by Arthur Slade
“I entertained myself.”
“Spending that much time with a local. What do you think will happen when they find our target dead? He’ll have your face in his memory. This isn’t a big community. They’re all related to each other.”
“What’s Halldór going to tell them? Besides, no one took a photograph of me.”
“That you know of,” he said. He set down his utensils. “You don’t understand how serious this is, do you? You nearly died because you left a shoe at your last elimination scene. A woman in Montréal was murdered because of that mistake. Horribly. And now you spend time with a local. What if our mission is not successful? And ZARC tracks him down? How do think they’ll treat him?”
Now that he was listing my transgressions, I was feeling a little stupid. But I bit my lip.
“No one will identify me,” I said.
“Did you tell him where you were from?”
“Kansas,” I said. “It’s a Wizard of Oz reference.”
“Clever. So they know you’re North American.”
“There are thousands of North Americans here. We’ve flooded this country with our cameras.”
“Yes, but you’re rather memorable. And certainly to him. He got to know you intimately.” He nearly spat out that last word.
“Well, I probably shouldn’t mention that we walked by the library last night.”
“You did what?”
“It was by accident.” It dawned on me that maybe I shouldn’t have been making any decisions right after dancing my heart out and drinking wine.
“So when the body turns up and the papers go haywire, he won’t remember that the strange woman from Kansas showed interest in the library. There are very few murders here. They make a splash.”
“He wouldn’t put two and two together. His hormones were shutting down his brain.”
“He knows what hotel you’re in. Even what room. And he’s seen me.”
“I told him you were another librarian and we were here for a conference.”
“And when he discovers there is no conference?”
“You worry too much, Dermot.” I drained the coffee cup. I was feeling several shades of stupid. I’d become lax. It was as if in ceding control to the League, I’d let down my guard.
A few moments of simmering silence passed. Dermot was staring at me the whole time.
“Are you trying to burn a hole in my forehead?” I asked.
“Well, the mission is done.”
“What?”
“It’s been compromised in far too many ways. We can’t continue.”
“You aren’t serious.”
“No,” he said. “I am serious. We are in the fallback position thanks to you. I stuck my neck out to get you back into the League, and this is how you repay me.”
“It wasn’t intentional. And we can’t go. I need to feed.”
“We’ll find a secondary target in the United States.”
“I could just feed on you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Your threats aren’t entertaining. And your lack of remorse and inability to admit responsibility is noted.”
Noted. That stung. “Listen, we can find this Hallgerdur Grimdaughter, and we can eliminate her.”
“Not in the library.”
“Then somewhere else,” I said.
“There is no time to work up another plan.”
“We can adapt.”
“And compromise this mission even further?”
“No.” I reached across and took his hand. Gently. “Dermie.” Okay that wasn’t a good way to start. “Dermot, I mean. I—I know I was stupid. I didn’t think things out properly. It’s the blood, the need to eat.” I was looking at his neck. I turned my gaze to his eyes. His angry, cold eyes. “I made several mistakes. Stupid ones, I freely admit that. In fact, I won’t go out or do anything from here on without your permission. But we can complete this. I can get into any building. That part is easy for me.”
The steely look in his eyes hadn’t softened. What did a girl have to do? Cry? Ha, that would be the day.
“Do you know where she lives?” I asked.
He nodded. Gee, he didn’t even want to speak. Maybe inside his Old Mother Hubbard brain, he was seeing some of my logic.
“I want to make this up to you. We can check out her lodging. Remember, I can get into a prison undetected.”
“I need to get in too. We need to question her.”
“Well, we’ll work on that. I’ll unlock the front door. Assuming she doesn’t live in a cave.”
“We’ll stay one more night,” he said. “We’ll visit her home, and we’ll see. That’s all ... we’ll see.”
“You’re a good sport, Dermot,” I said. I gave him my friendliest smile.
He didn’t smile back.
19
THE HIT BEGINS
It turned out, Hallgerdur lived on top of Mount Doom.
It was a short trip out of Reykjavik on a typical, lonely stretch of mist-covered highway. Her house had been built atop a cliff. It was a plethora of windows and stone and heated by steam like most everything in that country. For someone living on a librarian’s salary, she had deep pockets. She must have charged a truckload of coin per kill.
“Wow,” I said. “Now that’s a house.”
“Yes, and she designed it herself,” Dermot said. “She’s very talented.”
“It’s almost as if you have a thing for her.”
He shrugged. “That’s been over for ten years. Work relationships are bad for work.”
“What? You mean she worked for the League and you two ...” I couldn’t find the right word. It was hard to imagine. “Dated?”
“That isn’t pertinent information.”
“You mean you came along on this mission and she could recognize you? You’re jeopardizing the mission by your very presence.” I was especially proud of that last line.
“I have a different face.”
We pulled up to the base of the rocky hill and parked.
“A different face? What does that mean?”
“Exactly that. I had different features. There was a ... an accident. And I went through some alterations.”
“Did you look better or worse?” I asked.
“Better,” he said.
“I’m wondering if I’d like your other face more. Do you happen to have a picture?”
“No.”
