CHAPTER 26: DAVID VS. GOLIATH

  CYPRUS ALLEY—NOVEMBER 19th, 1992 | LATE EVENING

  ?

  Cameron’s fist slammed into the ground where David once stood, causing a fissure to splinter along the lobby of the Nightingale like a haphazard spider-web of fault lines. David had used Pauper to propel himself backwards, firing a small concussive wave from it in order to avoid another hit.

  “Just hold on, Cam,” David insisted, voice still dragged down by his swollen jaw. “Let me explain—”

  Cameron leapt towards him, and this time, anchored himself, crossing both arms as he’d done before, and shouldered himself through one of David’s force projections once more. He reached to grab David by the inside of his leather jacket and tugged, whipping him to the side and throwing him into the wall like he was weightless. Wood splintered outward, and the impact prompted the overhead lights to flicker.

  Before David could fully stand, Cameron covers the distance, grabbing him by the collar of his striped shirt. “You left us for dead, knowing full well that your stupid fucking plan would catch up to us! You’re the reason Mercedes is—she’s gone, David! Dead!”

  “I didn’t—”

  A bellow of anger left Cameron, and he threw David over his shoulder, and a silhouette skipped across the carpet before he crashed against the concession stand of the theater’s lobby. “Yeah. You didn’t know, ‘cause you didn’t care. Did you even try looking for us after you ran off? For her?”

  Blood caked David’s features. He couldn’t stand up, and instead, he raised his hand in anticipation of Cameron’s next approach, the symbols of Pauper alight. “Hngn—... I left that morning to find a new buyer, Cam, to take the damn guns off our hands, ‘cause I knew it’d bite us in the ass!”

  Cameron’s brows furrowed, the scarlet throbbing through the veins around his eyes.

  Filthy, weaselly liar. Even if he was telling the truth, Cameron saw it in his face; he didn’t feel sorry. He didn’t feel anything other than what he wanted to feel. Whatever had birthed David St. James made him one part pride, two parts ego, three parts greed, and four parts ambition. Combine them all together, and the end result is a man so convinced of himself that he feels he can do no wrong and would never do any wrong.

  And there Cameron stood, the white-ivory of his outer skin stained with David’s blood, and David was just the same as he was before—a mess of self-importance that only knew one thing: excuses.

  “Say it, David, say it’s your fault,” Cameron demanded, quickly crossing his arms in front of him as another blast was sent towards him. His skin held up. David wouldn’t do any damage to him, not unless he fired a blast like that point-blank.

  “I’m not—..” David wheezed, barely making it back up to his feet. He leaned one half of his body against the concession counter, and power surged through his glove and out as not one blast, but three at once. “I’m not the one who killed her, Cam! And you’re sitting here trying to pin the blame on me, when someone else put her lights out and you failed to keep Mercedes safe!”

  David’s words disarmed him almost immediately.

  The weight of them was heavy enough to make Cameron freeze, and his hesitation enabled the blasts to hit him dead on before he could plant his feet and shoulder the blow. Cameron tried to pivot, but all it did was redirect where he was thrown.

  Doors shattered around his body as he flailed down into the Nightingale's singular theater room, breaking through the rows of rickety wooden chairs. The only light in the room was that of the movie still playing, a silent film, all in black and white.

  Cameron rose to his feet, and grabbed hold of one of the chairs, throwing it towards David, who had just stepped into the theater proper. “Because it was a fucking arbiter, David! An arbiter! I never stood a chance, but the three of us might’ve if you weren’t out looking for your next big score!”

  David blasted the chair away with a wave of raw power. He had to lean against the door frame to stop himself from falling, as by now, all of the thrashing had left his body littered in contusions, bruises, and more. A goading smile stretched across his beaten face, lopsided by way of his injured jaw.

  “Who’s outside, Cam? That guy you’re with?”

  Cameron furrowed his brows.

  “If you’re alive and here, and Mercedes is dead, that means he didn’t kill you—... you’re out and about, same as me, and not behind bars. What’d you do? Become a rat? No,” David paused, a weak laugh escaping him. “No, no. It’s worse. You became someone else’s mutt. The question is.. whose?”

