Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(106)

Kev looked at Bruno and let out a snort. “You guys need to understand something about Bruno,” he began.

Oh, shit and yikes. Bruno braced himself and waited.

“Bruno saved my ass,” Kev announced. “I would never have learned to talk again without him. I would never have made it at all without him. So if you give a shit about me, you owe him. That’s all.”

Bruno was startled and moved. “Aw,” he said to break the embarrassed silence that followed. “You’re warming the cockles of this coddled, ungrateful punk’s hear

Kev slanted him a speaking look. “Zip it, Bru.”

“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” Sean’s habitual cheerfulness was rising back up. “Something tells me Edie’s exempt from the big freeze, too. Maybe the glaciers are starting to shrink. Who knows?”

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of her, too?” Kev looked hunted.

“Oh, shut the f*ck up,” Sean snapped. “I love you, man, OK? I missed you. Is that so hard to take? Does that scare you so damn bad?”

Kev looked away. “No,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t scare me. I missed you, too. All of you. It was a really long eighteen years.”

Bruno looked at all four men in turn. Seconds passed. Nothing.

His disbelief grew. That was it? That was all? Oh, for the love of Christ. These guys were emotional retards, every last one of them.

“And now it’s over,” he prompted, loudly. “And that’s great, right? Are we OK now? Everybody happy? Can we move on?”

Connor looked like he wanted to tell Bruno to shut up again, but he swallowed it back with some effort. “Amen to that,” he said.

“Yeah,” Davy agreed. Loquacious, as always.

“So we’re done?” Kev looked at Sean. “Do I still need to rip off a limb to show you that I care? You really put me in the mood.”

Sean’s grin flashed white against the grime on his face. “I’m OK.”

Kev turned his gaze on Con and Davy. “How about you guys? Knee to the groin, anybody? A couple of broken ribs? Anyone?”

Connor and Davy both looked like they were trying not to smile.

“No, thanks. We’re good,” Connor said politely.

“All right! Group hug!” Bruno held up dripping, muddy arms. “C’mon, you guys! Hug ’em, Kev! Loosen up, everybody! Feel the love!”

A sound jerked out of Davy that might actually have been laughter as he looked at the foully mud-slimed Kev.

“Keep your distance, man,” he warned. “You are disgusting.”

“Aw, what’s a little mud? You guys are so repressed,” Bruno complained. “Those sticks, rammed up your butts. Hurts to watch!”

Connor turned to Kev. “How do you stand him?” he asked.

Kev propped his hands on his knees to spit out mud, laughing. “I have no idea. Dad would have knocked us all upside the head if he’d overheard this conversation.”

“True,” Sean said. “But Dad was no poster child for psychological and emotional health. Being schizo, and all.”

“How about Tony?” Bruno offered. “The drill sergeant exmafioso, who shot guys in the head and plugged holes in the ground with them?”

“Our role models.” Sean’s voice was sentimental. “They made us the men we are today. Doesn’t it just give you a warm, fuzzy feeling?”

Bruno’s chest jerked with laughter. He braced his arm on the new lip of the hole where the mudslide had begun. He tried to drag his thighs up out of the sucking mud—

And stopped.

A human skull stuck out of the new muddy wall of the pit. It was held in place by plant rootlets and thick clods of earth. It looked at him sideways, grinning around a mouth full of dirt and stones.

As Bruno watched, it detached itselfrom the mud wall and rolled gently down the muddy slope, right into his hand.

He lifted it up, took a look. The jaw was no longer attached, but there was no mistaking that missing left eyetooth and the gold in the top molars. He’d seen those gold teeth a lot, when the guy had been screaming his beery breath into Bruno’s face.

There was a hole in the forehead between the brow protrusions.

“Hey, Rudy,” he said quietly.





“No way.” Lily breathed the words out, horrified. “Your heart?”

Sveti, the waif-like girl who was hosted by Tam and Val to go to school in America, nodded from her perch on one of Tam’s sofas. “Yes, my heart, my liver, my kidneys, and corneas, and other things.” Her lilting voice had a faint Ukrainian accent. “They saved me just in time. Nick, Tam, the McClouds, and Alex, too. There was big fight. The heart transplant patient was in next room, waiting for her new heart.”

Lily noticed the butter cookie in her hand. Heart shaped. She put it down on her napkin, her appetite gone. “So, ah, what happened to her? The heart transplant patient? Did they prosecute her?”

Sveti’s dark lashes swept down over the violet shadows around her dark eyes. “No. She died. She was only fifteen. She couldn’t wait anymore. She was gone by the time police came.”

Lily’s belly contracted. “That’s awful.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” Sveti said quietly. “She could barely speak. It was her parents who would have killed me to save her. And the people who took me, and Rachel and the others.”