Touch of the White Tiger

by Julie Beard

  “Brad!” Out of my mouth, his name was a four-letter curse word. Already he’d broken our agreement. I rammed my elbow back in a blind attempt to sock his gonads.

  Apparently anticipating this, he caught my elbow, kissed me where he’d pretended to draw blood, chuckled and sauntered over to the empty seats on the other side of the aisle.

  With Keshon, his familiar at his side, Brad slouched into a chair, thrust his hands in his skintight jeans, spread his knees wide and tossed his head back to listen to the proceedings with a bored expression. I wasn’t sure if his eyes were even open behind his too-cool sunglasses until he caught me staring and waved.

  I turned my head forward, pretending not to notice.

  “I’ve been in the retribution business for nearly thirty years,” Mickey began, rubbing his hands together in the spotlight. “This is the worst I have ever seen it. You all know about Roy.”

  At the mention of Roy, someone began to cry. It was something I’d never heard from a CRS before, and it gave me goose bumps. It was easy to be hard and fearless when you weren’t confronted with the realities of death. But Roy and Getty had shown us just how high the stakes were in this game we played.

  “I’ve been in touch with Connie Leibman. She gave me information on Roy’s funeral arrangements, which I’ll pass out at the end of the meeting. Obviously, we’re all devastated by Roy’s death. Unfortunately, I have more bad news. Some of you may not have heard about Getty Bellows.”

  “What happened to Getty?” Kent called out.

  In a somber voice, Mickey shared the details, then said, “I’m going to ask Angel Baker to come up here and talk to us, since she’s obviously involved in both these tragedies. We all know that Angel has been set up. Now it’s time to figure out how we’re going to find out who is responsible. But before I do, I want to talk a little about what we do, and why we do it.”

  I looked around and saw that everyone listened with rapt attention. I think we all needed a pep talk.

  “To be a retributionist, you have to have a lot of heart. You put your life on the line every day just to make sure that crime victims receive some sort of justice, whether it’s just an apology or some kind of payback. To that end, you have to be a little fearless.

  “The burnout rate in our job is high. Some lose their courage. Some come to realize they enjoy scaring the hell out of people just a little too much. Still others become discouraged because no matter how many of us there are, we’re never going to conquer man’s inhumanity to man.”

  A few heads nodded as we absorbed Mickey’s words of wisdom.

  “Now, some of you were pumped up recently when Judge Gibson started issuing execution warrants on ROVOR cases. Suddenly, you discovered we could prevent crimes against the innocent, not just react to crimes already committed. The Gibson Warrants increased our effectiveness, but they also raised our public profile. Where once we were considered a small band of vigilantes, distantly admired by the average citizen and barely tolerated by the police, we suddenly became assassins in the eyes of a lot of folks.”

  That was true. Judge Gibson’s new unilateral policy had sent shockwaves through the entire city and thrust retributionists further into the limelight. Disgusted with all the restraining order violators, or ROVORs, who were murdering their stalking victims, Gibson started giving out warrants enabling retributionists to kill any ROVOR caught on a repeat order violation. The power to legally kill excited some retributionists who saw it as the only way to protect ROVOR victims. I, personally, was troubled by the idea.

  “So what?” Tory called out as she rose from her seat, tossing back her curly blond hair. “I would never use a warrant, but I applaud those who do, if it saves the life of an abuse victim.”

  There was a grumble of agreement. Mickey held up his hands to quiet the group. “I know some of you feel that way, and I’m not taking a firm stance. I’m just saying that it might be significant that these murders happened after we started crossing the line between seeking justice for crimes already committed and killing in order to prevent them.”

  Mae stood up and thrust out her rolling hip, planting her arms akimbo. Her boa twisted around her neck, finding a more comfortable position, its forked tongue darting now and then. “Listen here, big boy, you’ve got it all wrong. That’s like blaming a rape victim for wearing a pretty dress.”

