Текст книги "Irregulars "
Автор книги: Astrid Amara
Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 32 страниц)
Henry seized the goblin’s hands and tore them from Jason’s neck. Jason fell, coughing and gagging, to Henry’s feet. The goblin made a dazed attempt to reach for Jason, but Henry shouldered it deeper into the darkness. The goblin staggered and then doubled over, heaving as if it were attempting to vomit its true body from the tortured shell of human flesh restraining it.
Not that it would have done him any good. The shade lands eroded all life, regardless of form.
Henry dropped to his knees. Jason stared up at him, white faced with the pain that every living being suffered in the shade lands. Fortunately, the atmosphere alone didn’t kill quickly; it drained life the way a pitcher plant ate through the struggling bodies of drowning flies.
The dark atmosphere even fingered the edges of Henry’s wound and lapped at his warm blood. But the dark didn’t worry Henry. The voracious hunters lurking within the gloom were another matter. Ghosts came in many forms and some were ravenous.
Slowly, dozens of luminous forms drifted out from the murky depths. They shone, translucent and tangled as jellyfish, all faint light and endless appetite. Some bore recognizable features while others had long ago melted into strange colonies of the hurt and hunger. Countless broken souls fused by a desperate need to reclaim even a sliver of life. Hungry ghosts.
The goblin flailed and screamed a long distorted howl as three ghosts clasped it in their tentacles and sank their needle teeth into its flesh, ripping away pieces of its muscle and drinking the living warmth from its blood.
Henry remained on his knees at Jason’s side. Reflexively, his bloodied hands found his flask. He slugged back a deep drink of his old poison as the ghosts closed in around him.
His tongue felt like ice and his throat tightened to a frozen trench as he swallowed. The poison spread through his bloodstream, chilling his veins like liquid nitrogen. Agony flared through Henry’s bones and ground into his muscles. But it felt so familiar he hardly noted it.
He’d died so many times now.
As one long swaying ghost extended a tangle of luminous tentacles toward Jason, Henry caught it in his frigid grip. It fought him, but the ghost’s need for life was only that of one young man lost in terror and still praying for salvation. Henry’s grasp was the void of a black hole, a chasm of emptiness torn in him by the countless souls he’d held and his own multitude of demises.
Henry drew the power from this ghost as well, drinking in its anger, fear, and even the faint spark of hope that had trapped it in the shade lands. Henry tasted the sick bitterness of love betrayed and a body tortured in the embrace of an iron lady. He felt screams rock through him and heard laughter answer his pleas for mercy. He took those memories and many more.
He drained away every agony from the trembling soul, taking them for his own, until the ghost ceased its struggle. Its fury dulled in his hands. Its cold light dimmed and at last it lay, no more than a helpless cinder, in his palm.
“Your rage is mine now and I will not forget the wrongs done you,” Henry whispered to the ghost. “Leave this place and let your sorrow be mine.”
He spat on the cinder and slowly it kindled to a hot gold light. Then Henry hurled it upward and it ignited like a firework, tracing brilliant streaks across the gloom as it tore free of the shade lands. And for just an instant, the darkness fell back, exposing a rolling landscape as white as bone.
Then the dank atmosphere closed in again.
The remaining hungry ghosts drew back from Henry’s reach, receding into the darkness. The goblin’s remains were stripped nearly to its skeleton. At Henry’s side Jason lay as still and wide eyed as a corpse.
Henry touched his cold cheek and Jason blinked.
“It was beautiful for a moment,” Jason murmured. He looked hollow and haunted. Then he asked, “Can I go home now?”
Chapter Five
A searing acidic sensation flared through Jason’s muscles and then both darkness and pain rolled back from his prone body. His eyes watered as if burned by chlorine, but he still made out the familiar expanse of pale blue sky above him.
Falk’s silhouette loomed over him, seeming almost black against the sudden flood of sunlight.
“You’re safe, Jason.” Then Falk staggered and crumpled to the ground like a slack sail.
For one moment Jason simply lay in the narrow alley beside Falk, reeling between horror and disbelief. He didn’t even know if he could move his arms or legs. His entire body burned and tingled with numbness.
The sweet, rotten stench of trash surrounded him and black flies darted between a nearby dumpster and Falk’s prone form. Jason clenched his eyes closed. He wanted to howl from the turmoil that this day had made of his carefully balanced life. He’d wanted to sob like a seven-year-old boy. Anger, pain, and fear churned through him with a force that sent tremors through his body. Or maybe that was just shock, he thought. Maybe he was just going to have a nervous breakdown right here and now.
