“We gave our word.”

  “Don’t trust him.”

  Vishal yawned. “Trust me instead, cowboy. I’ll protect you. Come back to bed.”

  Matt Reece gently pushed him away. “You sleep. I need a few minutes more.”

  “I love you,” Vishal said, and kissed him. He tasted beer on Vishal’s lips.

  Matt Reece felt like a child with a porcelain heart. His trust in Vishal ran as deep as his sudden joy, and he thought of taking this beautiful man back to bed and devouring him, as a way to consume all the happiness in all the world.

  “Is that you talking, or the beer talking?” Matt Reece asked. Vishal had drank both beers, for Matt Reece had no taste for the stuff.

  Vishal grinned. “That’s me talking to the beer.” He chuckled as he strode to the bed.

  MATT REECE was still at the window when the sun silvered the sky. The rain muted into a heavy mist; the wind held barely a breath, yet it drifted through a gap in the curtains to caress his face with cool fingers. A vague headache grew into something sharp, brought on by anxiety of what this day would bring. He could not shake that burning dream.

  Vishal slept on his back with an arm flung over his face and the sheet covering him to the waist.

  On the street, the rat race began as early risers hurried to the MUNI stops to catch buses headed for downtown. Haight Street woke up to itself, more obstinate than ever about not moving into the twenty-first century. But however many anti-Kenji/antigun rallies were planned for today, no matter how many shootings, no upheaval was going to keep the world from turning.

  The front door creaked, and the bedroom door burst open, banging against the wall.

  Kenji surged into the room, still dressed as a priest. “Rise and shine, lovebirds,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Forgive my barging in, but we need to get a move on.”

  Without waiting for a response, he crossed the room and held up a paper bag and a cardboard tray holding two Starbucks paper cups. “I need you showered, dressed, and fed in thirty minutes. Sorry to cut into your morning nooky time, but we’re on a schedule.”

  Vishal sat up, looking around as if in a daze.

  “What’s the hurry!” Matt Reece realized he was shouting and checked himself.

  Kenji set the food on the empty pizza box that sat on the nightstand. “I brought bagel sandwiches. One roast beef and cheddar, one turkey and swiss, and two vegetarian, not knowing his preference.” He nodded toward Vishal.

  Never had Matt Reece seen Kenji so animated. This person seemed outrageous, certainly not the composed, introspective man he’d known for most of his life. Kenji filled the room with nervous energy.

  Kenji touched Vishal’s face, which was now free of all disfigurement. “Christ, it worked so fast. You’re beautiful, just like I promised.”

  “Thank you,” Vishal said.

  “Okay, boys,” Kenji said as he snatched up the tricorder from the nightstand and walked to the door. “Eat, shower, and dress warm. Chop-chop. Our chariot awaits. Don’t worry about packing. We’ll buy clothes when we get there.”

  Before Matt Reece could ask about their destination, Kenji raced out the door.

  “Christ,” Vishal said, “you’d think the building was on fire. Wow, you should see the look on your face. It’s priceless.”

  Matt Reece leaned against the window frame for support. He was more shaken than he would have thought possible. This new, animated Kenji was something unexpected and somewhat frightening.

  Vishal was so amused that Matt Reece shot him a crooked smile. Seeing his lover naked from the waist up in this morning light, he admired his smooth skin. Vishal now looked like he’d been fashioned with great skill; his dark head and eyes, bullfighter’s physique, and impeccable skin held an exactness, like a butterfly or a hummingbird, something nature refined to perfection.

  Vishal lifted the lids off the two cups. “You want turkey, beef, or avocado?”

  WHEN HE had eaten his fill, he slipped into the shower. Vishal joined him, and they held each other, luxuriating in the heat and kisses before soaping each other down.

  Back in the bedroom, they donned the same clothes they wore yesterday. Those jeans and gray hoody took on new meaning for Matt Reece. Because they were Vishal’s, he felt surrounded by his lover, his soft touch and his scent. It felt as if they were somehow still making love.

  Before they abandoned the room for good, Matt Reece asked, “Are you frightened?”

  “Hell no.”

  “You won’t leave me?”

  “Never.”