  “No, no, Mae,” Mickey countered, shaking his head, “you misunderstood me. Look, we can debate philosophies some other time. Right now we have to figure out what’s going on and protect ourselves. Angel, why don’t you come up here and tell us what you know.”

  I walked up the aisle to the podium with as much enthusiasm as if I were walking the plank.

  “First, let me say I am so sorry to all of you for the passing of Roy and Getty.” I paused to swallow the dull ache in my throat. “I know many of you cared for them, as I did. I wish I could have prevented their deaths, but I still don’t even understand what we’re dealing with here. One thing is clear, we have to work together if we’re going to prevent any more deaths, because I’m convinced that we, as retributionists, are being targeted in a well-funded, high-powered conspiracy that may go to the very top echelons of the city government.”

  Exclamations of disbelief and anger broke the crowd’s silence. When they returned their attention to me, I continued.

  “I took the liberty of inviting Brad the Impaler to this meeting. Many of you know him from New Orleans. Brad, would you stand up, please?”

  He did so like a reluctant movie star caught unawares at the New Cannes Cyber Film Festival. He nodded and flashed his fanged smile, then slouched back in his seat. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.

  “Brad has graciously offered to help us get to the bottom of this problem, which unquestionably threatens the entire profession. Hopefully, as an outsider, he’ll be able to offer us a different perspective.”

  I went on to share some of the details of both murder cases that hadn’t been mentioned in the press. We debated various scenarios and ideas. At one point or another during our impromptu brainstorming session, just about everyone present offered to help me with my investigation, either by doing legwork themselves or by loaning out their private investigators.

  “So we’re all in agreement,” I said in conclusion, “that we can’t rely on homicide detectives to get to the bottom of this.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” one of the DCR guys replied, then laughed like he was high on something other than life.

  I smiled. “So, we have a game plan. We need to—”

  A retributionist I didn’t recognize called out from the back of the studio, “Hey, the media has arrived, everybody.”

  “Great,” I muttered to myself, then said to Mickey, “I guess it was inevitable.”

  “Our meetings aren’t exactly like conventions of the Milk Toast Society,” he said with a rumbling laugh. “We tend to attract attention wherever we go en masse. I’ll go talk to them.”

  “Brad’s talking to the TV stations now,” the messenger in the back added.

  I shared a speculative look with Mickey. “Maybe that’s why he offered to help,” I said. “Brad can’t resist the limelight. You think?”

  Before Mickey could answer, another person burst in, violently shoving aside the messenger. I recognized him immediately and gripped Mickey’s arm.

  “What’s the matter, Angel? You know this guy?”

  I nodded in slow motion. “Oh, yeah. That’s Cyclops.”

  Chapter 15

  Wait until Dark

  “‘Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York!’” Cy shouted from the back of the hall. “‘And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried! You do me wrong and I will not endure it!’”

  Cy’s melodramatic declaration was followed by absolute and complete silence. Dressed as he was in a relatively normal pullover cotton jacket, with his scarred, bald head tucked under the hoo
d, no one else recognized him, even though several of the more experienced retributionists had run into him on visits to Emerald City.

  “Angel Baker!” Cy shouted. “You have ruined my life, and now I’m going to ruin yours.”

  With that simple declaration, he left. The door hadn’t even banged closed behind him when I took off, racing down the main aisle, ignoring the questions and suggestions coming from my confused colleagues.

  “Don’t you run away!” I shouted after him. “Cy! Get back in here!”

  I shoved the doors open, stunning the reporters crowded around Brad on the sidewalk. I saw Cy disappear around the corner of the building and tore after him.

  “Keshon, go!” Brad commanded his wolf.

  I hesitated only a moment when I reached the edge of the building and realized that Cy had run into a pitch-black maze of construction scaffolding. It filled a neighboring site that had apparently been entirely gutted for remodeling. In the dark, my blind opponent would definitely have the advantage.

  Keshon loped to my side and looked up at me, as if to say “Come on, I’ll lead the way.” When he trotted in the building, I followed.

