In the end, he’d been too dangerous even for the men who’d made him.
“I’m surprised they cut you loose,” Nate said, his eyes reflecting a sort of morbid fascination. “I would’ve thought they’d be better off putting a burn notice on you. No offense.”
“None taken, because I’m inclined to agree, though most days I’m grateful they didn’t.” Michael paused. “It was Horn’s project, his decision. I think in the end it came down to hubris, and a certain scientific bent. He’d proven with me—and presumably others—that he could program a susceptible brain to split fully. Then he set out to prove that he could put it back together again, only better, effectively ‘curing’ me of my dissociative identity disorder. He reprogrammed me, cutting off my access to the Other once and for all, and convincing me I was exactly what I’d been playing for the previous three years: a decent-looking salesman who liked women and nice clothes, and had the depth of a puddle.”
“And they just let you go?” Nate persisted.
“Yes and no. He implanted a compulsion: If the Other ever returned to my conscious mind, I was programmed to call in.” He paused, grimacing. “The conditioning worked great, and probably would’ve kept me sane and ignorant for the rest of my life . . . except for the magic. The first of the memories started breaking through right around the time the barrier reactivated; I thought they were just nightmares. But then, during the talent ceremony, it all came spewing back. The Other. The jobs.
Killing the kid. Everything. More, it brought this crazy power with it, though I didn’t really realize it at first. My bloodline nahwal helped me push the Other back at first, and warned me not to let it through, and not to use the magic. The nahwal said that my soul balance was already tipped toward darkness, and if I used the magic, I’d tip it further. Too much, and I’d switch to channeling hellmagic.”
He glanced at Jade, “It’s an understatement to say that I came out of that ceremony in a really bad place, mentally. What was more, the Other’s return had triggered the conditioning, and before I knew what I was doing, I was on the phone with Horn. When I realized what was happening, I shut it down, but the damage was done. Thank the gods I’d had the sense to sneak out to Albuquerque to make the call, so they didn’t know to look for me here at Skywatch, but I knew they were looking for me, and they wouldn’t stop until they found me and shut me up for good. So I held them off. And I started to make a plan.”
“Which explains the bat phone,” Sven said, with his typical inability to take much of anything seriously. When the others just looked at him, he said, “What? You know you were thinking it. It’s not like anybody had ‘government agent’ in the pool.” It was common knowledge that the occupants of Skywatch used to speculate widely on the purpose of Michael’s second cell phone, the subject of the secretive calls he got at strange hours, and what he’d really done in the outside world.
Michael found a strained grin. “What did you have, ‘he owes money to the mob’?”
“Vegas, actually.” Sven slid a look around the room.
“Jade had ‘illegitimate half-blood child he doesn’t want us to know about,’ Leah picked the mob, and Rabbit guessed you were some sort of gigolo.”
“Shit,” Michael said mildly. “I should’ve put in a hundred for ‘borderline sociopathic assassin.’ ” But saying it aloud killed the brief spurt of humor that had temporarily lightened the room. He continued, “Basically, in the weeks following the talent ceremony I worked my ass off using a combination of visualization, martial arts, and the meditation tricks Horn had taught me, and managed to reassemble some mental defenses. I pictured them like a big dam, with sluice gates that opened now and then to let the Other slip through sometimes. We . . . I don’t know, we reached a standoff of sorts, inside my skull. All the while, I was working on my magic and trying to hold off Bryson and Horn, and figure out how to keep them from coming after me—and finding Skywatch—without just luring them somewhere and killing them. Not because I was against killing them per se. I figured it would attract more attention than it would defuse. So I worked, and I planned, and I stalled until the spring, just after the equinox.”
He looked at Sasha, still unable to see past the blank unease on her face. He said to her, “That was when Carter first got us your file. I can’t necessarily say it was your photo—and what I felt when I saw it—that got me off my ass, but you were part of it. I’d also figured out the chameleon shield by then.” He spread his hands, condensing weeks of sweat equity and split-second timing. “I contacted Horn and let him talk me into meeting him at a remote safe house for an ‘evaluation,’ knowing they would plan to take me out. Instead, I got my hands on some C-4 and detonators, ducked their attack, faked a counterattack, made it look like my detonator misfired early, and then shielded the hell out of myself when the blast went off.” It had been a terrible, terrifying experience. And the Other had loved every fucking minute of it. “Horn and Bryson left, convinced I wouldn’t be a danger to them anymore, and I dropped the chameleon shield and came home.”
Strike nodded. “That would be when you started wearing tanks, chucked the phone, and turned into someone we could stand.”
“Pretty much.” Michael took a long look around, thought he saw more understanding than condemnation on his friends’ faces, and let himself uncoil a fraction, thinking maybe he was going to be okay, after all. At least generally. He couldn’t help thinking that Sasha was far too quiet, far too still. She looked like she’d crawled away inside herself, someplace he couldn’t follow.
They would talk later, he assured himself. He didn’t know which way it would go, but they sure as hell needed to talk.
“Is the Other why you don’t use your offensive magic?” Sven asked.
Michael lifted a shoulder. “Depends on your definition of ‘offensive.’ All along, I’ve assumed that in blocking off the Other, I had blocked off that part of my magic. After these past few weeks, though, I’ve come to realize that wasn’t all of it. I’d known all along that anger could bring the Other closer to the surface. When I met Sasha, though, I realized that there was more to it than just anger.” He looked at her, trying to choose his words carefully. “Being around you, wanting you and riding high on sex magic and frustration . . . all those things also brought the Other forward, and weakened the defenses I’d built up. The silver magic the nahwal warned me against started breaking through more often. It was attracted to you.” He paused, then pressed on. “The silver magic is called muk. It’s the original form of our power; our ancestors deemed it too dangerous to use, because it often corrupted its user.
They split the muk into Nightkeeper magic and hellmagic, which the Xibalbans later claimed as their own.”
“I felt it,” Sasha said softly. “I didn’t know what it was, but I felt it. It was . . . seductive.”
Their whole relationship was tangled in the silver muk, Michael thought. The question was whether they untangle it far enough to find something that was theirs alone.
Actually, the question was whether they’d get that chance.