It was a box, wrapped in Santa Claus paper, tied with a clumsy pink ribbon.
I took it. Light. Too light for a bomb.
Brian, all of them, stepped aside.
“Brian! Stop them!”
Mina and I walked up and out into the steam tunnel.
-EIGHTEEN-
We were above ground when Mina said, “So what is it?”
“There’s a part of me that’s convinced it will be the head of a Girl Scout.”
“The box is the wrong shape.”
“It disturbs me how quickly you said that.”
“I’ve been hanging out with you since Friday night.”
I put the box on the car. It was light for a big bomb, but it’s possible that Brian the beefy Clone Wolf had put something small in there. A little plastique could mean I was about to say goodbye to my thumbs, and I rather liked those. They really tied the hand together.
Mina said, “This box looks like it was wrapped by a twelve-year-old.”
I looked at the wrapping paper. Crinkled, sure. Bunched up in places. Lots of tape straining to keep it shut. Certainly not a professional job. “Doesn’t look so bad to me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Open it.”
I did. I tried to probe the paper first, make sure there were no needles filled with horrible plagues. I ripped carefully, worried about a contact toxin. I opened the box away from me, because you never know. When I finally looked inside, it’s fair to say I was morbidly disappointed.
Mina asked again, “What is it?”
“A dress.”
A cute one, too, in a drooling juvenile fantasy sort of way. I mentally took back every bad thing I’d ever thought about Brian. I wanted to get him a Christmas card.
Mina snatched it. “What size?”
“Yours, I think.”
“Are there shoes? Tell me there are shoes.”
“No shoes.”
“Do we have time? I’m getting shoes.”
What the hell had just happened?
As we were driving, she looked it over. “This does look like my size.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, that’s weird. I’m sort of strange in terms of, you know, relative sizes of things.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Every other sentence you’ve said has been addressed to my breasts.”
“I didn’t want them to feel left out.”
I wasn’t sure how familiar Mina was with the area, but she had suddenly developed radar. She directed me to the nearest mall, and I found myself sitting next to a similarly forlorn guy as Mina ran off to the dressing room.
The guy gave me the once-over. “Which one’s your wife?”
I pointed to an Asian lady who looked just north of a hundred. “It’s a May-December thing.”
I think he knew I was fucking with him, but he nodded over to his wife. She was pretty, in a sort of Orange County way. “There’s my wife. Remember when Sundays were fun?”
“Not really.”
He chuckled. “What do you do?”
“I kowtow to a bunch of psychotics who would just as soon see me turned inside out as talk to me.”
“Yeah, I work in an office, too.” He stuck out his hand. “Davis.”
I picked a name out of a hat. “Zeke.”
“Got kids?” I shook my head. “Me neither, but that’ll change soon.”
“It’s supposed to be a lot of fun.”
“So’s sleeping for eight hours a night.”
“You make a good point.”
Mina came out of the dressing room. She had on the dress that Brian had picked out for her. Suddenly, I didn’t want to get him a Christmas card. I wanted to bolster his Christmas tree with every single geek fantasy I could think of. I would drown him in Jack Kirby Silver Surfers and Babylon 5 DVDs. I would somehow obtain every episode of Droids. I’d use necromancy to get him signed copies of The Hobbit and the first Monster Manual. I’d find him a Sarah Conner, a Princess Leia, a Zotoh Zhaan… and I was getting off track.
Put simply, the dress fit. Perfectly. If Mina’s figure previously had been an hourglass from a Boggle set, she had been turned into one of those two-handed antiques capable of keeping time while beating a serf to death. She twirled, letting the skirt flare out just a bit.
“What do you think?” she said.
I crossed my legs. “You look nice.”
Her face fell a little. Not sure why. I’d said she looked nice. “I’m going to get a pair of shoes.”
“Yeah, I’ll just wait here for a little while.”
Mina walked away. I watched her and tried very hard to think about my dead grandmother playing baseball on the toilet.
