Shrouds of Darkness (29 page)

The assassin immediately forces me into a fighting retreat, fending off lightning fast strikes and kicks with my bare hands. One mistake and I’ll lose some fingers at the very least. My own blade is tucked inside my jacket, but it may as well be on the other side of the room. The assassin’s attacks are so relentless I have no chance to draw it.

I don’t recognize the face but it is quickly apparent that he is a killer of exceptional quality and was probably quite expensive to hire. His fighting skills are at least equal to mine and he has a momentum he is not willingly going to relinquish.

He slashes again at my throat with that unusual blade and I duck it then block a knee strike he launches at my face. I spin into a roundhouse kick and in one fluid motion pull Shalonda out of my pocket but he kicks it out of my grasp before I can bring it to bear.

I earn several more slashes across my arms and chest as he forces me back across my loft. I need something to change the dynamics of this fight quick. No sooner do I think this than it happens, but not in a good way. Something rolls under my heel and I slip, just a little but it is enough to give my opponent the opening he needs.

A monstrous kick to my chest lifts me from the ground and slams me into one the big support pillars. A new source of pain shoots through me. I don’t have the chance to look at what it is but I already know. It’s a piece of rebar protruding from the concrete support. I don’t know its original purpose; perhaps they hung tools or iron bars from it. I use it to hang my jacket up, and once again my jacket is hanging from it only this time I’m still in it.

He uses his left arm to hold me against the pillar as well as pin my arms down. My assassin cocks his strange weapon back and prepares to relieve me of my pretty head. I realize I am well and truly screwed.

Both of us, my assassin and I, have made the same mistake. We both discounted the other occupant in the room although for different reasons. I discounted Marvin as being any help in a fight, the killer apparently dismissed him as a threat. We are both mistaken.

From my left I hear Marvin shout, “Break yourself, fool!”

Partially blinded by the flash, I make out Marvin being blasted onto his ass by the recoil of the shotgun as he fires both barrels into the intruder from just fifteen feet away.

Buckshot strikes the killer in the shoulder, neck, and head. It doesn’t drop him but it staggers him. I kick him back even further, launch myself off the pillar and chunk of steel that pierces my back, and draw my blade mid flight. I come down with a hard chop to the arm holding the weird knife and sever it at the wrist. My back swing does the same to his head.

I would like to have taken him alive but he was too dangerous and he probably didn’t know anything anyway. Professional assassins, I have no doubt that is what he was, rarely meet their contractor face to face. Nearly all correspondence is done electronically, through dead drops, or a third party at the very least.

This hasn’t been totally uninformative however. The fact someone went to this kind of expense means they consider me a serious threat to their operation. The fact that he waited until I had a new lead suggests am going down a route they do not want me to follow. It could have been coincidence, but I doubt it. I have a feeling he had been up there for some time.

“I take back what I said before, Leo. Now this is a hostile work environment,” Marvin calls out as he picks himself up off the floor and retrieves the shotgun that flew several feet further back. “Daaaaamn, you see that shit? I just smoked that dude gangster style! Oh, man, his head is gone. What are you, some kind of highlander or some shit? Who the hell carries a sword and cuts a nigga’s head off with it?”

“The kind that’s still alive,” I reply as I search his clothing even though I know he won’t be carrying anything to identify himself or his employer.

“Dude, my street cred is gonna skyrocket when I post this!” Marvin crows and starts taking pictures of the body with his phone.

I launch myself at Marvin, grab his phone, and shatter it against the wall. “Do you think this is a game, Marvin? This is a highly skilled assassin and it is just dumb luck we aren’t both dead right now!”

“My phone! Oh my God I can’t believe you just destroyed my phone! Why would you disrespect me like that after I just saved your life?”

“You helped but that does not change the fact that this is very serious and advertising is not going to help our position.”

“Helped? Dude, I saved your life. That guy was two seconds away from popping your ugly head off. Do you thank me? No, you just wreck my phone! Phone didn’t do nothing to you!” Marvin pouts.

“I’ll get you a new phone.”

“And are you going to get me back the hundreds of hours I put in to make my custom operating system and applications?”

“I bet a smart programmer like you has that kind of thing backed up somewhere.”

Marvin still sulks. “Yeah, but it still don’t make it right. You owe me a bonus and a new phone. I don’t know how much a ‘saving Leo’s mean old ass’ bonus is worth, probably not much, but you owe me.”

As I carry the body to the furnace I tell Marvin, “What you need to do is find out how he got in here without tripping my alarm. I thought you fixed it?”

“I did. No way he got in like I did. Let me get on the system and check the logs,” Marvin replies and darts back to his workstation.

By the time I toss the assassin and his head into the furnace, Marvin has an answer. “He used an admin code, didn’t hack it or bypass anything.”

“How would he get that?”

“Same way as me, hack their server or snatch a data packet that has the password in it. Or someone gave it to him that already knew it.”

“Disconnect me from their system and change the password. I want a standalone system from here on out. Someone knows you have been snooping into Vtech’s computer system. How?”

