“Perfect,” said Dean. “Hello, officer, can you go tell the mayor we need to get some people over to the banking district? What are you waiting for?”
The reg cop flipped up his visor and smiled.
It was the mayor’s goon, Donaldo. “Sure I’ll tell him, Fulsome. You might not want to draw a lot of attention to it though.”
“Shit.” Dean charged past him and heard a chorus of laughter behind him. Tasha would get an earful about how uncooperative this mayor had been, and this borderline harassment—no, not even borderline! She’d brought him in to help on the political end, but there wasn’t even a chance with these people.
Dean arrived at his vehicle parked along the street. He glared at it. A lot of good it did him. He didn’t know where the hell he was going.
“Where you going?” asked a voice from behind.
Dean was almost jovial seeing the dingy, gaunt form of the Noggin, Chipper Saude, again. “Hey do you know where the banking district is?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, my company headquarters is there,” he deadpanned and petted his cat behind the ears.
“Please, I don’t have time for jokes.”
The Noggin’s face fell. “Chill, guy. So yeah, it’s not far. Head straight down that way until you get to Freefall Circle and make a right. Take that to Ivevest Avenue, go left. Banking District’s at the corner of Ivevest and Loinage Boulevard. It’s probably like two and a half miles out.”
Dean pulled open the driver side door. “I owe you, friend.”
“Nope, we’re square.”
Dean plopped down in the seat, turned the key, and stomped the gas. The loaner car actually picked up quick and accelerated to sixty mph in a few seconds.
“Sweet,” he whispered with a laugh, but his heart was definitely not in it.
* * *
Dean didn’t have to even search for the banking district; all the wooden structures were either partially consumed by angry blue-red fire or fully engulfed. He spotted Rick hunkered down behind a vehicle that resembled a Palomino truck mixed with a type of monstrous diesel contraption. The mercenary calmly loaded shells into a long sniper shotgun rifle. His neck looked like it had a wound from earlier that had scabbed over, but he was otherwise looking stable.
His own weapon pressed to his thigh, Dean got out of the car and hurried to take position near Rick. His friend rolled his eyes at his approach. “Told you not to come,” he said, shaking his head, and crammed another shell into the rifle.
“I’m a rebel,” answered Dean. He glanced over the side of the truck and noticed a flood of people swarming out of a large building in the center of the district, which had only just begun to grow with fire.
“I think he believes I’m still in there with them,” Rick said thoughtfully. “I think, anyway.”
He edged up and took a look over the truck bed. He cracked a grin and thumbed the safety off his rifle. “Check it out,” he whispered. “Top floor.”
Dean cautiously looked over but could only see flames on the roof.
“Can’t see shit.”
Rick chuckled and poised the rifle over the edge of the truck. “Our killer is up there. He’s not looking this way, which I sort of love.”
“How in the hell can you see him?”
Dean watched as Rick looked through the sight. He couldn’t believe the man wasn’t sweating from all the surrounding fires. Dean was already drenched and he’d only been out of the car for a few minutes. He was about to ask how Rick managed to remain so frosty when the mercenary squeezed the trigger and let out a hoot.
“Hot damn! Got the bastard in the same shoulder from earlier! Buckshot nearly took his arm off. Should have been his head. No head means good night. I hope.”
Rick laughed and screamed a second later as something struck his cheek and clattered in the street. Dean’s eyes darted to the knife spinning over and coming to a stop near the tire of his vehicle. He turned around and noticed the wound in Rick’s neck had been re-opened and poured blood fiercely now.
“Bastard tit-for-tatted me,” yelled Rick, sinking down and pressing his palm into the wound. His hand came away with a great deal of blood, but the wound didn’t look bad at all.
Even so, Dean had a bad feeling.
“I’m calling support,” he said and grabbed his phone from his pocket. “Mayor has to send medics—”
“Don’t bother, man.” Rick looked up to the dark cavern ceiling above. “What a crap day.”
