Striper Assassin (41 page)

Feelings like that make her ill, sick with disgust, furious with outrage.

Ohara bangs through a sliding transparex door and stumbles onto a balcony, then turns and bangs back against the impact-resistant panes guarding the balcony’s outer edge. Tikki follows as far as the doorway, Kang thundering. The transparent pane at Ohara’s back fractures and then bursts into a shower of fragments. Ohara snivels and shrieks and begins laughing hysterically, maniacally.

“I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!” he screams, then pauses to laugh, laugh like a madman. “You’re the monster… yes!” He laughs wildly, frantically. “You’re the monster! The monster! You don’t scare me! You aren’t here! YOU’RE NOT REAL!”

Tikki pauses, lifting the Kang to point directly at Ohara’s face. In a sense, she realizes, Ohara’s right. She isn’t here. Now that she’s faced with the inevitability of making another kill, she remembers something, a previous kill she made for Adama. The memory comes to her clearly. It’s been flitting around for days somewhere just beneath the surface of her conscious mind. She was on the back stairway of a residence tower, the Ardmore complex. A door opened and a young male came onto the stairs, and she killed him because he might sound an alarm and prevent her from reaching her target. It seems impossible now. She killed a kid, an innocent kid. The realization hurts.

She could have just clubbed him over the head.

All this effing magic has her fragged up. She’s been doing things that are insane, things that don’t make any sense! Here in the middle of a city, she’s been acting like a creature of the wild…

It’s all too complicated.

As she watches Ohara sniveling and shrieking and laughing, a distant part of her mind tells her that this puny nothing of a human being is not worthy of being taken as prey, that it is somehow less than prey, like a bug. The idea of even bothering to kill it is practically an insult.

On impulse, she swings the JAMA-5 out from behind her back, points and fires once. The weapon thumps. Ohara doesn’t seem to notice the small dart that suddenly appears, sticking out of his midsection. Momentarily, his sniveling subsides and he goes limp. Tikki isn’t sure what she will do if he sways forward; but, as it happens, she doesn’t have to worry about it.

Perhaps Fate decides the matter.

Ohara sways back, back through the hole in the balcony’s transparent outer wall, and topples into the night.

It’s seven stories to the ground.

Tikki hesitates a moment, considering the hole in the balcony’s outer wall, then turns to go. She almost doesn’t care if Ohara dies in the fall, or if through some miracle he should survive. Too many other things are bothering her, questions involving her entire existence. She isn’t sure who she’s killing for, or why, or if she even has the right.

She has to get away.

51

There’s an impact beyond comprehension, then suddenly he’s tearing away, ripping free of his own flesh, shedding every last particle of humanity, everything but his animal awareness, as he hurtles down a black passage into an ocean of searing white.

The pain is beyond comprehension. He lives a billion eternities of agony in a mere instant. He lives ten billion more in the instant that follows. He senses a trillion trillion others thrashing and shrieking with a torment no less devastating than his own, and then something else, a presence, malignant and evil, a fiendish monstrosity reveling in the glorious suffering of souls uncounted. This abominable horror has caught him, along with so many others, only to feed on his agony and essence throughout all eternity.

His earthly schemes are undone. He is in the grip of one whose power exceeds all comprehension.

Then, the agony swells again, and there is nothing else.

52

It’s well past midnight when Kirkland lifts his eyes from his desktop monitor. What he sees coming through the door of his office is Deputy Chief of Detectives Nanette Lemaire, accompanied by Kirkland’s immediate boss. Captain Emilio Henriquez. The door swings shut behind them.

“You’re to close the Exotech case,” says Lemaire.

“I’m working on it,” Kirkland replies.

Lemaire shakes her head. “You have till tomorrow evening to shut it down. By twenty hundred, you’ll have a suspect in custody. You scan me?”

Kirkland spends a few moments watching Lemaire and Henriquez, then a few more lighting a cig. Henriquez doesn’t look like he’s about to make any protest about anything.