  A rhythm took over Cameron’s ears, suspending all other sounds in place of a noise that beat steadily like a drum ready to burst. His heartbeat quickened, and if there were words to be said, he couldn’t find them. Every ounce of aggression he’d saved for David was momentarily suspended in place of an overbearing guilt that clung to each of Cameron’s extremities like a tar made of Mercedes blood, thickened by Cameron’s guilt. No air left his nose or his mouth, and a tightness overcame his features.

  Another blast exited Pauper, and Cameron was sent hurling further down the rows of the theater, back forced against the wall just below the display screen.

  David pointed a gloved finger towards him. “And for what it’s worth, Cam? I had a plan. Was going to try and sell to the Lancasters, but that went bad too. See, that man out there, Gideon, he’s my ticket. Could be our ticket, if you had any damn sensibility, you’d quit throwing this tantrum and join up with us. We’re taking over. Once we’ve got Spectre under our control, we can only fall upwards.”

  Cameron’s silence persisted.

  His body didn’t even hurt, but something inside of him was bleeding—and he couldn’t stop it. There was no armor in the world strong enough to stop David’s words, and David had known that for years. It was how he kept such a tight leash on Cameron, and even now, he felt powerless, in spite of knowing full well he had the capacity to end things if he could just get his hands on him.

  “What we wanted, what we’ve always wanted, Cam, it’s just out of reach. If you can’t see that, you’re as stupid as you are stubborn. Do the right thing. It’s what Mercedes would’ve wanted.”

  Cameron looked up at David, whose features were grayed out by the black and white silent film that played behind him. Amidst the shifting of light, his frame looked more like a silhouette, and it was within those shadows that Cameron saw the vague impressions of a memory. A face.

  ?

  “Hold this,” she said.

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  Mercedes closed her eyes in focus and pressed her ear against a safe, listening for the proper combinations. Her curly brown hair pressed flat against the metal and her ushanka-hat was lopsided.

  Cameron grabbed hold of a small cage. Inside was a small plasmatic creature, made of a fiery purple and pink, shaped like a ball with a singular large eye that remained open and ever observant.

  “Why do I have to hold your sprite?”

  “It’s a better lookout than you. It’ll start blinking and acting weird if we get caught, and then we’ll know,” Mercedes said, opening a single eye just to see Cameron’s reaction.

  “Ha-ha. Very funny, Mercedes,” Cameron said, sneering at her.

  “I know. Now, if you’d be quiet, I have a safe to crack,” she said.

  Rumor had it that the barber shop off of the main thoroughfare, right in the supposed neutral zone between the 8th Street Gang and the Lancaster Boys, was ripe for picking. It was an elaborate scheme that David put together in no less than a few hours, all based on a hunch, and Cameron fully expected that Mercedes would only find a whole bunch of nothing.

  Hell, it would’ve been easier if Cameron activated his abilities and beat the thing open, but Mercedes decided that was too risky, and that they’d already drawn enough attention to themselves by taking a shot at one of the few places left in the South End that wasn’t protected by one of the bigger gangs.

  “How long is David going to be?”

  “Dunno’, but seeing as he made a fuss and has everyone in the barber shop chasing him currently, it might be a bit,” Mercedes said, continuing to twirl the knob of the safe.

  “Right. Stupid of me to assume he’d have told you anything,” Cameron scoffed.

  “Aaannnnndd.. there!” Mercedes whisper-shouted.

  The safe clicked open, and Cameron shuffled towards Mercedes, still holding her caged sprite, and their heads were nearly smushed together side-by-side as they both tried to look at their spoils. It was only a few wads of cash, and a clunky electric hair clipper that was made of solid gold; or at least lacquered in it.

  Mercedes and Cameron both puffed their cheeks out, trying to contain their laughter, only for their amusement to spill out. Even the caged sprite, who was otherwise placid, had this air about it—like it didn’t know what was happening, but jostled around in the cage in glee if only to include itself in the moment.

  “Well, that’s something,” Cameron said. He reached inside the safe and grabbed the wads of cash, shuffling them into his back pocket. “Don’t know how much use David will see in it, though.”

  Mercedes grabbed the golden razor and held it up triumphantly. “Doesn’t need to. I see plenty of use in it, since your hair is getting longer, and we all know you look better with a buzzcut.”

  Cameron nodded his head from side to side in agreement. “Yeah.”

