Chapter 26

"Eat," he said. "Here." He reached for a clean napkin from the next table and handed it to her. She dried her eyes and wiped her nose and ate a spoonful of yogurt. "Drink," he said, and handed her the coffee. She drank.

"They brought those girls home last night. *Little* girls. Teenyboppers. Disappeared into their bedrooms. The noises they made."

"Drink," Alan said, and then handed her the napkin again.

"Drunk. They got them drunk and brought them home."

"You should get out of there," Andrew said, surprising himself. "Get out. Today, even. Go stay with your mom and find a new apartment next month."

She set her cup down carefully. "No," she said.

"I'm serious. It's a bad situation that you can't improve and the more you stay there, the worse it's going to get."

"That's not a practical suggestion."

"Staying there, in potential danger, is not practical. You need to get out. Staying there will only make things worse for you."

She clenched her jaw. "You know, there comes a point where you're not giving advice anymore. There comes a point where you're just moralizing, demonstrating your hypothetical superiority when it comes to doing the right thing. That's not very fucking helpful, you know. I'm holding my shit together right now, and rather than telling me that it's not enough, you could try to help me with the stuff I'm capable of."

Alan digested this. She'd said it loudly, and a few of the other morning patrons at the Greek's were staring at them. He looked away, across the street, and spied Billy standing in a doorway, watching. Billy met his eyes, then looked away.

"I'm sorry, Natalie," he said. "You're right."

She blew air out her nostrils.

"What about this. You can knock on my door any time. I'll make up the sofa for you." He thought of Mimi and cringed inwardly. She'd have to stay upstairs and be quiet if there were strangers in the house. Then he remembered his promise about her wings. He bit his lip.

She let out a harsh chuckle. "Will I be any safer there?"

"What does that mean?"

"You're the weirdest person I've ever met, Alvin. I mean, sorry, no offense, but why the hell would I knock on your door?"

She stood and turned on her barefoot heel and took herself away, walking at a brisk and gingerly pace.

Barry moseyed over and sat in her seat. "She'll be okay," he said. He picked up her spoon and began to finish her breakfast. "You know, I can't watch the way I could yesterday, not anymore. Too visible. What do I do now?"

Aaron shrugged. "Find a job. Be visible. Get a place to live. We can have each other over for dinner."

Brett said, "Maybe I could get a job where I got to watch. Security guard."

August nodded. He closed his eyes.

"She's very pretty," Barry said. "Prettier than Mimi."

"If you say so."

"Kurt's awake."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You could introduce me to him."

I did it for your own good, you know. She couldn't bring herself to say the words, for the enormity of what she'd done was overwhelming her. She'd found three of his friends and treated each of them to an evening of terror and hurt, and none of them would tell her where her brother was, none of them knew. Maybe they'd been innocent all along.

"Where are you?"

"Far from you," he said. In the background, she heard a girl crying.

#

"It's going to happen, we're going to cover the whole Market," Kurt said. He had the latest coverage map out and it looked like he was right. "Look at this." The overlapping rings of WiFi false-colored over the map were nearly total.

"Are those our own nodes, or just friendlies?" Alan asked, all his confusion and worry forgotten at the sight of the map.

"Those are our own," Kurt said. "Not so many friendlies." He tapped a key and showed a map of the city with a pitiful sprinkling of fellow travelers who'd opened up their networks and renamed them "ParasiteNet."

"You'll have more," Buddy said. Kurt looked a question at Alan.

"My brother Brent," he said. "Meet Kurt."

They shook.

"Your brother?"

Adam nodded.

"Not one of the missing ones?"

He shook his head. "A different one."

"It's nice to meet you." Kurt wiped off his palms. Adam looked around the little private nest at the back of the shop, at the small, meshed-in window on the back wall. Danny watched at that window sometimes.

"I'm gonna send a screengrab of this to Lyman, he'll bust a nut."

It made Anton smile. Lyman and Kurt were the unlikeliest of pals, but pals they were.

"You do that."

"Why aren't you wearing shoes?"

Anton smiled shyly. "No volunteers today?"

Kurt shrugged, a jingle of chains. "Nope. Slow day. Some days just are. Was thinking of seeing a movie or something. Wanna come?"

"I can't," Anton said.

