Free Bloodroot by Bill Loehfelm Page B

asked. “The joke in the company name?”
    “Of course,” I said. “It’s technology beyond what your clients are used to, you know? And having your own company, that’s far beyond where you were personally a few years ago. I like the name. I like it a lot.”
    Danny smiled at me, benevolent and amused, his eyes a little sad. It was the look you give a kid who believes his dog died because God wanted it that way.
    “I love you, man,” he finally said. “I envy your mind. I always have.” Danny studied his reflection in his gleaming silver knife. “I wish I thought more like you, Kevin. When I came up with the name, I was thinking in terms of beyond the grave.”
    “Morbid, bro,” I said. “As usual.”
    Danny shook his index finger at me. “But true.” He stood. “We got time before the food gets here.” He grabbed his wine. “Come upstairs. I’ll give you a tour of the empire. Explain a little more.”
    Outside, only a few feet to the right of Santoro’s, Danny unlocked a windowless metal door, first by punching a code into a keypad, then by turning three different keys in three separate locks. He led us up a brightly lit, narrow staircase carpeted in a deep maroon.
    His front door opened into a high-ceilinged room with white walls and a gleaming blond wood floor. To our left was a small kitchen area, the walls and floor tiled in chessboard black and white. Stainless steel appliances shone like surgeons’ equipment atop the granite counters. In the wall to our right a huge black pocket door sealed off Danny’s bedroom. Seven cherubs carved in a panel of blood-red wood writhed in wicked, twisted contortions over the doorway.
    “Something else, isn’t it?” Danny said. “It was here when I moved in.”
    “I can’t tell if they’re fucking or fighting,” I said. “It’s disturbing.”
    Danny laughed. “That’s what I love about it. I can’t tell if that’s agony or ecstasy on their faces, if they’re in Heaven or Hell. Betcha they can’t tell, either.”
    “Maybe they’re in between,” I said, “trying to get one way or the other.”
    I walked farther into the room, toward what I took to be Danny’s workstation, a sprawling, patchwork construction of desks and shelves covered with monitors, hard drives, and an assortment of devices I didn’t recognize. Danny followed me, hovering over my left shoulder. The whirring and blinking hardware, no doubt expensive and complicated, impressed me. But it was the enormous painting hanging over the workstation that had caught my eye. It had to be ten feet tall. Twice, maybe three times the size of the original. I stood beneath it, awed and repulsed.
    “Saturn,” I said. “Devouring his young. Goya.”
    “I paid a fortune for it,” Danny said. “Gave the artist, this girl I ran with for a while, a nice bonus, compensation for the two weeks of nightmares that painting gave her. It’s funny. She dumped me right after she finished the painting.”
    I stared up into the inhuman, crazed blue eyes of a naked, muscle-roped wild man, his white hair flying, a small, headless figure clutched in his withered fist. The cannibal god’s chin dripped with blood, the blood of his own children.
    “It’s monstrous,” I said. “Why would you want that watching over you?”
    “It reminds me not to be afraid,” Danny said. “Fear. That’s why Saturn murdered his own children. Fear of the future. Fear of the unknown. Frightened people are capable of awful things. Believe me, I know. I used to be one of those people. I’m not anymore. He’s not watching me. I’m watching him. Caught in the act.”
    “I thought the problem with fear,” I said, “was what it kept you from doing.”
    “A common misconception,” Danny said. “A guy like bin Laden? Everyone thinks hatred motivates people like that. Or that he’s so courageous because he takes on the American Zeus. But that’s all bullshit. Bin Laden’s just another wannabe god hiding in a mountain