Dog Warrior (2 page)

The body left a smear of dead blood on the white acrylic when Atticus settled it into the tub. “What a mess.”

As Atticus cut off the boy's bullet-tattered shirt, Ru came up with the luggage.

“Here. I brought these up.” Ru held out a plastic bag for the black T-shirt. There had been white lettering on the shirt's back, but the exiting bullets had shredded the design; the only thing readable was “Benne” in a thumb-sized font under “Priva” in larger letters. “How is he?”

“Still dead.”

As Ru gingerly carried away the bloody shirt, Atticus undressed the body down to underwear. He was always the subject of this exercise—the dead person needing to be nursed back to life. It was a weird, out-of-body experience to be on the caregiving side.

The murderers had stripped the boy of all belongings; at one time, he had carried a wallet, cell phone, keys, change, a Swiss army knife and a pistol—all now missing. Only microscopic traces of them tainted the cotton fabric of his clothes. The bare basics that remained showed that the sim-ilarities between Atticus and the Dog Warrior went past genetic makeup and outward appearances. They both preferred
the same hiking boots, cotton boxers, blue jeans, soap, deodorant, and shampoo.

From such an identical foundation, how different could they be?

The biker jacket suggested the differences could be huge.

Kyle reappeared at the door with the first-aid kit. “Ru said to bring this up. What are we going to do if he doesn't come back?”

What a fucking mess that would be.
But you didn't say that to Kyle. While Ru got off on danger, Kyle liked to feel safe. Kyle had driven straight to the Cape instead of joining Atticus and Ru in Buffalo, just to avoid the mess they were dealing with there. “I'll deal with it.”

“We've got the buy going down tomorrow night.” Kyle glanced at his watch. “Tonight actually.”

“Kyle, I know.” Atticus opened up the kit and found the antibiotic cream. While the bullets probably lodged foreign material into the wounds, his body usually expelled such matter while healing. Hopefully—on all counts—the boy was the same. “I'll figure something out if he stays dead, okay. Do we have all the money?”

“Yeah, I was just counting it for a second time.” Kyle fidgeted while he watched Atticus apply cream and bandages. “I'm completely jacked in. Phone and cable are up, and I've got security running. We're set for anything—well, almost anything.” Not counting miscellaneous dead bodies that might or might not come back from the dead. “I also stocked the fridge, and put fresh linen on the beds.”

“Great! Okay, do me a favor.” Atticus told him where and how they'd found the dead body. “Find out, if you can without drawing attention to us, who killed him and what happened after we left.”

“Do you have an ID on him?” Kyle pointed to the boy in the tub.

“No. He was wearing colors.” Atticus described the biker
jacket. “The club name was either Dog Warrior or Warriors.”

“Bottom rocker?”

The city named at the bottom of the patch identified the chapter that the member belonged to. Club enforcers, who drifted from chapter to chapter, collecting dues, would have “Nomad” printed in place of a chapter name.

“There was none.” Now that Kyle mentioned it, Atticus realized how odd it was. Perhaps the jacket hadn't been a true “gang” jacket.

“See what you can pull up on the name.”

“Right.” Kyle left in his abrupt manner, locked onto something new.

Having covered the gaping bullet holes, Atticus strapped the broken ribs and splinted the shattered arm; apparently when the car had hit the boy, he had taken the brunt of the damage with his left side. Finally done repairing what damage he could, Atticus washed his hands, and caught sight of himself in the mirror. He studied his reflection for a minute and then looked down at the boy, trying to judge whether they were as identical as their genetics as Ru claimed them to be. While he had stopped being carded long ago, he didn't look the thirty-six years that his driver's license reported. If he seemed solidly in his mid-twenties, what age was this boy who looked only in his late teens? The differences between them were slight. Atticus kept his hair in a short, stylish cut instead of the boy's long braid. The boy seemed to have another inch or two to grow before reaching Atticus's height; his youth showed in his chin, the column of his neck, and the depth of his chest. Atticus could remember, though, having this build, this face.

