Suicide Kings, page 22
“Wouldn’t it be funny if we both shot each other and it turned out we were wrong the whole time?”
“Yeah,” she says. “A real knee slapper. So are you going to open the door?”
“Nope.”
“For fuck sake,” she says and throws the door open. I step back and toward the doorway with the Sig aimed at her head as she steps inside. “Really? Do I need to prove I’m me? Fine. I kicked your ass the first time we met in my hotel.”
“I remember doing the ass-kicking,” I say. I decock the gun and toss it onto the bed. “Sorry. It’s been a day. What are you doing here?” She’s wearing blue shorts, a cream-colored top, and tennis shoes. Her hair’s pushed up under a hair band. She looks like she’s about to go play badminton in the 1930s.
“Jesus, what happened to you?” she says, closing the door behind her.
“Hans and Otto happened.” I pick up my phone and respond to Amanda. Bigsby compromised. Talking to Gabriela
“And I didn’t get an invite to the party?” she says. “Who are you texting?”
“Amanda. There’s something fucked up with Bigsby, or the estate, and I’m not sure what it is yet. Otto and Hans caught me in the arboretum outside of, and I shit you not, an actual gingerbread cottage. I think it was a playhouse for Amanda when she was a kid. I mean, the house is full-sized but the furniture’s about right for a ten-year-old.” I give her the short version. Ambushed, handcuffed, hung from a meat hook. Then fried, stabbed, bit Hans’s nose off, torched his brain with his own cattle prod.
“And here I am,” I say.
“I don’t like this,” Gabriela says.
“Not nearly as much as I don’t.” I look into the full-length mirror next to the closet to see if I missed any spots. There are a couple on my back I can’t reach. When did they get to my back?
“Do you think it was planned?”
“Yes and no. I think Hans and Otto were following me looking for an opportunity. Finding the cottage gave it to them. They hit me with a drugged dart and dragged me inside. I don’t know for sure, but I got the feeling they prepped the place to nullify magic after they got me in there.”
“Once they did, no one would have been able to find you,” she says. “Not even Bigsby. But until then—”
“Until then, it’d be like anywhere else on the property. Bigsby’s part security system. Supposed to keep guests from killing each other, at least when they’re being blatant about it. So, what happened?”
“It either didn’t see what was happening, or it ignored what was happening,” Gabriela says. “Somebody’s gotten control of it.”
“Or it’s making its own decisions.”
“Jesus, that’s the last thing we need.”
“Either way it’s compromised,” I say. “Amanda’s turned him off.”
“She can’t keep him off for long, though,” Gabriela says. “Part of what’s keeping everyone in line is that they’re being seen and heard wherever they go. Shut it off—”
“And it’s open season. I get it,” I say. “So, who’s gotten control of it? Hans and Otto would be the obvious choice except for the fact that they’re both fucking idiots. I don’t think it even occurred to them that they were being watched.” I twist, trying to reach the spots on my back with the burn cream. They’re really starting to hurt.
“Gimme that,” she says. She grabs the jar of cream, her hand on mine, but I don’t let go. “What’s wrong?” Nothing. Everything.
“You want to know why I’ve been avoiding you?” I say.
She hesitates. Then, “Yes.”
“I hated you,” I say. “I was angry, at least.” I let go of the jar, turn around, and close my eyes. I don’t want to see her face right now, or mine. I don’t know if I can say what I need to say if I do.
“I know. I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t be.” There’s a thought that’s been forming in the back of my mind, but it’s not quite there yet. “I’ve been seeing Mictlantecuhtli in my dreams. Or not dreams. You know what I mean.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Peachy,” I say. “I barely recognize him anymore. He’s turned into what Mictlantecuhtli is supposed to be. Five years and we still looked human. But in a month’s time without me, he’s gone full death-god. Gray skin, knobby bones, guts pushing out of his abdomen like it’s about to pop. And it’s not just the look. We’re not the same. I don’t think either of us really understands the other. I sure as hell don’t understand him.”
