Free Chimera by Rob Thurman

did his best to straighten his traitorous limbs beneath him. After several seconds in which my grip was the only thing holding him up, he managed to stay up with only a little help.
    “Good, Vasily. One foot in front of the other.” Heavy hand on his shoulder, I steered him toward the back exit. He nearly fell again as he realized we were headed toward the back alley, but I stabilized him and kept him moving. In the surrounding hush his choked wheezing was the only sound to be heard. He was walking to his death, staggering really, but the end result was the same. He knew it. I knew it. What could fill that silence? What the hell could you possibly say?
    “I have a brother,” I stated in soft contemplation as his shoulder spasmed beneath my steadying grasp. “Did you know?” Of course the poor bastard didn’t know. All he knew of me was my role as Konstantin’s shadow. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t talking to him. “His name’s Lukas, after our grandfather.” I pushed at the exit, paying little attention to the buzzing alarm. Passing out of the gloom into a brilliantly sunny Miami morning, I continued with a numb tongue that was flying solo and out of control. “He needs me, Vasily. He needs me alive. Can you understand that?”
    From the gasping sobs that vibrated his frame and had him dropping to his hands and knees on the asphalt, I had to assume he didn’t. I couldn’t blame him; I don’t think I would’ve understood either. He was crawling away from me now, the pathetic, terrified son of a bitch, over pavement littered with broken glass that tore at his palms. I could see the blood in a scarlet handprint on a discarded fast-food bag.
    “Vasily.” I didn’t remember drawing my gun, but the crosshatched rubber of the grip filled my hand as cool plastic teased my trigger finger. It was the only thing I could feel. My arms, legs, even my face, felt numb and lifeless, but my palm felt the imprint of the gun as if it were a brand, red-hot and marking me for life. “Be still,” I said gently. “It’s over.”
    And it was over. Once I put him down, it would be all over . . . for the both of us. But Lukas would live. Lukas would be free. Whether that made it worthwhile depended on your point of view. I raised the 9 mm. It was unfortunate for Vasily that his point of view no longer counted.

Chapter 8
    S aul leaned loose and relaxed against the rear bumper and watched as I cleaned the trunk with Formula 409. He was the second person to watch me do it. The first had been Sevastian, who’d growled low in this thick throat when I’d shoved a handful of crimson-stained rags stuffed into a plastic grocery bag at him with the emotionless command to dump them. Profoundly disappointed that he couldn’t report back to Konstantin any news that would’ve permanently removed me from sight, he’d left me in the condo garage with a wad of spit beside my shoe. Less than five minutes later Saul showed up with take-out sweet and sour tofu that included a sauce the unhappy scarlet of fresh blood.
    It was not one of my better days.
    Raising curious eyebrows, Saul bounced a fortune cookie in his hand as I continued to scrub. “Should I even ask?”
    “No,” I answered shortly in a tone that had made lesser men think twice. Saul, unfortunately, was not a lesser man.
    “So much for scintillating conversation,” he said dryly. Cracking open the cookie, he extracted the small slip of paper and gave an audible growl. “Do you believe this shit? It’s a hard sell for some time-share scheme. It’s not bad enough we get this crap in bathroom stalls. Now they’re screwing with our cookies.” At any other time his outrage would’ve been amusing, but not too much was tickling my funny bone today.
    “You want a fortune? Here’s your fortune.” I slammed down the lid of the trunk. “Life is short, so get to the goddamn point.”
    His eyes dropped to the wad of paper towels clenched in my fist. I’d cleaned up most of