“Then stop pissing yourself and tell me.”
Douglas swore under his breath.
“He...he’s the head of the Syndicate, one of them, anyway.”
Alice allowed herself a little grin. For months, she’d been wearing him down, trying to get the names of the last two leaders. Now, finally, she had one.
But Phantasm can’t be the man’s real name.
“Who is he, really?”
Douglas shook his bald head. “You have no idea what you’re opening up. There’s no stopping him. If you get in his way, Phantasm will destroy you.”
“I’m not afraid of death.”
He laughed.
“Oh really, you so eager to leave this world? But even if you’re telling the truth, that’s not what I’m talking about. He’ll make you suffer first, in ways you hadn’t thought of. He’ll destroy what you love, who you love. He’ll tear your life apart, and when you’ve got nothing left, then he’ll either kill you or convert you. Either way, he wins. He always wins.”
Alice had to admit that seeing Douglas scared out of his wits was a sobering experience. Her instincts started to war with her desire to finish the Syndicate once and for all. What if there was some truth to this? What if a more careful tread was necessary?
But then she remembered how much she, Lionel, and Marco had already done. The men they’d brought to justice, the feeling of right and good that coursed through her every time they won the day.
We can do this. We can end the Syndicate, he’s just trying to protect his boss.
“I’ll find out one way or another,” she said. “And if you want to keep having these lovely little chats, you’ll tell me what I want to know, starting with who Phantasm is and where to find him.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. No one knows Phantasm’s real name.”
Alice felt a little deflated at that.
“Alright then, what about the second in command? Who is he?”
“I already told you,” he said, his hands clasping and unclasping. “I can’t give you that information.”
“Why not? Because you don’t have it?”
“No, because of what would happen.”
“What would happen?” she asked.
He shook his round head and looked away.
“The second in command keeps Phantasm in check, somehow. Last I heard they had something over each other, a kind of mutually assured destruction, if you will. But, if you take the second out, then whatever he has over Phantasm goes off and...well, nothing stops him from doing whatever he wants.”
“Which is what?”
“I don’t know, none of us do. But it’s big, we know that.”
Alice felt frustration well up inside of her. She was so close!
She narrowed her eyes, studying Douglas. His shoulders were slumped and his small eyes were fixed on his calloused hands.
Every visit he’d been confident to the point of cocky. He’d had all the power and knew it.
But he didn’t expect me to come in with that name. It’s now or never.
Alice leaned forward, closer to Douglas than she’d ever dared. Her stare bore into him and, after a moment, he looked up.
“I will find out what I want to know. One way or another. I found out about Phantasm, and I won’t stop until I know who he is. So, tell me what I want to know, or not. Either way, I’ll take the Syndicate down, eventually. And you’ll become obsolete.”
Douglas breathed out an obscenity and stared at the wall, the scar on his forehead deepening with his frown. Finally, he looked back at Alice.
“Alright I’ll tell you who the second one is.”
“Just like that?”
“You’re right. You’d find out eventually, and this way I can keep you from making a mess and stumbling into worse things in the process.”
“How sweet, you’re trying to protect me.”
A half-smile appeared on his fat lips.
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
Alice stared at him, trying to see if there was any sincerity under the sarcasm.
“Well then, talk.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Marco’s brow was wrinkled with thought as he asked, “You’re sure about this?”
Alice nodded. “If you’d seen him, you’d know he was telling me the truth.”
“Percy Marsh?” Lionel’s voice was bright with shock and excitement. “The crime boss? The man that no police officer or federal agent has been able to make anything stick to? That Percy Marsh?”
“He’s the second-in-command of the Syndicate?” Marco asked.
“Apparently.”
Lionel turned away, hands running over his hair. When he turned back to Alice his eyes were gleaming, a wide grin on his beautiful face. “This is going to be amazing!”
“And extremely difficult,” Marco said. “He’s like a ghost. There’s barely a person alive who’s actually seen the man in the last ten years.”
“Douglas said that he likes to have dinner once a week at a Chinese restaurant in northern Jet City, a little hole-in-the-wall place that shuts down for him. The dinner is as much business as pleasure, since that’s where his accountant keeps his very cooked books.”
“So, we go in, get him, and the accountant. The police have evidence to actually convict him,” Lionel said.
Alice nodded, unable to hold back her own grin.
“That’s the idea. The challenge is that everyone in that place will be heavily armed, including the wait staff, the chef — even the owner is one of Percy’s men. They are all there to guard him.”
“We can bring Garrick in, some police reinforcements could really help,” Lionel said.
“And it would grease the wheels a bit,” Alice said.
Marco was the only one not smiling. His frown had deepened, fingertips rubbing his lips absently.
“What is it?” Lionel asked.
“After all this time rebuffing you,” Marco said, looking at Alice. “Now, he gives you the information. It just makes me wonder if you haven’t been right this whole time, that someone is pulling our strings to do what they want, even if it’s against a group of criminals.”
Alice took a deep breath.
“He did make a comment about us continuing to clean up messes. It made me think the same thing, but his hesitation about Percy makes me think this is outside whatever orders he’s been given so far.”
