The Other Brother (22 page)

Chapter 3 9

1 round half-past midnight Gabriel attempted to call Nicole to share some of the information he'd picked up from Sean (minus his admittedly far-fetched theories about psychic powers). Nicole was a night owl and didn't mind late calls. But she didn't answer her phone.

He figured she must be occupied with her "company." He left her a message asking her to call him back.

He was eager to discuss what he'd learned with someone, wanted to toss ideas back and forth with a trusted confidant. Normally Dana would have been that person. But he was the last man she wanted to talk to right now.

Yawning, he settled on the sofa in the family room.

What should he do next?

Eventually he would have to confront Isaiah. A showdown was inevitable. But he didn't think he was ready for that yet not until he had a better idea of what Isaiah could do. He needed to learn more about him.

As Gabriel ruminated on his next step, the prickly feeling returned. He used his telekinesis to stir the contents of a glass bowl of potpourri that sat on the coffee table. Then, once he tired of that, he floated the remote control toward him and channel surfed. Finding nothing of interest on television, he used his power to juggle the remote control, spinning it end over end like a bottle.

Sometime later, bored, he drifted to sleep on the sofa.

He fell into a dream...

"Payback 's a bitch, ain't it, motherfucka?" a rough voice said.

He tried to raise his hand and fire a gun and discovered that he couldn't move his arm. He no longer had a pistol, anyway. He d dropped it somewhere.

But the dreadlocked black man standing over him still had a gun of his own.

The man aimed the weapon at his chest and squeezed the trigger.

Gunfire echoing in his ears, he spiraled into darkness, deep and complete.

No matter what....

Although darkness enveloped him, he wasn't dead. He was fully conscious.

What the hell is this? Is this what dying is like?

Somewhere ahead a pinpoint of pulsing white light appeared. It expanded into a beacon and steadily grew even larger, forming into a wide doorway. The brightness revealed the surrounding blackness to be the walls of a smooth tunnel.

An invisible force began to carry him toward the radiance like an otherwordly express train.

I'm not ready to die. I want revenge.

As he traveled closer to the light, he could make out, in the illuminated doorway, a tall humanoid figure, ablaze like lightning.

So an angel is waiting to greet me on the Other Side? Do I deserve this?

The doorway grew so incandescent, it was like viewing the sun at high noon. He wanted to close his eyes but he couldn't look away.

The glowing being stepped forward and pushed him. He tumbled backward in the darkness like detritus floating through deep space.

Maybe they realized they made a mistake and are sending me to hell.

He heard noises. The squeak of shoes on tile. Muffled voices. The clatter of something that sounded like silverware on a plate.

The darkness faded. Harsh fluorescent light punished his eyes. He blinked.

He lay on his back. He was in a dreary, gray-walled room, a lab of some kind. Sharp chemical odors pierced his nostrils.

He turned his head, which demanded effort, for it felt as though his skull were cast in concrete. On his right he saw several gleaming silver tables, each large enough to hold a human body.

On his left there was a bank of what appeared to be mini refrigerators set in a wall. Beside the coolers there was a set of double doors, like you would find in a hospital ER.

But this wasn't a hospital, he realized.

He was in a morgue.

I'm not dead! What the fuck am I doing in here?

He remembered what had brought him there, however. The gunfight back at the crib. Seeing Mama die. Taking bullets from those motherfuckers.

His vow of vengeance.

No matter what, I'm going to get you for this....

Fury electrified him like a cattle prod touched to his flesh.

He tried to sit up it felt as though heavy iron plates lay on his chest. By the time he was sitting upright, sweat had popped out on his skin.

A thin sheet covered him. Underneath, he was nude.

Most of his body was numb. He d been to the dentist once, to get a cavity filled and had gotten a shot of novocaine to deaden his tooth to the pain. His entire body felt as though it had been injected with that shit.

He grasped the edge of the sheet and tore it aside. He swung his legs to the side of the table, groaning from the exertion.

His legs were so weak that when he slid off the table, he almost crashed onto the floor. He leaned against the edge of the table to keep his balance.

There was a large desk, on the far side of the room. No one sat behind the desk but there was a wrapped sandwich and a bag of Jays potato chips sitting on the surface, evidence that someone would be returning soon.

His stomach craved food. He walked-staggered to the desk and grabbed the sandwich. He took a huge, sloppy bite.

It was only a turkey and cheese sandwich on wheat, but it was the best thing he d ever tasted in his life.

He stuffed it into his mouth, chewing savagely, making soft, animal-like sounds of pleasure. As he consumed the food, strength and sensation returned to his muscles and nerves.

He recalled taking a shotgun slug in the shoulder and a bullet in the chest, but he didn't feel any pain in those regions of his body. Puzzled, he checked the entry points of the gunshot wounds. A snarl of fresh scar tissue covered his shoulder and there was a puckered slash on his chest, thanks to the nine millimeter. These wounds should have killed him.

But he was alive.

It was a miracle.

He had finished the sandwich and was reaching for the potato chips when someone entered the room via the double doors. A tall, broad-shouldered white man with dark hair and glasses. He was dressed in scrubs and was bringing a can of Coke to his lips.

"What the " the man said, eyes stunned behind his lenses. He dropped the soda on the floor.

He had to stop this guy before he got away, told everyone what had happened. After the shit that had gone down at the crib, the cops would wanna haul his ass back to the joint, and he wasn't having that.

He did the most natural thing. He shouted at the white guy, "Stop! "

As he spoke the command, electrical current seemed to sizzle up the channel of his spine and explode in his brain like a thunderclap. He blinked, feeling drunk on ... something. Power?

The man had stopped. In midstep. He looked a figure in a wax museum.