“Quiet—” Someone came on the line. “Yes, hello,” said Dean. “Can I have the reg police emergency response…? This is Dean Fulsome. I’m contracted… What do you mean you’re disconnecting?”
More blood erupted from the wound. It was surprising that Rick didn’t seem more pale, but he was a badass and he’d experienced his share of hemorrhages. Dean knew blood though. He’d watched it with interest all those years he spent in the slaughterhouses. He knew the different flows, like some musicians knew exact notes when they heard them—perfect pitch, he believed it was called. He had perfect flow—he knew Rick wouldn’t live long. The rush was too quick and the blood too vibrant.
He didn’t have the courage to let on about this though, even if this man was brave enough to accept his fate.
“They’re on their way.”
“Sure they are,” answered Rick.
“Hey, stop it, okay?”
“How’d he throw that knife so far, so accurately?” Rick mused. Blood spilled over his lips. “It’s like he sees everyth—”
Something caught in Dean’s throat, but in the next moment, he realized it wasn’t his own throat, it was the man’s before him. A knife had gone through the car window and entered the back of Rick’s neck, the blade protruding out just below his Adam’s apple. He let out a coughing sound and his hands instinctively went to his neck. Dean reached for him, but the look of shock in his glassy eyes went dark—instant death, in the next moment.
That’s when Dean heard the sirens. “Help!” he screamed and scrambled to his feet. He could see the cruiser’s headlights filling the cavern inch by inch. “Please! My friend is hurt!”
The next seconds were hours. Long images without color. Help him. He’s bleeding. Dean studied every pore in the reg police officer’s face, not because he wanted to, but because it felt like he was asking for help for ten thousand years.
“Who?” the man kept asking.
It took Dean a while to snap to it and turn to point out Rick—but when he did, there wasn’t a body, only a long wash of blood across the ground.
“He was there a minute ago.”
“Dying?”
“Yes!”
“Well, doesn’t seem to have been dying enough to remain put.”
“He was taken.”
“Dragged off in the time it took you to run over here. Not likely,” said the officer. “Nobody is that quick.”
Dean looked at the blood. It did look smeared and trailing off. “We have to follow him!” Dean shouted and grabbed the officer’s shoulders.
“Take your hands off me. Who do we have to follow?”
“The Moon City Killer!”
The reg cop’s lips thinned and he shrugged Dean’s hands off him. “We have to respond to the fires. Excuse me, Mr. Fulsome.”
“Wait! This isn’t a Limbus thing! Why aren’t you going after him?”
The officer hurried off to the buildings. A fire brigade truck pulled in before him. Dean sank to his knees. His breathing was all he could hear and all he could concentrate on for the next full hour.
* * *
Dean pressed his head into the steering wheel, laced his fingers together, and put his hands against the back of his head. The pain in his sinus had spread through his entire skull. He didn’t know if the migraine was a remnant of the Quantum Flu, this unnatural sleep (no sleep) cycle, or if it was left-over trauma from just seeing a friend’s life claimed without a spare moment to process it.
A knock at his passenger window mad
e him thrash backward in his seat. He didn’t have time to be pissed at whoever scared the shit out of him—despite the huge grin on eleven-year-old Tasha Willing’s face.
“That just never gets old,” she said through the glass.
“Goddamn, Tash,” said Dean, unlocking the door. “Do you even know what happened?”
The little girl was as calm as a seasoned corporate executive, and dressed in a smart pants suit to match. Her smile could be disarming or calculating-cold.
“He was a mercenary. They get killed sometimes. Relax, Dean.”
“He was a friend, to us both—and his—”
“Body is missing, yes,” she finished and opened her binder to look at the project documents.
“So you know what happened?”
She put her finger on the line of text and tapped. “Was he dead?”
“He got a knife all the way through the neck. Signs point to a solid yeah.”
“Well who took the body? The Killer?”