Ru came back with a cocoa blast. “We should get him up if we can, in case Sumpter shows.”

One of the bullets had sliced through a major artery, thus the reason for the body shutting down—to keep the heart from pumping out the entire blood supply. Atticus could
sense, though, that the wound was healed over. That was promising in and of itself. “Give it a shot.”

Ru held the beer stein of warm mash under the Dog Warrior's nose. He gave the stein to Atticus to hold, repositioned the boy's head so the throat was one straight column, and spooned some into the lax mouth. “Come on, come on.” After a minute, he shook his head. “No, it's not working.” He thumped back onto the tile floor. “This is going to
soooo
suck if he stays dead.”

“He's healing,” Atticus said slowly. If Atticus could control the mice, and sense the body healing, maybe he could influence it even more. “Let's get him out of the tub.”

“Hold on.” With practiced ease, Ru cut off the soiled underwear, wrapped it in plastic, tossed it away, and cleaned the boy. It was embarrassing to know Ru had learned the skill on Atticus. Washing his hands, Ru spread a blanket out on the floor. “Okay.”

They lifted the body out of the tub and onto the blanket, tucking the flannel around the cool skin.

Atticus leaned over the Dog Warrior, extending his awareness until the boy's still body seemed like part of his own. He could feel the dormant cells patiently waiting for the return of life.
Come on. It's time to be alive. Breathe!
The boy's body arched upward as Atticus forced it hard into the first breath.
Good boy!
He let it go slack and nudged the heart into a beat.
Breathe!
Again the body bent as the breath rattled into its lungs.
Come on. You can do it. Breathe!

Like a motorcycle being kick-started, the Dog Warrior lurched through the forced breath, gave a sudden half cough, and then gagged as his newly awake stomach decided to eject its contents.

Atticus levered the boy up and over the toilet before he choked, and the boy's stomach emptied. He was ice-cold, and the vomit splashing over Atticus's arm held the same dead chill. The kid was shivering hard, his teeth chattering.

But he was alive. There was a heart thumping hard under
Atticus's palm, pressed to the kid's chest. The kid took deep, deep breaths, like someone who had stayed underwater to the point of drowning and had now come up for air.

“Well, that worked,” Ru said. “Whatever you did.”

With a wolflike snarl, the Dog Warrior spun to face Ru. Atticus felt the stranger's anger, fear, and despair as the boy started to growl. It was a feral sound, deep in the boy's chest, inhuman in its resonance and savagery.

“We're not going to hurt you,” Atticus said. “We're not the ones that killed you.”

Atticus had been expecting human reactions. As he started to speak, the boy jerked around to face him even while scuttling away from both of them with stunning speed. A moment later, the Dog Warrior was backed against the bay windows, the pit of the tub between them. His dark eyes locked on Atticus in a steady, unblinking stare that seemed to see into him, to his core, and through, to encompass all that he was and wasn't.

Belatedly, Atticus realized that—because they were physically identical—the boy hadn't realized Atticus was there until he had spoken.

“It's okay.” Atticus tried for a calming tone. “You're safe.”

Ru started to move, and the boy's stare flicked to him, his lips going back into a silent snarl. Of course, Ru took it in stride, holding out the stein of warm chocolate mash. “Cocoa blast?”

The Dog Warrior sniffed, nostrils flaring to catch the liquid's scent, as he considered the two of them. “Boy” was the wrong word for him. Dead, he seemed a young and helpless human. Alive—even deathly pale, covered with bandages, arm splinted, and shivering hard as his body fought to climb back to normal core temperature—there was no denying that he was something wild and powerful. Slowly, the Dog Warrior uncoiled from the corner, crept forward, and took the large stein in his one good hand.

He drank greedily, getting a dark brown milk mustache,
which he licked off. All the while, he watched them with the all-seeing stare.

