CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

At seven that evening, the rain drenched him and lightning lit black clouds. Thomas pulled his Shovelhead onto East 11th and headed west toward Jefferson Westside. He ignored the weather as his bike rumbled, competing with the storm. Red lights from the cars ahead flickered in the downpour. Even the lamps and traffic lights were dimmed. The city’s illusion washed away with the rain; dark square shapes of cement surrounded the asphalt with the people huddling inside or in the cars around him. The neon signs and happy posters couldn’t shine through this weather. Mother nature rolled down from the western mountains, but it could never fully cleanse man’s ambition. A car squealed ahead of him and horns blew. It would be a miserable ride.

He’d lost too much family over the past six months. I’m not losing Haddie. His last family had thought him dead, long ago. They’d moved on to grandchildren and great-grandchildren, second cousins and weddings. Then, six months ago, the funerals had started. All of those who died were related to his last identity. He didn’t — couldn’t — be part of that family. Haddie was different; their bond, no matter how strained it had become, had remained intact longer than most. She had become the only real familial connection in his life and the only one he’d attempted to retain after the centuries. Usually, he would’ve already moved on to a new life.

As a light turned green, he wove through a line of cars, letting the water bite into his face and pour in through his collar. Even the rain could not wash the fumes from the air. It tried, smelling alive and fresh one moment before the miasma rolled in around him. Eugene tried. The city had planted trees, and only a few of the buildings reached the multi-story height of most American cities. He rode past old wooden homes, preserved among two- and three-story growths that took up full city blocks with their parking. The greenery came as an afterthought, accentuating the buildings like tassels on a cloak.

Haddie had gotten herself into something more than mugging. She and the detective both knew it. Thomas had seen his share of corruption and street violence.

However, Haddie’s headstrong single-mindedness couldn’t be controlled. He’d tried. At seventeen she’d taken on the administration at her high school. The cafeteria had changed their procedure by separating the children, such as her, who paid for their lunch, from those who received assistance.

It seemed a small thing to him at the time, but she’d explained it differently. “They make Angela stand with everyone else who gets free meals. They have to merge in with us after we pay. Everyone knows. Before, most of us didn’t pay attention. People say mean things, won’t let them in until the cafeteria lady says something, or we push them ahead. It’s cruel, Dad.”

“Do they say why they made the change?” He’d been breaking down a carburetor for an ’84 Buell Warrior on his bench when she’d come bursting in from school. He’d had a full beard back then. A lot easier to take care of.

Haddie had raised her eyebrows as if incredulous. “They said it was to streamline the lunch line.”

He’d started to speak, but she’d cut him off. “It can’t, Dad. Everyone has to merge to get their trays and food anyway; we just stand there waiting. It’s like they’re on display. It’s just cruel.”

He hadn’t been surprised when two days later he’d gone into the garage office to find a message from a vice-principal complaining that his daughter had started a poster campaign and that a food strike had been organized for Friday. Evidently, fish filet day. Probably a good day to schedule it.

In the end, they’d capitulated. They’d caught Haddie red-handed taping up one of the proscribed posters and sent her home. Instead, she’d taken her sign making to the street in front of the school that afternoon.

She’d never been one to let things go. Haddie wouldn’t stop just because she’d been jumped in a park. Maybe for a day or two. Then she’d be back out.

And she wouldn’t be happy knowing that he’d gotten involved, especially right now when she didn’t know what to make of him. Like her though, he had a hard time letting go — when it came to family. A trait that did not serve his life well, considering the circumstances.

He’d traveled into the west end of Eugene where many of the old houses remained. Traffic had gotten worse, and the weather relentlessly pounded around him. A block of old concreted strip malls opened up on each side and the light for Chamber Street hung dimly in the deluge. The turn brought him north into houses that fared worse than most of the city.

He’d had little cause to go to this part of Eugene over the past two decades. Now, he pulled down a gloomy side street and crawled past, searching for numbers on mailboxes or doors. Avoiding a black mini-van, he turned around and came back to a yellow-beige house with dead grass and a gray ford sedan parked deep in the back by a white garage. A pitched-roof porch had straggly plants along its walk, as if lovingly cared for at one time but left to their own devices.

The driveway had remnants of asphalt giving way to mowed weeds, so he positioned his Shovelhead’s stand before testing it. Water dripped down his forehead as he took off his skull cap helmet. Blinds shifted in the window beside the porch; they’d noticed he’d arrived. He would have had to park down the street to surprise them, and it would be easier if they opened the door for him. He pulled his other gloves out of the pocket of his jacket and slipped them on as he climbed off his bike. Metal studs capped the knuckles.

Wincing from pain in the joints of his knees, he climbed the steps. The door opened and a small man with pale skin and a Scandinavian or Russian look to his nose and cheekbones stepped onto the porch. Neither of the men who had attacked Haddie. His right hand hung back at the hip of his jeans, likely resting on a gun in his back belt. He couldn’t have weighed more than one-hundred and fifty pounds.

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Cool light, like the blue-gray of a TV, bathed the room behind, lighting a couch facing the door and a littered coffee table. Shadows behind included a dark open doorway in the back to the left. The other occupants would be to one side or the other of the door, or in the back.

“You’re in the wrong place.” The accent was American. Second or third generation then.

Thomas came to the top of the steps, just free of the rain pounding overhead, and wiped the top of his head slowly as if to squeegee it dry. “Are you sure?” As his hand reached the tie of his braid, he whipped his fist around and clocked the man under the chin.

Barely one-fifty.

