Made Men (29 page)

He was more than Wolfgang’s list. Much
more. What else could he do?

He
found a cellphone in the drawer of a large desk. The room reeked of burnt hair,
but not just anyone’s.

Hennas
.

Scrolling
through the lobbyist’s recent calls, a human rage mounted.

Abernathy … Atwell …

Interrogations
and practice with his venom could follow; he must focus on the task at hand.
Ryker studied a box on the desk.

Podgorica.

The
stamp was a fake. Searching through drawers, he found a fancy knife, cigars,
and handwritten letters. He tucked the phone in his pocket and opened the
liquor cabinet, dousing the rugs, drapery, paintings, touching a firebrand from
the hearth to each. He opened a window to feed the fire. A wind howled in the
hallway toward the open front door.

It
didn’t help.

Ryker’s
rage eclipsed the fire. His jaws clacked, and he flexed the back of his tongue,
sending a jet of venom—accurately this time—several meters, where
it knocked a vase from a three-hundred-year-old sideboard. Hurling armloads of
books into the flames, he allowed the feeling to consume him, leaping to rip
down a chandelier in the hallway and ramming his heel through a thick plaster
wall. The room encased in marble—the entry—had high ceilings and
remained cool, though smoke billowed like a gravity-proof broken levee from the
top of the open front door. The genetic super-being tore away the dead
lobbyist’s clothes, circled his body twice, and knelt.

With
a thumbnail, he slit open the soles of the man’s feet, yanking away skin to
de-glove the toes. Blackshaw appeared, now, to have loose red socks flapping at
his ankles. Then the German tied the man’s feet (sans skin), his tendon, bone,
and meat to a grand newel post. A quick sheet bend secured a drapery cord to
the skin that once housed the tycoon’s feet. Ryker prized loose the garden
utensil and slung it, spear-like, at another horrid oil painting, then strode
to the carriage house.

Locked.

Leaning
his back against the door, Ryker drove an elbow against the lock and pushed
away the splintered wood. He lifted the carriage bolts out of their brick
holes, swung open the wide doors, and backed Blackshaw’s spotless Bentley to
the front stoop. With the other end of the sash cord secured to the tow hook
beneath the Bentley’s rear bumper—steadily—he inched the car
forward, a purring rumble resonating inside his sinuses.
Snap
.

Elastic.

The
skin of the lobbyist flew from the house … hair and all. The organ landed with
a heavy, wet
thump
on the rear
window. Ryker popped the trunk, rolled the gore-streaked mess into a bundle,
and flung it in.

His
face felt looser … inner lids relaxed open. The tube beneath his tongue clamped
shut, and he resumed breathing through his nose.

Cathartic.

He
pulled out the lobbyist’s cellphone, scrolling. With the proverbial head of the
snake in his trunk, now he could stuff in the body.

Where the head goes, the body will
follow. Are you home Atwell?

He
tapped
contacts
and found Alec
Atwell’s home address then that of Deputy Chief Constable Cromwell Abernathy,
the whiskey-sodden cop who had set Henna up for failure by caving to the
lobbyist’s whim, refusing to pursue the skinheads who had beat Stephan to a
pulp with hammers. He’d wanted to disembowel Abernathy ever since Henna came to
New York to stay, but Atwell, an unknown, might be pressed to guess where Osgar
had gone.

He’d save Abernathy for last.

T
he train from Beijing
to Tianjin was everything the Trans-Siberian Railway was not: fast, smooth, and
efficient.

As
they streaked toward the coast at over 180 miles per hour, Vai clenched Bonn’s
hand, sighing against his neck.

He didn’t like the modern train
.

With nowhere to sneak off to … no privacy … it
felt too bright and raw and much too fast.
At a bend, Vai glanced out a window.
His neck missed her breath the moment she turned. Eastern China flickered by at
a dizzying pace. Bonn marveled at her profile. She was so smooth and
even—funny and gracious. He slid toward her, shifting in his seat so they
could touch legs beneath the armrest. Bonn would tolerate any contortion needed
to be closer.

Nothing else mattered
.

Henna
had grounded him. She’d been different.

