Relentless

by Jonathan Maberry

“Then what?” asked Toys.

  “I … I think it was Joe.”

  Toys made a moue of disapproval. “What about him?”

  Junie rubbed her face with her hands and looked around the room as if she’d never seen it before. When she looked back at Toys, he saw tears glittering like small diamonds in the corners of her eyes. They broke and fell down her cheeks. The sight touched him, softening his natural antagonism every time Ledger’s name was mentioned. The dislike they shared of each other was rooted in just cause and had memories of hurt and harm heaped over it.

  He waited for Junie to find the words to say what disturbed her so deeply.

  “I think he’s in trouble,” she said.

  Toys smiled. “Oh, honey, he’s always in trouble. That man could get into trouble alone in an empty room.”

  But Junie shook her head, and her ashen skin went paler still.

  “No … I mean in real trouble. I mean … I’m not talking him being in physical danger. He lives for that stuff. No, Toys, I think Joe is in real trouble.”

  As she said that, her fingers brushed her forehead and then fell down to touch the spot on her chest over her heart.

  CHAPTER 12

  NOWHERE

  He sat in near-total darkness. A single votive candle burned, and it cast a circle of pale, trembling light. None of that light touched the man who sat cross-legged on the floor. He was naked, his pale body veined with twisted lines of black and red, as if every part of him was rife with disease, and those diseases warred within him. That was unseen—always—by any eyes but his own and the few unfortunate women who made the mistake of falling for his smile and his charm. Women whose bodies were seldom recovered, and never whole.

  The room was quiet except for the faint buzz of insect wings. Flies crawled across the floor and around the rim of the hammered copper bowl. One snuck down into the bowl and lapped at the stinking red liquid. It had been left to rot in this room, and that excited the flies. They, like the man, found the smell to be quite exquisitely exciting.

  The man picked up a box of Lucifer matches and struck one, enjoying the flare of heat. He was always cold. Always.

  He let the match burn for a moment, then picked up the photograph and studied it.

  It was a picture of a man printed from surveillance camera footage. Good quality, though a bit blurred since the man was in motion. A tall, powerful, fierce man with pale eyes and paler hair.

  He did not hate this man. He only hated one person on earth, but that one was beyond the reach of a ceremony like this. No, he rather loved this blond man with the icy blue killer’s eyes. A man like this was a child of chaos, and every child of chaos was the conjurer’s brother. He loved them all.

  The light of the match brightened the room, allowing the yellow glow to reach as far as the clothes and jewelry and skin he had removed.

  Then he touched the flame to the corner of the photograph and watched as the golden fingers reached up the face, blackening the paper, charring the grim countenance of the killer. When only the small corner he held was unburnt, he dropped it into the bowl of putrefying blood and strands of hair.

  It flashed and flared and burned with such lovely colors. Green and brown in all their baser shades.

  He sat there, naked, reeking, smiling, and watched it all burn until there was nothing left in the bowl but a smear of darkness.

  CHAPTER 13

  TRSTENIK ISLAND

  CROATIA

  “Mary mother of God…”

  I heard Bunny’s voice behind me, but I didn’t turn. I was afraid of what he’d see in my eyes. The ax was heavy in my hands, the handle slick. The stink of copper was sharp in my nose despite the balaclava I still wore.

  Behind me, the people in the beds had all fallen silent. They’d screamed for a while. Awful screams that I’d only been able to hear distantly, as if they were on the other side of a thick curtain. Or in another world.

  “Top … is it Rage? Is Outlaw infected?”

  I shook my head but could not speak.

  “Outlaw…,” said another voice. Top.

  I looked down at my hand, which was red to the wrist. My knuckles were tight against my skin, my fingers clutching the ax handle so tightly it hurt. The pain felt good, though.

