A Blood of Killers

by Gerard Houarner

  I’m listening for the dead. Even the ones who don’t know yet they’re dead, like those kids, like my father, like me. I hear their stories and I give them a voice, pass them along.

  Do you want to hear them?

  Or do you have a story to tell me?

  THROUGH LOVE’S SIGHT

  While the cocktail party droned on in the living room, laughter and glasses tinkling like a shower of broken glass, Max stood in the narrow kitchen holding a bottle of 1979 Chateauneuf du Pape as if it was a Molotov cocktail, checking the street below.

  A taxi had lingered perhaps too long discharging a passenger across the street. The homeless man had moved down another boutique storefront last night, and was setting up his bivouac once more now that the shops had closed and the foot traffic had moved to the corners and the avenue where most of the restaurants remained opened. The apartment windows across the street were dark, for the third night. No one ever seemed to be home.

  His ears burned and his forehead itched under the steady gaze of their blank panes, as if laser sights pierced their midnight depths to paint his skull the color of his death.

  The Beast writhed in torment under his restraint.

  They were all signs he could read but not understand. According to the mission profile, there were no active countermeasures in place around his target. Transparency was his intended victim’s choice of defense. Finding the target and getting close enough for a kill had been the challenge, and not much of one, in his initial estimation.

  He’d tried, but failed. The hunting ground was unfamiliar. He was used to rough terrain, veteran guards, reluctant informants. He hadn’t been able to handle his target’s territory, which required the camouflage of a well-tailored suit, civilized small-talk, and a false sense of humility toward one’s sense of self-importance. His prey had remained invisible among the herds of lawyers, doctors, executives, politicians and clergy.

  Mr. Jung had accepted the report of his initial failure calmly and pointed out the need for a guide. There had been no choice but to take on their informant and the target’s ex-lover, Amanda, as a partner. Just as there had been no options for Max in assuming the provocative public identity as her lover. Mr. Jung had made that clear.

  The mission parameters had been broadened to lure the prey out of hiding. Like fire, ex-lovers were unstable, but they did burn off cover and flush out secrets.

  Max didn’t hide behind false faces. He rarely took on partners. They almost never survived, and those who did, knew how to stay out of his way.

  Amanda didn’t know any better. She reveled in her place between Max and the target. She refused to believe she could never endure Max long enough to be mistaken for a lover.

  Like everyone else, she didn’t know about the Beast. And unlike some, she couldn’t sense that inner, raging entity. Or perhaps, she was drawn to that secret self like moth to flame.

  Max had never let that type last long enough around him to find out what they were really like.

  Mr. Jung was not concerned with Amanda. He only wanted the target terminated.

  “Max, how are you coming along with the wine?” Amanda called from the dining room. Were the guests growing restless? Should he throw them a bone? Or carve their flesh down to the marrow?

  What was he doing here?

  The Beast screeched with a need to swoop down on Amanda, render her flesh, consume her organs. Its claws—his hands—curled and tightened, as if sinking talons into flesh, and he nearly dropped the bottle of wine.

  It was true that through her, Max was closing in. The target was stirring in the undergrowth, according to other sources. Amanda had heard through the grapevine of their shared associates that he was curious about her new friend. Her conquest, as some put it. Max had noted their names for future reference.

  The cover of ex-military did serve Max well, despite his reservations about tipping his hand to the target, and he’d managed to cultivate a measure of popularity with carefully edited tales of his exploits. He’d been surprised how easily death, when properly managed, could become a social calling card.

  Amanda had steered him through the treacherous interpersonal minefields of too many anecdotal details, too much intensity in voice, expression, gestures. The eyes, she’d warned, needed fixing and she’d taken him to have his eyebrows trimmed. While he was at the salon she’d had his fingernails polished. The filing had dulled the edge he liked to keep on them. Now, everyone in her circle wanted to meet Max. Even, perhaps, the elusive target himself. No one seemed to suspect he was a killer.

  Max had come a long way from his raw Calcutta youth.

  But both he and the Beast were tired of the hunt. It was one thing to lay among the dead in a pit waiting for a targeted officer to appear to inspect the slaughter before rising from the bed of corpses to kill the man, and quite another to cover himself in the silken delicacy of refined tastes and polished manners for the opportunity of a single instant of terror and death.

  No more than an instant, he’d been warned. No time for even a taste of blood. The truth was plain enough. In these elite and powerful circles, a predator had no time to linger over a kill.

  All the work for so little reward: his fee; the good graces of his protectors and employers; and the opportunity to indulge himself, after the mission.

  He was bored. Tired of pacing off the limits of the tiny cage in which he’d been placed, weak from restraining himself for so long, and from not feeding the rage.

  And then there were the signs warning Max he was walking into an ambush.

  He couldn’t help gazing into those darkened windows across the street and feel someone staring back at him. Prey, thinking it was a hunter.

  The Beast pounded on the bars of its prison—his ribs and breastbone—desperate to savage its invisible tormentors behind the glass, blinds and curtains.

