Eight: I Always Wanted to Go Out with “Fuck You”

I CAME BACK ’round to darkness, pain, and the smell of cat piss. Better not question what they’d used the bag for before it’d ended up covering my head. Seriously, those things should be single-use only. But that was just like the Reds. Inconsiderate bastards.

A quick assessment got me right back to where I’d blacked out: still handcuffed, still bleeding, and my left shoulder felt like someone’d taken to it with a drill dipped in acid.

I was conscious, alive, and in complete fucking agony.

Aside from that, I hadn’t the damnedest clue where they were taking me or how in the Seven Hells I was going to get out of this one. After bagging me, the Reds’d stuffed me into some sort of van—had to be one of those models with fuel injectors and all that fancy shit, because it wasn’t nearly as loud as the things we drove around Low Side.

I figured there were at least two or three Reds in the back with me; they stayed silent during the ride, except for one who kept fiddling with something that sounded a lot like a butterfly knife, flicking it open and closed with annoying clicks and snaps that cut through the silence. Probably the same kid who couldn’t tell a wall from a moving target. Someone finally told them to quit it. I almost thanked them, but kept my mouth shut, doing my best to pretend to still be out cold.

If nothing else, it’d give me a few minutes to think. This wasn’t the first time the Reds’d hauled me off. Though I doubted this stint would involve recording devices and a conversation on the wrong end of a two-way mirror. Shape I was in and as pissed as Valyr was, I’d be lucky if it didn’t end with my body floating facedown the East River.

Maybe it was the way the handcuffs twisted my arms behind my back or the blood loss, but my left arm slowly grew numb. To make up for it, I hurt everywhere else, pain pumping through my body like a second heartbeat. The van stopped and the throbbing in my shoulder spiked to a hot jolt. I couldn’t smother a muffled grunt, which someone took as an invitation to start shaking me some more.

“Ah, you’re awake.” Laras’s voice. ’Course she’d show up. Because I needed someone to make my day even worse. “Which means you will be able to walk. Good.”

I didn’t remember seeing her back at Tarantino’s. Too busy getting the shit kicked out of me and being shot. Figured she wouldn’t miss this. Laras took hold of my good arm and dragged me out of the van. I gritted my teeth against the hole in my shoulder stabbing hot knives down my spine with every step.

“Get your hands off me.” I jerked away. Bad idea. More pain. Dizziness. And pretty damn pointless overall, cuffed and blinded as I was.

Laras took it as an invitation to get real close this time and grabbed a handful of my ass while she was at it. An involuntary flinch straightened my spine. The fresh slice of pain almost a welcome distraction from Laras’s hands on me. It didn’t last long enough to blunt Laras’s grin burning at my back. I clenched my teeth, tried to breathe through the panic like Iltis’d taught me.

Laras’s grip only tightened.

“I don’t know what Aris sees in you,” she whispered into my ear. “Tell me, do you make him scream like I do?”

I twisted away from her hand, my left shoulder shrieking in its socket. “Don’t. Talk to me. Not about him.” But I’d already said too much, given her what she wanted.

Laras sighed. “Sweetheart, that’s your problem. You keep trying to protect Aris from everything when that’s the last thing he needs.”

I gnawed my lower lip, tried not to think of the mess she’d made of Aris, or how hard he’d gotten when I’d clenched his wrists.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Did it help?”

“Yes. Damian, please.”

The memory crumbled. My hands curled into fists. I breathed through the hot stab in my shoulder, helpless against the cuffs or Laras or the fact I knew she wasn’t lying.

“Shut the fuck up, Laras. Those fucking drugs almost killed him. You telling me he needed that, too?”

That put a hitch into her step. “I didn’t—” She let out a tight breath, the steel bleeding back into her voice. “No. Which is why I told him we were done if he ever did anything this reckless ever again.”

“Yeah, like you’d give him a fucking choice.”

Laras let out a low laugh. “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. Aris always has a choice. Everything I do to him I do because he wants it. Why else do you think he keeps coming back?”

