A strange room. Pipes running along the ceiling and walls suggest it once had something to do with the subway tunnel below. Maybe it still does. Who knows? Tikki concentrates on what’s in front of her eyes. The room is like a den, a lounge, and a bedroom all in one. The combination of functions doesn’t surprise her, but rather the way it’s done. The look of the place. Like a forest at night. Black walls, painted with trees and dense underbrush, rise toward stars and a huge white orb on the ceiling that must be the moon. The bed sits on a low platform almost completely obscured by potted plants, plastic plants, some as big as small trees and treated with chemicals mimicking the smells of real vegetation of the wild.
“You live here?”
“I’ve been… coming here a long time.”
The place smells like him. Tikki scopes the place out, but keeps one eye on the male. She sees all kinds of junk scattered among the plastic plants and odds and ends of furniture: piles of newsprint and hard-copy magazines, a car tire, a headlight, an old keyboard-style deck, a tailor’s form, and other items even more obscure. She stops and looks back at the male.
“Drink?” he says.
Tikki nods.
“Water?”
Tikki nods.
“Good.” The male says that definitely, as if he approves her choice of beverage. Maybe he expected it. Maybe he’s got nothing but water to drink. He brings a plastic jug from the far end of the room and hands it to her.
“You first,” Tikki says.
The male looks at her a moment, then takes a swig. He doesn’t fall over dead, so Tikki has a swig herself.
“What’s your name?”
“Raa,” he says. “Raman.”
“Raa Raman.”
“Just Raman.” He watches as Tikki recaps the jug and sets it down. He stares until her eyes meet his. He seems puzzled. “Back there… in that tenement. You… defended me. Why?”
Why? Because she got stupid. Because she knew the man on the stairs would shoot. Because, in the moment she had to think about it, Tikki didn’t know if this male, Raman, could survive yet another blast from a gun. Because the idea that she had encountered a male of her own kind filled her with such urgency that she simply could not help herself. How does she explain all that? Answer: she doesn’t. “You tried to kill me. Why?”
Raman gazes at her for some moments, then says, “Before. Before I realized.”
“Answer the question.”
“Money. A wetwork contract.”
Why doesn’t that surprise her? If she ever gets over the shock of what he is, she may never be surprised again. “You’re an artist.”
“I prefer… kick-work to killing. But, yes. You’re right, I am an artist. A technician. You scan?”
Tikki supposes that the way he ambushed her could be described as fairly artful. She’s still not sure how he managed to take her from above. The male doesn’t look like the sort to master anything as specialized as ceiling-walking technique. A sarcastic smile tugs at one corner of her mouth. “So why am I still alive?”
Now his expression turns confused. “I… do not know… what you are. I’m still… not certain. We seem alike. What are you?”
“You saw what I am.”
“What do you… call yourself?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know.” He lifts both hands to his temples and slowly pushes back his hair. “I was… an orphan. I was raised by humans. For a long time… I thought I was human. Then, when I was young, I changed. One night the moon seemed to burn into me like… like the sun at noon. Like fire. That was when I changed. For the first time. I heard once that… that creatures like us are called Weres. Is that true?”
Tikki nods.
“But we aren’t wolves. Werewolves. We’re tigers.”
“Weretigers.”
“Were… tigers.” He says it like he’s thinking about it, unsure of it, then he looks at her. “You’re the first I’ve ever met.”
Tikki puzzles over all he is saying. If what Raman says is true, his confusion is perfectly justified. What bothers her goes beyond that, involves her own personal conceptions. She must have thought about this before—what she is, what she isn’t—but it’s hard to recall what conclusions, if any, she came to.
For a long time, Tikki believed she was a tigress, one that could assume human form. In recent years, she’s wondered if that could be right. She isn’t just a tiger with paranormal abilities. Neither is she human. She’s Were, a Weretiger, and that’s special, but what does it mean? What should it mean?
