On Broken Wings

by Francis Porretto

  That ain't the little guy with her. Maybe part of the story was true. Maybe he found a way to take out Rollo and Duffy, then bought it from Tiny. If that's the way it went down, he sure as shit did enough damage to Tiny first. No wonder Tiny lost interest in the bitch.

  But she's coming my way, and she's my ticket. With her, I can take Tiny down without firing a shot. His own pack'll tear the motherfucker a brand new asshole.

  "Guys, you know what this means, right?" None of the others spoke. "We bring her to the barracks and the Butchers are ours. We'll cut them in three. I'll go for the bitch. Pete, Al, you ride point. Take out the guy. Knock him down and keep him down until I'm away. Mac, Carl, you handle the dog. Dogs are fast, so don't fuck around. If he knocks you off your bike, you could be real sorry real fast. Okay?"

  The three seconds of silence that followed were the longest in Rusty's short life. Then Mac said "Okay, Boss," and the four of them reached into their back pockets for the bicycle chains they carried. All five revved their engines in unison.

  Rusty raised his left hand and brought it down.

  ***

  When Christine heard the engines, the old terror welled up in her again, paralyzing her. Five motorcycles bore down on them, and she could not move. Rolf stood staring at her, trying to coax her into speaking. She couldn't do that either.

  She recovered herself as the first two bikes trained themselves on Rolf. Both riders ignored her completely, until she leaped in front of them.

  Her snap-thrust kick caught Al Marshall perfectly. Her heel sank deep into his solar plexus. The biker arched in agony as his bike flew out from under him. He landed on his back on the sidewalk, twitched once, and lay still.

  Pete Gottfried had already lashed out with his chain. It caught Rolf around the neck, and the biker yanked. The snapping sound that followed would haunt Christine's nightmares forever. Rolf flopped to the pavement and did not move.

  Christine screamed and dove at Gottfried as he wheeled. The biker didn't see her coming, and was caught broadside by her attack. She knocked him off his Harley and followed him to the ground with both hands around his neck. As they landed, she broke his larynx with a single sharp thrust of her thumbs, rose, whirled and kicked off her pumps. Gottfried began the long, slow process of choking to death.

  Boomer hadn't waited an instant when he spotted the pair aimed at him. The Newfoundland charged with all the thrust his massive body could provide, and leaped for Carl DeShaies. DeShaies brought his arms up to protect his face, losing control of his steed.

  Boomer pitched DeShaies backwards off his bike. The biker wasn't able to use his weapon against his assailant; the range was too short. He grappled with the dog unsuccessfully for the few seconds it took for Boomer to close his jaws around DeShaies's neck and tear his throat out.

  Rusty McGill, trailing behind the twin prongs of the initial attack, swerved from his original course to strike at Boomer. The Newfoundland received the impact broadside. It stunned him and threw him about twenty-five feet down the block, to land against the corner of a building. Blood seeped from his nostrils.

  Christine crouched, awaiting the charge of Mac Swanson. The biker came at her directly, head down, heedless of the carnage she'd inflicted on his mates. When the gap had closed to ten feet, she leaped and whipped a cartwheel kick at his head. Her heel caught him on the bridge of his nose, driving the bone into his brain.

  She landed on her feet as he passed beneath her. Swanson's Harley carried his corpse another fifty feet west before falling and showering the street with sparks. She turned to confront her final target.

  The lone biker still standing revved his engine at her. She ignored the mechanical brag and walked toward him, glaring. He revved again, wheeled and roared away to the east at top speed.

  Her chest heaved for several seconds as she deescalated her heart rate and reestablished control of her breathing. She looked about for Rolf, saw his body, and ran to him.

  Her new love stared sightlessly up at her. She crouched over him, felt for his pulse, found none, and began to scream.

  It was a scream of loss and pain, but it was more. Rage swelled within her, pure and lethal, until her universe could hold nothing else.

