The Devil's Dream: Waking Up (8 page)

* * *

L
ook at him
, Brand said to Rally.

He knew he sounded crazy, speaking to her like this, but who else did he have? He barely had himself, and in some ways he didn't, not with Morgant making surprise entrances. He had no one else to run this by, no one to consult with. He had never needed counsel before because no one could think through things at the same level as he could. Here though, his emotion clouded everything—emotion and brain deterioration, he supposed. He needed someone that could look at the man sitting next to him, with his thin frame and dark hair, and make a decision whether or not Matthew was being duped. The only person he could turn to was the voice inside his head. The voice of the woman he built an entire shrine to when The Wall's cold embraced him. He turned to his wife now, even if it was only his own brain whispering back at him. Maybe it could give some objectivity. Maybe somehow his brain could see the truth through her vantage point.

I am,
she answered, her voice sounding like she hadn't needed him to tell her a thing.

Is this our son? Is this someone we conceived?

His own eyes looked over the young man. He was attractive, and his blue eyes matched the color of Matthew's own. Even now, in this new body, his blue eyes had carried over somehow. And was that a hint of Rally's chin, so elegant, on the boy's face?

What if he is, Matthew? What if he's a part of us? Does that mean that he's on your side? Does that mean he won't get you killed the first chance he sees?
She asked him.
And if he did, would it matter? Would you love him anyway despite it?

If this was Hilman sitting across from him, the answer would have been yes. If Hilman had slit Matthew's own throat, Matthew's last thought would be how much he wanted to hug his son, one more time. This person though, did he feel the same? Could he ever feel the same?

That doesn't matter, Ral. I need to know if it's him. If I have another son. I can't make any other decisions until I know if this boy is mine.

Look at him closely. Start at his eyes, Matthew. They're blue, true, but what do they say? Are they wearing a disguise to cover up something else?

Matthew stared at the kid, trying to look past the obvious genetic relationship their eyes shared. Vick was scared, but had he been when he first woke up? Had he been scared when they first started talking? No. He had accepted what was going on as easily as if he had woken up in his own bed. Now he was crying, but not at first—at first, he had been still. Calm. Asking questions and accepting what he saw. There wasn't terror when he awoke. Had the doping agent Matthew used caused that? Maybe, but only for the first few seconds of him waking. After that, hormones should have taken over and adrenaline should have surged through him. It didn't happen.

If this was Matthew's son, his own bloodline, the kid should still have been frightened. He didn't know Matthew. He had been kidnapped. He was riding around, tied down naked in a van driven by a dangerous, dangerous person, and he didn't show fear until Matthew asked him about it.

What else?
Rally asked.
What else is there here?

Her voice pushed him onward because his own wouldn't. His own wanted this to be his son, but now, opening up the person that sat before him, he saw things that he didn't before. The chin, was that really Rally's, or was it his imagination wanting it to be Rally's? The house he had walked through—
how much attention were you paying there, Matthew?
None. He'd been intent on getting to Victor, on seeing what he looked like. Matthew started pulling up the memories his brain stored like pictures in an album. Even when he wasn't paying attention, his mind was, capturing the world around him and keeping it all for later use.

The lock on the back door, it had been perfect. Mint condition, like Matthew was the first person to use it. When he arrived at the house, he had slid in his tools, only listening for the click to tell him the door was unlocked, but now, looking back, he saw there were no scratches on the lock like there should have been. No keys had missed the hole when the owners didn't pay close enough attention; the metal looked perfect, like it just rolled off the assembly line. And inside the house? The smell of the place, it was...clean. That's all. People left no hint of living there, no smell of animals, no smell of smoke, no smell of cleaning materials. The entire place smelled like it was unused, uninhabited. Every house ended up taking on the smell of its owners, sweet or sour, it didn't matter. Humans left odor. And the parent's room? At the time he only wanted to close their door and move on, to find the room that housed his supposed son. He hadn't paid attention to how they slept. Both with their back to each other, but more, a clear line in the middle of the bed. Their legs weren't venturing out, weren't trying to take up more space as most married couples did throughout the night. It was like their subconscious knew their bodies weren't supposed to cross one another, weren't supposed to touch. And more than anything else, why would
that
be? Matthew had lain with Rally for years and never once did he remember waking up without at least some part of her touching him. The subconscious might even have pushed her to him at night, pushed him to her as well, wanting their bodies to touch even while they slept. But these two, it didn't even look like divorce or some other marital problem troubled them—it looked like they didn't know each other.

