Elektra’s heart was pounding as hard in her chest as if she’d just had a rip-roaring good fight with someone. “Oh, I really hated that,” she managed. She inclined her head toward the window, a silent reminder that Abby was just on the other side of a pane of glass.
The expression on Mark’s face said he knew she was right, but he didn’t like it. She couldn’t help that, and just to keep things temptation-free, she got up and hurried inside, leaving Mark to find his way back into Abby’s room and sleep, fully clothed, on a comforter pallet on the floor at the side of Abby’s bed.
Elektra slept fitfully, twisting and turning and floating in and out of awareness, her nerves working on her and refusing to let her drop completely into slumber. The night had cooled considerably and now a chill wind was blowing into McCabe’s ranch house through any number of windows left open, including the one in Elektra’s room. This time when the air hit her, her eyelids snapped open and she was suddenly awake, logic and reason fully functional, reflexes on high alert.
McCabe was standing at the foot of her bed, holding his shotgun.
Elektra rolled and jammed her hands up and under her pillows; they came back out armed with a sai in each one. As she spun and readied them, McCabe raised his shotgun, and if she didn’t know any better, she would have sworn he was aiming straight at her—
He fired at something on the windowsill.
The gun’s report was a huge thing in the darkness, shaking the walls and reverberating around the house. The flash was bright and painful, enough to make her eyes water, as something, a shape that was blacker than the darkness outside the window, screeched and disappeared. As Elektra squinted to readjust her eyesight and stared at the two or three black feathers fluttering to the floor, it wasn’t hard to guess what had been spying on her in her sleep. She closed her eyes in a quick moment of concentration and—
—she could see them, Kirigi and his crew of ne’er-do-well murderers, approaching the house from all directions.
She blinked away the kimagure image just as Mark and Abby stumbled into her room, their faces shocked into wakefulness by the noise of the gun blast. Elektra was already on her feet and yanking on her jacket. “They’re here,” she said flatly.
Mark grabbed Abby by the elbow and motioned at Elektra. “Come on—let’s get to the truck.”
Elektra only looked at him. “We won’t make it.”
Mark swallowed. “But—”
“Trust me,” Elektra told him. “It’s too late.”
“Use the cellar,” McCabe said. He was still standing at the end of the bed and staring out the window, but there was a ratcheting sound as he primed the shotgun again. “There’s a tunnel that’ll take you out past the orchard to the woods. Head north.”
Elektra’s eyes widened. She’d had no idea. “What about you?” she demanded.
He shrugged and gave her a lopsided grin, and she could hardly believe it. This was the man who’d thought she was a fool for not just doing her job and killing Mark and Abby—the same man who was now putting his life on the line to help her save the two people she should have eliminated days ago. He would pay for this, and pay dearly, and they both knew it. She couldn’t do anything but hug him fiercely, and she saw him close his eyes for just a moment. Just that pause, that tiny thing, made her wonder if she had missed something in her relationship with McCabe all these years. It was a heartbreaking thought that now it would be forever too late to find out.
“Elektra, come on!” Abby cried, and McCabe pushed her away, propelling her toward the door to the cellar. He didn’t say anything else as he turned and strode in the other direction, gun now held tight and ready. The last time Elektra saw McCabe, he was headed out the back door to meet Kirigi and his fighters in the dawn.
He was going to die over this, and he knew it.
There were very few things that McCabe regretted in his life, but never revealing his feelings for Elektra Natchios was the biggest of those. There were a whole lot of reasons he hadn’t, of course—never mix business with pleasure, rejection, the potential for a volatile and ultimately failed relationship with such a dangerous woman. He wished he had that kimagure thing that Elektra had; he would have used it to see what would have happened if he’d just turned around and kissed her on any one of a dozen different occasions. But he didn’t have it, and now he would never know the answer anyway.