“Not possible. I am like a ghost in there. No one can match my genius when it comes to being a cyber-ninja. My kung fu is unbeatable.”

“First of all, kung fu is Chinese. Ninjas are Japanese and use ninjitsu. Secondly, what about three guys half as smart as you working together?”

“No one likes a know-it-all, Leo.” Marvin looks pensive. “But your math is solid. I guess that could do it.”

“I need to get to Sandra Johnston before someone can tell her to disappear. Lock up behind me, set the alarm, and drop the crossbars in place,” I instruct him.

“Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Yeah, she’s just a scientist. Shouldn’t pose too much of a danger.”

“Not for you, for me! Some dude just jumped from the roof, started kicking your ass, and now he and his head is a briquette in your giant stove! ”

“Look, I overestimated my security and got lax. Whoever sent this guy, they went all in. If they try and strike again it won’t be for a while and I bet it will be a lot more subtle,” I assure him. “Keep the gun close and call me if you even think there’s trouble.”

“Call you with what? You wrecked my phone!” Marvin rages, completely forgetting his earlier fear.

I give him an exasperated sigh, go back into my armory, and return with a cell phone. I toss him the old Nokia and watch his eyes widen in disbelief.

“Are you serious? Now I know what that room is. It’s a time machine to 1992! You cannot seriously expect me to use this phone.”

“It works,” I reply.

I have newer phones, several in fact. I use them for long distance remote detonators but his constant whining about his phone is pissing me off and I know giving him the Nokia will irritate him to no end.

“Works as what, a hammer? Submarine ballast? I guess I don’t even need the shotgun anymore. If anyone breaks in, I’ll just hit them with this phone! Oh, hold on I have a call. It’s Fred Flintstone and he says he wants his phone back.”

“I need you to look into the email records of Dr. Johnston and Vincent
Van Graff both home and office. I also want you to get a good layout of Vincent’s security system at his house and how to bypass it like our friendly assassin did mine.”

“Yeah, I can also shop for a new phone while I’m at it you mean, angry, phone-wrecking bastard,” Marvin grumbles under his breath thinking I can’t hear him.

Marvin is still mumbling complaints as I push my bike back out and roar off into the night. Dr. Johnston has an apartment in Manhattan and I want to be gone as little as possible so take my bike. I meant what I told Marvin about the likelihood of another assault anytime soon, but I still want to be cautious. The stakes are getting higher and my enemy has shown that he has had enough of my meddling.

Dr. Johnston lives on the twelve floor of her fifteen-story apartment building. A quick elevator ride to the roof and an easy drop has me standing on her balcony in moments. My acute hearing picks up the sound of a running shower from inside. I try the door and I’m not surprised to find it open. Few people expect an intruder to come in through the balcony door over a hundred feet above the street. People are foolish.

Just as I am about to slide open the glass door of the patio my phone vibrates. The number tells me it’s from Marvin so I answer it.

“Leo, did you get my text?” Marvin asks me.

“No, I didn’t.”

“A cat probably ate the little bird that flew out of this phone to deliver it then,” Marvin says without missing a beat.

I’m less mad about his inane phone call as I am about walking right into his bad joke. “Marvin, do you have something important to tell me because I’m a little busy.”

“Yes. I was watching this show on the Discovery channel about these ancient cave drawings in France. They show these cavemen hunting mammoths and saber tooth tigers and shit.”

 “I don’t see what this has to do with what’s going on right now.”

“Just listen! So this one image shows a guy getting ready to stab a mammoth with a spear in one hand. This is the crazy part. In his other hand—is this phone!”

“Marvin,” I say warningly.

“I don’t mean one like it, I mean this very phone! It’s so big I can read the serial number off the cave painting.”

“Damn it, Marvin, don’t call me unless it’s important!” I hiss into the phone, nearly crushing it in my grip.

“You getting me a new phone is important! I need a new phone, Leo!”

I resist the urge to throw my phone over the balcony and settle for hanging up. The water is still running so I settle down into a leather club chair facing the bathroom. A few minutes later, the water stops and I hear some fussing around in the bathroom.

Sandra Johnston steps into the room in a bathrobe, scrubbing furiously at her hair with a towel. I don’t think she even realizes I am here until she speaks.

“Buddy, you really picked the wrong apartment to break into,” she tells me as she looks up and tosses her towel to the ground.

She is a vampire and she probably thinks I am a burglar or rapist or something and that I am about to be a very convenient snack.

She looks to be in her mid thirties with a fit but soft build and a bobbed haircut. It is still wet so I cannot tell how dark it is naturally. Her face is a little rounded and bordering on cute and plain. She looks every bit the academic type.

“Sandra Johnston?” I ask without rising from my seat.

“That’s right. Who are you?” she asks a little warily.

She takes a sniff in my direction and her eyes widen in alarm when she realizes I too am a vampire.

“My name is Leo and I need to ask you a few questions.”

She gulps audibly and her eyes go from nervous to outright terrified. “Leo Malone?”