  There were always signs. Every living thing was bait for a trap.

  Civilization was an endless maze capturing and deceiving all who strayed into its grasp, transforming hunter into quarry with laws, contracts, the promise of intangible rewards, the allure of emotional bonds. Civilization was a hunter wearing the skin of prey so it could consume all in its path. Max understood that when he chose to live in its territory, he was no match for civilization’s power. There were simpler places in which to subsist: the wilderness; war zones; the vast, teeming ghettoes and shanty towns; the crumbling bastions of old warlords filled with the echoes of their death cries; the shadows of gleaming towers rising with the promise of order in places where no one noticed the blood running in the street gutters.

  But he’d been told he could do more than subsist, if only he could learn to hunt by a few simple rules. And the temptation of new and more satisfying prey had sharpened his appetites and drawn him deeper into civilizations’ heart.

  Where targets, just like so-called civilization, hunted in their own way, driven by their own peculiar beasts with alien hungers aching to be satisfied.

  He’d survived both civilization and dangerous prey for as long as he had because he paid attention to signs. He’d learned to respect needs and emotions he could not understand, and the value of disguises, feints, blinds, lures. Mr. Jung had insisted.

  The Beast preferred honest methods. It was a creature of predatory instincts.

  Every one of Max’s and the Beast’s finely honed senses and instincts warned him something was wrong.

  A flurry of laughter floated out of the living room like feathers from a downed bird.

  The danger wasn’t across the street. The real threat was closer. Already here.

  Amanda. If she’d switched sides, his quarry might be sipping wine in the living room and he’d never know. The target’s vague description had guaranteed Amanda’s value to Max’s employers. But there was no way to certify her loyalty. She’d been accepted as a possible asset when she volunteered her services by presenting herself as a jilted lover, one of a dozen sources and entry points into the target’s lif
e. But once she’d been designated as the primary gateway, her mother and sister had been taken hostage as a guarantee against betrayal.

  Everyone knew that in the service of love there was no such thing as loyalty. Even Max could calculate an end game in which Amanda had Max kill a reasonable facsimile of the target, with DNA confirmation, and then arrange for him to catch a stray bullet, a forgotten booby trap, and meet with a mission-related death.

  Mr. Jung’s employers would have no choice but to believe her version of what had happened, as long as they also trusted the evidence of the target’s death. And Amanda could return to her lover thinking he would be devoted to her, since his life was in her hands.

  Love might have blinded her to the possibility that the target would then be free to kill her so he could sink even deeper into the ranks of the anonymous.

  It would have been simpler to walk into the next room and kill everyone.

  No. He’d learned that lesson.

  He closed the window, lowered the blinds. Imagined the knots of men and women on the other side of the kitchen wall, just a few feet away, the strings of their conversations gathered into nonsensical tangles choking off meaning, substance, truth.

  They were all going to die, sooner or later. That was the only thing that mattered. They weren’t even listening to the music Amanda had put on in the background. Keith Jarrett a few minutes ago. Ahmad Jamal now. She preferred jazz piano. But no one cared, everyone was busy talking. Being civilized.

  The Beast howled its disdain and raked the soft pulp beneath the bone of Max’s temples for getting them involved in this charade. It preferred the frantic amplified screams and looping electronic feedback they sometimes found in large clubs and theaters, good hunting ground for stunned prey.

  Max didn’t care for music.

  But music was not the issue. It was another veil he had to wear over his predatory nature that chafed his spirit, wore away at his fragile patience and self-control, an irritant as debilitating as civilization. He was more than what he seemed or was allowed to be.

  And while it was true that the skills in subtlety and subterfuge Mr. Jung had forced him learn made him a far better hunter, wearing the skin of prey was draining, an unending siege against his nature, appetites, and the Beast.

  There were moments when he had to shut his eyes against blinding headaches, or swallow the Beast’s rage and spit up blood, just to take a breath of air. More than once he’d gone to the park in the middle of the night and joined the Beast in a harsh and ragged scream that barely expressed, but never released, the pain that was the price for keeping the company of cultivated angels.

  If his interrogators at Tuol Sleng or Bangui had been as skillful at discovering the fault lines of his nature, they might have broken him. Max let himself smile slightly at that last thought. He had allowed himself a joke. Of course, they could never have reached that deeply into him. Those torturers had been crude and brutal, and their efforts had only served to whet his appetite.

  Amanda had been working with him on developing a sense of humor with which to charm her guests, but had not yet let him make his quips to others. At least, on occasion, he could amuse himself. And she laughed when he sometimes shared his observations. Though it hardly seemed worth the effort. She laughed at everything he said.

  The Beast snapped at his wandering thoughts, his emotional outburst. It understood only hunger and rage. It wanted blood and suffering.

  Max fought the urge to gnaw the flesh from his knuckles.

  Mr. Jung had told him to use his head. Use the tricks he’d learned to survive and become a better killer. Listen to Amanda.

