Demons

Anybody who says a thief can’t have a clear conscience has never watched Cassandra sleep.

Don’t get me wrong. I love her, more than I thought I’d ever love anyone—but she sleeps like the dead, and on quiet nights like this I envy her her peace, because I’ll never have it. Not anymore, not after what I’ve learned.

I turn to watch her, see the steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. Then I look up at the ceiling again, with its coat of flaking plaster—and for a split second that old feeling comes back, the panic I’ve been fighting off for days now, the panic that tells me we should be back in our own room in Drakesworth, not here in the upstairs bedroom of a drafty two-story fix-‘er-up deal in Sikarta.

Dana Maldrake is a good woman. Her husband, Jordan, is a good man. I’ll admit I don’t like the way he watches me, though I suppose with his job as a psychiatrist or whatever it is, he takes it for granted that everybody’s got a hang-up, and he’s just waiting to see what mine is. I’m the son of an assassin, the grandson of an assassin. How long will it be before I stick a knife in him over the blueberry pancakes? Yeah, I know what he’s thinking. I’m a living, breathing reminder of his wife’s past—a past that he’s trying desperately to deny. Hell, I’m surprised that Dana herself can even stand to look at me, the way I’ve made her dredge up all that stuff about her life.

I won’t deny that it hurt to learn the truth about Dad. It did hurt. It hurt like hell. Dad was my hero when I was growing up, and I didn’t appreciate having all that turned upside down by Dana’s arrival. Even now there’s a big part of me that wishes I’d never seen her, even though I know all of this has been just as painful for her.

I thought I knew my father. But that was before I found out that Talon Featherstorm was my grandfather. I mean, in the Brotherhood we’re criminals, but we don’t murder, not without a good reason. Even as a kid I heard the stories about the Assassin’s Ring. How evil they were, and how cruel, especially Talon. He was the greatest bastard of them all, and my father was his son.

And Dana says that she doesn’t think he’s dead. What the hell kind of comfort is that supposed to give me? I have to watch my back as it is, because I work in a bar for a living and pull heists on the side—now I’ve got to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for Grandpappy to find me? Is that what she does?

Is that what Dad was doing?

I don’t like to think about it. Dad wasn’t around much when I was growing up. I saw him regularly enough—but not regularly enough. Other kids saw their fathers every day; with me it was once or twice a week, or every two weeks, or every month. Only Jezrael knew where he was all the time—and I suspect, knowing what I know now, that if it hadn’t been for Jezrael I wouldn’t have seen Dad at all.

Jezrael’s a good guy to know. He’s helped me out a lot, in ways that I can never repay. And I’m glad, too, that I heard the truth about Dad from him. I don’t think I’d have believed it from anyone else. Certainly not from Dana.

I’ve learned a lot from Jezrael too. Most importantly he’s taught me that you should always keep a little back, a little something of yourself that no one else knows. I guess that’s part of why I’m not comfortable around Jordan—he’s too persuasive, it’s too easy to tell him something without realizing you’re telling it, and yet you can’t get anything out of him; it’s as if he wants to know your business without you knowing his. And Dana, God bless her, she pries. I know she probably doesn’t mean to. She’s found a link to her brother and she’s excited, she wants to know everything about me, about Dad, about Mom. She means well, I guess—but growing up in the Brotherhood like I did, I was taught that another person’s privacy is something to respect, to hold sacred—and to me, she’s prying.

Especially when she asks about Mom. Because when I learned about Dad’s life as an assassin, much as it hurt, deep down I wasn’t surprised.

Because it wasn’t the first time I’ve been lied to.

I was six years old when I found out that Mom—Shakura Starwing—wasn’t really my mother.

I’ll never forget it. I’d just started school and I came home one afternoon and Dad was there. He was having dinner with us, we all needed to talk. I remember that Mom had a dress on, a dress I’d never seen before, and she was laughing and smiling. She was always happier when Dad was around. She was in love with him, though I didn’t really understand that then.

I helped her set the table, thinking that Dad had come to ask her to marry him. It was what she wanted; it was what I wanted, for the three of us to be together, like a family, like normal.

Boy, was I surprised.

Because I got told that night that I was adopted. That Dad was my real father, but Mom wasn’t my real mother. My real mother couldn’t take care of me, so she’d given me to Mom—that was the gist of it. There was talk in the Brotherhood about it, Dad said, so he and Mom had decided that I should know the truth...and my real mother wanted to see me.

I don’t remember much after that, other than that I ran from the room and went up to my bedroom, and threw myself on the bed and cried for I don’t know how long. It seemed like hours. And when I finally stopped, I could hear Mom and Dad talking downstairs, and suddenly Mom wasn’t happy anymore.

"We shouldn’t have done this, Duke." She had the same tone in her voice that she used when she scolded me.

"We should have done it sooner." Dad didn’t sound too pleased himself. "Shakura, come on. The entire Brotherhood’s known for years, it’s time Lauran learned the truth himself."

"What about the others? Do they know?"

She sounded especially angry, and I sat up. Others? What others?

"I don’t know," Dad said. "The boy might. The girl—hell, Shakura, they’re both younger than he is. He’ll understand eventually, if he doesn’t now. Them, now...."

He said something then that I couldn’t hear, and it was answered with something like a shriek, and I heard Mom screaming.

"He’s my son! Do you hear me? He’s—my—son!"

And she started sobbing, loud harsh noises that seemed to fill the house; and I heard Dad say, "Shakura, she doesn’t want him back. She just wants to see him—in the shape she’s in, she doesn’t have long."

Mom’s crying sounds stopped abruptly. "It’s that bad?"

"Yeah." Dad sounded suddenly grim. "It’s that bad."

I didn’t understand any of this at the time. But I’d heard enough—first Mom wasn’t my real mother, and now my real mother didn’t want me.