  It was the call of a predator who has summoned all his powers, and challenges his enemy to come forth from the forest to meet him in a final trial of strength and ferocity. It echoed from the buildings and gathered itself to pound against the dome of the sky. It foretold a great battle and a river of blood. It promised death and destruction in a universal tongue. No creature that heard that howl could do other than flee.

  She was still standing over Rolf and screaming when the police arrived and began to handcuff her.

  ====

  Chapter 49

  Captain Wendell Magruder had a serious problem. He had the corpses of four Butchers in his morgue. He had the living body of the woman who had killed them in a cell in the basement. They'd all been where they were since seven the previous evening. That much, he could have handled. But he also had sworn statements from six bystanders that the woman had been defending herself and her companion from an unprovoked homicidal attack -- in the case of the companion, unsuccessfully. None of the eyewitnesses could be made to back down.

  They mentioned a dog, too, but I didn't see one.

  She had said nothing, had not given even her name. They'd gotten that from her driver's license, the only item in her purse with a name on it. He'd asked her if she wanted to make a phone call, and she'd sat there as dumb as a rock.

  Her name hadn't appeared in any database available to the Onteora police. A fingerprint search had turned up nothing.

  The D.A. himself had tried to interview her, had taken the witnesses' statements, and had told Magruder there was nothing she could be charged with. It wasn't an indictable offense to withhold your name from the police, yet. He had to let her go. He had an unperson in a holding cell, a martial-arts master who'd killed four armed men with her bare hands, and he had to let her go.

  It wasn't just his curiosity that recoiled at the thought. Tiny was going to be furious. He'd want a pound of flesh. He'd want the young woman, and Magruder couldn't let him have her.

  Magruder longed to make the woman disappear. He couldn't do that, either. One of the witnesses had been a reporter. Now there were reporters jammed shoulder to shoulder in front of the building.

  At that moment, being the commander of a police precinct wasn't sufficient reassurance for Magruder. Tiny was too imaginative for Magruder not to fear his wrath. That he'd had nothing to do with it wouldn't matter at all.

  It was shaping to be the most spectacular story in Onteora's recent history, ready to blow sky high as soon as she walked out the front doors, and the commander of Onteora's First Precinct could think of no way to control it. For four hours he had sat behind the closed door of his office with all the blinds drawn. His only clues to the state of his command came from the bustle of the offices beyond. He had instructed his secretary to admit no one and accept no calls. The isolation had brought him no ideas.

  He stared at his coffee cup, which had long since gone dry. He'd been unwilling to leave his office to refresh it. Now the lunch hour was upon him, and the embryonic ulcer in his belly wouldn't let him skip that.

  I can't dawdle any longer. Ray will have to handle the fallout. If Tiny takes exception, I'll have to brazen it out, try to go on the offensive. Hell, I ought to, anyway. When word of this gets around, there'll be more neighborhood watch meetings and citizen patrols than you could shake a stick at. There might even be vigilance committees.

  He conquered his distaste, punched the intercom to the holding cell dispatcher, and gave the orders to have Christine D'Alessandro released.

  ***

  Two uniforms ushered Christine out a back door of the precinct headquarters, on the off chance that it would be unwatched at that time of day. They were in luck. She allowed them to shove her out into the alley, and waited to hear the door cl
ose behind her before she chose a direction and started to walk.

  It wasn't far to her Chrysler. Even barefoot, she could make it easily. She strode through the backstreets off Grand Avenue, trusting that her luck would hold, hoping no passerby would recognize her as the woman from the bloody incident on Cayuga the previous day, and half-wishing that Tiny and all the rest of his demons would present themselves so that she could finish what they'd started, or die in the attempt.

  I'm going to finish it.

  It was the only thought her brain could hold. She could not think of anything else: not Rolf, nor Boomer, nor Malcolm, nor Louis. The Nag said nothing. There were no passers-by.

  When she reached Cayuga and Helmsford, she turned west down Cayuga to where her Chrysler had been parked. Ninety seconds later she seated herself in it.

