I figure I’m pretty enough to be an actor now. Maybe a male model. What do you think?”
“I think . . .” He looked me up and down, then tossed me the vitamin bottle. “I think vitamin B is supposed to be excellent for the brain. It improves your thought processes. Helps you make clear decisions.”
“Biology, huh? Or the psychology of breaking it to me gently?” I caught the vitamins. “You combined two classes in one there. I couldn’t be more proud.” Reaching for the remote, I took it from his hand and switched off the TV. “Time to turn in. We’re up early.” He gave in with only a mildly petulant expression, a bare shadow of the one I would’ve flashed at his age. Nearly a half hour later I was on the edge of sliding into sleep when a quiet question ripped me back into stark awareness.
“Did you ever kill anyone?”
It wasn’t a question you expected to hear in the dark while cocooned in a nest of blankets with a soft pillow under your head. That was a question for the unblinking and unforgiving harsh light of day—or never. Never would be good too. Rolling over onto my back, I studied the pattern of moonlight on the ceiling. “No,” I replied simply.
I hoped it was true, but technically I couldn’t be sure. I may have killed someone at the compound during Michael’s rescue. I hadn’t exactly been stopping to check any pulses. Nor had I particularly cared whether they’d had one . . . not for my sake. None of those bastards deserved to live in my book. But for Michael’s sake, I hoped I hadn’t been the one to kick them over the river Styx. It was bad enough to have an ex-mobster for an older brother. I didn’t want to add the label of killer to that. I heard the rustle of sheets in the next bed as Michael processed my answer and then gave the response I wouldn’t have had a hope of anticipating.
“I have,” he said calmly.
Chapter 15
It rained during the night. A sheet of water had turned half of the parking lot into a rippling reservoir. A trick of the morning light made the depth of scant inches seem bottomless. When you’re a kid, something like that is so . . . shit, “miraculous” is the only word. Just a little thing, but through a child’s eyes it would be a lake so crystal clear that you could sail across glass to the distant shore. There would be trees that blazed autumn colors year-round, animals with the silver eyes of a benevolent moon, and amber gold grass would sing with every whisper of the wind.
It would also be a shore where children had never learned to kill.
I stepped into the massive puddle and broke the illusion. Water soaked through my sneakers as I popped the trunk to the car. My eyes burned from lack of sleep and even the rays of a cloud-shrouded sun felt like needles. Michael had slept a few hours, from what I could tell, but I hadn’t. I don’t think I’d once closed my eyes the entire night. Michael had finally come through with some hard information, as I’d wanted. Ask and you shall receive, right? Unfortunately, what he had told me was right on the edge of being more than I could handle. I’d once thought my brother had been taken by a sexual predator, a twisted perverse monster. I was wrong and I was right. There had been a predator. There had been a monster. But sexual abuse had nothing to do with the nightmare Michael had lived through.
There are all kinds of monsters.
Yeah, all kinds. And the one that had taken Michael was even worse than the pale slavering creepers with long probing fingers I’d concocted in my nightmares. Placing the duffel bag in the trunk, I slammed the lid with unnecessary force. The sound echoed through the deserted lot and sent a knot of birds screeching angrily toward the sky. Crouching, I checked the fasteners on the license plate to make sure they were tight. I’d switched the plates with another car last night just after we’d checked in. The original one was bound to be in the state cops’ computer system as stolen by now. The Toyota was an older car without any of that satellite transponder crap that made life so difficult; I’d made certain of that. For some reason that thought tugged hard at my mind. Unable to catch the kite tail meaning of it as it flew, I gave up and shook it off. If I kept changing plates, I could get a few days before I had to get us a new ride.
“Here’s your soft drink.”
I looked up, startled by Michael’s presence at my elbow. I’d sent him across the lot to a soft drink machine against the building. “Sorry. I was thinking.” Taking the can, I popped the tab and took a swallow and reveled in the life-giving caffeine. “Thanks.”
Rubbing a finger in the condensation tracking the metal of his can, he asked diffidently, “Am I still invited? Or should I catch a bus?”
The can dimpled musically under my clenched grip. He thought I’d desert him, that I was afraid of him. He thought I saw him through his eyes, as he saw himself . . . as yet another monster. Clearing my throat, I growled, “Get in the car, Freud, or you won’t see sugar for a week.”
The relief in his eyes came and went so quickly that it was possible I imagined it, but I don’t think I did. When we were in the car, I rested a hand on the wheel. I could feel the weight of his gaze centered on the small bruise on the back of my wrist. I pulled my sleeve down farther to cover it. “A bus?” I said, hoping to divert his attention. Rolling my eyes, I started the car. “You wouldn’t have the first clue how to catch a bus.”
He frowned instantly. “I took . . .”
I finished the sentence with him. “A class.” I laughed and after a second he smiled along with me. It was a small smile, and hesitant, but it was genuine. Sobering, I offered, “You’re my brother, Misha. As far as I’m concerned, you walk on water. Nothing you could say or do will change that.”
“Except sink?” The smile quirked, then disappeared as his eyes were dragged with obvious reluctance back to my bruise. “No one at the Institute can do anything good. No one who lasts.”
He’d said that last night too. He’d said and done quite a few things. At one point he’d touched a single fingertip to my arm. I’d felt a numbness, then a brief sharp pain as blood cells ruptured beneath my skin. It was then that the story he’d told me seemed as if it could be true—true in the way that violence and disease are true . . . in the way that death and murder are true. And suddenly I wasn’t a big fan of the truth as everything I’d known and believed exploded as thoroughly as my blood had.
“You’re good, Michael,” I said fiercely. “It’s not what you can do that decides that. It’s what you choose to do.” It was a lesson that had taken me too damn long to learn. I didn’t have a single doubt that he would learn it more quickly than I had, if he didn’t know it already. Of course it could be I wasn’t the best one to advise him on choices, because if one day we saw Jericho again, it was a good bet I would choose to make that his last day.
“I hope you find him.” He saw the question on my face and elaborated pensively. “Lukas. You’re a good big brother to him.”
“I’m a good big brother to you,” I corrected firmly. He wanted to believe, I knew he did, but he just couldn’t make that leap of faith. Not yet. Considering what I now knew of his life at the Institute, the fact that he trusted me at all, even if only in the tiniest measure, was a miracle. That he was alive and sane was an even bigger one. One more and the pope would have him up for sainthood.
I, on the other hand, would never be mistaken for a saint. And with what I had boiling in me now after hearing Michael’s tale, the chances of that happening dropped drastically. He’d said Jericho had made them special, and the son of a bitch had. He’d made them so special that most could kill with a mere touch. Some could do worse. Bodies had been warped from nature’s plan. A little girl . . . a very special little girl . . . had nearly destroyed the flesh of my hand without laying a finger on me. If her hand had actually touched mine, I’d be missing that appendage now or I would be dead.
This same little girl had chosen to stay with the man who’d done this to her. The mental had been twisted along with the physical. And why not? That was much easier to do. Hadn’t I convinced myself that my blue fingernails had nothing to do with a small girl with long blond hair? Hadn’t I dismissed it as nothing at all?
I had told Michael about her. Her name was Wendy, he’d said, and Wendy was scary. What had felt like freezing cold was actually blood vessels constricting, cutting off the warming flow of blood. And she hadn’t done it because she was afraid of me; Wendy wasn’t afraid of anything. She simply enjoyed inflicting pain. She was one of the thirty children or so the Institute held. The number fluctuated. New children, usually around the age of three, were brought in when the numbers decreased due to graduations . . . or other reasons. The kids who weren’t working out, who didn’t have a talent sufficiently powerful or destructive, were the ones who disappeared in the