McCabe could see one of Kirigi’s men heading toward the house at full speed, and he brought the shotgun up, aimed and fired, then fired again, and again. He was generally a damned fine shot, but this guy was remarkably agile, and as he came up fast on McCabe’s position, he recognized him as Kinkou, one of Kirigi’s younger punks. He made dodging McCabe’s target practice seem easy as he ran from a tree to McCabe’s car—where, incredibly, he momentarily balanced on the tip of the antenna—to the shed, all without losing his balance or tripping on a single stone. He was so impossible to hit that he might as well have been surrounded by an invisible force field.
McCabe fired until he felt he was no longer safe, then he backed up until the door shielded him, reloaded, and kept trying.
There simply wasn’t anything else he could do.
Elektra could hear the sounds of McCabe’s shotgun blasts, each one getting more and more muffled as she and the other two went farther into the cellar. It took only a few seconds to find the door, then they were through it and pulling it shut behind them, fastening it with a slide bar they found on the other side. Now, as they raced through an underground passageway barely lit by the faint glow of low-usage battery lights, the blasts went to faint thuds and finally disappeared altogether. She didn’t want to think about what that meant for the man who had been her business partner—and unacknowledged friend—for the past several years.
It didn’t take long until they came to the end of the tunnel, where they found a small metal ladder leading upward to a trap door. Mark would have led the way, but Elektra forced him behind her and climbed out first, blinking at the sudden light after the tunnel’s darkness. When she was sure it was safe, she motioned for Mark and Abby to follow, and by the time they emerged from the hole in the ground she had her bearings and was leading them as fast and far away from McCabe’s as she could.
McCabe was doing all right—at least that’s what he thought—until someone surprised him from behind; the guy must have snuck in from the other side of the house using the shotgun blasts—loud enough to make McCabe’s ears ring—as cover. McCabe whirled and fired automatically, point-blank into the chest of a man bigger than anyone he’d ever seen in his life. Then McCabe’s mouth fell open in amazement as he watched his buckshot literally flatten against the broad, chocolate-colored chest. He back-stepped quickly and slammed the door, but that was as useless as drawing a curtain—in two seconds, the huge man had smashed the door into nothing but toothpicks.
McCabe knew all the players, he always had. When Typhoid, Tattoo, Kinkou, and finally Kirigi himself strolled through the doorway, he wasn’t foolish enough to think that there was anything on the face of this earth that was going to save him.
But he’d be damned if he’d show them any fear.
“Circus in town?” He sounded a lot more mocking than he felt—he really hadn’t planned on dying this young. “Where are the midgets?” When no one laughed, he sighed. “You might as well kill me now, ’cause I’m not talking.”
Kirigi’s smile was full of darkness. “Talking’s not necessary,” he said. “But I accept the first part of your proposal.” Before McCabe could respond, Kirigi grabbed the man’s head in both of his hands and lifted his upper body off the floor.
McCabe suddenly felt like his head was going to explode. Kirigi’s hands pressed into his scalp, going through the hair and skin and bone and right into his brain…or maybe it just felt like it, then the leader of the band of killers going after Elektra began talking.
“They’re in the woods,” Kirigi said softly. “Kinkou, Stone, Typhoid—” He pointed nor
th. “That way. Hurry.”
The others rushed to obey Kirigi, and then it was just McCabe and him, staring into each other’s eyes. Kirigi released him with a shove and McCabe fell hard to the floor, biting back the shout of pain as his head thumped hard against the kitchen’s ceramic tile. Then he couldn’t do anything but lie there—couldn’t move, or think of a way out. There was no escape.
But he could still talk. He still had something to say.
Oh, yes.
“Hey, dickhead,” McCabe ground out. His voice sounded thick and wet, but that was okay. He was still going to get his point across. “I’ll bet you a thousand bucks you’re dead before Elektra is.”
McCabe saw Kirigi’s sword leave its sheath and swing toward his neck, heard the other man’s final words to him before he even registered what was going to happen.
“Shut up.”
14
ELEKTRA HAD NEVER THOUGHT A FOREST COULD seem so ominous.
