Barbara Harrier Spiegel turned sideways to the mirror and studied her reflection with a critical eye. The fabric of this dress wasn't her usual style; it shimmered and clung to every curve. Still, smoothing it over her narrow hips, she was satisfied with what she saw. Even in something this revealing, she was as lean and fit as ever. Living the so-called good life for eight years and having a son hadn't affected her figure at all.
Two sons, actually, her mind recalled, but she pushed that thought away. When you slept with a syndicate capo and made the truly stupid mistake of getting pregnant — especially a capo who was marked, as Eddie had been, and soon to die — it was a good idea to forget the entire thing. Good for her, even better for the kid, wherever he was. Better that it had never happened. Definitely better, if survival was your goal. Survival had never been one of Barbara's particular goals, but hell, if the kid had to be born, then he deserved a chance at it.
She tilted her head to slide the glittering sapphire clip into her pale hair, pulling the strands back from her face. Her movement wasn't graceful, the stiffness due to the wounds which had forced her early retirement. She'd mastered the limp, long ago, but had never quite regained full use of her left arm. Her husband Ben, watching from his own dressing table, believed her injuries had come from a vehicle accident, but he knew better than to offer her any help. He might be ignorant of who and what she had once been, but he was under no illusions that she had a sweet temper. But then, he was no saint, either. That was one reason she liked him.
The bedroom door slid open and their son made his usual low-key entrance, trying not to be noticed where he knew darned well he wasn’t supposed to be. His black hair, as untamable as Ben’s, was standing up in the forest of spikes that had given him his nickname as an infant, and God only knew where he’d been playing, because flakes of mud were crumbling from his jeans onto the rug. "Dammit, Spike," she snarled, and reached for him. At the same time the door opened further and Gretchen, their housekeeper, burst in. She also reached for Spike. Somehow, without apparent effort, he dodged both of them and flung himself into his father’s lap, screeching, "Dad! Save me!"
Ben ruffled his hair and laughed, both actions making a bad situation worse. "Back off, ladies. He’s mine. What do you want, Spike?"
Trying very hard not to smirk at the thwarted women, Spike said, "Where are you going?"
"Just to a party."
"But you promised me a ride!"
"That’s tomorrow." He avoided Barbara’s eyes.
"Oh. Tomorrow." Only a (spoiled!) little boy could sound so pathetic, as if tomorrow were a century away.
Furious with both of them, Barbara grabbed what little control she could. "You don’t get to go at all if you don’t do everything Gretchen tells you tonight. And take a bath!"
"Mo-o-om!"
"And don’t forget to wash your hair. You’ve even got mud in that. Where have you been?"
Instead of answering the question, he turned to Gretchen and said, "Is dinner ready? I’m starving."
"You’re always starving," Gretchen groaned. "Come with me, and let your parents finished getting dressed, and I’ll give you something to tide you over until the potatoes are cooked, all right?"
He skipped merrily out, neatly avoiding having to tell Barbara where all the mud had come from. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to know anyway. She rounded on her husband. "You’re not taking him out in that experimental ship!"
"No! Not that one. I won’t even be flying that one myself. She’s way too sensitive. I’m leaving her to the younger men. I’m just flying escort, to see how she does. Can’t sell her unless I can talk about her first-hand."
"That’s your reason for going. What’s Spike’s? Dammit, Ben, tomorrow’s a school day!"
He at least had the grace to look ashamed of himself. "I know."
"Well?"
"Well, he might never get a chance to see a ship like this one again."
"Oh, bull. He’ll see thousands of them. He’s going to be a flyer just like you when he grows up. If he finishes school!"
"I know, I know. But he hates school. And he heard me talking about the test flight today, and… well, he gave me The Look."
She snarled at him. "No more! Never again on a school day, I don’t care if he follows you for hours giving you The Look, he is not going! And if you tell him he is, he’s going to be real disappointed and you are going to look like a liar. I’m putting my foot down on this."
He rose and grinned. "I can see that. All right, I promise. No more school days."
"Swear."
"I swear."
She grabbed the matching hair clip and shoved it in almost haphazardly. "Do I look all right?"
