by Jack Porter
They had no real choice. Both the man and the woman brought out their ID and showed it to me through the gap. But when they tried to put it away, I wouldn’t let them.
“Wait,” I said, and brought out my phone to take a picture of each.
Only then did I let them off the hook. “Chad said he wanted to get away for a while. He seems to do this every now and again. He’s gone hiking. The Appalachian Trail, or part of it. He said he’ll be out of contact for a bit.”
Both of the cops seemed to relax a little at this, and I read a quiet sigh of relief as well. Whatever information Dario had given them, it obviously wasn’t enough to put me in real danger.
At the same time, having cops sniff around wasn’t ideal for my longevity as far as my new career was concerned.
And they weren’t finished. “Do you have any idea when he will be back?” the woman asked.
I put a blank look on my face and shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe a week? Two?” I said. “I don’t know how long it takes to walk a trail like that. Or how much of it he’s going to do.”
“Well, when he does return, please get him to contact us. And perhaps remind him to let his work know what he’s up to as well.”
I gave them an agreeable nod, collected their cards for the purpose, and shut the door behind them when they turned to go. Then I waited a few seconds to make sure they were out of hearing and burst out laughing as I sank down against the door and sat on the floor.
Whether I was laughing because of the hoops I’d made them jump through or out of a sense of relief, even I didn’t know.
Either way, at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder what else Dario had in store for me.
Chapter 15
“Maybe I should swap bank accounts or something,” I mused out loud. “And maybe find somewhere else to store the car. That storage unit is too close.”
I had no true understanding of how far Dario’s reach might extend, but I wouldn’t put it past him to try to take back some of the funds the Syndicate had already paid me for my services.
As for the Mustang–part of me knew it was just a car. If I had to walk away from it for some reason, so be it. At the same time, it was the coolest beast of a machine I’d ever seen, let alone owned. I didn’t want to let it go if I didn’t have to.
And anyway, I didn’t really see how Dario Gambetti could use it against me.
Then again, it really was too much of a coincidence for the cops to just happen to show up after our little meeting.
“Don’t forget his divine medallion,” Azrael reminded me.
“What has that got to do with anything?”
“At the very least, it means he has access to resources beyond what we can see. Perhaps he has direct access to a demon. Or perhaps he simply knows someone who does. Either way, it means you are right to be paranoid. There is little beyond the realms of possibility here. Blocking you from the app and sending police to your apartment might be just the first step.”
Dario Gambetti with access to a demon. It was a disturbing thought. Did that mean he could send it after me? Was I minutes away from being visited by a monster from the darkest bits of Hell?
If so, how could I possibly survive?
Then I shook my head. “If he could do that, he would have done it already,” I said to myself. “Whatever he’s got in mind, it can’t be that bad.”
I was still trying to convince myself of this when I heard a scraping noise from the other side of my door.
It wasn’t someone knocking. Instead, it sounded as if someone was fiddling about at the door frame, about where the hinges were.
“What the fuck?” I murmured.
With a growing sense of unease, I quietly stood up, and took another quick look through the peephole. This time, instead of catching a glimpse of a couple of cops in the hallway, I saw nothing but blackness.
It took me less than a second to puzzle it out. Someone had covered the peephole to prevent me from seeing what they were up to.
Not a good sign.
Azrael seemed to agree. “Move!” he bellowed, and either he managed to take over my body for an instant, or my instincts matched his exactly. Either way, I hurled myself away from the door as fast as I could, through the lounge and into the kitchen.
I’d only just made it when the door exploded into a million fragments, splinters of wood and shards of metal flying in all directions like shrapnel.
I had the presence of mind to duck down behind the breakfast bar even as the noise of the blast threatened my ears and the first bits of Chad’s door started raining down around me.
There was no fireball, for which I was thankful, but that didn’t mean I was safe. I heard movement following in behind the explosion, that of booted feet hurrying into the living room. I couldn’t tell how many and wasn’t about to risk poking my head out with the debris still raining down. But I did draw my gun and quietly curse Dario’s name as I promised anyone listening that I would end him if I could.
I didn’t know what Semtex or C4 smelled like but thought that the chemical scent in the air must have been the result of something like that. Plastic. Whatever. It didn’t matter. Once more, I was out of my depth.
Sure, I was a contract killer, but I lacked much of the training that came with the role. Megadeath #4 had been trained by the military, but me? First person shooters and an enhanced physique courtesy of the demon in my skull.
As for whoever the fuck had blown through my door, they apparently had some training as well.
Were they the cops, back with reinforcements and a different agenda?
Surely not. Even a SWAT team would announce itself before blowing the shit out of my door.
Then who?
I could hear them even as the echoes of the blast started to fade. They were stealthy, but not exactly silent. I heard the click of their shoes, the sound of the clothing, and even their breathing as they made their way further in.
And here was me, hiding behind the breakfast bar in the kitchen, doing nothing but waiting for them.