  That bolstered Matt Reece’s courage. He assumed he could face anything as long as they were together. They tromped downstairs and found Kenji and Vishal’s uncle waiting for them in the head shop. The black travel bag sat by the front door, and no doubt the cash, passports, tricorder, and computer were in it.

  When the old man saw Vishal’s restored skin, his hands flew to cover his gaping mouth. He backed away until the counter stopped him. “Oh my lord,” he whispered.

  Vishal stepped toward his uncle but stopped. He smiled. “Did Kenji treat you too?”

  “I’ll take no part in this devilry. Don’t come near me.”

  “This is a good thing, Mamaji. It’ll heal your heart.”

  “No good can come of this.” He turned to Kenji. “I curse the day I first saw you.”

  Kenji held out a set of car keys to Vishal. “Your uncle needs time to adjust. Let’s discuss it on the drive south. Just in case the car is under surveillance, I want you and your uncle to drive it out to Ocean Beach and park in the Cliff House parking lot. Matt Reece and I will wait here a few minutes and then grab a taxi and meet you there. Then we’ll all drive to San Jose airport where I have an airplane waiting.”

  “I’m going with Vishal,” Matt Reece said.

  “You’ll do what you’re told,” Kenji snapped. “It’s too dangerous, even in that disguise. You can’t go anywhere near that car until we know we’re not being followed. Look, I already have the cab waiting, and the meter is ticking.”

  Matt Reece glanced out the doorway. A yellow car was parked at the curb, waiting.

  Vishal snatched the keys.

  “It’s a cream-colored Prius, four blocks to Ashbury, and a half block to the left, toward the Panhandle. If you think you’re being followed, then drive past the Cliff House and come back here. We’ll call you and work out a plan B.”

  Vishal hurried to the tattoo room and came back with a wide-brimmed panama hat that he placed on his uncle’s head. He grabbed an umbrella, took the old man by the arm, and led him to the door.

  Matt Reece wrapped an arm around Vishal’s waist. “I want to come with you.”

  “It’s just for thirty minutes, cowboy,” Vishal assured him.

  “No!”

  “We have to be careful.” Vishal pushed Matt Reece away, giving him what seemed an encouraging smile. “You’ll be fine.”

  “What if you’re arrested?”

  They hugged again before Vishal led his uncle out the door and opened the umbrella. They disappeared in the crowd as they ambled toward Ashbury Street.

  As Kenji shut the door, Matt Reece’s windpipe began to close. His solar plexus clinched, and his breaths became shallow. “Oh—” He drew in a slight breath. “—shit.”

  Kenji pushed him into a chair and rushed to his travel bag. He unzipped it and rummaged around until he removed a narrow box. He opened it and removed a syringe and a vial of clear liquid. Holding the vial to the light, he stuck the needle through the rubber stopper, drew a syringeful, thumbed the plunger back to the proper dose, and knelt at Matt Reece’s side.

  “It’s a muscle relaxer, son. You’ll be fine.” He pushed the sleeve of Matt Reece’s hoody up his arm and gave him an injection.

  Matt Reece closed his eyes and leaned his head back.

  “I’m sorry,” Matt Reece said. “Forgive me.”

  “It’s okay, son. I prepared for this. I know how you feel about abandonment.”

  He opened one eye, studying Kenji’s face. He thought about confessing that his apology was to his lover, not Kenji, but by then he could feel his head drifting, and he tried to relax into that sensation.

  He was thinking clearly, enough that he knew something was wrong—something to do with Vishal. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but then…. Passports! Kenji had brought him here to obtain a fake passport. Wherever they were going, he needed one. But there had been no discussion about Vishal needing a passport.

  “Why—” he started to ask, but he couldn’t make his mouth form the words.

  Chapter Twenty

  “SADDLE UP,” Kenji said.

  Matt Reece hardly recognized Kenji’s voice. Blood pulsed dully at his temples. Whatever Kenji injected into his arm thwarted his brain, keeping him suspended between bewilderment and lethargy. When he tried to rise off the chair, he stumbled and landed facedown on the floor. His jaw was so lax it was difficult to speak. “Help me.”

