I looked up at the painting of this George and frowned. “He doesn’t look very strong, grandma. And that dragon is way bigger than him. Why did he think he could win?” I wondered how I might fight such a dragon. Was there a weakness? A trick?
My grandma laughed.
“Look at his eyes, Dieter. I don’t think Sir George believed he would win. I think he believed he would die fighting the dragon.”
“But he still fought?” I asked. That didn’t make any sense to me.
“He lived by a code, Dieter.”
“A code?”
“A code is like a rulebook for living. He valued his code more than he valued his life. His code told him that when he saw evil, he had to slay it. It was as simple as that for Sir George.” She looked at the painting and her face saddened. “Living by that code would eventually cost him his life. That is why he is called Saint George now.”
I frowned. I didn’t understand. Sir George had fought a dragon—so he must have been very brave—but he didn’t look it. He looked like a normal person. Maybe even a little sad. Brave people weren’t supposta look so sad and tired. Brave people weren’t supposta think they were going to die. Brave people were brave because they were strong. Because they knew they could win. Why would such a normal looking person decide to tread that path of a hero? Why had he chosen such a terrible, terrible fate?
It didn’t seem very fair.
My grandmother smiled sadly back at me. She didn’t need me to ask the question brewing in my head. “Sometimes the right thing costs,” she said, sliding the tin of cookies closer. “Sometimes it costs a great deal.”
+
The memory faded, and I returned to the cold cement floor. I hadn’t thought about my grandmother for a long time. I was thankful for it. It was a nice last memory to hold on to at the end. The right thing costs…I chuckled.
I looked past my scorched palm at Rei’s bloodied body. It was funny. Rei shared something in common with old Sir George of Cappadocia—they both liked to bite off way more than they could chew. A twinge of pain ran the length of my spine. Then again, who was the idiot charging in swinging a pipe a few minutes ago?
Rei’s breath seemed to be coming easier. Lucky her. I couldn’t say the same. My muscles ached, and my breath was coming faster and faster even as it shallowed. Deprived of its blood flow, my body was running out of gas. It was curtains for me, but I wasn’t scared. You see, death is only scary when you don’t know when it’s coming, when there’s still some hope it might not. Death isn’t scary once it’s already got you…just depressing. One thing was bothering me above all else. I was about to die without firing off one last snide remark. Now that seemed unjust.
“Hey, Rei,” I said in a raspy voice.
Her body remained still, but she managed to raise an eyebrow.
“For future reference, a knight should probably pack more than a box-cutter.”
“A knight?” She smirked. Her beautiful black hair had been reduced to a bloody mop. The right half of her face—where the goon had landed a blow—was nothing but ground meat. That single punch had even ruptured the blood vessels in her right eye, but through the tangled mess of blood and guts, her white teeth still shone. Her long incisors accented her wolfish grin.
“Next time,” she said, “I’ll be sure to bring a pipe.”
“Touché.” A fit of coughs took me. Too bad I wouldn’t be around to see next time.
The tall man was screeching something at the two of us. Rei turned to him, her eyes burning savagely. She struggled but couldn’t move.
I could smell the ozone before I even turned my head. The tall man stood over me, right palm pointed at my chest. He was clutching that thing around his neck again. That red crystal must be what he used to ready the strike. I thought frying me again seemed a tad overkill. I was already a goner. I did the only mature thing I could think of. With the last of my energy, I willed up my left arm and flipped him the bird.
The tall man looked down at me and smiled. There was no hesitation as he fired.
My chest exploded. Everything went white.
Chapter 8
SINGED
I awoke in a haze. The crushing pain in my chest was gone. Only a dull reminder remained. My senses returned to me gradually, like a slow computer coming back online. It felt like every nerve needed a reboot, that every cell needed time to recharge.
My hands were still blackened toast. Throbs of pain shot forth from them in regular intervals. I took the throbbing as a good sign. The throbbing meant I had a heartbeat. That was certainly a plus. I lay there in disbelief. The last shock must have restarted my heart. That guy was a walking defibrillator.
Did that mean I had to send him a thank you card?
I was thinking that all and all things were going pretty well compared to a moment ago when a piercing scream snapped me out of Zen-land. Whimpers and gasps followed, then more wretched screams of pain. At first I thought they were coming from Rei…but the noises were too masculine. Riled, I struggled to lift myself into a seated position before freezing in fear. Anyone looking would have just realized I was back in the land of the living. My death averted, the fear of it had returned. My heart started the race. The pain in my hands flared.
“Think before you leap, Dieter,” I reprimanded myself.