“Well, someday, I’d really like to see a snapshot. Were you two lovers?”
“We had common goals,” he said.
“Wow, how romantic. And what happened? She broke your typewriter?”
“She changed,” he said. “That’s what happened.”
It sounded like every relationship I’d seen in a soap opera. Not that I had anything to judge in real life, having really only had a relationship with my mother and an aborted date in high school that ended with me almost tearing the boy’s head off (and a quick move to another state).
“In what way,” I asked, “did she change?”
“This isn’t pertinent to the operation,” he replied gruffly. And maybe with un soupçon of petulance. “She used to be you.”
Ah, now I was getting the picture. Long ago, the League had a sniper who could kill from a distance. A very effective sniper. And now she was playing for the other team.
“So I’m her replacement. Oh, this is juicy. I’m about to go and ... what? Give her a pink slip?”
“No. We’ve had several, uh, eliminators since that time.” I made a note to find out what had happened to them. “She’s just another target.”
“Listen, if I’m going to be draining your ex-girlfriend, that’s pertinent information. I need to know how you’ll react. She’s rather attractive, so I’m confused about one thing.”
“What?”
“Why would she be interested in you?”
He barked out a laugh. “You do like to lash out. But I looked different then, remember. I was, perhaps, a different man. Maybe mor
e headstrong. But things changed after the ... the accident.” He glanced at his watch. “We need to get into her house.”
“You keep referring to an accident. But I think it may not have been an accident.”
“That also isn’t pertinent information. Let’s concentrate on our task instead of playing twenty questions.”
“By my count, I’m only up to seven questions. I have thirteen more. I’ll ask them later.” The only road up was certainly being watched by cameras. I glanced at the slick rock walls. “I’ll have to climb,” I said.
He eyed the rock through the window. It was wet with Atlantic drizzle. Iceland seemed to have the market on drizzle and fog. And chill. “You can climb that?”
“It will be a breeze,” I said. “The hard part will be doing it without sweating.”
I stepped out of the vehicle and tightened my blue rain slicker. He rolled down his window. “Be safe, Amber,” he said.
“That’s a silly thing to say, but thanks, Mom,” I answered. His concern was making me a little nervous.
I was, after all, about to climb seventy-five feet up a mist-covered, cliff wall with cold hands. And my fingers were trembling. Was I just doing this to show off for him?
The ascent was not as easy as I’d hoped. I’d climbed plenty of buildings, and my nails were rather good for digging in, and I was wearing good shoes with nice, bendable toes. But it was slick and cold and, so forbidding that I slipped. The first time, I was about ten feet up and lost my grip with one hand and had to grab and stab the other hand into the rock, chipping away a few stones.
I had two more near-death experiences at about the fifty-five-foot mark. My hands were getting colder. And, frankly, I was starving. Everything became a tad more difficult when you were hungry. The timing of this mission was a little too late in my feeding cycle. I should’ve had a meal a day or two before to think rationally. Instead, all I could picture was her neck. Her pale, luscious neck. The prospect of eating gave me a bit more strength, and I climbed the next twenty feet quickly and without incident.
Ten minutes later, I was at the top. I paused to wave to Dermot. The adrenaline made my wave look like a palsy. Then I glanced across the horizon, the light of Reykjavik in the distance. And I pictured myself at a desk in Montréal or Seattle or Boston, looking for my next meal. Was I really the same person who wasted so much time flipping through court documents?
I peeked my head over a stone parapet and got a clearer view of the house. A few lights were on. The whole side of the rectangular house was glass and misted, so I couldn’t see in clearly, though I did glimpse Hallgerdur moving from one room to another.
There were plenty of heads staring in my direction.
Animal heads. On the wall of her living room. There was a veritable menagerie of beasts of prey: lions, tigers—name a predator and it was there, staring with glassy eyes. Even a crocodile. So Miss Sniper didn’t just hunt humans. And she liked to keep her trophies on the wall. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a human head or two. Maybe she kept those in the basement.
I scanned for cameras or motion detectors. The little infrared lights were very easy to spot. And to avoid. I marked three of them.
A dog was out patrolling, but as I had no scent and made no noise, it was as if I didn’t exist for the dog.
I chose a part of the house that wasn’t all glass. I skittered across the rock garden and climbed up to the second story, which was another layer of glass. She certainly didn’t mind people looking in. Then again, she was on the tallest part of the rock and the nearest house was a mile down the road. Someone would have to be in a helicopter to spy on her. I thought about the psychology of a sniper who liked to look in every direction as far as the eye could see.
I crawled onto the balcony, stepping down on a marble chair. I supposed this is where she drank her coffee and watched the sun rise. Or read her books—being a librarian and all that. I wondered if we’d get time to talk about our favorite reads. Maybe I’d get a recommendation or two before I ate her.
There was likely an alarm on the sliding door. And motion detectors. These things always made it a little bit difficult to break in. And I assumed someone who worked for a security firm would have the latest in security hardware and software. So far, so good though.
I used a fingernail to etch out a large square in the window. There was the occasional blackboard-type squeak, which set my nerves on edge. I’d never liked that sound. Especially when it might have alerted my target.
