He had his brother. He had Stefan.
Almost impossible to believe, but it was true.
If someone could like dying, Stefan liked that he was reliving Michael’s life and not going through a rerun of his own. This way he didn’t have to wonder if he’d done good by the kid, done good by his brother, he knew. He absolutely knew he’d done good. No doubts. Not a one.
The kid could’ve done better than him, he thought in disjointed chunks as he faded further into the darkness, but it was something, it was … what Michael thought so fiercely as that Reaper’s cloak wrapped tighter around Stefan. Family. Brother. You always watched out for your brother, even if he was the older one. You held on to your family because having one was a luxury no one … no one could afford to take for granted. You didn’t let your family down and you didn’t let you brother down, no matter how many times he called you a kid.
How did Stefan know that? How did he know what his brother had experienced thought by thought years ago? What he was thinking now? How did he know Michael felt that way—even down to his annoyance at being called a kid? How did he get that last gift?
That’s easy.
Because on the day Stefan died, that kid proved what his brother had known all along.
That damn kid … he was a miracle.
“Hey, kid. I’ll take a black coffee, large. I need something to keep me awake in this boring-ass town.”
I didn’t bother to look up from my book resting on the counter. “I’m not a kid.” I repeated that every day to my brother, not that he listened. I turned a page. My name was actually Michael, but I couldn’t tell the customer that, couldn’t tell anyone that. “And it’s already waiting for you at the end of the counter. That will be three fifty.” I’d seen him come in, a flash in the corner of my eye and heard his loud voice from the sidewalk long before he’d entered. If he were a regular, I’d have given him my immediate attention and the service-friendly smile that exactly echoed the one of the former employee of the month, whose picture was framed on the wall. It was the right kind of smile … friendly but not too stalker-friendly. It said, “I make minimum wage, but it’s a nice day, and you seem like a nice person. How can I help you?” It was natural, nonnoteworthy, and appropriate for the job. It took me two tries in the bathroom mirror to copy it, and I’d used it for every patron since the day the coffee shop had hired me. It was the expected smile—the normal smile.
It was important to be normal.
Very important.
This tourist was my first exception. He’d come in every day for a week, ordering the same thing, tipping the same amount—nothing, and saying the same insult: boring-ass town. Cascade Falls was not a boring-ass town. It was a nice town. It was small and inconspicuous and no one had tried to kill me or my brother here yet. That made it the perfect town really, and I wished that this guy’s new wife—it had to be a new wife, he wasn’t the camping type—had planned their honeymoon elsewhere, because I was tired of hearing him carp every morning. I was tired of him period.
Also, only my brother could get away with calling me kid.
The man, five foot ten, about forty to forty-three, mildly thinning blond hair greasy with the sheen of Rogaine, hazel eyes that blinked with astigmatism or too much alcohol the night before, twenty-two to twentyfive pounds overweight, and with a small crease in his earlobe that indicated possible heart problems due to his body’s inability to cope with his diet, glared at me over the top of sunglasses he hardly needed on a typical Oregon day in the Falls and tossed down three dollar bills and two carefully fished for quarters. He snorted and flicked the tip jar with a finger. “Like you caffeine pushers do anything worth a tip.”
He made his way down to a cardboard cup of coffee, still steaming, that was waiting for him, grabbed it and headed for the door. I could do something worth a tip, quite a few somethings, if that was his complaint, but I doubted he wanted to experience any of them. Although, making him impotent on his honeymoon would be a poetic punishment… .
I shook my head, clearing it. Simply because I could do certain things didn’t mean it was right. I knew right from wrong. My brother Stefan had commented on it once—that I knew right from wrong better than anyone raised in a family of Peace Corps pacifists descended from the bloodlines of Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Considering how I’d actually been raised, he said that made him proud as hell of me. Proud. I ducked my head down to study my book again, but I didn’t see the words, only smears of black ink. Stefan was proud of me and not for what I could do, but for what I refused to do. It was a good feeling, and while it might have been almost three years since he’d first said it, I remembered how it felt then—and all the other times he’d said it since. It was a feeling worth holding on to.
Stefan also said that despite his former career he knew right from wrong too, but before he found me he was beginning to lose his tolerance for it. It was a lie—or maybe a wish that he could actually do away with his conscience. He was different. He’d worked for the Russian Mafiya. He’d done bad things to … well, probably equally bad or corrupt people, but the weak too. The weak always get in over their heads in dark waters. What Stefan had done, he didn’t want to tell me and I didn’t push, but I did my research. You didn’t work as a bodyguard in the Russian mob like Stefan had and still not do some serious damage to people who may or may not deserve it.
Regardless of that and regardless of the things that Stefan had done for me, under that ruthlessness to protect, and the willingness to kill if that’s what it took to keep me safe, there was a part of him that wanted to believe in a world that was fair. He wanted to believe that a concept like right and wrong could be viable. Despite all he’d done and had been forced to do, he wanted to believe. Stefan had heart and he didn’t even know it. Why else would he search for a kidnapped brother for ten years when his … our … own father had given up?