The body tumbled off the porch and landed into some bushes they were trying to kill anyway. The punch had been spot on; he’d be out for a while.

Behind the door is the best bet. Thomas stepped forward and slammed his boot heel into the partially open wooden door. A satisfying grunt preceded a gunshot. A small nine by the sound of it.

The door swung back to its midpoint, leaving some visibility. A bottle of Black Label nestled among empty cups and a wrinkled takeout bag.

Leaning inside and darting back out, Thomas checked for an attack from the other side. All he heard was a scramble from behind the door. He kicked a second time. No shot rang out, but a muffled cry came when the door stopped suddenly. Thomas kicked a third time and followed a moment later as the door swung wide.

The TV, wedged in the corner behind the door, had been muted, or they just watched in silence. The man, holding a bleeding nose, lay struggling to right himself from where he rested against the wall. Still not one of Haddie’s attackers. The gun lay under the short table that held a too large screen with a set of men pounding at each other unrealistically.

No one else seemed to be in the room, but they could have been hiding behind the couch. Heel first, he stepped down onto the man’s crotch, helping him sit up. Keeping an eye to his right where the back door and couch lay, he knelt down on the groaning man’s chest, shoving him back down, and stretched to reach the gun.

A dull glint of silver moved in the black rectangle of the back doorway.

Thomas reacted. Instincts had developed over the centuries. He grunted. A short, deep, guttural vocalization like any man might do. Embedded into it, surrounding and accompanying, was a higher note. It came from inside. Not a specific location, but as if his body rang like a bell.

Windows nearby cracked. His right hand flinched, as if directing the sound. It wasn’t necessary. Intent drove whatever force he wielded. Right now, he envisioned the gun held there and wanted it gone. He could survive a gunshot wound. An experience he’d survived many times. But, it would delay him from finding those who threatened Haddie. The pain of his abilities could be as debilitating, so he relied on them sparingly.

He knew, without seeing it, that the gun disappeared — spread out into some other place or time. His joints and skin seared with pain. His vision blurred for just a second, until the next heartbeat would bring fresh blood. Nerves screamed across his flesh and his mouth opened in a silent gasp.

A flash came from the black doorway, lighting a bearded man standing there. The bullet, fired at the moment Thomas called out, burned the man’s hands.

The nightmare images flashed in his mind, as they always did when he used his ability. An older, white-haired man disintegrating as he protected a teen-age girl in a sack-cloth tunic. Thomas shivered and pushed that and the other horrifying images to the back of his mind.

Grabbing the gun from under the table with his left hand, Thomas swung it precisely across the temple of the man under his knee. The body turned limp and relaxed, with its head braced against the wall.

Thomas didn’t pause as he pushed aching joints to launch himself toward the man in the back. He swapped the gun into his right hand with effort. His fingertips felt as though they’d been seared across flames. The pain would lessen. It always did. The hellish memories never went away. It had been decades since he’d last used his power; his joints never lost their pain, but the skin would clear up in a couple of days. His tongue tasted metallic.

The bearded man had been dazed from his burns, and only started to run as Thomas barreled toward him.

The doorway led into a dining room and a kitchen further in the back. The smell of spent gunpowder filled the air beside a small round table and two wooden chairs. Thomas had momentum when he slammed into the man running between a cluttered sink under a window and a white stove with a pot and pan stored on top.

The bearded man rebounded off a matching white refrigerator, and Thomas maneuvered him to the floor onto his back. Straddling his chest, he placed the muzzle under the man’s chin. “Louis Mattes.”

Thomas paused, listening to the noises around the house. There could still be others in the bedrooms or bath off the dining room. No noise. The neighbors might have called the police after the first shot. He had little time and his intended quarry didn’t seem to be there.

His silence unnerved the bearded man. “He’s not here.”

That had become obvious. “Where is he?”

“He moved south. Works for someone there. Never said.” The man’s hands had red streaming marks from the bullet blast.

“Who?”

“Never said.” The man’s tone pitched higher. Nothing in his voice indicated a lie.

Devil take me. Thomas growled. “Give me something or I will heat up that stove and finish off your hands.”

Those burns would be hurting enough that any thought of heat would make the man cringe. Thomas had wasted his time, and would be paying for using his power. Relying on any police force was next to useless unless they were motivated. He wasn’t about to lose Haddie.

“Anything.” He spoke through gritted teeth.

“Tommy Cho. He left with Tommy Cho. I haven’t seen them since. Used to hit up the Silver Dollar. Haven’t seen them there in three months.”

“Hell.” Thomas jumped up.

The kitchen ended at a pantry beside the back door. He moved across the dining room to the bedroom door. Nobody hid in there and it looked as though they barely slept there. One of the new nightmares flashed in his mind, a woman screaming as her arm slowly evaporated. Thomas shook the thought out of his head and took a breath in and out, trying to calm himself. The images brought on by using his power were worse than the pain.

He returned to the man on the kitchen floor who had started to roll over, using his wrists instead of hands. “Just stay still. I don’t want the neighbors to hear any more gunshots.”

The man flattened slowly, his face on the linoleum.

The back bedroom and bath were empty. Thomas pocketed the magazine and left the gun in the sink, heading for the side door. “The police are on their way. You might want to clean up.”

The trip had been a bust, and if Detective Cooper came out to investigate, he might just hear the story. Hopefully, the boys here would take the hint and be gone before that happened. His skin burned and his joints ached, but he’d made his choice. Biff had never seen him with the bruises, and Haddie wouldn’t remember. None of that mattered until Haddie was safe, and he had some bikers to visit in Southeast Eugene. There was always a chance they knew of these fellows.