"Damon, just go!"
Tricia put her hand over her mouth, felt the rain pouring down around her, gluing her hair to her forehead and her clothes to her skin. The world was darkening, the sky was opening up. Thunder rumbled. She watched Damon pull back, watched his fist smash against the man's rotund stomach, watched the man double over slightly in pain and shock. Damon reached down, grabbed the man by what was left of his hair, and yanked him up until they were face-to-face again.
"I asked you a fucking question," Damon growled, the rain flowing across his lips, making everything slippery, making the world into a wet and dizzy fuzz.
"Fuckin' punk," the man spat back, and before Damon could move away he felt a fist against his jaw, felt his teeth knocking together as Curly managed to find the one place on Damon's body that would force him to release. Damon had his left hand fisted and swung it back even as his body screamed in pain, his mouth slack, his face feeling broken. He hit Curly at the ear, forcing the man to stumble to one side, where Damon's right fist was waiting to hook him in the ribs.
That was the last blow Damon would land.
Curly knew he didn't have any choice at this point. He pulled the blade from where it was hidden in his waistband, flipped the switch and plunged it into Damon's side just as he felt the impact against his own ribs. With a howl of pain and burst of sudden rage, he ripped downward, pulling the blade through flesh and gristle, digging it deeper, deep as it would go.
For a moment, it seemed, it wouldn't matter. Damon wrapped his arm around Curly's neck, yanked him down, raised his elbow high to slam into Curly's back.
And then he stumbled.
His arms went slack.
Lightning crashed, thunder rolled, and Damon fell to the ground.
Curly coughed, backing away, the water running into his eyes. Damon's legs twitched as he tried to lift himself; his eyes caught on the silver sticking out of his side, the blood running clear but thick, mixed with the rain. Curly reached forward and grabbed the blade of the knife, ripping it from the wound. Damon would die quicker that way.
His heart was thudding, too loud it seemed, or maybe those were footsteps …
Curly gasped, finally getting his breath back, and turned just in time to see a blonde-haired, green-eyed clone of the man he'd just sliced open running towards him, rage in his eyes. And behind him, another man, thinner than any of them but no twig. Curly had approximately two seconds before the first man would be on top of him, and Curly didn't have to be a psychic to know that he'd be joining Damon in hell before this kid stopped wailing on him.
So Curly ran.
As fast as his aged, taxed, already-aching body could carry him. Girls were screaming. Car doors were opening, shutting, and Curly ran. He didn't look behind him, he only looked ahead, as far as he could see through the rain. The whole world was one big ocean, and he had to outswim the sharks. But fuck it, he'd gotten out of worse situations before, and he'd get out of this one. Two blocks – three blocks – four blocks and he turned.
He was alone.
Panting, he waited.
The sky cleared while he waited.
He stood up straight. Fuck, he thought. So much for another day, another dollar …
33
"Listen, you still gotta pay me," Curly growled, standing with his arms crossed. Roper snarled back at him.
"Pay you? We don't even know if you did what you said you did!"
Curly pointed to the bloody knife on the table between them.
"What, you think I got all that blood cutting myself? Think I chased down a seagull and stabbed it in the heart? I saw your boy, I cut him good, I get paid."
"No body, no money," Roper said, shaking his head.
"Aw, you gotta be fuckin' shitting me," Curly groaned. "I'm already getting stiffed by the club ‘cause the crowd didn't get their pound of flesh. You gotta give me somethin'. His buddies started comin' after me, it was gonna be two against one. Didn't have time to collect the body. Shit, they wouldn't have let me anyway. But I'm tellin' you, I got him deep, and I got him good. Check the obits. He ain't getting up again."
Curly was lying, of course. He didn't know if the wound he gave his would-be opponent was fatal or not. All he knew was that the last he saw, the guy wasn't moving around much. And he knew his rent was due, and that he was a good amount of money short. He'd tell these guys that he'd put their man on a rocket ship to Saturn with Freddy Krueger at the helm if it got him the money.
And when Roper tried to intimidate Curly, giving him a long hard stare, Curly gave it right back. He'd lived too hard and fought too many guys to back down because this asshole wanted to be stingy.
"Half," Roper spat. "We'll give you half. And the other half if we find out he's really dead."
Curly opened his mouth to argue, but heard the telltale sound of a gun cocking behind him. His mouth closed fast. He nodded. Better than nothing, he thought, and much better than a bullet in the back.
And wasn't that just the measure of these men? He counted out the money as he walked out the door. Shoot a fellow right in the back. Like cowards. For a split second, Curly Gottlieb hoped that man had lived, and that he'd come around to teach these fuckwits a lesson. They sure as hell deserved it.
34
Damon didn't need to open his eyes to know that the light would be too bright. He felt like he was leaking from his ribs, and for a confused moment he imagined his marrow seeping away from bones that had given up the ghost.
Voices surrounded him; low and grave, alternately high-pitched, all harsh as the light that filtered through his closed lids. But he could turn his hands to fists. He could wiggle his toes. He could move his head, at least slightly, from side to side. For a moment, the sound around him wavered, turned watery and sonic. His imagination bloomed with an image of the river Styx, lapping at some dark stone floor, and a white-faced Charon offering his bony hand for passage.
"You fucking asshole."
The words made the picture in his mind ripple away. He recognized the voice even through the haze; he realized, suddenly, how thirsty he was. It seemed like his senses were suffering from that thirst, that the reason the world sounded and smelled so weird was because his body was withering away like a tumbleweed. The anger and the ire in the voice at his ear, Cristov's voice, meant nothing. Nothing meant anything until he got some water. His own voice croaked out, feeling alien.
"Water," he said, his dry lips scraping together, his tongue barely moving, stony and cracked.
"No way motherfucker," Cristov raged. Damon sensed the heat of his brother's body close at hand, heard a rumble of chairs against linoleum, the heat receding as Kennick's voice came low and level through the air.
"Calm down, prala, let him have some water."
"Is he even allowed to have water?"
That was Ricky's voice, he knew. Damon groaned as he tried to force his eyes open against their will. Even the slightest allowance of light made his head explode in pain.
"Why not?"
Tricia. The pain forgotten, Damon opened his eyes, whipped his head to find the source of that voice. She was sitting closest to him, her knuckles at her mouth, eyes wide and worried. When she saw his gaze fixed on hers, a single sob escaped her mouth. She reached out with one hand and grabbed his aching head, rising to meet his lips, the pain in his jaw radiating, swallowed by her lips. It returned when she pulled away, shaking her head, her mouth contorted somewhere between a smile and a frown.
"Cristov is right," she said, voice barely a whisper. "You are a fucking asshole. Jesus, Damon, I thought you were dead … "
"Tricia," he croaked again, his mouth savoring the little bit of her that lingered after her kiss. "Water?"
"Right," she said, sniffling as she turned to the little table beside her, pouring out a glass of water with a shaking hand.
"Dude, wait," Ricky said, coming into focus now as Damon's eyes drifted over the small crowd gathered at his hospital bed. "He might be like … "
She grimaced, then put her hand to her side, right under her chest, over her ribs, and splayed her fingers out.
"A sprinkler," she said, blushing.
Leaking, Damon thought, recalling his earlier sensation. He looked down, lifting the flimsy blanket draped across his chest. He had a bandage wrapped around his ribs and across the top of his abdomen, tight. Touching his side, he felt pain erupt in a bright bloom.
"They stitched him up," Mina said, raising one eyebrow as she studied Ricky. She was sitting next to Kim, the three women lined up in chairs against the wall.
"I know," Ricky said. "That's what I mean. Try pouring water into a pillowcase and guess where it starts dripping."