Dean hissed through his teeth. “Aren’t you supposed to have the answers here? You’re the one who’s been through every universe ten times.”
Tasha sighed. “I’m only here… Well, let’s just say I made this trip because I knew you’d need to talk. You’re fragile like that.”
Dean had never been told that. In fact, he was anything but fragile, as Sandra, his ex-wife, and the few women he’d dated could attest to. However, comparing him with the hardness of Tasha Willing, she might have a point. Still, he wasn’t going to let her railroad him here. “At least you got the Golden Transport. You’re here and gone and don’t lose any time on Earth. Me? Shit! I’ve come out here, wasting decades, and probably screwed up my one chance for happiness, just outta being loyal to you.”
“To me?” Tasha raised her dark eyebrows.
Dean took a long breath. “Fine, to Limbus freaking Incorporated. And now our contract killer has himself been killed and the mark is still running around Moon City.”
“What’s your point?”
“I thought it was obvious. The whole project needs to be shitcanned.”
Tasha stared at him, bit her lower lip, and shook her head in disappointment.
“What?” Dean asked. When she didn’t answer right away, he asked again with more urgency. “Goddamn, Tasha, what?”
“This project will move forward, Dean. We plan to open a recruiting office here and contract with the Deitii. We desperately need them and their council. They have skill sets that will be well-utilized within one network of client companies—but we need this serial killer dead. No more Deitiis can fall to murder. You have to put an end to all of that.”
“How?”
“Track him and get rid of him. Isn’t that obvious?” asked Tasha.
“Me? You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m staggeringly sane.”
“I’m not a hired killer, kid,” said Dean, not trying in the least to hide his disgust at the idea.
“Don’t call me kid.” The young girl with the ancient eyes frowned and shook her head. “Imagination wasn’t ever one of your strong points, Dean. You worked as a Sticker—”
“I know what I did, okay?”
“You’d stand on the line in the slaughterhouse and kill hundreds of cows a day. That’s where I found you. Covered in shit and blood.”
“So what?”
“So what?”
“Yeah, so what.”
“So you know how to slit a throat. You know how to make a kill. Stop pretending this is different. Find this pain in the ass and END him.”
“I never signed nothing saying I’d do that sort of thing.”
“If you’re going to argue with me,” Tasha pointed out, “no double negatives.”
“Shit…” Dean whispered and scrubbed at his face.
“Look, there’s no time to send for another contract. You can go back now and lose decades and lose your fiancée…”
Dean stiffened at her nerve. “I thought you and I were friends.”
“Sure we are,” Tasha replied. “And if so, why the hell aren’t you helping me out here? You knew me before you knew Sandra.”
“Careful, Tash, you’re sounding jealous.”
“Screw you.”
“Oh good, I’ve finally gotten under that concrete skin of yours.”
“Hardly.”
“This is some stupid, stupid, stupid shit. Are you really that hard up? Isn’t there anyone else in Moon City who knows how to handle him or herself? I’m not going to live for two minutes going against that monster. He killed Rick Agate! One of the best there is. It’s throwing my life away, and though I might not be worth a Golden Transport, I’m at least worth more than this ridiculous suicide exercise.”
“You have no confidence.”
“Give me a Golden Transport return to Earth.”
“Can’t happen.”
“It has to.”
“I can’t—” Tasha pursed her lips. “I could perhaps arrange that, I suppose, if you can complete this task. In the meantime, I will send out a request for proposal to our network and try to get another merc moonside within a week.”
“Get Chris Agate. He’ll want to know about his brother.”
“He already does. I called him before coming here.”
Dean was flabbergasted. “And?”
Tasha shrugged her padded shoulders. “He’s busy.”
“Son of a—” Dean calmed his language. Even though Tasha was technically an advanced age, he still couldn’t curse to the face of someone who looked so young. “The best assassin in this galaxy can’t take time off to avenge his only brother? Chris Agate is probably the only person who can put this dog down.”
