The world settled, but was different. It took a moment for Max to recognize himself standing as the Temple crowd bumped into him, flowed around him, puzzled, disturbed. He viewed himself with curious detachment. He should have shaved that morning, or perhaps his dark beard and close-cropped, black hair stood out more under the garish street light among the clutch of innocents. A breeze picked at his duster, and he noticed his waist was thicker than he thought it should be. His black jeans were dusty, and he automatically reached down to brush himself off.
Touched a firm, round thigh in Capri pants.
From a distance, he heard the Beast roar in protest. And arousal.
He found himself in the body of the woman he was supposed to protect. New feelings crept in a quiet current though his awareness: cold nipples eager for sharper sensation; a hunger between the legs needing to receive rather than deliver passion's stroke; a hollowness in the belly yearning to be filled by a seed's blossoming. Life mingled with the death he always carried close to his heart. He glimpsed a blinding moment of what he was accustomed to snuffing out, and felt himself drowning in its glory. His impulse to kill rose like a plume of fire, and he aimed its power at the tide rising to consume him. But though his rage burned and his appetite demanded fulfilling, there was no killing to be done. His tools—the Beast, his body—did not answer his call.
A woman's laughter washed over him like rain.
Max looked out through alien eyes and searched the real, for something true to use as a weapon.
He stared at himself, reaching for contact with his flesh and the Beast. The remoteness of his own face shocked him, but the plainness of his visage drew him out of his instinctive madness. It was as if another mind, with another set of values, suffused his thoughts, calmed him, showed him a new way to perceive the world.
He studied his face. He was used to seeing it close-up in mirrors as he sometimes applied cosmetics and appliances to preserve the anonymity of his work, or brushed his teeth, or stared at the blood that had been sprayed back at him during the course of his pleasures. His hands—his true hands—fluttered by his sides, thick fingers moving restlessly with the speed and delicacy of a concert pianist. He looked lost. Steps from himself, he felt helpless.
Like a distant shadow, the Beast rose to the vulnerability it sensed across the fading channel of their bond. A shimmering black aura surrounded Max's form, as if the woman possessed special lenses that could pick out the Beast, like infrared gun sights sensing body heat. The Beast shaped his true lips into the beginnings of a sneer. But another shade flew across the face, looked out at Max in the woman's body. Smiled.
And in the body in which he found himself, another spirit, ancient, obsessed, flickered like the reflection of something unreal caught in a mirror. Its presence stunned Max, knocking him off balance as he struggled for control in an alien environment.
She carried her own Beast, though it did not boil with passions as his own did. Rather, it was a piece of something that had once touched her, leaving an imprint like an obscene cave drawing that influenced thought, shaped emotion, fired up drives. Poisoned the well in which her young soul had resided. Tainted the vision through which she perceived the world. Tangled the infant web of power, full of dance and music invoking water and fire that had been cultivated within her when she was young.
And in the imprint was the residue of power, like a layer of fine, fallen hairs and dead skin. The power was grave cold and resonated with cries of pain and despair. As if answering Max's struggle to understand, a voice rose out of the depths of the woman's memory. Foreign thoughts intruded on his own, weaving understanding from his confusion.
It was the sliver of a victim's spirit left behind in the body, too small to live on its own or exercise control, surviving on the grief of its host. It was the heart of the woman's Beast. Ghost hands swiped at him, phantom teeth snapped. Angry at being murdered, the thing reached out to him because he was alive, because he could still breathe perfumed air and taste spiced meat.
Images of his fresh kill enraged the shade as it recognized him as a murderer, a victimizer. But in the spirit's partial state it was powerless to seek retribution. Its glacial hate, inexorable and endless, bore down on him, sending a shiver of fear and excitement through Max. Immune to his own and even the Beast's rage, its appetite for what it had lost fed on Max's awareness and grew stronger.
