See Part One for Disclaimers

Part Two

He left her at the door of her office building with a wave and a thank you.  He drove back to the hotel and went to his room.  Once there, he pulled out his inheritance.  He looked at the letters, but decided to save them.  He started with the journal.  It was his grandmother's.  He read about his mother, her courtship and her wedding.  It ended soon afterwards.  It was fascinating to see his mother through someone else's eyes, to see her as a young adult and not as the woman he knew.

Then he went through the small album.  The first pictures were early Daguerreotypes.  He felt himself feeling awe at the age they represented.  These were people who were connected to him, people he had not met, had never heard about . . . that he remembered . . . but who were family.  There were select photos down the century.  He stopped and stared at one family photo.  His mother, a youth and their parents.  It wasn't a very good snapshot.  The boy's face was shadowed.  He turned the page.  Graduation pictures.  His mother looking young, lovely, on the edge of her life.  The boy . . . he recognized.  The long narrow eyes, the mouth, the attitude.  This was Aaron Acton, his uncle.

There was a slyness in the tilt of the head, the look in the eyes.  Yet he was a pleasant looking young man, fine boned, almost bordering on effeminate, yet . . . he could sense the steel beneath.  The facing page held a generational picture, grandparents, parents and a baby.  His mother and father he recognized.  The baby had to be himself.  And off to one side, Aaron.  He stared at the picture for several minutes.  What was that intent look on his uncle's face?

He turned the page and got a shock.  A candid shot of Aki, taken from a distance.  It had been taken during her pregnancy, late in the nine months.  She was looking down, her balance slightly off due to the weight she carried before her.  His Aki.  God, what he had missed.  The facing page was heart stopping.  A baby.  Black hair sticking out at angles, eyes squinched shut, mouth open to holler, little hands clenched tight in fists.  The baby lay on a receiving blanket, naked.  A boy.  And a birthmark very prominent on one side.

Hikari.  He mouthed the name in silence, his sight blurred with tears.  Here was proof.  H'kari had been born, had existed.  His son.  Where the hell had Acton gotten this photo?  He sniffed, wiped his eyes on the back of his hand and stared at the picture.  His son.  Aki's letter had given him a hazy form, an idea, a concept.  This was concrete.  This was the child the two of them had made, that she had shielded, that she had died so soon after giving life and sending away.  He lifted the photo away from the page, sliding it out of the prosaic paper corners that held it.

A birth date.  His mother's name.  Nothing else.  He put it back and closed the album.  His mind reeled.  Somehow, Acton had been in Japan.  Or had he?  He needed to think, to focus, to center.  He sat on the floor, folding his long legs into the familiar stance, clearing his mind, entering the near trances state of meditation he had practiced for so long.

It was dark when he felt he could face more revelations.

He picked the passbook.  He had brought a laptop computer with him, a gift a year earlier from Ski.  He plugged the modem into the phone jack and opened the programs he needed.  He checked the account number.  It was still valid.  He used the password and checked the account.  It had grown over the last decade.  There were quarterly deposits of interest to the account from somewhere else that kept it active.  Even with some of his more expensive tastes, the total would keep Jonathan comfortably for a very long time.  He transferred a portion of the total to his own account.

He was hungry.  He went down to the restaurant, ordered at random and ate with his mind entirely somewhere else.  He walked back into the lobby, not quite ready to return to his room, but not certain what else he wanted to do either.  He heard a voice.

"If I had the key, would I be asking for it?" The elongated vowels of a soft southern drawl were edged with anger.

Jonathan looked around.  Shock.  Standing at the desk was a tall, dark haired man in an impeccably tailored suit.  His profile was arresting because Jonathan knew that profile.  It was his own.  Fascinated, he stood in the shadow of a support column and watched.

"No, sir," the flustered desk clerk answered the question, wanting to be anywhere except pinned under the glittering dark stare of the man before her.  "But . . . it's not here and the reservation is for yesterday.  The key was picked up then."

"Reservation?" The man sounded as though he didn't know the meaning of the word as applied to him.

"Yes, sir.  Reservation.  For one.  Jonathan Raven."

"Is my name Jonathan Raven?" he asked, as though speaking to a very backward small child.

"No, sir.  But . . . but . . ."

"But mine is."

He turned, slowly, to face Jonathan.  Recognition flickered in the dark eyes which then traveled down and up before stopping to stare into Jonathan's equally dark eyes.  His hair was shorter, more sculpted.  His mouth had a slightly more cruel look to it.  And his eyes were hard, dark, glittering things under arched dark brows.

