Fade To Midnight. Shannon McKenna

Spanish. He was thirty years too young to be a Vietnam vet. It didn’t track.

      And the math, the science. Big bodies of human knowledge he was inexplicably familiar with. Theoretical physics. Biochemistry. Computer engineering. Earth sciences. Astronomy. The physics of flight. The history of aeronautics. The migratory patterns of birds, animals, and insects. Extensive first aid and field medic skills. Carpentry. He could sew, for the love of Christ. He connected the dots and got a scrambled clot. None of it made sense. But did any human life make sense?

      Since the ride over Twin Trails Falls, his dreams had gotten clearer. They lingered after he woke up, instead of scuttling away to hide. Things were shifting in his mind, tectonic plates moving. Little puffs of steam, spouts of ash, but no dramatic realizations, no floods of returning memory, no “aha!”

      Nothing so easy. Just feelings, images. Teasing, poking at him. Like his tiny angel, for instance. What the fuck was she about? She was too perfect, too iconic to be a real person, in that shining dress of hers. More like an angelic doll. A divine symbol, not a person.

      Maybe he’d desperately needed a benevolent presence to counteract Osterman’s evil, and his brain had fabricated the little angel for protection. Maybe he’d been religious, before. Spiritual.

      And then again, maybe not. He remembered throwing someone through a window. That didn’t strike him as particularly spiritual.

      He shied away from analyzing the angel, though. She had saved his life and sanity. Whenever he slid into that paralyzed black hole in his head, he hung on to her, and she led him safely out. She’d led him out of the first coma, the one he’d been in when Tony first found him. She’d guided him back into speech again. Maybe a psychiatrist could explain her psychological function, but no thanks. He still needed her too badly to risk spoiling her magic with clinical explanations.

      The first memory that had come to him after the waterfall had been of trying to convince some guy to help him, to believe him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was that he wanted the guy to believe. He remembered the man’s disapproving face perfectly. Long nose, thin mouth, curled lip. But not his name.

      It was maddening. Total amnesia had been more peaceful.

      He remembered Osterman gloating over him. He remembered a blond, leering man with a thick red face, too. An open flame, coming toward his face. The sizzle of contact. And pain. So much pain.

      There were gentler memories. A bearded man with a seamed, unsmiling face. Boys. A weathered house in the woods. A rough table, a kerosene lamp, like a scene from another century. Maybe he was remembering a past life. Pioneer days. Hah. This life alone was enough for him to wonder about. Spare him the red tape of past lives, too.

      He needed more. Frames of reference. Names, dates. Hard data.

      Concentrate, goddamnit. He’d lost the thread. He stared down at the cards. They were floating, shifting. Double vision, glowing with a halo. His ears were ringing, tinny and sharp. He couldn’t screen out the soaps and deodorants of the men around the table. The detergents their clothes had been washed in made his nose burn. The earthier smells of their bodies, their sweat, their breath. Chiliker’s chronic lung infection, the alcohol emanating from the pores of the dealer to his left. Cigarette smoke, peeling paint, dust. Mildewy water damage.

      The fetid stink made his head throb like a rotting tooth.

      And everyone was waiting for him to snap out of his vague dream, get off his ass, and bet. Chilikers had checked, so had Laker.

      Kev stared at the backs of his two aces. He couldn’t take this tonight. He’d play like a hothead rookie, end it fast. “Seven thousand.”

      Stevens blinked. “All-in, nine thousand five hundred.”

      Chilikers eyes darted to Stevens. He hadn’t expected that. “All-in, seventeen five,” he said, but his voice sounded nervous.

      Laker folded, shaking his head.

      Kev shrugged inwardly. What the hell. “I call. I’m all-in.”

      They all stared at him for a long moment. 5.5:1 pot odds didn’t technically justify his drawing odds, but he wanted it to be over, and he was feeling reckless. Angry. Twitchy. Acting out, like a bad little kid.

      “Two players, all-in. Turn over your hands,” the dealer directed.

      Kev turned his aces, and looked to his left. Stevens had flopped a set of queens. Chilikers had turned the flush.

      “Pair the board,” Kev said.

      The dealer burned the top card, and turned over a jack of hearts.

      Full house. Aces full of jacks. He’d won fifty thousand bucks. Son of a bitch.

      He flicked a few fifty dollar chips to the dealer as a tip, and walked out the door with fifty-eight thousand and change. Plus the title and keys to Chilikers’ 2007 Volvo, which bit his ass, but whatever. More than usual. He usually averaged ten thou a night, and that was playing more carefully and consciously than he had tonight.

      He limped out into the predawn chill. Chilikers was there, staring morosely at his Volvo, smoking a cigarette. The final blow for his infected lungs, no doubt. Kev crossed the street toward him. “Hey.”

      Chilikers did not turn. “Two fuckin’ outs,” he said, teeth clenched.

      “More like seven. Eight, with Steven’s quad Queen draw,” Kev replied quietly. “You were the 4:1 favorite. I just got lucky.”

      Chilikers muttered something obscene under his breath. “Asshole,” he growled. “You didn’t even have the fucking odds to call.”

      “No. I didn’t.” Kev gazed at him for a long moment. He fished the title and keys out of his pocket, and held them out.

      Chilikers stared. “You won that,” he said slowly. “It’s yours.”

      “You paid,” Kev replied. “But I don’t need it. Got no place to park it. Don’t want to insure it, or deal with selling it. Take it back. Please.”

      Chilikers looked tempted, but then his mouth hardened. He flung his cigarette down, stomped it. “What, feeling sorry for me, now? I don’t need any fucking favors, freak. You won it. You keep it.”

      Kev held his breath, teeth clenched. Whew. Before Twin Tail Falls, that interchange wouldn’t have registered on his radar screen. Walk away. He already had a lawsuit in course for assault and battery.

      He walked away, careful not to limp. So he was driving home, with Chiliker’s unwanted fucking car. He refused to let himself feel grateful. His leg was better, but it would have taken forty painful minutes to stagger home on foot with a headache like this.

      He peered up at the sky as he got into his new car. It smelled like Chilikers, he noted. Not good. But he’d unload the car soon. It was later than usual, and when the sun rose, it would drive long, cruel nails of light into his throbbing brain tissue. But with the wheels, he could afford to make a detour before he holed up in his dark lair.

      He parked by the battered brick front building on NE Stark. A sign by the door read “ANY PORT IN A STORM.” It was a shelter for runaway teens. It provided twenty-four-hour-a-day crisis intervention, emergency shelter, individual and family counseling, transitional living programs for homeless youths, street outreach, emergency housing, help for kids who were addicted to drugs. He’d done some cyber snooping, and he liked the place. He pulled the wad of cash out, shoved it into the brown envelope he’d shoved into his coat pocket for that purpose, scribbled the name of the director, and sealed it up. He’d give them the car, too, if it would fit through the slot, but he wasn’t up for anything that would require human interaction. His head hurt, his jaw hurt. He worked the envelope through the letter slot, waited for the thud. Saved him the bother of writing out a bank deposit slip.

      He’d had some incidents, on these morning walks. He’d once brought a young prostitute to the door of Any Port, after saving her from being beaten up by her john. The john he left