It took most of the day, till around nine p.m., for Wolfe and Shel to get everything set up for Juliet’s house. But the old lady was now resting at a resort hotel on Big Man Grimm’s dime, and chemicals were in—also at the expense of the Grimm family.

By the time Shel and Wolfe dropped her off, Juliet was singing Shel’s praises, and not actively upset with Wolfe.

Not bad, but it has been an exhausting day, and one that felt… pointless to the future I see for myself, Wolfe thought to himself. Except to keep Guinevere happy, which wasn’t the worst idea. Still… ‘Old lady rats problem solving’ wasn’t how I envisioned my remaining life going, especially now that I’m a deckbearer.

Shel was in the passenger seat as Wolfe drove back toward his house, watching him and fiddling with her beautiful strawberry-blonde hair, but not saying anything.

His phone rang, and Wolfe almost chucked it out the window. But he checked the number—it was Big Man Grimm.

He answered his phone with relief. “Yeah, Boss?”

Big Man Grimm’s voice was all business. “Come to club, please. I want to talk to you and I’m suspicious of who’s listening in on our conversations.”

Shel’s phone buzzed, and she answered it. Wolfe tuned her out.

“Of course. Any hints for me as to what we’re discussing?” Wolfe asked.

“My sons. I don’t want to say more. Just get over here.”

“I’ll be there,” Wolfe said, hanging up.

He started to turn the car, but as he did, Shel said, “We’ll be there right away. Send the address right now and stay hidden!”

Ah, shit.

“What’s happening?” Wolfe asked.

“Kevin’s in danger!” She said, staring at Wolfe. “We must save him. Please!”

“What’s happening, specifically?” Wolfe asked.

“The cobras decided that Kevin is too much of a fuck-up and threw him another beating. He ran and managed to escape. But he’s fairly busted up and hiding in a warehouse. They’re going to beat him to death as a warning to others!”

Wolfe almost said something that would probably have caused problems between him and Shel, but bit his lip. You want to help her.

“Where’s he at?” Wolfe asked.

Even as he asked, Shel’s phone gave a shorter buzz. She picked it up and poked at it, then faced it toward him. There were directions to an abandoned construction site in Cobra territory that Wolfe was familiar with. They used it the way the Grimm family used the warehouse, except that instead of sending people to the bottom of a river with a cinderblock tied to them, they filled in a small amount of concrete each time someone had to go away.

It was about ten minutes out, in the wrong direction. Gonna be late to see the big man.

“Fuck. Alright, let’s do this as fast as possible. If you’re brother causes problems, I’m gonna knock him out though, I swear to the gods.”

“I’ll make sure he’s good,” Shel said. “I promise.”

Wolfe doubted she was capable of that, but knew she’d try. He gunned his car anyway, turning and heading in another direction.

“Hey, Wolfe?” Shel asked, twirling her strawberry hair around her finger and biting her lip.

“Yeah, what’s up, girl?” Wolfe asked, half his attention on making sure no cops were around to arrest him for doing seventy in a residential.

“Can I ask what happened that got you a murder rap, when you were a child?” Shel asked, releasing her hair and tapping her fingers together in a steepled pattern.

Wolfe sighed. “With any luck you’ll be on a plane out of here in three hours. Why’s it matter?”

“You’ve… been a hero to me.”

Wolfe snorted.

Shel put her hand on his shoulder. “No, truly. You’ve always had my back since I met you. You’re the first person that ever did. I just wanna know about your origin story. Where you came from, why you are as you are. How you ended up… here… when you’re obviously amazing.”

Wolfe shook his head. Idiot nonsense. I’m hardly amazing, except at fucking a dude up. I’m damn good at that though. “Origin story? Like a freaking comic book?”.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Shel shrugged and took her hand back. “Please.”

Wolfe sighed. On the other hand, she was gonna be gone soon… so what harm did it do? “I killed my father.”

Shel gasped. “Why?”

“You said your father was physically abusive, right?” Wolfe asked.

Shel nodded. “Sometimes, yeah. He’s not… the worst, I guess… but he beats us a lot for very little, and he’s a drunk that wastes most of his money on booze. Was your dad like that?”

Wolfe was gripping the wheel and accelerating even harder. “Worse. He… he started to rape my younger sister when she was like eleven or twelve. I found out later, when I was fourteen and she was thirteen. The fucker had always beaten my mother, constantly, for the slightest thing. ‘To keep her in her place’ was his usual reason. He had a lot of really fucked up notions about being a man. But would fly off the handle for anything—because Mom backtalked, for a bad dinner, you name it. But the fucker had never hit us.”

“Never?” Shel asked.

“Well, not till later. When I confronted him and tried to stop him from raping Mel, I learned his forbearance wasn’t out of love or anything. The bastard beat me within an inch of my life.”

“I’m so sorry,” Shel said, her eyes watering. “Didn’t anyone do anything?”

