Black Shore of the White City Excerpt
He sat down on the sofa and looked at the gun. “I’ve never fired a gun,” he said to Sam. “This thing is useless in my hands.”
Sam sat down next to him and picked the gun up, and turned it over in his hands. “It’s a Glock 26,” he said. He pushed something and a narrow cylinder slid out the bottom. “Fully loaded, you’ve got ten shots.”
“Is the safety on?” Jude eyed the clip cautiously.
“Glocks don’t have safeties.” He pushed the cylinder back in. “The safety is in the trigger. They don’t fire unless you squeeze it. You can shake it,” he did, and Jude winced, “you can drop it, throw it against a wall, it won’t fire. You have to actually pull the trigger. It’s accurate. Very little recoil, so it won’t jerk your arm out of the socket. The only thing that scares me is Cindy totes it around.”
“I’m not sure I have the balls to use it,” Jude said. He thought of the question Sam had asked him earlier, which he couldn’t answer.
Sam motioned for Jude to stand up. He did, wary, and watched nervously as Sam stood up as well and reached around Jude’s side.
“We’ll tuck it in your belt,” Sam said. He stood so close Jude could smell him.
“You promise it won’t go off?”
“Not unless you reach down and squeeze the trigger.” He made a space between Jude’s belt and jeans. “You don’t have to be afraid.” He smirked, right in his face. “You can handle this gun.” He worked the muzzle into his belt.
“Why are you still helping me?” Jude asked. “Is this really benefiting you?”
“I hate the Institute. I’d do anything to make them pay.” Sam drew back. Jude felt the weight of the gun on his hip, heavy and menacing.
“It has to be more than that,” Jude said. “You sound like you’ve got enough evidence to fuck them up royally. You don’t need my plight to help you accomplish anything.”
“Do you want me to say I care about you? That I’ve taken some kind of liking to you? Maybe I have.”
Jude looked away. “You don’t care about me. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re willing to risk your life to save your brother.”
“I ran when they took my brother.”
“If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be able to save him now. Things happen the way they do for a reason. I know what’s inside you.”
“You don’t.” Jude snapped his gaze back to his face. “You see me in this situation, fighting because I have to. I’m not like you, Sam. I’m not proud of this thing I have. I grew up ashamed of what I am, when I saw it kill my sister and break up my parents. I never embraced it and I never will. I’m an artist. I tattoo people. I hang out with my friends in shitty bars. I like whiskey and wine and I suck cock. I just want a normal life.”
“I know what you want,” Sam said, his voice even. His eyes were dark, intensely dark. Almost black. “I know why you act the way you do, why you look the way you do. You draw attention to everything else so no one notices the one thing you want to hide.”
Jude took a step back, an instinctive wall going up. “I’m not this thing inside me,” he said. “I don’t give a fuck about the paranormal community, and activists, and science. This world just wants to make me a lab rat. You don’t know me, Sam, because you’ve only seen me trying to escape my inevitable persecution.”
“Jude,” he said, as though addressing a temperamental child.
“Listen to me.” Jude held a hand out. “Everything you’ve done for me is fucking phenomenal. I will be indebted to you until the day I die, which hopefully won’t be anytime soon. But please, don’t think I have some emotional connection to you or anyone else here, not even Micha. I just wanna get my brother and go home, and after that I never want to see this city again.”
Sam suddenly reached out, grabbed the back of Jude’s head, and jerked him in close; he was surprisingly strong. Jude widened his eyes.
“Just shut up and kiss me goodbye,” Sam whispered, close to his mouth. “I’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Jude looked into his eyes, so close. “Who do you think you are?” he asked, though the words didn’t come out as severe as he wanted them to.
“I know who I am, but you don’t know me. You mistake me for a selfless person. Trust me, I’m not, and it’s better that you’re leaving. Now do as I say, like you’ve been doing all along.”
Jude did, though he wasn’t sure if the kiss was of his own volition or if Sam forced him. Sam’s lips felt the way they had at the Pier only much more yielding. When Sam broke the kiss and drew back Jude felt heat in his cheeks as if he had a fever too. Sam turned away.
“Don’t get yourself confused with someone else,” he said, snatching up his mug from a table. He looked back at Jude. “You’ll realize who you are, before this is over.”
Jude patted his hip and the gun under his waistband. He didn’t know what to say, or how to react. He licked his lips and tasted Sam’s mouth, the taste of coffee and something dark and dangerous and exotic. With a sinking stomach, he knew those words foretold the end of his life as he knew it.