He thought about mentioning that he’d been stabbed in the shoulder at Bellinowski’s funeral, but decided not to bother. “She’s okay, if you think going all-in on Sullivan’s schemes is okay.” Holly’s lips parted, but before she could say anything, Alistair went on. “We should’ve listened to you. Packed it in and hopped on the first train to LA. I came here to tell you that, though I wasn’t sure if you’d already pulled up roots and gotten out.”
She sighed. “Yeah, well. I’m going to. I just…I don’t know. I didn’t want to leave Wanda in the middle of the gang war, I guess.”
“The war’s over, so you should leave as soon as you can.” He finished off his drink and waved for another.
“Tell me what’s happening.”
So he did. All of it, from the Egyptian hex to Wanda’s deal to restore The Pride. Every word seemed to pile another stone on top of his heart, weighing it down past the floor, the ground, the sewers, into some place as dark and cold as the bottom of Lake Michigan.
“We’re never getting away from Sullivan now,” he finished. “If this fucking hex works—and Sam seems pretty damn sure it will—he’s going to be more than just another bootlegger. More than the Liquor King of Chicago.”
Holly’s dark eyes seemed to look into some memory he wasn’t privy to. “Are they really going to bring back the dead?”
Before he’d left the house, Alistair had gone to their bedroom and opened the drawer where he kept his mementos: his bronze Distinguished Service Cross, the ring Forrest had given him when they bonded, and Forrest’s enlistment photo. Looking at his dead lover’s face, he had to ask what would happen if Sam was right. If Forrest could come back.
Would he be the same? Alistair certainly wasn’t. Too much life had happened since they parted at the train station, let alone since he’d felt Forrest die.
And his parents? He couldn’t really remember what they’d looked like, not in detail. They’d come from Italy separately and met in America, their English heavily accented. They’d had black hair and olive skin like him, and they’d both been unbonded familiars: his father a greyhound, his mother a water buffalo. They wrote long letters back to their families in Italy, but he didn’t know what part of the peninsula either of them had come from, or who his kin were there.
Fur and feathers, he’d been so young.
The ancient hex seemed to offer hope to the bereaved, but he feared it was a poisoned pill, an adder curled in a rose. It was too good to be true, and so he didn’t, couldn’t, trust it.
Especially not in Sullivan’s hands. Even if it worked perfectly, if life could be restored to those who’d gone before without any consequences, Sullivan would find a way to corrupt it. It would become another way to collect power and wealth.
Sullivan would keep its secret his for as long as he could. But what if the government decided it would be better in their hands? Sullivan would eventually end up dead, and the same corrupt assholes who outlawed liquor while drinking from their own private bar would command the power of life and death.
The next war, soldiers would be resurrected and sent right back into the meat grinder. Depending on how the hex worked, it might even be more efficient to kill the wounded than treat them. Just bring them back restored, right there on the front.
“I think, whatever happens, it’s going to be a disaster,” he answered Holly at last. “We’re going to be tied to Sullivan for the rest of our lives, and the best we can hope for is not to die alongside him. The Pride’s time has come and gone. We should have let go and found another, safer, way. Now we’ll be chained to its resurrected corpse. And Sam…he thinks he can fix his family, but he’s not the one who broke them. Who knows, they might even be happy for a day, or a month, or a year. But how long until they fall right back into old patterns?”
“Yeah.” Holly’s gaze came back to the room, and she took a big swig of her martini. “I guess you’re right. I understand why Sullivan’s doing it, though. Besides the power it might give him, I mean. He lost his kid.”
“I know, but this…it’s wrong. I can feel it.” He shook his head. “It’s shitty, and it’s not fair, and I wish I could change the past, but…”
“Yeah,” she repeated. Then she upended her martini glass and drained it. “So what are we going to do about it?”
He lifted his glass. “Get drunk.”
“Really? Alistair Gatti? The man I met under fire in the Argonne Forest?” She cocked her head in disbelief. “Alistair Gatti, who helped take down Ursino, defied Fabiano, and never met an argument he didn’t want to be a part of? Who somehow, against all odds considering what an asshole he is, got Sam Cunningham to fall in love with him? And now I’m supposed to believe the only thing that Alistair Gatti can think to do is give up?”
Anger flickered through the darkness inside him. “Fuck you, Holly. What am I supposed to do, get out my claws and fight Wanda? Fight Sam?”
“No—I want you to fight for them.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. He wanted to argue, to say he’d done everything he could. But that flicker of anger had kindled something, even if it was just his contrary nature.
“To hell with it.” He tossed back his gimlet. “Let’s do this.”
29
Alistair took on cheetah form and tried to reach Sam, but hit only the same gray fog that had come down between them that night at the warehouse, when Sam first encountered the damned Aten Disc.
Of course—Sullivan would have put protections up during the war, especially after his flower shop was bombed and he had to do business out of his home instead. No use interrogating a prisoner if their familiar can see and hear everything through their eyes.
Well, he’d been planning to go to Sullivan’s mansion anyway. He’d just have to arrive unannounced.
It was going on three o’clock by the time he drove The Pride’s truck to the gates of Sullivan’s palatial home. Most of the lights were off by now, but a few still burned. The gates were shut and guards stood watch outside.
