He was unbearably smug and I had no problem with tossing another fry at him. “Ass. I never let you hug me in public. We’re guys. Even Institute-trained know better than that. Did you ever hug anyone in the Mafiya?”
“If by hug, you mean choke into unconsciousness . . . all the time. I’m not afraid of my emotions, Misha. Embrace yours.” The words were dripping with enough amused sarcasm that I knew there was no winning this one. I finished the last burrito, balled up the final paper sack, and headed for the microwave with my tool kit.
“You’re a disgrace to mobsters and ex-mobsters everywhere.” I unplugged the unit, put it on the floor, sat next to it, and started to strip it down to its basic components. As I worked, I finally admitted, “But I’ll always listen to your advice. You know that, right?” Stefan had led me through almost three years as if I were blind, and basically I had been. The world had been an illusion inside the Institute. Stefan had been my guide through the reality of it; he’d taught me to be part of it. I wasn’t sure I’d have made it without him. Hell, I knew I wouldn’t have. I tossed the microwave door to one side and repeated, “You know that, right?”
A quiet snore answered my question. I studied him for a moment, sprawled on the bed—a very dangerous man who was anything but that to me. The shadows of weariness stained his face. I got to my feet and walked over to him, my hand hovering over his chest. He was healthy and whole. I could feel that sensation running through me, tickling my nerve endings. He was fine. He needed rest; that was all. I went back to the microwave and kept working. A half hour later I was at the door. As soon as I turned the seventies-style knob, Stefan woke up. “Where you going?” he muttered, his hand moving in an automatic reach for the gun under his pillow.
“To the vending machine outside. I need more parts.” I shrugged off my backpack—great for hiding said parts—and pulled out a heavy roll of cash. I waved it at him reassuringly. “I’ll leave money inside what’s left of it when I’m done to reimburse them. I’m not a thief.” I was everything else under the sun, but not a thief.
That had Stefan’s eyes opening wider. “Jesus, Misha, how much do you have there?”
“Oh,” I shrugged, “a couple of hundred thousand. It’s escape cash I kept tucking away every few weeks from the offshore account. If we’re on the run, we can’t always rely on finding a bank that accepts wire transfers from the Cayman Islands. You have to think about these things.”
He stared at me as if not certain he wasn’t dreaming . . . or having a nightmare; it was a difficult thing to interpret which of the two when it was someone else doing the wondering. He then sat up and jammed the clip home in his gun. “Okay then, Mr. Prepared. Let’s go defile that vending machine.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard. I’m the Grim Reaper walking, remember?” I stuffed the cash back into my bag. No sense in paying until I saw approximately how much I was going to rip out of the machine.
“Yeah, a pacifist Grim Reaper who uses his sickle to hang wet laundry on. Scary shit. I think I’ll go along for the ride anyway.” He swung his legs over and stood. “And bring the rat with you.”
Godzilla? “Why?”
“Because when you’re not around, he pisses on my bed. Why do you think I keep my bedroom door closed at home? To keep him from sneaking in to read my Playboys? Take the damn rat.”
Picky, picky, picky. I scooped up Zilla and draped him around my neck, and the three of us spent the next fifteen minutes cannibalizing the vending machine for parts and Ho Hos. The parking lot was empty except for cars, and all the windows were dark. No one saw us. Back in the room, I finished the microwave gun while Stefan sacked out again.
When it was done, I had a fleeting wish I was home and had access to some nice paint that would go over metal—metallic blue or candy apple red. But it was functional and that would have to do the trick. I peeled off the necessary cash to pay for the vending machine and started back outside. I paused at Stefan’s bed where he lay flat on his stomach, buried in the deep sleep he needed more than I needed a bodyguard. I touched the back of his calf with the lightest graze of a fingertip. It would keep him sleeping through the noise of my opening the door. Looking over my shoulder, I whistled lightly and Godzilla bounded off my bed, climbed my leg, and curled up in the pocket of my jacket. Stefan wouldn’t be happy when he did wake up if he had ferret urine soaking his sweatpants.
I opened the door, stepped outside, and walked the fifteen feet down to the vending machine. I was considering more sugar—candy bars this time. I reached a hand into the guts of the machine and then . . . nothing.
The night gobbled me up and took me away.
All those monster movies had been right. You shouldn’t go into the dark alone.
I woke up instantly, not in fits and stages. Once I healed, I returned to fighting form immediately. Jericho would’ve been proud of how I’d managed to accelerate the process and how I’d perfected what he’d begun. The thought left a bad taste in my mouth and when I opened my eyes, that bad taste went straight into an extremely bad mood as my pupils adjusted to the low light.
“Raynor,” I said flatly. He was the government’s dog panting at the end of the Institute’s leash. He’d tortured and murdered Anatoly, ruined Cascade—our home—and yet, after we assumed we were free of him after Saul had killed him in the mall parking lot, he was back for more. “Even death doesn’t want your malevolent ass.”
I recognized him from the sliver of profile I could see from where I was slumped against the door behind the passenger seat of a car humming smoothly over concrete. The pictures I’d taken of him off the Internet had been crystal clear and his threatening to shoot me in the mall parking lot even more so. He turned enough to reveal the short dark hair brushed forward, a faint pallor under his skin, and his impeccable suit’s collar open to show a half-inch tracheostomy tube in his throat. The tube was covered with a small, clear Passy-Muir valve that let people with trachs talk. Raynor tapped it. “Thanks to your friend, I’ll be needing this bugger for a while.” His voice was perfectly understandable, if hoarse. “My bad luck. Your bad luck happened to be an eager-beaver doctor with a penknife in that parking lot. Your extremely bad luck indeed.” He shifted his attention back to the road. “Did I mention that an impromptu tracheotomy whilst not under anesthesia isn’t particularly pleasant? No? Perhaps we’ll discuss it more later.”
I looked down to see handcuffs around my wrists and a chain securing them to the metal bracing under the passenger seat in front of me. I had four to five inches’ slack at the most. I was strong, but not strong enough to shatter metal. And Raynor, more careful now than before, had also shackled my ankles. I could dislocate both of my thumbs and slip the cuffs, but there was nothing I could do about the restraints holding down my feet. I looked back up to see the car clock reading 4:23 a.m. Stefan would still be asleep. He wouldn’t know I was gone. If Raynor had used a silencer, and I knew he had, neither would Saul.
“Speaking of pain, how’s your head? I was a good ways down the parking lot when I made that shot, but a rubber bullet would fracture the skull of anyone normal—anyone human. Kill them outright most likely. But I know how you chimeras heal and I crossed my fingers for you, although you were out for a few hours. When I dragged you into the car, I gave it a feel. And there it was—a nice fracture down the back of your skull. Not a hairline one either. A definite kill shot, again, for anyone normal. Yet here you are. You didn’t disappoint, Michael. I have to give you that.”
If I’d been out for two hours, he had come close to killing me. It was a hard thing to do, but not impossible and the brain was a delicate organ in a human or a chimera. I didn’t have enough reach to lift my hands and feet, so I bent my head low and ran fingers through my hair. It was spiky with dried blood. He wasn’t lying. He’d shot me while I’d been contemplating Milky Ways over Three Musketeers, damn it. He’d shot me right in front of the vending machine. . . .