“No, there’s also you,” said Tasha with a wide smile and a wink. When he said nothing, she popped open the car door.
“What do you mean, there’s also me?”
“You’re the Slaughter Man, after all.”
Dean groaned. “Maybe with a lot of help, but the city won’t give me any support. I’m blowing in the wind here.”
“Well, now that’s something I can help you with,” said Tasha. “I’ll be visiting the mayor next.”
Dean chuckled. “Good luck.”
“You too,” she answered, not seeming to catch his sarcasm or perhaps just not addressing it.
“Golden Transport,” he called after her. “If I get this done, you make it happen. Promise?”
Tasha smirked. “Would you believe me if I did promise?”
Dean’s shoulders slumped. “Why don’t you ever cheer me up?”
“That’s not in my job description,” she said.
“See you soon,” he replied.
“That’s the spirit.”
And with a single chuckle, Tasha started off. Moments later, Dean lost all track of her; she was gone.
His phone rang then.
Sandra.
She must have had insomnia. He wanted to let it go to voicemail, but he couldn’t afford more disconnection than they already had. So he answered, and they talked—but he didn’t tell her about his objective now and what it could actually mean to them if he survived.
If he succeeded.
Chapter 10
I felt the heaviness of the mercenary’s body—it was unusually substantial, solid, like transporting a small, dead planet. I had no other theory than that he was not from a normal bloodline, which was accurate because Christopher Agate was the closest thing to a god this universe had seen.
But he wasn’t a god.
I was.
Or would be.
I nudged Rick Agate’s body toward the edge of the cliff. Staring up was Black Kiss Falls, the abyss between Shinlow’s Caverns and Battle Column Path where I’d peered below so fondly as a teenager. I never could tell if the answers for life were down there in the dark, or the answers for death, but it was a beautiful nothing, a place I still enjoyed.
I pushed harder on Rick Agate. My strength was waning a bit from starting all the fir
es and demolishing the office building with my bare hands. It had been necessary to draw him out and pin him down in one location, but the price on my energy had been high. I needed more Deitii to drink, but as usual, I couldn’t recall how much I’d had earlier, so more was relative.
The mercenary’s body flipped over. A thin line of blood dribbled from the knife wound. The man didn’t even bleed like others—very curious—I would make a point to seek out the other Agate brother when I had the clarity of all universes in my mind. They weren’t human like others. I derived Christopher must also be different, just due to his vast success in the killing arts.
I retrieved my knife and slid it back into its sheath. With a grunt, I pushed again and Rick Agate’s body pitched off the side of the cliff, his body being swallowed by darkness, only a whisper of wind rushing around him.
“You’ll see your brother, soon,” I said, slowly backing away from the ledge.
I thought I heard a voice. A shout. The wind possibly… but I could take no chances. I leaned over the cliff and peered through the darkness, my eye sight carving through the black. I found the body at the bottom, hundreds of feet below. There was no heartbeat. Blood puddled at the head, from the eye sockets, the ears, nose and mouth. One leg was twisted around in a disturbing tangle. The body was still.
Whatever I’d heard, it wasn’t Rick Agate.
Standing there in the silence, I thought back to all I’d done today to be rid of this man. The chase through the Bleeding Caverns, planting the poison gas capsule in his apartment, bringing the whole business district down in ashes. It was all so… good. I’d never lived with such focus and purpose, outside of maybe becoming unstoppably strong and wise in all ways. The mercenary had given me something to use all the power on. I liked that and once more longed for the dead man’s brother to come find me. If Rick Agate had been sweet, Chris Agate would be ecstasy.
“You look happy,” said a voice from behind me.
My body moved in flashes, a series of motions that felt like the flipping pages of amateur animation, with long stretches of absent images—I turned, then I was in the air, I was standing before the person, I had them on the cold ground with my hand surrounding a small throat.
Moon City Page 10
