Dreamboat Ch. 01

Usual standard declarations about age, etc. apply here.

I like writing long stories, and this one drifted into becoming a novel-length story in the planning. I've dropped the first couple of chapters in to test the waters, so I hope you like it (no sex in the first chapter though – it takes a while to set things up). It covers a multitude of genres, so hopefully there's something in there for most readers, and a lot for some readers.

There will be a whole lot more chapters forthcoming soon, so if you like it, stick around and let me tell you a tale.

*****

It was a dark and stormy night...

No, it wasn't. It was dark, but the threatened storm had faded out into a pouting low pressure system which promised snow.

Lachlan Reid snuggled closer to the nice, soft bollard. Actually, it wasn't soft at all – bollards on piers never are. But the concrete pillar used to tie up boats to the pier had soaked up the weak afternoon sun, and its stored warmth was helping to drive off the chill of the night. It would be stone cold by morning, he knew, and he might be stone cold as well by that point. Sleeping rough in this weather always had somewhat of a doubtful outcome.

When you're homeless - with just a backpack of keepsakes, a dirty, torn, and evil-smelling blanket and a soul full of dark, misty memories to your name - a source of warmth is always very welcome. It's also very personal when it's too small to share effectively.

So the sound of pounding feet coming towards him along the pier was very unwelcome. He did not want to have to fight some wino for his spot on the deserted pier. He opened one eye to see a ragged figure, a bird of ill-omen with fluttering, ragged wings - pelting towards him. He raised himself up onto one elbow, and then recognised the figure – Wren; a bird of ill-omen of a very different nature.

He sat up completely, letting the blanket fall from his shoulders. The figure spotted the movement and angled its flight towards him.

"Reid!" gasped Wren in a strangled voice, forced from a throat tightened by exertion and fear. "Help me! Please! They..."

More feet were pounding along in the distance, heading their way and already cutting them off from any avenue of escape. He stood to see the nature of the pursuit. Three men, two in shiny, metallic-looking shirts and dark trousers, followed in a more leisurely fashion by a bigger figure loping along in a white jogging suit. Reid recognised them.

"Cole's men," he muttered with a sinking heart and turned to the panting figure, who was by then apparently trying to hide behind him. "Ah shit, Wren. What have you got me into, dragging the Fiddlers down here?"

The girl looked up at him from beneath her hood. Stark fear had frozen her face, only her eyes moving - jittering from side to side. Her breath steamed in the cold air.

"I... I..." She was panting too hard to continue. Her hands were grasping the edges of the massive black shawl she habitually wore, dragging each side downwards in turn in her panic as if trying to saw through her own neck. He realised why he had thought her a predatory bird, the shawl becoming wings when she ran.

"No! You didn't!" Reid stated, astonishment clear in his voice. "You didn't fuck with Cole. I thought you were clean! What did you do?"

"I am clean!" she protested through her panting. "I haven't ... not for months. Look, it was for Andrew. He needed it bad! I thought he was dying. And I didn't think Cole would find out it was gone!"

Reid's heart sank even further, if that was possible.

TJ Cole – more commonly known as King Cole – was the main dealer for the whole of the port side of the city. Wren had stolen from a man who forgave nothing, who knew to the ounce where his product was at any time and to the penny who owed him what.

Wren was a dead woman running, and he would be joining her if he tried to interfere.

"Andrew's dead," she whimpered, tears rolling down her cheeks. "They cut his throat. He didn't even have time to get up off the bed."

Reid considered that as far as homeless people went, Wren and Andrew – her worthless sponge of a brainless boyfriend – had had it pretty good, up until the moment he had been murdered. They had been camped out in an old abandoned warehouse, up in the rafters in what had been an office in a previous incarnation, a space under the roof that she had tried to turn into a home for them.

He had only visited there once, at Wren's invitation, and found her pathetic but heartfelt attempts to turn the broken-down room into a love nest to be almost heart-breaking – a foredoomed attempt to turn a foul-fanged nightmare into a unicorn dream. She had placed a few flowers in water in a broken jug, and somehow managed to get them to bloom. A mattress with a tatty blanket carefully smoothed over it lay up against the wall, a single clean, but stained pillow with no pillowcase at the head for them to share. A poster of Jimi Hendrix hung above the mattress, with a ragged corner where a piece had been torn off. She had made him a cup of tea, using what he suspected was recycled teabags, which he had drunk with caution, but thanked her effusively. Making small talk, he had complimented her on their love nest, making her blush with pleasure at his words. Then Andrew had cut in with a long, rambling stream of words that made little sense, even when he had turned his whole concentration to them. After an hour, he had had enough but left them as if they had treated him to an evening of fine dining and wonderful conversation. She had needed the boost to her self-image and he was happy to do that for her, although whether she had understood or even picked up on his attempts through the chemical dreams drifting through her, he had no idea.

