1. Champion #2
“As if. See you soon, cousin.” He hung up leaving me seething until the sound of chopper blades alerted me to my ride.
It was first-class all the way. I wasn’t in the belly of a plane with a pack strapped on my back, on some covert mission that I’d never hear about again.
This was prodigal son returning to the family home nonsense.
I didn’t drink the cold beer, even if there was a seal on it.
I wouldn’t eat or drink anything she offered me until I got back into my own world.
Was this some kind of reunion for a final reckoning or something equally dramatic?
Maybe the old lady was dying. One could only hope, because she was probably one of the immortal blood-sucking undead by now.
The beautiful and professionally friendly stewardess smiled at me and directed me off the jet, like I might get lost. It was big, but not that big.
On the tarmac, Daniel, my blond cousin who looked so much like me, was waiting with a little red car that was as pretty as it was dangerous. “Good flight?” he asked, tossing me the keys.
“Nice ride.”
“It is. Drive fast. Get some of that rage out of your system before you meet the Croc. Do you know how many people are betting that you lay waste to the parlor? Basically everyone.”
“Not you.”
His smile twinkled. “I’m too responsible not to place bets on both sides. Be careful with my car. It’s from my personal collection.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Cinnamon Bear.”
I stared at him. Daniel was one of the most cold-blooded, psychotic people I knew, and I knew my mother. “Cinnamon Bear? That’s downright wrong.”
“You’ve gotten soft if that bothers you.”
“No, that’s just unnatural and disturbing.”
He put a large hand on my shoulder, squeezing just enough to give me an idea of his hidden strength, the one he didn’t keep very well hidden. “You are easily disturbed. Enjoy your drive.”
“Not my visit?”
He shrugged and pulled out a pack of peanuts. “No one bet you’d enjoy that. I have money on the Ming vase. Make it at least fifty pieces, and I’ll split the winnings with you.”
I waved him away and got in the GTX Cobra.
I’d enjoy this ride in spite of myself. It was a beautiful day, blue sky with a few puffy clouds in the Alabama sunshine.
The road was freshly paved with plenty of winding turns.
Concentrating on driving helped me separate my emotions from the reason I was here.
By the time I pulled through the iron gates of the old antebellum mansion, I mostly had my head together. I was here to save my business, not break Ming vases. I would lose the red tape, not my temper.
I took a deep breath as I parked the sweet little goer in front of the double doors.
The dark green paint was clean, crisp, in perfect condition like the rest of the property.
She’d kept it up perfectly for the historical society that would love it after she kicked the bucket.
Maybe someone would turn it into a bed and breakfast. The idea of unruly kids and dogs running around and scratching the wood and marble made me smile.
Smiling was a good idea. I wasn’t the same eighteen-year-old that broke her butler’s nose and stole a car on my way out, and I wasn’t the twenty-one-year-old who came back for Thanksgiving with a prostitute I had dance on the table during dinner.
The memory made my smile slip, but at the time it had seemed necessary to confront her about my birth father and disrupt her world in the most unapologetic way possible.
Old Benton met me at the door, his expressionless face not showing any of the distaste he must feel for the person who gave him the scar over his nose.
“Benton. Aren’t you dead yet?”
“Not yet, sir. I do feel urges to feed on blood now and then, so perhaps I have and didn’t notice it yet.” He bared his teeth in a smile then turned and led me down the bright and airy hall. “This way, sir.”
“You can call me Nix,” I said with a friendly smile at his back. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all to stake him through the heart.
“I appreciate the gesture, but to me, you will always be Master Hammer.”
I gritted my teeth. I could suggest in more strong terms that he call me Nix, but I wasn’t getting distracted by nonessentials. “Whatever floats your boat. Mm. This house is beautiful, like a woman lives here with a herd of cats. And the parlor? She always disliked that room.”
He didn’t answer, just led me to the pastel blue room with an ancient oriental carpet that I’d rolled around on with whoever and whatever I could get. Wrestling, fighting, it was always my first love, my first nature.
My mother, the Crocodile of Alabama, wore a matching pale blue suit, holding a cup of tea and gazing out the window at the azaleas.
Her pale hair was up, like always, in an elegant chignon that made her look taller and more regal than she actually was.
It always surprised me to see that she wasn’t more than five four, not when she stood over so many forces with so much indomitable will.
“Welcome. Would you like a cup of tea?”
I glanced at the table set with a perfectly elegant set. “No, thank you. How have you been?”
She turned to face me and I got to see the lines on her face that she was too proud to remove with surgery.
She’d never used beauty as one of her weapons, however beautiful she had been, but she was still a handsome woman.