Sometimes, her bestial side grows so strong she can hardly think at all. It’s been like that a lot lately. She wonders why.
Raman steps closer, so close their faces are almost touching. “I don’t care… what humans paid me to do,” he says, quietly. “This is more important.”
“What?”
“This,” he says. “Us.”
“Meaning what?”
“I… want you.”
Tikki can see that. She can smell it, taste it. The fact of it fills the air and sends a quick tremor up her back. It’s madness. She knows it but she doesn’t care. Her insides are getting warm, really warm, warm and wet, faster than ever before, more than ever before in her life. Like her body has already decided something that her mind had barely begun to consider. She doesn’t like that. It makes her angry.
She puts her hands to his chest and shoves. Raman staggers back a couple of steps. Nothing changes. He’s still there, looking at her, smelling like he does, and the heat inside her keeps growing. Tikki steps up to him and gives another shove. Again he stumbles back a few more steps. She shoves twice more. He stumbles over the steps leading onto the platform of the bed and abruptly sits, as if about to fall anyway. Tikki stands facing him for a few moments, then straddles his legs and sits on his thighs.
“We do this my way,” she says in a voice like a soft, low snarl.
“Yes,” Raman says. “Your way.”
It’s the only way.
43
The telecom bleeps. Kirkland hits the key to answer, but doesn’t look up from the hard copy on his desk till he hears the quiet, familiar voice, “Hoi, Brad!”
“Hoi, old man.”
The face on the monitor could be that of a forty-year-old, but the curly white hair and dark-ringed eyes more suggest the truth. The man’s name is Dominick J. Rustin. He’s an old friend, a twenty-year cop veteran now retired and enjoying a cushy job with a local security corp. The job comes with fringes like discounts on cosmed surgery. “You ready to put in your papers?”
Kirkland sits back in his chair, lights a cig. “I got a few more things to take care of. How you doing, Dom?”
“Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll have you on our payroll in twenty-four hours.”
Kirkland doesn’t doubt it. “What’s doing?”
“You know the Seven Circles Club, Brad?”
“Naw, I live in Trenton now. I just visit Philly on weekends.”
Rustin grins. “Hey, you’re funny.”
Anyone who’s worked Philly Northeast knows the Seven Circles Club. It’s a devo club, for degenerates, big on sex, chips, drugs, violence—and plenty of it. Every month a handful of straight citizens wander in there to mingle with the lowlife and are never heard from again. Several attempts to shut the place down have been overruled by one of the city’s more infamous judges, a man Kirkland and others suspect to be on somebody’s payroll.
“Anyway,” Rustin says, “the club recently put in sec cams to monitor the action.”
“Is that a fact?”
“I guess they wanna know who’s doing deals on premises. Maybe they’re gonna clean the place up.”
“Sure, Dom. Sure.”
“Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that some decker managed to tap into the lines.”
Kirkland nods rather than waste words. The drek Rustin is feeding him now comes under the heading of covering his ass. His old buddy’s obvio
usly about to feed him some data on the sly. In all likelihood, Rustin heard about the new sec cameras at Seven Circles through some contact, then got some decker who owed him a favor to penetrate the system just to see what might turn up. Once a cop, always a cop. The beauty of it of course is that data turned up by a citizen with no connection to any law enforcement agency is admissible in court, whether obtained legally or not.
“Naturally,” Rustin goes on to say, “straight suit that I am, I figured I better turn the evidence over to you. I believe that tapping into secured lines is still a crime, right?”
“Last I heard.”
“Too bad the perp got away. Anyhow, here’s what I found.”
“Scope it through.”
A window opens in the upper-left corner of Kirkland’s monitor, treating him to an interior view of some dingy nightclub, presumably the Seven Circles Club. The view zooms in on two people sitting in a restaurant-style booth. One is a middle-aged Anglo slag with thinning black hair, well-trimmed beard, and neat black suit. He’s also wearing a pleased smile and has a walking stick propped next to him. Also seated in the booth is a slim female in red and black facepaint and synthleather to match.
