Shaw crouched in the shower, shifting Ukiah to the ground, letting the torrent wash the shimmering drug from the boy's body.
"You said this stuff is harmless!" Atticus shouted at Shaw. "That it only killed humans."
"Harmless to Pack." Shaw stripped the sodden clothes off of Ukiah as the water pounded unheeded on Shaw's shoulders and back. "Not to him. Not to you either. Not at that amount. His body shut down, rather than spread the poison completely through his system."
"He'll recover—won't he?"
"I don't know," Shaw snapped. "Poison is one way to kill us, as is fire."
. . . a blaze of pain like white fire and then nothing . . .
"Oh, fuck." Atticus couldn't bear looking at his brother; he stared instead at drops of rain sparkling in the spotlight. "What are you going to do with him?"
"He's our son; we'll do whatever needs to be done." Rennie stood, lifting Ukiah like a sleeping child.
The empty feeling grew, eating Atticus from the inside. He recognized the emotion now: grief. He found himself walking away, trying to put distance between him and the pain.
. . . another's pain filling him— a complete union of a soul that once was one— and then nothing . . .
Ru walked beside him, one hand on Atticus's shoulder, a spot of warmth in the cold rain. "He'll be fine." Ru's voice betrayed what the rain hid—he was crying.
Atticus steeled himself with anger and kept walking. He just met Ukiah on Sunday. Five fucking days—just enough time to leave a wound that would never heal. Humans were the lucky ones. They forgot the pain and hurt, given enough time. In vivid slices, he could still remember parts of being a wolf—a moment here, a moment there—from what it was like to run on all four legs, to having a tail, to seeing the world in black and white. After he became human, every agony was locked into place. Despite being less than a year old at the time, he still could recall his adopted parents in exacting detail, had every moment he spent with them etched into his perfect memory.
. . . and then nothing . . .
They'd come to an enclosed bus stop. Ru pulled him inside, out of the rain. In that enclosed womb, Atticus took out his Swiss army knife and opened the blade.
"What are you doing?" Ru asked.
"If I live the rest of my life with the moment of his death locked into my memory . . . I'll go mad." He cocked his wrist, placed the blade on the blue line of his vein, and cut deep.
Ru groaned and sagged against the shelter's wall, looking away.
The blood ran hot over Atticus's rain-chilled wrist and gathered in his hand. He willed it to form a mouse while staring at the ceiling, trying to think of nothing but the slow drumming of the rain on the roof. They say if someone tells you not to think of a polar bear, it becomes impossible not to. If he thought about what he was trying to drain out of himself, it would embed itself back into his memory. So he thought about the sound of the rain, scanning through his perfect memory for music that matched the rhythm. He found one in the mournful ballad of "I Am A Rock" and filled his mind with its somber words. I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died . . .
***
. . . If I never loved I never would have cried.
Atticus blinked, aware that tears were in his eyes, but having no idea why he'd been crying. He was in a bus shelter, rain drumming on the roof, an old Simon and Garfunkel song running through his head. For a panicked moment, he was worried something had happened to Ru, but his love was right there, on the wooden bench beside him. Mice whiskers tickled his fingers. He glanced down and found his knife in his right hand, a healing cut on his left wrist, and a mouse cupped in his palm, anxious about its fate.
He hadn't drained out memories since he was a child. Oh, God, what happened that made me do this again?
"Kyle?" he asked fearfully.
"No," Ru whispered huskily. "Your brother died."
"Again?"
Ru gave a shaky laugh, and then hunched over and began to weep.
Atticus spilled his mouse onto a floor strewn with cigarette butts and gathered Ru to him. "Hush, hush, I'm here."
What had happened? he wondered with dread. His brother must have gotten himself totally fucked-up if Ru was worried. The mouse climbed his shoe to press against his sock, fearful, aware of being cast out. Atticus had learned the hard way that he did this to himself for good reasons; taking back the mouse would be worse than being ignorant. His brother was dead—that was all he really needed to know to function. Perhaps all he could handle.
Tentatively, he probed his memories.
He could remember splitting up possible drug lab sites with Sumpter. After that, images of driving to South Boston and finding Daggit packing stuttered through his mind, ending with the Ontongard bearing down on them, and Ukiah racing toward them, and behind him, sweeping in on motorcycles, the Pack. At the time, he'd been too caught up in the roar of explosions to even notice the Dog Warriors. Distanced by time, now, he could feel them moving as one creature, with Ukiah as its heart and soul. They resounded with one will, one thought: to protect Ru. It would kill Atticus to lose Ru.
He had one clear memory of Ukiah shielding Ru with his own body, and then his recall ended, as if sliced out with laser precision. Practice made perfect. He could guess what followed. Even without the memory, knowledge that his brother sacrificed himself for Ru made him feel sick even as it confused him.
Why had Ukiah saved Ru? Why had he cared?
On the heels of that, he realized how close he'd been to losing Ru. Ukiah had acted with inhuman speed; Ru wouldn't have been able to save himself. The potential loss opened up a canyon of grief, which he could look into but—because of Ukiah—not fall into. If Ru had died, draining out a day's worth of memories would not have helped. To go home to an empty house and empty life, to go back to his life as it had been while he was growing up . . .
Ukiah had been right—losing Ru would have driven him mad.
It was stunning and humbling that his brother guessed what he hadn't known about himself.
Worse was the knowledge that he'd created the danger himself. He'd known the Ontongard had been tracking the cult, and in any direct confrontation between human and alien, the aliens would win. Yet he had not taken Ukiah with him, admitted the truth to Sumpter, nor contacted Indigo. He'd been a fool.
This wasn't just about the drug anymore. It couldn't be. He couldn't accept that huge a gift from his brother and then let all the pieces of Ukiah's life fall to the ground. There was the second Ae, the rest of the cult, and the transmitter to find. But his team couldn't do it alone. They had to get help .
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Summer Street, South Boston, Massachusetts
Thursday, September 23, 2004
The rain tapered off, leaving behind streets that gleamed like black silk. A wild wind rushed through the darkness, chasing the storm front. The warehouse burned with bonfire ferocity; they could feel the heat even where they stood, a full city block away. The smell of burning diesel and human flesh tainted the honest wood smoke of the Mayflowertimbers. Assaulting his senses, fire trucks wailed past them, lights cutting with razor intensity through the rain-black night.