Contents
Title Page
Before You Start
Love & Bullets
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Outlaw Blues
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Then
Now
Outlaw Blues
Gentleman Rogue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
Thank You!
Also by Percival Constantine
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright
Infernum. A shadowy, globe-spanning network of operatives run by the mysterious power broker known as Dante. They hold allegiance to no one, existing as rogues on the fringes of society. In this three-book series, meet some of Infernum’s top agents: Angela Lockhart, a spy on a mission of vengeance; Carl Flint, a retired assassin looking for peace; and Dalton Moore, a professional thief drawn into a dangerous game!
Infernum Omnibus
By Percival Constantine
Based on concepts and characters created by Percival Constantine and Kyle Shire
Just go to percivalconstantine.com/subscribe to get your free stories!
LOVE & BULLETS
CHAPTER 1
Jack Travis had a round frame and a face grizzled with dark whiskers, his horrible breath a result of his diet, consisting mostly of foods overloaded with onion and garlic. He wore his gray suit jacket unbuttoned, but his belt buckle was obscured by the hang-over of his gut, covered by an off-white shirt. Open collar with no tie in sight. Travis didn't have much use for dressing himself in fine clothes. To him, a cheap suit was just as good as an expensive one, better because of the price tag. This preference wasn't due to a lack of funds on his part—Jack Travis had quite a bit of money. But he preferred to spend it on things he felt were more worth his time.
He walked in on short legs, barely putting his height above five-foot-five. The two men who flanked him dressed far nicer than he did and they towered over him. He gestured for them to stop and they waited for him by the entrance while Travis walked down the narrow hallway and entered one of the many doors that lined the corridor.
The door led to a small booth with a reclining chair in the center, a box of tissues on the small ledge, and a glass window covered from the other side. Travis took out some bills from his wallet and slid them into the slot. The gold ring on his finger, with the Chinese character for fire engraved in the red gemstone, caught his eye and he chuckled. He sank into the chair, shifting to accommodate his frame. He raised his gut enough to unbuckle his belt and open his pants, reaching inside his shorts.
The covering over the window opened and Travis expected to see Charlotte, his usual girl. This was just a warm-up for his usual visits with Charlotte—he liked the teasing and after the show was over, she would go home with him.
But Charlotte with her dark hair and green eyes wasn't there. Instead a different woman sat in her place, very attractive, possibly late twenties or early thirties. Her long blond hair hung down, framing her thin face and she stared at Travis with an icy gaze. She wore a white shirt under a black leather jacket and a pair of blue denim jeans. Her hands were clasped behind her back.
“Tell me how you want it,” she said with a slight grin.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.
“A friend of Dante.” Her left hand swung around, a Desert Eagle clasped in her gloved grip. Two quick squeezes of the trigger were followed by two holes in the glass, now stained red. Jack Travis lay motionless in the recliner, blood seeping from the holes in his body—one in his forehead, the other in his neck.
The mysterious woman stood from the stool, walking past the unconscious Charlotte. The chloroform would keep her out for a while and solved the problem of any witnesses. Angela Lockhart would have preferred to poison Travis, make it look like an accident. But Dante wanted to send a message—snitches never prosper.
Before she had the opportunity to leave the booth, the door on the other end opened and Travis' two bodyguards entered, presumably drawn by the sound of the gunfire.
“Soundproof, my ass...” muttered Angela.
The guards each drew their weapons and opened fire. Angela dropped to the ground as the bullets cut through the space she once occupied. She wished she had a second gun. Her hand reached beneath her jacket, finding one of the spare clips she kept in the special pockets sewn into the lining. She gripped the spare clip in her right hand, hefting the Eagle in her left and getting ready, keeping careful count of the shots she head. They stopped at eleven. Seven shots unaccounted for. So either they didn't have full clips or they got smart and were now approaching the window. Angela wished it were the former but knew the latter was always far more likely. If she didn't take a chance now, it would be harder to get out.
She sprung from her crouch. The shots shattered the glass, leaving an open gap between the booths. Angela leapt headfirst through it, over the chair that housed Travis's body and between the guards who stood on either side. She landed in a roll and came upright in the corridor, swinging the gun from side to side, squeezing off four more shots through the doorway. One missed completely, one struck the guard on her left in his knee, the other two hit the right guard in his torso, felling him. She stood, ready to finish off the one left behind, but a new sound jerked her head to the right.
“You bitch!”
At the end of the corridor stood the owner, a shotgun in his hands, rage in his eyes. She rolled her own eyes and jumped into the booth just as the owner fired a load of buckshot, landing at the wall almost diagonal from the surviving guard.
