Black Onyx Duology by Victor Methos Read Free Book Online Page A

front of his tent. The air was col d but it had a dryness to it that was almost like a desert. The environment changed so quickly he wondered how it was that anyone could spend more than a few days here. He glanced up to the sky. He had never seen anything like it. Each star was bright, almost a moon in itself, and he could see the cloudy coloring of the Milky Way—something he’d seen before in the middle of the jungles of Peru, farthest away from civilization.
    James came out of the tent and bent down over the fire. He was looking directly into it and Dillon could tell he had something to say.
    “Dillon…”
    “I know.”
    One thing Dillon had l earned about James through the years was that he wasn’t a man that showed emotion. It was the way he was, the way he had been trained in the British Armed Forces all those decades ago. He thought a man shouldn’t show emotion if he could help it, that it was somehow weak to do so.
    He rose from the fire and put his hand o n Dillon’s shoulder. “Goodnight, Dillon.”
    James went inside as Dillon stayed and stared into the fire. Dillon had lived on the street since he was eleven years old. Thrown out by an alcoholic father. His mother had been killed in a car accident, a drunk driver, and his father, unable to cope, turned to the bottle. Soon, his mind fragmented and he was unable to deal with reality. Everything became Dillon’s fault, including the death of his mother.
    His father would go on long benders and have them end with intense beatings. Dillon was the only other person in the house and any girlfriends his father had didn’t stick around for very long. He became the object of his father’s hatred and depression.
    At one point, he was beaten so badly he blacked out on the kitchen floor and woke up the next day, his head slowly bleeding onto the linoleum. Before his father would take him to the hospital, he made him clean up the blood.
    The last time he saw him, his father had tried to break his head open with a baseball bat. Though young, Dillon knew he would have a better life on the streets of Honolulu than living with this man. So he left.
    James found him one night in his house, burglarizing it. He had snuck in through an outside air vent, disarmed the home alarm, and cracked the small safe James kept in the bedroom. James had been so impressed, he didn’t call the police. And in fact started giving Dillon odd jobs. He came to the boy’s shelter one day when Dillon was thirteen and sat down on the cot next to him: there were only a handful of rooms and each of those were shared by six boys a piece. So everyone else just got a cot in a gymnasium.
    Dillon would never forget how he felt when he saw James walk in. He was dressed immaculately, in a gray suit with crisp white shirt and green tie. Dillon thought he looked like a king. James came and sat down on the cot that was provided for the boys.
    “Dillon, I would like to take you away from here. I’ve spoken with your counselor about your situation. My understanding is that you have been thrown out of several foster homes. I understand your rage, I can see it within you, but let me tell you something young man, rage harms only you. It never harms the object of your rage. Do you understand?”
    Dillon nodded.
    “ I’m doing this because I believe you can change yourself, young man. There is to be no more of this petty crime. Do I make myself clear? Good. Gather your things, you’ll be leaving with me immediately.”
    Two years later, Dillon was officially adopted and his last name became Mentzer. Now, at twenty-seven, he couldn’t remember what the last name of his biological father had actually been.
    He stretched and stood up and looked to the sky again and then over to the mountain. He glanced from that to his tent and bit his lower lip.
    “Screw it,” he mumbled. He pulled on his crampons, snuck away some equipment, and began the long hike up the mountain.
    It was cold, even with the several la