"Beautiful as always."
His voice sounded odd, and she turned to look at him more closely. He had a hand spread on his stomach and an odd expression on his face. "Ben? Is something wrong?"
"Naw. Just a little indigestion."
It looked worse than a little indigestion. He was pale. "Do you want to just skip the party tonight?"
"It’s not that bad, hon. Besides, the company’s going have clients there, important ones. I have to do the glad-hand routine."
"All right, but if you don’t start feeling better, we’ll leave early."
"Deal." He did seem to be shaking it off, and by the time he held out her wrap to drape over her bare shoulders, he was completely himself again.
Ben didn't sleep well that night, so before her men left for the new ship's test flight, she woke Spike early and took him to the gym for a workout, to get rid of some of that excess boyish energy. She rarely spent so much time with him — she wasn't exactly the maternal type — so she was hugely relieved to hand him over to Ben after less than two hours of his company. She didn't understand how Ben did it, but he never seemed to tire of Spike, no matter how long they were together, even if it was an entire weekend. Of course, they were a lot alike. Not in looks — although Spike had Ben's coloring, the black hair and the beautiful brown eyes, he was otherwise definitely her child, tall, lean and leggy — but in personality. They were like a pair of cats, lazing around one minute as if they didn't know how to move, then the next minute bounding about as if a mere house couldn't possibly contain them. Ben was nearly 20 years her senior, yet sometimes he made her feel old. The man has never grown up, she mused as she watched the pair of them clamber into the car. No wonder he gets along so well with the kid. Just bring him home clean for once, will you, Ben? But he wouldn't. He'd drag the kid along with him to the hangars and they'd climb in and out of space craft and come back with grease in every fold of their skin and huge stupid grins on their faces. Spike definitely got that from Ben. She hated space travel and everything to do with it. She'd been born on Mars and had never left it, and she never intended to. She didn't mind listening to Ben talk about his work, partly because that was her wifely duty, but mostly because he was so charmingly enthusiastic about it. However, she was delighted to present him with a son to share it with, so he would quit trying to get her to join him up there.
They came back late and in fine spirits, but Ben was worn out. He flopped in his chair and they watched vid, the shows punctuated by Spike's descriptions of the high points of his exciting day. The one he repeated most often was that his father had let him fly the ship they were on, a declaration that, the first time, made her jerk upright and open her mouth to yell until she caught Ben's wink over the top of Spike's head. Spike was still talking about it, and making obnoxious zip craft engine noises, when she shoved him into bed. Immediately after, she coaxed Ben into going to bed early. He was so weary, she tucked him in almost exactly as she had Spike.
That was the last night they had as a family.
Ben rose late the next morning, but otherwise he seemed fine. Luckily, Spike had gone off to school by the time she and Ben sat down to breakfast. Gretchen served Barbara her coffee and Ben his cereal, then started beating eggs for an omelette. Everything seemed so normal. Then Ben looked at her with an expression of mild surprise and abruptly fell face-down into his bowl.
Barbara sat for several seconds, staring at him, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. It was Gretchen who snapped her out of it, by coming in, dropping her tray, and screaming. Gretchen babbled hysterically for several seconds, then raced for the wall comm unit to call an ambulance. Barbara didn't bother to move. She'd seen a lot of dead men in her career, and she knew it was far too late for any doctor to help Ben.
The shock of Ben's heart attack was severe, but not nearly as severe as what followed it. She'd been fond of Ben, as fond as she'd ever been of a man other than Eddie, but she wasn't the kind of woman whose life centered around her family. She'd married him because she couldn't support herself any more in her chosen career, and he was a nice, good-looking guy with money. She missed him, but the suddenness of it hurt as much as the actual fact. The larger shock, and the deeper pain, came a few days after the funeral, when Ben's accountant and their family lawyer gave her the worst news of all. Ben had left them almost penniless.

On his twelfth birthday, Vicious decided he was ready to roam the streets. Not permanently, but in an exploratory sense. He was ready to test his courage.
