Finally, Elektra eased the bowstring forward and lowered the bow.
“I’m not doing it.”
There was a moment of stunned silence on the other end, very rare for McCabe. He was a man who always had something to say, usually a comment sarcastic enough to annoy the person on his receiving end. Elektra kept up her momentum and her routine, flipping rapidly through her key ring until she found the only one she wanted before tossing the others into one of several filled plastic garbage bags on the floor.
“You mean now? Or ever?”
She kept moving, although even to herself she thought it was a little overboard. After all, she’d only been here for two days, barely time enough to use any of this stuff. On the other hand, she had unpacked it, which meant she had handled every single item she’d removed from a box. Yeah, best to bleach it or throw it all out just like she always did. “Too many variables,” she said into the cell phone. “Not enough background.”
“What do you need background for?” McCabe asked irritably. “You kill them, they’re dead.” He sighed. “How about born in Minnesota, July ninth, a Leo. Is that enough?”
He was being sarcastic and she didn’t need to explain herself to him—hell, she couldn’t. Rather than argue, she said, “I’m out of here. I’ll call you when I land someplace.”
As she was closing the telephone, her sharp hearing picked up McCabe’s voice, and the last words in the world she needed to hear:
“They’ll just send someone else.”
Elektra put it out of her mind and started dragging the garbage bags across the floor so she could throw them away.
9
THERE WAS A STORM BREWING OVER THE OCEAN.
Elektra could feel it, not just in the air but in her own body. Despite the humidity and salt-laden air, the ends of her hair crackled, and the finer hair on her arms was raised, charged by the static electricity in the air. There were huge thunderheads over the water, towering over the tiny island like cotton monoliths, and the wind screaming across the ocean surface did nothing to push them away. They boiled overhead, black and gray colors battling it out for dominance.
She wasn’t the only one waiting for the ferry. With the storm quickly approaching, even on post-Christmas night most of the island’s off-season residents had opted to travel back to the mainland and more stable ground to wait it out.
Finally the ferry was there, inching its way up to the loading dock. There were a few cars on it, maybe islanders gone mainland for Christmas dinner with relatives and who were now returning, some of the ferry’s crew. Waiting her turn to get on, Elektra wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and scanned the people automatically. Her gaze skipped over the usual fisherman and the captain, then rested on two men wearing black sunglasses despite the day’s storm-induced dimness. Elektra frowned and glanced right and left—just checking—but when she looked back, the two oddballs were gone.
No, something wasn’t right. She could forgive the glasses—lots of people had supersensitive eyes or just didn’t like daylight, whether it was cloudy or not. But Elektra’s nerves were singing now, sending unpleasant little pulses of warning signals across her shoulders and to her brain. She had to find out.
Another quick glance around, then Elektra closed her eyes and concentrated, dropping into kimagure at a speed only successful because of purest necessity.
Abby was screaming.
The night was black and full of wind and rain, but the shrill wind that snapped open and closed the doors and windows of Mark’s cabin wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of Abby talking smack at the television. Mark glanced at her, but he was more worried about the windows; they were the kind that opened outward like shutters, and most were whipping back and forth with enough force to make his teeth chatter. It had been like this all day, and now he gave the sky a worried glance from out of the largest window, then reached into the darkness and snatched at the frame, pulling it shut and latching it.
A futile gesture, Elektra thought as she watched from the wet darkness, and one that would never keep out the two figures she could see approaching the small building. She’d been waiting here since abandoning her spot on the ferry, and finally it was going to pay off—not ten feet away from her, one of them took a running start and then, in an incredible feat of athleticism, literally leaped onto the low roof. The other looked to the left and right, then melted back into his own little puddle of darkness.
Elektra watched a still blissfully ignorant Mark go from window to window, first securing them, then putting Xs of tape across each to keep them from shattering beneath the storm’s force. Abby was in the living room and clearly visible through the X-marked window, seemingly transfixed in front of the television and focused on the Weather Channel’s Storm Watch, waiting for word of the weather front that was battering the undersized island. Every fifteen or twenty seconds the picture digitized away in tiny blocks of coded signal, then it returned. With each brownout, Abby grew more impatient.
“I’m going to go get sandbags from the shed,” her father told her.
Abby didn’t look away from the television screen. “Storm Watch,” she sneered. “What a crock. They make it seem so exciting—tornado, hurricane, typhoon. Whatever—then it’s just some stupid rain.”
Mark grinned wryly and tossed her the roll of tape. “When your brain starts to rot?” he suggested. “Feel free to keep taping the windows.”
Finally Abby turned away from the tube, ready to protest, but her father was already out the back door, pulling on his rain slicker as he went. So innocent, Elektra thought. He couldn’t see the figure crouched on the roof directly above him, a man clad completely in the black garb of a ninjutsu. But to Elektra he was quite visible…as was the razor-sharp wire, a garotte, he was slowly lowering in front of Mark Miller’s face.
Marked squinted at the shed across the muddy lawn, but he could barely see the tiny building through the rain pounding down. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward.
He was barely an inch or two away from a sharp, hanging death when Elektra called out to him.
“Mark!”
