Pushing against whatever was closest to him—he wasn’t sure whether it was the ground or a tree or that red-suited fatty, Santa Claus, he eased himself over onto his back. As he flopped flat, the cold went to his head and helped to dull things.
He intended to get up. Check the Hummer. Beat the shit out of whoever had taken advantage of his blond moment. But that was just his brain playing with itself. His body had taken over the wheel and accelerator, and it had no intention of going anywhere the fuck.
Laying as still as he could, and breathing out uneven clouds of frost, time slowed down and then began to morph. For a second, he became confused as to what had put him in this at-the-side-of-the-road condition. The accident he’d caused?
Or…that Honor Guard from before the raids?
Was this back-flat on the asphalt thing a memory of his past or something that was actually happening?
The good news was that sorting out reality gave his brain something to do other than continue to hammer away at the get-moving stuff. The bad news was that the memories from the night his family had disavowed him were more painful than anything he currently felt in his body.
God, it was all so clear, the doggen bringing him the official papers and demanding some blood for a cleansing ritual. Him throwing that duffel bag over his shoulder and walking out of that house for the last time. The road stretching in front of him, empty and dark—
This road, he realized. This actual road was the one he’d gone down on. Or…was down on…whatever. When he’d left his parents’ house, he’d intended to head out west, where he’d heard there was a clan of rogue assholes just like him. Instead, four males had shown up in hooded robes and beaten him to death—literally. He had gone to the door of the Fade, and on it, he had seen a future that he hadn’t believed…until it happened. Was happening—right now. With Layla…
Oh, look, John was talking to him.
Right in front of his eyes, the guy’s hands were going through the motions, so to speak, and Qhuinn intended reply with some kind of update—
“Is this real?” he mumbled.
John looked momentarily confuzzled.
It had to be real, Qhuinn thought. Because the Honor Guard had come to him in the summer, and the air he was inhaling was cold.
Are you okay? John mouthed as he signed.
Shoving his hand into the snowy ground, Qhuinn pushed as hard as he could. When he didn’t budge more than an inch or two, he let that speak for itself…and passed the fuck out.
THREE
The sound of coke getting sniffed up a deviated septum made the man outside the door tighten his grip on his knife.
Fucker. What a fucker.
The first rule of any successful dealer was that you didn’t use. Addicts who funded your business used. Associates you needed to leverage used. Bitches you needed out on the streets used.
Management did not use. Ever.
The logic was so sound, it was fundamental, and nothing different than, say, going to a casino that had a six-million-square-foot facility, enough catered food for a small country, and goddamned gold leaf everywhere—and being surprised that you lost all your money. If taking drugs was such a hot frickin’ idea, why did people regularly die from the shit, destroy lives over it, get thrown in prison thanks to it?
Dumb-ass.
The man turned the knob and pushed. Of course the door was unlocked, and as he walked into the squalid room, the stench of baby powder would have overwhelmed him—if he hadn’t gotten used to the smell on himself.
That nasty nose-pincher was the only thing he hadn’t liked about the change. Everything else—the strength, the longevity, the freedom—he’d been into. But damn, the smell.
No matter how much cologne he used, he couldn’t get rid of it.
And yeah, he missed being able to have sex.
Other than that, the Lessening Society was his ticket to domination.
The sniffing stopped and the Fore-lesser looked up from the People magazine he’d made the lines on. Beneath the residue, some dude named Channing Tatum was staring at the camera, all hot as fuck. “Hey. What’re you doing here?”
As those beady, strung out eyes struggled to focus, the “Boss” looked like he’d given a blow job to a powered doughnut.
“I got something for you.”
“More? Oh, my God, how did you know? I only got two ounces left and I—”
Connors, a.k.a. C-Rider, moved fast, taking three steps forward, throwing his arm out wide, and swinging the knife in a fat circle—that terminated in the side of the Fore-lesser’s head. The steel blade went in deep, slicing through the softer bone of the temple, piercing the buzzed-up gray matter.
The Fore-lesser went into a seizure—maybe because of the injury…more likely because his adrenal glands had just pumped a million cc’s of holy-shit into his bloodstream and the stuff wasn’t mixing well with the cocaine. As the little shit flopped off his chair and shimmied his way down to the floor, the knife stayed with Connors, disengaging from the side of the skull, its blade marked with black blood.
Connors met the shocked stare of his now-former superior and felt really good about this promotion he had going on. The Omega himself had come to him and offered him the job, no doubt recognizing, as they all did, that a sk8tr punk was not who you wanted in charge of any organization bigger than a poker game. Yeah, sure, the guy had been useful in growing the ranks. But quantity was not quality, and it didn’t take the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines to see that the Lessening Society was being overrun by lawless, ADHD juvies.
Hard to promote any kind of agenda with that kind of rank and file—unless you had a real professional running shit.
Which was why the Omega had put all this in motion.
“Wh-wh-wh—”
“You been fired, motherfucker.”
The final part of the forced retirement came with another stabbing motion, this one taking that blade and driving it right into the center of the chest. With a pop! and a show of smoke, the regime change was complete.
And Connors was the head of everything.
Supremacy made him smile for a moment—until his eyes went around the room. For some reason, he thought of that Febreze commercial, the one where they’d shit up some place, spray like madmen, and drag “real people, not actors” into the scene to sniff around.
Man, except for the food remnants—which were a no-show, because slayers didn’t require eats—everything fit: the mold on the ceiling, the ratty furniture, the dripping over at the sink…and especially the crap that went along with a multi-chemical addiction, like syringes, spoons, even the two-liter Sprite-bottle meth lab over in the corner.
This was not a seat of power. This was a common crack house.
Connors went over and snagged the little shit’s cell phone. The screen was cracked and there was some kind of sticky patch on the back. The thing was not password-protected, and when he went into the messages section, all kinds of kiss-asses had blown up the phone, the texts blah-blah-blahing congrats about the induction ceremony that was going on tonight.
But the Fore-lesser hadn’t known about it. Wasn’t his gig.
Connors wasn’t going to retaliate, however. Those brown-nosing douches were just trying to stay alive and would suck anyone’s dick to keep breathing: He fully expected the same list to be hitting him up, and he wanted them to. Spies had their purpose in the grand scheme of things.
And, man, there was work to be done.
From what he had figured out during his own blessedly short period of ass-kissing, the Lessening Society had few assets left in terms of weapons or ammo or property. No cash, because what did come in from petty robberies had gone up the little shit’s nose or into his arm. No master list of inductees, no troop organization, no training.