Power Mage 3 Page 12

  “Much obliged for the offer, sir,” Brawley said, “but I reckon we’ll be moving on down the road. I got unfinished business to see to.”

  “Gathering more wives?”

  Brawley nodded. “I’m fixing to open all seven strands. But there’s more to it than that.” Briefly, he told Braxton about the gifts his parents had left him and how he’d learned the location of the two missing items. “As soon as we get the RV back, we’re hitting the road.”

  Now it was Braxton’s turn to nod. His dark eyes stared out at the green wall of vegetation beyond the fence, the muscles in his jaw bunched up like a fist. “You want to leave your wives with us? It’d be safer for them.”

  “Thank you, sir, but no,” Brawley said. “We look out for each other. Besides, I don’t put a lot of faith in hiding out. Seems like a good way to let the other guy make the first move. Once I crack all my strands and figure shit out, I’m going on the offensive.”

  Braxton laughed bitterly. “I can see why Remi likes you, son. You’ve got grit. But if you change your mind, you and your women are always welcome to ride with us. That’s an open invitation, no expiration.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Braxton grinned. “You going to shoot those bottles or are you hoping a strong wind will come along and knock them over for you?”

  Brawley left his pistol holstered. “Actually, I gotta try something.”

  Telekinetic blasts were awesome, but he needed to work on his flexibility and speed. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how to do what he wanted to do with the energy crackling in his arm.

  Dipping into his head, Brawley pulled a short length of sparking red force and used his mind to break this into several glowing fragments. He willed these in conical slugs of crackling energy and lined them up on the firmament of his mind like cartridges on a countertop.

  The whole affair had taken around ten seconds, an eternity in combat terms. Oh well. If this worked, he’d focus on speeding up the process. Nina would help.

  But first, he had to see if it would even work.

  Braxton watched in silence, eyes glittering, interested to see what a power mage could do.

  With the telekinetic ammo buzzing in his skull, Brawley eyed a Corona bottle and imagined releasing one and only one round. There was a little shutter-click sensation in his forehead, and the bottle shattered, taken dead center by a single shot.

  He shifted his eyes to the next bottle and pulled the mental trigger again.

  The bottle exploded.

  His eyes flicked and fired, flicked and fired, flicked and fired, moving down the row until he’d plinked all the bottles.

  Six bottles, seven shots. He’d hit the Jim Beam bottle high, smashing only the neck, and finished the base with a second round.

  “Not bad,” Braxton said. “A little slow.”

  “For now,” Brawley said. “This was my first time. I’ll get faster.”

  He was happy with the results. Telekinetic blasts burned a ton of force. Using smaller rounds would carry him through a long firefight.

  Day faded toward dusk.

  Braxton blasted away with his big revolvers, pointing out the drawback to Brawley’s Unbound projectiles. They were silent and therefore lacked the terrifying wallop of a firearm. “That sound’s a weapon all to itself, especially at the start of a firefight.”

  Brawley agreed, sort of, but pointed out the flip side. The sound of gunshots, like the barking of dogs, brought others to the fight.

  When it was his turn to shoot, he went back and forth between the XDS and his telekinetic rounds. He didn’t miss again, and by the time they quit plinking, he’d cut the load time to a few seconds and could fire the rounds as fast as he could fire the pistol.

  Not bad. Not bad at all.

  As the sun melted into the horizon, they burned the last of the ammo and drank the last of the beer.

  Braxton slapped him on the back. “Let’s go drink.”

  “Sounds good, sir.”

  Brawley turned toward the lake. At the far end, silhouettes danced around a bonfire of cleared brush, cavorting like wild savages.

  They started walking in that direction.

  “Remi tell you about her sister?” Braxton asked.

  “Some.”

  “Tell you Winnie’s locked up?”

  Brawley nodded. “She’s pretty torn up about it.”

  “We all are,” Braxton said, “but Remi got it into her head that it’s her fault, and that’s bullshit.”

  Brawley nodded again.

  “The FPI has my baby girl locked up in that fucking Chop Shop,” Braxton said, his voice suddenly thick with emotion, “and here I am, partying like a rock star.”