“What does he want?” She puts some of the salve on a burn I didn’t know was there until it lit up when she touched it. I tense. “Sorry.”
“All good. He wants me to stop killing Mictlan,” I say.
“Come again?” she says. I glance at her in the mirror and look away.
“Uncertainty and doubt,” I say. “Mictlan and Mictlantecuhtli are linked. He’s confident in his identity. He’s very clear who he is, what he is. I’m not. Haven’t been since I got here.”
“But how is that—You’re still linked to Mictlan, too, aren’t you?”
“It can’t tell us apart. And because the cosmos lacks any subtlety, my doubt has taken the form of a great big sinkhole sucking the whole place down.”
“What do you need to do?” She’s attended to three burns on my back so far. I am so going to kill Otto for this. Again.
“Figure out who the fuck I am. What I am. Choose it. Be it.”
“Kind of a tall order,” she says.
“I think it might be easier than I thought,” I say. “I’ve been childish. Like the kid who doesn’t want to come home from summer camp. There’s no way Mictlantecuhtli could be himself with me in him. I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For acting like a twelve year old,” I say. “Bigger picture. If you hadn’t pulled me out of there, sure, I wouldn’t have this problem right now, but somewhere down the line, a month, a year, an eon, who knows? At some point I wouldn’t be a part of Mictlantecuhtli. I’d be a cancer. So, thank you.”
She puts her fingers on a spot near my neck, traces along the edge of one of my tattoos. I can feel the magic in it flare as she does.
“Do you still hate me?”
“I never did,” I say. “All this time I’ve been angry and confused. Coming back. The whole shit with Darius. Everything.”
“You know that’s not why I brought you back, right?” she says. Her finger going down my back is very distracting.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m on fire and numb at the same time. Not myself. I don’t know how, but there’s something missing.”
“Do you think it has to do with what’s happening in Mictlan?” she says.
“I do, yeah. Mictlantecuhtli told me the important thing isn’t what I choose but that I choose.” Talking it out is making things clearer.
“Sounds like one of those things that sounds simple but really isn’t,” she says. “Like the best way to stay alive is to not die.”
“At first it did feel like that. But I think I know what needs to happen. I don’t know that it’s a choice so much as an acknowledgement. I’m going to have uncertainty and doubt, fears, desires, anger. All the rest of the bullshit. Because what it comes down to, what I’ve been fighting against, is the fact that I’m human. Even with all of Mictlantecuhtli’s memories, whatever left-over power might be in me, I’m still human. So that’s what I choose. To be human.”
A sudden weight I didn’t know was there lifts from my shoulders. It’s not relief, or happiness. It’s not any kind of emotion. It’s a responsibility fulfilled. As clearly as Mictlantecuhtli knows he’s the King of the Dead, I know that I’m a human being. That I choose to be a human being. Whatever else I am, mage, partial death god, punching bag for Nazis, it all comes down to one thing. I’m human.
And then the pain kicks in.
Chapter 19
Ever see This Is Spinal Tap? It’s a mockumentary about a rock band, and there’s this bit where one of the band members is talking about his amps and how they all go up to eleven. Other guys, see, they only play up to ten. But this band? They play up to eleven.
Everything in my body and soul goes up to eleven. My bruises are throbbing like sledgehammers in drywall, my cuts are tearing me open like I’m being run through with knives, my burns are spewing hot lava. Air is like a belt-sander against my skin.
The only sound I can hear is my own screaming. I can’t seem to stop, even though it’s ripping my throat inside out. I’m blind from the intensity of the light lasing through my eyes.
I don’t know how long it goes on. There’s no such thing as time. It just lasts and lasts and lasts. Until it doesn’t.
“Breathe, goddammit.” A voice I know but can’t place. Pressure on my chest I can barely feel, a vain attempt to push air into my lungs.
“You do not fucking get to do this again, you stupid motherfucker,” the voice yells. “I pulled your ass out of a fucking god and if you die on me now—Fuck.”