I was almost grateful she spared me having to work up a reply as she hustled me inside a building. Probably some old factory, a warehouse or wherever else the Reds brought people they wanted to quietly do away with. Laras stopped, then elbowed me in the ribs, dumping me into a wooden chair before she ripped the bag off my head.

Fresh air was definitely underappreciated. Even if stale and kind of dusty.

I blinked, squinting against the bright halogens overhead, everything blurring together. Valyr stepped into the light next to Laras, and things started to clear up fast.

Laras’s hand clenched in my hair, bending my head back.

“Word has it you feel like your current work arrangements aren’t meeting your needs anymore. That you have decided to…branch out.” The commander of the Watch cocked her head to one side, face set in tight, angry lines. “Now, why don’t we have a chat about that? You know, since feelings have been hurt and contracts breached. The Empire does value good employee relations after all.”

I snorted. “Employee relations. Right. Next, you’ll bust out the paperwork and tell me I get off with a write-up. Or maybe a final warning?”

Valyr’s smile didn’t make it to her eye. “I’m afraid we’re taking the paperless approach here.” She nodded at Laras.

So, she’d be the one doing Valyr’s heavy lifting. Laras’s hand closed around my shoulder, fingers digging into the bullet hole.

I let out a strangled scream as her nails dug into my blood-drenched shirt. Everything turned white with singing, burning pain bleaching out everything else. Laras’s fingers came away red. She made a face and wiped her hand on my shirt. It barely registered as I hunched over, gasping for breath, waiting for the colors to leak back into my surroundings.

Valyr watched me, expressionless.

“Now that we got the icebreaker out of the way, we can get to the core of things,” she said. “Like what you were doing at our mutual friend Mael Taerien’s, for example. Since it clearly didn’t involve fulfilling your contract.”

I laughed. It came out a dry, scraping sound. Should’ve known it’d end like this.

“Not much, honestly.” Other than making a deal with some batshit-crazy wannabe revolutionary who played people like they were fucking poker chips. I should’ve made up some story about how I’d gotten delayed. That she shouldn’t worry. I’d get the job done.

Except I’d known Valyr long enough to know she’d see right through my bullshit, so I said, “Taerien happened to outbid you.”

“I see.” Two words, clipped and icy, punctuated by a cheek-splitting punch from Laras.

I spat blood. Hoped my words didn’t slur too badly. “Problem with hiring outside hitters.”

It occurred to me I should keep my mouth shut and wait for them to rough me up and let me go. Unless they planned to shoot me outright, and there was pretty much fuck all I could do to stop that. Either way, any sense of self-preservation had been shot and thrown out of a three-story window that night over a week ago. Now it was all free-falling and waiting for what got me first: the bullet or the splat of impact. Either way, it’d be quick, without anything to trace this back to Aris and the others.

I’d done enough runs to know sometimes taking out the middleman was your safest bet. Even when the middleman was me.

Too bad for me Valyr wasn’t one for quick solutions. Laras stepped forward and hit me hard enough to make my ears ring and the chair teeter, a hair from falling over.

Gods, this was going to be a long night. And she was only warming up.

A double jab to my ribs left me hunched over and gasping for breath. The jagged thought whether this was what Laras did to Aris, how he’d gotten those black and blue ribs, fractured the pain. Part of me almost wanted to ask her, if only to get Laras to stop long enough for me to catch my breath. To show Laras two could play this game. Except that’d give Valyr a clear line of access to Aris and I’d let Laras beat me to death before I let Valyr get to Aris.

My left eyebrow burst open next and started leaking all over my face, turning half of my vision dripping red. Times like these I couldn’t help but realize how much this whole working for the Empire thing wasn’t worth the paper my nonexistent contract was printed on.

“Look,” I hissed, trying to keep a grip on things. “Can we speed this up and get to the point? Yeah, I fucked you over.” I blinked, trying to fight the black spots dancing in my vision. “So, either shoot me or tell me what you want me to do about it.”