"Sure," Brett said, oblivious to the fact that the invitation hadn't really been directed at him. "I'd like that."

"O-kaaay," Kurt said. "Great. Gimme an hour or so and meet me out front."

"It's a date."

#

He was half a block from home when he spotted Natalie sitting on her porch, staring at the park. Kurt and Link were gone. The patio at the Greek's was full. He was stood in his bare feet in the middle of Kensington Market on a busy shopping day, and he had absolutely nowhere to go. Nowhere he belonged.

He realized that Natalie had never put him in touch with her boss at Martian Signal.

Barefoot, there wasn't much of anywhere he could go. But he didn't want to be home with Mimi and he didn't want to walk past Natalie. Barefoot, he ended up in the alleyway behind Kurt's again, with nowhere else to go.

#

Blake and Kurt got back around suppertime, and by then Alan had counted every shingle on the roofs of the garages, had carefully snapped the sharps off of two syringes he found in some weeds, and then sat and waited until he was ready to scream.

Blake walked confidently into the shop, through Kurt's nest, and to the back door. He opened it and smiled at Adam. "Come on in," he said.

"Right," Alan said. "How was the movie?"

"It was fine," Kurt said.

"Incredible," Burt said. "I mean, *incredible*. God, I haven't been to the movies in ten years at least. So *loud*, Jesus, I've never heard anything like that."

"It was just A&E," Kurt said. "Asses and explosions."

Alan felt a wave of affection for his friend, and an indefinite sadness, a feeling that they were soon to be parted.

Kurt stretched and cracked his knuckles. "Getting time for me to go out diving."

"Let's go get some dinner, okay?" Andy said to Brad.

"G'night guys," Kurt said, locking the door behind them.

"I'm sorry," she said. There had been five minutes of near-silence on the line, only the girl crying in the background at his end. She wasn't sure if he'd set the phone down or if he was listening, but the "sorry" drew a small audible breath out of him.

"I'm really, really sorry," she said, and her hands felt sticky with blood. "God, I just wanted to *save you*."

#

Mimi was back in bed when they got home. Alan took a shower and scrubbed at his feet, then padded silently around the shuttered bedroom, dressing in the dark. Mimi made a sleepful noise.

"I'm making dinner," he said. "Want some?"

"Can you bring it up here?" she said.

"Yeah, sure," he said.

"I just can't face --" She waved a hand at the door, then let it flop back down to the bed.

"It's all right, babe," he said.

He and Brad ate dinner in silence in the kitchen, boiled hot dogs with cheese and sliced baby tomatoes from the garden and lemonade from scratch. Bradley ate seven. Mimi had three bites out of the one that he brought up to her room, and when he went up to collect her plate, she was asleep and had the covers wrapped snugly around her. He took a spare sheet and a blanket out of the linen closet and brought it downstairs and made up the living room sofa. In moments, he was sleeping.

This night, he was keenly aware of what had roused him from sleep. It was a scream, at the back of the house. A scared, drunken scream that was half a roar.

He was at the back door in a moment, still scrubbing at his eyes with his fists, and Bennett was there already.

He opened the door and hit the switch that turned on the garden lights, the back porch lights, the garage lights in the coach house. It was bright enough to dazzle him, but he'd squinted in anticipation.

So it only took him a moment to take in the tableau. There was Link, on the ground, splayed out and face down, wearing boxer shorts and nothing else, his face in a vegetable bed in the next door yard. There was Krishna, standing in the doorway, face grim, holding a hammer and advancing on Link.

He shouted, something wordless and alarmed, and Link rolled over and climbed up to his feet and lurched a few steps deeper into the postage-stamp-sized yard, limping badly. Krishna advanced two steps into the yard, hammer held casually at his waist.

Alan, barefoot, ran to the dividing fence and threw himself at it going up it like a cat, landing hard and painfully, feeling something small and important give in his ankle. Krishna nodded cordially at him, then hefted the hammer again.

Krishna took another step toward Alan and then Natalie, moving so fast that she was a blur, streaked out of the back door, leaping onto Krishna's back. She held there for a minute and he rocked on his heels, but then he swung the hammer back, the claws first.

It took her just above her left eye with a sound like an awl punching through leather and her cry was terrible. She let go and fell over backward, holding her face, screaming.

