Mr. Real (Code of Shadows #1) (36 page)

“Now,” Hyko said.

Alix turned her gun on Hyko. “Screw that. You drop it!”

Sir Kendall’s voice now: “Alix…”

“Fair’s fair,” Hyko said. “If you drop one, I’ll drop one. Look, look, look!” Hyko let one of his guns fall from his fingertips into the grass, which allowed Alix full view of his horribly ruined hand. Her mouth fell open.

Quick as a flash he snatched her gun.

She gasped. She hadn’t even known that was an option, snatching her gun away.

“Sir Kendall’s handiwork. Diverting isn’t it?” Hyko shoved her gun into one of his giant coat pockets and snatched his own up off the ground. Or rather, scooped it up with his strange, fin-like hand.
Because he had no thumb.
With horror she realized he didn’t have a thumb on his other hand, either, and the skin there was mottled and scarred
.
Sir Kendall’s handiwork.
She felt sick.

“Mess with me again and you’ll lose more than a weapon.”

His guns had modified handles, an arrangement of rings he hooked his fingers into. Noticing her stare, he twirled them in unison, like an Old West gunslinger, then aimed them back at her. “I make do. Now get back.” He motioned and she backed up, passing by the men until she hit the cage and could go no farther.

“You can stop there.” Hyko turned the guns on Paul and Sir Kendall.

“Leave them alone,” she whimpered.

Paul glanced at her warningly. Oh, what had she done?
Stay calm,
she instructed herself. The least outburst and Hyko might shoot, or Sir Kendall might cut Paul’s throat. Or both.

Hyko motioned at Sir Kendall. “Ease off, sailor.”

“I think not,” Sir Kendall said.

“You understand that holding a knife to his throat has roughly the same effect on me as your holding a knife to your own throat. Which is to say, very little. I’ve come to torture and kill only one of you, but the both of you, or even all three, will do. Toss it here.”

Sir Kendall hesitated, then tossed his knife. It sailed across the grass and gravel in a silver streak, bumping across the ground and coming to a violent halt as Hyko clomped a brown boot over it. “Now, which one of you is Sir Kendall?”

To Alix’s horror, Paul relaxed his face, suddenly looking very Sir Kendall. “I am,” Paul said—in a perfect Sir Kendall accent.

“No you’re not!” she said.

“The lady’s right,” Sir Kendall said. “I’m Sir Kendall.”

Paul laughed. “He’s my clone, Hyko. A halfwit, unfortunately. His manners are atrocious.”

“Your business is with me, Hyko.” Sir Kendall made to stand.

“Stay down,” Hyko barked.

Paul spoke in a more Sir Kendall-ish voice than even Sir Kendall used: “Your business is with me, Hyko.”

Alix gasped. “What are you doing?” she asked. “He’ll kill you!”

Hyko spun around to face her. “Which one were you talking to? Which is the real Sir Kendall? I know you can tell me.”

She shook her head. She didn’t want Hyko to hurt Paul, but she wasn’t about to give up the real Sir Kendall either.

Hyko strode over to her. “I’ll take you and his decoy down with him if I have to.” He pulled a coil of rope from his pocket. “Spill it, sister.”

“It’s okay, Alix,” Paul said in the Sir Kendall voice. “This is something I need to finish. I need to finish this with Hyko. I’m the only one who can.”

“Stop it, Paul!”

“
Paul
indeed.” Paul rolled his eyes. “Hyko isn’t quite so stupid as that, my pet.”

Sir Kendall stiffened. “Then why are you playing him for such a fool now?” He turned to Hyko. “Send them away. This is between us.”

Hyko lifted the gun barrel to Alix’s temple, eliciting protests from both men.

“Silence or I shoot!”

They went silent.

The gun felt cool on her temple, yet somehow unreal, like an object of a different order. She leaned away, only to be followed by its steely impress and Hyko’s dark glance. “Delightful as it is to have two Sir Kendalls to maim, perchance to kill, I’m only interested in the real one. So, my dear, you have until the count of three to point out the true Sir Kendall. Or I’ll blow your head off and kill both of your swains. One…”

“Wait! Stop,” she said, trying to think. Sir Kendall was alive in the commercial. Even if he was hurt in the real world, he would go back to the commercial in a day. If he was hurt here, would he go back hurt? Dead? She wished she could call Karen.

“Two.”

Paul and Sir Kendall began to jabber at her in Sir Kendall-speak.
I daresay…my dear girl.
She felt so confused. Hyko began to enunciate: “Thhhhh—”

“Okay!” She swallowed, meeting both men’s beseeching gazes; in this they were identical. It broke her heart. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It is never wrong to tell the truth, pet,” Sir Kendall said.

