Julia laughed. “Sixty bucks? You want me to strip for you, or something?”
“Gas money. I want you to take Claud up into the hills and try and find a vantage point that might match what she sees in her dreams. It ain’t much, but it’s a start.”
“When? Now?”
“Better at night, but if your dance card is full, I understand it.”
Julia nodded slightly. “You got it. I’ll get with her and see what her schedule’s like. Anything else?”
“Not unless you have a brain storm you’d like to share.”
Julia shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. “Not yet, but I’ll keep turning it over. And here”—she pushed the $60.00 back to Acheson—”keep your damned money. I can fill my own tank, thanks.”
“Expense it,” Acheson ordered. “It’s a legit expenditure for reimbursement. Believe me, I know. All I’ve been doing is going over the accounting.” Acheson motioned toward the pile of spreadsheets on his desk.
“Cool, then you can help me bury a trip to Turks and Caicos,” Julia said, heading for the door. “I’ll let you know what we turn up.”
***
At long last, the delivery van appeared at the wrought-iron gates. Tremaine verified its presence through the closed-circuit security monitors—Schwimmer had installed a comprehensive security suite—then pressed the control button that opened the gates. He rolled over on the big bed and kissed each of Holly’s breasts, then moved down and kissed her semi-hard cock.
“Do take care of this while I’m gone, love,” he said. “I won’t be but a few minutes.”
Holly gave him a sly smile and nodded.
The doorbell rang as he sauntered down the wide staircase to the great hall below. He opened the thick double doors and regarded the man standing on the stoop outside. He was thin, dark-skinned, and wore sunglasses. A huge afro sprouted from his head like a bush.
“Delivery,” he said. He held out a clipboard, which Tremaine accepted. He read the shipping list and nodded.
“Will you have any problems moving it up the stairs?”
The mover looked past Tremaine at the sweeping staircase that lay behind him.
“We’ll do our best, but man, this thing’s heavy! You sure you want it upstairs?”
“Positive.”
“Okay, man. We’ll do our best.”
The shipping crate barely fit through the doors. The movers pulled apart the crate in the entry hall. The object inside was encased in a thick padding of bubble wrap held in place by copious amounts of duct tape. It was a neat, thorough job, and the seal around the bubble wrap had been secured by hot wax that was unbroken, indicating U.S. Customs had not tampered with it. Not that they would have found anything remarkable if they had.
It took the movers almost thirty minutes to get the object upstairs and into the large, empty bedroom that had an entire western exposure. Using a metal measuring tape, Tremaine ensured they placed the object in the room’s exact center and oriented its back to the windows. The movers did as requested without much grumbling.
Once satisfied that all was in order, Tremaine signed for the object and gave the movers a $200 tip.
“You don’t want us to take off the wrap?” The foreman motioned toward the object, still ensconced in its plastic bubble wrap.
“I shall attend to that myself.”
The foreman shrugged and led his three man crew downstairs. They cleaned up the shipping materials in the great hall and disappeared. Tremaine closed the gate behind the truck.
Using a box cutter he gently sliced through the bubble wrap. The packing job was thorough, as one might expect from a German shipping company. It took quite some time to cut through it all, and he was happy to see that no one had applied any tape to the dark wood. Its finish was polished to a rich luster. Tremaine gathered up the packing and tossed it into the hallway, then walked back inside and examined the artifact.
It was a large, pedestal-mounted mirror of sorts, its fine woodwork adorned by an array of demons and wraiths. Surrounded by the bizarre mount of sculpted wood was a mirror of black glass so dark that it was a wonder it reflected light. Tremaine found he very much wanted to touch its surface, but he had been instructed to avoid contact with the dark glass. The Master had not told him why.
