by J M Hemmings
Ranomi’s brash confidence was faltering somewhat, and her comebacks weren’t quite so snappy.
‘Are you sure?’ she stammered. ‘How do you know she looks so similar to Aurora? You never saw her when she was alive.’
‘I’ve seen pictures, and I have an acute memory for such details! Why, I’ve seen—’
While Zakaria and Ranomi had been arguing, Njinga had been edging closer and closer to Adriana, taking very slow, subtle steps, which were barely perceptible to a non-trained eye. As soon as she was within striking range she lunged forward with vicious speed and rapidly disarmed Adriana, yanking her right arm up behind her back while wrapping her left arm around her throat in a chokehold. Adriana screamed with fright and tried to struggle, but Njinga held her firm.
‘Good work, Njinga,’ Zakaria growled as Adriana whimpered and bucked futilely.
Ranomi’s face, meanwhile, crumpled into an expression of disgust and intense disappointment.
‘Njinga!’ she exclaimed as she shook her head disapprovingly. ‘How could you?!’
‘No, no, no!’ Adriana gasped, weeping plaintively, her body racked with sobs of both fear and frustration as she fought against Njinga’s iron-firm hold. ‘No, let me go, let me go!’
‘Hold her tight, Njinga,’ Zakaria instructed as he walked up to Adriana and produced a pair of handcuffs from the back of his belt. ‘You at least are putting this mission before personal feelings, as a good soldier should.’
Ranomi ignored this jibe and walked up to Adriana. As Njinga tightened the cuffs around the girl’s wrists, she stared into Adriana’s eyes with tears of compassion rimming her own.
‘I’m so sorry about this,’ she said in a gentle tone. ‘Please believe me when I say that I had no idea that this was going to happen. And you two could be a bit more gentle with this poor girl,’ she added, glaring at Njinga and Zakaria.
‘I’ll never be free again,’ Adriana sobbed. ‘Only death can release me now. I’ll never be free again…’
‘Adriana, please, there’s no need to talk like that—’ Ranomi began.
‘You’re not the one who’s been passed around as a slave from one group of men to another!’ Adriana snapped, the flames of wrath dancing hotly in her eyes. ‘I trusted you! I risked my life for all of you! And what a fool I was to do it, what a stupid, stupid fool I was! Well go ahead then, take me prisoner. Kill me even, I don’t care anymore. I realised long ago that this nightmare could not be escaped from, and any hopes of ever being free again were empty dreams, and nothing else. Go on, do what you want with me.’
‘You will be treated fairly, and with as much respect as any captive of war deserves, and—’ Zakaria said.
‘Shut up Zakaria!’ Ranomi hissed, her own eyes glowing with anger. ‘The last thing she needs to hear right now is your patronising bullshit!’
‘Ranomi, listen, we have a mission—’ Njinga countered.
‘Fine, fine, you’re right,’ Ranomi muttered before Njinga could finish, none too pleased about what was happening. ‘We do have a mission to complete, and this squabbling is costing us valuable seconds, minutes even. We’ll deal with you later, Adriana, but I swear to you on my honour and my life that you will not be harmed by any one of us.’
Adriana said nothing in response; instead she stared glumly at the floor, her lip quivering and tears streaming down her cheeks.
Zakaria checked the time and then looked back at the open doors behind him. The strewn corpses of the freshly slain Huntsmen troops, the hanging pall of smoke, the blood-sprayed walls and the hundreds of empty bullet shells gleaming under the red glow of the emergency lights all gave the scene a suffocating and nightmarish feel.
‘Never mind the girl, where the hell is Kimiko?’ he growled. ‘She’s two minutes late! Now two of our team members are missing!’
‘We can’t afford to worry about her or Chloe,’ Njinga said, still shaken from the skirmish, but with her resolve returning. ‘Come on, we gotta move.’
‘You’re right,’ Zakaria grunted grimly. ‘We must move now. The Huntsmen are about to become the hunted. Ready your weapons, my friends, for from this point on we cut down anyone or anything that moves in these corridors.’
