Blood Victory

“Yes?”

“Thank you for killing Stephen and Philip. I hope they burn in hell for what they tried to do to Charley.” Then, as if she did little more than compliment them both on the menu, she smiles, waves, and leaves.

“News flash,” Cole says. “Julia Crispin believes in hell.”

Cole sips his wine and reminds himself that the expansive view from his terrace is one he should never take for granted. Kayakers make bright dots on the sparkling blue water, and the cliffs on the northern side of the bay are gaining definition as the sun travels west. Noah appears to be enjoying it, but there’s no telling unless Cole asks. His glazed eyes could mean he’s lost in thought.

“She’s not giving me a hard time about everything because she wants on my board,” Cole says.

“Ah, the perils of being a master of the universe.”

“Cynical,” Cole says.

“Sarcastic,” Noah responds. “There’s a difference.”

“I see. Was it quick?”

Startled by this abrupt subject change, Noah looks into his eyes. But he doesn’t stop eating.

“Stephen, yes. Philip, no. He saw it coming sooner and had a lot to say.”

“Like what?” Cole asks.

“Something about the greatest scientific breakthrough in history being in the hands of a spoiled, incompetent little fag and his inexplicable affection for a mouthy white-trash girl from nowhere.”

“Charming.”

“We can’t all go out in a blaze of elegance.”

“Do you agree with him?”

“Of course not. Why do you think I killed him?”

“Because we told you to,” Cole says.

Noah takes the last bite of his salad, chews it thoughtfully.

“And I owed it to you,” he finally says.

“How’s that?”

“You were right. I had no idea what I was asking when I told you to activate The Consortium again. I didn’t know them well enough, and I didn’t stop to consider how they’d react when they learned we had one living test subject. But the truth is, I only had to ask because I never expected her to run.”

“Charlotte?”

He nods. “I thought once she realized what I’d really slipped her, she’d be grateful. And we’d end up working together. That was my weakness, I guess.”

“Arrogance,” Cole offers.

“I was going to say optimism, but OK.”

“Were you in love with her?” Cole asks.

The question seems to startle Noah, and that was exactly Cole’s intention. He reaches for his wineglass and takes a sip. But he doesn’t break the eye contact, and so the moment starts to feel like a stare down.

“I hated her. Before I met her. I thought she’d exploited everything about what happened to our mothers. And then I learned the real story and . . .”

“And what?” Cole asks, his heart racing.

“She became like a sister to me.”

The question’s at the tip of his tongue, but he can’t bring himself to ask it. Were you in love with me?

“Scott told me my flight’s scheduled for tonight at ten,” Noah says.

“Correct.”

“I’d like you to push it until tomorrow night.”

“Why?”

“So I have time to fuck you. A lot.”

What startles Cole isn’t Noah’s choice of words but the unaffected tone with which he’s just delivered them, without any of the leering flirtatiousness he’s used to tease Cole on this subject in the recent past. As if Cole—or his body, at least—is something he’s decided to acquire after careful consideration.

“Murder turns you on, does it?” Cole asks.

“Thinking of all the ways we might change the world turns me on.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“You know you’re not obligated, right?” Cole says.

“For Christ’s sake, Cole. It’s not like I’m going to make a complaint to HR.”

“OK. Well, I’m not sure the way we used to is going to work anymore.”

“We can do it any way you want.” Noah stands, sets down the wineglass he just emptied in one long swallow. “Within limits,” he says. Then he steps through the sliding door into the living room.

“I guess no one’s eating lunch, then,” Cole says to himself, then he sets his fork down and his napkin on his chair and gets to his feet.

At the base of the stairs, Cole finds Noah’s crumpled polo shirt. At the top, his beige jeans. And by the time Cole enters the bedroom, Noah is naked and on all fours atop the bedspread, head bowed, a human coffee table of muscle and unexpected submission. He probably thinks Cole’s special box of toys—handcuffs, restraints, and other implements that were once the only things capable of reducing him to wordless and thoughtless surrender in the arms of another—is still tucked under the bed. But it isn’t. Cole hasn’t used those things in forever. Because he wasn’t lying. Something in his desire had shifted. Maybe it’s evolved or grown, or maybe those words for it are too charged with value. Maybe killing a man has given him a taste for exerting power in the bedroom.

All he knows is that he doesn’t want to be tied up, and he doesn’t want Noah tied up. He wants Noah to look into his eyes, and that’s what he does now as Cole rolls him onto his back atop the still fully made bed with its metallic-silver bedspread and night tables that look like steel cubes. His home is such a nest of sharp angles that at present Noah, for all his hard muscle and battle scars, seems like the softest thing in it. There’s more stubble across Noah’s chest than in years past, but all the traces of old combat wounds Cole used to caress and gently nibble are still there in flowery patterns along his waist and stomach.

Noah sits up, reaches for the hem of Cole’s shirt. Every graze of his fingers against Cole’s stomach sends gooseflesh racing up his chest. But untucking Cole’s shirt causes him to break eye contact, which is the last thing Cole wants. He cups Noah’s chin, raises it until they’re looking at each other again.

“I wish I knew who you really were,” he says.

“You do,” Noah says. “You just haven’t accepted it yet.”

Then he’s pulling him to the bed, and in another few minutes Cole is naked and on his back beneath the man’s delicious, welcome weight, absorbing the studied hunger of his kisses, and too late, he realizes he’s whispering Noah’s former name, the name he went by the last time he was inside more than just Cole’s mind.

44

Cambria, California

Luke suggested some recovery time at a cabin in the mountains, and as much as seclusion sounded tempting, Charlotte knew it was the last thing she needed. She needed people, life, the bright energy of a world where the Bannings and the Paynes were wolves stalking the forest shadows but the sidewalks were full of the kind of decent human being who stops to let others pass or dodges in front of a stroller with a hand up in case an oncoming car didn’t see it.

So they settled on Cambria, a charming seafront village about an hour’s drive south from their home in Altamira.

In Cambria, the shore was open and welcoming, nothing like Altamira’s little crescent of beach, sandwiched between soaring cliffs and accessed only by a steep and treacherous staircase. In Cambria, wooden walkways traversed the crowns of low oceanfront bluffs, and when fog didn’t shroud the coast—which was often, no matter the season—there were views for miles, mostly of golden mountains plunging to the sea, dappled with oaks. Hearst Castle sat atop one. When they both realized they’d never been, which seemed absurd given they’d grown up so near to it, they booked tickets. But as soon as they laid eyes on the bus they would have had to take up the mountain, they both went very still. Luke looked to Charley and Charley just shook her head. Its long, boxy shape, its giant hissing tires, the diesel fumes wafting from its tailpipe, invoked too many memories all at once. And so they lingered in the large gift shop, sat for a while outside the snack bar, watched the silly movie with all its dramatic reenactments from the life of William Randolph Hearst, and made jokes under their breath about whether a similar hagiography would ever be made about Cole Graydon or his late father.