The vid freezes. “Recognize anyone?” Rustin says.
“Yeah, maybe,” Kirkland replies.
The vid plays on. The guy in the suit smiles and says, “Any problems?”
Striper, the one in red and black, shakes her head. Kirkland recognized her at once. What amazes him is that his old chum must have, too. Never forget a face. That was always Rustin’s motto. Apparently, it still holds true.
The vid plays on. “Good. Very good,” the suit in the booth remarks. “We’ll have to discuss my next target.”
“Now?” Striper says.
“Well, later perhaps. I have other business just now. You understand.”
“Sure.”
“My Leandra. Or did you have something in mind?”
Striper nods.
“Such as?”
“Competition.”
“Really. Someone’s preparing to move against me?”
“It’s possible.”
“You mean they’ve targeted my principal weapon?”
Striper nods.
“What will you do?”
“Maybe I’ll go on vacation.”
The man smiles, then laughs very loudly.
The vid goes on some more, but Kirkland is no longer listening. He brings up another window, opens his Exotech master file, and quickly scans the images from Exotech Personnel. The pic that catches his eye is that of a guy ID’d as Adam Malik, formerly of the Special Projects Section. Malik survived the fire at Germantown, then dropped out of sight. His personnel pic so closely resembles the image of the guy in the booth at the Seven Circles Club that the phrase “exact match” comes to Kirkland’s mind.
“Brad? You there?” Rustin asks.
“Yeah, I’m here. Who’s the cobber in the booth?”
“No clue, old chum. Just doing my civic duty. Hope it helps. Gotta sign off.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“Lemme know when you put your papers in.”
“Maybe next week.”
Kirkland stores the vid in memory, erases the call, then watches the vid again, enlarged to fill the screen. “Good. Very good,” says the suit. “We’ll have to discuss my next target.”
“Now?”
“Well, later perhaps.” he tells her. “I have other business just now…”
Striper nods and stands up, glances around. Practically every movement she makes brings words like soldier and assassin to Kirkland’s mind. Hands free and empty, posture deceptively casual and loose. She reminds him of another killer, also a woman, one so good at behaving naturally, at blending in, that a young uniformed cop walked right by her without giving her a second look, despite having received her exact description and orders to watch for her only an hour before.
The final few moments of the vid really widen Kirkland’s eyes. Malik is joined in his booth by a group of women, some devastatingly beautiful, others merely hot. All look like redheads. Kirkland stares for several moments, then hurriedly brings up another window. A quick scan of the Exotech files uncovers a pic of one Leandra Forrester, who, unlike Malik, unlike Neiman, Jorge, or Harris, died in the S.P.S. accident up in Germantown. Leandra Forrester is, or rather was, her name. A woman in her mid-thirties, stunning, and a flaming redhead.
Kirkland reverses the vid. “Who will be my Leandra?” Malik asks. Kirkland keys his intercom.
“Get everybody in here!”
“Lieutenant?”
“Now!”
“Yes, sir!”
Two minutes later, nearly every detective assigned to the Exotech case is crowded into Kirkland’s office, along with Captain Henriquez and the lieutenant from Major Cases. Kirkland swings his telecom screen around so all the boys and girls can see. The windows on the screen show Malik and Forrester from their personnel pics as well as the scene at the Seven Circles Club, with Malik, Striper, and the redheads all present.
Kirkland runs the vid.
“Who will be my Leandra?” Malik says.
“Oh, great,” Detective-Sergeant Murphy remarks. “Now we got a grade-A psycho using a pro assassin.”
“What we got,” Kirkland declares, “is motive.”
“You mean, if Adam Malik and Leandra Forrester were sharing bed space,” says Detective Shackleford.
Kirkland nods. “Anybody wanna bet?”
No one does.
44
From the start, it’s more than just sex.