Ranomi and Njinga both nodded as they held their firearms out ahead of them, and together the beastwalkers advanced with silent speed up the stairs, dragging the stumbling, sobbing Adriana behind them, and soon all that remained of their presence was the ghost of an echo in the deathly stillness of the hallway.
PART SIXTEEN
53
SIGURD
12th October 2020. New York City
‘One for Apocalypse Now, please.’
The cashier at the Classic Reels Theatre, a large Hispanic girl in her twenties, who wore her hair tied in a tight knot on top of her skull, chewed mechanically on gum as she hammered the computer keys.
‘You wanna sit at the back or what?’
Her voice was nasal, and her tone apathetic.
‘I don’t mind. Anywhere.’
‘I ain’t no good at choosin’,’ she drawled. ‘You pick.’
She paused chewing for a second to glance at the towering figure who was smiling strangely at her through the bulletproof glass. Ice-blue eyes, bushy braided beard, platinum blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. A charcoal business suit through which powerful bulk practically erupted, the clothes straining to contain the treelike girth of the muscles beneath.
‘Let’s say … at the back, then.’
A strange accent; vaguely European, but ultimately not easily placeable. She kept her eyes locked on the man for a few more seconds, temporarily hypnotised; there was something about him, something beyond his striking appearance that held her attention. What was it? Fear? A strange attraction, even? She couldn’t place it, but there was definitely something about this man. Something imposing, no, more than imposing. Terrifying? She shuddered, resumed chewing her gum, and returned her gaze to the screen.
‘Sure, back row it is, mister.’
The man smiled eerily, and a chill ran down the girl’s spine.
‘Thank you.’
‘You want popcorn with that? You buy popcorn now with your ticket, it’s cheaper. You want a soda or somethin’? You get a combo, it’s a better deal.’
Sigurd shook his head, still wearing an unsettling smile.
‘No thank you. Just the ticket.’
‘You sure? It’s a long flick.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Seven dollars thirty-five.’
A massive, pale hand, crisscrossed with dozens of bone-white slash scars, pushed a ten-dollar bill under the wall of bulletproof glass. The cashier could no longer look at the man; something dreadfully powerful pulsated in those glacial eyes, something too overwhelming and frightening to contemplate.
‘Two si-, si-, sixty-fi, five…’ she stammered, finding herself stuttering and stumbling over the words as she counted out the change with fumbling fingers.
The brightness of the tungsten lights illuminated the man’s hair, anointing him with an aura of gold, a shimmering halo about his head, yet this only seemed to add to his sinister and almost demonic presence. The girl pushed the change under the window, retrieved the ticket from the buzzing printer and pushed it through too. Thick fingers brushed against hers for a split-second, and a kind of dark static sprang flea-like from his skin to hers, making her jump back with fright, and causing her to suck the wad of gum into her throat. She started coughing and choking as the gum lodged itself in her oesophagus, and she fell to the ground, gripping her throat with desperation as the air her lungs were screaming for just wouldn’t come.
‘He-, he-, help…’ she managed to wheeze, and through her watering eyes she saw the man’s pale blue irises regarding her with a sense of mocking amusement as she choked. The world began to swim as her lungs burned in silent agony within her chest. Her coughing was ineffective; the gum remained lodged with stubborn tenacity inside her windpipe. She dropped to her k
nees, and the floor came rushing up to meet her with alarming speed. A darkness was billowing, gnawing with hungry force at the outsides of her vision, crushing and throttling the life out of her with invisible fingers.
It was as she was starting to lose consciousness that stout hands grasped her torso, locked themselves under her ribcage and forced their strength through her upper body in a swift jerk. The Heimlich manoeuvre worked; she coughed up the gum and life-giving air came rushing back into her lungs. The girl flopped back onto the patchy red carpet, not caring about the grimy stickiness of it pressing against her bare arms. She saw the haggard, craggy face of the old janitor, Jenkins, peering down at her with alarm.
‘You was chokin’,’ he mumbled, his crooked teeth white against deep pink gums and ebony skin. ‘Good thing I seen ya. Good thing, huh?’
