I did. I let the anxiety come off me like steam. I steadied my thoughts. Once I took the heightened emotion out of it, I could see things more clearly. I couldn’t risk an escape attempt, even if I had the nerve. Kitten Face was too crazy. He might blow me away in a fit of pique and then take his chances in a shootout with the police.
No. The best I could do for now was try to get some information out of him, try to get a better picture of the situation I was in. It might cost me a few more raps to the skull, but it would give me a sense of what was possible. He obviously had orders to bring me in, so he wasn’t going to shoot me if he could help it. At least I didn’t think he would.
“So how come you killed him?” I asked into the mirror. Kitten Face seemed surprised that I’d dared to speak to him again. I waited for him to give me another swat with the gun barrel. He didn’t. Not right away, anyhow. I pushed on: “I’m just curious. You’re looking for the book, right? Another Kingdom. Isn’t that what you’re after?”
In the rearview, I saw the killer consider me. He narrowed his eyes. He pursed his lips to make his high cheeks hollow. Did he want to shut me up, or did he want to talk a little to pass the time? I met his gaze in the reflection and he met mine. I was surprised by my own cool. So was he, I think. I think that’s what decided him.
“Well …” he answered. “Daddy wants it.”
“Daddy. Your father?”
He gave an elaborate feminine roll of his eyes. Not his father. Of course not. His boss. His man. Daddy. I nodded. I shifted my eyes back to the windshield. I followed the Mustang’s taillights away from the bright lights of the strip and on into the grassier stretch of the boulevard.
“I get it,” I said. “So that’s what I mean. If Daddy wants the book, why kill Gunther? He’s the last one who saw it, isn’t he?”
He gave me a girlish little shrug with his narrow shoulders. “Maybe I just wanted to.”
I looked at him in the rearview.
“I like killing men,” he said. “Men especially. They think they’re so there, you know. Then pow. They’re gone. They’re nothing.” He wrinkled his nose at me as if he’d said something cute.
“Uh huh,” I said. I tried to keep what I felt out of my voice. It wasn’t easy. The guy was a horror show. “But you couldn’t kill him if Daddy didn’t want you to, right?”
“Don’t talk about Daddy,” said Kitten Face—and his kitten face darkened as he said it. So I didn’t talk about Daddy. He turned away and looked out the window at the passing mansions on their acres of grass. “We knew what he knew,” he murmured as if explaining it to himself. “There was no point in leaving a loose end. We only kept him alive till now in the hope he would draw out someone like you.”
Up ahead, through the windshield, I saw the Mustang turn right off Sunset. I followed him onto dark residential streets. The road began rising steeply.
Someone like me, I thought. Someone … “How did you know?” I said. “It was me you were following, not Gunther. How did you know I was looking for the book?”
He gave me a sidelong look, raising an eyebrow. He lifted his gun and pressed the muzzle to his lips: Ssh. It was a secret.
We traveled uphill, past fine homes and lofty estates. We rose higher and higher above the city.
I thought it over as I drove. I thought: it must’ve been my search. I had searched for Another Kingdom on my phone when I was at Jane Janeway’s house recovering from that sword blow to my head. Then when I got home, the Mustang showed up outside my building. They must have seen the search somehow. How else would they have known I was looking for the book? And then … my phone … After I had lost them in the Flats, they must have hacked into my phone somehow and found my call to Sean Gunther. Or maybe they had put a tracker on my car …
These thoughts made me sick inside, sick and cold. Who were these people anyway? The government? The police? Foreign spies? Crazed super-hackers? Who else could monitor a search engine waiting for someone to look up a book? Who else could break into your phone and find out where you were going, just like that? And who else could kill a man—just like that—without worrying about the consequences?
That thought made me sick too. If they had killed Sean Gunther because they knew everything he knew … and if they were taking me somewhere to question me … what would they do to me when the questioning was over, when they knew everything I knew too? You didn’t need heavy math to figure that one out.