Sorry to disappoint, anonymous voice, but I think you’re not going to have much of a say in this. Valiant effort. You can probably stop now. Or not. Up to you.
The anonymous voice is closer. It whispers in my ear with a volume that might as well be a scream. “Please don’t die. I’m not going to lose you again. I can’t lose you again. Please.”
A new voice. Higher, sharper. It sounds angrier than the other one, if that’s possible. “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me. What the hell did you do now, you stupid sonofabitch?”
A brand-new pain lances through me. I feel my lungs twist, shift, creating their own air. Nerves fire, heart beats. My brain is catching up like an old engine that won’t turn over. But then something in it changes, too, and it’s a fire of electricity. Commands that won’t be denied flare through it.
My eyes snap open and I’m alive. “Holy fuck, that hurt.” Gabriela and Amanda are looking down at me. They look more vivid, somehow, more there. I can hear the creak of shifting rooms, people walking around through the house. Slowly, my senses ratchet down to something almost normal.
“Don’t ever fucking do that again,” Gabriela says. She thumps my chest with her fist, again and again. “Do you fucking hear me?”
Amanda grabs her hands. “Keep doing that and he will,” she says. “What the hell happened?”
“I turned into a real boy,” I say. I roll over and slowly push myself up. “Fucking hell that hurt.”
“Somebody please tell me what the hell is going on,” Amanda says.
“I still had ties to Mictlan that I needed to sever, and I did. How do my eyes look?”
“Pitch black,” Amanda says.
That confirms one thing. Human as I am, I still have bits of Mictlantecuhtli stuck in me, like spinach in teeth. Something tells me I’m never getting rid of them. I have no idea if that’s good or bad. What’s important is that Mictlan is no longer in danger. Not from me, at least.
“How do you feel?” Gabriela says.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m okay.”
I am. In fact, I feel better than okay. Now that everything is calming down, I feel more myself than I have since I woke up in that bunker in San Pedro a month ago. Which makes sense. I literally haven’t been myself. Everything was slightly numbed and I didn’t even know it. Now it’s all been turned up a couple notches. There is, of course, a downside.
A whirlwind of emotions comes tearing through me. MacFee’s death a month ago is a punch in the gut all over again. The men and women whose souls were crushed when I destroyed Darius are screaming inside my head. The fight with the Baba Yaga, the knowledge that in that moment I lost a group of people I thought I could help. Who I thought could help me.
Not to mention what I just heard. Was it real? Did Gabriela say what I think she said? Real or not, it’s hitting some raw spaces in me that I really don’t want to look at right now.
“You don’t look okay,” she says. “Do you remember anything?”
Plenty. Lots. “Nothing,” I say. “Not until I woke up. I was standing here and then I was on the floor. Thank you, by the way.” Gabriela and Amanda look like they expect me to keel over any second. Fair enough. I’m not sure I won’t.
“Seriously, I’m okay,” I say. I hobble over to the closet. I see suits, ties, dress shirts, pants, boxers, a tuxedo, socks, cufflinks all laid out like a department-store display.
“You got any t-shirts in my size?” I say. “I don’t want to bleed all over anything fancy.”
“Hang on. Yes. Look to your left,” Amanda says.
“That’s a neat trick,” I say, pulling on a black t-shirt and wincing at the effort. No matter how I move, the fabric rubs against the burns like sandpaper. “Part of running the estate?”
“Something like that,” she says. “Okay, Mictlan. I have no idea what the hell that’s about, but why are you covered in burns?”
“Otto and Hans,” Gabriela says. There’s not much to tell and she gets Amanda up to speed, with me answering a question or two about the details.
“God fucking dammit,” Amanda says. “This is making more sense now. I’ve told everyone that Bigsby’s undergoing some routine maintenance. Not everyone buys it, of course, but nobody’s saying anything. I’ve gone over him as thoroughly as I know how. He’s a lot like a computer program, built with magic rather than code.”