“Alix,” Paul said warningly and Britishly, “I won’t have who I am denied now!”

She shook her head and pointed to the real Sir Kendall. “Red T-shirt. I’m sorry.” This last, really, to both men.

“Thank you.” Hyko threw Alix a coil of rope. “Cut this in four equal parts.” He kicked the knife to her.

She took the rope with shaking hands. Why would Paul step up as Sir Kendall?

Hyko handcuffed Sir Kendall to the outside corner of the cage. Then he instructed Paul to walk into the cage and get on his knees inside, fingers knit behind his head.

Paul complied.

Hyko strolled over behind Paul and, without warning, he heaved a violent kick into Paul’s back, knocking him face-first onto the ground.

Alix gasped.

“Turn over and spread ‘em,” Hyko said.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked.

“It’s okay.” Paul turned over and put out his arms and legs.

Hyko’s hillbilly hat cast his face half in shade as he stared down at Paul. “We have unfinished business, Sir Kendall.”

“But that’s not Sir Kendall!”

He trained his gun on Paul’s head as he patted his boxers for weapons. “Appears I’ve caught you without all your little gadgets, Sir Kendall. I should’ve known you’d be the one in underpants.”

“It’s not him!”

Hyko turned to her, a great smirk on his rugged face. Sir Kendall had come off as so arrogant and domineering, but it was nothing compared to Hyko, who seemed every inch the outlaw. “There’s a certain King Solomon fable—not the baby one, but another,” Hyko said, pale blue eyes glittering. “The Queen of Sheba presents King Solomon with two identical flowers and asks if he can tell which is the real one. The flowers look identical. They even smell the same. Then a bee flies up and lands on one, and the riddle is solved. You see, King Solomon knows that a bee will always choose the genuine flower.” Hyko stood, apparently satisfied with his inspection, and kicked Paul again, in the ribs.

“Uf.” Paul curled up, holding his middle.

Alix couldn’t breathe.

“Now in our story, I’m King Solomon, of course. You, my dear, are the bee, and you have chosen
this
Sir Kendall to save. Therefore, this is the genuine Sir Kendall. No woman would choose a fake Sir Kendall over the real thing.”

“No, Hyko, you’re wrong! Tell him Paul!”

Paul’s laugh sounded strange. “One must never take a lady’s word for the quality of her jewels or the names of her lovers.”

“Stop talking like that!” she yelled.

Hyko beamed. “And you’re going to tell me that’s not Sir Kendall?”

“Yes!”

Hyko waved a lazy hand out to where the real Sir Kendall lay. “You only confirmed what I knew. The real Sir Kendall wouldn’t be caught dead in a T-shirt that says Moogie’s Clam Bake. Now, get to your task. Any more talking and I’ll make him even sorrier.”

Sir Kendall watched the proceedings from his spot on the grass outside the cage. Why not slip out of his handcuffs? Was he waiting? Biding his time?

Alix hacked at the rope, wishing it were Hyko she was hacking at, a dream that became all the more impossible when he instructed her to throw the knife into the woods. He then made her enter the cage and tie Paul’s wrists and ankles to the bars with square knots. “His left to the left side of the cage, his right to the right side, and his ankles together to the end. And don’t think I won’t check your work. Every fuck-up loses you a digit.” He shoved his big gun into his belt, flicked his hand under his coat, and produced a small hatchet.

She crawled to Paul’s side. His chest rose and fell with alarming rapidity. She looped one of the ropes around his right wrist. “I am so sorry,” she whispered, hands shaking.

“Tighter,” he whispered. “You won’t hurt me, Alix.”

“Hey girlfriend,” Hyko said. “Talking’ll cost you a pinky.”

“Jesus!” She wiped away a tear, trying to figure out how to stop this madness. Paul gazed over at Sir Kendall. Looking at Sir Kendall usually upset him, but now it seemed to calm him. His dark hair stuck in clumps to his forehead; a line of blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Sir Kendall watched Paul back. What had happened between them?

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a small voice.

“Shh.” Paul spoke without taking his eyes from Sir Kendall. “It’ll be okay.”

She stifled a sob. Why had he suddenly decided to be Sir Kendall’s savior?

“Hey kids, I have an idea,” Hyko strolled nearer. “I was going to save the thumb removal part of the festivities for later, but—” Hyko tapped the ground next to Paul’s hand with the hatchet. “That’s like saving dessert for
after
dinner. I say, let’s begin our festivities now.”