His birthday was an arbitrary choice, simply a day so he would have a specific goal. He’d been tall enough to climb in and out of the dormitory windows for over a year, a head taller than any of the other children, even those older than him. There were only two of those now, and every month there were fewer and fewer of the younger kids. Father Paul found reasons and excuses to turn new ones away. As the older ones turned sixteen, they were sent out into the world with a small amount of money and a letter of recommendation to a possible employer. More were being adopted, partly because Father Paul used money meant for the orphanage upkeep to bribe potential parents, while broken plumbing went unfixed and the younger kids wore the older ones' hand-me-downs. Once he’d tried to sell Vicious that way, bringing the couple out onto the playground, since Vicious wouldn’t come to them. He kept his head down as they approached and filled his mind with the things he would like to do to Father Paul. Then he looked up at them — and smiled. That was the end of that.
Yet the nuns liked him. They saw him helping the younger kids occasionally, and his behavior had vastly improved, so he had their approval if not their affection. What they didn’t know was that his behavior had improved out of boredom. Father Paul was simply too easy. Vicious hated him, although not as much as Father Paul hated him, he knew. Feeding Father Paul’s hatred was his only entertainment lately, and it was far too easy to do.
The streets would be more of a challenge.
A few weeks before his birthday, he broke into the kitchen and took a long carving knife, one of the old-fashioned kind that had to be kept sharp. What he really wanted was a sword, like one he’d seen in a weapons shop on one of the orphans’ increasingly rare outings. But until he found a way to get one, the knife would have to do.
His first night out, he discovered he would need more than just a knife. Quivering with excitement, nostrils flared at the unfamiliar scents, he crept down the alley behind the church, skipped across the road, and ducked into the shadows of another alley. There he discovered there were more fearsome enemies than rats or even humans. There were dogs. Very hungry, very mean dogs. He ended up clinging to a window sill halfway up a wall until dawn made the wary beasts slink off. He barely made it back through the windows of the dorm before the nuns came in to wake them for breakfast.
He did a lot of thinking that day. That night, he robbed the kitchen of a broom, a mop, a hand saw, a pair of scissors, and a leather apron. The next day, working whenever he could sneak away, he cut the leather into strips and cut off the handle of the broom and a short piece of the smaller mop handle. Wetting the leather, he used it to bind them all together with the knife into a serviceable spear. The piece of mop handle sat crossways over the top of the knife, so that if the first blow didn’t kill the dog, it wouldn’t be able to work its way up the spear to him, like a medieval boar spear. If he ever got the chance, he decided, he’d heat the knife and hammer the tip back so it worked as a barb, doing more damage when he pulled it out again.
A few days later, when the spear had been tested and the leather looked like it would hold, he waited for the darkness, slipped out the window, over the fence, and back into the alleys.
He remembered the first dog who found him, a big shaggy brute who’d been among the pack that had kept him on the window sill all night. He smiled at it. The dog growled and charged, stupidly, obviously expecting him to turn and run. He waited until the last moment, then set his body and the spear, letting the dog’s own weight drive the blade in. For a second he thought the crosspiece wouldn’t hold, so insanely furious was the dog’s thrashing as it attempted to rid itself of the pain in its chest and bite the boy it knew was responsible. Then, so suddenly it was almost funny, it shuddered and went limp.
He jerked the spear out swiftly, glad now that he hadn’t barbed the end, because other dogs had gathered, four of them, just inside the mouth of the alley. They edged closer, heads lowered menacingly, no doubt drawn by the smell of blood. Vicious leaped at them, using the spear as a slashing weapon, cutting across the muzzle of one and the neck of the one next to it, then leaped back, agile as a deer. He felt almost high with his power. Every muscle, every nerve in his young body was alive and vibrant and under his control, and every sense was totally alert. He could hear the dogs panting, smell their meat-eaters’ stench, see every muscle ripple.
The two wounded dogs had yelped and backed away, but all four were gathering their courage for a rush at him. He smiled again. "Come and get me. No, wait, I’ll come and get you." And he jumped on them, slashing and stabbing, dodging the snapping jaws, once vaulting over a hairy back when they almost got him trapped between a trash bin and the alley wall. In a short time, the dogs had enough. They trotted off, bleeding, to look for easier prey.