  “To the chair!” Mercedes said, rushing out of the barber shop’s small office and into the grooming floor. All of the chairs remained empty, and Mercedes pointed him towards the first one that was available to them.

  Before sitting down, Cameron handed the caged sprite over to Mercedes, who carefully placed it on the counter in front of the mirror, turning it towards the direction of the doorway. “Just in case,” she said.

  “Don’t cut my head up,” Cameron said, finally sitting down in the old leather barber’s chair.

  “No promises.” Mercedes switched the razor on and began running it through his raven-black hair, which had to have been nearly down to his ears at that point, halfway between straight and wavy.

  She didn’t end up cutting him, but Cameron’s mouth dropped open at the results of her haircut. It was a buzzcut, but he’d hardly admit to calling it that. It was way too close to the scalp. So close that he looked bald, and even though Mercedes had been the one doing it, even she looked surprised.

  “You made me look like a skinhead,” Cameron said in disbelief.

  Mercedes removed her ushanka-hat from the top of her head and placed it onto his.

  “There. Problem solved,” she said, lightly slapping the side of Cameron’s face.

  ?

  David made an attempt to exit to the lobby, but before he could leave, Cameron stood up, shadows covering his gaze.

  Cameron slowly stepped towards him. “Leroy Waters.”

  “What?” David said, turning.

  “That’s.. that's the man outside. He’s the arbiter who killed Mercedes, and you’re right. I am running with him—what’s more, what’s worse, I’m his underarbiter.”

  For the first time in his life, Cameron saw what could only be described as a look of surprise laden on David’s features. The facade of absolute assuredness and that all-knowing spark dwindled, and short of taking any accountability, Cameron figured this was the best he’d get out of David. And that look of shock and awe was well worth it, even if every word that left Cameron was self-injuring in one way or another. Saying all of that out loud threatened his composure, and he felt halfway on the verge of screaming.

  “And when he killed her, David,” Cameron stood directly in front of David, and snatched his wrist before he could even think of firing off another blast from Pauper. He forced David down onto his knees, almost effortlessly, and stared at him. “I burned two names into my head. Names I’ve thought about every single night since she died. He’s the first one. Do you wanna guess, try and pin down who’s the second?”

  “Think about this for a second, Cam—”

  Cameron snapped his wrist.

  A cry of anguish escaped David, who watched as Pauper hung loosely against the hand that flailed like dead weight.

  The crack was loud with permanence, and Cameron pulled until David’s hand was ripped from his arm. Blood spattered in front of him, and with a renewed calmness. A cold calmness.

  Cameron showed David his white-ivory covered fingers. They were shaking. His body was shaking, and Cameron’s voice was well on the verge of cracking. “I’ve been around a lot of death lately, David. More than I’m used to, and it.. it’s started to mess me up. Has me in a bad way. Or maybe, it’s all the years of beatings and killings I did for you—for us, for the Sables—rearing their heads, like an army of skeletons chasing me from the closet I hung them in. I don’t know. Can’t say. But I am starting to.. to view things differently. Starting to view it differently, death, you know, for what it really is. How final it is. How it’s a release. And as much as I want to kill you, you don’t deserve that.”

  David held the base of his new stub with his opposite hand, gritting his teeth in open defiance of Cameron’s words. He was a mess of groans and cries, but stubborn nonetheless. Stubborn like he always was. But Cameron saw that defiance for what it was; dug deeper into its source.

  It was pride that tried and failed to disguise itself as fear.

  “Pauper won’t fit your other hand, David,” Cameron continued. “And without it, you aren’t anything but snake-in-the-grass with a big mouth and even bigger dreams. Thing is? You can still be all of those things and still be right. I wasn’t good enough to save her. But I’m still better than you David, because I was there. Because I tried.”

  David fell to his side in fetal position, clutching the area of his wrist where his hand had been snapped clean off. No further words left him, and he couldn’t even muster what was needed to look at Cameron. Instead, he looked at the severed hand only a few feet away from him, and reached for Pauper.

  “And —... and that’s worth something. It’s worth more than anything you’ll ever amount to.”

  Cameron walked past him and towards the shattered doors of the Nightingale, where outside, ice and shadow awaited him.

  CAMERON KESSLER

  DAVID ST. JAMES

  MERCEDES GARCIA (FLASHBACK)

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