by C L Walker
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Sample from Targeted: Merikh Book 2
Chapter 1
I worked the party like a pro, moving smoothly from one group of influential people to the next. I never stayed long enough to be remembered, but I made sure I added something to the conversation so I didn’t come off as the weird, quiet guy.
There were plenty of examples of weird, quiet guys, though. Men in tuxedos they clearly never wore, holding their champagne in death grips. They stood around the outside, hovering and hoping nobody noticed them. Their wives, the real power-players who were there to work the party and be seen, would wave them over when it was useful to have someone on their arm. They would sigh and detach from their position, only to return when their services were no longer needed.
The women who’d come to fulfill the same role – a plus-one and little else – handled things better. They pulled the same stunt as me, saying exactly enough to be noticed and nothing more, and they stuck it out with their partners no matter how boring the chit-chat became.
“Sure,” I said to the overweight guy who was holding court near the bar. “I can buy what you’re saying, and I respect it, but I think you’re looking at it wrong.”
“Really?” he said, surprised that someone wouldn’t swallow his opinion on immigration with a smile. “Would you rather we were overrun and did nothing?”
“You know what, you’re probably right.” I was putting on an accent, a slight southern drawl that Mouse said was obviously fake. She was usually right about these things but nobody else was complaining. “I’m just saying, if you keep them all out then who’ll do the jobs we don’t want?”
There was a round of polite laughter and a knowing grin from the large guy. He knew he’d found a kindred spirit, someone who thought the same repulsive crap he had festering in his head. He’d remember enjoying the conversation but forget who he was having it with, which was the point.
“I have to go,” I said, pulling my Blackberry out of the only pocket in my tux, as though it had vibrated in my pocket. “Duty calls.”
“I hear ya,” the overweight guy said. He turned to one of the remaining people to continue his diatribe. Poor guy shot me a look that begged me to take him away to safety. I smiled and shrugged before turning and getting the hell out of there.
“The target is approaching the hall,” Mouse said through my earpiece. She had her robot voice turned on, the one she used when we were working. No emotion, all facts. She’d lighten up when we got closer to the goal.
-- I’m moving to the back of the hall -- I typed on my Blackberry. It was old and it had weird glitches, but it also had a full keyboard and I could use it one-handed, and quickly, too.
I moved across the grand hall of the mansion, sliding between groups of people that had coalesced from the mass. I nodded and smiled to ones I’d passed through earlier while waiting for our host to make his appearance. They nodded back, though I’m sure most of them had no idea who I was.
The event was an art exhibit, and the host – and our target – was Neal Morgan. He was having the exhibit in his mansion, which was fortunate because it gave us easy entry. Every important person in Fairbridge was there; I’d spent time in a group that included the mayor and a “reformed” mob boss earlier in the evening.
Neal Morgan ran guns throughout the Third World and was secretly a disciple of the god of Envy, Invehl. Breaking in without the pretense of the party would have been possible, just harder.
He had something I needed to steal, and this time I didn’t have to kill him when I was done. Which is a change for me.
I stepped through a group of hapless husbands who’d found each other and were hanging out for comfort. There was a door behind them leading into the rest of the house, hidden behind a giant fern in an ornate pot. I waited outside it for the target to step into the room.
“Go,” Mouse said. She was hacked into the cameras and keeping an eye on everyone for me.
I opened the door and slipped through. The hall beyond was an old servants’ corridor, and still bigger than anything in my apartment. The lights were off and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust once the door was closed behind me. It wouldn’t do to bumble into someone because I was rushing things.
I’d memorized the layout of the house and knew where to go. Morgan had opened half his house to the party, supplying chill-out areas away from the main hall with its two hundred guests and an enormous dining area for the dinner later. The servants’ corridor would lead me to the other half of the house, including his office.
I moved through the house, unseen even by the cameras. All the wait staff had been hired in especially for the evening and nobody was using the paths I planned on taking. It was looking like an easy and straight-forward job, so of course I had to step out into a hall and get spotted by a guard immediately.
“Sir,” the guy said. He had a submachine gun on a strap over his shoulder and a mean look on his face, but he thought I was a guest he hadn’t noticed approaching rather than someone who’d stepped out of a hidden door in the wall.
“Hi,” I said, smiling for a moment before letting my eyes drift to the weapon and putting on a look of distaste. “I’m looking for the smoking room. Any chance you can take me there?”
“No, sorry.” The guy took up the middle of the hallway I had to use. He nodded back the way he thought I’d come. “You’ll have to go back to the party. This area isn’t open for guests.”
“No?” I said. I looked where he wanted me to go and turned back, confusion on my face. “I don’t think you can tell me what to do. I’m friends with Mr. Morgan, don’t you know?”
“You still have to go back to the party, sir.” His weapon was still loose and ready but he made no move for it. I was just a lost rich boy, exploring where I shouldn’t. He didn’t have to worry about me.