He felt a peculiar throbbing in the center of his forehead. He touched it. It was a vein.

The white man was still frozen. Chest rising and falling. Eyes twitching. But still suspended in place.

Understanding flooded him.

He had told this man to stop, and the man had obeyed.

Somehow, surviving death, coming back from the Other Side, had gifted him with some sort ofpower. It made sense. That was how it happened in the movies, after all.

He grinned at this amazing discovery.

Then, finding a metal stapler on the desk, he stalked across the room and smashed the guy in the head with it, knocking him unconscious. He stripped him of his clothes and dressed in them himself.

He probably looked like a felon in scrubs, not a doctor or whatever this guy had been, but the disguise should be good enough to get him out of there and back on the street.

Once he hit the streets again, it would be time for revenge.

First, the niggas who had attacked him and his mother.

Next, his father... .

Gabriel burst out of the dream. Chest heaving, he looked around.

He lay sprawled on the couch in the family room. The television was on, playing some Stephen King movie.

He sighed, lay his head against the cushions.

The dream had been like a film in its own right. It had been so realistic, yet so strange. He'd been in Isaiah's viewpoint, experiencing Isaiah's twisted thoughts, too.

Had his dream merely been influenced by the article he'd read of Isaiah's return from death? Stuff like that had happened to Gabriel before. Many times, he'd watched a particularly vivid film and later dreamed of some element of the movie.

Or was there another answer?

Had he dreamed of what had actually happened to Isaiah?

Much later that night, after Isaiah returned from his errands, he slept.

He dreamed, too.

He dreamed of driving a Lincoln Navigator on a highway in a blinding rain and getting smacked by an tractor-trailer. He crashed through a guardrail, tumbled down an embankment, slipped into darkness, and hurtled toward a radiant doorway ... only to be turned away before he merged into the ethereal light.

The dream then dissolved into him standing in front of a bathroom door. He reached toward the door. But the knob twisted and the door floated open, independent of his touch.

And his palms began to tingle....

Isaiah awoke from the dream shortly thereafter. He lay in the darkness, gazing at the ceiling.

He was quite sure that he had dreamed of something that had happened to Gabriel. He knew all about the accident.

But that wasn't what perplexed Isaiah. Something else did.

The door that had opened on its own.

Did Gabriel have some sort of power, too?

Chapter 40

r arly the next morning, after a night during which he'd managed maybe two hours of restful sleep, Gabriel went to Lowe's to purchase paint and brushes. When he attempted to pay for the items with a credit card, the clerk, a young black woman, handed the card back to him.

"It's been denied," she said, and gave him a you knew better than that look.

"Denied? That's not possible. Try it again, please."

She swiped the card again. Waited, and then shook her head and handed the card back to him.

"Okay." He handed her another card. "Try this one"

She tried that one. With the same result.

What was this? There was nothing wrong with these credit cards.

"Wanna go for strike three with another one?" she asked.

This was exactly what he needed. A comedienne.

"Let's try my debit card. This one has to work 'cause I know I have funds in my bank account" He handed the card to her.

She accepted it dubiously. Swiped it. Then turned to him as if he were the most trifling man walking the earth.

"Strike three," she said.

"This can't be" He had at least a few hundred dollars in that checking account, and more in savings. "Are you sure something isn't wrong with your system?"

"It's been working fine all morning."

Gabriel flipped through his wallet. He had only a fivedollar bill and no more credit cards.

"I'm going to run out to my car for a minute," he said. "I'll be right back."

In the Corvette's glove compartment he'd stored an emergency stash of fifty dollars in cash; he'd learned to do that because sometimes computer systems could be offline when you needed to purchase something. He peeled off a twenty and returned inside the store to pay for the items.

"Handle your bidness, honey," the clerk said, bagging his purchases.

Gabriel hardly heard her. He couldn't figure out what was wrong. He'd never had a problem with his credit cards-he paid them in full each month and the account balances were well below the limits and he knew for a fact that he had money in his bank accounts. He'd checked his statement online only a few days ago.

It was yet another problem to investigate. As if he didn't already have enough issues.

When it rained, it poured.

Gabriel drove directly to Dana's condo. He hadn't called her beforehand to announce that he was visiting. She wouldn't want to see him. But he needed to see her.

On Saturday mornings Dana usually went to an LA Fitness in Midtown to work out. He wanted to be at her home when she returned.

He approached her front door. Isaiah's spray-painted message looked even more vulgar and offensive in the daylight. Residue from the almost-murderous rage Gabriel had experienced last night stirred in him.

I'm gonna get you for this, Isaiah.

Muttering under his breath, Gabriel cleaned dust and grime off the door with a towel and then opened a can of burgundy-red paint, the same color as the door.

He was applying paint to the wood in steady strokes when Dana appeared in the corridor. She wore an Emory T-shirt and athletic shorts and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

Displeasure twisted her face.

"What're you doing here?"

"I'm repainting the door."

"Painting the door isn't going to change what you did. I want you to leave."

"Listen" Gabriel dipped the brush in the can. "Isaiah did this, Dana. He admitted it to me when I talked to him last night. He's trying to drive us apart-and I'm not going to let that happen"

"I don't want to get into this right now." She came forward. "Get away from my door. I'll repaint it later by my damn self."

Gabriel moved aside. He inhaled a deep breath and concentrated on summoning his energy, as he'd been practicing.

His telekinesis awakened, power sparking across his palms.

"You sure you don't want me to help?" he asked. And when Dana turned to spit another nasty remark at him, he caused the paintbrush to sail through the air, rest against the door, and slide downward in a smooth stroke.

Dana's mouth dropped open.

"Yeah, I did that," he said. "We need to talk, baby. I've got a lot to tell you"