Kirkland takes a deep drag off his cig. “I’m a little thick tonight. Chief. Why don’t you lay it out for me.”

“Don’t make trouble, Brad,” Henriquez says. “Not on this one.”

“I’m not making trouble. Just asking a simple question.”

Lemaire compresses her lips. For a woman her size, big as an ork, she’s got thin lips. They briefly disappear inside her mouth.

“This is how it reads,” she says, adamantly. “The media’s got it now. The mayor’s ready to drop a load in his pants. By order of the board of Hetler-Shutt, our parent corporation, you’ve got till twenty hundred tomorrow to make an arrest, and one that’ll stick.”

“And the hell with justice,” Kirkland remarks.

“Brad,” Henriquez says darkly.

Lemaire glares.

Kirkland takes another drag off his cig. “Do I get this order in writing, Chief?”

“Spare me your drek, Lieutenant!” Lemaire shouts.

“Don’t ask me to play patsy for the BOARD!” Kirkland roars.

Several moments pass. Lemaire turns several shades of red. Henriquez breaks the silence. “Why do you think I
'
m standing here, Brad?" he says quietly. “Nobody’s looking for a patsy.”

“You gonna sign off on the case, Captain?”

“You close it. I’ll sign it.”

That makes a difference. At least, it’ll suggest, in writing, that Kirkland took advice before closing the case. That means someone to share the blame if the case comes back to haunt them. Kirkland can deal with that. He can also deal with shutting down cases prematurely, even pinning the rap on the wrong piece of dirt. There’s plenty of dirt to go around and they’re all guilty of something. Pinning a rap on the wrong slag bothers him, but that’s the price of staying on the job, doing what little he can to actually fight crime. It’s called making deals with the devil. Deals like this make him want to vomit, but somehow he manages to go on swallowing his bile. It’s either that or just walk away, and just walking away isn’t his style.

“You know I’ll back you up,” Henriquez says.

That’s probably true.

Kirkland meets Lemaire’s glare for several moments. “Whatever you say, Chief,” he says softly.

Henriquez and Lemaire head out, passing Detective-Sergeant Paul Zanardi on his way in. Zanardi looks feverish, excited, but too bleary-eyed and tired to show it right.

“Marchese just called in. He says Bernard Ohara just fell out through a transparex wall and took a dive off his balcony.”

Kirkland hesitates, then says, “He should be so lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

Kirkland sips his lukewarm soykaf, drops the rest in the garbage can behind him. “Some new data’s just come to light. Ohara’s our perp.”

Zanardi looks astounded. “You serious?”

Kirkland tokes on his cig and sits back in his chair, considering the pros and cons, then says, smiling, “Think I’d joke about a thing like that, Zanardi?”

53

Adam Malik carefully descends the stairs to the squalid foyer of the tenement, walking stick in one hand, briefcase in the other. The stick conceals a short blade like that of a sword, but one magically imbued to provide a slight edge in a fight, in the unlikely event he should ever have to participate in physical violence. The real treasure is inside the briefcase, securely cradled in plush velvet. It takes the form of a huge gemstone weighing perhaps seven or eight hundred carats. Malik does not yet understand even a fraction of the gem’s potential, but he knows its value is beyond measure. It is called the Vault of Souls, and the power it contains exceeds anything he has ever encountered.

Now. as he steps into the foyer, a darkness emerges from out of the empty air in the center of the room, and swells to fill the room completely. Malik smiles, for this is the manifest form of the Master, the spirit calling itself Abbirleth. Malik holds himself still as the darkness slowly dwindles, gathering around him, filling him, becoming one with his flesh, his mind, his spirit.

“You are ready,” the Master says.

Malik smiles. “Yes.” Then a thought occurs. “What about the Weretiger stumbling around in the basement? My spell of confusion will fade shortly.”

“Leave him,” the Master says. “He is of no concern… We have a new servant now…”

“Yes,” Malik says again, still smiling.

