Dark to Mortal Eyes (5 page)

Beau shook his head, choked down the last of his coffee. His movements were growing jittery; his eyes were glazing over. “You made it clear: No runnin’
off at the mouth.” The kid’s rambling grew louder. “I swear my lips’re sealed. I wanna be part of what’s goin’ down.”

Stahlherz lifted a canvas sack onto his lap and located the zipper. “And what, precisely, do you believe is ‘goin’ down’?”

“Like you always say, it’s for you to know and me to find out.”

“Actually I say that it’s on a need-to-know basis.”

“Yeah, that’s it. That’s exactly what I told him.”

“Told whom?”

“Uh, no, what I meant was—”

Stahlherz slashed his fingers across his recruit’s shoulder and hooked them into a pressure point. The boy’s words crumbled into a moan while Stahlherz continued digging into skin and nerve tissue. After retracting his fingers, he unloaded from his sack a worn denim jacket. Certain that the pockets contained the requisite items, he wrapped it across Beau’s back, then beckoned his sedated rook from the sack.

“Your turn,” he directed. “I told you your chance would come.”

With glassy eyes reflecting the bar’s neon light, the bird clawed his arm, a fiend rising from the darkness. Stahlherz jerked. A talon—breaking his skin!

“Careful there. You do as you’re told.”

Ka-kaw-reech!
A paroxysm rippled through the creature’s muscles.

Stahlherz mouthed an injunction: “Rook captures pawn.”

The bird hovered over the table, then, in a shuffle of feathers and talons, settled on Beau’s shoulder.
Kee-reech-reach-insiiide!
It spoke into the boy’s ear, the tip of the beak dipping into the orifice like a pen into an inkwell. Beau’s lips parted in a gasp, seeming to repeat his earlier comments as statements of acquiescence:
We’re all expendable … Bring it on. I’ll take the rap
.

Without further fanfare, the rook disappeared.

Stahlherz stood and wiped at his wound with a napkin, then plucked at the single black feather now protruding from his recruit’s ear. The girl lowered her magazine to the counter and peeked over her glasses at Beau’s immobile figure.

“He’ll come around,” Stahlherz said, slipping currency onto the magazine. “A bit disoriented, but he’ll be ready for his assignment. Fifty dollars? I think that’ll cover the extra ‘shot’ you put in his drink.
Audentes fortuna juvat
.”

“Fortune favors the daring,” she repeated in English. Then pocketed the cash.

Stahlherz had intended for his words to seal her loyalty, yet as he shuffled out the door, he was annoyed by the lackadaisical shrug of her shoulders. “You live your life. I’ll live mine …” It seemed to be this generation’s motto. Though it served his and the Professor’s needs for privacy, it made motivating their recruits laborious.

Is there no one willing to fight? Are there only pawns on this board of life?

Stahlherz challenged the night. “A fight to the death—that’s what I want. Come now, Mr. Addison, surely there are easier ways to get the job done, but let’s you and me make a game of it.”

Josee Walker emerged at dawn from the tent. Her muscles felt like damp ropes strapped across her back, and her hips creaked like old fence slats.
I’m falling apart
, she thought. Defective merchandise. She snugged a coat over her Seattle Mariners sweatshirt.

Across the firepit, Scooter was perched on a decaying log. “You sleep okay?”

She shrugged. “How long’ve you been up?”

“A while, I guess. Didn’t sleep much.”

“Me neither.”

Her mind had been mulling over today’s reunion. Wednesday, October 29. For the first time since birth, she would see her mother. One o’clock at Avery Park. No big deal, but she’d go through with it for her own peace of mind, then move on. As for her father, Marsh Addison? According to Kara, he was “conflicted and confused.” He’d opted out.
Typical dirt bag. Had his thrills, but wants zero responsibility. Like I care
.

Scooter leaned back on the log. “Whaddya say? Should we turn this thing in?” He rolled up his poncho, rubbed the canister he’d concealed on his lap. “Could be some cold, hard cash in it for us, a reward. You never know.”

“Scooter!” Last night’s fears returned in a rush. “What’re you doing with that?”

“S’okay, babe. Just checkin’ things out.”

“Could be dangerous.”

“It says: Gift.”

“Gift?” She snatched the object away, drew her finger over a row of faded numbers and letters. “G-I-F-T. I didn’t even notice that in the dark. Well, there’s some twisted humor for you. Looks more like an old artillery shell.”

“The grand spankin’ mother of all bullets.”

“What if,” she theorized, “it’s from World War II? You know, Oregon’s the only state that had war-related casualties on her own soil during the war. Soldiers used to train near here at Camp Adair. Every once in a while a farmer’ll dig up some old armament and get his picture in the paper. Think that’s what this is?”

“Don’t know. Is that really true—what you said about Oregon, I mean?”

“It’s not like Puget Sound’s the only place things happen.”

“It’s where you and I hooked up, isn’t it?”

“Ooh, good answer. Might have to give you a point for that one.”

Three years ago they had met and formed an immediate bond that carried over into friendship, art, and love. Josee had been a freshman and Scooter, a sophomore at the University of Washington. They’d dropped out the following summer, however, convinced that college was a diploma mill devised by corporate greed to raise a working class of loan-imprisoned drones. Nope, that wasn’t for them.

They’d formed an artists’ colony in a travel trailer on his grandmother’s lakeshore property. Word got around. Soon budding artists and musicians arrived, yearning for expression and connection, for the sense of family of which most had been deprived. Josee spent hours in the living room, leaning against the rattan couch, filling a journal with poetry and pencil sketches. Behind the trailer, Scooter crafted metal sculptures in a shed pieced together with scrap aluminum siding and two-by-fours. When his creations were complete, Josee gave them titles. Often she matched them with one of her poems. As a team, she and Scooter sought out spots to display each welded image—on the porch, on a stump facing the lake, among the trees shading the pitted drive. Together, they sold their work at local galleries and cafés. The minimal cash flow was enough to keep them afloat.

