Chronicles of Julian, page 14
Ilya waved a hand towards the sparkling water. “What else do you think it’s for?”
JULIAN HAD BEEN FORCED to dispose of bodies before. In his line of work, it was an unavoidable aspect of the job. He’d burned them and buried them. He’d found them coffins and mailed them back to families. On certain occasions, he’d even left them on doorsteps as a threat.
But it never struck him quite like that day.
As Ilya went back inside, he gathered up what remained of his friend—carrying him gently out of the parking lot and down to the river’s edge. When he was out of sight from the facility and whoever may have been watching, he was even more delicate, laying him carefully across the shore.
His eyes streamed over as his hands moved slowly across the body. Emptying his pockets, zipping up his jacket, picking out a stray pebble that had found its way into his hair.
Look at you.
“I’ll stay in the meetings,” he murmured, lacing their fingers together. “I’ll find that second shipment, find all the girls on board...don’t you worry about any of that now.”
A tear slipped down his face, and he turned his eyes to the water.
Damn—I hate this river.
“My mom’s in here, did I tell you that?” He picked a stone from the shore, discarded it, then chose another. “So at least you’ll have some company. And that’s just until they find you.”
He paused, looking down at him.
“I’ll make sure they find you. I promise.”
There was no more stalling, nothing left to say. With trembling hands he gathered more stones from the beach, examining each one with the greatest of care before slipping them into his friend’s pockets. The pants, the shirt, the jacket. He didn’t stop until they were full.
When at last everything was ready, he took hold of Micah beneath the arms and dragged him backwards into the river, feeling those icy waters close around his own body as he held him aloft for a moment longer, staring down into his face.
“I’m so sorry.”
It was the moment he’d been dreading. The moment he had to let go. His fingers tightened of their own accord, resisting the very idea. But he forced them loose, watching as the man slipped quickly into the water, catching just a hint of moonlight before vanishing forever.
JULIAN STAYED ON THE beach for a long time—legs pulled up to his chest, arms draped over his knees. He was crying, but he didn’t really notice that anymore. The only thing his body was still able to notice was the temperature, as the wind froze the little trails running down his cheeks.
His feet were bare and muddy. His arm was still bleeding from where he’d been shot just a short while before. There was a dull ache in his chest that had started small but was ever-expanding, as if some part of him was drifting in that same water. As if his body had forgotten how to breathe.
Go back inside.
He’d never understand how he had the wherewithal to command himself to do so. But with robotic movements, he stood up abruptly and headed away from the beach.
The moon had fully risen, and the air smell of blood and cigarettes.
He cast a fleeting look towards the office, wondering vaguely if Ilya had picked up the discarded gun, before pushing open the door and trudging inside.
The place had been quiet when he left, but there were few things that would more quickly wake a group of criminals than a gunshot. There wasn’t a single person who hadn’t already crowded into the common room, passing out beers and buzzing about ‘that traitor Micah’ and how they always knew.
Already, the story had begun to grow in size. There were now several guns that were being fired, several memorable quotes that were inserted along the way. Micah had tried to run, but Ilya gunned him down like some rabid animal. Alexi may or may not have been dead.
The conversation stopped cold when they saw him. A dozen pairs of eyes flew immediately to his face. If he had been thinking clearly, he might have indulged them. He was a hero, after all. He was the man who’d disarmed him, who’d saved their fearless leader.
But there was no part left of him that was clear.
His skin was pale and cold to the touch; his legs were aching from kneeling so long on the shore. He gave them only a brief nod of acknowledgement, a quick sweep of the eyes, then he swept across the room and vanished into the hall—heading towards his bedroom.
The silence broke the instant the door swung shut.
I should take a shower first, he thought vaguely. I should probably bandage this—
“Took your time, didn’t you?”
He opened the door to the bedroom, only to find someone waiting when he arrived.
Ilya was sitting on the edge of his bed, fiddling with his fingers, chewing a piece of gum from the pack he’d found in the psychic’s bag. His eyes swept the young man up and down, noting the damp clothes and mud-stained feet before gesturing him closer.
“Let’s take a look at that arm.”
Julian froze in the doorway, unable to follow along. “...what?”
The man pushed to his feet with a faint smile, striding across the room before pulling open the psychic’s jacket and sliding it down over his arms. “You were shot, Alexi. Did you forget?”
Julian glanced down at the wound blossoming crimson all over his clothes, but his ears were still rushing with the river. He shook his head quickly, taking a step back, but the man had already produced the same med-kit that had been used to bandage Fatima.
He popped open the lid and took out a bottle of antiseptic and gauze.
“Have a seat.”
Get away from me.
“No, I’ll...I’ll do it myself.
A stern look passed between them.
“Have a seat, Alexi.”
He stared a moment, then did as he was told.
The man might have been a killer, but he had gentle hands. With surprising care, he peeled off the sleeve of the psychic’s shirt—flashing a sympathetic grimace when he saw the sliced skin.
“That has to hurt.”