I think I cried myself to sleep.

I don’t remember much of the next day, either—everything was still too bewildering. But I didn’t go to school; instead I went with Mom and Dad to a hospital, a cold place with ugly green walls, stinking of blood and disinfectant. A nurse took us down a long hall to a tiny green room, still cold, but this time full of the odors of sickness and thick perfume. She didn’t want me in the room; but I heard Dad say, "He’s her son," and suddenly that made it all right.

There was a woman in the bed, thin and bony and bruised, hung here and there with tubes connected to different machines. She was turned to the wall as if she was asleep; but Dad said, "Martine," and she turned to face us, and Mom had to help her sit up.

Mom navigated around all the tubes and everything and put me in the woman’s lap. To me she had the look and the smell of an old woman, the sourness of age; her dark red hair was lank and stringy, and there were bruises around her eyes and down her neck. She hugged me and kissed me and kept saying my name over and over: Lauran, Lauran, Lauran.

I squirmed; I didn’t want to be there. But I didn’t cry—Mom had told me not to cry, no matter how badly I wanted to.

Mom and Dad visited with the woman for a little while and then we went home.

Less than a week later the woman in the bed was dead.

Martine la Dague. My birth mother.

She was twenty-five years old.

It was years before I figured out what had happened, and why. Before I finally learned that Martine was Ernie Falcone’s whore, until one night in a drunken rage he’d beaten her so badly that her injuries had eventually killed her.

Before I learned that I had a brother and a sister.

Talon and Keidre Falcone, Martine’s two other children, both younger than I am. I’ve met them; they’re part of the Brotherhood. We all know we’re related. But I don’t go out of my way to make time for them, as they don’t make time for me, and I don’t really feel anything for them, beyond our casual acquaintance—the bad blood between their father and mine runs a little too deep. Talon’s an okay guy, even if these days his name does make me think of my grandfather, but Keidre’s popularly known around the Brotherhood as a "nasty little bitch"—which I guess is a polite way of saying she’s just like her old man.

We never talked about Martine after she died, though once Dad showed me a picture of her from the days when she’d been a little younger and a lot healthier—the days when she and Dad were lovers, before I was born. A pretty woman. Too good for the company she kept; Dad liked to say that she was a good woman with a weak heart, and it took me a few years to get his meaning. But since I’ve been on my own, working at the Black Rose, I’ve met a lot of good women with weak hearts—women who crave attention but who don’t have the self-confidence it takes to get the attention of a good man, at least not for very long. Women whose hearts can be bought for the price of a drink or a one-night stand. It’s sad, really.

But by the time I was old enough for all of this to make sense, I had other things on my mind.

I was fifteen when the Saurians came, and when Mom and Dad were taken away to one of Dragaunus’ work camps, the Swordfeathers took me in—Jezrael had taken the Brotherhood underground, away from Saurian eyes, for our own safety and for the sake of the Resistance. And by the time the dust was settled, and we could go back to business, Mom was dead; and Dad was...gone.

Quite frankly I’m surprised that Mom lasted as long as she did. Even before the Saurians came, I had known that something was wrong, that she was sick, not quite herself. She’d known it too, though she tried to pass it off. Whether or not Dad knew about it...I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m up late at night by myself, and I have a little too much to drink, I start thinking about how things would have been if she had survived, if Dad was still here, if the Saurians hadn’t torn everything apart. I tell myself that we would have been together, we would have been a family, like I wanted, like I’ve always wanted. When I get in those moods I cry a lot, and the next day I’m no good to anyone.

It was Jezrael’s idea to get the Brotherhood involved in the Resistance, as our forebears had helped Drake DuCaine all those centuries ago. Sometimes people ask me if I’m not mad at him for it, as if it’s Jezrael’s fault that Dad’s no longer here. They seem surprised when I say no—but then, I know the real story.

Most of the Brotherhood’s members had been really uneasy about going against the Saurians; and so Jezrael’s idea had been to get the top brass involved, to show the rankers that their leaders weren’t afraid. And his initial plan had been to go after Dragaunus by himself.

Dad wouldn’t let him go. I’d sit at the table at nights and listen to them argue; and Dad would always say, Jezrael, be reasonable, you’ve got a wife and five children. I’ve only got a son, and he’s a man.

It always made me feel weird when he said that. I was proud that he thought of me as a man—but he said I’ve only got a son, as if I didn’t matter. But he was right, all the same. I could take care of myself, but Jezrael’s three daughters and two sons were younger than I was, and needed their parents. Of course, Jezrael’s sense of honor being what it was, he’d always answer Dad with Duke, I have a responsibility to the Brotherhood. To the planet—to which Dad, not even blinking, would just say, Does that outweigh your responsibility to your family? Now, of course, I understand Jezrael better, and I know how torn he was by his different responsibilities—after all, I sleep with one of his responsibilities every night—but eventually Dad wore him down. And the rest, as Jezrael likes to say, is history.

And now I’m alone.

Well, that’s not quite true. I’ve got Cassandra and her people; and now, whether I want them or not, I’ve got Dana and Jordan. It’s not the family I had in mind, but it is a family, of sorts, and it’s a start.

I sigh into the darkness. I know too much, but not enough. I want to see my father again, to touch him, hug him, know that he’s alive, that he’s all right. But I want to forget about things too...about Martine la Dague, and Ernie Falcone’s kids, and...even about Dana.

Beside me, Cass stirs and mutters, "Lauran," and reaches out to me sleepily. I turn to face her and I see that she’s awake, and she’s got that look in her eyes that means she wants me to make love to her; and as I draw her into my arms I say a silent prayer of thanks to whatever god might be listening, that I’ve got this woman who gives me a chance to forget, even if it’s only for a little while.

Ignorance is bliss, indeed.