He stopped, then turned back as he saw Elektra on the other side of the porch. His face registered his surprise at seeing her soaking wet figure.
“I need to talk to you,” she yelled, fighting with the wind for volume. She gestured toward the door and moved toward it, and Mark obligingly followed suit, automatically stepping away from the almost invisible wire. Elektra could sense the ninja’s surprise at seeing her, and his indecision. That indecision would kill him in another ten seconds.
“Can we go inside?” she shouted.
He cast a last look toward the shed, and Elektra could’ve sworn he looked relieved. No kidding—she wouldn’t want to drag stuff out of there in this downpour either. “Yeah, sure.”
She and Mark met at the back door at just about the same time, and she stood back while Mark twisted the knob and pushed inside. As soon as Mark’s back was to her, Elektra silently slid out one of her sais, and, with a practiced and deadly flick of her wrist and a sharp, upward leap, she thrust the weapon through the underside of the porch roof. Alone on the porch for just a couple of seconds, she heard the smallest of death gasps, followed by a low thump as the ninja on the roof fell on his side and died. Her trained ear detected something else, too—a faint, evil hissing. Yeah, he was dead.
Inside, Mark was shrugging off his rain slicker and Abby was actually doing what her dad had suggested— going from window to window and taping them against breakage. She turned to see her father, then her startled gaze stopped on Elektra. “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
Elektra tried to figure out how to phrase this, but she couldn’t. Finally, she said, “Abby, would you go into the bedroom for a minute? I need to talk to your dad.”
Abby frowned and opened her mouth, but Mark held up a hand. “Go ahead, Ab. Now.”
Abby rolled her eyes and mumbled something under her breath, but she reluc
tantly turned and headed for the other room. She went into the room, but stopped just beyond the door; she’d eavesdrop, but her dad knew there was nothing to be done about that.
Elektra nodded to herself. Somewhere outside was the other ninja—she could feel him—and by now he would know the fate of his partner, would have seen the green death mist rising from the body. There would be no mourning period, and the only thing this meant was that the remaining guy would be prepared to do the work of both men. That, Elektra knew, was going to be big trouble.
“Who are you?” Elektra demanded without preamble.
Mark blinked. “W-what?”
Elektra put her hands on her hips and took a step in his direction. “Mark, they won’t just kill you, they’ll kill Abby, too. So tell me right now who’s after you and why.”
For a moment, he was completely unable to speak, and he looked like a terrified baby rabbit trapped by a fox. His mouth worked as he tried to find a few words, but the only thing that came out was “Uh…” He took a step backward, trying to put some distance between him and Elektra—
Something cracked through the window and a silver dollar–sized hole appeared in the glass, right where his head had been only a half-second before.
“Dad!” Abby screamed. She charged out of the bedroom, aiming for her father, but Elektra literally swept the teenager off her feet, pivoted and shoved her into the small bathroom.
“Hey!” Mark protested. He tried to reach around her and grab Abby, but he missed. “You can’t—”
Elektra didn’t give him the chance to finish complaining. Hooking one foot in front of his ankle, she gave him a push; when he stumbled, he kept his momentum going and propelled himself into the bathroom after Abby, who was already trying to come out. He fell against her like a bowling ball and they both staggered back. “Stay there,” Elektra commanded. “And stay down.” She kicked the door shut and turned back to the living room, then paused for the barest of moments, just long enough to gather her concentration and blink her eyes closed—
Elektra sprinted for the front door, right before another hole crashed through the side window and a handful of six-inch razored compound bow bolts strafed across the living room. Glass exploded in every direction and bits of wood and plaster sailed through the air, pelting her in the face. The front door was almost within her reach when one of the bolts caught her square in the back, sinking deeply into the big trapezius muscle between her shoulder blades. She went down on her face, feeling fire course through her back as she tasted blood, but she still heard the front door shatter as the ninja outside kicked it in. He stepped through the splinters and saw her as she forced herself onto her elbows and rolled, landing on her back and bending the bolt’s shaft sideways so that it ripped out a chunk of muscle and flesh. There was a noise, a sort of high-pitched keening, that she vaguely realized was coming from her own throat, and through foggy vision she saw the ninja whip out another arrow and load it into a Barnett Compound Crossbow. There was nothing she could do to stop or escape as he aimed and fired the bolt directly into her heart, then stepped over her body and went to look for Abby and Mark.
Elektra tilted her head and scowled toward the front door—clearly that was the wrong alternative. She squeezed her eyes shut again—
She spun and headed for the back door, just as the lone ninja leaped through the largest of the windows in the living room and fired directly into the spot where Elektra had just been standing. His bolts tore through the bathroom wall like it was made of paper. Most of them slammed into the mirror and sent pieces of spiked glass in all directions, but one found its target in the center of Mark’s throat, killing him almost instantly. Abby screamed—
—the same way she did in Elektra’s kimagure back on the ferry. So, the back door was also off the options list. She was running out of time here. She heard the door being kicked and tried one more time to concentrate, but she couldn’t do it; whatever was going to happen was going down right now. When she refocused on the here and now, Elektra heard the front door shatter and found herself face-to-face with the remaining ninja. His compound bow was pointed directly at her chest, and before she could think of anything else, he fired.