“Just when you think a job is finished, you have to contend with some fat bastard holding a shotgun.”
The remaining guard sat on the ground, clasping his knee to stop the bleeding, moaning in pain. Once he saw Angela, he risked moving one of his blood-stained hands, trying to grab his gun. Angela acted on instinct, firing one shot into his hand and then quieting his screams of pain by putting a bullet in his head.
She repeated her employer's instructions in a whisper, “'we have to send a message.'” Two rounds left in the Eagle, so she ejected the clip and slapped in the fresh one, loading the first bullet into the chamber. “Fuck you, Dante.”
Edging carefully to the door, she took one of the spare guns and tossed it into the hall. The owner fired again, startled by the sudden movement.
“Amateurs,” said Angela. The distraction meant recoil time, a window of no more than a moment. But it was a window she decided to dive through. The booth across the corridor was open. She leaped across the hallway, firing two shots as she fell into the oppos
ite booth. The owner followed up with some more shots.
Pushed up against the wall, she was just inches from the door. She could hear his footsteps and his heavy breathing. By this point, all the gunfire would attract attention. She hoped the other patrons were either too busy with their pipe cleaning or too scared by the gunfire to leave the booths and investigate. After she put down this asshole with the shotgun, she could get out of here, confident in the knowledge that no one who saw her face survived.
Her gun vanished inside her jacket. It wouldn't do her much good, not for what she planned. She waited and as soon as she saw the tip of the shotgun poke into the room, she grabbed it. Wrenching it from the surprised man's grip, she slammed the butt against his nose, hard enough to hear a crack and blood started to flow from his nostrils. She swung it like a bat, striking the side of his head and he rocked to the side. Flipping the gun around, Angela pointed it at his chest and fired. The force of impact sent him flying back, landing in the doorway of the booth where her other victims lay.
After dropping the shotgun, she went to Travis’ body. She raised his hand, examining the ring on it and carefully removed it. Knowing what Travis’ purpose in this place was, she was glad she had gloves. They'd end up in the fire later tonight. But the ring was important. Dante specified that he wanted it back.
She left calmly through the back entrance, the door used by the dancers. In the alley, a customized Harley Davidson sat waiting, helmet resting on top. Zipping up her jacket and donning the helmet, she started the bike and rode out slowly from the alley, merging into traffic and driving off.
CHAPTER 2
Camera flashes went off rapidly, taking photographs of the bodies of Jack Travis, his bodyguards, and the owner of the establishment. Crime scene investigators went over the place, finding the remains of the bullets and collecting them, searching for any other evidence available.
“Doesn't this just break your heart?” asked Detective Tom Bracken.
“What’s that, sir?” asked the uniformed officer by his side.
Bracken motioned to the strippers giving their statements to a few officers. “This whole thing. Who would want to disturb the sanctity of a nudie booth? It's sacrilege is what it is.”
The officer chuckled.
One of the officers who had been interviewing the strippers came forward, a stripper with dark red hair standing next to him. “Detective? This is one of the girls who works here. She was the one we found unconscious.”
“You remember anything, honey?” asked Bracken.
“Not a lot. Someone grabbed me from behind and then everything went black. Next thing I remember, I woke up and found you guys standing over me.”
“So you didn't see anyone?”
She shook her head.
“Did you know the victim?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Jack came here a lot. Usually to see me.”
Bracken cocked an eyebrow. “You don't seem too broken up.”
“He was a piece of shit,” she said. “But he was a good tipper.”
“Okay, you can go,” said Bracken. Charlotte nodded and went back to the other girls. Bracken scratched his neck as his eyes scanned the area. “Never seen anythin' like this,” he said.
“Then maybe you should take a breather.”
Bracken and the two officers turned to the source of the new voice. A young guy with brown hair that reached to his chin entered, wearing a suit and a trench coat over it. He was accompanied by a young woman also dressed in a suit with dark red hair pulled into a bun.
“This is a crime scene,” said Bracken.
“I know,” said the man. “And it's my crime scene. You and your boys can leave.”
“Come again?” asked Bracken. “And just who the hell are you?”
He handed Bracken a simple business card “Agent Christian Pierce, this is Agent Julie Kim.”
Bracken looked at the card. Nothing on it other than Pierce's name in bold typeface with a contact number in a smaller font right below it. “Uh-huh...and what are you an agent of? FBI? DEA? What?”
“You wouldn't be familiar with our organization,” said Pierce.
“Get these jokers out of my sight,” said Bracken. The theme song from the Indiana Jones films began to echo from Bracken's jacket. Christian offered a half-smile.
“Are you going to answer that?”
