Mike didn’t understand what was funny about that, and didn’t care. He stood his ground. “If she’s sick, then she ought to go to the doctor.”

Vic laughed again. “Well, I think it’s a little too late for the doctor, kiddo. Isn’t it, Lois honey? Too late for the ol’ doctor? Still, she knows where the medicine is, and she knows how to get it, but she won’t, ’cause she’s a stupid, stubborn old cow.”

“Don’t talk like that about my mother,” Mike warned.

Vic looked at Mike for a second, then burst out laughing. “I’ll say whatever I damn well want in my own house, and you, my little piece of shit, are just going to have to listen and like it.”

“I’m telling you—”

“No, shithead, I’m telling you! Since when did you grow a pair of balls? What, you think you’re standing up for your mother’s honor? That’s a frigging joke! I was screwing her long before your father rolled his car off Shandy’s Curve. I was sticking it to her day and night while your dumbass father was out working his balls off. Christ, what a shithead he was!”

“You’re a liar!” Mike felt his hands balling up into fists.

“Hell I am,” Vic snapped back. He was smiling, enjoying this. “And I’m here to tell you, boy, ol’ Lois there used to be a sweet piece, no matter what hole you’d take her from. And head? Damn, she could suck a golf ball through a twenty-foot garden hose. Jeeez-us! Man, those were some good times. Your dad’d call home to say he was working overtime and Lois here’d call me up not ten seconds later, talking all sweet about how she wants my cock in her and she can’t get enough of it and how she’s all wet and wants me over there. Back then, kid, I’d be over here in a hot minute. You’d be sucking your thumb upstairs and your mom’d be sucking my root down here.”

“Shut your lying mouth!”

“Hell, boy, I was taking her up the ass when the chief’s office called to say that John Sweeney was Spam in a can off Shandy’s Curve. You know what? We finished screwing before we went out to the accident. How’s that for good old mom?”

Mike took a definite step toward Vic, who didn’t budge.

Behind him, Mike could hear his mother quietly weeping.

Mike looked over his shoulder at her huddled form. He tried to muster anger at her, tried to conjure hate, but he couldn’t. Maybe there would be a time for that, but right now all he felt for her was sadness. Still, as he turned back to face Vic, a searing white-hot hatred sprang up in his heart, charring his soul.

“Yeah,” Vic said in an offhand way, “Lois’d ball anything with a dick back then.” Vic leaned forward and gave Mike a secretive leer. “How do you know John Sweeney was even your dad?”

“He was my father, asshole!” Mike snapped, though he knew it was a lie.

“John Sweeney was a useless piece of shit who did the whole world a favor by rolling his car down the hill. Kid, if I was you I’d be embarrassed to tell anyone that I was even related to that loser, let alone scream that he’s your father.” He gave Mike a knowing sneer. “You couldn’t begin to understand who your father is. Or what he is! You should be ashamed of yourself, you little faggot, for being such a weak, miserable piece of crap, when your father is—”

He never finished his sentence because against all logic and expectation Mike Sweeney hit him so fast and hard that Vic never saw it coming. It caught Vic in the mouth and ground his inner lips against the teeth of his laughing mouth and knocked him back three steps so that he slammed against the living room doorway. Vic touched his mouth and looked at the hot blood on his fingertips.

For a moment he stood there and stared through shocked eyes at Mike. The boy’s chest heaved, hands clenching and unclenching, and there was a look of mingled fury and surprise in his eyes.

“Oh, God, Mike…no!” his mother cried from the shadows.

Slowly Vic’s eyes rose from his bloodstained fingers to stare at Mike, and Mike swore he could see a crimson veil of fury fall over his stepfather’s gaze.

“You just killed yourself you stupid shit,” he said and hurled himself off the wall, looping a hard right hook that broke a big white bell in Mike’s head and sent him crashing into an overstuffed chair. Mike slid to his knees as blood ran into his left eye.

“Fucking hit me?” Vic said, still overwhelmed by it. He moved toward Mike, bringing his hands up into a boxer’s guard.

Mike scrambled to his feet and backed away as he brought his own hands up the way Crow had taught him, remembering the advice he’d learned: “The best block is to not be there.”

Vic started throwing jabs and short hooks, uppercuts and backhands, tagging Mike in the biceps and shoulders, trying to beat down his guard. Mike blocked and parried as best he could, but his head was ringing so badly that he couldn’t think. Vic’s hands were pistons, driving Mike back into the living room, into shadows, toward the edge of the couch.

