His heart told him that the Dark never was so easily dispersed.
After all, in a former lifetime, Colonel John Phoenix rose from the ashes of an Executioner.
He turned, looking back up into the garage.
The Executioner had no fear of the dark. But from now on, he’d be a little extra aware of the dangers within it.
The RING.
The Army of the Hand of Christ.
The Abu Sayyaf Group.
The Fist of God.
Dark, risen from the grave.
He’d be ready for every single one of them.
EPILOGUE
The morning light was coming through the window, and after a night of healing lovemaking, Sable Burton was rested, even though she’d only dozed off for a half hour. The soldier’s stamina was amazing, but he was also gentle, exploratory, and when he found a place where he could give her pleasure, he seized upon it as if it were a weak point, the target of a precision military raid giving her the most joy possible. Burton returned that passion and found herself rising to levels of lovemaking she hadn’t realized she was capable of.
She looked over at Brandon Stone, his craggy face, handsome despite the bruising and the surgical tape on one cheek. Even then, that side of his face was resting on the pillow, his eyes closed in restful slumber. She felt the urge to bend over and kiss him again, but decided to let him sleep. He struck her as the type of man who easily awakened.
She crawled out of the bed and walked toward the bathroom.
There was a knock at the door.
She looked back to Stone, who hadn’t moved in the bed, then hustled to the bathroom, grabbed a robe and went to answer it, closing the bedroom door behind her.
It was Hector Terin, dressed in a suit. Behind him, the hulking form of one of his bodyguards loomed, glaring at her from behind mirrored sunglasses. Burton pulled her robe tighter around herself.
“Mr. Terin,” she greeted.
“Hello, Professor. I hope I didn’t wake you up,” Terin said. His suit was all sharp creases and he was the ultimate in neatness, from his razor-thin mustache to his knife-pleated slacks. Burton wondered why her eyes weren’t cut to ribbons looking upon such a hard-edged man.
“What did you want, sir?” Burton asked. She held out her hand, pointing to the sofa.
Terin sighed as he entered, closing the door on his bodyguard. “Just to tie up some loose ends.”
“What?”
The door suddenly kicked in hard, the frame splintering as the handle and lock were booted through the wood. The ruined remains swung slowly inward, the hulking figure with the mirrored shades looking through the wreckage he’d created.
“Well, it seems that someone broke into your home this morning, raped and murdered you. Really a shame,” Terin said. She noticed that he was tugging on black leather gloves.
Burton took a step back, forcing herself not to look at the bedroom door.
“Mr. Terin, Hector…what…Why?”
“Just in case Glen told you anything about my outside dealings.”
He reached out and grabbed a handful of robe and pulled the woman forward. She feinted with her fingers stabbing at Terin’s face. When he caught her wrist, she brought up her knee. Instead of hitting his groin, the CEO blocked with his thigh and twisted her around, wincing at the force of her blow.
“Dammit. Get the door, Eugene,” Terin growled.
The wall of human flesh in a black three-piece suit strode to the bedroom door. He bent to turn the handle when it flew open, a pair of rippling, bare arms reaching out and yanking Eugene face-first into the frame. The mirrored shades snapped in two on contact, a crunching collision that sent the huge thug stumbling backward.
Bolan burst through the door, swinging up his foot and catching the henchman right in the gut, folding him over. Grabbing both sides of his head, the Executioner snapped the goon face-first into his knee and gave a savage twist that ended in the sound of neckbones crackling.
Eugene slumped bonelessly to the carpeting, only moments after he tried to open the door.
“Hector,” Bolan said.
“Colonel Stone,” Terin replied, pulling Burton into him as a human shield.
“Let the professor go,” he demanded, aiming the 93-R at the CEO.
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Terin asked. “It’s your word against mine in a court of law.”
“My job isn’t to send people to jail. I don’t testify against anyone,” Bolan answered. “But for the record, tell Sable why you murdered Glen Shephard.”
“I can figure that out, Brandon,” Burton answered. “Glen found out what his boss was doing, found out enough about his dealings with the RING and its support groups…and he killed him.”
Terin chuckled. “Almost, but not quite the whole story, cutie pie.”
Burton felt herself being lifted farther off the carpeting.
Terin kissed her ear before continuing to speak. “See, I wasn’t sure that Glen was all for really doing the right thing.”
“The right thing?” Bolan asked. “Give me a break.”
“How about her little neck?” Terin taunted.
“So that’s why your home looked tossed,” Bolan said. “Glen was getting evidence to take to the authorities.”
“That’s when I decided that he’d be perfect for a little trade. Seems the Army of the Hand of Christ needed the body of a man about six-two, six-three, two hundred pounds,” Terin answered.
Bolan’s eyes narrowed and Burton’s heart skipped a beat.
Could it have been?
“Killing two birds with one stone,” Bolan said, interrupting Burton’s speculations.
“You could say that, Colonel Stone. Kindly point that thing in some other direction. You’re making me nervous.”
“I’ll keep it aimed right where it is now. Why did you do it?” Bolan asked. “Can’t be money, you’ve got pockets deeper than Bill Gates with your military contracts.”
“I’m doing it to make sure that the world will be worth living in.”
Something clicked beneath Burton’s elbow, sharp metallic tics that made her spine shiver at the thought of a gun pressed to her kidney.
“And so you kill innocent people?” Bolan asked.
“Burton? This bitch is a sinner. Shephard? A traitor to Christ.”
“Christ said to love thy neighbor.”
Terin smirked. “He also said to sell thy cloak to buy a sword to defend thyself.”
Bolan frowned. “Defend thyself. Not murder.”
“Who are you to make that kind of distinction? God?”
“God would forgive,” Burton said. “He doesn’t.”
“Not really,” Bolan said. “I forgive small stuff.”
“And the ‘big stuff’?” Terin asked.
The sound-suppressed machine pistol chugged and hot, sticky gore splashed into her hair again. This time the woman barely flinched, only clenching her eyes tight against the gooey mess that was now dripping like raw pulp down her neck and into her ear.
“Fire and forget,” Bolan answered, lowering his Beretta. He rushed forward to catch Burton, but she managed to keep standing as Hector Terin’s decapitated body slumped to the floor like a sack of boneless meat.
She looked down over her shoulder. “This is why you don’t stick around.”
Bolan squeezed her tight. “Think of the cleaning bills you’d save without a fresh corpse on the carpet every month.”
“And this is the second time in three days I’m covered with someone else’s brains. Dammit, I don’t know if I need therapy or a really good shampoo.”
Bolan cupped the back of Burton’s head and let her rest her cheek on his chest. “I’ll call a friend. He’ll take care of things here.”
Bolan freed himself from her embrace for a moment and closed what was left of the door after checking to make sure nobody was in the hall snooping. The handle and lock were gone, and there was a split down the center, but with the umbrella stand acting as a doors
top, it would give them enough privacy.
Burton looked at the splattered corpse of Terin, then to the lump of insensate flesh of the bodyguard.
“Brandon…” She began. “I’m sorry. I’m just not cut out for all this.”
“You don’t have to be. Now you know.”
THE CLEANUP CREW wasn’t long. Her carpet was deep-cleaned, the door frame repaired, a swarm of activity to remove every ounce of evidence of a death in her living room.
With a queasy emptiness, she noticed that the biggest evidence of anyone being killed in her living room, Brandon Stone himself, was gone. She wiped away a tear as Hal Brognola’s crew of irregulars finished their job.
The mystery man was gone again, no longer a mystery to her.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-7456-6
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Douglas P. Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.
SEASON OF SLAUGHTER
Copyright © 2005 by Worldwide Library.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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