The Beast That Was Max (38 page)

The baby moved inside him. Max rubbed his hands over his belly, certain he could hear the alien heartbeat. His belly had grown, like a pustule stretching skin to contain fluid. He closed his eyes. Sounds coming from the Box faded. Exhaustion sapped his will to act, watch, even imagine. Darkness closed over his mind. He sank quietly into sleep.

~*~

In the dreams, a clawed hand ripped his abdomen from the inside out. In his dreams, worms crawled through his veins and intestines. In his dreams, small, sharp teeth gnawed incessantly at his nipples.

~*~

The fall of a body woke Max.

The solid thump of a fleshy mass on wood floor penetrated his sleep and dreams, galvanizing nerves and muscles. He opened his eyes slowly, let them adjust to the faint light in the loft and his field of vision. He listened for footsteps, breathing, the rustle of fabric.

The twins, with no audience but the men and equipment in the alcove, had closed the door to the Box, sealing in the sounds of Dex's torture. Cutting them off from Max. The mambo behind the closed door to the bedrooms was useless.

Max waited. Missed the sound of surveillance electronics from the alcove. Mapped the possible avenues of assault, focusing on an attacker coming at him from over the couch.

Slowly, he slid down from the couch, turning his head to sweep the loft. Blind spots behind the couch and counter captured his attention. He took a cup from the coffee table as a weapon.

His attacker still did not come. Max crept along the floor on his side, feeling awkward and unbalanced by the shape and weight of his belly. The child moved again, and he imagined tiny hands scraping the inner wall of skin holding in his guts, playing with the coils of his intestines, pinching organs, bones, muscle.

The floor behind the couch looked clear as he came around, approaching the alcove. He stopped when he saw the two suited men slumped against their equipment racks. Dead or immobilized, they were useless. With the surveillance equipment partly or completely disabled, Max assumed a remote monitoring station would sound the alarm and estimated help would arrive in minutes. The assassin needed to act soon. Now.

A soft scrape of cloth on tile by the dining counter focused Max's attention on the kitchen. A small, dark lump twitched by the edge of the counter. Stupid, Max thought. Shadows exploded. Max turned. A slab of night bolted out of the darkness gathered on the other side of the alcove, from a trick of angle and shadow and the glow of city light coming in through the window. Stupid, Max thought, seeing what had happened in a vision as he tried to roll but was stopped by his stomach. Something he might have done: a tiny electronic motor controlled by remote in a beanbag, tossed on the other side of the room, its landing masked by the body falling. At the right moment, with the push of a button, the sound of miniature mechanical legs or wheels churning through filler to crawl on the floor was enough to be distracting.

Now.

The slab of night loomed over him. Max had time to brace himself, check for the glint of metal from a knife or gun, and then a weight crushed him.

Fingers closed around his left wrist, pushed that arm back to the floor. A point of darkness bore down on him. He rolled, protecting his face with his hand, swinging his elbow around. A black blade edge cut his left shoulder as he deflected the angle of attack from his throat with his elbow. Close work. Silent work. Coming back with his right hand, he caught the knife wrist. Their legs scrambled, hooking and kicking. The assassin slid along the side of Max's distended belly, and Max managed to bring his hips up, snake his legs around his attacker's hips, and hang on.

Strength on strength, desperation against cold rage, they struggled. Max held on to the knife hand, pulling himself up while exchanging grips and taking hold of his opponent's right hand. The assassin staggered back, twisting and bucking between Max's scissoring legs. Unbalanced by the shifting weight, the assassin fell back on to the couch. Max held on, tried to squeeze, but managed only to pull himself up as his attacker broke out of his grip. They struggled, wordless, panting. Cushions flew off into the dark. They sank into the sofa's guts, locked in a killing embrace. Forehead to forehead, heads slipping on each other's sweat-slick skin, faces too close to view, they tried to steal each other's breath, tried to give each other a kiss of death.

Max expected the Beast to rise. Moments passed, and it remained slumbering. He called for it to fill him with a rage deeper than the one that drove the assassin. But the Beast did not answer. He felt as he had after he had killed the Beast for the love of the twins: empty. He felt as he had at the airport: confused, weak, the Beast a silent ghost.

The Beast wanted the child dead. Needed it dead. To keep Max for itself.

The assassin surged on top, legs spread wide, pinning Max under him.

The Beast wanted the assassin to kill the child. It was willing to risk Max, risk its own tenuous hold on existence, just so it would not have to share Max's attention.

The attacker reared. His face loomed over Max, features blurred by night and sweat in Max's eyes. But the features, the angle of cheeks and jawline, were familiar.

The Beast, jealous, had betrayed him. Withheld its power.

The assassin's knife bore down on Max. Muscles strained, thoughts flailed wildly, searching for reason, finding only betrayal.

The twins were gone, involved in their pleasures. The Beast sulked. There was only the assassin's face above him, eyes like black pools of water sucking him in. Someone he knew. Lips parted. Smiled. In the moment of Max's recognition, his strength faltered and the knife point came to within a finger's width of his left eye. But the killer's identity made no sense to Max. Why would Mr. Johnson kill his own men to come after him? Why would Mr. Johnson try to do the job himself? What had happened to Mr. Johnson's eyes?

"
Merde!
" Alioune shouted.

"Tonton!" Kueur cried out.

At the sound of their voices, the Beast revived. Not jealous, not betraying its host, the Beast had merely been lying in the depths of Max's soul, stunned by unwanted intimacy with others. Roused by echoes of pleasure and pain and passion raised by the sound of the twins, it roared in defiance. Strength flowed through Max. The knife point was forced back.