Davis spoke up, sounding like I’d just given him the secret of fire. “That’s your girlfriend?”
“It’s… uh… complicated.”
“Friend zone, huh? Yeah, that sucks.”
“I should…”
“Yeah. Nice talking to you. Take it easy.”
That was pretty good advice. I stood up, and fortunately, I wasn’t having a junior high moment. I found Mina trying on shoes. She hadn’t seen me. The posture of someone who doesn’t know they are being observed has a vulnerability to it. Their subconscious takes over. They sing under their breath along with the tune in their head. They flex their hands and wiggle their fingers, maybe conducting the same music, maybe making a speech, maybe in the throes of esprit d’escalier. Their pretense melts away, and their face takes the expression underneath—in her case, a secret smile. Their bodies relax, letting the natural weight pull their spines into comfortable curves.
Mina looked up. Her back straightened. She swallowed the smile. “Can I pay you back for the shoes?”
I wanted to say something along the lines of “My treat,” but all that came out was, “Yeah, no problem.”
When I got back to the car, my briefcase was buzzing. I opened it. Voicemail on one of my phones. I sifted through the clacking plastic and found it: Assassins. That would be a fun conversation. “Say, Len, have you seen Tariq?” “Gee guys, no. Last I heard, he was going to cover himself in squid juice and jump in the shark tank at Sea World. You haven’t seen him since?”
I called the voicemail and heard Hasim’s voice, sober for once and sounding more than a little like Hudson, even if he never actually used the phrase “game over.” I listened to it, but before I was done, one of my other phones started ringing. I answered it and tried not to sound annoyed.
“Squire Max, it’s Sir Richard.” He sounded a little like Hasim. I wondered if they were having similar problems.
“Yes, Sire?”
“We need you to come to the Castle, as soon as possible.”
“Give me an hour.”
He hung up without saying goodbye. I wondered where they had found Eric’s body, and in what state.
I started the car. Mina said, “You’re popular.”
“A bit too popular. We’re going to see the Assassins, then we’re going back to the Templars.”
“They were the ones at Medieval Castle?”
“Yep.”
“I wanted to kick that one guy.”
“Again, reserve the kicking for me.”
“Whatever. So tell me about the Assassins. All you said before is that they’re the originals, whatever that means.”
I laid the rest out. It all started in the 9th century, when a guy named Hassan-i-Sabbah created a sect of trained killers who didn’t mind dying. He took the standard-issue religious fanatic and decided to crazy them up a little more. He created this bizarre pleasure palace, stocked it with fruit trees, sexy women, and streams that literally flowed with milk and honey. He then got these fanatics, usually impressionable kids, really high on the best hash he could find and let them into the palace, telling them it was heaven. So yeah, he convinced them that if they killed for him, they would get right into heaven where all their puerile teenaged desires would be exceeded. The sect was known as the Ha
shishin—users of hashish—which was corrupted into the modern word assassin. Supposedly the sect was wiped out in the Crusades, and the Templars tried their damnedest to do it—there’s still some bad blood there—but actually, they just went underground.
Which brings me to William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was a lot of things—newspaper magnate, flamboyant philanderer, sledding enthusiast—but his biggest accomplishment was something that most people are entirely unaware of. Hearst was a tireless enemy of the demon weed. Most people who know this fact will tell you this is because Hearst owned timberlands, and the more efficient hemp would undercut his prices and slice into that famous fortune of his. That’s not true, at least not entirely, but I’ll get back to that. The point is that hemp made Hearst send his yellow journalism machine into overdrive. He linked pot with violent behavior and promptly scared lawmakers into criminalizing it.
Which makes no sense. Pot only makes you violent from the perspective of a box of graham crackers.