  I'm going to finish it.

  Boomer was probably dead as well.

  I'm going to finish it.

  Perhaps Malcolm would help. Either way, it didn't matter. Her resolve glittered within her. The time had come to collect her due, if she had to cross Hell to do it.

  I'm coming for you, Tiny. I'm not the same helpless girl you tortured for ten years. You've had a little taste of what I can do now. Savor it. Feel the fear. I'm coming for you, and I'm going to finish it.

  ***

  Loughlin met her at the door and stepped aside to admit her. He waited until she had settled herself onto the sofa, then sat beside her.

  "What happened?"

  She told him. When she had concluded, he rose and began to pace. She had never seen him pace before.

  "We'll have to relocate to my trailer. We can't stay here any longer."

  She lifted her head from the sofa back. "Why the hell not?"

  "Aren't you able to think straight any more? Don't they know this is where you live? Haven't they been here once already?"

  "Yes, yes, and yes, Malcolm. It changes nothing. I'm not running from them. Let them come. The sooner the better, in fact."

  That stopped him cold.

  "You want to confront them."

  She nodded.

  "You're going to take it to them, aren't you?"

  "You've got it."

  He stared. "You're insane."

  "Why, Malcolm? Louis faced them down. Why am I insane for wanting to do so?"

  "Louis dealt with three of them. They didn't know what he could do. He had more advantages than you can count. They're alerted to you, they number how many -- ?"

  "After yesterday, I make it seventeen."

  He scowled. "There are seventeen of them. They've got weapons you know nothing about. It appears from the news reports that they've also got some kind of police protection --"

  "Wait a minute." She sat forward. "How do you figure that?"

  "Haven't you been reading the papers? They've figured in damned near every crime story for the past six months. Their colors are unmistakable, and they're reported consistently: a cleaver dripping blood. But the police claim to be baffled. Do you intend to take on the Onteora police too?"

  "Not if I can help it, no."

  "Well, I'm certainly glad to hear that. But have you considered that if you succeed in pulling off this ambitious multiple homicide in their jurisdiction, the Onteora police will take an unpleasantly acute interest in you? Especially if these thugs turn out to be their clients?"

  She nodded. "Yes, Malcolm, I'm aware of that. It doesn't matter. I'm going after them, and I'm going to eliminate them. They took ten years of my life and filled it with pain. I had to kill one of them to get away. They tracked me down and tried to reassert their ownership of me, and only Louis Redmond was there to prevent it. Now they've taken the life of a man I loved."

  Stay calm, Christine.

  Shove it, Nag. The time for that is past.

  She rose from the sofa and glared down at him.

  "We're not talking about something trivial like prolonged gang rape and sexual torture anymore, Malcolm. They've murdered someone dear to me who could have lived his life in total ignorance of them, except that he got involved with me. They're going to die, Malcolm. They're going to die by my hand. You can't dissuade me. If the police decide to make it their business, I'll deal with them in their turn."

  Her rage had returned. It burned along every nerve channel in her body. It was the red rage of which Louis had warned her, the bloodlust that cannot be quenched by any other fluid, and she would not stint its portion.

  He studied her in silence for a long moment. "Sit down, Christine."

  She sat.

  "We've talked of the costs of combat so many times these past six months, and you've always seemed receptive. I thought you understood me. Yet you plan to embark on a course of bloody revenge that will buy you nothing and cost you everything you have, including quite probably your life. Has my teaching all been so abstract that you can't make use of it? Haven't you learned to avoid the fight you can't win, the fight that costs you more than victory is worth? Confound it, child, must I bury my most brilliant student because she ceased to think at the moment she needed it most?"

  "Malcolm," she said, feeling exhaustion steal upon her, "shut up."

  He opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking.

  "Whatever else you are, you are what Louis said you were. You have taught me more than I could ever have learned on my own, and far more than I could ever repay you for. But you haven't got the point of this yet. I have no life. It was taken from me by the Butchers before I could start to live it. Did Louis ever tell you where my last name came from?"