The wave of hysteria began to rise in me again. I caught it, forced it down. I focused, just like I’d learned to do in the sewers of Galiana. I made my mind dark. I let the fear go. Incredibly, it worked. There were no fairy lights, no magical protection. But it calmed me down anyway.
I glanced out the window. I had no idea where we were anymore. High in the Beverly Hills somewhere and even beyond. We turned and turned again. The roads got smaller, steeper, higher.
Now, a few yards away, the Mustang turned into a driveway and came to a stop before a large filigreed iron gate. The gate swung in. The Mustang went through. I followed in my shabby Nissan, the gates looming over me. Then both cars, the Mustang and mine, began the climb up a long, winding lane. The moon became visible over the far horizon. The moonlight and the city light bleached away the stars.
Up into the night we went, a long way with nothing but grass and trees on either side of us, no signs of habitation. This was bad. Bad twice. At least twice. One, it was deserted up here, so that was bad because with no one in sight, and no houses, there’d be no one to witness what happened to me, no one to call for help. And two, this was expensive property, which was bad because it meant whoever owned it was rich—really rich, and probably powerful. Rich and powerful enough to have Sean Gunther killed without a qualm, and so therefore plenty rich and powerful enough to erase a minor character like me.
“So who …?” I began to ask.
But Kitten Face said, “Ssh. Quiet now, peachy-poo. I want to deliver you undamaged if I can.”
Man, oh man, I had to give it to him: the guy had a way of getting under my skin. Every time he pulled that sweety peaches shit on me, I wanted to rip his head off with my bare hands.
I drove up and up after the Mustang. And with a start, I suddenly realized we were not alone. There were people here—dark figures lurking by the side of the road. They were guards. They were patrolling the hilltop. They were holding rifles on their hips. They were dressed in black. They were almost invisible in the night.
Then a house hove into view above them.
It was a fine, modern ranch, built to seem a part of the hillside. Constructed on a long rolling line, it fit the contours of the setting exactly. It was fashioned of brown stone and tan stucco, surrounded by brush, lit by soft spotlights. The indoor and the outdoor spaces blended one into the other. I could see a dining room without walls leading into an enclosed den with a fire blazing in an enormous hearth. The den had glass doors, and the glass doors led out again onto a broad, flat patio of clay-colored brick.
The Mustang stopped on the wide pavement before a four-car garage. I stopped behind it. A black-clad rifleman stepped up to the Nissan’s door.
“Out you get, baby boy,” Kitten Face said.
I opened the door and climbed out into the cool of the autumn night. Billiard Ball was already out of the Mustang. He had crossed his arms over his chest and was watching the scene with lidded eyes. Kitten Face emerged from the car behind me. He tossed his fluffy blond hair and slipped his pistol into his windbreaker. He winked at the rifleman and gave him one of those pursed-lip kisses. The rifleman was a bearded, hard-eyed military type. I saw him curl his lip with annoyance, but he didn’t say anything. I wondered if he was afraid of the psycho too.
What happened next took me by surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t have. It had been a long night. A long night and a long day. In this world and the other. I’d been roughed up and chased down, slapped around and forced to witness a murder by a crazy-as-shit assassin who treated me like his ca
tamite. Now I was heading who knew where to face who knew what, and I was trying to stay focused, trying to keep my attention trained outward on the situation around me and not inward on my own mental state. I guess I didn’t realize just how jacked up and pissed off I was.
The rifleman said to me, “This way.”
He gestured with his head toward the open-air dining space. There was no one there now, but the long table was set with two places. It was lit by candle globes and an elegant chandelier. Beyond it was the cliff and the city lights and the moon hanging in the dark blue sky making the setting spectacular. It was a good guess that Daddy was on his way and would be joining me for dinner.
I began walking toward the house over a slate path. Focusing my mind, controlling my breath, taking in my surroundings. The rifleman walked a half step behind me. Billiard Ball was trailing somewhere off to my left. I’d lost sight of Kitten Face. The rifleman kept his weapon on his hip, pointed upward. He wasn’t worried about me making a run for it. Where would I go? We were on the highest peak of Mount Nowhere, and there were men with guns in every direction.