Elektra let herself go fully into instinct.
She did a sharp backflip that an ordinary person would have found impossible. The burst of arrows skimmed over her and, except for the one she literally caught in midair, the rest burst through the wall behind her, disintegrating the skimpy barrier between the bathroom and living area. They hammered into the mirror and it shattered, making Abby scream. Her father reached for her but missed as she flung open the bathroom door—
“Abby, no!”
—then froze as the scene before her registered in her brain. Her gaze took in everything, as it always did: Elektra, still tumbling in the air with one of the arrows clutched in her hand, the room full of projectiles, the black-clad ninja with his finger releasing the trigger as the last bolt shot from his canister.
Elektra’s vision skipped around the room as she turned, over and over and over again. One, two—
“Thirteen arrows.”
Her whisper was lost in the sound of the bow’s firing. Elektra landed in a crouch as the last one whizzed past her shoulder and the ninja ejected the smoking bolt canister from his compound bow. It rolled across the floor as he jerked a fresh one from his belt—
She sprang.
Thunk!
The ninja’s eyes went wide with pain as Elektra embedded the arrow deep into his left shoulder, paralyzing his arm. His hand fell to the floor, palm up and useless as the full load of ammunition spun away. Then his eyes narrowed and he snarled at her.
“Abby—Jesus!” Mark cried. He grabbed his daughter and tried to pull her back into the nonexistent safety of the bathroom. The ninja threw a stiff-fingered punch at Electra that would have broken her cheekbone had she been stupid enough to let it connect; instead she ducked under it, then sent a vicious punch straight into the man’s solar plexus. When he doubled over, she pinned his calf in place, then dropped her full body weight on his knee; it shattered with enough force to where both Abby and Mark heard the bone disintegrate. The ninja gasped, but to his credit, he still didn’t scream.
He also still didn’t go down.
He careened backward on one leg, falling against the opposite wall and sliding down it at the same time he ripped a set of throwing stars off his belt. With a speed that was still like lightning, he brought his hand up—
One of Elektra’s sais pierced the ninja’s palm and nailed it brutally to the floor.
Elektra could hear Mark’s astonished intake of breath, but right now she couldn’t take the time to be concerned about how shocked he and Abby were at seeing someone they’d thought was an ordinary woman leave a professional killer bloody, broken, and paralyzed. There were things she needed to know, and she would get this information.
She crouched over the ninja and pressed the tip of her other sai to his temple. The skin indented and broke just enough to ooze a single drop of scarlet.
“Who sent you?” she snapped. “Dare ga o mae wo okurikonda?” When he didn’t answer, she used her other hand to rip the black mask free of his face, but there was nothing special about the thin Japanese man smiling benignly up at her. Well, if you discounted the fact that he could still smile given the amount of pain he had to be in.
“In a moment, you will know,” he said. “Sugu, omae ni wakaru hazusa.” His black eyes gleamed, then he turned his head as far to the left as he could, straining the muscles in his neck until they stood out like ropes.
Elektra pulled the sai back reflexively. “No!”
But the sai, as it turned out, wasn’t even needed. The ninja saw to his own death by snapping his head back in the other direction so hard..…. that he broke his own neck.
Elektra scrambled to her feet and backed away, vaguely aware of Abby gagging behind her. When she glanced over, even Mark looked green around the edges and decidedly shaky,
but there was no time for that now. There was more to come, and if she or the other two got in the way, they’d join this guy in whatever realm he now wandered.
“Get back!” she hissed at them.
There was the sudden smell of sulfur, like a thousand matches being lit at once, then acrid green smoke began pouring from beneath the dead man’s clothes. It was vile and thick, and while Elektra had never seen nuclear waste vapor, she imagined this was what it would look like. They were out of time.
“Get back now!” she screamed, and leaped at Abby and Mark. Her grab pulled the two of them into a tumble with her that Elektra kept going until they were all crushed against the far wall. At the last second, she yanked the pitiful remains of the bathroom door down and in front of them, using it as a last-ditch shield.
Whoosh!
The green smoke suddenly boiled into white-hot flame. It pulsed outward, sending a ripple of horrible heat in their direction. They huddled behind the door as the front of it blistered and peeled and almost caught fire itself.
Finally, it was over. Elektra stepped boldly out, but Mark and Abby followed more carefully, their faces still tinged with fear. The ninja’s smoldering remains were in the living room, and for all the whiteness of the fire that had consumed him, the flames and the destruction of his body had left an ugly, telltale black circle on the ceiling above him. Mark looked from the Ninja’s corpse to Abby and back again, before finally turning to face Elektra.
She knew he probably had a thousand questions, but all that really mattered right now was that Abby was safe and he was still alive and in good enough shape to take care of her.
With a little help.
“We have to go,” Elektra said flatly. “There’ll be more of them coming.”
Mark dug a hand into his unruly hair and tugged, an odd little gesture that Elektra understood at once— there was nothing like a good stinging on your scalp to convince you that you weren’t having a nightmare, that you actually were experiencing something.
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