‘Th-, thank you,’ she uttered through deep, intense breaths of air. ‘You s-, saved my life.’
The old man shrugged.
‘Ain’t the first time I saved s’mbody’s life,’ he said flatly. ‘Don’t ‘spect t’ get no thanks fo’ it neither. Just doin’ what I gotsta do.’
‘Did you … did you see him?’
Jenkins raised an eyebrow, causing his rheumy eyes to bulge a little out of their thick sausage lids.
‘See who?’
‘The gringo, Jenkins, the gringo … the, the white guy, the guerro, big, no, huge, tall-ass sonummabitch, standin’ there by the counter. Just a minute ago, while I was chokin’.’
‘Big tall cracker, y’ say? Nope … didn’t see nobody. Jus’ you, on yo’ knees, chokin’ on that gum.’
‘He was there, I promise you. Must have been close on seven feet, an’ built like a damn tank. Had a business suit on, long blonde hair, an’ a big-ass beard an’ shit too. Scary-lookin’ dude, real scary. He was watchin’ me choke. Watchin’ me an’ laughin’ about it.’
The old man shook his head slowly.
‘I didn’t see nobody. You was trippin’ or somethin’, girl … you must’a been.’
‘I swear he was there, though. There was somethin’ real spooky about that asshole. Real spooky, Jenkins.’
The janitor stood up and brushed his knees off.
‘If y’ say so … I gotsta get back t’ work. You sure you okay?’
‘I don’t feel too good after that. Think I’mma call Danny to cover the rest of this shift.’
‘You do that. Yeah, you do that…’
***
Sigurd’s eyes gleamed in the dark as his angular, strong-featured face was lit up in flickering hues of alternating light and shadow by the reflected luminescence of the images on the cinema screen. He was alone in the theatre, and he sat with his long, heavy legs draped over the threadbare seat in front of him. Trailers for forgotten films of yesteryear were playing, but his eyes were not on the screen; instead, they were locked on the Roger Dubuis watch strapped around his left wrist.
‘Yes,’ he growled to himself the moment the hands struck the appointed hour. ‘Yes...’
With a savage grin he sprang to his feet and leapfrogged over the seats, dashing towards the emergency exit. He tossed a rapid glance over his shoulder and then, seeing that the coast was clear, pushed through the emergency door.
As it closed behind him, leaving him in the dimness of the exit passage, he reached inside his suit jacket and caressed the grip of his Desert Eagle pistol.
‘Trust not in men,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Trust in steel … trust only in steel … I am the terror in the night.’
With silent speed he moved down the passage and rounded a corner at the end of it, vanishing like an evaporating phantom into the shadows, ready to commence his night of slaughter.
A minute later he stepped out of the back door of the theatre, emerging into a dank, cramped alley that was piled up with rusting hulks of scrap steel, old auto parts and other abandoned and broken items. He loosened his pistol in its holster; it would see some use in the next few moments, he was quite sure of that. His enemies would not have been so foolish as to leave their prize unguarded, but whatever troops they were using would be mortals, and Sigurd feared no mortal.
He sniffed at the air while pricking his ears to detect the slightest sounds, and his polar bear senses started to feed him a glut of information, for there had been people here very recently. Yes, very recently indeed, yet now he could detect no hint of a living, breathing human presence. Something felt off; he drew his pistol and gripped it in his right hand. He would not be taken unawares, nor step into a trap, which this situation was starting to smell like.
The first hints of a flareup of rage licked at the back of his neck with flicking lizard tongues; he knew that this was the place, and that his enemies could not have had time to move the prize. His sources – whose information was always accurate – had informed him that this would be the exact hour at which they would be moving her, in fact. This was why he had waited until now; they would be at their most vulnerable at this point.
But there was nobody.
Sigurd breathed in deeply and closed his eyes, allowing the oxygen to aerate his blood as he honed in on a crisp, clear and detached sense of focus and concentration.
