Out of the Black - Lee Doty [126]
"You said 'thought'. What changed your mind?" Rae asked, voice thick. She seemed grateful for the conversation's distraction.
"I had this family... they came to the clinic I was interning at while I finished my dissertation. They'd been having trouble: abuse, drugs- the whole enchilada. I got assigned to them from the pool because I'd requested the tough ones. I was going to write my dissertation about motivating dead-enders to try, about the benefits of keeping the family together at all costs." The words were just tumbling out now.
"You're not kidding." Rae realized. "You know, I think you'd be good at it, come to think of it..."
"You'd be wrong." Ping winced, swallowing hard. "The father was an insurance exec, the mother was the substance abuser, the child abuser; emotional and physical. The daughter was eight, but she had this look- like she was ancient- wise like the Buddha. She had a quick draw sense of humor, but the smile was a lot slower out of the holster. It was worth it when you saw it, though.
"The daughter?" Rae said.
Ear to ear. Dead eyes accusing. She was before him now whenever he blinked. His hand closed around the sword. "Yeah." His voice caught. "Yeah, the daughter. We were making real progress I thought. They had all committed to see the process through. They were happy the last time I saw them... going for ice cream after they left. I had this warm feeling inside- I was doing something valuable." He was speeding up now... he could hear the commotion at the end of the hall.
"Nobody knows what went wrong. On the night before our next session, they found the husband shot in the bathroom, the daughter they found in the kitchen, throat cut ear to ear. The mother ate the gun in the garage; her bag was on the passenger seat all packed for her big getaway trip... guess she changed her mind."
The business end of the collapsed sword pressed against Alex's chest. Running footsteps outside; Rae turned around. Her eyes went first to the door, fear and misery in her expression. But then she noticed Ping and Alex. She saw the sword. Her hand went out toward them, imploring. "NO!" She screamed.
"It was my fault." Ping pressed the activating stud; the blade rang out through blood, bone, and mattress, finally burying its tip in the floor below..
***
"Look at this dad!" Roy shouted, prodding the corpse with the end of his blade.
"Just a sec." Ivo said as the corpse of the last Savant from Asado's little hit team disintegrated in the lattice of his Cast. Attempted murder is always a drag, especially when it's your murder that's attempted, but cleaning up afterward was always a distasteful task.
Ivo took a few more seconds to touch up the hasty mend he'd put on his broken femur then hobbled over to where Roy was standing. The battle had been much tougher than he'd expected. Some kind of chaosing energy had actually pushed him out of the Loom in the middle of the battle. It was like nothing he'd seen before. If it wasn't for Roy, he'd have been killed right then.
"Am I not cleaning these fast enough for you master Peter?"
"Roy, Dad... It's Roy, comprende?"
You'd think he'd pick 'Ace' or 'Spike' if he was going to pick his own name. But what could Ivo expect from someone who loved circus peanuts so much?
"Sorry Peter," Ivo smiled, "I'm sure I'll remember next time. What've you got?"
"Look at this..." Roy drove his blade through the chest of the dead creature. Sparks leapt from the wound, crept along the length of the blade. "Someone's forged these things... it's in their flesh."
Ivo looked at the chaotic energy bleeding out of the wound for a long time. It was a struggle for him even to maintain his view into the Underworld this near to the body's chaos. Was this Asado's secret weapon- some new kind