“What's your name?” Atticus asked.

“U-U-Ukiah.” It was forced out between chattering teeth.

Atticus exchanged a look with Ru; he'd been found as a toddler in Idaho, just over the Blue Mountains from Ukiah, Oregon. “Like the town? Ukiah, Oregon?”

“Y-y-yes.”

Atticus waited for him to add a last name, but none was forthcoming.

“W-w-who are you?”

“Atticus. Atticus Steele.”

“I'm Hikaru Takahashi, but my friends call me Ru.”

Ukiah thrust out the empty stein, the hand trembling, but the eyes locked and steady. “M-m-more. P-p-please.”

At least he had manners.

Ru took the stein and murmured, “It's going to be easier to feed him downstairs.”

Yes, but the kitchen was full of money and guns. “Go let Kyle know I'm bringing him down.”

 

Kyle hastily packed away the money as Atticus half carried the blanket-wrapped Dog Warrior downstairs; he gave Atticus annoyed looks as he stuffed stacks of twenties into a brushed-steel briefcase. The guns were out of sight, and Kyle's computers showed only log-in screens.

As Ru mixed another cocoa blast using raw eggs, puréed liver, wheat germ, and chocolate sauce, Atticus helped Kyle hide away the money.

“Speaking as someone who has an asshole for a brother,” Kyle hissed, “we shouldn't trust him.”

Atticus looked to the stranger with his face and feral eyes.
Brother?

Amazing how one word could explode so much emotion through him. Atticus couldn't even identify all the fragments. Excitement? Maybe something that might have even
been joy, but heavily mixed with anger and fear. Family was something Atticus had dreamed about as a child, along with a Santa Claus who would finally figure out which foster home he lived in and deliver several years' worth of misplaced presents.

The Dog Warrior at least had his keen hearing. “B-brother works.”

Yeah, right.
Still, Atticus couldn't deny that they were genetically identical.
Younger twin brother?
“Who are you? Really?”

Ukiah eyed Kyle, apparently unsure if Kyle was in on family secrets.

“These are my best friends,” Atticus said. “I don't hide things from them.”

Ukiah picked up a bag of fresh pizza dough Ru had set out of the refrigerator in his search for the cocoa blast makings. “O-our mother was from the Cayuse tribe. Her name was Kicking Deer.”

The Cayuse were a Native American tribe in northeast Oregon, over the mountains from where Atticus had been found. According to his case files, the Idaho state police checked with the reservation outside of Pendleton and no one had reported a missing infant. He and Ru had double-checked the summer of their junior year in college. Atticus controlled a flash of anger—he couldn't assume that the boy was telling the truth.

Ukiah fumbled open the bag, and shivered while making the dough into a soft, squishy doll. “Kicking Deer was kidnapped and made pregnant by our father, Prime.”

“Prime?” Atticus echoed.

“That's the English version of his name. He wasn't human.” Ukiah laid the doll onto the granite counter, and hugged the blanket around his shoulders. “Kicking Deer had a baby. His name was Magic Boy.”

“Just one baby?” Ru took sausage links out of the microwave and set them in front of the Dog Warrior.

“I don't get it,” Kyle said.

“One of us was this Magic Boy?” Atticus hoped there was a point to this story.

They had to wait while the narrator gobbled down the sausages and licked his fingers clean.

“I-if Magic Boy was hurt,” Ukiah continued finally, pinching off a small ball of dough, “what he lost became a mouse.” He rolled the ball around on the counter. “Which Magic Boy could recover later by merging it back into him.”

“We know about blood mice,” Atticus said.

“Ah. Good.” Ukiah merged the tiny piece back into the doll with trembling fingers. “Got to keep track of them. They're very important.”

Atticus fought the urge to ask why.
Why can't I remember being a baby when I have a perfect memory? Why do I bleed mice? Why do we come back from being dead?
There were so many questions. Would he like the answers? “So I'm this Magic Boy?”