Reid was just so glad he had never got himself hooked on that poisoned barb. Drugs would have quietened the memories but unleashed other nightmares for him to deal with.

"How did you get away?" he asked, still trying to decide what to do.

"They smashed through the door while I was feeding the pigeons..." she gasped. He shook his head and snorted quietly. Not enough between them to buy a loaf of bread but she still somehow managed to feed the fucking birds. She let out a strangled wail. "They didn't say anything, just slashed out at Andrew with a massive knife. There was so much blood... When I saw that, I dived out of the open window and managed to get away across the roof."

"And led them straight to me," he muttered.

She stared at him, hope dying in her eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't know where else to go. You're my only friend."

"I'm not going to be anybody's friend in a few minutes," he pointed out, his mind trying to find any avenue of escape. The place was deserted – no boats, buildings or anything else to hide behind or mount some sort of defence. There were a few lobster pots and a couple of tattered nets in a small heap to one side. And this end of the pier was pretty far out into the waves, the water too deep to wade and far too cold to swim in for more than a couple of minutes before hypothermia set in. "I think I'm probably going to end up just like Andrew."

"No! No, I didn't want..." She let out a sob, and then moved out from behind him, starting forward towards the trio of men approaching, until he grabbed her arm and drew her back.

"I didn't say I wouldn't help. I just said I don't think I have a choice anymore," he said quietly. She considered him a friend. That was news to him, and it probably wasn't true, but he felt the lump of ice in his gut melt just the tiniest bit.

The two men in the vanguard slowed as they approached, automatically separating to each side to avoid the possibility – however unlikely – of both of them being rushed at the same time. The Fiddlers, or Fiddlers Three to give them the correct nomenclature, were so called because of a stupid nursery rhyme about merry Old King Cole who called for his pipe, bowl and the three utter bastards who served as his enforcers.

"Evening Chato," Reid remarked, as if they had come upon the trio while they were all promenading along the pier. The man looked at him blankly, no expression on his dark face, his eyes flat beneath thick black brows.

Reid turned to the man to his right and nodded equably. "Pocho!"

Pocho grinned, all white teeth set in olive skin, beneath narrowed eyes and a full head of well-oiled curly hair, which shone faintly in the moonlight. "Hey there, ese! Wassup wid jew?"

"...And Blackwood!" Reid finished as the big man walked up to join his crew. He was huge, his shoulders leading down to a massive chest and enormous belly – dark brown skin making it difficult to make his features out in the darkness, although the white jogging suit signposted his presence more than adequately. He was puffing slightly.

"Nice to see you, man!" Reid continued, his eyes trying to watch all three men at the same time. The two on the wings would close first, he decided. Then Blackwood would move in for the coup de grace while he was occupied with the others. "I appreciate the irony of you wearing a jogging suit. Good one!"

"Give us the girl," rumbled Blackwood, his voice seeming as massive as his hulking body. "Or not. I don't care. We'll get what we want either way."

"Have you got the drugs on you?" Reid whispered from the corner of his mouth, and sensed rather than saw her jerky nod.

"Hey Blackwood, here's an idea. If you don't care, then what about this? How about we give you the drugs, and we agree it was a bad mistake and you let us go," he suggested.

He knew that was never going to happen. Cole and his men would never let someone steal their stock from them and then just let them go. But it might take up a little time while they pretended to consider it, and time was what he needed most in order to come up with some sort of plan. Any plan.

Nothing occurred to him.

Blackwood's dark face split in a bright, white grin. "Sure, why not?"

The smile assured him he was right. He and Wren were scheduled to be sleeping with the fishes in a very literal sense. It probably would have happened anyway, even if Wren hadn't drawn him into it. They didn't leave witnesses. As soon as she had stepped onto this pier, he had been a dead man walking – or, in his case, a dead man lying down and trying to sleep.

"We'll give them over when we get to the shore side of you three. That way we know we'll be safe."

Blackwood shrugged, and indicated to them to pass. "Be my guest."

"Shit!" Reid cursed quietly. "They have the far end of the pier blocked."

"Really?" He heard the shiver in her voice. "I can't see anybody there. How do you know?"

"It's what I'd do," he murmured.

"What?" Her fear was mixed with bewilderment.

He looked around again, feeling hopeless. If he got them past the three Jokers, there would be more thugs waiting for them with drawn guns. It wouldn't work.