Better than himself in nearly every way.

She’d
been the bellwether of his scattered pieces, not herding him into a better
place, but leading him there. He missed Henna’s insight and her unconditional
acceptance; she’d given him what even Manny and Linda couldn’t—or at
least what he’d never entrusted his surrogate mother and father with: the
ability to trade truths. Linda and Manny had always been genuine with him, but
he hadn’t felt able to do the same.

Henna
had sat beside him when he’d been the thirstiest for the world’s worst blood
and never judged … having been there herself.

Vai
was a part of him—now no less crucial than his hands. When she breathed
out, he breathed in—just to smell the air leaving her body. She consumed
his thoughts. Her stories soothed him: the places she’d lived, fantastic
mistakes she had made—triumphs despite bad decisions. She could have been
or done anything, but she’d waited. She had come for
him
.

“I
studied naturopathy. Did I tell you that?” She stroked his arm. “I didn’t get
good marks. I wanted to become an acupuncturist, but I was terrible at choosing
the spots to poke—” she held his hand to her mouth, giving him a playful
bite, then lightly brushed a finger over his knuckles. “Just when I thought I
was improving, a woman came for a treatment…” Vai contorted her face, pulling
in her regal jaw in pantomime “…dour … with the top button of her shirt flat
against her throat like a permanent scab.” Shooting her eyebrows up, she stuck
her tongue out of the side of her mouth, squinting as though throwing a dart.
“The first needle I placed she screamed! I think all the others had been too
polite. Some guys had already come for second treatments. How much pain had I
caused?” She laughed, lighthearted. “I got kicked out. The woman, my stabbing victim,
owned the school. I took a bus to California to pick fruit for a month. I
learned some Spanish. Do you know any?”

Bonn
nodded. “A little.”

Vai
pressed her mouth against his, kissing him deeply.
Her tongue
smooth, soft.
She pulled his hand to her belly and blinked up at him,
watching his eyes. “Estoy—embarazada.”

His
face flushed. Beaming, he rubbed where she’d placed his hand. “Pregnant!”

“I’m
not afraid,” she said. “Not anymore. I don’t dream you since I have you. I want
a whole life—and it doesn’t matter where we live it.”

They
smiled at him as he felt her belly. Bonn felt tears tickling his cheeks and
realized they were his.

He’d never been loved before, in a
romantic sense.

C
hinese faces swiveled
to their windows and books, anywhere but the young lovers. Only an old woman
scowled, spitting a short admonition in their direction as though it were a
live locust, then returned to her sewing.

“I’m
hungry,” Vai declared. His hand still rested on her midsection, cupping her,
cradling the small life inside.

“I’ll
find something,” Bonn promised. He untangled himself from her, and she fought
the urge to pull him back. Watched him work his way to the rear of the car, a
wave of nausea hit Vai like a swell.

Not hungry. Yuck. But
exhausted—and her breasts ached.

Straightening
in her seat, she closed her eyes. In a few deep breaths, the nausea had passed.
Turning back, she saw Bonn waving a suspect package of something, maybe
crackers, with a comical shrug. She smiled, nodding.

That’s fine.

With
a flash, an incredible concussion cracked the tail of the train like a whip.
Vai’s hair was sucked toward the void where Bonn had just stood. One eardrum
had burst. As the cloud of debris began to settle, she saw that the rear of the
train car had been sheared clean away. Vai struggled to free herself from the
seat, but couldn’t—
curling
into a ball as the
intact front of the train shrieked to slow. Finally, she pulled a breath.

It had happened. He was gone.

L
ight then
dark—pressure then relief. Things seemed, always, to be moving.

Henna
gazed at a place on a wall, struggling to keep her eyes steady. She couldn’t.

Her lids were too heavy.

Her
eyes slid shut, weighted and oily.

Nothing made sense.

Osgar
talked absently. Not to her, really. Loose words edged through the grease and
the fog in her brain.

Cycle
. G
onadotropin.
Insert.

She
couldn’t feel her body; or rather she could, but when a sensation made it to
her brain it didn’t seem like hers. She WAS aware of machinery. There was
equipment everywhere.