Still…
Tremaine lifted a hand and held it an inch from mirror’s surface. There was something there, a sensation, something that tickled the nerves of his fingers and made the hairs on the back of his hand stand up…
Death Damnation Carnage Sex Blood Murder Gore Laughter Rape Abomination Flame Desecration Feces Insects Filth Terror
Tremaine gasped, reeling. The sudden mental barrage of disjointed images left him chilled to the bone. What had he just witnessed? He tried to recall, but the imagery retreated from his mind’s eye. He stepped away from the mirror, fearing he had done something terribly wrong…
No. He had not touched the glass. He took a tentative step toward the mirror again. He stared at its barren, immutable surface and saw… nothing. Not even his reflection.
A chill ran through Tremaine as he stood in the bright light that streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows and into the second story great room. Clearly it was not a mirror at all, but something much greater. Something far beyond him, until such time as the Master informed him what it was… or showed him.
Tremaine felt the stirrings of anticipation. Anything that might serve to bring him closer to entering the Family was something he eagerly welcomed.
5
Acheson emailed the spreadsheets to Washington. There they would be used as tools championing the next round of weapon, training, office, and paper clip purchases. How the organization remained secret with all the bean counting going on remained a mystery to Acheson.
Damn, I hate this job, he thought, rubbing his eyes. Then he smiled to himself. That wasn’t true. He hated the administrative functions of the job, but the rest was an adrenaline junkie’s dream.
He went into the ensuite washroom and splashed some water on his face. He dried off and looked at his reflection in the mirror. Acheson had never looked particularly youthful, and now that he was in his early 40s, time had left indelible marks of passage. The crow’s feet surrounding his eyes and the wrinkles in his brow made him look older than he actually was. He wondered what his high school girlfriend would say if she could see him now.
“Another late night, I see.”
Acheson turned. Chiho stood in his office, peering through the bathroom doorway.
“Oh… hey. Yeah, it’s that time of year. But I’m almost done, I think.” He walked past her to his desk and settled back in his chair. “What are you still doing here?”
Chiho leaned against the front of his desk. “Claudia has yoga and won’t be home until after ten, so I have no real plans. Yourself?”
Acheson checked his watch. “Well, dinner with Sharon and her family. They’ll be heading back to Detroit tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll be giving them a quiet send-off. And then, hopefully… a return to normalcy.”
“It’s been difficult? With her family?”
Acheson shrugged. “I’m hardly Joe Social when it comes to things like this. Is everything okay with you?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
Acheson hesitated for a moment, then rose and headed for the couch. “Close the door,” he said.
Chiho did as he instructed. Acheson motioned for her to join him on the couch, and she slowly lowered her compact frame into its leather confines.
“I’ve been thinking about the discussion we had a few days ago,” he said.
Chiho looked embarrassed, but she didn’t lower her eyes. “I was out of line. I said inappropriate things. But I did speak from the heart.”
“I know you did. You’ve been very much on my mind lately.”
“And you on mine,” she said. She looked around the office, then down at her hands, folded primly in her lap. “I honestly don’t know what I expected
to happen. I always knew that marriage and children were out of the question. But I’d hoped for a permanent companion. I do need affection in my life, and someone who cares for me.”
“Well… you have Claud now, right?”
Chiho smiled and looked up at him. “I prefer a man in that role. The life Claudia prefers is a softer one than I like.”
“I’ll avoid the wide open double entendre there.”
Chiho smiled again. “You never used to do that. Why now?”
Because the only thing I can think of right now is fucking you, he thought. He kept that to himself, crossing his legs as surreptitiously as he could to hide his erection. This brought another smile to Chiho’s face, and her eyes never left his.
“You still want me,” she said softly. “Tell me truthfully. Does Sharon have the same power as I do? Is she as insatiable as I am? Does she treat you as well as I did?”
Acheson swallowed, avoiding her gaze. “You’ve… you’ve always been one of a kind.”
“Then why her, not me?”
Acheson sighed and looked out the windows at the city beyond. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.
“I don’t know why,” he admitted finally. “I can’t put my finger on it. The two of you are like night and day. You offer things she never could.”