Older brothers, especially ex-mobsters, weren’t supposed to be more naive than their younger ones, but Stefan … sometimes I thought that he was.
If he hadn’t spent almost half of his life looking for me and doing what was necessary to finance that search, I wasn’t sure what Stefan would’ve been. Not what he was, I did know that. When I had been taken—such a simple word—it had ruined lives, and when it came to Stefan, when I had been abducted it had done more than ruin. It had done things I wasn’t sure there were words for. And when it had happened, it had changed my brother as much as it had me—which wasn’t either right or fair. But true as that was, we were both alive and free now, and that was a thousand times more than I’d ever expected or dreamed. Where I had spent most of my life, freedom wasn’t even a concept, only a meaningless word to be looked up in a dictionary.
My brother had made it mean something. Cascade Falls was part of that, which only made me wish I had made that tourist pay for his contempt. And that was a slippery slope. I concentrated on my book and the words swam into focus. I was close, very close to what I was searching for … it was only a matter of months or maybe weeks, I hoped. Seven years of a normal life before I’d been kidnapped—although I couldn’t remember them, ten years of captivity—which I remembered with stark, vivid clarity, and nearly three years of freedom, freedom to do research and now the time was almost right. I was almost there. All the more reason to learn more and do it faster.
“Parker, you’re always studying. If you’re not going to college, why bother?”
Parker wasn’t my real name, but Serafynna didn’t know that. Then again, Serafynna didn’t know how to spell her own name and that made me doubt she cared that my name was actually Michael. Or Mykyl. When it came to Serafynna, I wasn’t too sure that wasn’t how the letters popped up in her brain. I wasn’t sure Serafynna had a brain at all without an MRI to back that up. All that Sera, the nickname was much simpler and it didn’t make my mind twitch, knew was how to put whipped cream on top of the lattes and how to flirt. To “mack,” or hit on guys. Since I didn’t know who Mack was, I went with
the other one. Hit. That was more modern than flirt … hit on guys. Whatever.
Saving brain cells for important information outweighed saving them for teenage slang.
In three years I’d learned about flirting and sex, but now … nineteen closing in on twenty, I liked intelligence in girls or women. Sera was entertaining and let me know my hormones were working at top capacity because she was gorgeous … hot, I meant. Hot is what someone my age should say, but she didn’t have it all. I’d come to find out that I needed smart too and Sera had everything except that. She had sunshine bright blond hair—fake, big, turquoise eyes—fake, and she bounced wherever she went. That meant certain things, also fake, on her bounced with her as she went and rarely stopped bouncing. The first time Stefan had met her, he waited until I got off work that night and took me to the drugstore for a box of condoms.
I told him I didn’t need them, and he told me I was an idiot if I didn’t want to play in that sandbox. I was nineteen, he said with a grin, and that’s what nineteen is all about. Knock yourself out.
But I didn’t. I saw her fake colored contacts and thought about the one I wore that turned my one blue eye mossy green to match the other one—two fakes don’t make a reality—thought about her lack upstairs of anything but whipped cream, and it seemed like a waste. We’d lived two years in Bolivia before we came to Cascade Falls. I’d played in sandboxes there, whatever Stefan said. It wasn’t like I was a virgin. But I’d had the experience … experiences. I’d been seventeen before I’d gotten to make my own choices, even a single one. Now that I had three years of making decisions for myself, I wanted to be sure that each one I made now was the best one I could make.
Sera did bounce in a very intriguing way though.
“I might go to college someday,” I said, turning another page. What I didn’t tell her was that I was going to the equivalent of college and then some. I had the knowledge base for a medical degree with a specialty in biogenetics with an emphasis on polymorphism and pseudogenes, and a PhD in biochemistry and neurology.
Theoretically.
Nineteen and a doctor three times over, but it was amazing what you could learn when you can hack into the computer system of any university in the world. Computer hacking had actually been the easiest thing to learn. It was pretty boring.
I’m smart, I know.
The question was: Was I born that way or made that way?
“College sounds like a lot of work.” Sera’s voice brightened. “Except for the parties. I’ll bet frat parties are fun. Maybe I should go. My parents keep bitching at me to since I graduated.” She pushed up to sit on the counter, against the rules, but I was reading. Technically I shouldn’t notice.
And technically my eyes didn’t wander to technically not watch her bouncing … lying to yourself can be fun … when I saw past her to the television in the break room. What I saw on it made Sera’s whipped cream skills and bouncing vanish. The sound was turned down, but I saw him on the small screen. I saw a man I’d never expected to see again. His face with that enigmatic smile that could save your life or far more likely put you in your grave: Stefan’s father.
My father.
Anatoly Korsak.
Dead.
I told Sera that I felt sick, and then I went to the bathroom and threw up, nice and loud—no finger needed. Genetic skills, I had them in spades. And you don’t tell stories you can’t back up. You always do what needs to be done to provide evidence to support your deception. I hadn’t learned that from Stefan. I’d learned it at the Institute—the place where Stefan had rescued me. The Institute had thousands of lessons and some still hung around. Lingered—when I was awake, when I was asleep, they most likely would my whole life. When it came to making people think what you wanted, a small amount of those lessons were harmless, the rest considerably less so, but all were efficient.
