Immortal (20 page)

“It’s complicated.”

“Sure it is.” Clara took my hand in hers and gave me a flirty smile, and the possibility dawned on me that I was dealing with a groupie. Go figure. “How about we take off before the bad people come?”
 

Did she think I went through all this trouble just to pick up a woman?

I heard, to the right of the bench and just off the path, a gun cock. “Do not move, sir.” It was a man’s voice with a hint of Mississippi.

I looked at Clara. “Too late,” I said. “They’re here.”

Iza finally found her way. It’s difficult to piece together from her syntax, but I think there were exhaust fans that were tough to navigate around. It’s a very small, closed system—my cell is technically a stand-alone building—so you’d think it wouldn’t have been all that difficult. There are only so many places to try.

   
So, her basic message was, “tell me what to do.”

I’ve decided that since Clara went through the trouble to smuggle my tamed pixie into the place that I should trust her. (Although knowing about Iza at all means Clara had to have been eavesdropping on me. Two demerits for that.) Besides, I didn’t have much to lose. It’s not like they can do anything worse to me.

The problem is pixies aren’t good with complex instructions. This is going to take a while.

*
 
*
 
*

The guy with the voice and the gun was still behind me.

“Put your hands on your head,” he ordered.

“I can’t,” I said. “You told me not to move.”

I felt the barrel of the gun up against my head. “Funny man,” he said. Maybe not Mississippi. Georgia? “Go on and do it.”

I did as I was told while still looking into Clara’s eyes. She was looking at the man behind me, and she appeared scared but not out-of-her-mind scared. This I took to mean two things. One, I had a human behind me, and two, maybe she was telling the truth about knowing how to handle herself.

“Miss, you’ll want to run off now,” the man suggested. “This is not your concern.”

“Why don’t you run off instead?” she offered. “I found him first.”

“Please, ma’am. I am not above killing a woman.”

“You would not,” she said a tad less defiantly than I think she was aiming for.

“Do not make me prove it to you,” he barked.

“Clara, listen to him,” I suggested. “He’s not kidding.”

He pressed the barrel deeper into my scalp.

“Quiet,” he whispered. “I know about what happened in Boston. Trust me when I tell you I will not make the same mistake. Now be still for a moment, please.”

I felt a sharp prick in the back of my right hand.

“Owww!” I exclaimed. “Not again with the damn shot.”

“It’s required,” he said simply. “Now sit tight.”

Fifteen seconds later he said, “Good enough. Get to your feet. You too, miss.”

“Hang on . . . ,” Clara protested.

“Get. Up.”

She got up. So did I, hands still behind my head. “Turn around,” he ordered, to me.

I turned. He was a skinny black man a couple of inches shorter than me. Had a scar running down the right side of his face that made him look a bit more badass, but only just a bit. I figured I could take him if he gave me a chance. Possibly aware of this he stepped back, his gun pointed at my heart. He pulled a pair of plastic handcuffs out of his jacket pocket and tossed them over my shoulder to Clara.

“If you’re going to stick around, darling, I may as well put you to work. Handcuff him.” He looked at me. “Bring your hands down behind your back, sir. I trust you’ll be less lethal once properly trussed.”

“It’s not me you have to worry about,” I said, having taken note of some telltale movement just over my captor’s shoulder.

He smiled, looking very relaxed and unconcerned. “As the lady said, do you have an army of soldiers hidden in the lake?”

“No. But I’d check the trees if I were you.”

A loud ZIP sound echoed through the night. I watched the bounty hunter’s expression change from confidence to the shock that usually transpires when one’s heart unexpectedly explodes. He collapsed forward.

“Sniper,” I said to him, lowering my hands. “Told you to check the trees.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Clara exclaimed, now officially in panic mode. “I should . . . we have to . . .”

I spun around. “Don’t move . . . !” but she had already turned to run. Another loud ZIP and the sod at her feet kicked up into the air. She cried out in surprise and stumbled backward, landing gracelessly on her very pretty backside.

“That’s a marksman up there,” I pointed out to her. “You’re in luck. He only misses if he feels like it, so he must like you.”

“Stay where you are!” a man at the opposite end of the clearing demanded. He emerged from a set of trees nowhere near the sniper. He was dressed in black pajamas and carried what looked like an M-4 in his hands, looking very Delta Force.

“Two of you?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he said fairly amicably, as he marched toward us. Suddenly everybody wanted to call me sir. “We’re here to take you into custody, sir. I trust you’ll come quietly.”

Climbing to her feet, Clara backed away from him, hands raised, until she was next to me.

“What’s going on here?” she muttered.

“Told you this was a bad place to be,” I answered.

“You weren’t just being mysterious?”

“Nope.”

“Why are they after you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But your MUD is what helped them track me, which is why I used it. It’s not what it seems.”

“I thought this was a trap.”

“It is, but not for them—for something else. They’re here to help me kill it. They just don’t know it yet. And you don’t want to be here when it arrives.”

“Something worse than them?”

“Oh yes.”

The soldier marching to the bench looked pretty intent on “taking me in” as he put it, except that he kept swatting around his head, like a mosquito was bothering him. It seemed out of character.

“Ma’am, this is a government matter,” he said officiously, drawing up to a stop a few feet from us. Again with the swatting.

“Like hell it is,” Clara said.

“I don’t want to get rough with you, ma’am.”

“Yeah that’s what he said.” She pointed to the recently deceased man behind us.

Close enough now, I heard the buzzing more clearly.

“Iza,” I said loudly. “It’s okay, Iza.”

He looked puzzled. “Who are you talking to?” he demanded.

“Nobody,” I said cheerily.

He raised his gun. “Is there someone else here?”