  “I reckon if there was a way to rescue Winnie, you would’ve done it a long time ago.”

  “You got that right, son. Couple of guys who ride with us spent time in there. The facility’s in the Smoky Mountains. And I mean in them. Deep underground. Maximum security, state of the art. And to make matters worse, the Order keeps an eye, making sure nobody tries anything.”

  They walked in silence for a few strides.

  “But Miami crippled the FPI,” Braxton said, “and they’ll be hunting you with all they’ve got. The Chop Shop will be running on a skeleton crew.”

  Brawley looked at him. “You gonna try to bust her out?”

  Braxton nodded. “I’d rather die trying to save my girl than keep on living knowing that her heart’s breaking fresh every day, wondering why her daddy hasn’t come for her.”

  “Well, don’t go rushing into a suicide mission. You got another daughter out in the world.”

  That seemed to rankle Braxton. “You think I don’t know that, son? You think an hour of any day passes without me worrying about Remi?”

  “Sir,” Brawley said, “you give me a little time to crack these strands and figure out what the hell I’m doing, and I’ll ride with you.”

  Braxton smiled. A veil of emotional fatigue clouded his hard, vibrant features. “I appreciate the offer, son, but this is a father’s errand.”

  “A family errand,” Brawley said. “I’m in.”

  Braxton shook his head. “You take care of Remi. Make me some grandkids. And in the meantime, you’ll be doing your part by drawing off heat and manpower.”

  “I’ll keep stirring the pot,” Brawley said, “but if you think Remi will let you hit the Chop Shop without her, you don’t know your daughter so well.”

  Braxton laughed. “You have a point. That girl’s a hammerhead just like her mother. So don’t tell her.”

  “No can do, sir,” Brawley said. “I keep no secrets from my wives.”

  “Shit,” Braxton said, and spit into the lake. “You’re a piece of work, son. I can’t help but like you. But you’re going to be a pain in my ass with your sirs and ma’ams and all that cowboy code bullshit.

  “You want a happy life, you’d better learn to hold your tongue, because women aren’t like us. They latch onto something, they don’t let go of it until it’s dead or all dressed up in feathers, whatever they’re aiming for, timing be damned.”

  “I appreciate the advice.”

  “But you won’t take it.”

  “No sir, I reckon kindly I probably won’t.”

  Braxton shook his head. “Whatever happened to opposites attract? You’re even more stubborn than my daughter.”

  Brawley grinned. “I don’t know if that’s possible, sir.”

  “You got a point,” Braxton said. “Trouble is, you’re both still wet behind the ears. How old are you, son?”

  “Twenty-three,” Brawley said.

  “Twenty-three,” Braxton said. “I’m one hundred and forty-one years old, kid.”

  “Well, then you should know better than to go attacking a place like a Chop Shop just because your daughter’s in there. You won’t do her or Remi any good if you’re dead.”

  For a few silent seconds, the words hung in the air between them like the echo of a slap.


  Braxton stared through him. When the man spoke again, his eyes remained out of focus, as if he was staring into the past… or perhaps into a timeless abyss where one might rearrange the pieces of his life into a more favorable position.

  “Never have daughters, Brawley. Everybody says girls wrap their daddies around their little fingers, but that’s not the half of it. A son will butt heads with his father until the day he’s a man and maybe even until he has sons of his own and starts to realize what a jackass he’s been. It’s just the way we’re made.

  “But girls are sweet. So sweet. Sweetest thing in the whole damned world, a daughter. There is no close second. Even in the middle of a screaming fight, all a daughter has to do is hug you, and all is forgiven. That makes a man vulnerable.

  “A daughter will rip out your heart and eat it right in front of you, and all you’ll be able to do is tell her to chew slowly so she doesn’t choke. There is no limit to the love a man feels for his daughter, and every girl is born knowing that. There is nothing a man won’t do, nothing he won’t suffer, no one he won’t kill, for his daughter.”

  For an awkward moment, Brawley thought the hard-as-nails King of the Scars might break into tears.

