Page 4 of Nightfire

So he was happily living through his brothers’ families, though that wasn’t the way he thought of it. Not until last night.

He’d spent New Year’s Eve at Sam’s house, playing with Merry, they’d all spent New Year’s Day together at Harry’s and the night after that at Sam’s. When Mike asked about today, there’d been a flash between Eve and Nicole and Sam and Harry. One look containing a thousand words.

Who was going to take on the problem child? The one who couldn’t get his act together?

Eve was tired because she’d given her annual Christmas concert and it took a lot out of her. Plus Grace was teething and both she and Harry had bruised rings around their eyes from sleepless nights. Nicole was three months’ pregnant, suffering from morning sickness and had a big important translating job she’d taken on over the holidays and was working on from home.

That was when it hit Mike like a blow to the head—they wanted to spend time on their own. Each family wanted to spend an evening alone, each in its own space, relaxing. The only one without a family to go to was Mike and they’d sort of taken up the burden of providing a surrogate family for him.

He burned with shame when he realized how often he simply took it for granted that he’d be welcome, any day he wanted, any meal he wanted. Feeding off the good vibes Sam’s family and Harry’s family gave off.

Mike Keillor, vampire.

He’d resolved to stop sucking at the teat of his brothers’ families and take care of himself. Starting now. This evening, he’d opened the fridge, seen bright glowing emptiness except for two six packs of Anchor Steam, and had headed downtown. Looking for something to eat and something to fuck.

Well, that’d turned out real well, hadn’t it?

Mike had an excellent sense of direction. He’d been top in his class in Scout/Sniper training and he’d made Force Recon. The map in his head turned, he turned and started walking.

Walking became a slow trot, because he wanted to escape from his thoughts. And he wanted to get away from this part of town. It was depressing, borderline dangerous. The streets were dark, filthy. Pathetic bundles of clothes covered in cardboard huddled hard between the sidewalk and the building walls, hoping for a little leaked heat.

He ran past a rusted drum. Inside, a fire had been lit, rough hands warming themselves over the fire. The glow cast an orange light up grotesque, lumpy, misshapen faces, the faces of men who had abscessed teeth and cuts that were never treated. One man opened his mouth in a feral animal snarl, rotted teeth like black tree stumps in his mouth.

A methhead, just like the one who beat Harry’s mom and his little sister to death. Harry was just now getting over that, thanks to a wonderful wife and a little girl, both of whom he desperately loved.

Mike ran faster. He wanted to get away from here, away from everything that was here, from the darkness and the pain and the sorrow. He’d had so much of that in his life.

Why could he never escape it?

He was running flat out now, that pounding rhythm that took him out of himself, sweating out the toxins from tonight and the memories of all the nights he’d gone tomcatting in dives, waking up in snarled, sweaty sheets with the woman du jour, trying to remember her name even when his hangover was so catastrophic he could hardly remember his own.

He wanted to forget all of that as he ran and ran and ran. It was over fifteen miles to Coronado Shores, not counting the ferry, a distance he’d run daily in boot camp, carrying 50 pounds of gear. And when he seized up with stitches, that old bastard Ditty, his Drill Instructor, screamed right into his ear that pain was weakness leaving the body.

Ditty was right, of course. DIs were always right. All Marine DIs were God.

On and on and on. His head lifted when he reached the ocean, the clean briny smell of it in his lungs. He’d sweated out the stench of the woman’s room and their sick sex. Now the only thing he could smell was his own sweat and the sea. The sky over the city behind him was now a slightly lighter shade of black and, ahead of him, he could start to distinguish the line where sea met sky.

He stopped at the ferry landing, running in place so he wouldn’t lose his rhythm and kept it up even when the ferry arrived and he boarded. It was so early there were few people to stare at the crazy guy hopping up and down. When they landed, he ran straight off.

He was pouring with sweat by the time he ran down the sidewalk to his building, the last condo on Coronado Shores, fumbling in his pocket for the keys. Ruiz, one of the four night guards of the building, saw him and remotely unlocked the big two-story glass doors.

Ruiz had been there a couple of years and he’d seen Mike come home in every single state there was—after nights of drunken sex and after nights of undercover work. Drenched with sweat from a long run in jeans, a tee and a bomber jacket was nothing. Ruiz simply nodded to Mike as he slowed to a walk and crossed the huge lobby.

Upstairs, his apartment was exactly as he’d left it earlier tonight—no, last night—in a restless rush. Clean, because a cleaning lady came in once a week and because he was Marine-neat. He didn’t have too much stuff anyway. Bed and couch and entertainment center and a kitchen which he never used.

Antiseptic and empty.

He stripped out of his sweat-sodden clothes, dropped them in the laundry basket, and headed for the shower. He stood under the big shower head, leaning with both hands against the wall, letting the boiling hot water sluice over his back for a full half hour. By the time he got out, the sky outside the window was pearly gray. He walked out onto the long deck overlooking the Pacific, and looked out over the view he loved.

This morning the vast cobalt blue ocean with its lacy morning waves didn’t instill the deep calm it usually did. He clutched the iron balcony, standing there with a big white towel around his hips, watching the sky become lighter and lighter.

Unlike Harry, Mike never had trouble sleeping. Before getting married and plunging into Harry Blissworld, Harry had gone for three, four nights at a time without sleeping, something Mike had never really understood.

Now he did. He felt no sleepiness at all. He felt like he’d never sleep again. He watched the sky grow brighter, the ocean becoming ever larger and he felt that his life was like the ocean, going on and on and on, yet never changing. He had a glimpse of his own future in the water.

On and on.

Trying not to bug Nicole and Ellen too much. But seeing as much of his nieces as he could, because he loved those little girls. It seemed to him that the only thing he had to look forward to was watching them grow up, from the outside looking in.