Baylon's stride stiffened, each step requiring that much more effort. His laborious breathing sounded like wind tunnels. The mud by the fence bulged then oozed forward as if something plopped in it. Rain outlined the shadow of a figure. Baylon stiffened his hands. Without warning, he dashed forward and drove his fist through the center ma.s.s of the rain-occluded wisp. Blood sprayed the bridge embankment.

Garlan faded back into view as his pulse lessened, the last beats of his heart bringing him into full view. Baylon grabbed Garlan's hand and slipped the ring from it. Placing it in the center of his palm, he examined it. Then he flicked it into the air, caught, and pocketed it before police came to investigate the scuffle.

Now it was just him and Dred. Dred would have to turn to him again, and things would be like they were.

The window latch clicked slightly as the gla.s.s slid up. An exhalation of a breeze jostled the curtains. The room was a murky swirl of shadows, unfamiliar and terrifying. The night hid the creature under the bed or bought camouflaging protection for the bogeyman in the closet. There were all sorts of predators in the night. Things that went b.u.mp in the night. Things that no amount of iron bars, safety gla.s.s, or fancy alarm systems could give the illusion of providing safety against.

He slipped in noiselessly. Despite his build he moved with the grace of a thief, light of foot and touch. Her mother certainly didn't lack for imagination. She wanted her daughter to have a magical, safe childhood, a little girl's room fraught with little-princess dreams and little-princess trappings. Mementos of a childhood denied him. It took him forever to find. There was power in a name: a tracer spell might have sufficed, but the apartment complex had some sort of ward placed on it. His own mother used a similar spell also to hide from him.

The little girl was just as beautiful as he imagined her. The sounds of light snoring filled the room as she snuggled into a thick pink blanket and pillow. For a moment he stood over her, just watching her sleep. He covered her mouth and sat down next to her. Her eyes sprang open, large with panic. Her balled little fists slammed into him, then slowly ceased as recognition filled her eyes. He removed his hand.

"Daddy!" she whispered with enthusiasm, sitting up to give him a hug.

"Nakia," Dred said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Growing up, all of the adults in King's life filled his head with the idea that he had so much potential. That he was good and somehow destined to do great things. However, he had trouble enough leading his life much less the fact that he never truly envisioned himself as a particularly good man. He clung to the quiet belief that he never lived up to being the man he was meant to be. This knowledge both haunted and drove him. What he was slowly coming to accept was that he was a man out of place in this world. Try as he might to get caught up in the cynicism of this age, he couldn't shake his core faith that people were called to a purpose, were meant to stand for something. He'd been given a responsibility and had betrayed that. He didn't deserve anything approaching honor or respect, but he knew that no one was beyond redemption. Or forgiveness.

Even himself.

"Everything looks good, Mr White," said a small squat woman with large gla.s.ses who perked to attention around him like he was the last rib at a family barbecue. The nurses fussed about him, drawing blood and checking his pulse and pressure, poking and prodding him. The police had already left, marginally satisfied with the answers he had for their questions. His friends his only true family waited down the hallway.

"When can I get out of here?" King raised the bed so he could sit up.

"The doctors want to keep you overnight for observation. No reason why we can't let you go in the morning."

"Can you send my people back here? I'd like to see them."

"Only a couple at a time. We don't want a crowd in here." The nurse pushed her gla.s.ses up on her nose. A sweet smile curled on her lips, but she was not a woman to trifle with.

King raised his hand to his forehead as if nursing a headache. The images replayed in his mind. The searing pain of being shot. After that, his memory became stills. Flashing lights. A breathing mask. Bleets of a machine. Doctors hovering over him. Then nothing. He dreamt of his father, though it wasn't his father. More like the ideal of his father. And there was water. Cool. Refreshing. Pure. Like drinking life itself. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice Lady G enter.

"Hey," Lady G said.

"Hey," King straightened. He pulled the sheets down on his leg, not wanting her to see him in so pathetic a state. "Just you?"

"Nah, they all out there. Wayne. Pastor Winburn. Big Momma. Percy. Had."

"No Merle?"

"He out of pocket. Some girl though. Calls herself La Payasa."

"Who?"

"Says she's with Black's crew. Helped bring Had and Percy back safe. So did Lott."

"Yeah, I need to handle some things. Old business." The question was still there, unspoken Why did you do it? but silence reigned with no obligation to fill it.

"King, I"

"You know what I've realized?" King cut her off. Nostalgic for times that never really existed. Sometimes he feared that he couldn't relax and enjoy life because he lived it like it was glimpses of happiness spent holding his breath, waiting for the fall to happen. "I've worn out my capacity to love. At least in my own strength and on my own terms. I've just sort of reached my limit on what I can do on my own. It's a big world out there and I'm still amazed by all the good. And there's still so much to do. Like this Black situation."