For his actions to make any sense, Hearst had to have known about the Assassins, and, in fact, he did. He first learned of them when they killed a friend of his, while the guy was celebrating his birthday aboard Hearst’s yacht. This friend was the director Thomas Ince, who, according to public record, died from either a heart attack or cramps. Witnesses blamed his demise on the bullet hole through his head. In any case, after Ince’s death, Hearst turned his attention to the man that killed him. When he learned about the demon weed, that’s when he went on the offensive. Hearst had pot outlawed to fight the Assassins.
Mina said, “They didn’t mention any of that on the Hearst Castle tour. Why did the Assassins want Ince dead?”
“That’s a whole other story. Look, when we go in there, don’t mention chupacabras, okay?”
“I wasn’t planning on it. The Assassins still have the contract out on me, right?”
“No. Tariq specifically has the contract on you. As long as they think he’s still alive, you’re safe. As soon as they know he’s dead, someone else gets the contract and you’re back in danger. In a lot of ways, the Assassins are nicer than the Russian mob.”
By all accounts, the Assassins back in the Holy Land were more of what you’d expect: dour fellows whose hobbies included bomb making, knife sharpening, and scripture interpreting. The local Assassins had gone native. They were much more pleasant to be around. That’s not to say they wouldn’t stick six inches of steel through your eye if someone paid them to, but they wouldn’t be dicks about it. They didn’t even mind using an infidel like myself to pick up their dry cleaning and plant their getaway cars. The simple fact that they had getaway cars to begin with showed just how native they’d gone.
I wasn’t too worried about meeting with the Assassins. If there was one group I was pretty sure Ingrid Brady hadn’t infiltrated, it was them. I had to find out what the hell had Hasim’s panties in a bunch and see if they could help me track my Ms. Blank.
I pulled up at their beach house. A high fence ringed it, but as soon as you left the gate, turn right and there was the Pacific Ocean. I went ahead and let myself in.
That turned out to be a mistake. Assassins who weren’t waiting to kill me were still waiting, and they were still armed. Before either of us knew what was happening, we were grabbed from behind, had guns pressed to our temples, and were being forced to inhale breath that smelled like old milk.
Hasim came charging out of the house, hands up. “Wait! Don’t shoot him!”
I said, “Them! Don’t shoot them!”
“Right, that too.”
The guys let go, backing off and glancing around at the surrounding rooftops. That’s when one of them sprayed blood out of his chest. I didn’t even hear the gunshot.
Hasim screamed, “Get inside!”
Mina and I ran. The man that had been holding her was just behind us. I heard bullets kicking up along the walk, then heard the man fall. We burst through the door, falling onto hard wood. Hasim slammed the door shut behind us.
I looked around at the living room. Couches and chairs tipped over for cover, some pocked with bullet holes. They had six opened boxes of cereal, several half-empty bowls, and a bong that had the top broken off. Assassins were scattered around the room, already behind cover, armed and terrified.
I yelled at him, “What the fuck did you get me into, Hasim?”
“We need your help! Get behind something!”
“I’m behind the fucking door!”
Mina had more sense; she hauled me into the adjoining kitchen and pulled me behind the fridge. I heard the door get kicked in. Then, silenced gunshots that sounded like how I imagined laser weapons would. There was a scream, a shot, a thud, then silence.
Hasim poked his head around the door. “You can come out. It’s safe for the moment.”
“The hell it is! What’s going on?”
“Assassins. We’re knee-deep in them.”
“Do you want me to point out the irony, or are you already there?”
I crept out of my hiding place. There were more bullet holes around the room, one of the cereal bowls had been shattered, and Che Guevara was lying in the living room, dead. Hasim pointed at him.
“We’ve had guys like that tracking us all over the city. We lost three of our people before we holed up here. We thought we were good until one of them showed up on our doorstep at five in the morning and killed Khalid. We’re under siege, Lenny!”
“And you thought you’d call me?”
“You’re just a rafiq. You can find out what’s tracking us, right? They’re not tracking you.”
“Well, in point of fact, yeah, they are.”
“Shit. Shit! Shit! Sorry. Look, you shouldn’t have brought your lady friend.”