  Footsteps a little closer. Then a hand on my forearm. Strong. Steady. Top’s hand. For some reason, he’d taken off his glove, and I saw his brown fingers curl around mine. Felt the pressure as he coaxed my hand to release the tool. The ax slipped, and Top caught it. He tossed it away. We both watched it hit the concrete, striking sparks before it went slithering and rasping across the floor and vanished under a bed. The inmate of that bed was a man in his forties who lay staring at the ceiling with eyes that appeared to see everything or nothing at all.

  Ghost whined softly, the sound as heart-piercing as a troubled child trying to punch his way out of a nightmare.

  “It’s not Rage,” murmured Top. “This is…”

  He let the rest hang. I still said nothing.

  Top took my arm, turning me to face him. He’d removed his goggles and balaclava. His face looked ten years older than it should have. Seamed and sad, his eyes filled with concern.

  I looked past him to where Bunny, a big key ring in his hands, was working to unlock the prisoners. Andrea stood in the doorway, goggles and hood still on, but tension written in his body language. Bunny glanced at Top and me, and then his eyes slid away.

  I was covered in blood. It was all over my clothes, glistening darkly like oil. It was on my hands and splashed across the lenses of the Scout glasses.

  Top stood in front of me, the heel of his hand resting on the butt of his Snellig dart gun. “Do I need to get you out?”

  I said, “What? Oh. No.”

  His eyes seemed to drill into mine. I saw concern, doubt, something else. My perceptions were so warped. I don’t know what emotions I was really seeing.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs and wait on the chopper,” Top said gently. “You don’t need to be down here. You’ve done your part. We can handle the rest.”

  I looked at him for a long time. Five seconds? Ten?

  Then I nodded and shambled to the door. Ghost followed me along the hall and upstairs to the entrance foyer. I was about to reach for the door handle, then paused and turned to look up the stairs. I thought about the young girl in Mitrović’s bed. No matter how much medical and psychological help we provided her, she would always remember what he’d done to her. It made me think of Helen; about how her body healed but her heart and mind never did. Some women can come a long way back from the horror and violence of rape, but is it possible to come all the way? I didn’t think so.

  Those thoughts banged around in the haunted house of my head, and I almost didn’t realize that I was climbing the stairs. There were moments when I saw myself doing that, and moments that seemed lost. Then I was in the master bedroom.

  Mitrović and the girl were both on the bed, separated by five feet, each of them wrapped in individual cocoons of nightmare because of Sandman. So, yeah, we’d done that. To keep a rape victim from screaming, I’d shot her with a drug that would fill her mind with awful hallucinations. What kind of a total piece of shit was I? How had I even managed to pull the trigger of the dart gun?

  How?

  How?

  I looked down at my hand and saw that I was holding my gun. Not the Snellig. No. It was the Sig Sauer. I watched my left hand reach across to rack the slide. It was like watching a movie. I saw it, but didn’t feel it.

  Nor did I feel the gun buck as it fired.

  And fired.

  And fired.

  The shell casings glittered as they arced away from the weapon.

  I blinked, looking at the utter ruin of Mitrović’s face and head.

  I blinked again, and I was downstairs. My gun was holstered.

  Had I fired it? Had I even been upstairs?

  To save my own soul, I could not say.

  Ghost was watchin
g me, his eyes dark and intense. I could feel his gaze penetrate all my defenses and see deep inside. I knew he was seeing more than I was.

  I reached for the doorknob, and we stepped out into the night.

  I pulled off the Scout glasses and let them fall. Did the same with the balaclava and the tactical computer on my forearm. Limb pads next. Rifle. All of it except for my clothes.

  Ghost followed me, stepping over the items I discarded.

  Belle was still in her tower, so we took a route that was out of her line of sight. In the distance, I could hear the heavy thropping sound of helicopter rotors. At least three or four of them. At least one big Chinook with a medical team to take care of the people down in that room.

  With each step away from that building, I felt another piece of myself fall away. The voices inside my head—the Modern Man, the Cop, and the Killer—had all fallen silent, and the default now was silence wrapped around some purely objective thoughts. Step this way. Avoid that trip wire.

