by Dakota Banks
Looks like Landry doesn’t get out often.
“How do you like my snug little home?” he said. Landry was in his early fifties, pale, with small eyes and hair so fine and skimpy that at a quick glance he could have appeared bald. He reminded Maliha of some cave creature that never saw the light of day, and most likely he didn’t.
“Your home’s fine but your hospitality stinks. Not too happy with your harem, either. I’ve heard rumors that you like your girls young. Your pet warrior Duma didn’t approve.”
“What Duma thinks, or thought, I should say, doesn’t matter. I assume since you’ve joined me that she’s dead.”
“You should know. You were watching her ass the whole time, you sick bastard.” Maliha jerked her head in the direction of a couple of monitors that showed Duma’s body from different angles.
“Did she say anything about me?”
“Yeah. She said you had the littlest dick of any guy she’d ever seen. Look, I’m not here to chat with you, Landry. I want to know who the Leader is and when the nanites are going to be set off.”
“You’re very desirable. I’m sure you’ve been told that. A little old for my taste, but I’ve been known to make exceptions.”
Did I hear that right?
“Are you offering me information for sex?”
“You’ve been around. Can’t be the first time.”
“First thing in a confrontation,” Master Liu said, “find out who is in charge. It had better be you.”
“Let me explain something to you,” Maliha said. “You can tell me about the Leader. Or not. But don’t waste my time.”
Landry began to reach for a gun hidden behind his desk. She spotted the movement, dashed over to him, and got him in a hold with his revolver pointed under his chin.
She hitched his arm higher, just short of dislocating his shoulder.
“Fuck you.” Spit drooled down his chin from the vehemence of it. He’d put every bit of the pain he was feeling, his fear, his disgust at her entry into his private quarters into it.
With a strong elbow hold on him and his legs pinned against the desk, she pulled the gun away from his throat, released the latch and swung the cylinder out. With her hand inserted into the frame of the gun to hold it, she pressed her fingertips over three of the loaded cartridges and tipped the gun so the other three fell out to the ground. Closing the cylinder, she spun it and put the muzzle back under his chin.
“Tell me who the Leader is.”
“No.”
She pulled the trigger. Click.
Sweat broke out on his face. “You’re crazy!”
“Feel like talking now?”
“You’re crazy! I can’t tell you anything! He’ll kill me!”
“Then you’d better be ready to die now.” She pulled the trigger again. Click.
Landry started shaking uncontrollably. He’d been so protected, shielded for years, in his cave home with his guards and his cameras and his warrior queen that the bravery of the man who dealt arms with some of the worst the world had to offer was in tatters.
Without saying anything, she pulled the trigger for a third time. She and Landry both lucked out.
“Been counting? I think the odds are pretty damn good, like one hundred percent, that your brains get blown out the next time I pull the trigger.”
“Wait! I swear I don’t know much. I don’t know who he is. I swear I don’t know who he is!”
Maliha relaxed the pressure on his arm a little, decreasing the pain. “What is it that you do know?”
“I know where his hideout is. It’s in the Congo, in the jungle somewhere. I can give you the coordinates.”
“Do it.”
He rattled off the coordinates and as far as she could place them mentally, they were in the right area of Africa. They didn’t sound made up on the spot, especially since Landry was standing in a pool of urine. He was a motivated man.
“When do the nanites get launched?”
“Two days from now.” Landry allowed himself a sneer, no doubt thinking she’d never get there in time so his information was useless to her anyway.
“What sets them off?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, he never told anybody! It’s the truth. I told you everything! Now let me go.”
Let him go? Did I say anything about letting him go? She thought of Landry’s illegal gun sales to militias like the Janjaweed and his harem of underage sex toys.
She pulled the trigger.
Chapter Thirty
Maliha dropped the gun and Landry’s body. She was looking around for something to clean the spattered blood from her face and arms when she suddenly felt the pull to Midworld. Rabishu was summoning her for a meeting, for the first time since she’d renounced her contract.
Midworld’s fog and stench were as she remembered it from the numerous times she’d been pulled there to get her killing assignments. She wondered what form Rabishu would take this time. He’d appeared to her as many different creatures over the years, all of them horrifying. As the peculiar rotting smell that signaled his approach reached her nose, she braced herself for both his appearance and his assault on her mind. She decided to take an aggressive approach. She shouted at him before she could even make out his shape clearly.
“Demon, you have no right to call me here. I don’t serve you! Send me back!”
There was a blast of sound inside her head in response. She felt like her head was splitting open, and for all she knew, it was. Her hands were pinned to her sides, or she would have checked to make sure her skull was intact. Then the roaring let up as Rabishu came into view.
He came this time as a nightmarish assembly of spinning blades, like the giant blades from a sawmill. Protruding at all angles from a central core, the blades were coated in blood and pieces of flesh. He had no discernible limbs or a head. Maliha watched in horror as a living human was spit out by the core and roughly tossed from blade to blade until there was nothing left of it to scream. A few seconds later, another person was ejected. Rabishu was shredding these damned people he brought along from his hell for his amusement as he talked to Maliha.