But it was enough time, enough distraction, and Alan had hold of Krishna's wrist. Remembering a time a long time ago, he pulled Krishna's hand to his face, heedless of the shining hammer, and bit down on the base of his thumb as hard as he could, until Krishna loosed the hammer with a shout. It grazed Alan's temple and then bounced off his collarbone on the way to the ground, and he was momentarily stunned.

And here was Link, gasping with each step, left leg useless, but hauling himself forward anyway, big brawny arms reaching for Krishna, pasting a hard punch on his cheek and then taking hold of his throat and bearing him down to the ground.

Alan looked around. Benny was still on his side of the fence. Mimi's face poked out from around the door. The sound of another hard punch made him look around as Link shook the ache out of his knuckles and made to lay another on Krishna's face. He had a forearm across his throat, and Krishna gasped for breath.

"Don't," Adam said. Link looked at him, lip stuck out in belligerence.

"Stop me," he said. "Try it. Fucker took a hammer to my *knee*."

Natalie went to him, her hand over her face. "Don't do it," she said. She put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll call the cops."

Krishna made a choking sound. Link eased up on him a little, and he drew a ragged breath. "Go ahead and call them," he rasped.

Alan took a slow step back. "Brian, can you bring me the phone, please?"

Link looked at his sister, blood streaming down her face, at Krishna's misshapen nose and mouth, distorted into a pink, meaty sneer. He clenched each fist in turn.

"No cops," he said.

Natalie spat. "Why the hell not?" She spat again. Blood was running into her eye, down her cheek, into her mouth.

"The girl, she's inside. Drunk. She's only 15."

Alan watched the brother and sister stare at one another. Blaine handed him the phone. He hit a speed dial.

"I need a taxi to Toronto Western Hospital at 22 Wales Avenue, at Augusta," he said. He hung up. "Go out front," he told Natalie. "Get a towel for your face on your way."

"Andrew --" she said.

"I'll call the cops," he said. "I'll tell them where to find you."

It was as she turned to go that Krishna made a lunge for the hammer. Billy was already kicking it out of the way, and Link, thrown from his chest, got up on one knee and punched him hard in the kidneys, and he went back down. Natalie was crying again.

"Go," Alan said, gently. "We'll be okay."

She went.

Link's chest heaved. "I think you need to go to the hospital too, Link," Alan said. The injured knee was already so swollen that it was visible, like a volleyball, beneath his baggy trousers.

"No," Link said. "I wait here."

"You don't want to be here when the cops arrive," Alan said.

Krishna, face down in the dirt, spat. "He's not going to call any cops," he said. "It's grown-up stuff, little boy. You should run along."

Absently, Link punched him in the back of the head. "Shut up," he said. He was breathing more normally now. He shifted and made a squeaking sound.

"I just heard the cab pull up," Alan said. "Brian can help you to the front door. You can keep your sister company, get your knee looked at."

"The girl --" he said.

"Yes. She'll be sober in the morning, and gone. I'll see to it," Adam said. "All right?"

Brian helped him to his feet and toward the door, and Andrew stood warily near Krishna.

"Get up," he said.

Mimi, in his doorway, across the fence, made a sound that was half a moan.

Krishna lay still for a moment, then slowly struggled to his knees and then his feet.

"Now what?" Krishna said, one hand pressed to his pulped cheek.

"I'm not calling the cops," he said.

"No," Krishna said.

"Remember what I told you about my brother? I *made him*. I'm stronger than him, Krishna. You picked the wrong Dracula to Renfield for. You are doomed. When you leave him, he will hunt you down. If you don't leave him, I'll get you. You made this situation."

Billy was back now, in the doorway, holding the hammer. He'd hand it to Adam if he asked for it. He could use it. After all, once you've killed your brother, why not kill his Renfield, too?

Krishna looked scared, a little scared. Andrew teased at how that felt and realized that it didn't feel like he'd thought it would. It didn't feel good.

"Go, Krishna," he said. "Get out of this house and get out of my sight and don't ever come back again. Stay away from my brother. You will never profit by your association with him. He is dead. The best he can do for you is make you dead, too. Go."

And Krishna went. Slowly. Painfully. He stood and hobbled toward the front door.

Mimi watched him go, and she smiled once he was gone.

