That would be me.
I heard my thighbone break. The sound was so clear. The snap of a tree branch underfoot; the cracking of ice in a spring thaw—I heard that, but I never heard the gun that fired the bullet. And I don’t remember falling; I knew only that I was lying on the ground with the taste of sand in my mouth. I couldn’t feel my leg. There was a slow warmth spreading across my skin, but no feeling . . . no pain. Not yet. Shock took care of that. It also took care of my thoughts. They moved in staggering circles as my hands made vague motions in the sand, trying in vain to turn me over.
“There you are.”
The gloating voice was fatally familiar. I pushed up again as my brain convulsed desperately to grasp what was going on. This time with a leg that was worthless deadweight, I managed to turn onto my back and braced myself, barely, upright on my elbows. Where was he? There was nothing but darkness and a leering moon that all but blocked out the sky.
“All I wanted to do,” the voice floated on, “was to make others like me. With a few minor improvements of course.” There was a laugh rich with mock self-deprecation. “I do get so lonely.”
Jericho. It all came back; a river of fetid knowledge—fear, rage, and despair. The only hope I had left was that Michael was in the water. I didn’t see him. He had to be swimming away—he had to be. As for me—I was dead. It was inevitable. I had seconds, maybe minutes, before Jericho killed me, but if Michael made it out of here, then death was something I could live with. That would look good on a T-shirt. Death was something I could live with. The bile black humor twisted itself onto my lips before a spasm of coughing sent sand from my lungs. “Come out, you son of a bitch,” I rasped. My gun . . . Where was my gun? It had flown from my hand when I fell. Surreptitiously I felt beside me, running fingers through grit for the comforting feel of metal. It was over for me; I accepted that, but my last breath would be spent trying to take Jericho with me. “Come out,” I repeated. “What the hell are you afraid of?”
“Certainly not of a common thief.” He materialized out of a mass of night and moon shadows. He was a shadow himself, lit only with lunar streaks along the planes of his face. “You took my Michael. You took my property. Cheaters never prosper, haven’t you heard? And neither do thieves.” He hadn’t lost his gun. It was still securely in his hand and trained on me.
“Thief? You’re the one who stole him. Stole a little boy,” I spat. “Did you think you could just take him and walk away?”
“Steal? I didn’t steal him. Like any good baker, I made him from scratch.” The grin that carved across his face was as brilliant and cold as the moon overhead.
He wasn’t making any sense. None. The man was insane, but I would listen to his psychotic ranting until the end of time if that gave Michael more of a chance to escape. “How did you find us?” My hands still searched futilely for my weapon.
“A friend.” He crouched down well out of reach and rested his gun hand on his knee. “An old, old friend who sold you a sad, sad story. I hear you’ll let him know when the article comes out. Could I get a copy? Since it is about me, it seems only fair. I could frame it for my office.”
I should’ve felt stupid. I didn’t. I felt worse. It was idiocy that couldn’t be equaled; it was carelessness miles beyond criminal. Bellucci had spun his tale of righteous anger, betrayal, and redemption, and I had swallowed it all like a spoon-fed baby. I’d watched the person who had no doubt planted the tracer on our car and my only thought had been regarding the ugliness of the wet dog she’d been carrying. It hadn’t once crossed my mind that Jericho needed a confederate in the legitimate science world. What better way to get access to cutting-edge new developments that had yet to see the light of the published world? Bellucci was the perfect silent partner. He could feed Jericho information, equipment, and get a nice slice of make-your-own-assassin pie. Even better, he could write outraged refutations of Jericho’s work and show himself to be Jericho’s most devoted rival. If anyone investigated Jericho, where would they go first?
Right.
Jericho’s early-warning system had been our downfall. “College pals,” I said bitterly. “Colleagues. And now you torture children together. Isn’t that . . .” The pain started. I was talking and breathing, and suddenly that was over. A malevolent butcher set up shop and went to work carving my thighbone into a thousand sharp-edged ivory knives. I gasped raggedly for air, then pushed through the black wave that washed over me. “Isn’t that . . . too . . . much togetherness?”