  I kept a hand on the wolf’s back, trusting it entirely to lead me somewhere. Anywhere. Filled with sawdust, broken plaster and bird dung, the air was dark, suffocating and hot. Sweat soon drenched my clothing, partly from the stifling heat, but also from nerves. It was nice of Brad to send in his alter identity, but it would be even nicer if he had volunteered to follow us in.

  I had to believe the wolf was working on some kind of scent, because he took a series of abrupt turns that I would otherwise have never even known existed. If Cy was still in the building, he had chosen not to reveal himself. I heard nothing but my own steps. We finally stopped when we reached the back end of the building.

  “That clever little devil,” I muttered, squatting and looking out of an old air shaft that opened to the light of day. The scent of freshly cut grass was a welcome reprieve for my clogged lungs. “He’s gone, Keshon. He must have crawled out just before we got here. But thanks anyway.”

  I didn’t expect the wolf to respond, and certainly not with an ominous growl. I stood slowly, trying not to look frightened, and glanced down to see if the wolf was getting ready to attack me. What I saw scared me even more than I already was. Keshon’s gray, narrow snout, snarling with her innate need to viciously tear apart the enemy, pointed to someone, or something, in the darkness. She’d dropped her shoulders, preparing to pounce.

  “Who’s there?” I called out. No response. “Show yourself!”

  And he did. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even see my own hand in front of my face. And I certainly didn’t see the fist, dense as a brick, that plowed into my right eye.

  “Ah!” I cried out as I staggered back, knocking my head hard against a bare concrete wall. If it was possible to see black in pitch blackness, I saw it as consciousness started to fade. No! I commanded myself. If I didn’t win this fight I’d be dead. I could tell by the savageness of the blow. It suddenly occurred to me that Cy was just the bait. I’d chased him into a trap.

  As I doubled over and wretched from a combination of pain and disequilibrium, I heard Keshon snarl, snap and growl. She’d finally found her enemy. Clothing ripped. A man gave a deep-chested curse of outrage, then a howl of pain. Scaffolding rattled as man and beast flailed. I grabbed a cool metal bar and hung on, determined not to pass out.

  After a moment that seemed suspended in time, I finally recovered, blinking in the darkness to see if Keshon was winning or losing. When they fell in an embattled embrace in front of the air vent, I could finally see what I was up against.

  A Shadowman. His stringy, shoulder-length hair fell around shoulders so broad and scantily clad that he could have starred in the old Hercules movies. He had a radio face, though, I noticed when he twisted his head next to the vent, trying to keep Keshon’s snapping teeth away from his throat. Someone had smashed his nose nearly as flat as a pancake. Scars mottled his cheeks. He was missing a few teeth.

  In an instant I surmised what an interrogation would later reveal. This was one of the Shadowmen who had been on Cy’s payroll, helping him run his underground prison. Normally these inarticulate, rat-eating, jack-booted thugs lived with an underground gang, but occasionally a freelance contract brought them aboveground.

  In one monumental show of strength, my would-be assassin threw the wolf through the air. I heard it land with a sickening thud and a whimper in the distance. Then he grabbed my ankle, yanking me down onto the concrete floor.

  I cursed and twisted out of his grip. It was time to use all the techniques that I’d learned from my wushu mentor. The only problem was that I couldn’t judge distance in the dark. My opponent was used to working in shadows, as his gang’s name implied.

  Mike might have been able to beat him by going into some zen trance, anticipating his moves on some unspoken, unseen level. I couldn’t quite get my act together. I kicked into the darkness where I’d last seen him but there was only air.

  The thug grabbed my ankle again, lifting me up. I slammed down on my back, banging my head. I heard a scraping noise that sounded ominously like the spikes of a medieval-style cudgel dragging along the concrete floor. If it was hard for this powerful brute to pick up, it would be a thick steel ball that could crush my skull with one blow. I’d seen them in Cy’s cave prison.

  I rolled hard to the right, but before I could flip up into the air, a boot stomped down on my solar plexus, knocking the wind out of me, pinning me like a live butterfly to a hobby board.