She wanted to curse him, but her voice died in her throat. Then she heard him in her mind.
You have not made much progress in balancing your scale. Stay your course and I will win. You will become my plaything forever.
“Enough with the plaything! I’ve heard that before. You don’t scare me, and I will win! Why did you bring me here?”
You have come back to what I taught you. You stand there wearing the blood of a human you tortured in his mind. Your whip sword is as red as these blades of mine. Come back to me, servant. You will be immortal again. There is no need for you to suffer with these trivial wounds.
The bullet wound in Maliha’s calf healed instantly. She’d forgotten how good it felt to heal that fast.
Let me put my mark on you and death will leave you, as before.
“Same contract?”
The same, signed anew with your blood. You will be my chief servant. There are privileges that go with that.
“The answer is—” She knew she should say no. She had friends who counted on her, she’d persuaded Lucius to go rogue. But it was tempting. Am I crazy to even be thinking about this, or am I crazy to turn it down? “Do I have to decide now?”
No, but I will not wait long.
She was thrown back from Midworld to Vincent Landry’s bloody home.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ouésso, Congo, was on the Sangha River and about a degree and a half north of the equator. It had an airstrip cut out of the rain forest and a soccer park for enthusiasts, in a country where animist religions were practiced and it wasn’t unheard of to have accusations of witchcraft during hotly contested soccer games.
From Maliha’s viewpoint, it also sheltered in the nearby jungle the most important man in the world that day, the Leader. Vincent Landry had told Maliha that for many people the world would end in two days. Con
sideration of Rabishu’s offer would have to wait.
Today was Day Two.
Maliha was running on empty as far as sleep was concerned. She’d taken a couple of fifteen-minute naps since then, dropping off on the plane when she was supposed to be planning her mission.
Following her GPS, she was walking through the forest looking for the Leader’s headquarters. The sun had just risen and there was a break in the rain, though according to the humidity, it might as well have been raining. The sun peeked through a narrow opening in the clouds, lighting the tiny water droplets suspended around her and obscuring her view with a bright fog effect. It reminded her strongly of the forest where she’d last seen Lucius.
She pressed on. She felt Yanmeng’s touch against her face. He was remote viewing her, and getting better at letting her know. Previously, he’d told her of his presence with a vague, feather-light touch on her face or shoulder, easily missed in some circumstances. This touch felt like he was standing next to her and had reached out to touch her cheek physically. It amazed her to think that Yanmeng was seventy-five hundred miles away inside a mountain. She didn’t resent his quick check. After what she’d reported to them about Landry, they were rooting for her success and worried about her.
When she had only a quarter of a mile to go, she stopped and checked her weapons. She was a walking arms cache. Wearing only shorts and a halter because it was too hot for her usual black killing outfit, she carried her throwing knives strapped to her thighs and a Glock 17 semi-automatic low on her right hip. There was a small pack that held her throwing stars within reach, a katana in a sheath slanted across her back, and a sai bound to her belt with leather straps on her left side.
The sai was a weapon with three unsharpened prongs, with the round, center prong longer than the other two. Normally, two sai were used, with a third on the belt in case of damage to or loss of one of the primary sai. Maliha brought only one with her. Weight was a consideration, both for rapid travel and for fighting, and besides, it was all she had with her in France.
The headquarters turned out to be a low building fitted into the understory like it grew there: a squat mushroom. Concrete block construction, but concealed with a trompe l’oeil painting of the forest. No guards were visible so she decided on a direct and low-tech approach. Standing about thirty feet away, she heaved a rock at a spot on the door. There was no response, so she moved closer and did it again.
A distorted male voice spoke to her.
“Come in. I’ve been expecting you.”
“Why do you hide behind some computer squawk box? Tell me your name.”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
She was at the door, and tested it cautiously. It was open. She pulled the Glock from its hip holster, pulled the slide to chamber a bullet, and rested her finger lightly on the side of the gun’s frame, ready to fire when needed.
With the door open, in front of her was a hallway that consisted of a round glass tube. Just looking at it made gooseflesh rise on her arms in the tropical heat. It looked exactly like the one in the Keltner Building, the one that had trapped a security officer and gassed him to death. There was a powerful urge not to step into that tunnel.
This is Day Two. Have I come this far to back out now?
“Scared? I assure you it’s safe.” There was a giggle after that, in the distorted voice.
It started to rain again, a thoroughly pounding rain. Maliha was already soaked. The prospect of getting into a dry building provided just the tiny boost she needed.
She took a deep breath, not that it was going to help if he left her in there for ten minutes, and stepped into the tunnel. Bright lights came on and the door snapped shut behind her. Maliha felt tingling all over her skin and wondered if it was the first effect of the gas. She ran to the other end of the tunnel and pushed on the door. It wouldn’t open. The tingling on her skin became worse.
“Don’t be alarmed. The tunnel’s automatic. You’re just feeling the bug cleaner. Mosquitoes, you know. Can’t have those nasty things inside. Don’t you hate that buzzing, especially at night? It’ll finish when it detects no more bugs in the tunnel’s air.”