The new servant waits out front by the car. He is an ork, a blank slate as far as magic is concerned, and not particularly bright. Those two factors make him easy to control. He is physically large and powerful and has no qualms about killing. That should make him useful, a good weapon, very good. He will never be as resistant to injury as, say, a Weretiger, but in this world of violence and death, to replace him is a simple matter.

“And what of Striper?”

“We are through with her as well…”

“Yes, of course.”

“Now, we go…”

As the Master wishes, so it shall be. Malik is more than pleased to be getting out of Philadelphia. More than pleased to do whatever the Master wishes. The Master has granted him many favors, given him a taste of power beyond human conception. A power enabling him to summon the spirit of his beautiful Leandra, and to bask once more in the glory of her love. The Master’s power also made controlling the Weretigress Striper as easy as expressing wishes, and gave him the weapon with which to take vengeance on those responsible for the death of his beautiful one: Neiman, Jorge, Harris, and, of course, Ohara.

Bernard Ohara was the worst. It was he who ruled the Special Projects Section with an iron fist, he who insisted on the ritual summoning that led to Leandra’s death. Ohara richly deserved the death he got. Malik’s only disappointment was that it was not more cruel. The Master’s pleasure would have been greater had Ohara’s death, like that of the others, been one of exceptional violence.

The Master’s pleasure is of great importance, because without the Master’s power Malik would be nothing, the greater secrets of the metaplanes forever closed to him.

Now, all the knowledge of the universe awaits him.

From the foyer he steps out onto the sidewalk. He will not miss this decaying, god-forsaken neighborhood. Neither will he miss Philadelphia. Who would?

Carson, the new servant, opens the rear door of Malik’s old limo. The car is a virtual antique that looks like it’s falling apart, but Malik likes it, and for the moment, it suffices. Malik slides into the front-facing rear seat.

“We goin’ now, boss?” Carson inquires.

“Yes,” Malik replies. “On to Newark.”

The Master has an affinity for places like Newark, a city like so many others that the guidebooks describe as urban hells.

Very appropriate.

Carson climbs behind the wheel of the limo and starts the engine. As the Lincoln pulls away from the curb, the world suddenly explodes into a million shards, a million fiery fragments, roaring with the monstrous searing flames of an inferno.

54

The thousand candles climbing the wall in tiers burn brightly. On the altar half a hundred incense sticks also smolder and burn. Eliana dips her thumb into a small clay pot on the altar, then dabs a spot of the gray paint of Cat on her forehead, nose, and cheeks. She uses a bowl of pure water and a fresh, clean towel to meticulously bathe her thumb and fingers and hands. That done, Eliana retreats three steps from the altar and settles slowly to her knees.

The dozens of slender bangles ringing her forearms chime softly as she lowers her hands to the floor, and begins to softly sing.

The song is a short one, and rises from the depths of her being. The words come to her lips as if of their own will.

The room around her, her lodge, changes character, growing vibrant, potent, and pure with the energies of nature. The thousand candles gleam like stars. Her soft song echoes as if carrying throughout a gigantic cavern.

The twin doors at the front of the altar swing open, revealing the dark tunnel to the etheric. Eliana crawls into it on all fours, mindful of every movement, then she rises onto two feet as the tunnel swells in size. She emerges into an alley, a very special one known only to the very few who understand the importance of secrets.

The alley runs through the heart of a vast metropolis. Here the energies of humanity blend with the energies of nature. All is in balance. In the buildings that rise high into the night ablaze with starlight live thousands of human beings, living, dying, waking, sleeping, loving, fighting, laughing, crying.

On they go with their lives in complete ignorance of the special nature of this alley.

That is as it should be.

Eliana chooses a place to kneel and wait, a place in the middle of the alley that is free of litter and grit and dust. Examining her right hand, she finds no smudges or stains on her skin. Slowly, the brilliant stars turn across the sky. Before long, a supple form emerges from the cloak of shadows at the rear of the alley.