  But the Carnal merely cleared his throat and turned toward Brawley, and suddenly, his eyes were Remi’s eyes: hard and dark and fierce.

  “Remi and Winnie know all this,” Braxton said. “They’ve known it every hour of every day since the FPI took my baby away from me. And yet I have not rescued Winnie.” He took Brawley by the arms, and his boxy hands were like vises. “Do you know how that feels, knowing your girl is suffering in a cage, wondering why her father has forsaken her? Knowing that her sister, who always thought you were the toughest guy in the whole world, is wondering the same thing?”

  “No, sir, I can’t imagine.”

  “I’ll wait for you if I can, son,” Braxton said. “But hurry. Hell isn’t being hurt by others. Hell is having to stand by while others hurt the people you love… and knowing those loved ones think you have forsaken them.”

  Up ahead, the party raged. There was a lot of noise. Shouting and laughter, music and the roar of engines, an occasional gunshot. The flames of the huge bonfire glimmered upon the oily blackness of the lake’s surface.

  “Oh,” Braxton said as they drew near, “heads-up. Ramrod will try to start a fight with you later.”

  “Who’s Ramrod?”

  “My sergeant-at-arms.”

  “Big, mean-looking son of a bitch with a bunch of bullet scars on his belly?”

  “That’s him,” Braxton said. “Don’t take it personally. It’s his job. Somebody new shows up, he’s supposed to test them. But he won’t force it. Just let him talk his shit and wave him off.”

  Brawley nodded. “We’ll see. No promises.”

  12

  Tammy cracked the kids’ door just wide enough that she could work by the sliver of light that fell through the gap. Then she tiptoed inside and gritted her teeth, growling quietly when she stepped on something hard.

  Standing on one leg, she squeezed her foot, staring down at the offending object.

  One of Ty’s toys, of course. A cowboy complete with not only one but two six-shooters. The boy not quite seven years old and already obsessed with guns.

  How many times do I have to tell him to pick up his toys? she thought, trying to squeeze the pain from her arch. By seven, he should be mature enough to keep his stuff picked up.

  But in all fairness, she thought, by twenty-seven, I should be smart enough to wear shoes walking into a dark room likely littered with toys.

  She glared down at the cowboy. To make matters worse, the plastic gunslinger reminded her of Nina’s boyfriend, Brawley. And that son of bitch was definitely on her shit list now.

  The news out of Miami was terrifying. She just hoped Nina was okay.

  At least the crazy bastard had been good to his word. She’d received the money order that afternoon. She appreciated the extra cash, too. But Brawley was still on her shit list. She’d skin him alive if Nina was hurt.

  Hurt… or worse.

  But she wouldn’t allow herself to think along those lines. She just wished she hadn’t shielded her friend’s mind. Then she could check in on her.

  Ty breathed softly from the top bunk, out like a light. The boy was just like his father. A hard charger, he never wanted to go to bed. Then as soon as his head hit the pillow, he was out like a poleaxed calf. Whatever he did, the boy went all in, whether it sleeping, eating, badgering his little sister, spreading sharp-ass toys all over the carpet, or chasing Luna around the yard.

  Speaking of Luna, the little bichon frise was barking up a storm outside. Probably hollering at those assholes across the way. Whatever the case, if Luna woke the kids, Tammy would skin her alive.

  Tammy fetched a diaper from the top of the dresser and crouched down by the lower bunk where little Hannah lay diagonally atop the covers. Her tiny little toes poked from the bottom of her princess nightgown, pink and pudgy and perfect in the shaft of light from the hall.

  Tammy straightened her little girl atop the bed. Hannah stirred drowsily. Unlike Ty, who slept like the dead and woke like a live wire, three-year-old Hannah was a light sleeper but a slow waker. Her nights were patchy, her mornings blurry. In that way and many others, Hannah favored her mother.

  One thing Hannah had inherited from Charley, however, was her temperature. The little girl was a furnace. Even with the AC on—and since getting cash from Brawley, Tammy had left it on all night—little Hannah had thrown off her covers and her strawberry blond bangs were dark with sweat and plastered to her hot little forehead.