It’s a freight train careening down a mountainside, a meteor screaming down through the atmosphere. Riveting, enthralling. Forces too powerful to control send them hurtling ahead. Once isn’t enough. A dozen times isn’t enough. They’re at it for hours, till they’re drenched in it, till the air around them reeks of it, till the only thing left to breathe is the smell of it, the thousand humid, musky scents, mingled and mixed together till the odors seem born not of two bodies but of one.
Tikki changes, assuming her four-legged form. At the start, she won’t have it any other way; in the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s felt his teeth gripping the back of her neck, his claws pressuring her hide, that she’s met the animal part of him, felt his power. That’s when she begins to grasp what is really happening, it has nothing to do with whether she likes him or he likes her, nothing to do with love or any other romantic idea. It’s something primal and fierce and wholly inexorable, reaching into their animal cores as forcefully as the moon, and yet also grazing their higher natures, their minds, their emotions, till they feel almost welded together, two halves of a single creature.
“Nothing hurts you,” Raman murmurs.
“Hurts me?” Tikki looks back over her shoulder at him, then stretches out on her side again. A faint smile slowly curves her lips. It feels too good to hurt.
Softly, she laughs.
As the hours wear on it goes from rough to gentle to almost tender. After one particularly satisfying bout, she pounds her hand against his chest, and he takes her hand, opens it, draws it around to his back, drawing her close. She snarls softly into his face. He covers her lips with his mouth. To her surprise, she doesn’t mind the closeness, the cuddling. Usually, she likes her space after sex, from the moment the male slips out. Now, though, with this one, this male, Raman, everything is changed. Tikki isn’t sure if that’s good or bad, but there’s no denying the fact.
She’s half asleep when a strange scent brings her suddenly wide-awake. She’s been breathing it for who knows how long, maybe only seconds, maybe minutes, before she realized how starkly the odor clashed with every other scent in the air. Instinct shouts at her so loudly she jerks, thrusts herself up, lunges across the mattress for the Kang, but the gun flies from her grip even as her fingers close around it.
Then it’s too late.
Standing a few steps away is a human female. She has an extr
avagant mane of blonde hair, but her features are delicate, refined. She holds a long black cloak tightly about her body and wears boots with impossibly high heels. Her expression hints of wry amusement.
Tikki exerts herself to maintain a facade of perfect self-assurance. “Give me my gun.”
The female smiles, a smug look. “You have no need of it at present.”
Tikki struggles to control her emotions. Fear and outrage battle for supremacy. The female smells of herbs and potions, like a magician—whether mage or shaman, it makes no difference. Either means trouble. Tikki glances quickly at Raman, whose face shows displeasure.
“Her name is Eliana,” Raman tells her. “We have worked together. I did not expect her here.”
“That’s quite true,” Eliana remarks.
Tikki smells nothing of lies.
“What are you doing here?” Raman asks the magician.
“You need my help,” Eliana says.
Raman hesitates, looking surprised, then says, “I do not think so.”
“You are wrong.”
Abruptly, Eliana tosses her cloak back from her right shoulder and thrusts out her right hand, fingers curled like claws. Tikki reacts instinctively, jerking away, banging back bodily against the wall. Eliana smiles and murmurs something under her breath. What happens then is so strange that Tikki goes rigid with alarm. What happens could only be magic.
The entire character of the room instantly changes, as if transformed from a full-color pic into a holographic negative of black and white. The bed, the low platform under it, the plastic plants, practically everything in the room and the very substance of the room itself become somehow insubstantial, as if mere illusions, ghosts of solid objects in a strange, deceiving dream. Eliana changes too. She becomes a figure of radiant white against a background of darkness. Her face takes on the features of a strange, ethereal cat. The hand she holds extended becomes like a paw. Traceries of a white even more brilliant than her form coil around her neck and arm, pulsing, flowing, seething to and fro like a thing alive.
[Shadowrun 11] - Striper Assassin Page 27