As Butch smiled in a hard way, she looked at the uneven edge of his front tooth.
"He told me it was for being a spy and a snitch. I swore to him I was just looking, I wasn't going to tell no one. He clipped me again and called me a pervert. My brother... yeah, my brother just watched the whole thing happen. Didn't say a word. And when I walked past my mother with my split lip and the chip out of my tooth, she just held my little sister Joyce closer and looked away." He shook his head slowly. "Up at the house, I went to the bathroom and cleaned up, then headed for the room I was staying in. I didn't give a shit about God, but I went down on my knees, clapped my little hands together, and prayed like a good Catholic should. I begged God that this not be my family. Please let this not be my family. Please let there be someplace else I can go..."
She had a feeling he didn't know he'd switched into the present tense. Or that he'd reached up and was gripping the solid gold cross around his neck like his life depended on it.
His lips cracked into a half smile. "But God must have known I wasn't sure about Him because nothing came of it. Then that fall my sister Janie was murdered." As Marissa sucked in a breath, he pointed behind himself. "That's the tattoo on my back. I count the years since she's gone. I was the last one to see her alive, before she got in the car with those boys that just... desecrated her behind our high school."
She reached for him. "Butch, I'm so - "
"No, let me get this out, okay? This shit's like a train, now that it's moving, I can't stop it." He dropped the cross and shoved his hand through his hair. "After Janie disappeared and they found her body, my father never touched me again. Wouldn't come near me. Wouldn't look at me. Didn't talk to me, either. My mom went crazy after a little while and they had to put her in a psych ward. It was right around then that I started drinking. I ran the streets. Did drugs. Got in fights. The family just limped along. I never understood the change in my dad, though. I mean... for years he beat me, then... nothing."
"I'm so glad he stopped hitting you."
"No difference to me. The waiting to get clipped was as bad as getting my ass slammed. And to not know why... but I did find out. At my oldest brother's bachelor party. I was like twenty by then and had moved from Southie - er - South Boston to here because I was starting as a cop with the CPD. Anyway, I went back home for the party. We were in some guy's house with a lot of strippers. My father was pounding the beers hard. I was doing lines of cocaine and sucking back Scotch. Party comes to an end and I'm buzzing out of control. I'd done a lot of coke... man, I was so f**king polluted that night. So... Dad's leaving... getting a ride home from someone, and suddenly I had to talk to the sonofabitch."
"I end up chasing him out into the street, but he's all ignoring me and shit. So in front of all the guys, I just grabbed him. I was beyond pissed. I started going off on him, about how I thought he'd been a real shitty father to me, how I was surprised he stopped cracking me because he liked it so much. I went on and on, until my old man finally looked into my face. I just froze. There was... total terror in his eyes. He was completely scared of me. Then he said, I left yah alone 'cause I couldn't have yah killin' any more of m'children, could I? I was all... What the f**k? He starts to cry and says, Yah knew she was my favorite... yah knew and that's why yah put hah in that cah w' those boys. Yah did it, yah knew what would happen." Butch shook his head. "Man, everyone heard it. All the guys. My oldest brother, too... My father actually thought I'd had my sister murdered to get back at him."
Marissa tried to embrace him, but again he shrugged her off and took a deep breath. "I don't go home anymore. Ever. Last I heard, Ma and Pa were spending some time in Florida every year, but otherwise were still in the house I grew up in. Like, my sister Joyce, her baby was just baptized? The only reason I knew about it was because her husband called me out of guilt.
"So here's my deal, Marissa. I've had a piece missing all my life. I've always been different from other people, not just in my family but when I was working here on the CPD force, too. I never fit in... until I met the Brotherhood. I met your kind... and, shit, now I know why. I was a stranger among humans." He cursed softly. "I wanted to go through the change not just for you, but for me. Because I felt like then... I could be who I'm supposed to be. I mean, hell, I've been living on the fringes all my life. I kind of wanted to know what being in the thick was like."
In a powerful move, he got off the floor. "So that's why I want... why I wanted to do this. It wasn't just about you."
He went over to a window and pushed aside the pale blue velvet drapery. As he stared out into the night, the glow from a lamp on the desk fell across the planes of his face, the heft of his shoulders, the thick pads of his chest. And the golden cross that lay over his heart.
God, how he yearned as he looked out of the window. Yearned so fiercely his eyes nearly glowed.
She thought of him the night she'd fed from Rehvenge. Saddened, hurt, paralyzed by biology.
Butch shrugged. "But... you know, sometimes you can't have what you want. So you deal and move on." He glanced back at her. "Like I said, you don't want me to, I won't."
Chapter Thirty-five
Butch looked away from Marissa and stared back out into the darkness. Against the dense black screen of the night, he saw images of his family, clip art that made his eyes sting. Holy f**k, he'd never put the whole story into words before. Never expected to.
Not a pretty picture, the whole lot of it.
Which was another reason he'd wanted to go through the transition. He could have used another shot at life, and the change would have been like birth, wouldn't it? A new beginning, where he was something else, something... improved. And purified, too. A kind of baptism by blood.
And man, he hungered to wipe the slate clean, all of it: the stuff with his family, the things he'd done as an adult, that shit with the Omega and the lessers.
He winced, thinking he'd gotten so close. "Yeah... ah, I'm just going to tell Wrath and them this is not - "
"Butch, I - "
He cut her off by going to the door and opening it. As he looked out at the king and V, his chest burned. "Sorry, fellas. Change in plan - "
"What will you do to him?" Marissa's voice was loud and all hard edges as it cut through the air.
Butch glanced over his shoulder. Across the study, she looked as grim as he felt.
"Well?" she demanded. "What will you do to him?"
Wrath nodded to his left. "Vishous, you better field that one."
V's answer was factual, straight to the point. Horrific.
Hell, any plan that ended with "and then we pray" was not a trip to Disneyland.
"Where would you do it?" she asked.
"Down in the training center," V replied. "The Equipment Room has a separate area for first aid and PT treatments."
There was a long silence, during which Butch stared at Marissa. Surely, she couldn't be -
"Okay," she said. "Okay... when do we do it?"
Butch's eyes popped. "Baby... ?"
Her gaze stuck to Vishous. "When?"
"Tomorrow night. His chances will be better if he has a little time to recover from the regression."
"Tomorrow night, then," Marissa said, wrapping her arms around herself.
V nodded, then looked at Butch. "I imagine you two are going to want some privacy today. I'm going to crash here at the main house, so you have the Pit to yourselves."
Butch was so stunned out, he couldn't make sense of anything. "Marissa, are you - "
"Yes, I'm sure. And I'm terrified." She walked past him, heading for the doorway. "Now, I'd like to go to the gatehouse if you don't mind."
He grabbed his shirt and went after her.
As they went along, he took her elbow... but had the sense that she was leading him.
When they got to the Pit, Butch could not read Marissa's mood. She was quiet, but she'd marched across the courtyard like a soldier, nothing but strength and focus.
"I'd like a drink," she said as he shut the door.
"Okay." This at least he could handle. Assuming they had anything but hard liquor in the house.
He went into the kitchen and cracked the fridge. Oh, man... decaying bags of Taco Hell and Arby's. Mustard packets. Two inches of milk that was now a solid. "I'm not sure what we've got. Um... water - "