  He shook his head.

  "I got it from the phone book, Malcolm. The clerks at the hospital had to have a name, and all I had was Christine. I don't have one other memory of the time before they took me captive. My first name is the only thing I have to show for the first twenty-five years of my life. Everything else I have was a gift from Louis Redmond.

  "I'll be trapped behind those walls until they've been knocked down. I'm not going to wait any longer for someone else to do it. You can help, or you can stand aside, but don't think to get in my way."

  The old warrior reared back as if she'd struck him across the face.

  That was not well done, Christine.

  Nag, you have been more of a help to me than any other creature I've ever known, Louis excepted. Right now it doesn't mean shit. I intend to do this thing. Don't you get in my way, either.

  The room had grown quiet. Christine fancied she could hear Loughlin thinking. The master strategist was weighing probabilities, assessing potential avenues of attack, straining to see what there was to be won or lost along each line of development. But his need was not hers. What he decided could only affect her tactics. It could not change her objectives.

  "I will agree," he said, measuring out his words, "not to interfere with you, but on one condition: that you start thinking again. You have the right. I would never question that. You may have the ability. But your opponents are formidable, and they will overwhelm you unless you reactivate your most formidable weapon at once."

  "What weapon is that, Malcolm?"

  "Your mind. Use what I've taught you. Study the terrain, reflect on your enemy, and devise a strategy that maximizes your chances. Don't go charging into their den in your current state. Christine," his voice cracked, "I don't want to lose you, too."

  She nodded. "All right. Will you help?"

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Wait."

  She went to her bedroom and opened the safe. She returned to the living room with a thick wad of cash. Loughlin glanced at it questioningly.

  She fished her car keys from her purse and tossed them to him. "Go to Cayuga and Helmsford. Start a search spiral for Boomer. If you find him alive and unhurt, or dead, bring him back here. If you find him injured, take this" -- she handed him the wad of bills -- "and go to the Foxwood Animal Hospital on 231 and Kettle Knoll. Give Boomer and the money to them. Tell them to do whatever they have to to save my dog's lif
e, and that I don't expect change. We'll talk again after that."

  He nodded. "And you?"

  "First I'm going to shower. After that I have preparations to make. I'm going to be making some justice, so I have to assemble the capital equipment and make sure it's all in working order."

  ***

  The consciousness of a dog differs qualitatively from that of a man. A dog possesses no sense of the extension of events through time. Each moment of its life is separate from all the others. Because of this, a dog forms no abstractions, and learns no principles of cause and effect. It lives its entire life on the plane of concrete objects and events.

  This does not keep a dog from having desires, even passions. Some of those passions are natural, rooted in hundreds of thousands of years of development. Others are man-made and man-implanted, owing to the domestication of the dog and its instruction at human hands. A third group are in the gray zone between, a melding of instinct and experience, but no less powerful for that.

  Boomer had been badly hurt. Of course, he didn't know that. The impact of Rusty's motorcycle had broken several of his ribs and given him a hematoma that held one quarter of his total blood supply. He was on the border of shock, and in danger of his life. He didn't know that either. His emotions were a mixture of pain and yearning for his absent mistress and her comforting touch.

  He had dragged himself perhaps two hundred feet from the scene of the assault, into the darkness of a garbage-filled back alley, before his giant strength and gallant canine heart were overwhelmed by the pain. If nothing happened to disturb him, he would lie here until the passage of time and the natural processes of his body determined whether he would live or die.

  If he lived, he would search for his mistress until his strength gave out or his sense-impression memories of her affection had faded beneath the weight of more current experiences. If he died...who knows what happens to the soul of a dog?

  He lay there, breathing shallowly, bearing the inexplicable pain from his chest. He grew hungry, and terribly thirsty, but was unable to do anything about either. The light faded and was gone, returned again, and was beginning to fade again, before the footsteps sounded in his ears.