"What college did your father go to?" Matthew asked. He knew the answer. He knew every publicly available piece of information about the parents. It wasn't a hard question either; the boy should know it.

Matthew watched as Vick's pupil's widened minutely.

"What?" Victor asked, except Matthew knew that Victor no longer existed. Matthew knew that whoever sat in the seat across from him wasn't his son, wasn't any relation to him at all, or the other people sleeping in the bed back at that house, either.

Matthew turned back and looked out the windshield.

"I cannot really explain how big of a mistake you and Art just made."

He put his keys in the ignition and pulled the car back onto the road.

* * *

G
reg sat
in the coffee shop, his sociology book open in front of him, a highlighter in his hand, but not reading a single word. His phone sat to the left of the book, the screen black. He had put it down five minutes before, having replayed his brother's message. He listened to it five times over the past day, and with each listen came a stronger urge to call Henry. He wanted to say sorry, to tell his brother that he wanted him to make it home safe, and that he was an asshole for the way he acted. He wanted to hear his brother's voice again, because...

Because you're starting to think that voicemail might be the last time you do. Because he might be gone now, and if he's gone, he might not come back.

So why hadn't he called? Why had he ignored his brother's own calls?

Because you're an asshole.

He didn't want to cry in this coffee shop, but he thought he might. He was an asshole, but it was more than that. He didn't agree with Henry, he was
angry
with him—angry for his choice, angry for the way their mother had just given him the go-ahead, angry at the whole situation. His brother was supposed to be at home, right down the hall from him if need be. Maybe not forever, Greg wouldn't think that, but for right now? Yeah, without a doubt. They were roommates and neither had a girlfriend or kids or anything else that should make them move out, so Henry should be home when Greg got home. But he wouldn't be. Henry was gone and that meant he had left Greg here, alone. Left their mother alone.

So he ignored the call out of sheer anger. Anger at his brother for...what? For choosing to help the world over staying with him and their family. And now, a day later, Greg wondered if he would ever hear Henry's voice again outside of the digital recording left on this phone.

He put the highlighter down and wiped at the corner of his eye, trying to keep the tears at bay.

Just call him. He'll answer. Tell him you’re sorry.

But still, the anger, the stubbornness kept him from doing it. He wanted to, but he didn't—he didn't want to let him off, give Henry his own blessing on this whole ordeal. What mattered more, though? Making Henry feel guilty for what he'd done or making sure that he heard his brother's voice again?

He picked up the phone and looked through his numbers, finding Henry's. He just had to click dial and that was all, then he could talk to his brother, apologize, wish him well, anything he wanted. Just needed to click dial.

He pressed down on the phone and put it to his ear.

It didn't even ring once. A voice simply told Greg that the number had been disconnected.

S
ix people stood
in the room despite its small size. Jake and Art stood next to the bed, Duvate and Jensen—Werzen’s ‘parents’—just inside the bedroom door, and the two agents who manned the watch car on the street behind them.

"So wherever he is, he's naked?"

"Yeah. Those clothes and the tracker in them never left the house. We had no idea anyone came or left," one of the agents said from behind Art.

Art felt his hands turn to fists, looking like an older version of a young boy about to throw a tantrum. He was going to lose it, right here in front of these four people that didn't know him. He didn't look at anyone, just turned from the room and walked out. He went down the hall, through the living room and to the front door. He pushed as hard as he could, wanting to rip the door from its hinges as it opened, and then finally he stood outside—away from the constraining walls of the fake fucking house they had just bought and furnished with all that bullshit furniture.

He slammed the door behind him, turned around, and hit it, pain barking immediately up his arm. He hit it a second time and his knuckles scraped raw. A guttural grunt came with the third punch. Finally, with his entire arm aching, he dropped his arm and just stared at the door. A single speck of blood sat on the white wood. His blood. The first he'd shed in this entire saga. Because no matter what he did, other people got hurt. Not Art. Not him standing behind his legions of agents, always the people in front of him, the pawns he moved around as he tried to capture this madman.