So that was the scenario. I was about halfway along the path to the dining space. Then, for no reason other than that’s the kind of punk he was, Kitten Face stepped up behind me and gave me a slap on the ass.
“Hurry up now, little one,” he chided me.
I turned around and punched him.
I didn’t mean to do it. That is, I did mean to do it—of course I did, you can’t slug a guy that way by accident. What I mean is, I didn’t intend to do it, I didn’t think about doing it before I did. If I had, believe me, I would’ve stopped myself. He was a stone-hearted killer, after all, with a gun under his jacket. But he did what he did and I did what I did and there it was.
I came around fast and my fist came with me. I’d never hit anyone before. I’d never been in a fight in my life. I had no training. But it didn’t matter. Where he was walking and the way I had to turn to get at him—our positions created a perfect punch. Hips, arm, fist. Boom. My knuckles connected with his cheek, dead-on. His face was soft. It didn’t hurt my hand at all. And he—well, he was in good shape and fierce and all that, but when it came down to it, he was a girly little guy, and there wasn’t much to him. The blow sent him spinning sideways, and he dropped to the ground. He propped himself up on one elbow right away, but then he just stayed there, staring, conscious but dazed.
I gaped down at him, shocked at myself. I glanced at the rifleman. He had his tongue stuck in his cheek as if to keep from laughing. I glanced over at Billiard Ball. He was standing still, blinking. I think he was as shocked as I was.
“Hmph,” I heard him say.
That was putting it mildly.
My predicament had already been bad, but it was bad squared now, maybe bad cubed. There was no point in trying to run away. One of the riflemen would shoot me down or tackle me. There was nothing to do but stand there until Kitten Face recovered. Then what? He was sure to kill me. Or beat me senseless. Or beat me senseless and then kill me. Whatever—it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
So we stood there, the rifleman, Billiard Ball, and me. We stared down at Kitten Face, all of us. After a while, Kitten Face shook his head. The fog cleared from his eyes. He looked around. He looked at me. He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. It was a smile that sent a chill from my balls to my brainpan.
“Oh,” he said in a throaty whisper. “Oh. Oh. Oh.”
With that, like some sort of supernatural feline beast, he leapt to his feet in a single swift motion. I caught my breath, waiting helplessly for whatever would come.
Kitten Face took a slow step toward me. His smile became a full-fledged killer grin, mirthless and furious. “Oh,” he said again, drawing it out this time.
He took another step and came up close.
Just then, a blinding light struck all of us. A vibrant guttural stuttering filled the air. The stuttering grew swiftly louder until, in another moment, it became a thunderous roar.
Kitten Face froze, his smile faltering. A murderous fury flamed in his eyes. His fists clenched at his sides. His hair—my hair too—began blowing wildly in a newly risen wind. He stayed where he was, but he didn’t attack me. Something had made him hesitate.
The hilltop grew brighter, louder. The wind rose higher. I lifted my eyes.
A helicopter was descending out of the night sky. It seemed to have come from nowhere. It seemed to be heading directly toward us. The wind off the rotor blades was blowing over us. The noise enveloped us. The chopper’s spotlight grew brighter and brighter.
I lowered my eyes to the assassin again. His face was red where I had punched him and red where I had not punched him too, just red with passionate rage. His grin was forced and savage now. His eyes were white hot.
He spoke to me. His mouth moved anyway, but the words were washed away in the chopper noise. It didn’t matter. I knew what he was saying, more or less. He was telling me what he was going to do to me—what unimaginable thing—the very first chance he got.
But not right now. The helicopter continued its descent, and as my perspective on it changed, I could see it was coming down not on top of me, but on the patio over there just beyond the den. As I was watching it, the black-clad rifleman caught my attention with a gesture. He tilted his head: Follow me. There was still a little humorous quirk at the corner of his mouth. He’d enjoyed watching Kitten Face get punched. I think he wanted to get me away from him as quickly as possible. I followed him to the patio.