“And the warning he gave you?”
“I don’t know,” Alice admitted. “It gives me some pause, but I don’t see how we can pass this up.”
“Maybe we should wait, just to find out a little more about this Phantasm.”
“No way,” Lionel said. “Percy runs half the drugs in this town and the police think that he could be behind Fantasy. That alone makes this worth it.”
“And if it does unleash this other threat?” Marco asked.
“Then we deal with it,” Lionel grinned. “It’s what we do.”
Marco sighed. “Alright. What’s the plan?”
Alice’s body hummed with energy, a now-familiar sensation that preceded every mission. She crouched on the roof top of an apartment building that sat a few buildings down and across the street from the small restaurant. Alice took a deep breath, the smell of Chinese food drifting on the warm night air, a hint of something sour behind it.
She’d loved coming to the International Quarter or the Dregs, as some called it, when she was a girl. Crammed into the far northwest corner of Jet City, the Dregs was a place where cultures clashed in a brilliance of businesses, homes, and traditions. Bright red-and-gold paper lanterns danced in a breeze perfumed with barbeque chicken. Small kosher delis sat across from dry cleaners and bakeries.
Aunt Diana and Uncle Logan had frequented the delis and restaurants, knowing most of the owners by name. Alice had always been entranced by the riot of sights and sounds. One Lunar New Year, her aunt and uncle had brought her to the Dregs for the celebration. Never had she seen so
much color, or eaten so much food. She remembered how everyone celebrated, not just those for whom it was tradition.
As she scanned the buildings around the Chinese restaurant, Alice became distracted by the fact that not much had changed. The same signs, repainted every year, graced the windows of the businesses. The sidewalks were as swept and neat as they had been when she was a girl. Flower boxes filled to bursting with bright blooms dotted the apartments and outside of some of the businesses. Even the smells were the same. A part of her wished that the syndicate had just left this part of the city alone.
Focus! No time for trips down memory lane.
Most of the buildings had small alley’s behind them, but the Chinese restaurant also had a small passageway to the left of it where Alice could see trash bins and boxes from food deliveries. The garbage bins created a barrier between the passageway and the alley, and with everything stacked into it, it was very narrow.
Not a great place for a fight.
A door opened on the passageway side of the restaurant, and a man in an ill fitting suit stepped out and lit a cigarette. He walked to the end of the passageway and looked up and down the street, then up at the buildings. Alice ducked down, even though she knew that he wouldn’t be able to see her where she squatted in the shadows on the roof.
After a moment, Alice heard a car pull up. She peeked over the edge of the roof and saw Percy Marsh step out of his black Cadillac. He was short and had a strangely delicate quality about him. His facial features hinted at a possible Chinese parent, but the cocoa-colored skin told Alice that he likely also had a Negro parent.
Four men stepped out of the car with Percy, each taking a post outside. One stood at each corner of the restaurant, one holding the door open for Percy and the fourth stood to the other side of the door. The man who’d been smoking said something to one of the men and then followed Percy into the restaurant. After checking all around the restaurant, two of the guards went inside and the others tried to look nonchalant, as if they stood outside restaurants smoking all the time.
Marco was keeping a lookout in the opposite direction and kept shifting his feet from side to side. He was usually the calmest of the three of them, so much so that Alice had always wondered if he ever got nervous. But tonight, he was bordering on jittery.
“What’s wrong?”
He jumped a little and took a deep breath. “I just...I have a bad feeling. Maybe we should’ve thought through the repercussions of this.”
“Too late now,” Lionel said, nodding as the blinds on the restaurant across the street closed.
“And there’s Garrick’s signal,” Alice said, pointing to a flashlight that was turned on and off. “The police are in position.”
Marco nodded. “Well then, I guess we better.”
The clang from Marco’s grappler as it connected with the fire escape on the apartment building seemed far too loud and Alice hoped no one had heard it. Lionel jumped to the ground with Alice in his arms. She hated the momentary feeling of weightlessness, but it was better than swinging from the grappler.
Lionel and Alice crouched in the shadows cast by the apartment building. Marco moved across the street to the guard in the passageway, his duster flaring, and shadows writhing around his body.
A moment later, Lionel and Alice followed towards the passage.
Marco began manipulating one of the guards, who ran to the edge of the passageway in a panic. Lionel hit him, lifting the man off his feet, and then down onto his back. As Lionel straightened from checking that the guard was alive, two men came out of the front of the restaurant, and rounded the corner to the passageway.
They saw Alice first, and one drew a huge dagger. He lunged for her and she grabbed his wrist, spun to the side, and tried to flip him over her shoulder. He was ready for that move though and punched her in the lower back. Her body armor took some of the impact, but the blow jolted her so that she let go of his wrist, and he slashed her upper arm. The man took a stance, grinning at her and gloating.
That would cost him.
Alice kicked the dagger out of his hand, then grabbed his lapel and shoulder. When she pulled, he tried to grab her shoulder and take back control. He was stronger and Alice was about to lose her balance, so she drove her foot onto his thigh, using the momentum to bring them both to the ground. Wrapping her leg under his head and around his arm, she pulled, feeling the elbow pop. The man screamed and Alice shifted her leg, and smashing his face into the dirty sidewalk.