"Are you, indeed?"  Caleb Acton Moorecock was not pleased by the advent of this doppelganger into his life.  He lounged back against the desk sizing up his double.

"Yes.  I was surprised when I got the penthouse suite instead of the room I had reserved."

"Ah.  And did you . . . point out the error of their ways to the personnel on duty?"

"I was . . . assured that the room was correct."  Now he understood the odd emphasis on his name the day before.  "I suspect the error was . . . expectable."

"Indeed.  And do you have the key?"

"Yes."

Caleb held out one well manicured hand in something between request and demand of what was his right and due.

"Why don't  we go up.  I have some things I need to retrieve," Jonathan suggested softly.  The arrogance of the other man was grating on his nerves.

"Ah, luggage."  Caleb looked around at the desk attendant.  "Bell boy?"

"Yes, sir.  Right away, sir."

"That . . . won't be necessary."  He met the dangerous gaze.  "I didn't bring much."

Caleb seemed to relax.  "But I did.  Very well."  He turned his attention back to the desk.  "Have my usual sent up," he told her softly, letting his eyes run over her in a way calculated to make her squirm.  He turned to Jonathan with a smile and they walked to the elevator.

The journey to the penthouse was made in silence.  Caleb affected to ignore his companion while Jonathan tried to size the other man up.  He seemed a set of contradictions.  His apparent nonchalance overlay a core of intense energy.  Jonathan's steady gaze was getting to him.  He stepped out of the elevator first, forcing Jonathan to walk past him to open the door.

Both made a swift, instinctive survey of the open living area.  Caleb's eye fell on the photo album sitting on the coffee table.  "How sentimental."

Jonathan smiled.  "An inheritance."

"Inheritance?" Caleb stepped over to the table to look down.  "Not much of an  inheritance.  Unless you're into genealogy, of course."  He flipped through the pages carelessly, almost missing the graduation pictures.  He stopped on those, his face becoming frozen.  "Well, well, well.  Aaron Beauregard Acton."  There was a sinister tone to his recognition.  He closed the album and looked up at Jonathan.

Jonathan recognized pure hatred in a look, after all, he'd seen it frequently enough in his own eyes while he was growing up.  And he saw it in the eyes of every Black Dragon he'd killed since exacting his revenge.  He braced for the attack.

Caleb sauntered around the end of a couch, putting distance between them.  "So.  Another whelp to add to the mix.  Only, he seems to have known about you."

"My mother's brother."

Caleb stopped.  He considered this.  "Uncle Aaron."  He smiled.  "Bastard," he said pleasantly.  Jonathan wasn't certain whether he meant Aaron or himself.  "Well, you seem to have done well.  I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.  The man was not inclined toward . . . respons . . . ability."

A cursory knock at the door heralded the arrival of Caleb's luggage.  The door opened and the luggage was brought in on a rolling cart.  "Your usual room, Mr. Moorecock?"

Caleb looked long suffering and nodded.  "You'd think they had the hang of it by this time."

"Uh . . . yes."  Jonathan was relieved when the luggage disappeared into a room he wasn't occupying.

Silence reigned while bags were stored and the bell boy left.  It was broken by a second knock.

"It's open."

The door opened and a cart was wheeled in.  Dinner, under warming lids.  The waiter wheeled it over to the dining table and began setting up.  He offered the wine for inspection.  Caleb nodded.

"You've dined?"

"Yes."

"You'll join me in a glass of wine?" The look was a derisive challenge.

"I might."

The waiter indicated that set up was done by standing patiently behind one chair.  Caleb sat down in the chair.  The waiter pulled out the opposing one for Jonathan and waited until he was seated before pulling the covers off the plates.  He waited a moment for Caleb's inspection, poured the first glass of wine and left.  Jonathan's glass remained empty for the moment.

Dinner was interesting.  Caviar, shrimp remoulade, Thinly sliced steak in a sauce Jonathan did not recognize, and a salad.  The only bread was the thinly sliced toast triangles for the caviar.  The wine was deep and red with a purple hue.  Caleb swirled it around the bubble goblet and smelled it.  He looked satisfied.

"Wine?"

Jonathan didn't quite know what prompted him to accept.  The wine was rich, full bodied and a touch bitter.  He didn't recognize it.  It lay somewhere between a beajolais and a burgundy.  And he wasn't quite certain where.

"Bayou red."

"What?"

