Delusion in Death

14

In the dream she knew for a dream, the world exploded. Fire plumes of murderous reds, virulent orange, greasy black lit the night sky to the east as blasts shook the ground and punched like fists through the smoke-stung air.

She heard the boom of explosives, the crack, crack, crack of what she recognized as gunfire. There’d been a time, too long a time, she thought, when people had lived and died by guns.

Now they found other ways to kill. But she wasn’t in the now.

The canyons and towers of New York thundered with the sounds of war. The Urbans.

A dream, she thought, just a dream. Still, she made her way carefully, weapon drawn, down the deserted street. Maybe dreams couldn’t kill, but they could damn sure hurt. She’d woken far too often with phantom pain screaming to travel unarmed, even in her own subconscious.

But sometimes dreams showed you what you needed to know and didn’t recognize in the busy business of the day.

So she’d look, she’d listen.

She stopped by a body sprawled over the sidewalk, crouched to check for a pulse. And found the bloody slice across his throat. Barely more than a boy, she judged. They’d taken his shoes, and likely his jacket if he’d had one —and not long before as his body still held some warmth.

She left him where he was—no choice, just a dream. But checked her weapon. And saw it wasn’t her police issue but a .38 automatic. She recognized the style from Roarke’s gun collection, checked to make certain it was loaded, tested the weight.

Moved on.

She passed windows and doors, dark and boarded, burned out husks of cars her subconscious must have fashioned out of memories of vids from the period.

Chained fences barred the entrance to a subway station. Uptown train, she noted and skirted its black maw carefully. Streetlights—those that weren’t broken stood dark. Traffic lights blinked red, red, red, and made her think of the room in Dallas where she’d killed Richard Troy.

It’s not about that, she reminded herself. It wasn’t about the child she’d been, but who she was now. What she did now.

She came to a street sign, Leonard and Worth, and realized she wasn’t far from the first crime scene.

Maybe the answer lurked there.

She started to cross, heard the gunfire—closer now—the screams. She changed directions, ran toward the sounds.

She saw the truck—military, armored, and the man at the machine gun on the roof. She heard more gunfire from inside the building the truck guarded, and the cries and screams. Children, she realized. They’d come for the children.

She didn’t hesitate, but took her stance, took aim at the man on the truck. He’d be wearing body armor, she calculated, and aimed higher. Took the head shot.

As he fell she raced forward, ducked into shadows as two men and two women dragged out struggling, screaming children. She sucked in her breath, held it. Fired.

She took both men out, credited either the target shooting she did with Roarke or the luck of dreams. The women fled, one with a wailing baby in her arms.

No, Eve thought, not even one, not even in dreams. She ran in pursuit, barely pausing at the huddle of terrified children.

“Get back inside, block the door. Wait for me.”

And ran on.

The women split up, so she ran after the one with the baby.

“NYPSD! Halt! Halt, goddamn it or I’ll shoot you in the fucking back. I swear to Christ.”

The woman stopped, turned slowly. “That would be just like you.”

She stared into her mother’s face, watched the blood run in thin rivers from the gaping wound across her throat.

“You’re already dead.”

“I just look that way. How many times do you have to kill me before you’re happy?”

“McQueen killed you. I’d’ve put you in a cage, but you’d still be breathing.”

“I’d be alive if you’d minded your own.”

She had been minding her own, Eve realized. But why explain? Even in dreams Stella would never comprehend.

“That’s an old tune, Stella. I’m bored with it. Put the kid down.”

“Why should I? You know what this little bitch is worth to the right people? I’ve got to get by, don’t I? You don’t know what it’s like now, here. It’s hell here. I lived through it. What do you think made me what I am?”

“I lived through it.” Mira stood beside Eve, spoke quietly. “So many of us did. She made her choices, Eve, just as I did, just as you did. You know that. Nothing made her. She made herself.”

“What the hell does she know? Fucking shrink with her fancy clothes, fancy ways. She just wants to fuck you over, like everyone else. I’m the one who carried you inside me. I made you.”

Mira barely spared Stella a glance. “You know the truth, and you know the lie. You always have. Say it to me, say the truth.”

“I made myself.”

“Yes. Yes, you made yourself, and did it despite her. She never controlled you, not where it matters. Why do you let her control you now, even here?”

“I can’t. It has to stop.”

“Make it stop,” Mira urged her. “Make it end. Make a choice.”

“Put the kid down, Stella, and walk away. Stay away.”

“You can’t stop me. Put a bullet in me, go ahead. I’ll just come back. And maybe I’ll snap her neck first. It’s easy, all those soft bones. I thought about snapping yours. Whining, crying brat, just like this one.”

“You left me with him instead, so he could beat me, rape me, torment me. But I got through it.”

“By killing. The blood’s still on your hands. Richie’s blood. My blood.”

“I can live with it.” That was the answer, wasn’t it? She could live with it. “Put her down.”

“What do you care?” Stella closed a hand over the soft, tiny neck.

Eve started forward, to end it, and the baby cried out.

“Das!”

Bella. Mavis’s Bella, with tears streaming, her arms held out.

On a hot spurt of fury, Eve pressed the barrel of the gun to Stella’s forehead. “Let her go, you bitch, or I’ll splatter your brains on the sidewalk.”

“She’s nothing to you.”

“They’re all something to me. Mira, take the kid.”

“Of course. There now, sweetheart.” Sliding Belle from Stella’s grip, Mira nuzzled her. “Everything’s all right. Eve won’t let anything happen to you.”

“She’s just another brat. Plenty more where she came from.”

“Not for you. You’re finished.”

Stella’s eyes gleamed. “What? You’re going to shoot me now?” She held up her hands. “You’re going to shoot me when I’m unarmed?”

“No, I don’t have to kill what’s already dead.” Eve holstered her weapon, watched Stella’s smile spread. And rammed her fist, with all her force—her anger, her despair—into that smiling face. “But I think I’ve needed to do that for a long time.”

Stella lay on the sidewalk, as she’d laid on the floor of McQueen’s apartment. The blood pooled around her, a black lake in the shadowed dark.

“You can come back. I’ll just kick your ass again.”