  Kenji muscled him into the chair again and knelt before him, checking his eyes. “You betrayed me, Romeo, but I’ve set everything right again.”

  Through his dizziness, Matt Reece realized that everything that mattered to him was in danger. “Vishal,” he whispered. He tried to push himself up, but he fell back, helpless.

  “I forgive you,” Kenji said. “Young love makes everyone crazy—”

  He tried to look away, anywhere but into Kenji’s predatory eyes. But now he couldn’t move his head or close his eyelids, helpless as a mongoose frozen into immobility by the swaying, blinkless eyes of the cobra. He wondered if his heart would stop as well.

  So much for living forever.

  “—although I admit, you’re not so appealing now that you’re soiled goods.” Kenji’s voice sounded detached, clinical. Perhaps, Matt Reece thought, my hearing is affected too. But a rushing sound blasted his ears, a roar that shook the room and rattled the windows.

  A profound terror washed through him.

  “Time to skedaddle,” Kenji said. He ducked his head under Matt Reece’s arm and lifted him. His body sagged and his feet dragged as Kenji carried him to the doorway.

  Kenji opened the door and dipped to clutch the black canvas bag of money. Once outside, Matt Reece tried to scream for help but could only manage a weak moan. Kenji stuffed him and the bag into the back of the waiting cab and crawled in after them.

  “Hurry it up, Father,” the cabbie said. “This place just turned into a war zone. Something wrong with the kid? You want to dash to a hospital?”

  “Naw, stupid kid broke into my liquor cabinet when I was asleep,” Kenji said as he slammed the door shut.

  “There’ll be hell to pay if he pukes in my back seat.”

  “Raising kids isn’t as easy as it used to be.”

  “Never was easy. You want problems? Try raising girls. I got four.”

  “Marina Green in fifteen minutes gets you a C-note tip.”

  The cab squealed away from the curb, raced to the corner, and barreled through a red light as it slid into a turn. They turned another corner and sped up the block along the Panhandle. Matt Reece saw traffic snarling the road ahead and a column of smoke rising over the buildings to his right. Slowly, he realized that he was hearing sirens.

  The cabbie jumped the curb and raced up the sidewalk of Panhandle park with horn blaring, dodging all the jammed cars. Cursing pedestrians leaped for their lives. As they bypassed the head of the traffic bottleneck, Matt Reece’s head rolled to the side and he glanced up the hill to see the cause of the traffic backup—a car parked halfway up the hill with flames leaping above the roof. He caught only a glimpse of it as they sped back onto the road beyond the backup. It was not enough time to make out the type of car, but he held no doubt that it was Consuela’s Prius.

  A primal scream rushed from someplace deep in his gut, somewhere he never before experienced and against which he had no protection. His vision blurred, and he experienced a spell of vertigo, falling through space with no place to land.

  He closed his eyes. A moment later, he detected a different kind of movement in the car. Like a breeze, it seemed as if a window had opened, a change in the air so delicate he could both feel it and not feel it. A trick of his imagination, but he couldn’t ignore the pressure and heat of breath on his cheek, his eyelids. The tension on his skin was real. The voice in his ear was also real. “Forgive me.” Then came a dreadful silence. The pressure on his skin moved away, a subtle heat that one body exerts upon another cooled, and he felt only emptiness.

  Had his stomach been able to move, no doubt there would have been hell to pay with the driver. Vishal was gone. Only a dozen minutes from bliss to utter hell.

  He tried to visualize his lover at that moment he sat in the Prius—protected from the storm, surrounded by dull light, raindrops still clinging to his cheeks, his clothes slightly damp and musty, holding his breath the instant before he lit up like a Roman candle for the second time in his short life. What was he thinking before the car ignited: of Matt Reece, of living forever, of the life they would have in hiding while the world disarmed? Or was he thinking of Vishnu and the bargain he’d made to trump the Indian god’s will? Was he afraid this bargain made him an abomination in Vishnu’s eyes? Or was he simply thrilled to be driving his new Prius?

  He felt the blood go thick behind his eyes. A million thoughts flashed through his head—he was too innocent to be wrapped up in this heartbreak. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. This couldn’t be happening; he had always played by the rules, lived an honest life.