My trip to the bathroom got me a “Shit, Parker, sweetie. Are you okay?” from Sera and a call to someone else to replace me. Ben Jansen. Ben liked the bouncing even more than I did. Or that Stefan said I should.
Stefan … he should know better. He shouldn’t have done this. There was protective and overprotective then what Stefan practiced. Now this. Anatoly. It had to stop. Three years free and twice I’d saved his life; it was a twoway street now. He had to trust me with the bad as well as the good. I wasn’t a child anymore. I could carry my own weight.
The coffee shop door shut behind me and I started down the sidewalk with my hands in my pockets, heading to my car. It was seven years old, gray and a Toyota. They were virtually invisible. That was Mob and Institute knowledge, oddly coinciding. Low tech meets high tech with the same purpose: clean getaways. Although the Institute expected if you did your job adequately no getaway would be necessary. I guessed we’d fooled them, because Cascade Falls was a clean getaway so far.
In the distance I could see through the trees the silver glint of the Bridge of the Heavens crossing the Columbia River. When we’d picked this place to live, Stefan had quirked his lips. “Bridge of the Heavens,” he’d said. “How about that, Misha? That must mean this is Paradise.” Sometimes he could be a little thick, my brother. He didn’t always get that everywhere I went outside of the Institute was paradise. If there was actually a hell, the Institute would make it seem like paradise too. But while I thought certain people deserved hell, I doubted it was that easy. Life isn’t. I didn’t think death would be either. But I didn’t tell Stefan any of that, because he was right. No matter how many paradises you went to, they weren’t the Institute. They were all, in the end, paradise. Maybe Stefan wasn’t so thick after all.
“Hey, kid. Smart-ass. You get tired of ripping people off with your high-priced shit?” The words, tainted with bile, came from out of nowhere or nowhere if your attention was off and mine was.
It was the tourist. He was sitting on the wrought-iron bench, always freshly painted sky blue, outside Printz’s Bakery. He had a cheese Danish the size of a four-year-old’s head in one hand and a smear of buttery cheese on his chin. Nope, no doubt—his body had its work cut out for it taking care of him.
But it wasn’t my job to take care of him, unlike his unlucky heart, and I ignored him and kept walking. That was normal too. I was a teenager, and teenagers usually aren’t polite to annoying people. Or assholes. Stefan would definitely say he was an asshole. He wouldn’t be wrong.
“Smart-ass, I’m talking to you.” I’d only just passed him when there was a hand grabbing my arm to give me a shake and from the smell he’d put something in the coffee after he’d left the shop. Cheese, alcohol, coffee, and natural halitosis, I’d smelled better things and I’d smelled worse. People smell worse on the inside than the outside.
The Institute had had anatomy classes and enough cadavers to make Harvard Medical School jealous. The Institute taught its students to hurt people, taught them to use what had been stamped on their genes. But I’d never wanted to hurt anyone. I’d never wanted to kill anyone. The thought of killing even in self-defense had made me sick … once. That didn’t mean I wasn’t forced to learn.
The Institute also had biology classes. One thing they taught us in biology is that as adolescent males grow, the production of testosterone increases, and so do levels of aggression. The natural kind that gives you the instinct to protect yourself if attacked. Three years ago I wouldn’t have hurt this on-my-last-nerve irritating tourist. I wouldn’t hurt him now. He wasn’t a threat, despite being much bigger than me. But although I wouldn’t, it didn’t mean I wasn’t slightly more tempted now than I would’ve been when I was younger—that my temper wasn’t running hotter now than then.
Slippery slope, I repeated mentally to myself, same as in the coffee shop.
“Alcohol is bad for your liver and not too great for your stomach either,” I said as I pulled my arm free. His eyes widened, he dropped the Danish he was still holding in his other hand, and I backed away quickly. I made it in time as he bent over and threw up on the sidewalk. I’d
done the same to myself earlier, but not quite so … explosively. I couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it. Out of range and unsplattered, I turned my back on him and kept walking towards my car. I heard him vomit one more time, curse, and then vomit again. He would chalk it up to strong coffee, whatever alcohol he’d put in it, and the Danish. After all, what other explanation could there be?
Well… .
Other than me?
He was fortunate I wasn’t more like my former classmates. If I had been, that one touch of his hand to my arm, that hard shake he’d given me—I could’ve ripped holes in his brain, torn his heart into pieces, liquefied his intestines. That’s what I was. A genetically created killer, lab altered, medically modified child of Frankenstein, trained to do one thing and one thing only.
All with that single touch.
Isn’t science fun?
ALSO BY ROB THURMAN
The Cal Leandros Novels
Nightlife
Moonshine
Madhouse
Deathwish
Roadkill
The Trickster Novels
Trick of the Light
The Grimrose Path
Chimera
Anthologies