"You and Merle go on about your duty. Your responsibility. It doesn't have to be you. The world will go on if you don't get on your white horse to try and save us all."

"When I first met you, you seemed like such a scared little girl. I mean, you came across all hard and stuff, but I could tell. I wanted to protect you. Heal you. I lost my way. Tried to deny my feelings for you, but they were too strong. Fell in love with you. I thought you felt that way too." It was always so easy to be with her. She understood him in ways few others did, without him having to explain much. King stirred as if bored. His brow lowered. Her voice didn't fill him with the crazy pa.s.sion it used to. Loving her was like loving a black hole. Some days, he thought he loved her so much he hated her for making him so weak. Then there was something else. Something he didn't want to have to admit to himself or voice because to voice it made it real. That he loved the idea of her loving him. That if she accepted him, he'd finally feel good about himself, because of who she was... Good. Innocent. Pure. "Everything I did, I did out of love."

"I wanted to believe it. Trust in it. But part of me always thought that you loved your mission, not me." Lady G knew that was only part of it. Inside, she was still a little bit of that scared little girl. Trapped in a burning house with no one to protect her. To keep her from being burned. The idea of being loved so completely intoxicated her. It nourished her and she craved it. And she lost her way. She removed one of her gloves. The scars from her burns pulsed like throbbing veins. She held her hand out until King took it.

"I'm guilty of many things. I'm sorry I hurt you. I loved you, but not the way I should have. I should have guarded your heart better. I hope you can forgive me."

"I do." King squeezed her hand. "If I were to ask 'why?' would you have an answer?"

"Would anything I say help? Can't we just move on?"

"We can. Maybe we ought to. That would be easy. But not... real. We'd both always have questions that would haunt us."

"Do you ever wonder what happened to us?"

"Every day."

"You left."

"I..." by reflex, he almost said "I didn't stop loving you" but even that would have been a tacit admission of a truth. That he prided himself on how he guarded his heart and life were. How she slipped under his radar, right past his walls of protection. He didn't see her coming, then next thing he knew, she occupied a place in his heart. Nor was there any defense to be found by crying out to her, "You made me love you. You forced me to let you in, then you left me. You left me all alone. I had n.o.body. I needed you."

"There was an emptiness with you. Like you weren't all there, not... filling me."

"And Lott filled it? I couldn't?"

"You couldn't. Not really. You weren't there."

"I was good to you. Why didn't that matter?"

"It did, it just wasn't enough. Not from you. That was easy for you. What I needed from you, you couldn't give because it wasn't in you to give."

They met each other's eyes, affection tinged with regret and sorrow. The tension was gone. Nothing to rub up against. No one to blame. King cursed himself for falling into a laid trap of their weakness of character. They fought to gain some sort of control over their environment, their lives. He couldn't help but think it was somehow his fault. The price of a crown was often a heavy heart.

"One day, impossibly, it won't hurt this much," Lady G broke the silence. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him anymore.

"What's broken can be made whole. What's dirty can become clean." The words came out of King, though he wasn't sure if they were directed at him or her. "That's the hope we live in."

"You're crying."

"So are you."

The conversation had already delved deeper than he was comfortable with. A wound dug into in order to remove the settled rot was a good place to allow the healing to happen. Saying any more might push them to a place they couldn't come back from. So they stopped. Movement caught Lady G's attention. She cut her eyes back at King, then lowered her head to excuse herself. Lott stepped to the bedside.

"You look good," Lott said, not knowing where to begin.

"Do you want to do that?" King asked. "Begin with a lie."

"No, not really."

"You don't have to be here."

"Where else would I be? You shouldn't be alone."

"I'm not alone. Not as long as I have people around me who love me."

"You ain't gonna make this easy."

"You are a lie. Let me know something about the you that hides."

Hurt spilled from Lott's eyes. A pain left buried in his chest. "I love Lady G. I always have. And I love you. You and me... we brothers. And I betrayed that. I betrayed both of you. I'm sorry, man. I... You don't know how sorry I am."

There it was.

The betrayal in a sentence. Somehow it seemed bigger before it was said. Now here, they were both broken, regretting the stupid decisions they had made and the pain caused in the wake of them spinning out of control while their worlds had been tossed upside down. A lot of hurt had pa.s.sed between them. Sometimes too much time elapsed and there was nothing left of a relationship to mend together. Sometimes, you just had to pick up the relationship where it lay. And sometimes, you just had to see the weight of the hurt on the other person's face to know how genuine it was. "You need to quit punishing yourself."

"But King..." The words "I'm sorry" still felt too small to contain all that Lott carried and wanted to convey to King.

King waved him off. "Enough. We need you. I need you. We can't do this thing on our own."

"I just don't want to be alone anymore." Lott buried his face into the sheets. A hand rested gently on his head.