Scooter edged forward on his perch. “Think you’ve got a point, Josee. Looks like it could be GI: government issue. Like a war relic or something. Be careful with it.”

“Excuse me? I can take care of myself.”

“You’re a hundred and ten pounds.”

“And all muscle—don’t you forget it.” Though she tried to sound lighthearted,
she found herself twiddling her eyebrow ring between two fingers. She considered the canister, feeling torn between the threat of the unknown and the allure of the forbidden.

“Josee?”

“Huh?”

“You with me? You okay?”

“Yep.”

“You look like you’re off somewhere else.”

“Did I ever tell you about my grandfather? He died a few years after World War II, or so Kara told me on the phone. Never knew him, never even met the man.” Another page, Josee brooded, missing from her scrapbook. “She sent me his picture, thought I might be interested.”

“Yeah, you showed me, remember?”

“But I don’t even know what killed him. Isn’t that weird? I mean, I should know something like that, shouldn’t I?”

“Maybe it’s better you don’t.”

“Better?”

Scooter scratched at his bearded chin. “Sometimes the truth hurts, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Well, thank you. Why do men feel like they have to protect me, like I need their help? I think I can handle the truth. ‘The truth shall set you free,’ isn’t that what the Bible says? Heard that somewhere, way back when.”

“Wouldn’t know. Sorry. You ask me, it’s better to free your mind. Little somethin’ to take the edge off, if you hear what I’m sayin’. Less pain that way.”

“That’s it, just tune out altogether? That can’t be the answer.”

“Comes highly recommended.”

“Not gonna happen. I’d rather feel pain and at least know I’m alive. Aren’t you even a little curious about things? There are so many unknowns, things that just don’t add up. Maybe it’s a part of being adopted … looking for, I don’t know … identity.”

“Least you’ve got this link with your mom. Today’s the big day, right?” Josee rolled her neck. “One get-together’s not going to erase twenty-two years of separation. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

“Hey, don’t think like that. I know what this means to you. We didn’t
thumb it a coupla hundred miles to see you skip the big event. This is connection at a root level.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Good stuff, think about it. Kara’s your blood, your family. From what you’ve told me, she sounded nice enough on the phone. If she’s even a little bit like you, she’ll be good by me.”

“Now you’re getting sappy on me, Scoot.”

“What, who me? Must’ve been in a daze. Scratch every word. Lies, all lies.”

“That’s more like it.” She smiled and reached to squeeze his hand.

“Okay, Josee, so what about that?” He indicated the canister. “You got me curious. See any buttons or latches, see a way to open the thing up?”

“Nothing obvious.” She looked down to find the skull’s same chilling stare from last night. And what was that smell? Sweet but spicy, with a bite to it. “Maybe you were right,” she confided. “Maybe we should leave it alone.”

He brushed it with his hand. “C’mon, don’t leave me hangin’.”

“Forget it. Don’t mess with this thing, okay?”

“If you say so.”

“I mean it.”

“Sure, babe. Hands off.” Yet his fingers tarried, and Josee would’ve sworn that his moonstone ring surged with a pallid gray glow.

After generic cornflakes and powdered milk, Josee took hold of Scooter’s bike. “That little market’s just up the road, right? I’m gonna ride over and give my mother a call, make sure everything’s still a go.”

“Got change for the phone? I’m all out.”

“I’ll figure a way. It’s this feeling, I guess, like I need to see what’s going on.”

“Worried she’ll cancel, huh?”

“No.” Josee disengaged the kickstand. “Just wanna touch base.”

“You are worried.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Be careful, babe. Road’s narrow out there.”

The bike was a symphony of squeaks and sighs. Two days earlier Scooter had haggled for it at a local garage sale. Josee’s feet just touched the pedals, and by the time she reached the market, the sun was winking hello through trees thick as lush lashes. A scene worth drawing. She wiped the sweat from her chin and thought how good it was to be back in Oregon—her birthplace.

Inside the market, by a rattling ice machine, she saw a flier tacked to a corkboard. Some institute, the House of Ubelhaar, advertised art lessons and supplies as the pathway to fulfillment. Probably where Scooter got her case.

“Morning,” said the cashier, whose thighs hid the seat of her stool.

Josee mumbled a reply. So much for flirting with a guy clerk for a chance to use the phone. “Think I can make a call?” she asked. “It’s local.”

“Pay phone’s out front.” The woman’s eyes never left the television behind the register.

“Yep, I know, but see, I’m out of change. Not a dime on me.”

“Sorry. Store policy.”

She stared past the woman at rows of locked cigarette cartons. “It’s a Corvallis number, I promise. Please, I’m trying to get ahold of my mother.”

“I don’t make the rules.”

“And you won’t bend them, not even to help someone in need?”

“Geez, okay.” The cashier dragged a rotary phone into view. “I’ll have to do the talking for you, pass on a message or whatnot. Gimme the number.”

Sitting in a van parked among the pine trees off Ridge Road, Beau shivered. He swallowed a yawn, then wiggled his toes under the blanket wrapped around his legs. What was he doing here? His brain felt disconnected from his surroundings. Maybe that’s what the cold did to you—like hypothermia. During the night he’d run the engine a few times to get the heat flowing again, but Mr. Steele had warned him to keep the lights off. Not like anybody’d see him back here.