But he fought to keep his terror down—fought to keep a grip on himself and regain the control that he’d spent years mastering. This entire day had been strange and frightening—he didn’t even understand half of it—but falling apart wouldn’t make anything better. It never did, he knew that.
With an effort, he pulled himself upright. He’d lost his glasses somewhere in the HRD Coffee Shop, but as he gazed down at Falk, the battered man looked dull, as if a shadow had fallen over him, blotting out that luminous quality that Jason had grown accustomed to. The front of his coat was dark with blood and his limbs seemed oddly stiff, as if rigor mortis had already set in.
Horror welled through Jason at the thought.
Agent Falk couldn’t be dead, Jason told himself. But he’d seen corpses before and instinctively recognized the lifeless slump of Agent Falk’s form. Still, he didn’t want to accept it, because he’d just met Agent Falk—just started to warm to his rough looks and crooked smile. And if he was dead, then it was Jason’s fault, because he’d fought to protect him; there could be no doubt that those three goblins had come after Jason.
He can’t be gone. He can’t be…
Despite the clumsy numbness of his limbs, Jason groped at Falk’s throat, feeling for a pulse. When at last he registered a faint kick beneath his fingers, the relief that washed over him was out of all proportion, verging on pure joy.
“Agent Falk?” Jason’s voice sounded as rough as his throat felt. “Agent Falk?”
Falk opened his eyes. His gaze seemed far away and Jason couldn’t tell if he could see him or not.
“Agent Falk?”
“Yeah…” His response could have been a low groan, but then he dragged in a rough breath and went on. “I’m with you…Give me a minute…”
“Should I call an ambulance?”
“No…Waste of their time. Just give me…a minute.” He pulled in another ragged breath and a little color seemed to come back to his cheeks. He blinked and his gaze rolled to meet Jason’s stare. “I should be able to walk the worst of this off.”
“There’s blood all over your coat—”
“It’s nothing. Most of it isn’t even mine.” Falk rolled to his side and then slowly pushed himself into a sitting position. “I don’t know what’s worse sometimes, going or coming back.”
Jason wasn’t certain he wanted to know exactly what Falk meant by that. He didn’t think he could stand too many more revelations today. He already felt so helpless against the onslaught of weirdness that this day had been.
Falk scrubbed at his face as if he were just waking up. His fingers left bloody tracks across his cheek, but he didn’t seem to take note of it.
“What about you?” Falk asked. “Are you all right? You think you can walk?”
Jason would have laughed at the question coming from Falk in his condition, but in truth he wasn’t sure if he could even stand.
When he tried, he discovered his limbs were alarmingly clumsy and weak. Still, he managed to rise to his feet. He swayed slightly and then steadied himself against the hard edge of a dumpster. “I’m just a little dazed and bruised, but I think I’m okay.”
“Good,” Falk replied, but he hardly moved. “We’ll need to get you holed up and call this into HQ as soon as possible.”
“I don’t have a cell phone—”
“Not secure in any case,” Falk cut him off. “I’ll worry about that once we get to your place…” One of Falk’s legs twitched, but he didn’t rise. He glanced up to Jason and a faint blue flame lit his eyes. “Give me a hand with this old sack of bones, will you?”
Jason knelt at his side. Up close he could see the gleam of fresh blood seeping through the front of Falk’s coat. His body felt hard and cold as ice as Jason wrapped an arm around him and helped him up to his feet.
“It’s going to be all right,” Falk told him. “Just trust me a little, you’ll see.”
There was absolutely no reason to believe that anything would be all right. Jason’s entire world had been altered and as far as he could work out he’d become some kind of commodity to goblins and magicians. And yet Falk’s words did ease him; maybe it was that tone of experience or maybe some spell, but Jason nodded and steadied Falk as they stumbled forward.
They staggered out from their shadowy alley into the bustle of the post-lunch rush on Turk Street.
Fortunately, they didn’t have far to go.
The weathered Victorian sprawl of the Avalon Apartments slumped over a dingy liquor store and a concrete laundromat like the remains of a wrecked ship. Decorative woodwork and paint had long ago weathered away and the rickety fire escape looked like it had been thrown on in a windstorm. Two ground floor windows were boarded over and the entryway reeked of urine from the number of drunks who had pissed themselves after passing out on the stoop.
“Avalon.” Falk’s voice was little more than a whisper, but Jason still noted the tone of irony. He’d thought the same thing on earlier occasions.