This one was, though—like something out of a nightmare version of Snow White, except in this telling of the classic fairy tale the seven dwarfs were compacted into Kirigi and his killers and she and her helpers were doomed. It was sunrise and bright, yet every bush seemed alive and filled with dark movement, nothing more than a place for something evil to hide, some assassin or hideous tattoo come to life. The previous night’s storm had left its mark here, too: the forest floor was thick with wet, sticky leaves, and while that damp carpet should have quieted their footsteps and helped them along, she knew it would also help those who were chasing them. She knew there would soon be other things helping in the hunt, too, ugly bits and pieces of Tattoo’s animal menagerie given animation and sent to track them for their master.
They were deep into the woods when Elektra led them into a thick stand of trees, and for a moment—a very short moment—they were out of range of the prying eyes. Abby was next and Mark hurried after her, his feet heavy on the muddy ground, pounding forward until he saw that Elektra had held up her hand for them to stop. They could all hear Kirigi’s team coming— there was nothing at all stealthy about their pursuit— and Elektra gestured for Mark and Abby to crawl under a canopy of fallen trees, a sort of deadwood cover that might conceal them.
Abby balked and started to back up. “No,” she protested. “I want to help—”
Her father ignored her, grabbing her by the wrist and yanking her with him beneath the branches. When they were fully hidden, a quick snap of Elektra’s wrist sent a handful of throwing stars into the vine-covered trunk of a nearby tree and leading upward into the branches; she scampered up them as though they were stairs.
Then Elektra sat back to wait.
Such pretty flowers, Typhoid Mary thought. So fragrant and… delicate.
She trailed her fingers over the white blossoms that had been planted in the decorative pots on McCabe’s front porch, then watched them wither and die at her touch, curling in on themselves until they were nothing more than tiny brown shells. Yes, that was better, much better.
“Typhoid…”
She jumped as Kirigi’s voice startled her out of her reverie, then she looked up and smiled at him. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her so that their gazes met, his clear and black, hers equally dark, but faraway and dreamy. His mind pried into hers, but she didn’t care at all.
He grimaced suddenly and pushed her away. “What repulsive thoughts you have,” he said. His normally calm face twisted, and she couldn’t help but grin even as he steered her ahead of him and they followed the others on the hunt for Elektra and the treasure. Her touch would clear the way for them in the woods, withering the leaves and cracking the branches into nothing but twigs. Soon there would be nowhere for their prey to hide.
Despite his immense size, Stone was the first of Kirigi’s crew to flounder upon their hiding place.
Elektra watched him from her safe perch above, feeling the tree vibrate with each step that took him closer to Mark and Abby’s concealment. So far, so good—no one had moved and the two were doing well at being still. If they just stayed that way, Stone would blunder right by them and—
A branch crackled in the bushes.
Elektra silently ground her teeth. Abby, little Miss Can’t-Be-Still, must have moved, and it was a terrible error—they’d almost been in the clear, but her fidgeting had given away her and her father’s position.
It was too much of a stretch to hope that Stone hadn’t heard it. For a moment, the huge man acted like that was exactly it, then he gave a wide-mouthed grin and looked directly at the spot in which father and daughter were secreted.
He might be looking forward, but he should have had eyes in the back of his head.
Elektra dropped to the ground right behind him, coming down so softly and without sound that she might have been a graceful cat landing on a bed of cotton. Stone hefted a club that looked more like a caveman’s weapon than anything else and started to move forward; when he was in exactly the right position, Elektra expertly spun one of her sais until it was pointed in the correct direction, then stabbed him dead center in the back.
Clank!
Then she was holding up the sai and looking at the broken blade in disbelief.
Stone turned, his mouth stretched in a hideously self-satisfied grin. She’d heard stories of this man, of how his flesh was impenetrable, the skin as hard as the stone for which he was named, but she’d never really believed it. This was an awfully bad time to find out the legends were actually true.
Before she could decide what to do next, Stone’s ham-sized hand wrapped around her upper arm, then he lifted her body and flung her away like she weighed no more than a child’s rag doll. Usually she enjoyed the sensation of flying, but never like this, when she knew it was going to—
“Uh!”
—end in the particularly painful moment when her flesh slammed into something a whole lot harder. Worse than that—Elektra could take a little pain—was hearing Abby’s cry of dismay when Elektra hit a tree about fifteen feet away. That was bad, because it turned Stone’s attention away from her and sent it right back to where Mark and Abby were hiding. So much for concealment.
