Fade To Midnight. Shannon McKenna

over and gave him a whack upside the head. He gave the wheezing Rudy an unfriendly nudge with his toe. He gave Kev an assessing look.

      “Next time, don’t fuck the window,” was his laconic comment. “Them bastards are expensive. Now help me take out this trash.”

      Bruno and Kev helped drag the bleeding thugs though the kitchen, to the alley where Tony’s pickup was parked. Bruno timidly asked if they should call the cops. Tony gave him a look. “Got a death wish, kid?”

      Fair enough, after what had happened back in Newark.

      Tony ordered them to hose down the bloodied sidewalk, and hang a CLOSED FOR REPAIRS sign. Then he’d driven his pickup away.

      That marked the moment Bruno stopped following Kev around out of curiosity, and started to do it out of hero worship. Tony changed his attitude toward Kev, too. He’d started staring at him, whenever his back was turned. Wondering what he had back there, quietly washing his dishes. And if it was a time bomb that might blow up in his face.

      Tony’s chair creaked as he shifted in the hospital chair. “You look like dogshit,” he said. “Rosa sent lamb shank. And rice pudding. She thinks the smell of food will wake him up. Have some. There’s plenty.”

      The mention of rice pudding made Bruno think of the guy wedged into the broken dessert counter, bleeding out into the cream custard.

      He shook his head, and dragged out his laptop. Researching Kev’s bad guy was a good distraction, and somebody else had to do it, since it was looking pretty fucking hazardous to Kev’s health to do it himself.

      “You researching that Otterfen asshole? I told you. You’re wasting your time. Put that goddamn thing away and eat something.”

      “Osterman,” Bruno repeated, though it was no use wrangling the point. Tony won, by seniority, loudness, meanness. A swift backhand to the mouth, sometimes, too, when Bruno was younger. He still remembered the sting, but he didn’t hold a grudge. He also remembered watching Tony drive off, the black plastic tarp draped over those mobsters who had come to kill him. How grateful he’d been when Tony came back hours later, and grimly hosed down the bed of the pickup. No talk, no explanations. It was like the thing had never even happened.

      Tony had just eaten a big dinner in the back of the diner afterward, and then sat there, smoking a long series of hand-rolled cigarettes. He stared, head wreathed in smoke, looking fixedly at the back of Kev’s head while the guy washed a huge pile of dishes.

      Then he told Bruno to stop crying, or he’d pop him a good one. Tousled his hair, violently enough to give him a case of whiplash. Went off to bed, heavy boots thudding on the stairs.

      It was like Kev said. Life was full of tradeoffs. Nothing was for free.

      But sometimes, even the highest price was worth paying.

      Noise battered at Kev’s brain. Voices, babbling, but he couldn’t decode the words. He was stuck in a hole inside his mind. His oubliette.

      Here, he could not be compelled. He’d blocked the connections to his voluntary motor functions. He didn’t know how he’d done it. All he knew was that here, in this place, they could not fuck with him.

      The flip side was, he couldn’t compel himself, either. He was safe, but paralyzed. And stuck. No door in this place. No tunnel. No ladder.

      It wasn’t unconsciousness. His mind was crystal sharp. And he wasn’t panicking. Not yet. He’d been in here before. He’d climbed out somehow. It might take a while, but he’d figure it out.

      He wondered if this was a coma, but he doubted it. Most people weren’t called upon to develop evasive mental maneuvers to thwart brain control. Probably comatose people were curled up in a similar oubliette, fast asleep. Not clawing the walls, like something out of a Poe story. Whoops. Wrong turn. If he kept on in this direction, he’d panic.

      Just wait. The quiet instruction floated up like a bubble from the depths. Be patient, and just wait.

      He set himself to calming down the turbulence in his mind with his usual techniques. A white starflower. The Milky Way, spattered out across the night sky. A monolith of black volcanic granite, stark against a snowscape. Still, his thoughts whizzed and spun. He started to get exhausted. Only then did he bring out his secret weapon.

      The little angel.

      He tried not to use the angel too often. Overusing his talisman would tarnish it, rob it of its protective power. Even daring to think of her too often could overlay false memories over the true, pure one.

      It worked, like always. He looked into those clear, solemn eyes, and the whizbang ricochet of desperation calmed. He felt relief, an upwelling of unreasonable joy. Like cool rain on a fevered face.

      His brain slid into focus. The static of noise battering him from outside resolved into comprehensible language. A conversation, ping-ponging back and forth over him. Voices he knew very well.

      “…bullshit,” a gravely voice pronounced. “They don’t teach torture techniques in goddamn scientist ivory towers.” That was Tony’s voice, that harsh, cigarette and alcohol roughened rasp.

      Emotion jabbed through him, prickly and sharp. Unwilling fondness, anger, and gall. That crusty old bastard. The jolt flipped the switch, reconnected him. He could move now. His eyelids fluttered.

      “…course it is,” Tony was replying, to whoever was out there. “Kid’s been a pain in the ass since the day I found him.”

      “You should have let the guy kill me,” he blurted hoarsely. “But you didn’t.” His eyes opened, fastened on Tony’s face

      Tony stared down, eyes narrowed in shadowy bags of flesh. “Don’t mouth off to me, kid,” he said. “A coma ain’t no fuckin’ excuse.”

      Kev’s mouth twitched. Tony stared, stone faced. No way could he give in so far as to smile back. To yield was to die. His unspoken creed.

      Kev looked up at Bruno. The only time Kev ever saw any familial resemblance between Tony’s ravaged face and Bruno’s GQ good looks was when the kid was scowling, just like that.

      “No more comas,” Bruno warned, through clenched teeth. “Or I will kick your useless ass right into the next life. That clear?”

      It wasn’t a coma, but Kev didn’t have the energy to explain. He attempted to move his arm, was cautiously pleased when it obeyed his command. He patted Bruno’s cheek, stubbled with black scruff.

      “Thanks for caring,” he said.

      Bruno recoiled. “Don’t patronize me,” he snarled.

      Kev gazed at his brother. The beard scruff was stark evidence of how upset he was. Bruno was always shaved, gelled, perfumed, dressed in the best. Today, he wore a wrinkled T-shirt with coffee stains.

      He felt a pang of guilt, and struggled into a sitting position, peeling off the tape that held his IV needle into place.

      “Hey!” Bruno clamped Kev’s hand in his own, stopping him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? The nurse can do that!”

      Kev plucked Bruno’s fingers off his forearm. “I’m awake,” he said. “I can move. Let me get on with it.”

      “On with what? With looking for the monsters of your past? Great! We get to witness you die from a stroke when you find them!”

      “I won’t have a stroke,” Kev said mildly. “Where are my clothes?”

      “Lie back down, kid,” Tony advised. “You look like shit.”

      Kev ripped the tape loose and yanked the needle out of his hand. He looked around the room. “Give me that laptop, would you?”

      Bruno rolled his eyes. “Are you out of your fucking mind? No, don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question. The answer is, fuck no, and over my dead body! Any more questions?”

      “Aw,