“You bore me.” Dismissive, he stood and walked close enough to kick the foot of my injured leg. As kicks went, it wasn’t much. Fairly gentle, more of a hard tap than anything, it was nevertheless enough to have the salty copper of blood flooding my mouth. “I thought you must be clever to have gotten this far, but close up . . . I simply don’t see it. Although removing his tracking chip wasn’t completely idiotic.” He tilted his head as if truly considering the exact measurement of my stupidity. “Surprising such a thought would occur to you. But even more of a mystery is that Michael stayed with you. He’s not much for killing, more’s the pity, but I fully expected him to take his leave of you quickly enough. Surely he wouldn’t have balked at a short coma for his kidnapper.”
My tongue almost refused to cooperate, numb from where I’d bitten it to keep from screaming in pain. “Not a kidnapper.” My hands fisted in the sand felt like the only thing holding me to consciousness. “He’s mine.”
“Yours?” The bass of his voice was colored with derision. “And here I thought he was mine all this time. Pray tell, dead man, how is he yours?”
He still didn’t know? He still hadn’t figured out who I was? “I’m his family,” I snarled weakly. “His
“Oh really?” The curve of his mouth was ripe with superiority and an amusement I couldn’t understand. “And how do you figure that?” He held up a hand and took a few steps back. Blood did tend to spatter a long way. “Never mind. I haven’t the time or inclination to play this little game.” Raising his voice slightly, he called out, “I see you, Michael. I’ve seen you watching all along. It’s all right, you know. Watch all you like. I rather enjoy the thought of your watching your ‘savior’ die. You can watch at my side if you wish.”
No. Damn it, no. He listened when I told him to run. He always listened, but then he always came back.
“Michael.” He drew the name out cajolingly. “You cannot deny your Maker, boy. If history has taught us nothing, it has taught us that.”
I didn’t see him. I twisted my head back and forth desperately. Maybe Jericho was wrong. Maybe he was doing this to torment me, to make my final moments as wrenching as he could. That was all it was; it had to be. When I finally brought my eyes back to those glossy black ones, I tried hard to hold on to that hope. It wasn’t easy in the face of the poisonous dark gaze fixed on me as I labored to sit upright in the sand. I wasn’t going to die lying flat in the sand, as if I were just waiting for it.
“Shy, that one,” he mused. “An odd quality in death incarnate.”
“He’s not.” I knew that as well as I’d ever known anything. “He’s not death.”
“Death enters through a thousand doors.” The gun extended toward me. “He’s only one. In time I’ll have all one thousand. And when all my doors open on the world, I alone will hold their keys.”
Then he fired.
The waiting is the hardest part. You learn that from nearly day one. You could be a child waiting for a cookie or a shiny new bike, or a cavity-ridden teenager waiting and dreading the jab of Novocaine with a needle that has no end. You could ask one of a million people waiting for outcomes both good and bad, and they would all tell you the same thing. Anticipation is a bitch; everything else is downhill. Is that true or not? I didn’t know, because what I expected, a bullet to the chest, didn’t happen. But God, I wish it had.
Time didn’t freeze. My life didn’t riffle before me like the pages of a badly drawn comic book. None of the clichés held true. My heart didn’t even have time to pound at a faster, more agonizingly painful rate. By the time you hear the gunshot, it’s too late for that. The bullet has already found its mark. If you’re the one hit, a beating heart may be a moot point. If you’re not the one cradling lead, a living heart isn’t what you want anyway— not anymore.
I looked down at the armful of deadweight, almost puzzled. So, it was God after all, not fate. It was God, and his sparrow had fallen from the sky to rest broken in my lap. Strands of bleached hair were cool against my arm, as cool as the liquid flowing against my chest was warm. The bullet had entered his back and exited his chest to rest in my shoulder. And the blood—the blood was everywhere. It flowed like a river out of him and onto me. I could even smell it on his breath—his shallow, fading breath.
“How could you do something so stupid?” I choked, the words ugly with anguish. “How could you do