Inside, the grimy yellow wallpaper displayed a Rorschach test of water stains. The cage elevator bore a perpetual “out of order” proclamation and for the first time Jason resented it.
In truth, there were only three things to recommend the Avalon Apartments at all. First, the rent was cheap. Second, the locks worked. Third—and most importantly, this afternoon—it was not the sort of place where anyone took much note of two beaten, bloodstained men staggering up the stairs together. With so many drunks, junkies, outpatients, and social outcasts in residence, the sight of him and Falk merited little more response than a bloodshot glance from a half-dressed transvestite traipsing down in the opposite direction.
“I’d throw that one back, honey,” the transvestite informed Jason.
“Damn. If I’d known we’d be meeting the queen on the stairs, I’d have worn my tux,” Falk replied gamely and received a laugh in passing.
Jason smiled despite his exhaustion.
Together they fought up another flight of stairs. When Falk’s boot caught on a step they both swayed. For an instant Jason thought they would fall, but he didn’t let go of Falk. To his relief, Falk caught the handrail, steadying them both.
Falk seemed to be getting stronger. At least Jason hoped he was because he was himself on the verge of collapse.
His muscles trembled with exhaustion and a raw ache scraped through his bruised throat with every breath he took in. Still, it was a relief to feel anything at all.
By the time they reached Jason’s rooms on the third floor, Falk was taking most of his own weight and Jason could feel living warmth radiating from his lean body.
***
“So here it is, Chez Shamir.” Jason unlocked his door and followed Falk into his tiny studio apartment. He guessed that Falk wasn’t the type to give a damn. Still, he felt slightly embarrassed by the single room, bath, and kitchenette that made up his home. It had to look miserable to a stranger. Falk couldn’t know just how much of an achievement it represented to Jason to live free of mental institutions and halfway houses.
A shelf made of cinderblocks and planks stood beside his narrow window. It overflowed with sheet music, instruments, and CDs. His stereo and speakers perched on a second shelf on the other side of the windowsill. Jason’s folded clothes and paired socks occupied a stack of two milk crates beside his futon. A third crate displayed his alarm clock, a battered lamp, and a history book he’d been trying to read.
The barren kitchenette stood open just past the door to his bathroom. From the doorway Jason could see his frying pan and coffeemaker sitting beside his empty sink.
“Clean.” Falk said it like he’d expected as much. Then he glanced over his shoulder to Jason. “Close the door and lock it, will you?”
Jason did both quickly. Then Falk reached out and laid his bloody right hand against the door. He flexed his fingers and silver light gushed up from his chest, lighting him like a halogen filament. His eyes shone bright. His hair and clothes moved as if caught in a breeze.
“I name you sanctuary.” Falk leaned close to the door, almost pressing his mouth to the white paint, and whispered, “Let none pass who mean him harm.”
Blazing light flashed up from Falk’s hand and spread like frost across the door and walls of Jason’s apartment. Jason stared as the crystalline patterns climbed his window and curled across both his floor and ceiling. He thought he saw florettes of blades and glinting forms that reminded him of skulls and he wondered if the markings were the letters of some strange spell. They moved as if they were almost alive.
At last the luminous filigree closed and the entire apartment glowed so intensely that Jason squinted against the flashing brilliance. He stole a glimpse back to Falk and found the man’s figure strangely dark in the midst of so much light, as if it had drained him completely.
Then Falk lifted his hand from the door and the symbols sank away beneath paint, plaster, and flooring. Only Falk’s bloody handprint remained, a wet crimson smear on white planks.
Again Falk swayed on his feet but didn’t fall. He met Jason’s worried expression with a crooked smile.
“Just got a whiff of myself. Nearly floored me,” Falk commented. “You have a private tub and toilet in this joint?”
“Yes, right through there.” Jason pointed to the bathroom door. Falk strode in without bothering to close the door after him. For a very awkward moment Jason wondered if he should follow the other man in to make sure he was all right or give him his privacy.
“If you have any salt, bring it, would you?” Falk called. “And a felt marker. Mine’s getting dry.”
“I’ve got a ballpoint pen.” Jason pulled it out of his jacket pocket.
“That’ll work.” Falk’s reply rose over the sound of rustling cloth.
“How much salt do you need?” On his way to the kitchenette Jason stole a glance in at Falk and found the man bracing himself against the small porcelain sink as he stripped off his bloodstained clothes.
“A cup would be good, but anything you have will help.”