The chopper wind grew stronger, the noise grew louder, and the light grew brighter and then dimmer as it narrowed on the point just beneath the craft. With a wobbling tremor, the copter touched down. The engine kept running, and the rotors kept spinning. The door slid open and out stepped a little man, ducking his head beneath the turning blades.
Daddy.
He was old and bent and exceptionally short—four foot something probably, maybe five foot nothing, but not more than that. He was wearing a dark suit, the jacket flapping in the rotor wind. Since his head was bent, all I could see of him was a fine crop of unruly silver hair and his hands, so wrinkled they seemed made of crumpled paper.
Then he came out from under the rotors and looked up. Big surprise. I had never seen him before in the flesh, but I recognized him all right. From pictures in the news and from the framed photographs on the mantelpiece in my parents’ living room back home and other photographs on the wall of my brother’s fabulous New York apartment. Because my father held the Orosgo chair in Psychology at Berkeley and my mother funded her research with grants from the Orosgo Foundation and my brother worked for the Orosgo Institute and, hell, even I worked for Global Pictures, which Orosgo owned.
And lo and behold, here he was right in front of me: my father’s benefactor, my brother’s mentor, my own employer, Serge Orosgo.
IT’S STRANGE TO SAY, BUT I’D NEVER GIVEN MUCH thought to Orosgo. You’d think I would have, wouldn’t you? His presence wound like a golden chain through my family—Mom, Dad, Richard, me. When you think about it, even my sister, Riley, took his money if you count the handouts she got from my parents, which ultimately, one way and another, came from him. Yet, somehow, though I had been vaguely aware of his existence since I was little, I had never really considered him as a person, real, with skin on. He was just too far above me somehow, too rich, too powerful: more an influence than an individual, more an atmosphere than a man.
Now, though, here he was walking toward me, and it was disorienting to see him in his humanity, to say the least. He was ancient yet vital—for all his years, a casual, confident, even youthful figure. He wore no tie, just a white shirt open at his wattled throat. His face beneath the silver hair was square and very pale, the skin almost transparent where it wasn’t pocked with liver spots. His cheeks weren’t wrinkled much. I guess he’d had some cosmetic surgery since they were weirdly smooth, as if he were wearing a plastic mask. His pale blue eyes were wide the way very old men’s
eyes get wide. Smooth cheeks and wide eyes: the overall effect made him look kind of like an infant, a perpetual baby perpetually startled by the brand-new world.
As the chopper gave a wobble and lifted up into the sky behind him, the old man offered me his hand. Dazed by his presence, I took it, looking down at him from my greater height. His hand was cold and dry like a lizard’s skin.
The chopper tilted and shot away. The wind around us subsided. The noise grew dimmer.
“Austin. Good to finally meet you,” Orosgo said. He had a faint, romantic-sounding accent. I couldn’t quite place it. “Come. Sit with me. We’ll eat.”
He walked toward the dining area. The rifleman met him along the way. Orosgo touched his shoulder in a paternal manner as the big soldierly man leaned down and spoke low in his ear. Orosgo nodded. Glanced at me. “Go on ahead. I’ll be right with you,” he said.
He walked off to where Kitten Face was standing apart from us. The killer had not moved to greet the chopper but was still where we had left him on the path. He was sulking like a child, kicking the slate of the path with the ball of one foot. Orosgo gently took his chin in his fingers and tilted his face so he could examine the place where I’d punched him. He murmured some consoling words. He patted his cheek, then sent him off toward the house with another pat on his backside.
I, meanwhile, moved to the open dining area, stealing glances over my shoulder at the conference between the billionaire and the murderer as I went. To say I was confused, to say I was stunned, to say my head was spinning is not to say enough. Thoughts were whirling through my mind like tornados. In the last … had it even been twenty-four hours?—I had seen sights beyond believing. I had traveled from world to world in ways I couldn’t—in ways no one could—understand. I had seen a man’s head ripped off by a one-eyed ogre. I had seen a man shot dead by an androgyne psychopath. I had seen a man torn to pieces by a monster made of shit. Made of shit! Yet somehow my brain had managed to incorporate all that into its conception of the possible. But this …
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