Tormented (4 page)

“But of course,” Anselmo said with a magnanimous nod, taking a few steps back from the tank. Cassidy slowly sat up, leaning against the metal backing, letting the water slosh as she did so. The tank needed to be drained anyway, so she started the automated sequence for cleaning and refilling it. She’d need someone else to add salt later, which was a task of its own. She had a design to automate it for the most part, but she lacked the fabrication facilities here to carry it beyond the design phase.

For now, though, she had other things to worry about. “What seems to be the problem, Anselmo?” She looked over at him, finally, her eyes open enough to admit light—and a full image of the scarred man in front of her.

Anselmo Serafini had been handsome once, a bronzed sculpture of a human being impeccably dressed in every photo Cassidy had ever seen of him, his dark, wavy hair sculpted with gel. Now he had no hair, and his once-smooth complexion was nothing but scar lines, a hideous cross-hatching of swirls and redness, unnatural bumps dotting the surface. “Have you seen what is happening on television?” Anselmo asked, voice low and raspy.

Cassidy did a little rasp of her own inadvertently, a small gulp as she waited for the inhaler to work. “You talking about the airport thing? I’ve seen it. Why?”

Anselmo’s eyes were dark, devious. Cassidy didn’t like the man, didn’t like anything about him. She’d read about what he’d done, the original complaints in Italy that had been all but ignored by the local police. She’d idly followed the trail of bribery, seen how much work Anselmo had done to buy himself out of trouble. He was probably the single biggest piece of pond scum she’d ever personally met, and every day that Eric was gone, she rued the fact that he’d brought Anselmo here on a whim. She was supposed to do the planning for them, and Anselmo …

Well, the man was just too unreliable to make plans around.

“This … man … this Benjamin Cunningham … could be of aid to us,” Anselmo said, raising his hands to gesture with. Her eyes followed his exposed forearm with a fascination bordering on horror. Nasty red swirls grew redder as he talked, as he moved. “Imagine someone capable of destroying—”

“We don’t need him,” Cassidy said, cutting him off. She’d been pursuing the information on Cunningham as more of an intellectual exercise, something fun to do while she waited for other plans to bear fruit, other wheels in motion to finish their spin.

“You are telling me that you cannot find something creative and fun to do with an exploding man?” Anselmo asked, cold menace in his voice. He didn’t like to be interrupted, but it especially seemed to annoy him when a woman did it. Needless to say, Cassidy did it as often as she could.

“What’d you have in mind?” Ma Clary asked, reminding the Italian that she was there. Cassidy could see in the surprised way that he turned his head that he’d already forgotten about her. He forgot about any woman that didn’t catch his eye, which suited Cassidy just fine. She ran a hand down her gown, wiping the excess water off her thin arms and into the draining tank.

“If I could get to him before they do,” Anselmo said, now speaking to both of them, “I could persuade him to join us. They will hunt him, attempt to put him into confinement, or simply kill him for being too dangerous—”

“He’s not just a danger to them—” Cassidy started.

“That seems like a good idea you’ve got there, Anselmo,” Ma said, talking right over her. Ma’s broad face was staring right at Anselmo, deep in thought. “Could always use a few more hands around here, after all.”

“Exactly,” Anselmo said, pointing a finger at her and smiling, his burned and cracked lips peeling back to expose perfect teeth and blackened gums. Cassidy suppressed a shudder. “I realize that part of our revenge is already well in motion, but … we are not all done yet, no? Reed Treston still requires dealing with. He will be in the thick of this … manhunt.” Anselmo’s face went darker. His facial expressions had been blunted by the burns. He was scowling, that much was obvious, but anything more subtle was beyond him.

“Well, you ought to get out there and start tracking this fire-man down, then,” Ma said, nodding her head slowly.

Anselmo raised what was once his eyebrow up slightly. “Me?”

“With Denise, Eric and Junior off on their own tasks right now,” Ma said, “that just leaves you, me and Cassidy.” She nodded at Cassidy, caught her eye, and Cassidy saw something there that prompted her to keep quiet about her feelings on this. “We can’t send her; she can’t leave her tank.”

“Ah, yes,” Anselmo said, nodding sagely, “she possesses a great weakness. Perhaps the time has come for the bird to leave the nest—”

“Anselmo,” Ma said, chiding, “you wouldn’t send a sickly girl to do a man’s job, would you?” Cassidy blinked. Anselmo was a prideful sort of prick, but surely he wasn’t
that
—

“Of course not,” Anselmo said, shaking his head furiously. “And this is a man’s job. This burning fellow must be talked to, man-to-man, so an understanding can be reached.” Cassidy kept her lips zipped, even though practically every word that fell out of Anselmo’s mouth offended her in some way. “I will leave immediately.”

