We soldiered up and began cleaning the remains from the walls and floor in grim silence.
* * *
p
I took the long, circuitous way home, knowing I’d only sit, staring, playing Bridget’s death through my mind, seeing images of the bits and pieces of her being reassembled into a bloody whole that could never be made whole again.
There were many things I should do, as dusk took my city.
At the moment I was sitting on my idling bike in the empty lot above Chester’s nightclub. The rubble littering the pavement was hauled off years ago by the Dublin Cleanup Crew, leaving only a fractured concrete surface with deep jagged cracks and a heavily warded trapdoor.
Not, however, too heavily warded for me, and besides I’d found the back way in two years ago.
That was the night I’d discovered, locked in a storage room deep beneath the club, a small printing press and reams and reams of paper. I also found the initials RKS at the bottom of a pile of legal documents, granting Ryodan title to properties all over Dublin. I’d entertained myself endlessly trying to guess his last name. Depending on my mood, they’d ranged from exotic and sexy to absurd.
How many dragons had the man launched into my sky for me, trying to keep me too busy to get myself killed? The Dublin Daily was once the bane of my existence, occupying hours of my time, inspiring me to write smarter, try harder, take myself more seriously. It, and WeCare, which I sometimes suspected he’d created as well, had kept me fighting faceless entities rather than racing out into the streets seeking more tangible, deadly foes.
“Come back already,” I muttered at the empty lot.
I missed him and the simple way he saw me, without any filters. I missed feeling the way I felt around him. He was gasoline to my fire, matches to my dynamite. He’d enjoyed my fire, my dynamite. And, whether I’d liked it or not—and most of the time I hadn’t—he’d kept me from blowing myself or too many others up with it.
Life wasn’t the same without him around. Although I love my city, my life, Dublin without the Nine, without Mac and Barrons, is a Big Top Circus without a single lion, tiger, or bear. Not even elephants. Just chimps, clowns, and sheep. Oodles and oodles of sheep. And snakes—those are the Fae. I used to like being the only superhero in town. I’m so over that.
Countless were the times I’d considered calling him on my cellphone.
Countless were the times I’d shoved it back in my pocket, accepting his absence for what it was: a desire to be somewhere else that was not with me. The man who’d launched my dragons didn’t care enough to call or text me a single time in over two years to see how I was doing.
Or if I was even still alive. Leaving was one thing. Never checking in was unforgivable.
“Rot in purgatory, Ryodan,” I growled as I put my bike in gear.
* * *
p
Shaz and I have code names for our many residences. I doubt I need them. I suspect he can find me anywhere, anytime he wants, and thinks it’s funny to humor me by pretending to read the notes I scrawl telling him where I am.
Before I’d left this morning, I’d scribbled the word “Sanctuary” across the bedroom wall in Sharpie. An enemy would have no idea what it meant. Shazam would know he’d find me in the penthouse flat that occupied the top floor of a building on the north side of the River Liffey. I prefer to live up high, with a clear view of my city below. On those rare occasions I’m not patrolling at night, I love to sit on the fire escape, beyond the tall arched windows that line the wall floor to ceiling, and watch the river slide by, the lights twinkling like fallen stars in the streets.
Sanctuary is a study in grays and blacks and whites, the most colorless of my abodes. I crave its Spartan elegance when something’s bothering me, eschewing the distracting brightness of the world to think surrounded by soothing monotones.
I dislike doing anything uniform or predictable that might allow an enemy to track me, yet a risky number of my residences are penthouses, as they afford tall windows and vaulted ceilings. I accept the liability in exchange for space, room to breathe, and a place to burn off restless energy. In Sanctuary’s enormous living room that’s void of all furniture, on a polished black floor that I can see my own reflection in, facing a wall of windows, with a line of fire burning behind glass at my back, on hard nights in my chronic town I dance like I once danced on another world, beneath three full moons, abandoned to a song only I can hear. I dance to get it all out, the emotion that builds up inside me. I dance until, exhausted, often weeping, I sleep.
My kitchen is a sleek modern affair of quartz, chrome, and black marble floors. Those floors spill throughout the entire flat, and are easy to mop blood from. Usually when I seek Sanctuary, I’m bleeding.
Tonight there was no blood, just an arm as black as my floors.
Shazam was sprawled fatly across the ivory island, occupying half of it, tearing flesh off the skull of—
“Is that a pig?” I said disbelievingly. “You ate an entire pig?” From the amount of blood staining the counters, dripping down the sides, and the size of the hooves he’d left uneaten, it was a full-grown pig, too.
Shrugging, he said nothing, only studied a distant space in the air and licked innocently at a paw, tail twitching with audible thumps against the quartz.
“Good grief. You might have at least saved me a flank of bacon,” I groused as I rummaged in the pantry for a can of coconut milk and a couple of protein shakes. My stomach was queasy but I needed energy. During our time together in the Silvers, Shazam had often hunted for me, and I’d hacked the flanks off more animals than I could count, filleted and roasted them over a fire. I might seem a bit barbaric to the rest of the world. The world seems barbaric to me.
I tossed back the coconut milk, followed by the protein shakes, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand then turned to find Shazam standing, back arched like a horseshoe, porcupine bristles ridging his spine, lips drawn back in a silent snarl as he stared down the long ebony-floored hallway that, after a right turn into a small foyer, led to the front door. Anytime he does that, a chill ices my spine. He’s never wrong. My Hel-Cat’s hearing and sense of smell is more acute than mine. It’s kept us alive on many occasions, both in Dublin and as we wandered hostile planets in the Silvers.
When he freezes, I freeze. And prepare.