It was as if the soul of one of Max's victims had returned to share the journey of its fate with him. But he had no hand in the cause of this spirit's pain. He was not the murderer of its original house of flesh. The thing did not care. Like the Beast, like Max, it was appetite, and though it did not hunt as Max and the Beast did, it was as capable of rage and destruction if its hunger was not appeased.
Max wondered what pursuing and consuming such a power might be like. Even without the Beast at his call, he wished the full spirit had resided within her, and not as the corrupting reflection of a ghost caught in meat.
But without the Beast's reassuring savagery or the comforting rhythms of his own body, Max's confidence wavered. Separated from his tools and weapons, was he still a hunter, a killer? As whatever he was, a spirit, a soul, a wisp of imagination, could he still find a way to kill a thing accustomed to such an existence?
The woman's voice rose again, offering ways for him to handle the spirit. What he was being offered, he realized, were paths to becoming someone else and forgetting who he truly was,
The hollow, mocking roar of the Beast, itself a memory, offered another way to escape.
Before Max could feel the chill of fear over losing himself to the vengeful spirit, the woman, or in his own killing fury, he was torn out of his exile. The world spun as he landed back in his own body, as if pulled home by an elastic band's tension. A hurricane of sensations and emotions ripped through him, and for a moment he blacked out, overwhelmed by the force of the change. But only for a moment. The Beast rose from unknown depths to envelop him in its strength. His body fit like an old, comfortable coat, and responded willingly, though with a hint of sluggishness, to his will. He was Max again, stumbling, dizzy, skin cold and prickly, but a single weapon once again. One force, out of nature, with a single, insatiable appetite.
The Beast whined in confusion, but quickly snapped with joy, eager to welcome its familiar. Heart racing, Max embraced the monster. The darkness within deepened. People in the Temple group eyed him suspiciously.
"Mani Kalliyan Chea," Lee said, bringing the woman to Max. Closer to Max, Lee whispered, "Straighten out, buddy. You're looking like shit and you're freaking everybody out."
She tilted her head to the side, met his gaze, and gave him the same smile she had given him when he was in her body. The Beast reared, ready to pounce on the challenge. But then it hesitated in its routine headlong pursuit of prey, recognizing something in her. So did Max. Together, they felt the same rush of surprise and excitement in encountering a fellow traveler. Not since Paris, when the twins had captivated him during one of their murderous hungers, had he felt the same conflict between desire, dread, and rage. But the twins had been children, evoking a previously undiscovered and overruling instinct for protection. Seeing himself in them, he had not wanted their young years to be lived like his, alone and unprotected on unforgiving streets.
She was not a child. What she provoked did not fit the assignment parameters. Appetites collided. He did not know whether to kill her or fuck her.
And there was the hint of her inside him: an impression of her sinuous body pressed into the walls of his mind; a warmth permeating his senses, like a lover's body heat smoldering in the bed long after they are gone. Max understood who had smiled at him from his own body.
"This is your guardian angel, Max," Lee said to her as they followed the press of crowd toward the Lincoln.
The Lexus drove off with a squeal of rubber, as if the driver was eager to escape his passenger's presence.
"How did it feel?" Mani said, hips and shoulders swaying, wat
ching him with the barest turn of her head. The sound of her voice resonated in his mind. A part of him was reluctant to let her go. The Beast hissed at the rival connection that had suddenly taken root in Max.
"Like death," he answered.
"And yet you live. Life is a strange paradox, is it not?" She laughed as Lee opened the Lincoln's back door and let her in.
Her body, the kaleidoscopic assault of memories and sensations, the separation from himself, returned in a play of shadows running through his mind. He shook his head to clear it. Something stuck in his mind, a feeling he had never experienced before. Not the web of her power or the remnants of an ancient spirit, but the hint of yet another thread of life and power inside her. Max tried to tease the memory from a mix of images and emotions.
The Temple group surged on, except for one young Asian man who thrust his chest out in front of Max, distracting him. "If anything happens to her, we will hunt you down," he said, with intensity surprising for his youth and stature. A grief-stricken expression crossed his face when he saw Lee close the door behind Mani.