Julian shook his head faintly. “I’m numb,” he admitted. “The water was freezing.”
Ilya nodded, probing around the edges.
“Still, you’re lucky it wasn’t any closer,” he murmured, eyes flashing to Julian’s face. “You might have lost some movement. This is pretty superficial. Strange, since he was standing so close.”
The psychic froze beneath his hands.
“I wasn’t the target,” he finally replied. “I imagine he would have aimed better if it was you.”
Ilya smiled again, unscrewing the alcohol. “You ready?”
There was no countdown, no time for the psychic to reply. The second the words left his mouth, the man poured the liquid over Julian’s skin. He let out a quiet hiss upon impact, biting his lip as trickles of blood and alcohol ran down his arm. He’d jerked away reflexively as well, but the man held firm—tightening his grip ever so slightly as he pulled out the needle and thread.
“Why were you with him?” He jabbed the needle through the psychic’s skin, imprisoning his arm at the same time. “Why did you go outside?”
Julian froze perfectly still, eyes fixed on the floor.
There was something abnormal about the question. There was something abnormal about the man’s grip. While he did nothing to test it, he’d spent enough time sparring with Devon to know when he’d been outmatched in strength and could no longer get away.
Think of something.
The needle hovered in the air, catching glints of light.
THINK of something.
“I had a vision,” Julian began quietly, still not knowing what he was going to say. “I...” His gaze lifted in a burst of illumination. “I gave one of the girls a toothbrush.”
Ilya leaned back suddenly, releasing him. He’d clearly been ready for the psychic to say any of a number of things, but that was nowhere on the list.
“A toothbrush,” he repeated in genuine surprise. “Why?”
“She didn’t have one,” Julian replied quickly. “It was the girl they locked in the bathroom; she asked for it when I checked her stitches. I gave it to her, but Viktor gave me shit for it and I got nervous that maybe I wasn’t allowed. I went to ask Micah, had a vision of him going outside.”
Every part of the story was fully verifiable, but sitting on the bed, trapped in that room, Julian wasn’t sure that mattered in the slightest. His heart was pounding, his arm was bleeding, and he was suddenly terribly curious as to what their fearless leader’s ink might be.
But his answer had changed something. One way or another.
Ilya nodded silently, then finished suturing the psychic’s arm without another word. He worked quickly and quietly, taping a bandage when he was finished and heading to the door.
He paused in the frame.
“Why were you going to ask Micah?”
Julian sat there a moment, then lifted his arms in a helpless shrug. “Because he was nice.”
Ilya stared for a long moment, then nodded.
“Get some rest,” he instructed. “That arm’s going to hurt like hell in the morning.”
Julian nodded obediently, stretching out on the bed.
“You wanted me to check back in with you,” he remembered suddenly, calling out just as the man stepped into the hall. “You wanted to have a talk?”
Ilya stared a moment, then smiled. “We just had it.”
Chapter 12
A week went by. Then another. Then five more.
Things had fallen into a terrible kind of rhythm in the little warehouse by the water. Julian would wake up, take a moment to orient himself, then carve another secret line into the wall by his bed. He’d check the future of his family, track the faces of his friends, then Julian would vanish.
Alexi would walk out the door.
There had been no movement in terms of the shipment. After what happened with Micah, Ilya had been keeping things close to the vest. The crew was instructed to monitor the existing girls, and do nothing forward. For over a month, they had not even been permitted to go outside.
It was an extreme course of action, even for their more experienced members. For those new to the profession, it was nothing short of torture. Tensions were running high, and a new fight broke out almost every day. Julian avoided these as best he could, but it wasn’t always possible. And the longer they stayed penned up together, eating at the same table, rotating through the same shifts with the girls, the harder it was to see a distinction in what they’d been sent there to do.
That particular morning didn’t start well.
He was dreaming again. Bad things always happened when he dreamed.
He was in England this time. In a tiny room that looked eerily similar to the one he was living in now. As he pushed to his feet, that picture shimmered ever so slightly and the room turned into a cell—his father’s cell—a place he had visited for himself in Gabriel’s mind. A place he had thought of many times in the years after. The walls got closer and he took a breath to steady himself.
It’s a dream, he whispered. It’s only a dream.
But just knowing that didn’t help. He ran back and forth, searching for an exit, then banged against the door until his fists were bloody—screaming through the stone at the top of his lungs.
LET ME OUT!
Harder and harder. Screaming for people that were no longer there.
LET ME OUT!
JULIAN’S EYES FLEW open and he took a quick breath—parting his lips ever so slightly as he sat up on the bed. The world had steadied, but his heart was still racing. There were tiny dots of blood on his palm where his nails had broken through, and the bitter taste of adrenaline soured his mouth.
He took another breath, then lifted his gaze to the wall.
Let me out.
He was out the door a second later, striding not towards the common room—where he and the rest ate breakfast—but in the opposite direction. To the parking lot and the office on the far side.
He knocked twice, then opened the door. “Do you have a minute?”