I gritted my teeth in anger, both at the intruders and at myself. Keeping low, I risked a quick look around the breakfast bar and caught sight of three figures all dressed in black and carrying automatic weapons.
They looked like they could have been military but weren’t acting as a team as I would have expected.
At least one of them saw me when I stuck my head out, though.
And all hell broke loose. A single burst of automatic fire started it off, and then that was all I could hear. The cupboards around me seemed to burst into splinters, and I curled up behind the breakfast bar and hoped it was sufficient to protect me.
For long seconds, my assailants kept up the barrage of gunfire, and my apartment filled with the smell of it. I thought it was just a matter of time before a hot piece of steel flying several hundred feet per second smashed into my skull, or joined a few dozen of its mates in perforating my chest.
But maybe that luck attribute into which I’d poured so many points proved the difference. Or maybe the dishwasher and drawer full of cooking pans was enough to provide the protection I needed.
Either way, none of the bullets found their target.
That didn’t stop me from letting loose with a stream of curses. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I said. “Come on, fuck off already! God, fuck it, but that’s fucking loud!”
And then, just like that, it was over.
Or at least, that part of the attack was over.
The next part was perhaps even more scary. It was just like a scene from a movie, where the gunfire had died down and there was a moment of silence. And into that silence came the sound of something small, about the size of a fist, made of metal, bouncing about in the kitchen right next to me.
Chapter 16
I knew what it was without even thinking, and knew I had only moments to react. I’d jammed my eyes closed at the start of this mess, but that wouldn’t help me if I wanted to survive the next couple
of seconds. So I opened them again and immediately looked about.
And there it was. A Hollywood cliché of the type that I didn’t think existed in real life. A hand grenade, made of shiny black metal, looking like a fist-sized pineapple with a lever at the top.
For some reason, I’d thought they were an outdated design, and that the military no longer used them. But what did I know? I was a gamer, and ass bender (as Chad would have called me), a guy with a demon in his scalp, just trying to make his way in the world.
And I didn’t have time to wonder about the modern design of a hand grenade. I had to act.
So I did. Using reflexes I hadn’t had until Azrael gave them to me, I scooped up the hand grenade and flipped it back over the breakfast bar to whoever the hell had thrown it my way. I heard a male voice let out a panicked curse, and then a second explosion ripped through the apartment.
It was like a bomb going off. In fact, it was a bomb going off. Just a small one, but still significant enough to shake the whole apartment and leave my ears ringing.
The neighbors, I thought, were going to be pissed!
Despite the hell that had been unleashed around me, the thought of my neighbors complaining brought a smile to my lips. I knew Azrael wanted to urge me into action, to make use of whatever chaos the grenade had caused, and this time, I beat him to the punch.
“I’m on it already!” I said before the demon had uttered his first word. And I was. Somehow, I still had my gun in my hand, and that was enough. I lurched to my feet and sailed out of the kitchen in a single, fluid motion that brought me into the ruins of what had once been Chad’s living room.
It was a mess. The furniture had been shredded. It was blown apart with the remains scattered everywhere. Not even Chad’s flat screen TV over by the wall had escaped. I knew without even trying that it had shown its last SpongeBob cartoon.
As well as the remains of my furniture, there were three figures all dressed in black, crumpled and groaning on the floor.
These three had tried to kill me. That they had failed was down to no more than chance, and that thought alone made me angry as Hell.
I wanted them dead. The grenade seemed to have done part of the job, with the nearest of the three missing part of an arm. Yet he was still breathing, still coughing up blood, so I put two bullets into his skull and moved on to the next.
This one wasn’t moving at all. Perhaps he was already dead. Or perhaps he was merely unconscious.
Two more bullets, and he was no longer unconscious.
Then I wheeled to the third, the smallest of the three, a slender figure sitting up against the wall. Perhaps this one had been the last in, following behind the other two. In any event, he’d caught less of the blast than the others.
I was totally enraged. I was going to kill this one too, even though Azrael had another idea.
“Don’t kill him!” he shouted. “We need information!”
I knew in my soul that Azrael was right, that this third intruder was a source of answers. But I didn’t care. In a hot, blind rage, I loomed over him, stuck my gun in his face, and watched him try to flinch out of the way as I pulled the trigger.
Click.
The slide tried to move, but it couldn’t. Jammed. I cleared it and tried again, with the same result. Click.
Jammed.
In a fit of disgust, I tossed my gun to the side and drew one of my knives. But before I could plunge the blade into my target’s face, he spoke for the first time.
“Don’t,” he said.
Except that his voice was surprisingly high. Feminine, in fact.
It was enough to make me pause. He–she, maybe–was wearing headgear that obscured much of his or her face. A helmet, complete with facemask, and a dark balaclava to boot. With no gentleness whatsoever, I tore all the gear away from their face, and found myself staring at a woman with close-cropped hair on one side, and a collection of earrings that were sure to set off any metal detector at an airport.
She looked at me with an expression of fear mixed with acceptance, and I made a cognitive leap which caught me by surprise.
