GHOSTS could be quite comfortable in a place like the armory, full of cubbyholes and closets, corridors and large, echoing chambers. Sonny found a few of his own ghosts: shades of youth, hours of work, moments stolen for trickster substances and dark, secret sex. Discovery. Not of what he was—queer, artist, vulnerable—but of what he might make of those materials. Most of the Sonny Bly James that had come of it, he liked. Some things he’d do differently. Some things he’d change now if he could.
Like Delsyn. He’d take better care of the boy if he could go back. He wouldn’t let him run wild. He wouldn’t let him take chances with his life. He wouldn’t have to worry and wonder if this time he’d come back in time, or never again.
He stepped through the corridors almost blindly, remembering his days at Western, the university that technically owned the building. Remembering the way he’d neglected his young cousin while he spent time there at the armory. With every step, he fell deeper into that past,
seeing everything in the old, oddly-used ruin not as it was, but as it once had been, until Luki gripped his shoulder and turned him around to face him.
“Slow down,” Luki whispered, so quiet the sound fell away before it reached Sonny’s ears. “And stay behind me!”
Feeling guilty, Sonny nodded and let Luki pass. His ghosts vanished as he marshaled his attention to the here and now, treading carefully, feet—even breath—as close to silent as he could make them.
A flash of movement behind a half-lit, half-glassed door. Luki put his hand out to hold him back, stepped toward the door, gun in hand, and pushed it open. The man fled, but not before Sonny, closer behind Luki than he should have been, got a good look.
“That’s him,” he said. “That’s the guy who stabbed me.”
*
Luki registered Sonny’s meaning before he finished speaking. In motion immediately, he laid a forearm across Sonny’s chest, stopping him before he could step out, then flying after his target, relaxing his body, freeing his muscles to move without hindrance. Without ever increasing the tension, he reached his target and kicked, striking behind the knee.
The man—no, another kid, maybe as old as Josh—went down and rolled over, putting an arm over his face as if fearing a blow.
“Mr. K? Are you Mr. K? I’m sorry I ran. I got scared. Please!”
“Damn,” Luki said. And wanted another cigarette. “What’s your name?”
“BJ. I’m BJ, like I told you before. That’s what everybody calls me, I mean. Please, I did what you asked. I did the best I could. I—”
“BJ, just shut up for a minute.” He locked the safety on his gun and holstered it, looked at Sonny, who was staring at him and looking a little out of his comfort zone. “What are you looking at?” he asked, which drew a little smile from Sonny but apparently confused BJ.
“I’m not, I mean, please, Mr. K—”
“Not you, BJ! And stop calling me that. I’m not Mr. K. Now stop talking until I ask you to start.”
“Okay, Mr.— “
“What did I just say?”
BJ got the message and made a lip-zipping motion, which made Luki want to laugh. He didn’t, of course. He gentled his voice a bit. Here he was again with a kid who wasn’t likely to be the real bad guy.
“Is there anyone else here, kid?”
“No! I did like you said, Mr.— “
“I’m not Mr. K!”
“I came by myself!” A shred of a sarcastic adolescent attitude peaked through, and he added, “Whoever you are.”
“Whoever I am, I’m probably not as sleazy as Mr. K,” Luki said, “but I could probably be scarier. Information, BJ. For now, that’s what I want from you. First, are you still expecting this Mr. K?”
“I don’t… I don’t think so. I got here late. I think maybe he was already here and left.”
“Lyin’ little shit,” Sonny said, his voice not at all patient or kind.
It wasn’t hard to understand why Sonny might be less than happy with the boy, but Luki was pretty sure a modified game of “good cop, bad cop” wouldn’t get them what they wanted. He gave Sonny a glare.
When BJ started to edge away toward the door they’d just come in, Luki kept his glare on Sonny while pulling his pistol smoothly, slipping the safety, and pointing it unwaveringly straight at BJ. “We’re not done, BJ.”
The boy went still, but Luki’s glare seemed to have no intimidating effect on Sonny at all. He began to wonder if he should have played it the other way—gun on Sonny, glare at BJ. Too late now. “Sonny, perhaps—”
“Don’t bother, old man. I get the message. But I won’t be listening to you comfort that junky scum.”
“Sonny, stay close,” Luki said, but the door had already closed behind him. Luki turned his attention back to the “junky scum.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Think what?”
“Why,” Luki said, the strain on his patience about to surpass what it could handle without a cigarette, “do you think he was already here and left?”
“Because,” BJ whispered, wide eyes shining in the dying light.
“Because of what I saw in that other room.”
Luki had it on the tip of his tongue to ask what he saw, but he thought twice. Whatever it was, it had the kid so frightened he could barely speak of it. And when he spoke of it, he gestured with his chin toward the door Sonny had just gone through. Luki holstered his gun and in a fluid motion reached behind him and snapped a pair of nylon cuffs from their concealment on the inside of his belt; without even hesitating, he gathered the kid’s arms and slapped the bindings on.
“I’m under arrest?”
“I’m not a cop,” Luki said as he pulled the struggling boy toward the door. “But listen to this: if you can’t be still with those cuffs on, I can hitch your hands to your ankles behind your back and string you from a coat hook.” Nice, creative, empty threat, Luki congratulated himself, especially since BJ seems to believe it.
He pulled his captive out into the corridor, where he found a lot of shadows that were not harboring Sonny and some crates that Sonny was not sitting on. Luki held his breath, fighting down an uncharacteristic blast of adrenaline—something close to panic. Which I could fight down much easier with a cigarette. But there was no time for that. Mouth gone dry, he rasped, “Take me to this other room.”
BJ pointed with his chin again. “It’s that door, right there.”
Following that direction, Luki strode down the hall, heedless of the stumbling teen he was practically dragging behind him and making no effort now to keep his feet silent on the hardwood floor. Pushing open the wide, heavy door, he found a cavernous space that must, he
figured, be against the building’s outer wall. Blue light, streetlamps or moonshine, flooded in from a bank of high windows to his right. The high ceilings were lost in darkness, and in the opposite wall, wide double doors, the kind you might see on an old garage, stood almost
closed against the cool night air.
Which had nothing to do with the chill that crept up Luki’s spine.
Sonny stood like a marble statue in silhouette against the almost light flooding the room. At the sound of Luki entering with BJ, he let out a long, slow sigh and turned his head so slowly he might have been an apparition, the only break in his dark form a hard glint in his eyes. Luki recovered his power of thought and sat BJ down in a corner. “Don’t move,” he said.
“No, sir,” BJ answered, teeth chattering.
Luki knew exactly what had the young man so frightened. He could smell it. He switched on his flashlight, careful to keep the light low and shielded.
A slick on the floor as if someone had been dragged through a puddle. A smear on the partially-tiled wall under the windows—with a double handprint clearly visible near the baseboard. And almost at Sonny’s feet, a small pool of dark liquid, drops splashed around its edges.
And smeared across the wall: FAGGOT. FAGGOT. FAGGOT.