  “Die, bitch!”

  Finally, my own zenlike senses had kicked into high gear. I knew without seeing that he had raised the cudgel over his head and was about to hammer it down onto my head, making mincemeat of my brain.

  Suddenly, Keshon’s growl cut through the air. I never thought I’d be happy to hear a wolf about to attack. When she did, the Shadowman rasped in pain. The cudgel thudded to the floor. I squirmed out from under his foot and tackled his legs.

  He struggled to keep the wolf from his throat. I should have had the advantage, but this guy was one determined son of a bitch, and his survival instincts were far more honed than his intellect. He’d been inbred to brutal perfection. He threw off the wolf for a second time, then peeled my arms from around his legs and began to fling me around like a doll, up against a steel support beam, a stack of wooden pallets, then into the back wall, which was mercifully made of wood.

  He’s going to kill me, I thought. It was a quiet, certain notion. Oddly, it didn’t bother me as much as the idea of disappointing Mike. He would want me to win this fight. I couldn’t give in now. If only Brad would come. I needed help.

  As soon as the words formed in my mind, a light swarmed into my bleary sight, suspended in the air, growing stronger as it neared.

  “Stop!” a theatrical voice commanded. “Let her go!”

  “Brad!” I called out. Thank God.

  “Keshon, hold!” he thundered in an impressive voice. The wolf released its hold on the remarkably resilient Shadowman and trotted to its master’s side. The Shadowman let go of my arm, and I fell to the floor in a puddle of bloody scrapes and aching bruises.

  “Who are you?” asked my attacker.

  Confusion and awe softened his guttural voice. I was impressed myself. I’d never seen Brad in action. His cape shone with dozens of little lights that I had assumed were only sequins. He was as bright as a walking used-car sign. Not only did his illuminated cape enable him to see us, the light cast long shadows on his face. With his hair spiked straight up, his pale skin eerily aglow, and his pointy eyeteeth bared, he looked like Dracula. The slack-jawed Shadowman apparently agreed. Sort of.

  “Are you Frankenstein?” His slow, choppy cadence made him sound like Bela Lugosi in the eponymous movie’s title role.

  Brad’s lips twisted with disdain. What an idiot, he would be thinking. Some people were just too stupid to scare. Then again, Shadowmen
barely qualified as people.

  “I am Brad the Impaler,” he said ominously, “but you may call me Dracula. Now, be a good shit-for-brains and back up to the wall behind you, very slowly.”

  I could almost see the wheels churning, ever so slowly, behind the Shadowman’s overhanging forehead. His confusion transmogrified to manly belligerence.

  “Fuck!” he shouted without finesse, leaving us to wonder which of the roughly twenty-seven different meanings of the word he was using.

  “That’s cool,” Brad said, raising a miniature crossbow from the folds of his cape. “I have just the right implement. Where do you want it?”

  The Shadowman and I both gaped at the vicious little device. It consisted of a steel bow and metal arrow mounted perpendicularly on a sophisticated and, doubtless, powerful firing mechanism, all of which was strapped onto Brad’s forearm. The trigger was mounted below the weapon on a pistollike grip that fit snugly in his hand.

  “If I give up,” the thug said, “you won’t kill me?”

  “Aw, man,” Brad moaned, shaking his head. “You gonna give up that easy? And I wanted to rip this baby straight through your heart.”

  The Shadowman didn’t quite know how to respond. Showing more good judgment than I’d given him credit for, he raised his arms in surrender and backed up to the wooden wall, as Brad had instructed.

  “Very good,” Brad said as if to a dog in an obedience class. “Back up a little more. Keep your hands above your head. That’s right. Back up just a tad more and…perfect!”

  Brad raised the crossbow with swift precision and fired. The arrow whistled through the air and thwomped into the Shadowman’s right palm, nailing his hand to the wall.

  “Ahhh!” the big thug shrieked, looking at his crucified limb in horror, then regarding Brad as if he were Judas. “You said—”