  Hannah’s eyes opened, blinking groggily. “Mommy?”

  “It’s me, Peanut,” Tammy whispered, caressing her daughter’s cheek. “Shh now. Mommy just wanted to give you a kiss.”

  Hannah smiled faintly, her eyes drowsing shut again. “Love you, Mommy.”

  And wham—just like that, Tammy’s heart melted.

  Raising two kids alone was tough. She missed Charley so much. Missed his big, booming voice, his easy laughter, and his calloused hands. Missed the feel of those hard hands on her body and the sight of them, holding coffee or beer or little Hannah, who had looked so damn small in those big hands of his, the baby just fourteen months when her daddy died.

  Tammy wiped at her eyes. Here we go with the waterworks again, she thought. It’s been two damn years. Shouldn’t they have dried up by now?

  But she knew they hadn’t and doubted they ever would. Not completely.

  Nor would she want them to.

  Because that would mean something. A letting go, a moving beyond. Whatever you called it, a cessation of tears would mean forgetting to a degree the man she had loved and still loved and would always love, and she hoped to hell that never happened.

  You’re a mess, she told herself. A grade-A mess.

  But she was doing her best. And even though raising Ty and Hannah alone was tough and scary, she was grateful to be doing so. Fiercely grateful.

  Tammy was exhausted all the time and wracked by worries, mostly to do with money and this shitty neighborhood. Ty was a bull in a China shop most of the time, and Hannah was already proving that the terrible twos are a myth. The damned threes, on the other hand, will kill you.

  But oh, she loved them. Loved them with the fire of a thousand suns. Loved them more than she could ever have imagined loving anything.

  And one slurred “Love you, Mommy” from her little girl filled Tammy with joy and gratitude and wiped away all the bad, the loneliness, the exhaustion, even Ty’s refusal to pick up his stupid toys and Hannah’s terrible three tantrums. All of it gone with a single whispered profession of love.

  Well, almost all the bad stuff.

  Worry remained.

  Because that was the price of love.

  She removed Hannah’s heavy diaper, balled it up, sealed it, and spread a new diaper beneath her daughter’s little butt.

>   Hannah shifted, murmuring softly, half-awake, half-asleep.

  Tammy positioned the diaper and fastened it, thinking for the hundredth time that she had to look into nighttime diapers. Lucy said they worked a lot better.

  But then again, Lucy’s husband was alive and gainfully employed.

  Nighttime diapers, amazing or otherwise, were expensive, especially because you couldn’t borrow your parents’ Costco card and buy them in bulk, the way she could regular diapers.

  Of course, if it saved a diaper per night, that would stretch them out, saving money. Enough to make up the difference?

  Her brain refused to grab hold of the math. Again. And again, she wondered if the whole world was run by some secret corporation that banked on tired moms not having the energy to sort out the cost differences between diapers.

  No, she thought. That would be too mundane. Too benign.

  The world wasn’t run by anyone. It was a battleground. Order and chaos waging their never-ending war. Neither would win, of course. Neither could. Order was a sandcastle at high tide, and chaos was nothing, literally nothing, without some constant against which to churn. In fact, total chaos would be nothing more than order.

  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

  Both of them.

  And that’s why you’re not a philosopher, Tammy thought.

  She kissed her babies goodnight, tiptoed from the room, and shut the door.

  The damned dog was still barking. It was much louder here in the hall.

  She’d call Luna and just sit for a while. Take it easy. Maybe go through the old magazines her mother had given her. People, Guideposts, Reader’s Digest. Sure, staying up would cut into her sleep, but sometimes your conscious mind needed a break, too.

  It was tempting, now that she had a wad of cash, to subscribe to cable again. Sit back, watch something mindless like The Bachelorette or House Hunters or Married at First Sight. Lose herself in someone else’s mild drama.

  But she wouldn’t. Because “wad” was a bit of a stretch.

  She’d blown half of it catching up on rent and bills, then lost her mind and racked up a two-hundred-dollar bill at the grocery store.