The Beast That Was Max (6 page)

Mani closed her eyes and arched her back, exposing her throat. The curves of her body shifted again, calling.

Her erotic vulnerability drew Max's gaze from the road. He soothed the Beast with his breathing, and wished he could do the same for himself.

Lee frowned, pursed his lips. He thrust the gun in her direction. "If you really wanted to get away from him, you could've killed the son of a bitch. It would've saved all of us a lot of trouble."

Mani was silent.

"Max?" Lee asked. "How much of this miscommunication crap we've been getting is bureaucratic bullshit, and how much of it is a plan to fuck us?"

The edge to Lee's voice brought Max into focus. He followed his partner's reasoning with his own intimate knowledge of their charge. He knew from the moment he met Mani that at the end of her seductive lure lay a killer.

The village massacre had left little for Rithisak to teach her about slaughter, and it was in fact her murderous self he found most enticing. Killing for her freedom would not have been a problem for Mani. The source of her entrapment lay elsewhere.

Though he could not quite bring himself to believe in spirits and ghosts, the reality of his own Beast and the twins' powers, and Mani's mind-switch trick, let his instincts overcome doubt for the moment. The beisac had tainted her, leaving the residue of a hateful thing resonating within her. But there was a hunger inside her that did not belong to the beisac.

The death of her childhood world had left her empty. Her savior Rithisak filled it. Her need for that fulfillment was as strong and real as it was the day she became small and let the village's blood spill over her. If the roots of Rithisak's worldly power remained in her, the roots of her emotional stability were still sunk deep in him.

If she could have escaped or killed him, she would have done it long ago. She had found another way to free herself.

"She can leave him because his roots are still in her," Max said. "She has a part of him with her." The blinding glimpse of the life in her came back to him. He blinked, eyes stinging. From the glare of oncoming headlights, he was certain.

"Yes," Mani said. Her voice was a breeze lost in bare branches. In the shadows of the backseat, she was so small she was almost invisible. No wonder the Khmer Rouge, or the beisac, had missed her.

But the Beast had her fixed. Max knew exactly where she was, what she was.

"I remember," Max said. "All the things I felt and saw in you, I remember. You gave him what he wanted. You were afraid he was going to kill you after he got it, weren't you? That's why you held out, spent so much time away from him doing his work, finding other ways to be useful to him. But in the end, when you realized you could use his need to your advantage, you gave in. That's when you went ahead with your escape plan. And that's why he wants you so badly. Why you could bargain for your freedom. You're carrying his baby."

Lee smirked. "Bingo, we have a winner," he said. "Fuck pride and all that shit."

"I taught him about life, to want a child," Mani said vehemently. Her legs and arms whipped around as she sat up and filled the backseat with her anger. "Before me, he knew nothing of the living world. It was always the dead he wanted, the dead he could control. He tracked me after the massacre because he thought he'd find something in a survivor to dominate the beisac. I showed him what I knew, but it was not enough. My father's way was life; that's the way I was born into. That's what I had to offer. But he corrupted me, turned me into what I am."

"The beisac changed you before he found you," Max said, dismissing her justifications with a wave of his hand. "Now you're getting what you need from your bond with his child."

"It's not the same," Mani said, collapsing into a corner like a broken spider drawn in on itself. "I still feel so alone...."

"The child is enough to fill your emptiness and let you run. You can live without Rithisak, as long as you keep his child with you." Max glanced at Mani in the rearview mirror. In her excitement, she had lost her self-control and her scent filled the car. He smelled a boy. “But Rithisak's son is
his
future,
his
legacy, and he can't let that go. That's the real reason he's coming after you."

"A son," Mani said, looking down at her belly and rubbing it. "Less than a month old, and already you know. I wish you could've been the father."

"I don't want a child any more than you do. But you needed one, for your freedom. Are you going to make him your tool, as Rithisak made you his?"

Mani frowned. Her eyes blazed, and rage colored her face. The hunger of the dead reached out for him, tried to snatch him as it had in the street and pull him into her. But this time he was not distracted by her allure. He felt the cold of the grave creep through his flesh, the tug of bony fingers on his heart. His own rage answered, and the Beast's. Their joint roar filled Max's mind and broke her grasp on him. Her eyes widened, her lips parted. As the cry carried on, she shuddered, looked away, and put a hand up between them.

"I wanted the baby, too," she said, a tremor in her voice. "But not for Rithisak to use like me. I wanted one on my terms, to serve the living, as my father did, and as he wanted me to do. I need him, yes. I may not be able to let him go if he chooses to leave me when his time comes. But by then there may be someone else to fill me." She turned back to Max, gave him the slightest of smiles. "Or if not, the boy may care more for his mother than for the world's mysteries and dangers." She widened her smile, allowing a thin line of teeth to show.

"Damn, I must be getting old," Lee said, pushing Mani with his free hand back into the seat. "I almost missed her having an angle. I really do need a fucking vacation."

The Beast volunteered to toss her out of the moving car. Max held its reins tight, using its energy to fuel his racing thoughts. Lee's comment about the show of respect and honor in having someone important escort her came back to him. She was a trophy, being passed through various circles of power in a kind of ceremony. Max's superiors respected her power and what she was turning over to them. They were appeasing her with a ritual show of their strength. And at the same time, they were displaying their contempt for Rithisak. Without his favored weapon, wandering out of his Asian jungle element and into a Western urban sprawl, no one believed he had a chance to take her back. They were taunting him. And more.

They were luring Rithisak into a trap, using Mani and the child, and Max, to kill him. And once Rithisak was dead, the people Max worked for could use Mani as another weapon in their wars, controlling her through the child who had allowed her to escape Rithisak in the first place. But as Mani had shown, she had talents against which his superiors had no defense. A dangerous game was unfolding, with players holding different views of reality, conflicting sets of rules and objectives. And at the heart of it all, an unborn child grew in a mother's belly, its potential for power and control already claimed by three parties.