"You're not alone. Not as long as you have people around you who love you."

La Payasa never wanted to be her mother. Her mom was unable to survive without a man. It was that simple. Born in Mexico, her mom was married three times. Each time a husband left or died, she hooked up with another one within months. Her life was its own prison, trapped by being functionally illiterate with her third-grade education and thus captive to the whims of her men. Her third husband moved to Indianapolis to find factory work. Her whole life revolved around pleasing him. Her long hair was worn in a bun, the way he liked it. She spent her days cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children, the way he envisioned a good wife should be. There was little of her mother in her own life.

La Payasa was not much different from her mom, moving from Black to King, her life defined by what others wanted of her and fitting in with their wants. Following their dreams and not her own. Yet she stood in the room at King's bedside as if having been granted an audience. Percy and Lott she knew. Not the girl. And not the one who, while lying down in a hospital bed, commanded the entire room.

"You're with Black and his crew," King said.

"I know the story that's been written about me." La Payasa ignored the weight of eyes in the room and focused on King. He had a way about him, like Black. He could draw you in. Unlike Black, there was a gentleness behind that hard exterior. A burning sense of caring. "But what if I'm actually one of the good guys?"

"You asking or telling?"

"Both, I think."

"What about Black? Aren't you helping him?"

"I'm hoping to help everyone."

King recognized that air about her: damaged but resilient. She reminded him of Lady G. "n.o.body does it alone. Black and brown, we have a lot in common. And we need a place we all make together. Bring folks together in a positive way."

"I don't know, hese."

"You know what?" King turned to all of them. "I believe that Dred has united enough of the gangs and controls enough of the drug flow in this city to open the flood gates. To sink the streets, our streets, to lows and depravity and desperation we've never known. I believe the police are powerless because they can't build a case against someone they barely know. They're too busy cleaning up the messes left by the front lines of this war to get near him.

"Well, the police aren't in this alone. This is our community. These are our streets. Those are our brothers and sisters and children shedding their blood and losing their lives out there. Day after day in senseless waste. We're always fighting the same fight.

"This struggle has been going on forever. The players may change, the philosophies may differ, but there would always be war. On the one side you have the warlord, simple in his own way, who was always chasing that dollar no matter what the cost, and would use and climb over anyone he could to ama.s.s power. On the other side, you had the idealistic church wanting everyone to believe the same things and follow the same rules. You'd think they were on opposite sides but they were two sides of the same coin. Neither was as all good or all evil, as all right or all wrong, as the other side would make them out to be. In fact, both would do both good and terrible things to get what they wanted.

"And I'm tired.

"Tired of sitting on the sidelines. Tired of waiting for someone else to come along to solve our problem. Tired of not caring. Running around out here, asking folks to care, to look out for one another. That ain't snitching, that's caring.

"Most days we are gray people leading gray lives. We keep our heads down and mind our own, hoping things will work out. We keep on keeping on. Shadows in a world of black and white, of light and dark, waiting out a war and hoping that we don't get caught in the crossfire.

"But we live in the crossfire.

"Every once in a while, we're faced with a decision. An opportunity. The chance to do something right, something we don't have to question or wonder about. Something we know is true." King turned to Lady G, then faced them again. "When we find what's true, we hold on to it. We're moved by it. And we act on it. This is one of those times. Some might say it'd be better to get out of their way and let Dred and the police scuffle it out. But this is our community, too. There comes a point, maybe when one side goes all in to wipe out the other, when you can't stand on the sidelines anymore. You have to pick a side. We will take this war to Dred and we will end it. Our brothers and sisters are out here, lost and misguided. But they're not beyond hope. They're not beyond redemption.

"Do you know how I've always thought of you? As knights. Knight means servant, and to be a leader you must serve. Sometimes we've forgotten that. Lost our way. I know I have. Faithful service is not always acknowledged. And you aren't a good knight until you've been tested. You've all been tested. Each of you in your own way. Now it's time to serve our people one more time."

They burst into applause, they couldn't help themselves. King stirred something in them. They dared to hope. They remembered what they could be. The nurse burst in to shoo them back in the hallway. Pastor Winburn followed her, his "clergy" identification badge pinned to his suit jacket. He waited until the nurse finished her duties, nodding politely to her as she left.

"You have your serious face on. What happened?" King asked.

"King, there's something I got to tell you. It's about Prez."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

King slouched over his knees. The pain in his side and neck faded into afterthoughts as he reached over toward his clothes. The ones he was brought in with had to be cut from him. Pastor Winburn had brought a change of clothes upon hearing King had awoken.

"What are you doing?" Pastor Winburn handed him his clothes.

"I need to see the body."

"You know I can't let you do that, King. Family only."

"I'm the closest thing to kin that boy's got."

"Still..."

"Do me this solid."