not for extended family even then, dead or absent, but for the neighborhood itself. The neighbors were younger then, with kids of their own. Visalia itself was younger as well, smaller . . . back before the banks pumped their bullshit schemes into the realty market. Most of the decent neighbors sold then, taking off for greener pastures.
I mean, it has a two-car garage and a swimming pool, don’t it? And look at them interest rates! We ain’t gonna change them on you three years from now or nothing . . . promise! Sign here, bitch!
Worse than the old neighbors moving, was that the even more desperate filled their spots. People even poorer than the Prices. That’s really fucking poor! Kind of people never would’ve been able to afford a home loan before corruption went big time. Then the bullshit got extra stinky, them rates changed, and the whole world crashed down a ravine with the grace of a drunken retard didn’t know the difference between grape soda and fortified wine.
Out went the broke ass homebuyers, in came the ‘for sale by bank’ signs. It was a vacant, overgrown, lifeless poverty the whole neighborhood still couldn’t quite escape, no matter what new bullshit schemes the bankers started playing at. Always another scheme, always another wall to keep you from breaking through.
Hard to think about politics, especially supernatural politics when you’re grating cheese into piles, but King Henry never missed a chance to get pissed off. His mind wasn’t the kind that stopped, probably why he picked up the bottle when he just couldn’t take thinking no more. Only way to dam the flow. Not the kind of man who could sit at a simple task, mindless as all the other cogs. Promised Val I wouldn’t brood, and I’m trying, but getting pissed ain’t brooding. Not exactly . . .
Wasn’t bankers he was really pissed at. I mean . . . generally I fucking hate all of ‘em and would kick ‘em in the balls until my kneecap broke, but . . . got bigger fish to fry these days.
The Lady.
The Old Bat.
Maudette Fucking Lynch.
What kind of name was ‘Maudette’, anyway?
Samson-less now, that make her meaner? She wasn’t getting any Flick-the-Shriveled Bean happy time no more, and not getting any happy time sure made King Henry meaner. Why the fuck a hundred year old woman needs to be having sex of any type I don’t know, but I sure as fuck walked in on it that one time, so it was definitely happening. Shit, part of me still wants to puke just remembering, only that would ruin this fine pile of cheese I got going.
The Lady.
The Old Bat.
Maudette Fucking Lynch.
The Dean.
Fairies called her the Lakeborn. As the Maximus of Water she was the Streamfeeder. Whatever the fuck that meant. Makes about as much sense as naming someone Maudette. The Lady wasn’t quite around to have her say about all the lies keeping the supernatural world barely taped together, but she’s the one who—more than anyone else still walking the planet—had seen those laws upheld these last hundred years.
Her and the Divine Nii-Vah, I guess.
The Lady had been slow-rolling him these last two weeks.
These things take time, Mr. Price. We’ll get there, don’t you worry.
Every fucking day she uttered those words or something equally aggravating.
The Divine Courts must be pacified, the Guild must pick a new Guild Master, you need to accept your place on the Council, Ceinwyn will need to train you and Miss Ward, of course. We’ll need time to catalog the Curator’s treasures and you can’t construct your research center at the school, parents would never accept that. No, we’ll need to find a suitable location, build it, and then we’ll need to consider staffing and security, won’t we?
With a rumbling growl from his throat, the cheese went into paper bowls and next he started in on chopping up a couple tomatoes.
Dad went Mexican for the night, whether because it let him make King Henry’s favorite enchiladas or to please Vega was anyone’s guess. I think assuming a Mexican wants to eat a taco is just a little bit racist, but given he’s my father is anyone really surprised? Granted it wasn’t nearly as bad as the time King Henry bought T-Bone KFC for a month straight . . .
He doubted Vega would mention it anyway, being all politically correct and perfectly sociable and all that. Opposite of me in quite a few ways, ain’t he? Horatio Vega: the first man King Henry made peace with. First time that insidious seeping horror of Civilization made its mark upon him.
Still wasn’t sure it was the right call. At the very least, all that time pumping out floro-seeders sure sucked sweaty coyote cock. Think I’d be more insulted if they were actually for his rich-man-needs-cherries-in-winter orchard rather than some subterranean coke plantation.
Diced up tomatoes went into another little bowl before King Henry moved on to an onion. Toppings for the tacos, chicken and beef both. No fish like the Asylum cafeteria, but since it would be awhile before King Henry ate anywhere else besides the Asylum cafeteria given the likelihood of his future plans, he couldn’t complain about the glaring absence.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner. Beef, it’s still what’s for dinner.
Dozens of tacos, heaps of mole enchiladas, big enough pots of beans and rice to feed an army platoon, five kinds of chips with five kinds of salsa . . . looked mighty tasty. Marge even baked up three cakes for dessert, provided they didn’t kill each other before then. Three types of ice cream, root beer for floats . . . wasn’t fancy, but it felt like a serious effort had been made.
Serious effort, Lady! Ever fucking heard of it?
Of course she hadn’t.
We’ll see about starting your Council orientation when you return, Mr. Price. I have a conference call lined up with the three Divines you apparently lied to about the World-Breaker in your possession being destroyed, and if that’s cleared up without them demanding your immediate death, hopefully we can start inching forward. I think you’ll need the full three month course . . . being as young as you are. Ceinwyn at least had those years as a Recruiter, you . . . well, you’ve jumped quite beyond your age and station, haven’t you?
Next to him at the stove, Old Man Price gave some corn tortillas a quick deep fry. “How’s it going, Boy?”