Alix gasped. “You can’t!”

“Don’t worry, our festivities will be awesome all the way through.”

Panic rose in her throat. “Hyko, you’re an idiot. It’s not him.”

Paul extended his thumb outward from his hand, pale against the dirty metal floor of the cage. He had the look she’d seen in the ring—the calm, beautiful eyes that saw everything. It broke her heart. This was a man with a code, a man who fought for what he believed in. “No,” she whispered.

“It’s okay,” Paul said. “I need to step up for him.”

“You
don’t
need to step up for him!” Tears rolled down her cheeks and her heart burst with the most overwhelming sensation she’d ever experienced. It had always been Paul. This was the man she’d dreamed about, the man she’d fantasized about.

The man she loved.

“Alix, listen—” Paul was starting to say something, but Hyko was there, pressing his boot to Paul’s cheek, garbling his words.

Fear and rage boiled up in her. “Get off him.”

“Why so gloomy, GFF? I’ll have you know I’ve sharpened this hatchet, which is far more than Sir Kendall did for me. Do you remember, Sir Kendall? The knife you used to sever my thumbs was like a dull steak knife from a church cafeteria. Do you know how that felt?” Hyko turned to her. “Let’s just say it was
other
than the best feeling ever.” Hyko stepped down harder, squishing Paul’s face even more.

“Get off!” Alix flew at Hyko, two hands whomping onto his chest, pushing him off Paul. He stumbled backwards, banging back on the cage bars, smiling all the while, as though he thought it was funny. She didn’t care that he had the hatchet; she hauled off and hit him in the chest—once, again. She went for his smirking face.

He fended off her blows with one arm, laughing. “Girl can hit. You’d prefer it later? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? I suppose we could hold off.”

“Leave him alone, Hyko! None of this is real. The thumbs thing didn’t even happen in real life. Sir Kendall did not do that. Just listen to me,
please
. None of what you think happened
ever
happened.”

Hyko smiled a glittering, toothy smile. “A lot of desperate people have tried to stop me from doing a lot of bad things, but no one’s ever gone that route. Nothing is
real
? That’s your gambit? Points for originality.”

“Listen to me: I conjured both Sir Kendall and you with a kind of magical computer program. I have this process where I can transform two-dimensional images into three-dimensional reality. I make pictures into real-life things, right?” She watched Sir Kendall, who followed with interest, but he didn’t look surprised. Or was it an act? Maybe he planned to ambush Hyko. “I know it sounds crazy, and it sort of is, but you’re not from this world. You’re from a comic book, and Sir Kendall’s from a commercial.”

Hyko raised a finger. “Perfectly logical as this all sounds…”

“Go look it up. Derangerous dot com. You
know
it’s farfetched that Sir Kendall somehow cloned himself right under your nose. He didn’t. I made him. Paul isn’t a clone, he’s a fighter from Los Angeles who played Sir Kendall in the commercial. And you both are going to wink back out tomorrow night at seven forty-six.” She looked down at Paul, tied to the floor of the cage. “It takes a day for the stuff to appear, a week to wink out. And everything weirdly improves. That’s why the necklace was so amazing. Those rubies.”

Hyko pointed to the keychain gleaming in the grass nearby. “Bring me that keychain. I presume one of those keys locks this cage.”

She glared at him.

“Go ahead, or I’ll take
your
thumbs.”

Still she glared.

“Tempting, I know.” Hyko swung the hatchet. “As far as body mod goes, it blows the earlobe-hole and lip-ring set completely out of the water. One…two…”

She retrieved the keys for Hyko, hating herself. She’d brought a man to life out of selfishness and thoughtlessness. She had been like poison to Paul. To the whole world. She would find a way to make it right. She had to.

Hyko threw her three pairs of handcuffs. With all the weaponry and handcuffs in his pockets, it was a wonder he could walk. “Get in there and cuff his wrists to their respective sides of the cage, and then cuff your wrist to his.”

She complied, clicking the metal circle around her wrist, then Paul’s.

Hyko came over and kneeled. “Your cloning operation wasn’t even on my radar, I’ll give you that,” he said to Paul, jerking at the ropes and tightening the handcuffs. “Or was it surgery?”

“Hear me out,” Alix said. “Both of you were transformed from computer images into three-dimensional reality last week at the exact same time. Let me just ask you, can you name one TV show or movie you saw last month? Can you answer questions about your childhood? Have you noticed that everybody else in the world can? Somebody else dreamed you up—you and your whole sunspot weapon plan, bringing a second Dark Age and drugging the water supply…”