“You can take the car out in the shed,” Ma said, nodding toward the back of the house. “It ain’t got air conditioning, but you won’t need that this time of year.” She turned her head to Cassidy. “You mind getting him some directions to Minnesota?”

Cassidy stared at her for a quarter second, which was practically an eternity for her, pondering all the while. “Sure—”

“I do not require directions,” Anselmo said, like some beautiful example pulled right out of a book of common stereotypes. “I can find my way.”

Ma was a hell of a tough read some times, but there was no mistaking the amusement buried under a layer of apparent sincerity. “Of course you can. Spare keys are on the ring by the door. Burner cell phone on the counter, so you can keep in touch.” She nodded toward the front of the house. “You need anything else? Cash for the road?”

“I have money,” Anselmo said, and he started to back up toward the kitchen. Cassidy felt like she was watching the retreat of a wounded animal and couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “I will go and find this man, this Benjamin Cunningham, and bring him into our fold. But first, I will take my revenge on Reed Treston.” Anselmo took a breath, loud, satisfying, and smiled his hideous smile. “If there are no objections?”

“We have a plan—” Cassidy started.

“Oh, you go right ahead, darlin’,” Ma said. She had a dish towel in her hand that was still damp. Cassidy could sense the wetness of it from across the room, could smell the scent of mildew within it, overwhelming her delicate senses. “He wronged you more than the rest of us, anyway. We’ll get our revenge on the girl here in the next few days, you go ahead and take care of the brother, and then maybe we’ll meet up in the middle on taking care of that gall-damned agency of theirs.”

“Yes,” Anselmo said, “there are good days ahead.” He nodded, like what he was saying made any kind of sense at all. “I will be back before you know it,” he said, “a victorious
man
,” and then disappeared through into the kitchen. Cassidy heard him take the cell phone from the counter and the keys from the ring near the front door, and then listened to the screen door slam shut as he left. She sat in silence with Ma Clary, both listening until they heard a car start out back, roughly, on the third try. It ran for a couple minutes and then drove off, receding into the distance. Cassidy waited a minute more before she felt comfortable speaking.

“Are you out of your mind?” Cassidy asked, focusing wholly on Ma Clary. “You just sent that idiot—that maniac—out there on a mission to recover the exploding man?” She shut her eyes tight, shaking her head. “How does that—in any way—get us closer to our goals?”

“I don’t really care whether this Reed Treston lives or dies,” Ma said casually, sauntering over to her. “We’ve got the missile locked on target with Sienna, and that’s all that matters to me; that she dies suffering and screaming.”

Cassidy flushed. “But what about what
I
want? Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to derive some serious satisfaction out of Sienna Nealon’s painful death, especially after what she did to Eric—” Sometimes Cassidy watched the YouTube video of that bitch manhandling her man, “—but there are other things in mind here. All we need is meathead wandering around out there, screwing things up for the rest of us—”

Ma Clary took the last few slow, measured steps over to Cassidy’s tank and dabbed at it with her damp towel. Cassidy blanched at the smell as she ran it along the wet, spotted edge of the tank opening. “Darlin’, let me tell you something about Anselmo Serafini that you already know … he’s a dog.” She pursed her lips and dabbed at the tank again.

Cassidy waited for more, but Ma seemed to lose herself in mopping up the water on the edge of the tank. “… And?”

Ma took a long, lazy breath and let it out without a care in the world. “When my boy Clyde first had his babies, I had a dog. Old thing, contentious little bastard. Just a mutt with a bad attitude. But I liked him all right, see, so I kept him around. He’d drive off the damned stray cats, and that was useful, so he earned his keep.

“But one day,” Ma said brightly, looking at Cassidy again, “that old dog took a snap at little Denise. She couldn’t have been more than four at the time, and the dog just …” She clapped her hands together, dragging the rag along and spattering Cassidy with some of the moldy, stinky water. “Just took a snap at her. Didn’t even get a tooth on her, but that was enough, you see?