"You won't like what you find," Max said. The boy ran away, tears streaming down his face, before Max could snatch him and break his neck. The Beast howled, frustrated once again. But the Beast's anger did not trouble Max as much as the sense that the boy had been so focused on Mani and whatever ruined emotions lay between them that he had blinded himself to the danger of the rage his provocation had raised.
Max remembered the monks peeking out from the Temple, his own near-loss of self. The woman's power ran deep into those she chose to target. Subtle, brutal, seductive, she had more than one way of conquering. Having survived her direct tests of his strength, he had no intention of falling under her sexual or emotional spell.
Max went to the driver's side and entered the car while Lee covered the area. As soon as he was inside, he turned to the woman and said, "I should kill you for what you did."
"Some add to life, others take away from it," she answered, settling into the backseat. She drew her legs up under her and hugged herself.
"Which do you do?"
"I take away from death."
"Why did you do that thing to me?" Max asked, wanting even more to ask how she had managed the transposition he had just experienced. But what drove him was the need to establish his territory, to warn her off, kill the bond between them she seemed to want to establish. Demanding explanations of how she did what she did only invited and prolonged unwanted contact.
The Beast paced restlessly, crying to vent its lust. She lingered inside him like a perfume. To Max's shock, the Beast seemed to calm down just a bit from his body's memory of her habitation.
Lee dropped into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut, and slapped the dashboard twice with impatience. "Do what?" he asked, checking his watch.
"To warn you," Mani said. "And teach you that you cannot always pursue what you want by force, so we may both live to see this episode to its end."
"Are you getting yourself in trouble with her already, Max? Damn, man, just relax, okay? We're going to Mott Haven 149th Street. Take the Deegan to Third Ave. Oman's picked up a city-owned place down there. He leased that nice little factory he had in Brooklyn to a floating club called Painfreak. You ever hear of it?"
Max let the question slide over him.
"Thought you had. They burned the place down the last time the club came to town, that's why I figured you'd know them. I bet Oman's having an orgasm with that upgrade to Nowhere House status. I've been recommending him for higher-level operations status for years. Glad to see he's one of us, now. He deserves everything that's coming to him, the son of a bitch." Lee cackled. "He don't know what he's in for, do he? Fucker should waive his fee for the privilege of having Nowhere House vibe to soak into his walls. You know his usual customers. They'll come running once word gets out. It'll be even better than when you do your personal business in one of his places so he can get all that bad spirit and ghost vibe to sell. You never actually met him, right?"
"We never had the pleasure."
"I bet. He does know how to stay out of the line of fire. Until now. But what are friends for, right, Max? Gotta love the guy." Lee turned to the woman. "That's an unusual name you have there, Ms. Kalliyan. You Cambodian?"
"More than you can imagine."
Max pulled out, followed Crescent as it led him away from the highway but closer to its entrance. "What are you?"
"The past trapped in the present to buy the future.”
“Whatever," Lee said, giving Max a warning glance and shaking his head.
Max thought he would have to be as vigilant against her as he had to be against her enemies, and his nature.
They rode in silence until the turnoff for the Cross Bronx loomed. The Beast's hunger, sharpened by the stimulation of odd occurrences and provocations, dug into Max with manic pawing. Every shift in the seat from Lee, each glance from Mani, inspired a fresh shiver of suspicion, a new source of threat. Cars coming too close made his hand twitch for a gun. Max meditated, breathing deep, relaxing muscles and thoughts. He fought for a grip on reality, sifting through the Beast's paranoia and his own demanding appetites to discover the real danger lurking on the borders of his awareness.