For a single, breathless moment, Elektra thought he was going to miss them. She was still picking herself up when he lumbered over to the deadfall where they were hiding and stopped, tilting his head as though he just wasn’t quite sure if this was the right place. Then he took two steps past the pile of dead branches—
—whirled back, and started beating on it with his club.
Elektra hauled herself upright with a silent snarl as Mark and Abby gave up their hiding place under the massive assault, flushed out of it like terrified rabbits. They tried to back away, but Stone’s last swung grazed Mark, just barely, on the side of the head; even so, his heavy weapon was enough to send the lighter man sprawling. Grinning madly, Stone advanced and raised his weapon.
THWACK!
Elektra cracked Stone hard on the back of the head with a branch as thick as her forearm.
“Huh?” He turned in a slow circle and regarded her with small, black eyes, like a dull-witted ape. He wasn’t hurt—she hadn’t expected he would be—but at least annoying him would give Abby time to get her father on his feet and run. She gestured at him with a lot more bravado than she felt. “Come on—let’s see if you can give as good as you get.”
As expected, Stone lumbered toward her. They circled each other warily—as stupid as he might seem, he knew better than to underestimate Elektra. She was faster—always—but in the end, he had invulnerability on his side; ultimately she ended up on the defensive, throwing punches and kicks that did nothing to affect him as she was forced to back away.
Finally, she had nowhere else to go.
Her back was against the trunk of a good-sized tree. She could have dodged around it, but what would be the point? Nothing she could do would hurt Stone, and he would just keep coming after her. One way or another, this had to end, and she’d seen Mark and Abby escape
behind him.
With the familiar psychotic grin on his face, Stone reached out for her and started to take a step forward, then looked down at his feet in confusion. No good— his heavy body had sunk into the soft earth and mud and he was firmly stuck. It didn’t matter to him; rather than chase after her, he lifted his massive club, aimed it at her neck, and put all his weight into flinging it. The motion was so hard and powerful that the club went forward like a rocket-propelled battering ram.
But Elektra was gone before it got there, already hanging from a branch above him in the tree. The heavy club spun into the spot where she’d been and punched a huge hole right through the trunk. Overhead, Elektra swung her body around the branch like a gymnast, landing upright, then speeding down the backside of the tree’s trunk, using her leg muscles to pound it downward toward Stone. He stared at her, not impressed.
“A tree?” he rumbled. “Rock beats paper.”
He didn’t bother to move as the trunk finally cracked and the tree tumbled toward him, then suddenly his face changed and he belatedly realized he was wrong about the game’s rules and he needed to run. But it was too late for that—his weight had made him sink even farther into the mud, the moist ground closing around his huge, heavy feet like quicksand around a rotting log. He wasn’t going anywhere, not now—
WHAM!
—not ever.
Elektra looked triumphantly down at him. “Nope. Paper beats rock.”
Even invulnerability had tension points, and sometimes the best assassins know just how to hit them.
Kirigi heard the crash from the woods and knew instantly that it meant Stone’s death. He shook his head in disgust. Stone had had his uses, but time and time again the universe had proved that brawn was no match for brains, and this was just another example. He headed in the direction of the noise with Tattoo and Typhoid following, then looked over at Tattoo. They’d come to a small clearing and Kirigi didn’t have to say anything for Tattoo to know what was expected of him. Tattoo sank to the ground and sat cross-legged, then slipped out of his robe. His torso was naked underneath, dressed only in vibrant shades of ink. As the others fanned out, he flexed his muscles and closed his eyes, concentrating; an instant later the ink began to ripple across his skin. Soon the eyes of all the creatures inked on his body blinked, slowly at first as they awoke, then faster. The patterns shifted, then started to bleed off his body. Kirigi left Tattoo there to do his job, and before he and Typhoid had gone five feet, all the animals that had been emblazoned on Tattoo’s skin had leapt free and were streaking past to disappear into the forest in glowing blurs of blue.
Elektra Page 14