“I don’t think so.” I took a step toward him and stumbled a little. When I looked up at him I could see he’d worked me out. He figured I was drunk and he’d have to take care of me.
“Time to go, sir.” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around, then started marching me back to the hall.
I let him push me a few feet, enough so that he’d be comfortable I was following orders, then grabbed his hand and pulled him over my hip while I leaned out of the way of his suddenly flailing hands.
He hit the ground with more of a thud than I’d hoped, grunting as the air was knocked out of him. I grabbed his other hand and yanked them together as I put my knee on his thick neck and put my weight on it.
He glared at me, angry at first as he tried to pull his arms apart and free. Then he panicked, because although I looked like an early twenties rich boy I was pretty close to him in pure muscle. A tux can be cut to hide anything if you pay enough. Plus, I had him at a disadvantage. He wasn’t getting his hands free any time soon.
I checked the hall as he started bucking against the floor, now desperate to throw me off. He hadn’t taken a breath since I knocked the air out of him and he no doubt had some pressure building up in his head. I was cutting off his air, sure, but I was also keeping blood from flowing freely to and from his brain. Either on their own would be enough, but together they were pretty terrifying.
He fell unconscious and I dragged him into the servants’ corridor before he could wake up. I tied his hands behind his back and his feet together using cable ties I’d brought with me, then tied his hands to his feet. To finish off, I took out one of my knives and cut enough of his shirt to make a gag.
When I was sure he wasn’t going to be a problem I went back to
the hall and continued my journey through the house.
Morgan had inherited a fortune when his father died, and he’d made it work for him. Investing in weapons and acting as the middle man for warlords looking to pick up a little something for a summer campaign of slaughter and genocide had paid well. But it was when he started his own private army that he’d really come into his own. Now he contracted his company’s services to anyone who could pay the price, and kept the choicest toys for himself. There were stories of him selling weapons to one faction while sending his men in for the opposing faction and cleaning up. He could then collect the weapons and sell them again.
He was, basically, a bad guy, and Mouse and I hadn’t needed to think about it for too long before agreeing to the contract.
I reached the door to his office and slipped inside, closing the door softly behind me. It was an ostentatious room built to impress, with a double-height ceiling and walls covered in the kind of books nobody reads and everybody shows off owning. An enormous mahogany desk took up the space nearest the window. It was evening and the world outside was invisible as soon as I turned on the light, but I knew the window overlooked the grounds of his estate and would help set the mood for anyone unfortunate enough to have to sit opposite Morgan in a meeting.
There was a secret room behind a bookcase, or so the plans had led us to believe. I had no idea how to get into it, though, so I started pulling on books and twisting light fixtures, all the things I thought I’d use to open a secret room if I was building one.
Ten minutes of fruitless searching later, I sat in his deluxe office chair and found a switch carved into the bottom of the desk.
“Some people just don’t respect the classics,” I said as I pressed it. A section of bookcase opened out into the room and revealed the space I was looking for. “I’m in. How am I looking?”
“Dapper and professional,” Mouse said. “The tux cost too much but it fits you well.”
“Knock it off. I’m working here.”
“Fine.” I knew she’d loosen up when we got near the goal. “There’s nobody approaching and Morgan is still schmoozing the guests. You’re clear.”
The room was where he kept anything truly important and our employer had assured us that it was where the ring he wanted was being kept. We trusted his judgment – he was a god, after all – and worked with that assumption in mind.
There were papers stacked haphazardly around the small space alongside a handful of rifles and an expensive – and apparently original – cavalry sword. A glass case had been set on a small table, the area around it cleared to give it prominence. Within the case was an open box with a rusty metal ring waiting for me to steal.
It didn’t look like much; it was dented and rusted, and worn almost completely through in two places. It looked like the kind of thing you’d expect to see in a museum, in the Stone Age exhibit.
It was another artifact of the great power that had even the gods worried. Wanalain, the god of Despair and my current employer, had told me I needed it to save Mouse after what happened in Midway. Mouse seemed fine to me but he was sure she was going to need help, and this was the first step in rescuing her. I was willing to buy it as long as I couldn’t prove he was full of it.
I unlatched the glass case and grabbed the ring. It was cold in my hand, as though it had been in a freezer. I put it in my pocket and closed the case before turning back to the room.
A man was waiting for me, sitting on the edge of the desk. Calm. His hands were in his pockets and when I met his eyes I could tell that my presence wasn’t a surprise to him.
“Merikh,” the man said.
My heart beat faster at the sound of my name; there weren’t that many people who might be both in the house and know who I really was. I went by Mark to everyone except Mouse and Patty, which meant he had to be a disciple, a god, or…
“Merikh,” he repeated, and I knew what he was going to say next before he spoke another word. “You are to be formally charged. I have come to take you back.”
Chapter 2
He was an assassin, one of DeLacy’s. He would be a master, one of the few who led the clan. My palms were sweating.