Falk’s coat and vest lay in a heap on the floor. His button-up shirt hung open, exposing the solid expanse of his bare chest and abdomen. Jason remembered how strong and hard that scarred body had felt against his own. The memory was immediately eclipsed by the sight of a bloody bullet hole gaping over Falk’s heart. A sluggish stream of blood seeped down his chest.
Jason stared in horror at the wound, feeling amazed and sick at once. How could Falk even be standing?
Falk glanced up and, meeting Jason’s stare, offered him an almost sheepish smile.
“I know, blood’s a bitch to clean up. I’ll pick up a new set of towels for you as soon as I can.” He shrugged off his shirt and Jason noted a second massive stain from the exit wound in Falk’s back.
“How can you still be alive?” Jason’s words came out in a horrified whisper.
For just a moment Falk went still. He glanced down at the stream of blood pouring from his torso and seeping into the fabric of his pants as if he’d just noticed it.
“No other option,” Falk replied offhandedly, but he didn’t meet Jason’s gaze. Instead, he wadded up his shirt and wiped at his bloody chest almost self-consciously. “You gonna grab that salt?”
“Ye—yeah.” Jason tore his gaze from Falk’s chest and bolted into his kitchenette. For a moment he thought he might throw up in the sink, but then he regained his composure.
He’d seen worse—much worse. But there was something so disconcerting about the combination of Falk’s easygoing manner and those ugly, gaping wounds. How could a man be so deeply injured and just keep moving?
The sound of water running in the bathroom brought Jason back to the task at hand.
“Is kosher salt okay?” Jason called.
“Better actually,” Falk replied between splashes of water. “But anything you’ve got will do.”
Jason brought the entire box of Diamond Crystal kosher salt and his ballpoint pen.
Falk sat on the edge of the claw-footed bathtub, naked, with a roll of masking tape in one hand and a towel in the other. The water in the tub swirled with currents of deep red and dilute pink. Falk had clearly made an effort to wash away the blood. Water glistened in his blond chest hair and droplets slipped down the line of his lean abdomen. He was a big man, and stripped of his ill-fitting clothes, he looked more savage, muscular, and tattooed than Jason would have expected.
A black star shone against the pale skin of his hip and tiny golden symbols stretched like constellations across the scarred lengths between his right thigh and his broad shoulders. Amidst the arcane markings a black block letter F stood out on his right shoulder like a brand.
He held one of Jason’s white towels against the wound in his chest, as if shielding Jason from the sight, though, he seemed utterly unaware of the disarming effect of his nudity.
Despite himself Jason felt a flush rise across his cheeks.
“What should I do with—”
“Just leave them on the toilet seat.” Falk didn’t look at Jason. “You don’t have to watch this. I can manage it myself.”
Suddenly Jason felt like an ass. Falk had suffered these wounds protecting him. More than likely he’d saved Jason’s life. The least he could do was help the man.
“The bullet hole in your back looks like an awkward reach for you on your own,” Jason commented. “It would probably be easier if I helped with that.”
“You sure?” Falk glanced to him questioningly. “’Cause it won’t do either of us any good if you lose your lunch trying to patch my ugly ass up.”
“I won’t,” Jason assured him. “No way am I giving up my free meal.”
“All right then.” Falk held out the roll of masking tape to him and Jason took it. For just an instant he expected to see something strange on the surface of the tape—some swirling magical script—but it seemed to be nothing more than mundane beige masking tape.
“What should I do?”
“Just tape me up.”
Falk turned so that Jason could see his bleeding back. Just below his shoulder blade streaks of scarlet blood seeped from a ragged exit wound.
“You don’t have to look at it,” Falk told him. “Close your eyes and just concentrate on the idea of healing. Try to hold the thought while you make a mark on the masking tape with your pen and then slap the tape over the wound.”
“What kind of mark?” Jason frowned at his pen and the tape.
“Doesn’t matter,” Falk replied. “It’s the thought that counts, not the wrapper, if you know what I mean. The faster you do it, the less likely you are to overthink it, though.”
“Right.” Jason responded automatically to Falk’s terse tone. The man was probably in intense pain; Jason could ask questions later. He gripped the tape and pen, closed his eyes, and thought of what healing meant. Smooth skin marred by only the shadow of a long faded scar. Health and well-being. Unbidden, a melody came to him and he wrote the simple notes on the masking tape.
Then he tore off a length and taped it over Falk’s back. He half expected the piece of tape to just fall off. But it adhered instantly to Falk’s flesh. As Jason watched, the inky notes dulled from black to red to the shiny white of scar tissue and the beige strip of tape melted into Falk’s flesh, taking on the color and texture of his skin. Only Jason’s musical notations remained as the faintest scars.