As if inspired by the dance of headlights and the beat of tires on the road, Lee suddenly broke into a sour bluesy drawl: "I ain't eighteen, but I'm still on a bullet; got my finger on the trigger and I'm gonna pull it." His laughter pitched higher, and he rocked back and forth in his seat. "Oh man," he said at last, sobering, "I need a fucking vacation. Right after this trip to Europe. They're giving me a choice between Angola and Iraqi weapons inspection after this next assignment, but hell no; I need to get away from crazy motherfuckers like you. All this huggermugger, macho intimidating shit is wearing me out. I'm gonna make myself a promise not to kill anything for a week.
‘See how long I last. Last time it was two weeks in the Yucatan. I think the tequila helped. But I think you two are going to click. Yeah, he hasn't popped you yet, Mani, so I'm thinking you're going to last the night."
"I think so, too," she said.
"I think we're being followed." The words flew out of Max's mouth before he knew he had spoken, propelled by instincts feeding on his experience, Mani's presence and powers, and his memories of being inside her. He let out a long breath as the tension drained from him. Knowing the situation meant he could control it. The Beast relaxed, anticipating prey.
"Bullshit." Lee checked his side-view mirror. "How can you tell one headlight from another?"
"He's right." She looked out the back window at the steel-cradled roadways sweeping around and above them, at the Alexander Hamilton Bridge connecting the Bronx to Manhattan. "Coming in from the West Side. I feel them, too. They know I'm moving, which direction I'm going in. They've picked up my trail."
Lee twisted around to face Mani. "What the hell are you talking about? Who knows you're out in the open?”
“My enemy."
"Come on, lady, cut the crap."
"My captor and former lover—now my enemy because I escaped him."
"Great. Always good to get the full briefing, right, Max? And how is this mook tracking you? You were supposed to be clean at the pick up."
"He's `ap thm`op, a sorcerer with roots still in my spirit. He knows I'm in this city because he feels my anticipation of freedom. But it was my display with you, Max, that allowed him to pinpoint me. I am sorry. I acted impulsively, from my hunger. I felt you as a kindred being, and the loneliness . . . my appetite . . ." She put a hand to her forehead and shook her head. "I should have contained myself. Now he knows something of you, as well as my interest in you. He will be jealous, and even more angry at my betrayal."
Lee continued to stare at her for a moment, then settled in his seat. "Right. Max, are we having a psychotic moment or something?"
"She's right about someone coming after us. Don't you trust my instincts after all this time?" At the prospect of blood
shed, the Beast tested Max's control. Sensing potential for a feast, it allowed the flow of Max's controlled breathing to calm it.
Mani sat forward, put a hand over the back of Max's seat. Her fingertips brushed his shoulder. "Your teacher has brought you far along the path of chi kung breathing exercises. The monster in your head responds well. I barely escaped when I was inside you."
"How did you know I was taught by a woman?"
"I was inside you. I know all the women who have touched you."
"Then you know what happens to most of the women I meet."
Mani drew back her hand. "I know what you do to those you desire."
Images from the night's hunt blossomed in the darkness of his mind: a breast stained with blood, a thigh cut to the bone, a dangling eye peering into a place within him Max could not see. "Then don't taunt me."
She sat back, closed her eyes. "I'm not. I can teach you things. More, much more than I already have."
Lee waved his hands in the air between them. "Excuse me, girls. Can we get back to this supposed tail? How many are with this old boyfriend of yours? What are they driving? What kind of firepower are they carrying? Are they professional, or is this just a family thing?"
Mani shook her head. "I don't know. More than one car, I'm sure, though I don't know what kind. Rithisak's family must be with him—"
"Aha! At last, a name."
"—and many of them worked for Pol Pot's regime, so you may consider them professional."
Lee struck Max's biceps once with the back of his hand. "We probably know them; shit, we worked with enough of the bastards. I can see why the higher-ups weren't too concerned about them. They were pretty good against unarmed civilians, but the Vietnamese sure kicked their asses in a hurry."
"What is Rithisak's power over you?" Max asked, his hands becoming cold at the thought of a repetition of the body exchange. "What did you mean when you said his roots are still inside you?"
The Beast That Was Max Page 3