You are a machine, a mechanical creation of pure steel, meticulously oiled and perfectly calibrated. You are speed, you are strength, you are skill, you are focus … you are sheer, unadulterated power. You will take the prize for yourself, and crush any who stand in your way.
With the sights of his Desert Eagle trained on the path ahead and his finger resting lightly on the trigger, ready to unleash hell in a split-second, Sigurd stepped around the corner to where the entrance to the building was located. He paused at the doorway and smelled the air once more, but could detect nothing but a mess of dead scents, streaked alongside one another like different coloured pigments that would not blend: old mould, rotten carpeting, crumbling drywall and lead-based paint, peeling from the walls in a process of protracted decay. And then there was the sour rancidity of the derelict building’s only residents: rats, cockroaches, termites and mice, and their accumulated waste.
Sigurd growled under his breath and smashed open the rickety door with a powerful frontal kick, and then swiftly gave the darkness inside a sweep with his polar bear eyes.
Nothing.
He stepped in, cautious and alert, and only barely managing to reign in the impatience and frustration building in his core like a head of steam. He swung his pistol towards a side door as a sound cut suddenly through the veil of silence, but it was only a startled rat, scuttling away in fright. With a muttered curse he moved on, heading through the entrance foyer. An ancient elevator stood at the end of the hall, but with its door ripped from its hinges and the cage inside hanging at an angle, it was plainly evident that it had been out of use for years or possibly decades. Still, it did not matter; a flight of stairs next to the elevator led up into the heart of the ruin.
Sigurd advanced warily into the morass of cobwebs and shadows. He glanced down at the debris-thick floor, with its ripped-up carpeting and piled chunks of broken plaster, and saw a multitude of fresh footprints. They had been in here all right, his informants had been correct about that. And it had been very recent; he squatted down and touched one of the footprints, and when he drew his finger back there was not a speck of dust on it. It was almost as if it had been made merely minutes beforehand. He stood up again and waited, listening intently for any sign of life. There was none.
With the pressure of the rage inside him growing to almost unbearable levels, Sigurd gritted his teeth and moved up onto the stairs. He scanned the area carefully, first, making sure that there were no shooters waiting for him on higher levels. He then examined the stairs themselves for sign of tripwires or pressure-activated switches that could set off bombs or other booby traps, and again there was nothing.
He set off, moving swiftly up the stairs, viewing every nook and cranny of the derelict building through the sights of his Desert Eagle; if anything moved, anyt
hing whatsoever, it would instantly taste the bone-pulverising impact of three fifty-calibre bullets fired in quick succession.
Nothing moved, however; there was only the scuttling and scurrying of mice and cockroaches.
With every level Sigurd ascended he felt the wrath growing fiercer within him, this fury that had been with him since the moment of his conception. It had always been as if he and the flames had been one from a cellular level, as if he had been incubated not in the womb of a human woman but in the deepest sulphur-belching pits of an ancient volcano, with its oozing magma and liquid streaks of primordial fire. It was an omnipresent wrath, a primal blaze that could be both a powerful ally and a crippling handicap.
Finally he reached the top, and there he froze in his tracks, the volcanic heat stopping its smoke-hissing passage through his veins for a moment, for now he felt it, rippling its current through the marrow of his bones: the presence of another beastwalker.
‘You left yourselves unguarded!’ he whispered to the darkness, the words mere traces of sound waves trickling like vapour from between his lips. ‘You fools, you stupid, stupid fools,’
Now, just at the point at which it had been ready to erupt from his every pore and douse the entire building in its anarchic vengeance, the fury died down and receded, retreating back into the dark chasms from whence it had crept; perhaps, it seemed, the prize would not be denied him after all.
He stared for a while at the twin doors at the end of the corridor; they were wide and tall, but rickety and rotting. That was where they were; he could feel their presence in his bones, on every nerve ending across every square inch of his skin. A quick bristling of suspicion sent its prickly claws scurrying across his skin, though. This was too easy; why was there not a single guard posted anywhere in the building? Would his enemies really risk the loss of such a prize by leaving it unprotected?