The rest of the night, he hunted dogs. He also found the dogs’ usual prey, rats. These weren't as big as the nuns had threatened him with, but they were big enough and fast enough and wary enough to make for good hunting. He returned to the dorm in the dark of the morning, exhausted, exhilarated, and badly in need of a bath.
After that, he went out at least once a week, honing his skills until he was a better predator than any four-legged alley beast. As the winter wore into the spring, he learned the streets for several miles in all directions from the church. At first the tall bell spire was a landmark for him, but eventually his sense of direction grew so good, he was able to find his way home from anywhere he ended up. He not only learned the haunts of the alley beasts, but those of men as well. He stalked the homeless men who slept on the streets, but only as a game, and could have killed a hundred of them, so stupid and unwary were they. When he grew bored with that, he began to stalk other men, marking those who looked dangerous and playing at how long he could follow them, a dangerous shadow among the shadows, before they saw him.
One spring night, he followed a man a step too far, and he learned a valuable lesson — that just because he didn’t win a fight didn’t mean he lost it.
Mars, of course, had no real seasons except on calendars, but there were those who swore it rained more in the spring and fall. Vicious had always scoffed at that, but this year he began to wonder. Whatever the reason, the season or simple bad luck, he spent most of the month of April soaking wet. On this particular night, he’d picked a "victim", a seedy-looking man with a knife in his boot, and had followed him for five or six blocks when a rain shower suddenly opened up over them. The man swore colorfully (words Vicious memorized for later use) and ducked into the door of a nearby bar. On impulse, tired of being wet and feeling daring, Vicious did the same.
He stopped just inside the door, staring in wonder. Here was where human civilization sat on the border of the savage world of the rats and the dog packs. The low ceiling was obscured by the haze of cigarettes, cigars, and — his nostrils flared — something else, something more acrid that he couldn’t identify. Under those smells was the brisk tang of alcohol, and weaving through it was the rank smell of unwashed men and too-sweet perfumes. The noise was incredible, almost unbearable. Dozens of men and women were talking, most of them at a loud volume, while music blared from the back. On the floor just to his left, seven or eight men were shouting curses at each other, and even as he glanced that way, two of them suddenly came together and began to wrestle and punch each other. All of the men either looked dangerous or wanted to look that way, and the women were dressed like no women he’d ever seen before, even on the streets. For the first time, he wondered what the nuns looked like under their habits.
A very large man, muscled like a rhinoceros, slid from behind the bar and stalked over to the two men fighting. He grabbed them by their collars and dragged them to the door as if they were puppies, tossing them out into the rain. He would have walked right over Vicious, except Vicious had slid deeper into the shadows, away from the door, and was almost invisible.
He felt eyes on him and turned swiftly. The first thing he thought when he saw the man was, He’s the real thing. The man wore a long dark coat over dark jeans and shirt, and a dark hat, and his skin was so dark that he was even more invisible than Vicious. He was slender and not particularly tall, and he wasn’t doing anything scary, simply staring down at Vicious, smoking a pipe — not a pipe like Father Thomas’, but a long-stemmed slender one with a small bowl. The pipe, which was white, and the glow of hot ash in the bowl were the only color about the man except the whites of his eyes. That was all he was, a lean dark man smoking a pipe, but somehow Vicious knew he’d crossed a line and come at last to where the human predators laired. He smiled.
The man took the pipe out of his mouth. "What are you doing here, kid?" His voice was soft and pleasant, almost musical.
"Hunting."
"Hunting what?"
"Just hunting."
"As long as you’re here, make yourself useful. Go to the bar and bring me back a bottle of whiskey."
"Get it yourself."
His tone was calculated to provoke. He’d honed that to an art with Father Paul. But what he provoked was nothing like what he expected, and it happened so swiftly that even he never saw it coming. One moment he was sneering up at the dark man, who was what he thought a safe distance away, and the next he’d been spun around to face the bar, one of his arms pulled up behind his back and his throat imprisoned in a vice. He’d never experienced pain like it before, not even with the cracked rib. His arm felt as if it were being torn off at the shoulder by a beast with a hundred sharp teeth, his wrist felt as if all the bones were being crushed, and his hand burned like a torch. He almost whimpered, and had to grind his teeth to stop the sound from coming from his throat. "You want to try another answer, kid?" the dark man asked pleasantly.