  He jostled side to side as the cab swerved through traffic. The cabbie used his horn more than his brakes, zooming over hills and down narrow streets. At the Marina Green, Kenji directed the cabbie to a line of boats moored in the harbor. The boats huddled under the mist that was growing into a steady rain.

  Kenji slipped the cabbie a C-note and held up five more in a fan of green. “This is a reward for waiting five days before you tell anyone who was in your cab.”

  The cabbie offered a crooked grin. “Hell, I took the day off. Right now I’m reading poetry at Ocean Beach. I love me some Robert Browning.”

  Kenji handed him the cash. “I’m a big fan of Browning, myself.” He hauled Matt Reece and the bag onto the wharf and hoisted the boy over his shoulder like a sack of rice, lifted the bag, and carried them down a line of sailing vessels. They stopped before a single-mast sailboat, large enough to cross an ocean, small enough for one man to manage. It boasted a teak deck, lots of brass fittings, and a roof covering half of the cockpit to protect the helm. Matt Reece’s head was hanging upside down, but he could read the ship’s name stenciled on the bow: Valhalla.

  Valhalla, he knew from reading Norse mythology, was the Hall of the Slain, the final resting place of the gods, where Odin gathered the fallen heroes of battle. That mountain temple became the gods’ mausoleum.

  A voice from the ship yelled, “Welcome aboard, Father. Right on time.”

  Kenji tossed the bag aboard and pitched Matt Reece into the water behind the stern.

  The fall was short, barely time for Matt Reece to comprehend what was happening. But when a shock of cold hit him, it became all too clear. He plunged, surrounded by bubbles and green water. When the water turned darker, he knew he was sinking, but he couldn’t move his limbs to save himself. For a boy brought up in the high desert, and who was supposed to live forever, he couldn’t believe his life would end by drowning in a dozen feet of icy seawater.

  His body rose into green water again. His head bobbed above the surface, and he filled his lungs with air as his body leisurely rolled onto its back. Kenji knelt on the wharf, only two feet away and making no effort to rescue him. They stared at each other for what seemed hours, with Matt Reece hating, and at the same time imploring, those rapacious eyes.

  With an exhale, he sank again. The icy, silent blackness surrounded him. That’s when he understood true terror, that point where you’re not human anymore. He was pushed into a space where he slipped out of his body, shedding his history and his future, and leaving behind everything he had ever believed in. He knew he was about to die, and he could do nothing but surrender to it. His mind shrieked a silent scream just before he felt an upward rush toward the light. Was this his moment of death? Was he rising to heaven? No, Kenji was dragging his body onto the dock. He gasped for air.

  Kenji lowered his face close to his. “I did that to demonstrate how easy it is for me to kill you. My love for you is the only thing keeping you alive, but don’t test me again.”

  Kenji hoisted him onto his shoulder and walked up the gangway and onto Valhalla’s deck. He dropped him on a bench in the cockpit, next to a hatch that led below.

  “Haul in the gangway and cast off the bowline, Father,” said a one-legged man who sat at the cockpit controls. Kenji jumped to do what he was told. The rumble of an engine sounded below deck. A minute later they were backing away from the dock.

  Matt Reece moved his fingers and then his toes. He realized that his dunking had more purpose than to frighten him. The cold shock helped his system overcome whatever drug paralyzed him. He knew then that soon, he would be normal again.

  He managed to lift his head to see a smoky mushroom rising above the city, a black mass that even the clouds’ tears could not wash away.

  Kenji went below and came back with a blanket. He wrapped it around Matt Reece and sat beside him, holding him steady with one arm over his shoulder. Matt Reece could only continue to stare at that mushroom, feeling an unquenchable loss.

  The ship cleared the harbor and entered the bay. The engine throbbed, and the propeller chewed the water as it launched itself toward the Golden Gate. The one-legged man cranked a winch, and the mainsail inched up the mast. Kenji manned another winch, which unfurled a second sail.

  The ship scurried under that massive orange bridge. When they cleared the lighthouse, the engine went silent. The world hushed, seemingly holding its breath.