Kueur landed on Mr. Johnson's back. One hand pulled Mr. Johnson's head back by the hair, the other reached under his chin. Alioune struck a blow to Mr. Johnson's ribs. Kueur pulled, twisted. Alioune gripped Mr. Johnson's head, added her strength. Bone cracked. Mr. Johnson sagged. Alioune reached over and intercepted the knife as it fell from his hand.

Ideas and fantasies and emotions flew like a startled flock of birds through Max's mind. Nausea erupted, hot and bitter and withering, through his body. The Beast howled, wanting blood, searching for blood, feeling somehow cheated.

Max opened his mouth to vomit, thank the twins, give voice to the flock of questions and emotions and thoughts fluttering in his head. Before he knew which was first to pass his lips, his vision tunneled to a bright pinprick of light surrounded by darkness. He saw wings spread wide, white instead of the red he had seen in Painfreak, at the end of tunnel. And then he saw nothing more for a while.

~*~

Rumbling voices drew him out of the darkness. He opened his eyes, tried to focus, managed only to catch his surroundings in fragmented glimpses. He was on a bed. A large bed. The double-king in the loft's bedroom. On the quilt, naked, belly larger than he remembered. A double arm's-length away lay the mambo. Facing away from him. Covered by a blanket. Beyond, people bustled. Voices rose and fell. Kueur and Alioune shouted and cursed. Hissed, spat. Lights burned like tiny suns. Floated toward him. Aluminum, extending booms stretched over the bed, bearing the lights. Instrument pods. Lenses and probes.

A brown arm flashed over him. Metal jangled against metal. Plastic tubing rattled. A lens shattered. Max cringed, closed his eyes, waited for the shower of glass. When he opened his eyes, the metal arms arcing over him were gone, the bright lights out. Kueur and Alioune were screaming their outrage, and men's voices rose in angry reply. Max grabbed at the quilt. Tried to sit up. Failed. Looked to the edge of the bed, where Alioune swept away a lunging hand, struck back with a knife hand. Someone gagged, coughed, choked. Max looked back the other way. Into the mambo's open, bloodshot eyes.

Her pale face.

"Do not fear this one," the loa whispered. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her hand trembled. "I will guard her. But watch the weak ones, the hollow ones the spirit can possess."

"What. . . spirit?" Max asked.

The mambo passed out.

"Legba …" Max called, and joined her in oblivion.

~*~

Max heard himself shouting, "Rip it out, help me, take it out, I'm going, mad, please, I can't think, why, the feel-ings, too much inside, the Beast, where, please, stop this . . ."

The litany of pleading droned on. As if from a distance, he wondered if he had passed out while the twins were making love with and to him, and had merely continued crying out automatically, prodded by their tender attention.

But his words jumbled, his voice faded. And then he heard nothing more.

~*~

Until Mrs. Chan spoke to him out of the darkness: "I said meditation, not exercise."

"Is he hurt badly?" Alioune asked.

"He will be fine."

Kueur asked, "And the baby?"

"As far as I and the others can tell, the child was not injured. But there might be complications in the delivery.”

“Kueur," Max croaked. "Alioune."

No one heard.

~*~

Voices argued from a world away. Two women, a man. "I thought we settled this."

“Destroying equipment and hurting my men settled nothing."

"You are to leave. Right now."

"Threatening me won't help, either. Mr. Johnson and I represent a much larger body of interested parties.”

“Mr. Johnson no longer represents anyone."

"But I do. There are questions to be answered. The monitoring equipment. . . failed at the critical—"

"Your Mr. Johnson sabotaged the equipment. We know what happened."

"So you say. But there are matters of proof. Documentation. Accountability."

"We were protecting our Tonton."

"You've been doing rather a poor job of it. This pregnancy, and then his near death. There are associates of mine who wonder about your role in these affairs."

"There's no time for this. We're busy working on something that will help him."

"We are not interested in your experiments in bizarre sex games. We require answers. And until we get them, he must be secured."

"He will be secure when he is left alone, under our care."

"That is not acceptable."

"Do you wish to fight over him now, in his condition?”

“If that's what you twins want."

"We will kill you."

"Death is the risk we take, the price we pay for what we want. Are you willing to take that risk, now with him so vulnerable?"

In the silence that followed, Max believed with dreamlike logic that he had lapsed into unconsciousness. He was startled when one of the twins spoke up.

"You will stay."

"My men—"

"You. Only you. Your men will set up surveillance equipment above the door and provide the Box with monitoring equipment so we can keep our own watch. The door to the loft will be locked. No one else will be allowed to remain inside. Your men can listen and watch and study their instruments from whatever remote location they wish. You will sit there, by the door. You may use the bathroom, kitchen, whatever you want from the rest of the loft. Take one step toward our Tonton, and you will die."

"I am glad you trust me."

"We do not. We trust our power over you."

"You have no .. ." A moment after he stopped, the man let out a startled cry.

"Do you like our touch?"

"The sharpness of pain?"

"The sweetness of pleasure?"

"Yes?"

"Yes?"

"Say yes."

Voices moaned, whispered, sang, shrieked. Max swam through the sounds buoyed by the possibility that he might be making them, driven to discover what would happen when his mind connected once again with his body. The sounds drifted away, returned, faded. No longer bound by time, he followed the current made by two women and one man, until he ran aground on a word.

"Yes."

A word spoken by a man.

"Step beyond the chair at the door, and you will die. Yes?"

The man grunted.

"Tell us, you will die if you try to harm him." The man groaned. Wheezed. Whimpered.

"Tell us, Mr. Tung."

"Yes."

"What?"

Words barely made themselves understood between the man's weeping and his weak voice.

"I will die if I step beyond the door."