  Then Ghost and I were down on the beach. When the choppers passed over, I stepped back beneath the shade of a massive oak. Ghost crouched beside me. The helos landed on the lawn, and I went the other way, moving along the beach, past the place where we’d buried the MotorKites, around to the western side of the island, where a pier ran a hundred and fifty feet into the black waters of the Adriatic. There was a big Lürssen super-yacht moored at the end of the pier, which told me there had to be deep water out there. And four small craft—including a pair of Scout 355 LXF fishing boats and a German Cigarette 59 Tirranna with six matched Mercury outboard racing engines and a hull built for speed. Sixty-five feet long, with nearly fourteen feet of beam.

  Once again, I heard a rustling sound like dry leaves and turned to see more of the night birds. They were everywhere. On the nearby trees, in the grass, on the dock, and on every flat surface of the moored boats. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. And every set of beady black eyes was turned in my direction. Ghost made a small sound that was somewhere between discomfort and a warning. His bushy white tail was tucked between his legs.

  “It’s okay, boy,” I said, and it felt like a lie.

  The birds fluttered their wings.

  I undid the lines, climbed aboard, and slid into the pilot seat. Ghost lay down on the other seat. The keys were in the ignition. The tanks were three-quarters full, which would give me a range of about six hundred nautical miles, even running at a top speed of seventy-two knots. Italy was a hell of a lot closer than that. From there, I could go anywhere on earth.

  The engine started with a growl, and it was loud enough to smother any wandering thoughts. I could feel the Darkness coiling inside me, wrapped around my windpipe, trying to choke me. Cold, like a snake.

  Before I hit the gas, though, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. There was a group of people standing on the dock. A tall, middle-aged man. A younger man who had the same posture, the same eyes as the older man. A pretty woman, and a couple of kids. They stood watching me, their faces pale as candles, their eyes filled with horror at what I had done.

  I wanted to tell my family I was sorry.

  But the thing is … I wasn’t sorry. Not at all.

  I pressed down slowly on the gas, and the boat moved away from the pier.

  I aimed it toward the darkest part of the western horizon.

  INTERLUDE 5

  BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER

  STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON

  FIVE MONTHS AGO

  Rafael Santoro and Kuga climbed out of the Escalade into dappled sunlight.

  It had been nearly two months since either of them had been to this place, and they took a few minutes to look around and admire the work. Quonset huts painted in camouflage greens, browns, and blacks; heavy canopies over everything to reduce surveillance from satellites, planes, or drones; and lots of activity.

  “How many people do we have here now?” asked Kuga.

  “Forty-seven support staff and four hundred and eleven soldiers under training,” said Santoro. “Add thirty in the science and research staff.”

  “Nice.”

  Kuga turned back toward the car. “Hey, Barbie, move your ass.”

  “I don’t want to,” came the petulant voice of Eve from the shadows of the back seat.

  “Come here regardless, my girl,” snapped Santoro. “It was not a suggestion.”

  There was a comically loud put-upon sigh, and then Eve emerged from the Escalade. She wore a tight camo T-shirt and loose pants, with a sidearm hanging low like a Western movie gunslinger.

  “Why are we even here?”

  Santoro snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground next to where the two men stood. Eve huffed and trudged over.

  “Ask your question again with manners this time,” said the Spaniard.

  Eve started to say something, then caught the look in Santoro’s eyes. She took a beat and then tried again. “You never said why we were coming out here except that it would be educational.” She leaned on the word as if it were a side dish of brussels sprouts. “So, please tell me why we came all the way out here. Is this about that dumb G-55 American thing?”

  “Yes,” said Santoro, “and other things.”

  If Eve had any additional comments, she kept them to herself because a woman with a pretty face and a bright smile came walking briskly over. She had her hair in a comfortable bun and clutched a clipboard to her chest. Her smile was large and infectious, and even Santoro found himself smiling.

  “My dears,” she said brightly, extending a hand to Kuga and a cheek to be kissed; then repeated that with Santoro. “And who’s your little friend?”