Benny said, "Kurt's shop is on fire."

#

They ran, the two of them, up Augusta, leaving Mimi behind, wrapped in her blanket. They could smell the smoke as soon as they crossed Kensington, and they could see the flames licking out of the dark black clouds just a moment later.

The smell was terrible, a roiling chemical reek that burned the skin and the lungs and the eyes. All those electronics, crisping and curling and blackening.

"Is he in there?" Alan said.

"Yes," Barry said. "Trapped."

"Call the fire department," Andrew said, and ran for the door, fishing in his pocket for his keys. "Call 911."

He got the door open and left his keys in the lock, pulling his shirt up over his head. He managed a step into the building, two steps, and the heat beat him back.

He sucked up air and ran for it again.

The heat was incredible, searing. He snorted half a breath and felt the hair inside his nostrils scorch and curl and the burning was nearly intolerable. He dropped down on all fours and tried to peer under the smoke, tried to locate Kurt, but he couldn't find him.

Alan crawled to the back of the store, to Kurt's den, sure that his friend would have been back there, worn out from a night's dumpster diving. He took a false turn and found himself up against the refrigerator. The little piece of linoleum that denoted Kurt's kitchen was hot and soft under his hands, melting and scorching. He reoriented himself, spinning around slowly, and crawled again.

Tears were streaming freely down his face, and between them and the smoke, he could barely see. He drew closer to the shop's rear, nearly there, and then he was there, looking for Kurt.

He found him, leaned up against the emergency door at the back of the shop, fingers jammed into the sliver of a gap between the door's bottom and the ground. Alan tried the door's pushbar, but there was something blocking the door from the other side.

He tried slapping Kurt a couple times, but he would not be roused. His breath came in tiny puffs. Alan took his hand, then the other hand, and hoisted his head and neck and shoulders up onto his back and began to crawl for the front door, going as fast as he could in the blaze.

He got lost again, and the floor was hot enough to raise blisters. When he emerged with Kurt, he heard the sirens. He breathed hard in the night air.

As he watched, two fire trucks cleared the corner, going the wrong way down one-way Augusta, speeding toward him. He looked at Billy.

"What?"

"Is Kurt all right?"

"Sure, he's fine." He thought a moment. "The ambulance man will want to talk with him, he said. "And the TV people, soon.

"Let's get out of here," Brad said.

"All right," he said. "Now you're talking."

Though it was only three or four blocks back to Adam's place, it took the better part of half an hour, relying on the back alleys and the dark to cover his retreat, hoping that the ambulance drivers and firefighters wouldn't catch him here. Having to lug Kurt made him especially suspect, and he didn't have a single good explanation for being caught toting around an unconscious punk in the dead of night.

"Come on, Brent," Adam said. "Let's get home and put this one to bed and you and me have a nice chat."

"You don't want me to call an ambulance?"

Kurt startled at this and his head lolled back, one eye opened a crack.

"No," Alan said. "No ambulances. No cops. No firemen. Just me and him. I'll make him better," he said.

The smoke smell was terrible and pervaded everything, no matter which direction the wind blew from.

Adam was nearly home when he realized that his place and his lover and everything he cared about in the entire world were *also* on fire, which couldn't possibly be a coincidence.

#

The flames licked his porch and the hot air had blown out two of the windows on the second story. The flames were lapping at the outside of the building, crawling over the inside walls.

No coincidence.

Kurt coughed hard, his chest spasming against Alan's back. Alan set him down, as in a dream. As in a dream, he picked his way through the flames on his porch and reached for the doorknob. It burned his hand.

It was locked. His keys were in Kurt's door, all the way up Augusta.

"Around the back," Bentley called, headed for the fence gate. Alan vaulted the porch rail, crashing though the wild grasses and ornamental scrub. "Come on," Bentley said.

His hand throbbed with the burn. The back yard was still lit up like Christmas, all the lights ablaze, shining through the smoke, the ash of books swirling in it, buoyed aloft on hot currents, fragments of words chasing each other like clouds of gnats.

"Alan," Kurt croaked. Somehow, he'd followed them back into the yard. "Alan." He held out his hand, which glowed blue-white. Alan looked closer. It was his PDA, stubby wireless card poking out of it. "I'm online. Look."