About ten seconds later the door in front of her opened and the tunnel went dark, an obvious invitation to move further into the house.
The room she entered was large and designed for the needs of one individual. There was a startling resemblance to her haven, but without the creature comforts. A wall of weapons, a practice floor, sleeping area, a basic kitchen, a basic bathroom out in the open. Utilitarian fluorescent lighting. The place was a self-contained box in the jungle where its owner could withdraw from society.
Like Lucius and his island. At least that was a lot pleasanter than this place.
One wall was nearly covered with maps showing Earth, with the target countries marked. Clocks timed down to an event about thirty minutes away. The rest of the wall was taken up with security camera views, including one of the now darkened tunnel she’d come through. There was a man seated at a desk with his back to her. She knew him in an instant by his lean form and lanky hair.
Rasputin!
Somehow, she had to stop one of the Ageless from throwing the switch, and she didn’t think she’d be able to talk him out of it. Her plans immediately switched to different paths, different outcomes. Instead of hoping to walk away into the jungle after killing the Leader, she now saw her best possible result as mutual destruction.
With his back still to her, Rasputin was absorbed in the displays on the wall. She had a chance.
She dashed forward while squeezing the trigger on her pistol. She was an excellent shot, even while moving. If she could plug the seventeen bullets, or a good part of them, into his head and neck, Rasputin would be weakened enough that she could finish him off with a swing of her sword. Getting his head a good distance from the rest of him was her plan.
Halfway to the chair she knew her tactic had failed. Rasputin had vanished and reappeared to the side of the room, having used his Ageless speed, no doubt when he heard her wet shoes moving across the floor. Her bullets careened past the chair and hit the world map, creating showers of sparks and darkening entire countries.
“Interesting,” Rasputin said. “It seems you have a penchant for destroying South America.” He nodded at the darkened sections of the map. “You could join me and make that your dominion. I’m willing to share. Share my castoffs, at least.”
“You never had any intention of sharing power with the other council members,” she said.
“Ah, but it kept you busy, tracking them all over the world. It left only one thing for me to do, and that was getting rid of the naïve young man who pretended to be the Leader. I delivered his payoff.” He smiled, no doubt remembering the man’s painful death. “I do wish you’d left Duma for me, though. I had plans for her.”
“There were only four members on the council then.”
He waved his hand. “Forget the council. They were a means to an end.”
Exactly what I thought about my method of obtaining this location. Hearing it from Rasputin’s mouth makes it feel dirty.
“Don’t you recognize me, now that we’re standing still and having a conversation instead of fighting?”
“I don’t know you from times past.”
“You do,” he said, switching to Russian. “We met in St. Petersburg. I was a penitent at the academy there. I tried to seduce you.”
Maliha’s free hand flew to her mouth. “Grigori Yefimovich. I do remember!”
“Kind of you not to use my nickname. I’ve never liked it.”
“Rasputin.” Rasputnik meant “lecher” in English.
“Couldn’t help yourself, I see. I earned it, I suppose.”
“Were you already Ageless when you were killed?”
Rasputin was a Russian peasant born around 1870. He found himself unwelcome in his village due to drunkenness, sexual conquests, and wild behavior. Roaming the Siberian wilderness, he was involved in o
bscure cults and became a hypnotist and mystic with a reputation for healing by hypnosis. He worked himself into the favor of the royal court by healing the Tsarina’s ailing son, but court intrigue got the best of him. A group of men poisoned, shot, beat, and drowned him, later claiming that each successive attempt didn’t kill Rasputin until he finally drowned.
“The body pulled from the Neva River wasn’t mine. It belonged to some unlucky look-alike.”
Maliha was inching closer to him. She didn’t think he’d let her get within sword’s reach, but she had to try it. She glanced at the bank of clocks. Twenty-five minutes.
“So how did you become Ageless?”
“I was alone in the wilderness, hunting. It was in the spring, when the mother bears have their cubs. I was very careful, but also very hungry. I found a run of salmon and jumped in to try to catch some with my hands. Ah! I was so happy. I caught the fish, cracked their heads on the rocks, and threw them to the shore for later. Then I was lifted from the water by the claws of a great brown bear. She dragged me back to her den and left me there for her cubs, to learn to catch and eat for themselves. If I tried to escape, she would swipe my legs with her claws and bring me back. The little ones had full bellies from the salmon. They sniffed me, mauled me, but didn’t kill me. After a couple of days, I was in terrible pain. Then one of the cubs caught me in the belly with its claw. For another two days I lay on the ground as the cubs put their muzzles into my guts and tore pieces and swallowed, or ate me alive in other parts of my body, and I could not die. That’s when my demon came to me.”
“You have been Ageless less than a century. Throw off your yoke and be your own man!”
“I will be my own man, and I will be Ageless, too. I will rule the humans as my slaves and kill the demons if they do not bend to my will.”
He plans to have the tablet and lens!
She’d been keeping herself in check, trying to learn something that would give her an advantage. Twenty minutes. Maliha noticed on the wall behind Rasputin that the monitor displaying the tunnel showed the bright light of someone entering.