Now this kid, this twenty-four year old who trusted Art, was missing. Stolen. And what the fuck was Art supposed to do? Call up the boy's mom and say, hey, we messed up? Tell his brother, his goddamn roommate, that Art miscalculated and now Henry was gone?
Sorry about that.

He would have to call; he knew that. He would have to call and say
something
and then he would hear the accusations, the wails, the rage—all of it directed at him, and he deserved it. Art possessed the kid for less than two days, and now he was gone. Brand had shown up and simply stripped him naked then walked out the door with him. Stripped him naked. Knew, somehow, that they placed tracking devices in his clothes and so took them off and then took Henry. Twenty-four years old. The kid had probably been laid a few times total. Never witnessed birth. Never had the chance to let infatuation turn into love, and to let that love turn into something deeper. Art had taken a child, basically, and fed him to a predator. Greased him up in tasty looking fat, bound him, and left him right where the predator could sniff him out, somehow thinking that the child would be able to undo his ties and fight back, would be able to lead Art to the predator.

Had he ever made such a poor decision?

He didn't think so; he'd never fucked up like this, not in his entire career.

Art wanted to pray, standing there with his hand dripping blood onto the concrete stoop; he wanted to talk to God. A lifetime of reinforcement, of turning to the Big Man when things weren't right, weighed on him, pushed him towards it.

No,
his mind answered the calling.
He did this too. He let this happen as much as I did.

Art's stomach clenched, sweat springing from the pores on his forehead at the thought. He'd never felt something like this before; the respect, the ingrained subservience to God, weaved through Art as surely as his own DNA. And yet, he wouldn't pray. He wouldn't ask God for a single fucking thing, because he imagined Henry Werzen was asking for a lot right now without anything being delivered.

Fuck you,
he thought.
Fuck you for allowing any of this to happen.

The door opened slowly in front of Art, and Jake stood in the opening; the kid’s whole face sung a song of sorrow. He had never experienced something like this before, never been responsible for someone else's death. The man and woman that owned the lumber shop hadn't been his fault, per se—he simply hadn't moved fast enough. Now though, this could be put on him. Henry Werzen's death fit comfortably on Jake's shoulders, and looking at him now, it appeared Jake felt that new weight.

"What do we do?" Jake asked.

Art turned around to face the yard. "I don't know. I don't know what to do."

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.
Jesus, no. Not this. Not now.
He reached inside and pulled the phone out, already knowing the number he would see. No number at all. Private. And there it was, parading across his screen as if Art should be happy to see it.

His hand shook as he brought the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Don’t say a word, Art. Just listen. You got that? Not one word if you want this kid to live another second. I'm not a cursing type of person, Art. Not if I can help it. The English language is an amazing thing, with so many words and intricacies to express oneself with, why use gutter words unnecessarily? Still, I don't know any other way, any other words, that can adequately express what calling you a stupid fuck can. You're. A. Stupid. Fuck. Do you have any idea what you just did? You thought that you could trick me and then track me. You thought that you and the boy wonder over there were going to outsmart me, by using Rally, by using my family against me. More, you sent some kid still wet behind the ears to do the job. It didn't work, Art. Henry Werzen is not Victor Trust, is he? I did a bit of research on Henry Werzen once I got the name out of the kid; a twenty-four year old FBI agent with a law degree from Duke. That's what you thought was going to take me down. You thought that would save you? You stupid, stupid fuck. Now you've got a young kid in a lot of pain. And I mean a lot, Art. I'm going to ratchet that pain up every single chance I get too, because I want you to know it's all on you. You probably didn't come up with the idea, you're not clever enough for that, but you certainly gave the approval. In the grand scheme of things, one more dead isn't going to matter, but Henry is going to hurt a lot before he dies. More than Jeffrey Dillan, even, because of the way you tried to use me.

Understand something, Art. There's no stopping me. This was already over the moment I woke up.”

Art’s hand still shook as the line dropped.