  Think.

  “Max, are you hiding in the kitchen?” Amanda asked, standing in the doorway. She beamed at him in her little black cocktail dress, lips wet, curls of auburn hair dangling across her forehead. Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at him, as if passing him through the filters of her need until all that was left of him was what she wanted. She’d kicked off her shoes, a clockwork signal for the guests that the time for formalities was over.

  He could have eaten her up where she stood.

  The doors to her bedroom and bathroom closed. Guests had claimed those provinces for private passion.

  He hated this part of the night. The Beast wanted to join in the games, help the players find new amusements. So did he. But it was also the time when his prey might surface and he had to be ready.

  Signs. It was almost as if he was deliberately being distracted.

  What did she want from him?

  Someone out of sight touched her elbow, drew her attention away from him. Max’s heart jumped with excitement. But no, nothing, just more small talk. She winked at him, then gave her unseen suitor a sprinkle of laughter while keeping her hand firmly on top of his forearm.

  He’d never been good at thinking. Mr. Jung should have known better than to expect so much from him. Someone else should have been assigned to the job. Perhaps no one else had been available. That was the usual excuse. Or maybe the man simply didn’t care, preferring to reshape the available tool when the required instrument was not available.

  If he could think, he wouldn’t be taking orders from Mr. Jung. He’d be giving them.

  Amanda’s splash of laughter as she pushed her unwanted suitor away provoked the Beast. His cock hardened as he watched the fabric of her dress stretch between her thighs. Yes, she was ready for him.

  The target.

  His head throbbed, pincers squeezed the muscles of his neck and back. His eyes ached and his chest felt as if a spike had been driven up through his ribs, its dull, rusty tip emerging through the left shoulder blade. All he needed to do was give to her to the Beast. Of course, she’d never survive. That wasn’t the problem.

  Without her, he’d never reach the target.

  It was one of those assignments.

  “Oh, that bottle’s much too young for these hooligans,” Amanda said, walking up to him and taking away the bottle.

  “Someone asked for it.”

  “They were just testing you, dear. Trying to see if you knew anything about wines.”

  “I don’t like being tested.”

  Amanda replaced the bottle in the rack, picked out another. Her hips and shoulders shifted as she turned, head bowed, to face him, and as she offered him the wine to open, she whispered, “Please die, my love.” Her lips curled around the last word as he took the bottle from her, fingers lingering over his, her skin hot, almost sticky, as if their flesh was meant to melt and merge into one.

  “I know you’re not talking to me,” Max said, leaning back on the window sill, daring the bullets to shatter the window and his spine. Of course, both window and spine remained intact.

  The Beast convulsed under her touch, setting off waves of nausea.

  “Why? Because I wouldn’t want you dead?” she asked. She snatched the bottle from his hands suddenly, as if daring him to keep it from her. Pulling a cork screw from a drawer, she devoted her attention to inserting the instrument into the stopper with surgical precision, the tip of her tongue protruding from between her teeth with the effort.

  “At least not until the job’s finished,” Max said, keeping his hands loose at his sides. “You wouldn’t get your reward, your vengeance, or your family back. But mostly because you’d never call me ‘love’ in private.”

  “I think you want me dead,” she said.

  “You’re not the target.”

  “So you love your target more than me?”

  “I don’t love anyone or anything,” Max said. And then, because he was trying to be human in the company he was forced to keep so Amanda would lead him to the objective, he added, “But I could learn to love you, for a very short while.” The Beast gagged on the word and made him pay for the blasphemy.

  “I’d rather be dead than live without you.” She put the bottle between her thighs, looking up at him from a crouched position. “When you have me you’ll die.”

  “I’d rather
you die than not have you.” She pulled the cork in one quick, smooth motion, showing him surprising strength.

  She still wouldn’t last long. “You won’t be that lucky.”

  She shook her head, even blushed. “I don’t know why they say the things they do about you. You’re so different.”

  “Not different. I’m only myself. Completely.”

  “Yes.” She set two glasses on the counter top. “I know. That’s why I love you, Max. That’s why I wish you’d show me all that you are, rather than hold back.”

  Think. The mission. The safety of both himself and the Beast. He could do whatever he wanted, once the operation was completed.

  All that he was didn’t matter. Not to her. To anyone. All that he was belonged to the Beast, and it shared him with no one. “Do you really want me dead?” he asked, watching her carefully, looking for signs.

  She put the bottle down, leaving the glasses empty, and braced herself against the counter. Someone popped their head through the doorway, but quickly retreated. A ripple of laughter passed through the party. “It hurts too much to love you. And I don’t want to lose you to whoever you’re saving yourself for. I’d kill her if I ever found out who she was.”

  The Beast didn’t need her goading, and neither did Max.

  “I’d kill you if I thought you’d have anyone else after me,” she said.

  Max felt the game they were playing leading them down a different road than the one he needed to be on. “Amanda, are you delaying the job so we’re forced to spend more time together?”