“Then what does she offer that I cannot?”
“Stability,” Acheson responded, immediately wishing he could take it back. Still, he pressed on. “Stability… and familiarity. I can always tell where Sharon’s coming from.”
Chiho’s expression remained serene. “And you feel those things are beyond me?”
Acheson turned to her. “Chiho, right now, you should be hopping mad, or depressed, or at least leaving the room. That’s what I would expect. But you’re sitting there, placid as a cloud, while I tell you things that should be tearing you up. Sharon couldn’t do that, which means I can be sure that she would never hide things from me. You, I’m not so sure about.”
Chiho looked down at her hands again. “You know I’ve never been given to emotional outbursts, Mark. It’s not my nature, and it is not my culture. JMshiki… I told you what that is. Do you remember?”
“Yeah. Japanese ‘national thought’ or something.”
“More than that,” Chiho said. “Cultural thought. Women in Japan are still secondary to men by far. The most the majority can hope for is to be an ‘office lady’ somewhere. They live with their parents until marriage, and if marriage never comes, they live with their parents until they die, and then they live alone, perhaps watching after the neighbor’s children, working to fill up the time, living a life empty of dreams and fulfillment. Perpetually anonymous.”
Chiho looked up at him, her eyes bright, and Acheson saw the emotion in them. “I’m not at all like that, Mark. But I am sometimes not unlike that, either. It’s the way I was created, though it is not the way I live. So this is perhaps why you thought I was—what?—unavailable to you. But when you picked me up at the airport, I was very, very open to you. It made you angry.”
“I wasn’t angry with you.” Acheson rose from the couch suddenly and stalked toward the windows, his body rigid. He crossed his arms and looked out at what passed for civilization in southern California, a land rent by crime, shrieking car alarms, theft, intolerable traffic, relentless smog.
“I am damned angry with myself, however,” he said finally. “After you said the things you did on the way back, I realized I made a mistake. And I feel very stupid about that.”
“What mistake?”
“I’m in charge here,” he said softly. “I have to remain consistent. I have to remain frosty. I can’t let myself get bogged down by things that aren’t mission-oriented, because if I do, things could get messy very quickly. Responsibility and duty first, everything else second. That’s how it’s got to be.”
“You would have made a perfect Japanese,” Chiho said, and Acheson knew she had left the couch and stood behind him. “Leading a life of duty and denial.”
“Chiho, what is it you want me to do?”
He gasped lightly when she put her hands on the small of his back. It was electric, arousing virtually every nerve in his body. She moved her hands slowly up the curve of his spine, her touch lighter than that of a butterfly.
“I want you to feel free to do what you want,” she said. “Not what you feel obligated to do… not what duty compels you to do. I could never hold you back. I would never hold you back… I just want to see you happy, and I would do anything to help you with that…”
“Please stop,” he said.
“I can’t.” Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
Acheson spun around and grabbed hold of her arms, pinning them to her sides. He lowered his face to hers. Their lips touched, and her mouth opened like a blooming flower, her tongue meeting his. Chiho grabbed his hips and pulled closer. She moaned in her throat gently, and again when Acheson’s hips thrust against her rhythmically. Acheson had never known such arousal before, such pulse-quickening excitement. His hands roamed about her small frame, cupping her buttocks, trapping her against his body. His erection throbbed almost painfully against her abdomen. In the back of his mind, he realized why the excitement was so great. He had never been one to cheat on a lover. But the small voice of correctitude was drowned out by his mounting passion.
Still, the voice came through for an instant, and the self-loathing that descended upon him brought with it a moment’s pause. Then desire overwhelmed it, triumphing in a microsecond.
He was rough with her, picking her up and virtually slamming her to the top of his desk, sending spreadsheets and files flying. She gasped, her startled eyes meeting his. He grabbed her upper arms and pinned them to her sides, pressing her flat against the desk. Her skirt had ridden up, exposing her lightly tanned thighs. A hint of cream-colored panties gleamed at their apex.