Who would Dario Gambetti be most likely to send after me, if not his own pet hitmen? Why else would he knock me out of the system so quickly?
The men I’d killed were my peers, hitmen in the employ of the Gambetti Syndicate. I’d probably seen their names on the app more than once.
One of those names came to mind as I stared at the woman on the floor in front of me, with my knife in front of her face.
“Ladykiller,” I said out loud.
At the time when I had first seen it, I assumed it meant no more than that the particular hitman had a way with the ladies. Or that he liked to kill them. But now, I had a different interpretation.
Even though she must have thought she was going to die, the killer on the floor in front of me stiffened in surprise.
“How do you know that name?” she said.
There was a hard edge to the woman’s tone that suggested a similar edge to her nature, but her answer told me what I wanted to know. This was indeed Ladykiller, one of the Syndicate’s paid assassins, and she was there to kill me.
I didn’t know who her two companions were. Perhaps they were Ladykiller’s men in the same way that Megadeath had worked with a small army of mercenaries. Or perhaps they were also named hitmen on the Syndicate’s list.
Much of my anger evaporated. It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision, but for some reason I knew I wasn’t going to kill this woman after all.
Perhaps she saw my lack of resolution in my body language, or perhaps my grip on my knife relaxed just a bit. Either way, Ladykiller took advantage of the situation.
Turns out, she wasn’t badly injured even though the blast had disarmed her. Instead of using my momentary hesitation to point an automatic rifle at my head and let rip, she reached out for one of my ankles and then hurled her weight off the floor to bury her shoulder into my hip.
She knocked me off my feet, and as the wind burst from my lungs, some of my anger returned. Which was good, because I had to do my best to keep her from killing me with her bare hands.
Ladykiller was tough and surprisingly strong, a swarm of elbows, knees and fists that came at me from every direction. So I blocked what I could, absorbed what I couldn’t block, and used my Azrael-given reach, coordination, and strength to my advantage.
It was like trying to fight a dozen wildcats at once, and despite my best efforts, I still ended up with more than one bruise, a split lip, a scratch on the side of my face and a punch to the throat.
Eventually, I was able to pin her to the floor, sitting astride her with her wrists caught in my fists. Even then, she twisted and wriggled beneath me, trying to knee me in the back as she snarled and spit.
Somehow, I’d lost hold of my knife, but I wasn’t going to go look for it just at that moment.
“Quit it!” I shouted. To emphasize my words, I smashed her wrist against the floor, the impact mitigated somewhat by Chad’s carpet.
In response, Ladykiller tried to headbutt me in the face.
I flinched out of the way but decided I’d had enough. I headbutted her in return, smashing my forehead against hers, hard enough to do some good.
For the first time since she had pounced on me, she stopped fighting.
“I said quit it,” I said, using my Batman voice, or as close an approximation as I could get to it.
For a moment, both of us were quiet, breathing heavily, and no longer immediately trying to kill each another. This time, I didn’t ease off in the least. I wanted her to know she was beaten.
“I’m not going to hurt you unless you make me,” I grated. “Now. Are you done?”
My headbutt had hurt her, but no more than that. This Ladykiller was tough!
Damn, the headbutt had hurt me, too.
She glared at me. Swallowed. Gave me a single nod.
“How do you know that name?” she growled again.
I still
didn’t let her go. “How do you think?” I asked.
“I’m not here to play guessing games!” she said. “Tell me.”
Despite myself, I had to grin. This was no delicate beauty like Sandy, and she was as different from Rachel as it was possible to get. This Ladykiller was a firebrand, a tough, ball-breaker of a woman who really could kick ass and take names if she chose.
I liked her already, although I didn’t think this was the right time to say so.
“I’ve seen your name a few times. I think you may even have snagged a contract I was thinking of taking myself.”
I saw the light of understanding go off in her eyes. “Simon,” she said. “SimonSaysDie.”
I nodded.
“You killed Megadeath #4,” she said.
Still straddling her and holding her down, I let out a laugh. “Him and a bunch of his men. Yes.”
Ladykiller was starting to relax. She looked around at the mess she and her companions had made. Then she breathed deeply and looked back to me.
“No wonder the contract was for multiple hitters acting in concert,” she said, her surprisingly attractive face twisting into a snarl. “They could have told us what we were up against. The file said you were no more than a gamer.” Then her face took on a puzzled expression. “But you don’t match your profile image.” From her place beneath me, she looked me up and down. “In fact, nothing about you is as it should be.”
I grinned at her but said nothing.
She took a deep breath and let it out. She could have been calming down even further, or she could have been gearing up for another attempt to fight me off.
“So, what happens now?” she asked.
“That depends on you,” I replied. “I’m going to let you up. When I do, you can either take a moment, relax, and we can continue this little talk, or you can try to kill me again.” I let my expression harden. “If you choose the latter, be warned. I won’t hold back a second time.”
Again, Ladykiller nodded. I took that as a positive sign and let go. I stood swiftly and reached for another of my knives. But I didn’t draw it. I just waited to see what she might do.