The trick was to catch the glass before it fell to the floor and shattered. I’d done this before, but not with such thick glass. I guessed it was bulletproof.
I cut through the last layer, and as the glass fell into the room, I snatched at it. My reflexes, as I’ve said, were amazing, but I wasn’t able to catch it until it was a quarter of an inch from the marble floor. I wiped the sweat from my forehead.
I crawled into the darkened room expecting alarms to go off. It was her bedroom, judging by the white cover on the bed. I crept across a stone floor—a polar bear rug keeping my tread quiet and my feet warm. What hadn’t she killed? I liked to hunt. There was a wonderful rush of euphoria in the moment of capture. But I didn’t respect those who killed to show their dominance. It was pointless and cried out for psychotherapy. Kill to eat. That was my motto. I could be showing my dominance every day of my life. But there was no joy in that.
Dermot obviously had poor taste. Or he was different before the so called “accident.”
Anyway, I was tempted to just kill her and feed, but he needed to question her. Why did he have to make everything so complicated? Although, if she did have answers to a few his questions about the universe—specifically about my kind—well, I wanted to know those answers too.
I cocked an ear. She’d been downstairs, but in the time it had taken to cut through the window, she could’ve gone anywhere. A TV was on somewhere on the lower floor. Maybe she was watching Icelandic soaps. I’d flip off the alarm, then call Dermot up. Of course, I’d have to subdue her first, but that would be the easy part. I mean, she may have been a sniper, but she shouldn’t be anywhere near as fast or strong as I was. The dossier on her would have mentioned whether or not she was augmented, either by Gabriel’s organization or another one. When the questioning was done, maybe I’d feed on her right in front of all the stuffed predator heads. I smiled and licked my lips.
I slowly, so slowly opened the door to the main room.
And looked face-to-barrel with a .45 Magnum.
20
THE HIT CONTINUES
Her hand was perfectly still. Her eyes were blue, just as the picture promised. And she was watching me with a curious diffidence.
“Give me three good reasons why I shouldn’t blow your head off.” Her voice was calm and elegant and contained a hint of an accent.
Three reasons? I swallowed. “One: if you shoot me, you won’t know why I’m here. Two: you’d get your polar bear rug all stained with brains and blood. That can’t be easy to clean. And three ...” I had just impressed myself—I’d rattled those first two off without hesitation. I needed a kicker for the ending. “Oh, Dermot says hello.”
Watching her reaction was interesting. She nodded at the first point, nearly smiled with the second point, then with the last point, her eyes opened slightly wider. I had her. She wasn’t going to pull that trigger. At least not right away.
Now, I could have attempted to disarm her. But there was always a slight chance that contact would press her finger against the trigger. My thoughts would be splattered against a rather nicely painted wall.
Never let them shoot your brains out, Mom had told me every morning. Okay, she’d never said that one. But it was a motto for me, ever since my heinous hit on that mafia kingpin in Boston.
“Dermie,” she whispered.
“Is that your pet name for him?”
Hallgerdur’s eyes froze into Icelandic ice. “So the League has finally come to erase their rogue agent.
Nice try. What are they paying you?”
“I’m pretty cheap, I must admit. A meal. A glass of wine. A holiday in a sunny place.”
I thought I was being flip and clever, but her eyebrows rose an eighth of an inch and she said, “So you killed Gabriel. Our little vampire hit girl. I should have known.” She set the barrel of the gun right against my forehead. “Don’t think you can react fast enough to stop me from pulling the trigger.”
Stupid. Stupid me. This Hallgerdur was a little bit too clever for her own good. Well, for my own good. Maybe Dermot was right: I needed more training. I just wasn’t used to talking to my food.
“Come this way.” She grabbed my shoulder and guided me over to a white chair. My dirty rain slicker would stain it with mud and water. She used the barrel of the gun to push me into a seated position. Then she backed slowly away and sat across the room. The gun was perfectly level the whole time. “How long have you worked for the League?”
“Oh, a bit here and a bit there,” I said.
“You’ve convinced yourself that you’re clever. You’ve spent too much time alone. Most of your kind are like that.”
“My kind? How many do you know?”
“I have known three,” she said. The have known was a little bit ominous. Frustrating to think that she had already known more vampires than me. “You’re the youngest I’ve seen. I thought your species was dying out. I guess someone managed to reproduce.”
All new information to me. “I spring from fertile loins.”
“The League’s methods of capture must have improved. Were you supposed to ask me any questions? Or were you just going to drain my blood and leave me here?”
“I was supposed to challenge you to game of checkers.”
She shot me. The bullet went right through the flesh of my shoulder and into the chair. “Damn it!” I said. I squeezed my shoulder with my left hand. Blood stained my hands. There was a hole through my rain slicker, the blood coming down the blue fabric and spreading across her white chair. “Awww. Ouch!” I bit my lip. “I’m staining your chair.”
“I’ll buy a new one,” she said. “I’m not in the mood for jokes. That was a clear shot. I didn’t aim for any bone. Your kind heal quickly. What were your orders?”