“Is this what you want?” he growled at her.
Without hesitation, she reached down and pulled her skirt up to her waist and spread her legs. The thong panties she wore were moist.
“Fuck me.” Though her voice was barely above a whisper, there was no mistaking it was a command. “As hard as you can.”
***
Sharon hit the brakes when she came around the bend and saw the coyotes on the road. The vintage Mustang almost fishtailed as the drum brakes did their job, but she kept the vehicle under control. Five of the coyotes scampered across the road, disappearing into the brush on the other side. The sixth—the largest and probably the pack’s leader—halted momentarily and faced the idling Mustang, its eyes gleaming in the glow of the headlights. Then the coyote let out a harsh yip and bolted after its pack mates.
Sharon relaxed behind the wheel. Coyote sightings were not uncommon. She wondered how they managed to survive so close to the city, and remembered that they occasionally ate people’s pets. It was an unusual circumstance, living in a place where man’s buildings and highways coexisted with the raw, sometimes dangerous wilds of nature.
As Sharon pulled her Mustang into the driveway minutes later she saw the Mulholland Drive house was dark. She busied herself with the two bags of last-minute groceries she had bought—including some freshly cut tuna steaks, the night’s main course—then closed the car door behind her. She fumbled with her keys as she headed for the house.
When she reached the front stoop, she noticed the door was open. Not just ajar, but entirely open. For a heartbeat, she was perplexed. Her sister knew better than to do this, and her husband didn’t seem to be a fool…
From inside the dark house came a coughing cry. Her infant niece.
Sharon dropped the groceries to the pavement. She pulled the Glock .40 caliber pistol from its kidney holster with her right hand while going for the cell phone with her left. She hit the speed dial for Acheson’s cell and lifted the phone to her ear, pistol at ready.
Ringing… then, “This is Acheson. Leave a message.” Beep!
Sharon
hit the speed dial for the office line. The phone rang, then went into voice mail. “Hi, you’ve reached Mark Acheson. I’m either on the phone or away from my desk, so please leave me a—” Sharon pressed the # key, and was transferred into Acheson’s voice mail.
“Mark, there’s a shake at the house,” she said before disconnecting.
He’s either in the elevator or in the parking garage, she thought, her mind starting to whirl in several different directions at once, on the verge of panic. Cecil—call Cecil, or Rick or Nacho—
Again, the baby cried. This time she kept on crying.
Sharon hit the speed dial, going for Cecil, but hit the wrong combination of keys.
“This is Rick. Sharon?”
“There’s a shake at the house,” Sharon blurted. “No lights, and I can hear my niece crying.”
“Get out of there,” Rick said immediately. She heard the engine of his Dodge Ram rise into a bellow. “It’s a trap, get out of there!”
The baby. Crying.
“I can’t,” Sharon said, her voice small. “They’re my family.”
“I’m on the 110, headed away from you. I’m turning around now, but I’m a good twenty minutes out. Get out of there!”
“Tell the rest of the team Two-Five needs backup,” Sharon said. She disconnected before Rick could protest and slid the phone into her jacket pocket. There was a pair of night vision goggles in the hall closet, less than thirty feet from where she stood. They could help even the odds slightly.
She moved quickly but stealthily. Over the threshold. Scanned left, scanned right, scanned above—they could cling to ceilings when they wanted to. Nothing she could see in the darkness. The soles of her running shoes whispered across the Saltillo tile in the foyer. Five steps, and she made it to the closet. She pulled it open, reached for the NVGs in their case on the shelf—
Gone. She reached down into the corner of the closet, where the Mossberg shotgun… wasn’t.
My God. She was going into the fight with what she had.
She pressed on. Covered the stairs for a moment, but nothing was there—or was there? She couldn’t see well enough to be sure. Swung left, panning the pistol’s glowing sights across the living room. Nothing but furniture and a hundred hiding places.
City Of The Damned: Expanded Edition Page 10