More
words piled in, parts of some message, like the pulp of fruit pushed through
cheesecloth. Nothing recognizable. Henna’s eyes rolled back. She struggled for
control, and, barring that, for understanding.

Hormone levels.
Did he say hormone levels? I think he did.

When
she stopped struggling, exhausted from the effort, Henna became a cherry
blossom in a breeze. A bee visited her, intimately.

A
gentle, electronic bee.
She wanted to hold it.
To look
at the insect’s eyes.

What color would they be?

With
great effort, she brushed her hands down her body: she felt unorganized,
separate from her skin. A larger hand, his hand, reached for hers, held it for
a moment, and then placed it beside her. She felt something, the wind again, on
her eyelashes.

But not in her hair.
How did he do that?

Her
hair felt like skin.

“How
did you do that?” Her voice wasn’t hers, so she tried again. “No wind in my
hair. How?”

“I’ve
shaved you.” Osgar answered. His voice sounded like hers. Inside of her head,
like she’d imagined his response.

Cold skin.

Shivering.
The bee was insistent. She felt—full.
A sharpness
.
A low, dragging pull.

Not a gentle bee
.

He
was inside of her. Was he? The bee? He felt intent to turn her inside out.
Henna fought to tighten her pelvic floor.

“
There
, there” he said. “Relax.”

“Who
said that?” Henna asked. “Did I say that?”

More
oil. Thick brain. The device left her cervix, yanked crudely from her vagina.
Her legs were wet. Words.

Egg. Fertilize. Kill.

He
had flown off, it seemed—the bee.

The electric bee with
the large man’s large hands.

Fluid dripping into her.

“Where
is this? Am I still me?” Neither the bee nor the man answered.

Henna
drifted off, lids half-closed. A small pump pushed nutrition into her stomach
through a thin tube in her nose. She didn’t feel pain. She didn’t
feel—anything.

A
cluster of cells settled on a spot inside her. Technically, Henna was a mother
now.

H
is unfortunate ward
was a mess. Rickard had agreed to allow the man to shower.

Taking
his time in the small bathroom, the water still ran, but the sound of drops
hitting the tub was too uniform.

Likely, the human struggled with an
escape plan just inside the door
.

There
was no window in the bathroom and although the man outweighed Rickard by sixty
pounds, it was not an even match. Rickard considered opening the door, dragging
his simpering captive back to his stained spot on the carpet, but if he let the
guy work through his options for a few moments longer, the human may divine the
truth.

Attempts at escape were futile.

The
pilfered telephone jangled, and Rickard sprinted for the telescope, making out
the distant apartment window as he answered.

“A
man fitting your description just arrived,” said the hired man. “He rolled a
large bag onto the elevator. It looked heavy.”

“Stay
put,” Rickard commanded, placing the receiver down carefully, adjusting the
scope.

The
window remained dark. No movements … no lights. The German held his breath and
waited, unblinking.

Bursting
from the bathroom, his prisoner careened toward him, shower curtain tied like a
toga. He swung the ceramic lid of the water closet wildly. Rickard ducked. The
telescope teetered and crashed. Coiled and solid, with no time for nonsense,
Rickard launched. Wrapping his legs around the man’s torso, he drove his
forehead into the berserker’s nose. As they fell, Rickard reached out to soften
their landing. A blow to the back of his head might kill him, rather than
incapacitate him.

He didn’t deserve that, though he'd
become a bother.

Rolling
the injured fellow onto his one side, he hurriedly inspected the fallen
telescope. Holding it aloft, he scanned the building. The lenses remained
intact.

A light.

Dim,
but present.

Rickard
saw movement. With a glance at his old pocket watch, he imagined what
housekeeping Osgar would attend to first. The unknown German warrior ran
scenarios—like films through his mind—watching for clues. He picked
up the receiver, forcing the breathing tube closed beneath his tongue that
bypassed his voice box. “It’s him. You’ve done well. I’ll wire your money. Go,
now. You are no longer safe.”

Replacing
the receiver, he sat with the phone on his lap, waiting. With the other hand,
he toggled a button on a small VHF radio.

“He’s
here.”