– I had a feeling about you, Joseph.
I bring my right hand up to the back of her head.
– From the first moment I saw you, I had a feeling you were special.
I bring up my left hand, the cuffs, one bracelet sawed through, still trailing from my wrist, and cup her chin.
– Special. Like you were someone I could trust.
Her eyes drift to her daughter and back to me.
– Can I trust you, Joseph?
I run a tongue over my lips, taste the blood.
– Yeah, sure.
– Good.
And I break her neck.
It's not easy. It's very hard. I am drained and weak and she flinches at the last moment. I heave once and her spine crackles and she starts to tremor. Then I heave again and feel the clean snap and she goes still.
I lower her to the floor, and as I do I meet Amanda's open staring eyes, see her mouth gaping in a silent nightmare scream, and then her eyes close again. This moment, I hope, to be lost with the rest of her terrors.
Lydia brings three of her hammers. Two of them are diesels, beefier than her but not nearly as cut. The other is a pre-op tranny a huge chick with a dick, shoulders and tits the size of bowling balls.
– Is she OK?
– They shot her up with something. I don't know what.
– They who?
I look at Amanda, limp in my arms.
– People who aren't around anymore.
Lydia nods.
– What now?
– She needs a safe place.
– How long?
– Don't know. Couple days maybe.
She looks at the tranny.
– Sela?
The tranny nods and answers in a throaty rumble.
– Sure, I can take care of the sweetie.
Lydia looks at me.
– OK?
I look at Sela.
– People may come.
Sela lifts both her arms, flexes them bodybuilder style and her biceps just about pop out of her skin.
– Their problem.
I nod.
– OK.
Sela lowers her arms.
– Let me have the cupcake.
I hold her out. Sela plucks her from my arms and tucks her easily into the crook of one of her own. I point at the bloody fingerprints on her jeans and shoes, left there when I finished dressing her.
– See if you can get her into something clean before she wakes up.
Sela is watching Amanda's sleeping face, one Lincoln Log finger brushes loose hair from her forehead.
– No problem, we'll get cupcake all sorted out. C'mon, ladies.
One of the diesels opens the door and checks the street outside, then signals an all clear. Sela follows her out and the other diesel brings up the rear, closing the door behind her. Lydia points at the closed door.
– She'll be fine with them.
– Yeah.
She goes to the door, puts her hand on the knob.
– We should get going, sunrise soon.
– Yeah.
We step out of the empty storefront onto Avenue B. Lydia locks the door behind us and we start down the street. I point back at the storefront.
– That a Society safe house?
– One of mine.
– Hn.
She's burned a safe house. Let someone outside her circle know about it. There'll be skin to pay for that. There's always skin to pay for something. Then again, chances are she won't have to worry about anything I know much longer. She looks at me from the corner of her eye, smiles slightly.
– Tom's been going batshit.
– Yeah?
– Yeah. Told him I went to give you some chow and you sucker-punched me and grabbed the key to the shackles. He tried to track you, but I had a couple of my people out gumming up your scent. He's frothing. Says he'll have me up on charges when Terry gets back.
– Still not back?
– No. Got a message from the drop, though. The Coalition's raising some kind of stink, clogging up all passages across their turf. Know anything about that?
– Nope.
She stops on the corner of 9th and B.
– I go this way. What about you?
I point the opposite direction.
– Home.
– Sure about that?
– Nowhere else left.
She nods.
– Anything else?
– Got a smoke?
She shakes her head.
– Give my money to the death merchants at the tobacco companies? You should know better.
– Right.
She stuffs her hands in her back pockets.
– The girl?
– If you don't hear from me tomorrow, wait for Terry. He'll know what to do.
– He usually does.
– Yep.
At home I get cleaned up, and in bed with a cigarette. Every time I take a drag the cuff still hanging off my wrist bangs against my neck. I could pick the lock, but my wallet with the picks is on the opposite side of the room. Too far away. I put my cigarette in the nightstand ashtray and take hold of the dangling cuff. I begin to twist it round and round. The chain bundles and knots and the cuff still locked on my wrist digs into the skin. I crank the loose cuff once more and wrench my locked wrist in the opposite direction and the chain pops, one broken link shooting across the room. I put the sawn-through cuff on the nightstand and pick up my cigarette. I rub my wrist, massaging the red skin under the single cuff I now wear like a bracelet. I spin the bracelet around and around and think about the girl that it had been locked to.
And I lie in the dark, sucking smoke into my one good lung.
When I finally sleep I dream. I don't dream about the girl or her mother or her father. I don't dream about Whitney Vale or Evie or the wretched things that raised me. I dream about a darkness. And I see all the details I had only glimpsed in that room.
The way the darkness seeped into the room through a crack in the air. How it cut the space between Horde and myself. How it passed through Horde, passed through him as he would have passed through a mist. How it flapped and shivered as with pleasure, gliding up to the shadows in the corner of the room. The things bulging from within the darkness, trying to get out. The shapes bulging from it, pressing it outward from the inside, like people trapped inside a black sheath of rubber. The hole it cut in the shadow. The last shape, digging from within it, before it inked the shadow black and disappeared.
The shape like an oily black relief of Horde's screaming face.
– Stop screaming, Pitt.
I open my eyes. They're already here.
– Little early, guys.
Predo has set the chair from my desk next to the bed and is sitting in it. He looks at his watch.
– It is nearly midnight. You have slept all day. Now it is time to get up.
– Yeah, guess you're right.
I sit up in bed and stretch.
– I'd offer you guys some coffee or something, but I don't like you. So. I throw off the covers and move to get up and Predo's giant holds up a hand.
– If you could just stay on the bed for now, Mr. Pitt.
– Yeah, sure.
I grab my smokes from the nightstand, light up, lean my back against the wall and sit there in my shorts and undershirt, and smoke. Predo lets it go for a minute, then gets tired of it.
– Where is the girl?
I take a drag. I think I can feel some of the smoke going into my right lung. A good sign.
– Say, Mr. Predo.
His eyes tighten, but he waits for it.
– Know what I'm noticing?
He waits.
– No? OK, I'll tell you.
I stub my cigarette in the ashtray.
– I'm noticing how you're not asking what happened to the Hordes.
I grab the pack of Luckys and knock a fresh one out.
– When last seen, one of your enforcers was with them. You'd think he'd have called in by now. But he hasn't. Know how I know he hasn't?
I flip my Zippo open.
– Because I killed him.
I thumb the wheel.
– But I have a feeling you already know that.
I light the butt.
– And that you don't give a fuck.
I close the lighter with a snap.
– Care to comment?
He temples his fingers and presses them to his lips.