Wolfe winced, remembering the week spent in the hospital afterwards. “At first he was taken to jail—for one night. After that, the investigation went away, all the corrupt cops said I was a liar, and various judges made rulings that kept everything out of court. Records were even falsified. The bastard was friends with everyone, including people in our current business. Lots of people in our business—he was a lawyer making near a million a year working for the three big crime families. I learned that that kind of pull can make problems go away—and that I was a problem. Saving two kids wasn’t worth upsetting my dad.”

Shel was just watching Wolfe as he drove and talked, saying nothing else. Wolfe wished he had left Cereboo out, but he didn’t want his companion card being seen by any deckbearers.

He kept talking as he drove through town, heading into worse and worse areas. “So, afterwards, I spent a lot of time working out and in fighting gyms. I learned one lesson the hard way—people don’t give a shit when you’re powerless. So I did my best to get power.”

“Violence?” She asked.

“All power comes down to violence, if you dig far enough,” Wolfe said.

“Hmm…” Shel offered.

Wolfe continued. “Dad, evil fucker that he was, stopped… hiding things from me after he beat me. Tried to teach me, about how to be a man, take what I wanted. He beat mom and Mel in front of me and wasn’t… shy… about his sexual abuse of either of them. He reveled in the fact we all witnessed it, knew it, and were helpless before him.”

Silent tears, of sympathy Wolfe supposed, started running down Shel’s face.

“But I wasn’t helpless,” Wolfe said, a savage satisfaction in his words. “One day, a year or so later, I felt ready. When he tried to take Mel into his room, I grabbed him. We ended up in a fight, but this time I won. But I won… too much. I killed him when I kicked him in the head after I had knocked the asshole to the ground. I’ll never forget it, the rapist fucker down, on his hands and knees, staring at me with hatred and still struggling to get to his feet. I wanted him to stay down, and he did.”

“I’m so, so sorry,” Shel said, reaching out and putting her hand on his shoulder again. “That must have been so hard.”

“Whatever,” Wolfe said, suddenly tired of the conversation. “It was over twenty years ago. I’ve moved on—and speaking of, we’re here.”

Wolfe pulled to the side, parking his car along the road front. The construction site was surrounded by a long chain-link fence, and a thin strip of browning grass just past that. The chain fence had been cut in multiple places ages ago, but none would let a car through, so Wolfe was forced to leave his car on the side of the road.

As he got out, the slight smell of industrial pollutant and trash hit him. A ton of garbage had collected against the fence—plastic bags, diapers, old newspapers even in this day and age, soda bottles, the works. Also, a few tents had been set up around one corner where the grass portion was larger, and a faint smell of human feces mixed into the general malaise of the neighborhood.

Wolfe was thankful the moon was still up, as every single streetlight appeared to be inoperable. Judging from the nearby one with its innards opened to the world, they were all probably broken from having their copper stripped to pay for drugs.

“We’ll need to be extra quiet since they’re homeless about. Might hear something and tell someone—Cobras or the police,” Wolfe said.

Shel nodded nervously and stared around into the dimly lit darkness.

Wolfe just pushed through a clear cut in the chain-link fence, holding it open so Shel could easily make her way past. “Where’s your brother, exactly?”

She brushed past him. “He said he was near two huge, half-finished towers.”

Wolfe glanced up, easily seeing what Shel had to be referring to. But they were huge, and the area “near” them was also huge, and filled with tons of boxes and pipes, small buildings, and other abandoned machinery. Joy.

“Let’s go,” Wolfe said, jogging in that direction. Shel started to jog after him. Wolfe kept his gaze moving between his feet, to avoid holes and trash, and his destination, not paying much attention to what she was doing.

They ran across a mostly empty yard and reached the edge of the mess of construction surrounding the two half-finished towers.

“Should be bring our companions out?” Shel huffed.

Wolfe almost said no, but he had to admit, the situation was liable to get very fucked very quickly, since the Cobras were chasing after Kevin.

But he still didn’t want people to know about Cereboo.

“Bring out Sorenia. I’ll hold off on Cereboo for now.”

Shel touched her chest, and Wolfe got the deckbearer pulling a deck notification. She touched Sorenia, and the Lantern angel appeared next to them. She was still an impressive sight—nearly six tall, with giant dove wings. She also had silver hair and blue eyes, and the old-fashioned ironmongery lantern chained to her wrist. The lantern lit up the area around them, which was both good and bad. Good because they would be able to look for Kevin more easily, bad because the Cobras would be attracted to them like a moth to flame. Or a porch lamp, really.

Sorenia glanced around. “You haven’t summoned me in almost two days, my deckbearer. Why?”

“Because of questions like that,” Wolfe huffed out.

Sorenia frowned. “Or perhaps because of bad influences like you.”

Just then, Wolfe got a second ‘deckbearer has pulled their deck’ notification.

“Ah, shit,” he said. “We’re going to have trouble. It’s never easy, is it?”

Shel was glancing around at the shadows around them in the construction site as if any might spring an enemy at any moment. “I, um, guess not.”