Valyr scowled at me and not for the first time I wondered if she just wore that eye patch of hers to have exactly this kind of creepy Cyclops-effect on people. Didn’t think even Aris knew how she’d lost that eye. Doubted anyone who wanted to keep all their important body parts had ever asked her.

“Leave us, Captain.”

Laras opened her mouth as if to protest, her right fist already tense for the next upper right aimed at my face. Her shoulders straightened. She gave Valyr a curt nod and walked out.

Which left me with Valyr and four of her goons hovering by the doors, discreetly out of the way, but ready to jump if I made any move to off their precious commander. Fat chance of that, cuffed to a chair and bleeding all over the place as I was.

If I didn’t hurt so much, I would’ve been flattered.

“Now, let’s talk rehabilitation. Never let it be said the Empire isn’t giving any second chances,” Valyr said, her voice low. “Where is he?”

“Where’s who?”

Wrong answer.

Valyr hit me hard enough the chair toppled over. Blood filled my mouth. My shoulder smashed into the concrete floor and didn’t leave me enough breath to scream. The world tilted dangerously, flashing black for a second before it came back into focus and zoomed on Valyr’s red fingers curled in my collar.

Something flickered in her eye, when she said, “You know exactly who I mean, Nettoyer. Where is my son?”

Ah. Wondered how long it’d take her to bring up Aris.

Her so-called parental concern was something fit to be filed under “Most Fucked Up Family Relations.” Aris had turned his back on her years ago, just after he’d found out he was a Voyant, after he’d seen how Valyr intended to “help” people like him.

He’d been running ever since, dodging all those talks along the lines of “I’m so disappointed in you” and “Why don’t you join the Reds like a good little minion?” and her attempts to snatch him back, promising him a safety she’d never be able to give him. I’d worked for Valyr for the past five years, keeping her eyes on me and away from the rest of the Shadows, all the while gathering as much dirt on the Empire as I could. I couldn’t blame Aris for taking it up with Laras instead of asking Mommy Dearest to cover for him.

First off, she wouldn’t ever keep him safe. Not when she could use him instead. And second, no, I wasn’t even going to start thinking what she’d make him do. What she’d turn him into. Much as I hated to admit it, Aris fucking Laras might not be the worst-case scenario, all things considered.

“Fuck you, Valyr.” The words came out mangled. I spat blood on the cracked concrete floor. “He stopped being your son a long time ago. I’d rather die before I hand him over to you.”

“Are you sure of that?” She dragged the chair back up, her .45 inches from my head.

I licked my lips, the taste of blood thick and salty at the back of my throat. Valyr stood above me, hands tight around her gun, her red coat buttoned up all the way to her chin. Would hardly even see the blood spatters on it afterward. She looked at me like she expected me to cave any second. It would be easy, too. All I had to do was arrange a convenient time for her to run into Aris and me alone. Could even pretend I’d had nothing to do with it.

Aris would never see it coming.

“Forget it, Valyr. Go ahead and shoot me already.” Then a thought hit me. “Just don’t half-ass it like that bastard Raeyn Nymeron did. In fact, do me a favor, save a bullet for him?”

Blowing Raeyn’s cover story was petty as hells, but I’d be damned if I didn’t do whatever I could do to take that backstabbing shit down with me. Valyr was nothing but efficient at getting her goons to take out the trash. At least she’d wipe that smug grin off his face for a bit.

Apparently that one hit right home, too, because Valyr stared at me like I’d started babbling in some foreign language. “You’ve seen Raeyn?”

“Bit more than seen him. Unfortunately.”

The blank look on Valyr’s face morphed into a furious snarl. And like that, I knew I’d gone too far. “You are a Light-forsaken liar, Nettoyer,” she snapped, pointing her piece at me.

So glad we were back on track with that bit, at least.

“I would ask you if you had any last words, but I prefer we cut the theatrics, don’t you?”

“Well, I always wanted to go out with ‘Fuck you,’ but whatever,” I said through my teeth and watched her pull the trigger.