"Go to hell," he managed to rasp out.
The arm around his neck loosened, and he heard a metallic snick. He jerked his chin until he was looking up at the smoke-obscured ceiling, trying to avoid the sharp prick of the knife under the point of his jaw. The pleasant voice said, "You know, I could cut your throat, and nobody here would even notice."
His arm was still screaming in pain. And he was scared. Pissing scared. But he’d be torn apart before he’d admit to either one. He reached down inside himself and pulled up the last bit of courage he had left. "Go ahead. It might be interesting," he retorted coolly.
For a second, neither of them moved at all, and he knew that he was on a balance, and that any small thing would mean the difference between getting to go back home or having to watch while his blood spurted across the table in front of them. Then a woman laughed across the room, and the knife fell away, and his arm, blessedly, was released. The man rose, and with the same movement spun him around to face him. "Shit, kid. You’ve got guts. What’s your name?"
"Vicious."
"That ain’t a name."
"It’s mine."
Teeth flashed, and to Vicious’ surprise, the man started to laugh. "Son of a bitch. Want a drink?"
Vicious was dazed by the sudden turn of mood, but that was something else he wouldn’t show. "Sure."
"You drink whisky? Now, don’t lie to me, boy, you’ll piss me off."
He didn’t want to piss this guy off. "I drink wine."
The man made an inelegant noise. "You must be from that church orphanage. What are you doing out at this hour?"
"I told you. Hunting."
"That’s right, you did. Sit down." The table he gestured to had two men and a woman already seated at it, but they got up and left as soon as the dark man looked their way. Feeling both dizzy and giddy at the same time, Vicious slid into a chair, and the dark man bent, picked up the pipe from where he’d dropped it, and sat down opposite. He waved a hand at the bar, and a moment later a woman appeared with a bottle and two small glasses. "What in the world have you got here, Rafe? You’re gonna cost us our license." Her words were severe, but she sounded amused, and beamed at Vicious as if he were a nephew or something.
"This is a friend of mine, Sally my sweet, and we’re about to have a little man-to-man conversation. Put the bottle down and take your cute little butt back to the bar."
The woman grinned, put a glass in front of each of them, poured from the bottle into both glasses, and set the bottle next to the dark man, all with smooth efficiency. Then she took the bill the dark man was holding out and walked off, her hips swinging.
"First thing you’ve got to learn," Rafe said to Vicious. "Don’t be rude unless you’ve got something to gain from it."
He was serious. He was talking to him as if he weren’t just a kid, but another man. Vicious just nodded. He wasn’t sure how to speak to an adult who wasn’t patronizing him.
"My name’s Rafe. You might’ve figured that out. I’m also known as Black Rafe. You run into any trouble around here, and you drop that name, it might get you out with a whole skin. But I don’t think you’ll do that. You got the look of a guy who wants to win his own fights. So… what do you find, when you go hunting in the night like this?" he asked amiably.
To his own surprise, Vicious opened his mouth and told him. He spoke about what he was doing and what he felt, while Black Rafe repacked and lit his pipe and listened without a single interruption, with only an occasional word to keep Vicious talking. Vicious got thirsty, telling it, and drank the whiskey, forgetting what it was, which made for a long interruption while his eyes watered, his insides burned, and he choked and tried not to be sick, while Rafe’s chuckles flowed richly around him. Valiantly, he kept talking despite a now-raw throat, and when Rafe filled his glass again, he drank that, too. Only more slowly.
By the time he was finished talking, he was an apprentice who had found his master. No such words were spoken, but he knew it, in the same way he’d known that his life had been, literally and figuratively, on a knife’s edge tonight. He knew he would come back tomorrow night, and Rafe would be here, and they would talk and drink whiskey, and he would begin to learn.
And that was exactly what happened.

copyright by DragonKat, July 2002

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