Alan shook his head. "Not now." Mimi, somewhere up there was Mimi.

"Look," Kurt croaked. He coughed again and went down to his knees.

Arnos took the PDA in hand and peered at it. It was a familiar app, the traffic analysis app, the thing that monitored packet loss between the nodes. Lyman and Kurt had long since superimposed the logical network map over a physical map of the Market, using false-color overlays to show the degree to which the access points were well connected and firing on all cylinders.

The map was painted in green, packets flying unimpeded throughout the empty nighttime Market. And there, approaching him, moving through the alleys toward his garage, a blob of interference, a slow, bobbing something that was scattering radio waves as it made its way toward him. Even on a three-inch screen, he recognized that walk. Davey.

Not a coincidence, the fires.

"Mimi!" he called. The back window was blown out, crystal slivers of glass all around him on the back lawn. "*Mimi!*"

Billy was at his side, holding something. A knife. The knife. Serrated edge. Sharp. Cracked handle wound with knotted twine, but as he reached for it, it wasn't cracked. It was the under-the-pillow knife, the wings knife, Krishna's knife.

"You forgot this," he said, taking the PDA.

Then Davey was in the yard. He cocked his head and eyed the knife warily.

"Where'd you get that?" he said.

Adam shifted his grip for slashing, and took one step forward, stamping his foot down as he did it. Davey retreated a step, then took two steps forward.

"He set the fires," Bentley said. "She's as good as dead. Cooked. Won't be long now, she'll be cooked."

Darren looked at him for the first time. "Oh, yes," he said. "That's about right. I never found you, no matter how I looked. You don't get found if you don't want to."

Brent shook his head. "He set the fire, he used gasoline. Up the stairs, so it would spread up every floor quickly."

Aaron growled and lunged forward, slicing wildly, but Davey's scurry was surprising and fast and nimble.

"You're going to stab me again, cut me again? What do you suppose that will get you?"

"He's weaker than he was, then. We got six years, then. He's weaker. We'll get ten years. Twenty." Billy was hopping from foot to foot. "*Do it*."

Alan sliced and stabbed again, and the knife's point caught Danny's little bandy leg, like cutting through a loaf of stale bread, and Danny gasped and hopped back another step.

"He gave you the knife, didn't he? He gave you the knife last time. Last time, he took me to the school yard and showed me you and your girlfriend. He explained all about girlfriends to me and about what it would mean once our secret was out. He taught me the words, taught me to say *pervert*. Remember, Billy? Remember how you taught me?"

Andrew hesitated.

"He taught me the ritual with your thumbtip, how to make the little you, and then he took it away from me for safekeeping. He kept it in one of his rabbit cages, around on the other side of the mountain. It's not there now. Have you seen it? Does he still have it?

"He never liked having a little brother, not me or the others, but he liked having that little thing around to torture."

Billy hissed. "She'll be dead in minutes," he said. "In seconds. Another one dead. His doing!

"Killed her, cut her up, buried her," Benny chanted. "Sliced her open and cut her up," he shrilled.

Alan let the knife fall from his hands. Benny leapt for Danny, hands outstretched. Danny braced for the impact, rolled with him, and came up on top of him, small hands in Benny's eyes, grinding.

There were sirens out front now, lots of sirens.

A distant crash, and a rain of glass fell about his shoulders. He turned and looked up, looked up into the dormer window of his attic, four stories up. Mimi's head poked out from the window, wreathed in smoke, her face smudged and eyes screwed up.

"Mimi!" he cried.

She climbed unsteadily onto the windowsill, perched there for a moment. Then she leaned forward, ducked her head, and slipped into the sky.

Her magnificent wings unfolded in the smoke, in the hot ash, in the smoldering remains of all of Alan's life in human society. Her magnificent wings unfolded and caught the air with a sound he heard and with a downdraft of warm air that blew his hair off his forehead like a lover's hand, smoky smell and spicy smell.

She flew.

The sirens grew louder and she swooped over the yard. She gave two powerful beats of her wings and rose higher than the roof, then she circled the yard in great loops, coming lower and lower with each pass. Davey and Benny watched her. Kurt watched her.

Alan watched her. She was coming straight for him. He held out his arms and she fell into them, enfolding them both in her wings, her great and glorious wings.