For once, he had a window on the machinations behind his assignment. He found no comfort in the view. Mani and his superiors were getting both more and less than what they had bargained for, which suited Max as long as he was not in immediate danger. He did not care if Mani had placed herself and her baby into circumstances worse than Rithisak's service. He had killed enough of her type for his pleasure; guilt had never been his burden to bear. If he had met her under different circumstances, she and her child would have known a great deal more pain before dying. But if his superiors had underestimated Mani, then they might have done the same with Rithisak.

It was no wonder neither he nor Lee had been fully briefed. The more he knew about the situation, the less certain and stable it became.

Max gripped the wheel of the Lincoln tight as he took the Willis Avenue exit off the Deegan. People not getting what they bargained for were not his problem. Surviving the night was.

Lee directed them away from the Mitchell Houses, across Bruckner Boulevard and under the ramp to the Triboro Bridge. They skirted freight rails and empty lots until they found a short, lonely, warehouse-lined block that ended on the water. Riker's Island prison lights, small and hard, shined in the distance. There was no one on the surrounding streets, and the windows were dark. Metal trash bins were clustered under a recessed loading dock, its rolling security door shut and locked. Across the street, the rickety frame of a fire escape stair clung to a six-story factory building like the skeleton of an extinct dinosaur to a mountainside. The breeze off the water gently herded paper and cardboard from one side of the street to the other.

Max glanced at Lee, who confirmed the place was clear with a nod of the head. Max opened the window, shot the two streetlights out with the Ruger as they cruised to the dead end. He popped the trunk open and released the front hood, then stepped out. Lee directed Mani out with the shotgun in one hand, the .45 in the other.

Max walked around and put a hand over the .45 in Lee's hand. "I don't think she's a threat."

Lee lowered his weapons. "Sorry. For a minute there I forgot who the hell we're supposed to be protecting." He went to the trunk and began unpacking weapons. "Damn, you've even got mines in here," he said, with a slight hush of awe.

"You have to arm them," Max said.

"No shit."

Max sidled up against Mani, who leaned back against the car. The dim light from the car's ceiling lamp spilled out the side window to carve her hips and narrow waist out of the night. She raised a hand to her head, accidentally bumping Max's arm. Heat prickled his skin beneath where she had touched his duster. He grunted, acknowledging her attempt to entice him.

"How can he hurt us?" he asked, poking her shoulder roughly with his index finger, trying to intimidate her. Muscle yielded only slightly.

"The same way I can. Magic."

"We're not going to start the mumbo jumbo again, are we?" Lee called out from the rear. "How about the real stuff. You wouldn't be holding out on us again, would you?" He stepped out, brought a flashlight beam to bear on her face. "Does this old boyfriend have any surprise backers? Professional reserves? Maybe someone inside our operations looking to make his bones on us?"

"No. He doesn't do things the way you people do. He only works with people he knows, or controls." Mani lowered her head, shivered. "He's catching up to us. Two, three, maybe four cars. There don't seem to be many people."

Her frown sent a warning ripple through Max. Things were happening even she could not predict, and she had been Rithisak's agent for years. "Lee," Max said, holding out a hand to cut the beam off. "Set the mines up, then pick your high ground. Make sure you have an escape route. Take a headset, channel three. I'll do the remote crossfire and take the grenades."

Lee turned the off flashlight, glanced over his shoulder as a truck rumbled by on the avenue, walked up to Max. "I feel like I'm putting up a coffee shop for Mormons in Utah. Now our tail is up to four cars and just a few guys. It doesn't add up. You really believe he's tracking her through this spirit mumbo jumbo?"

"If you don't trust my instincts, trust the things you've seen with me that you can't explain."

"Yeah, sure, we've been through weird shit." Lee pointed the flashlight at Mani's face. "But she's been yanking our chain all night. You don't think she's still setting us up? You trust her?"

"No, to both."

"Then are we doing the right thing, trying to ambush her old man? Maybe she'll tip him off."

Max leaned into Lee. "Would it matter if she did?"

Lee hesitated, then laughed. "Damn, you really don't give a shit."

"At worst, how much of a problem can the opposition be?" Max took the flashlight and swept it like a pointer at the open end of the street.

Lee backed away. "Right. A bunch of half-assed guerillas lost in the big city. Cheap mercs and street guns, at best. No special equipment. Like knocking off neighborhood wanna-be hoods."

Mani's manipulations and Lee's doubts had awakened the Beast's appetite. Keeping the Beast under control was wearing out his resolve. The unexpected mission changes only heightened his frustration. He did not want to admit to Lee how badly he needed the release of a fight, the familiar routine of killing. The Beast had to be fed again, tonight. And Max required death's reassurance to calm him in the face of so many lies, so much uncertainty, and the maddening potential of even more changes. If he did not get his ration of blood, he could not guarantee Mani surviving the shelter of his protection. He could not even promise to keep his patience with Lee.

Max turned away from Lee, who went back to the trunk. Mani brightened with Max's attention.

"Where do you want me?" Mani asked, looking at the garbage bins.

"In front of the trunk."

She snapped her head around to stare at him. "I thought you were supposed to protect me."

"Is Rithisak out to kill you?"

"No."

"Then you'll be perfectly safe out in the open. Is he the only one protected against your little mind trick?" She nodded.

"Then he'll come after you himself and use his people to protect him. This is a small space, so you should have line of sight on them. You distract as many as you can while Lee and I close the killing box. If you're lying, you'll have no one to blame but yourself."