“That’s good.” Falk sounded both surprised and relieved. “Really good. Can you keep going?”
“Yeah…It seems kind of easy actually.”
“Easy…” Falk repeated as if he found it ironic. “Where have you been all my life?”
Jason’s cheeks flushed at the remark. He glanced away before Falk could notice and returned his concentration to the next strip of tape.
He expanded his melody, writing the notes nearly as quickly as they came to him. He laid each new strip next to the last. Soon the wound in Falk’s back was entirely closed. Jason stared at the pale scars and expanse of healthy skin, hardly able to credit that he’d played any part in anything so amazing. Pride swept through him.
“Shall I take care of your chest as well?” Jason offered.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Falk asked. “I don’t want you dropping dead of exhaustion.”
“I’m fine. I actually kind of enjoyed doing it.” Jason stole a glance to Falk’s disbelieving expression. “Is that a weird thing to say?”
“No more weird than closing a bullet hole with masking tape is in the first place,” Falk replied, but then added, “Though it’s pretty damn impressive that you haven’t even broken a sweat.”
Falk turned to face Jason and the regard in his expression made Jason flush slightly. Slowly Falk lifted the white towel away from the gory hole in his chest. The sight of it still unnerved Jason, but he pushed past that. Here was something of real value that he could do, something that made him feel a little more in control.
Already the gentle notes of his healing melody came to him and he wrote them across lengths of masking tape in a flurry. He closed Falk’s chest quickly and then just stared at the new skin.
Falk too stared down at the phrases of tiny notes that lay like pale scars over his chest.
“A song?” Falk asked.
Jason nodded.
“Any tune I’d know?”
“No. It just came to me, when you said that I should think of healing.”
Falk contemplated his chest for a moment more, perhaps attempting to decipher the pattern of scars, and then shrugged. “As long as it’s not ‘Love for Sale’, I think we’re fine.”
Jason smiled. He liked Falk’s dry humor and calm demeanor. Somehow he made even this strange, bloody scene seem reasonable. Then he realized that he was staring and self-consciously lowered his gaze before Falk could take note.
“So what do you need the salt for?” Jason asked.
“Ah yes, that. Add it to the water in the tub,” Falk directed him.
Jason dumped the salt out and watched as the large white crystals melted into the still, red water. Beside him, Falk remained motionless, slowly recovering his natural radiance. Finally, he leaned over the heap of his discarded clothes and dug into a pocket of his trench coat. He cupped something between his hands, plainly hiding it from Jason’s view.
“I have a proposition for you, my girl,” Falk whispered over his own hands.
Jason tried to not to stare, but there wasn’t anything else in the tiny confines of the bathroom that he could even pretend was more interesting. He remembered that just before they’d been accosted Falk had told him that a girl’s heart lay hidden in his pocket. Was that what Falk cradled so gently in his big, scarred hands?
“I can give you a living body, but in return you’ll be bound to my will by my blood.” Falk spoke softly over his hands. His expression was gentle and his deep voice struck Jason as disconcertingly charming.
“It’s your choice,” Falk said, as if responding to a question. He smiled wryly at something and shook his head. “No, not as a princess…Who do you think I am, the gnome king? Nah, you wouldn’t like him anyway, would you?”
“Are you talking to…her ghost?” Jason asked.
Falk glanced to him and gave him a quick nod but then returned his attention his hands.
“A kitty? You’re certain? Sure, I can manage a cat. Easy peasy…” Then Falk looked up at Jason and his eyes shone like blue flames. “She wants to know if you’ll sing her a lullaby. She says she heard you singing to yourself when we were in the shade lands. She likes your voice.”
“Oh that…” Jason resisted his reflexive embarrassment at having been caught doing something so strange as humming to himself when he was terrified—the quiet melody came unbidden in moments of fear. He hardly knew when he was doing it anymore. Compared to the bizarre sights and actions he’d witnessed today, it hardly seemed worth note.
“I’d be happy to sing a song. If you want,” Jason offered.
“A lullaby,” Falk clarified. “That would be great.” His intense blue gaze had already dropped back to his cupped hands.
As Jason sang, “Hush Little Baby”, Falk leaned over the tub and slowly submerged his thick, scarred hands in the bloody water. Something wriggled from between his fingers. Jason fully expected to see a little heart. He’d almost begun to imagine the pink symmetry of a valentine. But the shape beneath the murky water looked leggy and insectile—like a spider but big. The sight gave him a pause. He didn’t like normal house spiders and the thing creeping across the bottom of his tub was nearly the size of one of Falk’s fists.