His attention was caught by something near the end of the pier, a pale shadow bobbing on the waves. What looked like the ghost of a small cabin cruiser was drifting slowly in. There were no running lights and he couldn't hear a motor or see any sign of a crew. It didn't make any sense.

He looked away quickly, but Pocho had caught the look. "Boat," he called. "There's a boat there!"

The stance of all five people suddenly changed, the two homeless people edging backward towards the end of the dock, the three facing them suddenly tense and getting ready to pounce.

Pocho took a step forward, breaking the stalemate, and then halted as Chato moved in turn, in a well-rehearsed dance of death that normally left victims confused.

Then all three of the Fiddlers were charging in.

"Get on that boat and push off from the pier," Reid yelled. He didn't wait to watch her run. He reached down, grabbed a lobster pot, twisted and jammed the open end down over Chato's head, leaping backward a moment later to avoid the low, sweeping cut with a knife that was suddenly in the thug's hand. The narrowed trapping funnel within it opened enough to drive down over the enforcer's face, and then snapped closed under his chin, imprisoning the suddenly bewildered man in a bulky wire mask. His next knife thrust went wide as well as Reid span him around to serve as a shield against Pocho's thrust.

The shield tactic only worked for a few seconds before the maddened Chato resisted the pushing and pulling that kept him between Reid and the other two attackers. The homeless man then dropped to one knee and swept the other leg around, breaking the thug's kneecap as he swept his feet out from under him and left the man screaming on the floor, trying unsuccessfully to reach down to his knee and up to his head at the same time..

Still low, Reid swept up the dropped knife and dived forward at Pocho, jamming his foot hard against the concrete deck of the pier at the last moment to push himself sideways, the knife sweeping around as he moved, cutting across the Fiddler's thigh, twisting upward to hit the main artery and – after a few breathless seconds where nothing seemed to happen – drop the squealing man like a stone. Blood squirted black in the moonlight.

A forward roll and he was once again out of range of Blackwood.

The problem was, he was now brandishing a six inch knife at a huge man with a two foot long machete. This guy wasn't messing around, but at least he hadn't brought a gun to a knife fight, thought Reid. But then, he wasn't too sure about even that. There was a suspicious bulge under the man's left armpit.

He risked a quick glance behind him. Wren was standing at the end of the pier, flapping at the boat as if to make it move faster towards her by the air currents she created, as it drifted terribly slowly into the pier. A couple more feet and it would be close enough for her to...

He felt fire suddenly blossom in the back of his right thigh and flame burst up throughout his body. During those two or three seconds of inattention, the huge dark man had moved incredibly quickly to stab the machete into and all the way through the back of Reid's thigh, determined to drop him to the ground but leave him alive. The drugs were still to be recovered, and then there was the need to have a long, painful discussion about who organised the theft in the first place. Cole was concerned it might have been organised by one of the rats and mice dealers who tried to muscle in on his territory now and again.

To his astonished disbelief, Reid seemed to tense the muscles in his impaled leg and then suddenly twist around hard, providing enough leverage on the machete trapped within his flesh to sweep it sideways out of the big man's hand.

With a continuous yell of excruciating agony, Reid drew the huge knife from his leg, and limped quickly toward Blackwood, needing to finish it before shock and blood loss from his thigh took him down. The man gaped for a moment at the sudden turn of events, and then went for the zip of his jogging suit, trying to yank it down as fast as possible to get to his gun. Fuck the idea trying to question anyone! This crazy mother was going down, and going down hard and fast! He didn't have time for this shit, and with Pocho bleeding out and Chato stuck in a crab net – which was kind of funny and kind of scary at the same time – he needed to...

He felt the butt of the gun in his hand and then caught movement from the corner of his eye. He looked up to see moonlight glinting off the blade of the machete as it descended diagonally inward towards his shoulder.

The blade cut into the man's shoulder at the base of the neck and kept on driving down, through the collar bone and deep into the rib cage, slicing through muscle, tendon, bone and finally lung tissue.

Blackwood's eyes grew huge as Reid wrestled the machete out of the huge wound, and limped off towards Wren without a look back. The girl was on the boat and staring at him, her eyes huge. Then she looked over his shoulder and began yelling and pointing.

Reid couldn't hear her over the roar in his ears as shock and pain rushed through him, but he vaguely realised that Cole's back up crew must be coming up fast behind him. He paused to scoop up the second knife – not wanting to leave anything with his fingerprints behind – and limped on, trying to peer through the dark clouds that were sweeping in on all sides.

Then the end of the pier was at his feet and the boat was drifting away. Wren was screaming something at him and holding her hands out to him. Knowing he was going to succumb to the shock of his wound at any moment, he swung his wounded leg forward and took a blind step forward into darkness.

*****