  Santoro placed his hand on Eve’s lower back and pushed her gently forward.

  “This is my protégé, Eve,” he said smoothly. “Eve, this is Jill Hamilton-Krawczyk, the director of our recruitment and training program.”

  “This is Eve?” The woman looked interested. “You never told me she was such a beauty.”

  Eve colored and offered a hand and was uncharacteristically shy about it. Santoro was amused. Eve was never shy around men, but with powerful women, the girl had a tendency toward deference.

  “Hello, Ms. Hamilton-Kray-chick.” She stumbled a bit over the name.

  “It’s a mouthful,” said the woman. “Call me HK. Everyone does.”

  “Okay, Ms. HK, I … I mean…” She colored a deeper shade of red and stopped talking. HK leaned close and kissed her cheek.

  Then, to the three of them, she said, “Your timing couldn’t be better. I can give you a full tour later, but there’s something going on in building 36 I believe you’ll really enjoy.”

  “Let’s do it,” said Kuga, and they followed HK through the camp to the largest of the Quonset huts, nestled back beneath the furry arms of four massive pine trees. A sentry in full body armor and black fatigues snapped to attention as they walked inside.

  The hut was crammed with people. Hundreds sat on bleachers, many with notebooks open on their laps and pens scribbling busily. Others were on the floor, working in teams. Some of these were shirtless—wearing only pants and boots; others were in full combat kit. A few wore bulky body armor of a kind Eve had never seen. They were paired up, going through combat drills at dangerously high speeds. Both combatants in each team held knives, and although the blades were not sharp, they weren’t exactly dull, either. Quite a few of the soldiers bled from cuts, and a few of those injuries were deep. The training mats on which they worked were spackled with sweat and blood.

  But Eve’s gaze was soon jerked away from the bloody drill as she saw what was playing out on a large movie screen that hung down at the back of the hut. On it, two other men were fighting, and it was no drill. One man was a total stranger and wore some kind of security company uniform that Eve was unfamiliar with. The other man was tall, very fit, lean, with blond hair and icy blue eyes. He moved with an oiled grace that was deceptive because his movements were so economical. There was nothing wasted, n
o obvious concession to style. He simply moved at the right time and was never there when the attacker’s blade came at him. Not that the man evaded every attack, but when he was cut, there was no flinch, no facial reaction, and no hesitation at all. He responded to each attack as a direct counterattack, often cutting the attacking arm during the attack, or shadowing it back to cut during the withdraw. The opponent was a mass of blood, and as soon as he began to tire, the big blond man moved in like a blur and in less than a second slashed his blade across his opponent’s inner thigh, the biceps, and the throat.

  Eve felt herself floating, as if somehow a cloud of burning rage was lifting her off the ground. There he was. Forty feet tall, right in front of her. With at least sixty soldiers training to mimic and beat the man’s ruthlessly efficient fighting style. Eve wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted a knife so she could stab someone to death. If not him, then anyone close. She wanted to stab someone in the eyes, in the balls, in the heart.

  A hand closed around her shoulder, and Eve spun, trying to slap away the grip, throwing a punch with all her speed and fury and hurt. But Rafael Santoro’s grip was iron, and with his other hand, he parried the blow.

  “Calm yourself, child,” he said softly.

  Kuga and HK watched with surprise and amusement.

  Tears sprang into Eve’s eyes. They burned, hotter than acid.

  “Ledger,” she snarled, and there was so much pure and unfiltered hatred in that one word, in that name, that several of the closest people on the bleachers turned in surprise.

  “Ledger,” agreed Santoro. “And this, my daughter, is how we’ll destroy him.”

  CHAPTER 14

  TRSTENIK ISLAND

  CROATIA

  Top Sims stood on the pier and stared at the black water. The ripples were limned with faint red from a reluctant dawn.

  He was alone but spoke aloud in a normal tone of voice. Normal in volume, but twisted with doubt and fear and sorrow.