Ilya glanced up from his desk, half-hidden behind a sea of papers. What those papers were, was anyone’s guess. They could have been customs certificates, or freight verification. They could even have been falsified passports based off that bag of IDs Micah had died trying to get.
“A minute,” he answered. “What is it?”
“I need to go out.”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Where?”
“Anywhere,” Julian replied shortly. “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I just need to get out of this warehouse.” He paused, meeting the man’s gaze. “Please.”
Ilya’s face softened with a hint of understanding. “There’s a farmers market a few blocks away.”
“I love farmers markets.”
The man flashed a hint of a smile. “It’s close enough to walk.”
Julian turned on his heel without a second’s pause, swinging the door shut behind him and setting off in the opposite direction from the way he’d come.
He’d almost made it out of the lot, when Ilya called after him.
“Don’t be long.”
The psychic nodded, then quickened his pace.
THE STREETS WERE WARM and Julian stopped the moment he’d lost sight of the warehouse, tilting his head back and pulling in a deep breath—like he could inhale that distant sun.
For a lengthy moment the most he could do was simply stand there, basking in the open air and the quiet. Letting that sense of freedom—no matter how fleeting—wash over him like a drug.
Then, as quickly as he’d stopped, he took off jogging up the road.
He was no longer seeking the quiet, it was noise that he craved. Different kinds of noises than the ones he’d been hearing—always encased in metal, all those distant screams. He craved laughter, and conversation, and cars honking, and songbirds, and—
He came to a sudden stop, staring in open delight.
This. I’m craving this.
It was the same kind of market he’d walked a hundred times back in London, the kind of place where he and his friends would always take their kids. But never had he appreciated those little beauties until that very moment. All those details that got lost amidst the cheerful mayhem.
The faint jingle of coins as people dug around in their pockets. The flash of teeth and cackle of laughter as an elderly couple resurrected an inside joke. The children were always the best to watch—they were watchers themselves, offering the purest of reactions. Wide-eyed wonder, comical bewilderment, and feral bursts of wild, unadulterated joy.
He felt like one of them, slipping into the crowd.
In hindsight it probably looked as though he’d strayed from his medication, tilting his head back with a faint smile, letting himself be jostled about by all the rest. But he was an artist, who’d been trapped in a metal box. There was no end to how far he would stray. There was no resisting the plunge into sudden, glorious, over-stimulation. His eyes roved everywhere, soaking it all in.
There were pockets of fragrant steam from the street vendors, spinning pinwheels nailed to their booths. A handful of canoes drifted leisurely across the water, and stretched across the street in a bright canopy were vibrant splashes of blossoms, most of which had already fallen to the ground.
I missed the spring, he thought wistfully, taking a moment to savor the sun. It’s coming on summer.
What else had he missed? Molly’s birthday, Lily’s spelling-bee, Lorenzo’s exhibition. Devon would have gone to Vienna without him, those dates had been fixed. Then there was Angel.
His chest tightened with actual pain.
How many times had he lain awake at night, staring at the ceiling, imagining the exquisite perfection of his wife’s face? How many times had he closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his pillow, wishing so desperately it was his beloved daughter instead.
My beautiful girls. I miss you most of all.
“Kürtöskalács?”
Julian glanced over to see a man calling to him from a nearby booth. He gestured to the spiced pastries lining the glass, waving him closer with a smile.
“You want to try?”
He hesitated a moment, then stepped out of the crowd.
“Yes, thank you.” He handed the man some forints, watching as he sprinkled the little funnel with extra cinnamon before wrapping the base in paper. “Is this yours as well?”
He pointed to a bin of raw ingredients.
Deliveries had been strictly forbidden, along with any forays into the outside world, and his body was desperate for anything other than canned stew and vats of pasta.
“All mine,” the man said in broken English, handing him a basket. “Have a look around.”
Julian nodded in thanks, wandering a bit away from the main booth as he browsed up and down the adjoining carts. Truth be told, he had very little idea what he was looking for. After several unforgivable culinary disasters, he’d been given limited kitchen privileges at home as well.
Just get some apples, he told himself, picking one up for examination. Can’t go wrong with apples.
His eyes drifted across the produce.
Maybe I could devise some kind of tart—
“I hope you’re not planning to cook anything yourself.”
The psychic jumped guiltily, then glanced up to see a strange woman watching him from the other side of the booth. Nothing about her was familiar. The spattering of freckles, the poorly-dyed hair—there wasn’t a spark of recognition, not a single thing to clue him in.
Except perhaps her words. And the twinkle of mischief in her eyes.
“...Rae?”
The woman nodded, gesturing to the apples.
“It seems I’ve come just in time.”
A wave of relief swept over him, so achingly powerful it threatened to lift him right off his feet. In a moment of sheer recklessness, he almost scrambled right over the top of the fruit to seize her in one of those unending embraces. But he didn’t. He kept careful distance instead.
“It’s a no to the apples?” he asked lightly. “I was thinking of making some kind of tart.”