Bracken grumbled as he took out his cellular phone, pressing the call button and putting the phone to his ear. “This is Bracken—what? With all due respect, sir—no, I don't—yeah—okay. Sir, this is my case, we can't just—right. Yes sir, thank you, sir.”
Bracken turned off the phone and put it back in his pocket. Pierce just looked at him, that half-smile still present on his face. “Who could that have been?”
“...sir?” asked one of the uniformed officers.
“That was the...ah...the commissioner,” said Bracken. “Agent Pierce is in charge here and we're supposed to do whatever he says.”
“I thought you'd see it my way,” said Christian. “Now go get yourselves some coffee, maybe order some breakfast. My partner and I will handle this. Get rid of those girls, too. We don't need to talk to them.”
Bracken grimly nodded. “You heard the man.”
As they started to file out, a crime scene investigator gave Julie the report that had been compiled so far. Once they had left the room, Christian moved to the room where Jack Travis' body lay. He examined Travis' hands, but found nothing adorning the fingers and he sighed, looking up at his partner.
“They got him,” he said.
“How do you know?” asked Julie.
“The ring is gone,” said Christian.
“Ring?”
“All the important players at Infernum wear a gold ring with a red gemstone and in the gemstone is an engraving of some character in Chinese or Japanese, I can't remember which. Don't think Travis knew what the character was of, either. If the ring's been removed, that means it was someone from Infernum who did this.”
“Either that or someone who wanted to hock the ring,” said Julie.
Christian raised the sleeve of Travis' jacket, revealing a gold watch on his wrist. “Why take a ring and not the Rolex? Besides, this was more than just some burglar. This assassin took down three armed men.”
He looked through the space where glass had once separated the two booths and pointed against the far wall. “Look at that—bullet holes in the wall. Which meant they were shooting at this guy while he was in there. Anything else in that report?”
She flipped through some of the pages, scanning them quickly. “Here's something interesting. A bullet from an unidentified gun was taken from the back of Travis' chair, the same kind of bullet that killed all four victims.”
“So a bullet went through Travis' head and hit the chair,” said Christian.
“No, it came from the other side.” Julie walked to the chair and pointed to the back. “The bullet entered here. That means the killer either decided to put another bullet in as he left, or...”
“...or we're looking at a scene that would give John Woo a wet dream,” finished Christian.
“These guys are good.”
“Infernum gets the best and brightest,” said Christian. “For what they can afford, it's enough to convince a lot of top talent to come work for them.”
“And how do you think we're going to find out who did this?”
“We're not,” said Christian. “This is now a dead end and we have to find another way to get to Infernum.”
“You're not even going to try to find out who did this?” asked Julie.
“Why waste our resources?” asked Christian. “I've dealt with Infernum before. They don't make mistakes when it comes to assassinations.”
“We have to look into every avenue.”
Christian sighed. “Listen, you're new here so you're not used to dealing with these guys. They are very good at covering their tracks, their assassins are the best in the world. There's n
othing we can do here that the local boys can't. So we let Bracken and his people investigate, see if they can turn up anything, and if they can, we'll know. Meantime, we can focus our resources on the things the cops can't.”
“You know Pierce, I can be a lot more helpful if you tell me what you know about these guys. We were assigned together, so we might as well get used to each other.”
Christian stuffed his hands in his pockets as he looked around the crime scene and then slowly nodded. “You're right, I'm sorry. I don't mean to come off as one of those assholes who refuses to work with anyone. I'm just not used to it, that's all.”
“It's okay, not used to it, either,” said Julie.
“In that case, let's get some breakfast and I'll tell you what you want to know,” said Christian.
***
Christian sat back, sipping his coffee and watching as Julie dug into her breakfast—two eggs over-easy with three small pancakes and a side of hash browns and three slices of bacon. He set the coffee down and smeared some cream cheese over one of the toasted bagel halves he ordered.
“Is that all you're eating?” she asked, pausing from the eggs to sip her own coffee.
“I don't like to have a heavy breakfast, usually I'll just have an apple,” he said. He bit into the bagel, watching as she scooped up an amount of hash browns covered with the egg yolk. “How do you eat like that and keep in shape?”
Julie smiled. “My sister asks me the same thing but with more of a jealous tone. Guess I was just blessed with a very good metabolism.”
“I'll say,” said Christian.
“So what about Infernum?” she asked.
“You know some of the basics already,” said Christian. “An international organization of assassins, presumably involved in other illegal activities as well. It's centralized by a mysterious figure known only as Dante. Could be his real name, could be an alias. Race unknown, age unknown, description unknown—hell, we don't even know if he is actually a he. If we know of anyone who's seen him in person, they aren't telling us.”
Infernum Omnibus Page 1