“And you are?”
“Zubin. First circle.” Not only was he a master, he was one of the first, one of DeLacy’s original students. That made him old; despite looking to be in his thirties he probably had a few hundred years behind him. One of the gifts being a master endowed was a lack of aging, along with an immunity to magic, a ridiculous healing speed, and a giant ego.
“He sent the big guns.” I swallowed, unconcerned at showing my nervousness. The man would have been able to read me, regardless, and could probably see my next moves better than I could. I couldn’t hide anything from him.
“No. I was just in the area on a mission.” His voice had the quality I always tried to emulate, a clear authority and confidence in whatever he was saying.
“How does he know?”
“That you’re alive? A message from a god, apparently.”
“Merikh,” Mouse said in my ear. “What’s happening? I didn’t see anyone enter on the cameras.”
“You wouldn’t have,” I replied, forgetting to hide her eavesdropping.
“Is that Angelica?” Zubin said. “Or Mouse, rather. I admire your work, my lady.”
“She says bite me.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.”
Zubin stood and I stepped back, my hands rising reflexively into a fighting stance.
“You have nothing to fear, Merikh,” he said. He smiled and it was a perfect blend of threatening and comforting, two extremes that shouldn’t have been possible on one face and yet there he was, pulling it off.
“I fear going back to DeLacy,” I said, slowly lowering my hands.
“Well.” He shook his head, disappointed with me. And I cared what he thought. Somehow he’d brought me to heel without me noticing. “That can’t be avoided. You’ve broken one of the few rules we have and you must be punished.”
“You mean put on trial.”
“Of course, of course. Then punished.”
“No innocent until proven guilty, then?” I wanted to keep talking in the hope that I could do it until the end of the universe. I hadn’t come up with a better plan, so I was going with what I had in hand.
“That isn’t how it works.” He raised a single finger between us. “You have one day to get your affairs in order. Say your goodbyes, hand over the trinkets you’ve accumulated out here in the world. Perhaps spend a final night with Patty. She seems nice.”
“It isn’t like that.” I hadn’t spent much time at all with Patty since we’d gotten back from Midway, and whatever sparks that might have been there had been doused in the destruction of her home town.
“Of course not, but you’re a handsome young man. Have a night on the town and see what you can do.” He lowered his finger and shook his head again. His eyes never left me, like a predator watching prey. “You’ve built a life for yourself out here and I respect that. Not many who run ever manage it.”
“Then let me stay.” I was whining and I couldn’t stop myself. I felt like a child before an authority figure, and in a way I was. Compared to him I had barely lived at all.
“One day. Come to me tomorrow night or I’ll come to you.” He reached into his tux jacket and retrieved a matchbook. It was for the Gloria Hotel, of course. “I’ll be in the lobby.”
“And if I don’t come?”
“Then I will come fetch you, of course.” He grinned as though it was the most ridiculous question I could have asked, and it probably was. “Don’t make me do that.” He turned to leave and made it halfway to the door before turning back. “One more thing, I’m afraid. I’ll need you to put the ring back where you found it.”
Mouse spoke in my ear. “What the hell is going on, Merikh? Who is this guy?”
“I can’t do that,” I said, ignoring her. “I need it to help a friend.”
He
took a step toward me and it took everything I had not to raise my hands again.
“Put it back.” He said it with that confidence I couldn’t emulate, as though simply saying the words would make them so. I was tempted to do it, or frightened that if I didn’t he’d force me to. “We do not concern ourselves with the affairs of the disciples, the gods, or the remnants unless they directly engage us. Has the man who owns this house directly engaged you?”
“I need it to—”
“Answer me.”
I’d faced down a god in an alley and a prime disciple in his temple, but this man in his tux terrified me more than anything I’d seen since leaving the clan. He could take me apart with little effort, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
My mouth was dry as I shook my head, anyway. “I need it.”
He paused and for a moment I thought he’d leave it alone, let me keep the ring and chalk my defiance up to youthful stupidity. No such luck.
“I have given you the gift of a day, Merikh. I don’t have to do that.” He was no longer getting ready to leave. Now he stood with his shoulders squared, facing me, ready to do what he’d been sent here to do.
I licked my lips. “Then let’s do this.” I raised my hands and tried to prepare, but my mind wouldn’t blank. I couldn’t focus on him over the thought of what he was about to do to me.
“Keep him talking,” Mouse said. “I’ve set off the alarm in the office. Morgan is on his way.”
Zubin stepped forward and I stepped back, raising my hands in surrender. When I was sure he wasn’t going to go through with it, anyway, I slowly retrieved the ring from my pocket and held it up.
“Now put it back, and let’s go.” Zubin’s hands were back in his pockets, his demeanor still relaxed.
I turned slowly and stepped back into the room. He didn’t follow me but he was able to see what I was doing well enough to know if I followed his order. I opened the case and reached in, the ring gripped tight between my fingers.