Mike felt the back of the couch against his thighs as he was battered backward. He almost overbalanced and fell over, but Vic darted out a hand and caught his shirt, holding him upright as he delivered a short hook to the ribs that knocked all the air out of the room. Mike’s head swirled with pain and disorientation. This had been a mistake. Stupid, and probably fatal. Well, he thought as the beating continued, at least I hit him, at least I made him bleed.

Vic cuffed him again in the head, but this new blow had a weird effect. Instead of worsening the disorientation it seemed to hit some kind of internal circuit breaker and suddenly all of his interior lights came back on, all at once. Crow’s voice seemed to whisper in his ear: “Never hold someone with one hand and hit him with the other. It limits you. The hand that’s holding on can’t hit and the punching one can’t block. Use both hands because otherwise it leaves half of your body wide open.” How Mike was able to remember that at such a time was beyond understanding, but suddenly that germ of information was there. He had looked at what Vic was doing and somehow managed to analyze it for a flaw—and found that flaw. From his perspective, despite the constant blows, Mike could see what Crow was trying to tell him. He could see how vulnerable that whole side of Vic’s body was.

FUGUE.

Before he even knew he was going to do it, both of his hands moved at once. With his left he blocked the incoming high hook, meeting it at the source and jamming the swing of Vic’s shoulders so that the punch never generated any power; and at the same instant Mike’s right hand lashed out, palm foremost, and caught Vic on the side of the head, just at the curve of the eye socket where eyebrow meets temple. This time the blow was delivered the right way, and Mike even used one foot to push himself away from the couch and turn into the blow as he delivered it. This combination of movement was unexpected and immensely powerful; it spun Vic halfway around so that he had to let go of Mike and flail his arms to keep from falling as he took three staggering sideways steps.

Mike stepped in and kicked Vic in the back of the knee with the edge of his foot, jolting the knee into such an extreme bend that Vic’s legs buckled, and as he went down Mike hit him with two overhand rights, one after the other, that smashed Vic’s nose and nearly tore his ear from his head.

Vic crashed down onto hands and knees, shaking his head, trying to fight through explosions of light and shadows to understand what had just happened. Blood poured down his face and neck and splattered on the floor. Mike surged forward and landed a football place kick that caught Vic in the floating ribs, half-lifting him off the ground. Vic flipped over onto his back, wrapped his arms protectively over the point of impact, and struck the floor with a crash that knocked decorative plates off the shelves in the living room.

Vic was vulnerable and Mike stepped forward to kick him again, had actually raised his foot to do it…

…and hesitated.

Vic was bleeding, dazed, down.

Don’t stop! Don’t stop now! His own voice screamed in his head, but he didn’t listen. Instead he turned, searching the shadows for his mother, wanting to grab her, pull her out of here, run while Vic was dazed. He saw her; she was on her feet now, a dark shape against the greater darkness of the room.

“What have you done?” she demanded in a voice filled with dread.

“Mom…I had to…”

She didn’t move. “Oh, Mike,” she said softly, but her words were strangely muffled.

A metallic clicking sound saved Mike’s life. Vic had pulled out his clasp knife and with a flick of his wrist he snapped the four-inch blade into place. The gleaming metal seemed to fill the whole room. Mike saw his death on that gleaming blade as it slashed at him. He ran backward out of the way, but he was in the middle of the living room now and Vic was between him and the front door.

“Oh boy…” Vic crooned softly, “Oh boy. Here it comes, now. Here it comes. Oh boy. Here it comes.” Vic held the knife, guarded by his other hand, the way an expert would hold it. Mike had seen Crow hold a knife just that way. Crow probably knew how to take a knife from someone. Mike did not. Their lessons hadn’t gotten that far. He wished he had a sword, even the blunt-edged bokken.

He was going to die. After all that he had survived, he was going to die.

“Here it comes, now. Here it comes.” Vic’s eyes were insane. Blood dripped from his mouth and torn ear, it streaked his grinning teeth. “Oh boy. Here it comes, now.”

Vic advanced on Mike, the knife slicing at the air between them as if he was cutting a path toward Mike’s heart. Mike knew in that instant, without any reason for knowing it, that Vic had killed people, and he wondered how many people had seen Vic smile just that way before they died.

Mike didn’t know what to do or where to go. There was no other exit from the living room that the doorway, and Vic’s crouched body blocked it entirely.

“Here it comes, now. Here we go.”

Mike didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want to just give up and collapse and be killed with no way left to fight. He wanted to fight, even if it meant going down fighting, but he didn’t know how. Not against a knife, not against this.