"Bayou Red.  The wine.  A group of Cajun boys got together and created a concord grape that will tolerate swamp growth.  Ten years ago, they got the first crop that tasted like anything and made wine out of it.  This is from the third year's pressing.  The bitter is the swamp."

"Impressive.  Yours?"

"No.  I backed them for two years.  I get a couple of cases every year for personal use.  It goes with Steak la Belle."

"I was going to ask."

"Don't."  Their gazes met again.  "I guarantee it would not charm you."  He smiled, the even white teeth glazed with a touch of brick color from the sauce.  He licked it away, slowly, his eyes locked on his guest.

Jonathan sipped his wine.  Silence, again.  He should be packing, be leaving this strange alternate version of himself.  Yet he found it hard to tear his eyes away from him.  "You have a name?" he finally asked.

"Caleb.  Caleb Moorecock."  He loved the strange play of fate that had blessed him with that name.

Again, that charge of almost electricity that passed between them when their eyes met.  He took another sip of wine.  "You  always get the penthouse?"

"Of course."

"Why?"

"Because I deserve it."

"Deserve?  Not afford?"

He laughed and downed most of his glass of wine, refilled it and went back to finishing off his dinner.  "Because one can afford the best, does not mean one deserves it," he pointed out.  "I can  afford a wife and child of my own, but that doesn't mean I've earned the right to have them, that I  de-serve them."

"Or that you even want them," Jonathan observed with a sigh, wondering where this was going.

"Very true.  You are a true observer of the human condition, I can tell.  Who knows, I may decide to like you."

"Honored, I'm sure," Jonathan shot back wryly, the last thing he wanted was to be liked by this fool.  He missed the snap and glitter in the man's eyes, the sudden shift to bordering madness.

"Tell you what.  I'm going to be out most of the night.  Why don't you stay, and find another place tomorrow."

"I'm leaving tomorrow."

"All the better then.  You stay here, use the bedroom you've been using, and we will part tomorrow, having barely gotten to know each other.  And probably wishing we hadn't met at all."

Suddenly still dark eyes met hard and glittering ones.  Jonathan could see the touch of madness there.  He felt a slight chill.  He'd lock his door tonight.  No sense in encouraging the fool.  He rose from the table, his wine half finished, and went to gather up his belongings.  He neatly repacked them into the carry on, saving the gun for last.

He pulled it out of the box to check the clip.  He expected it to be old and rusty.  It was surprisingly clean.  He stilled as the other loomed up over him, glass in hand.  He looked up into an unreadable mask.  Caleb's eyes were fixed on the gun.

"He left you that?"

"Yes," came the wary answer.

"Odd.  We all thought he'd gotten rid of it."

"Why?"

Caleb turned one of those brittle, glittering smiles on him.  "I suspect that's the gun he killed Madison with."

"Madison?"

"Harper Madison.  Story goes Aaron was seeing Harper's sister Angelique.  She was a beauty, I hear.  Harper didn't care for Aaron.  Seems he was right.  One night, Aaron walked into Harper's house and blew his brains out with a .38 automatic.  Then he ran into the swamps.  Took six months to catch him.  Gun was never found.  The law thought he'd thrown it in the swamp.  Guess he didn't."

"Why did he kill Harper?"

"He  said the fellow was ugly, which he was, and that he was evil.  Beau Acton said he needed removing from the Earth.  And that's all he ever said."

"What about his sister?"

Caleb's smile broadened.  "Well, Angelique left town before the shooting.  She came back two years later, with a little girl who looked just like her, and maybe Beau Acton.  He never acknowledged the child and Angelique said she got married, had a baby and divorced the father to come home."

"Interesting."

"Isn't it?" He checked the watch he wore, a gold Rollex by the look of it.  "My, look at the time.  I really must be going."  He set the glass down on the table next to the stack of letters Jonathan had yet to open.  "Enjoy your evening."

He walked into the bedroom where his luggage was stowed and closed the door.  Jonathan relaxed, then chided himself mentally for being so tense around the fellow.  // Uh, huh.  And since when are you not tense around predators.  // He finished packing up his inheritance and stood up.  He looked at the glass of wine he had not finished.  He went over, picked it up, sniffed at it and finished the glass in one gulp.  It was an intriguing vintage.

He was already behind the locked door of his own room when Caleb came out, dressed for the evening in black.  Boots, trousers, turtleneck shirt, leather vest and leather coat.  He looked supremely sinister.  Jonathan might have noticed he was carrying weapons as well.  He left the penthouse and went out into the night on foot.

Continued

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