“Keep singing,” Falk reminded from where he crouched beside the tub.
Jason continued the lullaby, though he watched the shadowy form beneath the red water warily.
Falk stroked his mutilated left hand over the water, producing a series of ripples. Below, the spider’s silhouette broke and distorted. Falk glared down, his expression going hard and commanding. He spat out a rasping low word and Jason saw silver light burst from his lips. The water flashed as if reflecting the light. Then Falk slapped his hand down into the tub.
Waves sloshed and crested as Falk agitated the water further. Strangely, the blood seemed to settle out of the water and Jason realized that he could now see the scarlet shape distorting below the frothing water. What had been a plump ruby spider stretched and twisted like a length of red kelp caught in storm surf. The sharp peaks that Jason had thought were huge mandibles rolled and resolved into two little ears. The legs folded and bent from hard insect angles to supple mammalian limbs. A tail flicked through the water and then a yowling feline head broke the surface.
It was a kitten, Jason realized, though, he’d never seen a cat with such a brilliant crimson coat or such dark eyes before.
The kitten sank its claws into Falk’s hand and wrist as it scrambled to escape the water. Falk scooped it up and cradled the shaking creature in the crook of his arm.
“You’re all right, Princess. I’ve got you. See, you’re fine.” Falk stroked the cat’s head and began drying its tiny body with the clean corner of one of Jason’s bloodstained towels.
“So, she’s the ghost girl you told me about earlier?” Jason stared at the kitten.
“One and the same.” Falk shrugged. “Give or take a few legs.”
“But she’s…alive now?”
“Princess here wasn’t really all that dead to start with. Her body was gone, but her soul was intact and her will was strong. By my count that made her two-thirds alive already. I just built her a body to inhabit.”
Disconcertingly, the kitten studied Falk as if contemplating his explanation. Then she nodded.
“But she looks like a cat to me,” Jason said. “Shouldn’t I see something else? Her true ghostly form or something?”
“Not anymore. This body is her genuine flesh now.” Falk stroked the kitten’s ears. “This isn’t some transformation of her original flesh or a glamour disguising her. She’s a kitten all the way to her bones.”
“A normal kitten?” Jason asked skeptically, because looking at her closely, he noticed that the toes of her front paws strongly resembled fuzzy fingers and he could almost make out a darker patch of fur on her foreleg that looked remarkably similar to the F tattooed on Falk’s shoulder.
“I didn’t say that,” Falk replied. He stood with the kitten and snatched up his stained trench coat, then started out of the bathroom. “You ever heard of familiars?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Like witches’ familiars?” Jason pulled the plug from the tub and then followed Falk as the water drained out.
Falk tossed his coat over the doorknob, then strode to the window, apparently unconcerned about displaying his nudity to the world. He released the kitten onto the windowsill, where she set straight to licking her ass.
“Exactly like a witch’s familiar.” Falk gave the kitten one of his brief, crooked smiles. “A spirit pulled from another realm and bound to a witch’s will by blood and flesh.”
“So Princess is your familiar?” Jason inquired. Then after Falk’s quick nod, he asked, “Does the F on her shoulder stand for Falk? Like your tattoo?”
“Hers might. Mine doesn’t…” For the first time since they’d met Jason thought Falk actually looked taken off guard. But then he shook his head. “No. It stands for Franklyn Fairgate.”
He gazed past the kitten and out the window, with an oddly distant expression. Jason guessed that was the end of the conversation, but then Falk turned back to him. “Franklyn brought me into the Irregulars, way back during the war. They were desperate for grunts and guinea pigs and I fit the bill for both. I spent four years catching bullets and testing black poison for him.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Those were the times. People were dying by the thousands in the trenches. We had to do everything we could to end it.” Falk shrugged. “You got spare pair pajamas or something by any chance?”
Jason accepted the abrupt change of subject. Though the mention of people dying in trenches made him wonder just what war Falk was talking about.
“I have a pair of sweats that might fit you.”
Jason easily located the faded blue sweatpants from among his few other clothes. Falk, in the meantime, steamed the windowpane with his breath and then drew a small square on the glass.
“Here.” Jason handed him the pants.
“Thanks.” Falk took the clothes and pulled them on quickly. Normally the sweats looked rumpled hanging off Jason’s slim frame, but on Falk they clung to the muscles of his thighs and stretched to accommodate his groin. Falk turned his attention back to the kitten. He stroked her head with one finger.