“Did you find anything?” Gabriela says.
“Yeah,” Amanda says. “Somebody changed the spells around his awareness and motivation. They’re subtle, but I’ve been tinkering with Bigsby since I was a kid.”
“Awareness and motivation?” I say.
“He couldn’t perceive some people. And if he did, he wouldn’t help if they were in trouble.”
“Can he perceive the absence of people?” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“Does it know Hans is dead?”
Amanda frowns, cocks her head to the side, and closes her eyes. A moment later she opens them and says, “Shit. He wasn’t taking into account anyone missing, or anyone new.”
“New?” Gabriela says. “Did someone get onto the property?”
“If they did, they’re not here, anymore,” Amanda says. “I don’t know how they would have, but it might explain how somebody got to my dad. Goddammit.”
I can see this starting to nosedive into a pity party and we don’t have time for one. I change the subject.
“Who couldn’t he see?” I say.
“You, Liam, and Helga,” she says. “Why, I don’t know. You make sense. You’re an obstacle and you can be killed without triggering the curse. But I don’t understand Liam or Helga.”
“Siobhan has an axe to grind with Helga,” I say. “I can see her doing that. And she knows Helga and I—Helga and my grandfather had a history, so she might think I’d get in her way. But that doesn’t explain Liam.”
“Or how she was planning on doing it,” Amanda says. “She needs someone else to pull the trigger or the curse comes down on her.”
“Before we veer too far off the subject, what’s your plan with Bigsby?” I say.
“He’s fixed. Holes, any I could find, are patched up,” Amanda says. “And I’ve put in more safeguards. If anyone tries to touch those spells, I should know it. If, somehow, they get past that, I’ve got Bigsby checking himself a million times a second. If his state doesn’t perfectly match the previous ten thousand checks he shuts down. But that’s not my biggest worry. I don’t know how anyone got to him in the first place. The only people who know how he works are me and my dad.”
“Somebody figured it out,” Gabriela says. “Could Siobhan?”
“I seriously doubt it. Her knack is in plants. I suppose she could have, but I just don’t think so.”
“We can cross Hans off the list,” Gabriela says.
“And Tobias,” Amanda says.
“Why Tobias?” I say. “I know he’s got no magic, but what if he’s got an artifact or a talisman or just happens to know the secret knock to get control of Bigsby?”
“Maybe,” Amanda says. “But I don’t think so. I’ve spent a little time with him and he’s, I dunno, timid’s not the word. Apprehensive?”
“Scared shitless,” Gabriela says. “I don’t know how he’s going to take the news his dad is dead.”
“Dance a jig on his grave?” I say.
“No,” Gabriela says. “That kid’s been beaten into submission. Once he finds out Hans is dead, he’s going to latch onto Otto even though he terrifies him. And if Otto goes, any authority figure he can find. I can’t see him doing anything like this, even if he was able to.”
“That leaves Liam and Helga. No. I’m missing someone. The lawyer. The fuck is his name?”
“Jonathan,” Amanda says. “He’s definitely playing a game, guys like him always are, but I don’t think it’s this one. If it was, he wouldn’t be the one doing the heavy lifting.”
“Fair enough. I like Liam for it.”
“I do too,” Gabriela says. “But I wouldn’t discount Helga or Siobhan. Helga used to live here. She might know things about the estate nobody else does. And Siobhan’s still a wild card.”
“She says she’s here to kill Helga,” I say. “But there’s no way to prove that.”
“We’re missing something,” Gabriela says. “What if it’s not about the inheritance? What if it’s about consolidating power? With Hans dead, control of his assets go to Otto?”
“Helga,” Amanda says. “But she’ll probably give them to Otto, yeah.”
“What about Helga?” I say.
Amanda frowns. “I’m not sure. Either to Otto or to Liam. Probably Liam. We’ve got shit like this codified, so I know there’s an answer, but I’d have to look it up. Everything in this family is about succession.”