“Not yet. But don’t worry, he’s on his way.”

He looked around. “Who?”

“You’ll see. Unless you want to take off now. I’d really recommend that, actually.”

“Is that a threat?” he half-shouted. He wasn’t about to shoot me, but that didn’t mean his gung-ho aggressiveness didn’t come off as a little disturbing. (Guns and short fuses never go well together.) He also knew there were other people out there looking for me who were willing to do the same thing to him that he and his partner had just done to the first guy, and that had to make him a bit edgy.

“It’s no threat. It’s a warning,” I said. “There are other things out here tonight that are worse than you.”

“No shit,” he scoffed. “That’s why I invited my friend to help secure the perimeter.”

“Is that what you’re calling murder now?” Clara asked.

“No ma’am. I call that business.” He pointed his M-4 at her. “You know another one of my favorite terms? Collateral damage. Maybe you want to take the deal that fella on the ground there offered you and start running. This doesn’t concern you.”

The ZIP of his partner’s rifle halted any further negotiation. Clara and I winced instinctively at the sound, but no dirt kicked up and neither of us collapsed suddenly in a heap. It was followed by three more shots. The sniper was shooting at somebody else.

G.I. Joe in front of us put his finger to his ear. “Falcon Two, what’s going on?”

How cute. Only two of them and they still came up with team codes.

I took a look at the distant tree that I’d spotted Falcon Two in. “What’s he say?”

“There’s someone moving out there,” Falcon One said. (I’m assuming he was Falcon One.)

“I hear it,” Clara said, turning to look as well.

I did, too. Something very large was barreling through the Central Park trees.

We heard two more reports from the rifle and then the tree Falcon Two was in shuddered. This was followed by a loud thump and then a sickening whump and a high-pitched, very brief scream pierced the air.

“Falcon Two!” Falcon One shouted into his ear-mike. “Billy, what happened?”

Silence.

“Billy’s dead,” I said.

“Like hell,” he argued, even as he readied his rifle.

“No, he’s really dead,” I insisted. “That second sound was his chest cavity being forcefully imploded. It’s not the sort of thing you mistake for something else.”

“Fuck you.”

“If you were listening carefully, you probably heard the ribs snap.”

Falcon One stepped in front of us and aimed his rifle at the tree area where his friend had just died, not particularly concerned that I could disarm him from that position. It was disturbingly quiet.

“Clara,” I whispered. “Human beings don’t like killing pretty young women. What’s coming doesn’t give a damn.”

“What is it?” she asked, sounding panicky.

“Just run. Get out of here. I’m not kidding.”

“Yeah,” she said, backing away. “Yeah, I think you’re right.” She tugged at my sleeve. “Come with me.”

“I can’t. It’s after me. If they can’t deal with it, I’m going to have to.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She looked at me, now thoroughly terrified. Clearly this was a good deal more trouble than she had been looking for. She nodded, then turned and ran.

“Maybe you want to tell me what this is?” barked Falcon One over his shoulder.

“Sorry, pal,” I said. “I already gave you your warning.”

He spun around and pointed the barrel at my chest. “Tell me what it is!” he demanded. Having his buddy killed kind of shook him up for some reason.

“You wouldn’t believe me. But I can give you some advice.”

“Go on.”

“He’s big, he’s much faster than he should be, and you should try and aim for his head. I don’t know if a chest shot will do much good.”

The truth was, I was hoping this guy could take care of my demon problem for me. That was basically the plan. Attract a bunch of armed men into a secluded location and then invite the demon to come and play. I was hoping guns had more of an effect than swords, maces, and spears did. Of course, in my mind I pictured a lot more armed men. I also didn’t think they’d be so unconcerned about killing one another. Really, they couldn’t figure out how to split five million?

We were about twenty yards from the copse of trees where the demon was hidden, so it had a major open space to traverse in order to get within striking range, provided it wasn’t armed. I was going with the assumption it wasn’t, because guns have triggers and triggers require little, human-sized fingers, and demons don’t have human-sized fingers.

The two of us stared at the trees and waited. And waited.

“Fuck this,” he said, finally. “We’re going.”

Just then a loud roar pierced the air. My gun-toting maniac companion freaked and started firing indiscriminately into the woods, which made a hell of a lot of noise because unlike his partner, he wasn’t using a silenced sniper rifle. That would surely send the police our way.

The problem was he wasn’t firing anywhere near the demon. It had moved to our right, a fact we both discovered a second too late when it emerged and started charging.

Falcon One showed less than iron fortitude, I have to say. He did turn and fire in basically the correct direction, but in terms of marksmanship most Boy Scouts would have done better. I mean we’re talking about a big target moving forward on a direct path. Pitiful. I used to face charging lions in the Serengeti with nothing more than a stone axe and a loincloth. People today disappoint me.

His best chance to score a decent hit—while the demon was closing the gap—fell apart when it threw something that struck the soldier square in the face, knocking him onto his back. It took me a second to realize what the demon had thrown. It was Falcon Two’s head. I never saw a lion do that.

I stepped back and watched as the demon neatly dispatched Falcon One in a manner that I don’t think you need to have described. I will say that it took a few minutes, because even after the guy was dead the demon needed a little extra time to play with the corpse in what can only be called vivisection by fist. It was not unlike what happened to Gary and Nate.

When he’d finally calmed down, I asked, “Are you finished?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Ain’t you gonna run?”

“You’ll just keep chasing me,” I said.

“Yep.”

He stood. He was a bit shorter than the ones I remembered, and not quite as stocky. He was also fully clothed, which took a little getting used to. In the poor lighting he actually did look human. I imagined during the day he wore lots of hats, and maybe mittens or something.