“I dragged that dog out back,” Ma said, eyes far off, like she was remembering it all right now. Her lip curled at the side. “Right out to the wood pile. I grabbed that axe up from where Clyde had been splitting wood, and I—”

She clapped her hands together again, and this time water from the rag hit Cassidy right in the face. It was foul, the stench of it, and she fought the urge to gag. “Wha … why?”

“Because don’t nobody mess with my family,” Ma said, her brown eyes alive, mouth flat as if she’d just told a story about a loaf of bread she’d once baked. “Anselmo? He’s a dog. Nothing but. Sooner or later, like any dog that’s got it in his mind to do something, he’s gonna snap at someone he shouldn’t. I’ve already seen him eyeing you and Denise, and I don’t care for it.” Ma shrugged expansively. “If he drags back this fire-man, well, good for him. It’ll get him out of the house for a spell, maybe allow him to express some of that tension he keeps throwing our way.”

Ma put a hand on Cassidy’s shoulder, strong, knotted, leathery fingers squeezing her bare skin. It was sensory overload, too much sensation by half. “And if he get hisself killed? Well …” She clapped her hands together again, but this time the rag had already lost most of its liquid. “I ain’t going to shed any tears about it. Are you?” And Ma Clary smiled, a deeply unsettling look that showed off her teeth, which looked to Cassidy a hell of a lot sharper and more predatory than any dog she could imagine.

I cut my hand on a piece of exposed metal on the ferry’s railing, and it hurt. I didn’t even see it coming, just a rough section of the rail that I was running my hand along idly as I made my way back to my rental car. It did a number on my palm, too, opening a six-inch gash that started bleeding immediately, made all the worse by my failure to pull my hand away in time. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

As far as pain went, it was minor, but I started dripping right away. Bright scarlet drops came running down my forearm in a stream, falling off my elbow in crimson raindrops. “Son of a …” I muttered.

“Whoa,” Jake Terrance’s voice came from behind me. I looked back to see him there, eyebrows elevated, staring at my injury. “You gonna heal that?”

I paused, staring at him, and chewed my lower lip. “I … uhm … kinda … can’t … at the moment.”

Jake maintained that eye-raised look. “… Can’t? Admittedly I don’t know much about you or your, uh, powers … but don’t they work on command?”

I felt a pained expression spring onto my face that I couldn’t quite control. “Most of the time, yes. But … I’m on vacation, and my powers are tied to some … uhm … metahumans that I … uh—”

“Absorbed, right?” Jake asked. He ran a hand through his grey hair, and I caught a whiff of concern that seemed genuine. “During the war? You took in some villains?”

“Mostly villains, yeah,” I said, clenching my wounded hand tight to try and stop the blood drip. “Anyway, they, uhm …” I rolled my eyes. “They’ve kind of been arguing the last couple weeks. So I decided to shut them up for a little while … uh, chemically.” I flushed.

“You drugged … yourself?” He looked amused and perplexed all at once. He was amuseplexed. Permused. Something. “Drugged them?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I used to use this chemical called chloridamide to suppress them temporarily, and I take a shot every now and again if I need to quiet them.” I glanced at my rental car. “I took a big dose before I drove up.” I swept a hand over myself. “Hence the driving, not flying.” Flying was generally more soothing, but it wasn’t ideal for carrying a suitcase. Besides, the drive had been kind of leisurely and scenic and peaceful and stuff. Which I … needed. Or something. I’m still trying to convince myself.

“So … you’re not going to heal lickety-split?” He nodded at my hand.

“Without Wolfe it’ll take a few hours,” I said, trying to figure out where I could mop up the blood. I’d usually just wipe it on my clothes because … well, when you’ve ruined as many wardrobes as I have, you don’t get attached to your outerwear.

“Come on,” he said, after a moment of chewing it over, “my wife’s clinic is on the main street. I’ll take you to Sarah and she’ll get you patched up.”

I stole a look at my rental car. The horn on the ferry blew once, loudly, as we approached the dock, the sense of movement through the water slowing. I was tempted to blow him off, say I’d just deal with it myself, grab some paper towels from the local store and just be on about the business of locking myself away so I could start my solitude, but …

There was something really warm and inviting about his manner, about the way he asked, about his … genuine concern … that took me off guard. I don’t get genuine concern that much anymore. In fact, I was on a starvation diet of it lately—that, and the milk of human kindness, and what I got mostly came from Ariadne or Augustus Coleman, whenever he was actually around. Guy went home a lot. Which I couldn’t blame him for, because I’d go home a lot, too—if I had one with family in it instead of an empty house in south Minneapolis.