“I’m getting tired,” she answered, as if I actually wanted to know and wasn’t just being pleasant.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She smiled slightly. “You aren’t as honest as you used to be.”
“I’m more practical in my old age. What do you want?”
She went to the table and picked up a piece of paper, frowning at it before she walked over and handed it to me. “You would like me to sign this.”
I read through the papers, and she was right, I did want her to sign it. She wouldn’t interfere in my life, with as many guarantees she could give, naming assets and stocks if she should slip up.
I lowered the papers and smiled my warmest smile. “Go ahead and sign.” I packed my most persuasive voice into that statement.
She smiled back, but her smile wasn’t nearly as warm. “You sign first.” She handed me a single sheet of paper with very simple instructions. The force of her will was easy enough to brush off. I hadn’t been a slave to her will for a long time.
I read those simple directions three times to make sure I had it before I lowered it slowly to study her. “You want me to date a woman for six months?”
“A respectable woman from my alma mater.”
“Why?”
“Obviously, hoping that you’ll fall in love and change your ways, start a family, take responsibility for your heritage.”
I snorted. “Beg your pardon, madame, but I that’s never going to happen.” Hearing her say the words ‘falling in love’ like it was something she believed in was positively nauseating.
“You’ve never dated a woman for longer than three days, and I use the term dating lightly. I realize that you have a deep mistrust for women, which I take full responsibility for instilling in you, but in order for you to reach your full potential, you need a good woman at your side.”
I nearly smashed the Ming vase right then and there, but I kept my hands relaxed instead.
This was an insult, interference, manipulation, all the things I hated, but it was also an opportunity.
If she thought that I’d ever find a woman that made me feel responsible for her mess, she must be getting delusional in her old age.
“You want me to date a female for six months, and if I do so, you will sign that paper?”
She nodded and took a delicate sip of her tea. It was probably laced with the blood of her enemies. I couldn’t trust her, but her behavior lately had been different, out-of-character for her.
“What’s the catch? Marriage? Pregnancy? I’m not giving you a baby to raise after the job you did on me.”
“I don’t want a baby,” she said, giving me a stern look. “I want my son to fulfil his potential.”
“Which means date a respectable woman for six months.”
“Any woman at the school where I went and where you refused to go.” She added a little nod to that like it wasn’t insane.
“Ah, so you’re getting me to go back to school as a side perk. I’m a little old for college.”
“Yes, you are getting older, but you haven’t smashed anything yet, so maybe you’re getting wiser as well. College would be a perk for you. Education is always desirable.”
“I’m not interested in dating a respectable woman for six months,” I said, handing the papers back to her.
She took them with a serene smile. “I am fully aware of your fears regarding women, particularly the ones whose company you could actually endure for any length of time. You date the most vacuous, superficial, vain, spiteful, weak-willed, women you can possibly find. In anywhere other than Las Vegas it would be difficult to find so many females trolling those depths.”
I laughed, smiling at her warmly. “Beg your pardon, but hearing you regale me with tales of other women’s vices is charmingly ironic. You kill people, but you complain about a woman’s vanity? Sorry to interrupt. You were saying about my choice in women?”
She took another sip of tea, and I noticed a slight tremor in her hands. It wasn’t fear, but weakness, age. That one tremor told me more than anything else she’d said. “I want you to be happy, Nix. I want you to live up to your potential.”
“I don’t think we have the same goals for my potential.”
“Your potential is yours to fulfil, not mine. That’s part of the contract. I wouldn’t interfere with your leadership if you were to take your place as my heir.”
Cold washed down my body from my head to my toes, leaving me frozen and terrified.
I needed to run, hide, get as far away from this monster as I could possibly get before I devoured her and became an even worse monster.
I swallowed hard. “I will consider your offer. I should get going. I have a fight to win this evening. Hopefully everything will go smoothly with the authorities.”
She smiled, the softest smile I’d ever seen on her. “Of course. I will be there to watch it. What could possibly go wrong?”
“You’ll be there?” The churning in my stomach solidified into rocks.
She nodded regally. “It’s a free country, and I’ve bought several tickets.”
“Several tickets.” The thought was incomprehensible. My mother was not going to bring her court to my world. Absolutely not.
“That’s right. We’ll be running into each other often in the future, unless you choose to make yourself happy. Six months. No commitment. Complete freedom afterwards no matter what you choose to do. Enjoy your flight back.”
I drove to the airport in a buzzing haze that grew until I was in the cage with my opponent. He would bleed, scream, and weep until I finally felt something other than my mother’s crocodile jaws clamped down on my leg, beginning the deadly spin that would drag me under.