Someone came up behind Alice, pulling her off the now unconscious man and out of the passage. An arm snaked around her neck and tightened. She fought to find any purchase at all to stop this man from suffocating her. Unable to gain any traction, she shot a dart into his meaty thigh.
Usually the victims of a serpent bite were down fast or easily subdued, but this man was still holding onto her neck. Panic burned on the edges of her thinking, but she shoved it aside and fired another dart into the man’s leg. Finally, he let go of her, falling to his knees. She crawled away, gulping air, her lungs burning and throat raw.
A huge hand appeared in her field of vision. The moment before she shot it, she realized it was Lionel’s. As he pulled her to her feet, he scanned her body for injury. Alice looked around, the bodies of about half a dozen guards lay in the passageway or at the mouth of it. She was amazed that no one else had come out of the restaurant.
“When those guys don’t come back, they’ll know. We gotta get into the back of the restaurant. Are you okay?” Lionel asked.
She nodded, trying to ignore the sting of the shallow slash on her arm and the pain in her throat.
As they walked back into the passage, a man opened the side door and looked around. Upon seeing the three heroes, he raised his gun and Lionel jumped in front of Marco and Alice. When the bullets hit him, Lionel gave a grunt of pain, but leapt forward and punched the man, knocking him out.
After nine months, Alice still wasn’t used to seeing Lionel get shot, even if he could walk it off.
The shots warned the others inside and Alice could hear glass breaking, as the restaurant’s front door was being broken down. Garrick and his men were in play now, and Alice knew they had to get Percy’s personal guards, who were a different breed of soldier, according to Douglas.
The trio burst into a small kitchen, crowded with two stoves, a huge sink, and a long table in the center for food prep. Two men grabbed cleavers and butcher knives and ran for them. Alice dodged two swipes of a gleaming butcher knife, stepped back, and then dropped down under a third swipe, kicking the legs out from under the man wielding it. He fell hard onto the cold linoleum, the butcher knife still in his hand. She aimed a serpent bite, but the man batted it away with the flat side of the blade. Then, jumping up, he took a slash to her middle, the blade scraping against the leather of her vest. He screamed in frustration as Alice punched his face, and then landed a kick to his gut. She was going in for another kick when he brought the blade up, aiming for the soft underside of her jaw.
Suddenly, the man’s eyes bugged and he began beating the air with the knife in his hand. Alice glanced up and saw Marco walking toward them, his shadows twisting in the air. Just over Marco’s shoulder, Alice saw more men running into the kitchen. One aimed their gun at Marco’s head.
Alice rushed forward, falling to her knees and skidding to Marco’s side while shooting a serpent bite at the gunman, whose aim went wide, hitting Marco in the shoulder. The shadows began to dissipate, like mist in the sun, though they didn’t dispel completely. Marco had learned to maintain his concentration while wounded, and the man with the butcher knife ran out of the kitchen as if chased by hounds from hell.
The man with gun turned his weapon on Alice, who pivoted on her hands, lashing her leg around to kick the man’s legs out from under him. The gun went off, the bullet taking out a light in the ceiling. She then shot him with another dart, and when he still attempted to raise his gun, she jumped on him and hit him in the face.
She looked at Lionel and Marco, who were poised for another attack.
“My bites aren’t taking these guys down, unless I use two or three. It’s a lot like the warehouse, but these guys are even tougher.”
Lionel nodded. “I’m having to use more force, too.”
“Powered?” Marco asked, the shadows writhing around him unusually.
“Douglas said Percy uses an enhancement drug on his men,” Alice said. “It makes them tougher to kill. Says it’s probably what we encountered at the warehouse.”
Lionel nodded. “Load more darts then and let’s finish this.”
They pushed the kitchen door open, and Alice’s heart beat out a wild rhythm as her senses searched the dark restaurant. She could just make out the shapes of bodies scattered around, some fallen over chairs or tables. The floor was slick underfoot and Alice hoped it was food, not blood.
“Well, well,” said a quiet voice. “I didn’t expect to see you three, not yet.”
That was when Alice noticed a man sitting in a corner, a gun in each hand. One pointed at Garrick’s head, the other at them. He was in shadow, but Alice thought she saw a wide smile on his face.
“Three against one?” he continued. “I guess you think those are some good odds.”
“Maybe,” Lionel said.
Alice looked around at the bodies on the floor, swearing she saw one of them move.
“I know what you’re thinking, but unfortunately, your cop friend here killed my accountant. So, I guess you don’t have anything on me. I guess you’ll just have to kill me.”
“We don’t do that,” Marco said.
Percy laughed. “Well, you better start. You see, if you take me out, you’re in for a world of hurt. And the person doing the hurting? Well, he doesn’t give a shit if you don’t kill.”
“Yeah, we heard,” Lionel said. “You’re the one holding that dog’s leash.”
Serpent's Sacrifice (The Vigilantes Book 1) Page 20