“Well, you could have mentioned on the phone that I was walking into a gunfight.”
“But then you might not have come.”
I really wanted to hit Hasim. I swallowed that impulse, and instead, said, “These assassins attacking, we’re talking Manchurian Candidates, right?”
“No, none of them are Chinese. They look Mexican or something.”
“Not a movie buff. Okay, they all have blank expressions, incredible strength, that kind of thing? Maybe they keep muttering the same thing over and over? They really like Catcher in the Rye?”
“I don’t know about that last part, but yeah. They’re all old-school assassins, only they don’t have any connection to us. There’s that rumor about other groups making something like we used to, but it was just a rumor, and they sure as hell weren’t coming after us.”
“You said you lost three guys?”
“Three guys definitely. No one’s heard from Tariq since yesterday. We’re hoping he’s holed up somewhere.”
“Yeah. It would take more than these guys to take him out.” Like a pack of genetically engineered killing machines, for one.
“Okay. Look, we can just stay in here, and whoever is sending these zombies at us, maybe Tariq will track him down and solve the problem.”
I almost put my hand on his shoulder. Couldn’t give away the store, though. “I need to get out of here.”
“No, man! We’re safe in here.” We both looked around at the bullet-riddled room. “Safer, I mean.”
“I think I’m going to take my chances out there. How often do they attack?”
Hasim shrugged. “It varies, but the frequency is going up.”
“Hasim, you have to get the hell out of here. This is a death trap. Whoever is sending these guys is just going to keep sending them until one of them gets lucky, and then you’ll be dead. Get out. Leave town.”
Hasim gave me a weak smile. “Nah, man. Safer in here.”
Well, I tried. “Good luck.” I turned to Mina. “Ready?”
“Oh yeah.”
Mina couldn’t look at the corpse we had to step over to get to the kicked-in door. How many of these guys had the Clone Wolves made? And how many had they sold? I was getting to the point where I was going to sta
rt pointing guns at every set of twins I passed, on the off chance they were Candidates. I peeked out the door. It looked safe, other than the two Assassins lying dead on the front lawn.
“Just run.”
Mina nodded.
We bolted for the gate. No shots. Opened it. Closed it. Ran more. No shots. Scrambled into the car, started it, peeled out. No shots.
Mina said, “That was a lot of bodies.” I glanced at her. She was staring at her lap. I hadn’t seen her look quite that shaken before, but she was right. That was a lot of bodies.
“Yeah. Sorry you had to see that.”
She shrugged. There was part of me that was convinced this was an act. My guard was so low as to be completely nonexistent, which is just where she wanted it, regardless of whoever she was actually working for. But there was a bigger part of me, not to be egotistical, that wanted to believe her.
Normally, a trip to Medieval Castle is something that’s done maybe once a decade. When the nieces and nephews are in town—not that I had any, but it was the kind of place I imagined taking them when I imagined having them, an occurrence which usually involved alcohol of some kind. I always wondered if that was normal: if women fantasized about having kids, and if men just fantasized about hanging out with them for the excuse of seeing guys in armor wale on each other with swords.
The show wouldn’t be on until eight, but the cast would be there, gearing up, doing the last-minute rehearsals. It was important to be faux-authentic. For every “yo, Brad” that replaced a “forsooth, Sir Bradley,” there was disciplinary action. I parked where I had on Friday night, just for symmetry’s sake.
Eric’s car wasn’t there. I don’t know why I expected that it would be. Poor guy. He was a complete asshole, but he probably didn’t deserve whatever had happened to him.
I walked in the stage door with Mina, and no one bothered to stop me. Max Gross had a reason for being there. I passed guys in black t-shirts carrying equipment and clipboards. I heard the ring of steel on steel coming from the show area and ignored it. Richard had a dressing room to himself, while the other knights had to make do with a communal one that was more locker room than anything else. I knocked on Richard’s door. I got a shouted “What?” in response.
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