I needed to calm down. The human brain can be a huge help in a crisis, but ‘can’ is the operative word. Our big juicy forebrains only get to play ball if the old-school noggin’ lets it. Thoughts need to get past the amygdala first. If fear hits you hard enough, the amygdala acts like it has for millions of years and switches to autopilot. You get the classic fight-or-flight response. The nuance of the cortex gets tossed through the nearest plate glass window, and you’re either left staring into space, pissing your pants, or running away screaming (or sometimes all three at once). Fortunately, getting electrocuted twice in the last minute was making it kinda hard to get any more riled up.
I forced my attention back to my surroundings—which were now 100% covered in blood. Man, oh man, there was a lot of it. And it all trailed back to the fresh corpse of the thug in red. I didn’t care to enjoy the irony of the color coordination; I was struggling to keep down my lunch. The red thug’s face was twisted in an expression of horror and pain. One giant hand still clasped his slashed throat. From that opened artery the blood had flowed. It’d formed a circular pool. Some time must have passed, because the blood was clotting into a dark gelatinous mess. The spot where Rei had laid was the one noticeable exception. It was dry, and more importantly, empty. From the look of the blood, Rei had gotten up under her own power. Stranger still, between her old location and myself, a section of the blood was charred.
I raised an eyebrow. How was any of this even possible? Those guys had broken a bunch of her ribs and caved in at least one of her lungs. How on earth had she been able to move under her own power? And what was up with the charred section of blood between us? Strange shit was going on here. Shit that didn’t obey natural laws. People don’t shoot lightning bolts out of their fingertips. Young women don’t go skipping off after getting their bones broken by giant bruisers.
People don’t explode one another’s heads in schoolyard fights either, Dieter, a little voice chimed in.
I looked down at my blood soaked jeans. This wasn’t going to work. I needed to forget about how things were supposed to work and get myself the hell out of here—preferably while I was still breathing. I could worry about rewriting the laws of nature later.
My hands burned, but the pain was manageable. No one else was in the room, and I noticed a light was on in a small office about 50 yards off. Part of me wanted to just get the heck out of Dodge, but nothing about the past few minutes made any sort of sense. Sure, I was terrified, but damn it, I wanted answers. I turned my attention back to the bloody footprints. After a few shaky steps, I followed them off into the darkness. They led right to the man wearing the blue tracksuit.
He was in two piece
s.
I blinked a few times.
The scene made no sense. The man was as big as I remembered. His torso was still as thick as a barrel, but now a huge diagonal slash separated his upper and lower halves. The cut started low and went clean up through his left shoulder blade. I knelt down. All the bones where hewn straight through.
How the…
Like every American male, I had my samurai-phase growing up. I knew that the amount of power needed for that type of slash was nearly impossible. In real combat, swordsmen perform focused slashes on vital areas. Trying to cut through bone is a huge no-no. It dulls the blade and risks it getting stuck (both nasty propositions in the midst of combat). Yet here was a man, splayed open on the floor, split cleanly in two.
Another bout of screams erupted, and I jumped straight up into the air. (People getting cleaved in half tend to put my nerves on edge.) The screams were coming from an office in the corner of the warehouse. I was scared shitless, but that was the direction my feet were taking me. My entire body shook from the adrenalin coursing through me, but I wanted to know—had to know. I went flush against the wall and carefully edged toward the window. The noises were coming from inside the warehouse office. Shuffling. Pattering. Whimpering. A shadow moved to and fro. I took a deep breath and peered inside.
The tall man sat tied to an office chair, his arms and legs bound by twisty ties so tight that they dug into his flesh. His shirt was torn off—and so were large swaths of his skin. A long strip from his back lay on the desk in front of him. Two more strips sat in heaps near his feet. Strip after strip, someone was peeling the skin from his body. I swallowed. He was being flayed alive.
Nausea was getting the best of me when I finally caught sight of her. I looked at the girl who had sat next to me on the bus, slept quietly, elbowed me clumsily, and talked with me late into the night and came to an abrupt conclusion: Monsters were real.
Rei’s skin blurred under the fluorescent light. It was far too translucent and pale. The light seemed to bounce off it, producing a fuzzy whiteness that made it hard for my eyes to focus. The lean muscles of her arms were tense, and I couldn’t help notice the nipples pushing against her blood-soaked tank. Like a merry gardener trimming roses, her eyes lingering over her work.
I looked upon the scene with utter revulsion; she smiled serenely.
I had once watched my cat bat a mouse around for nearly twenty minutes. If you didn’t know any better, you would think they were both having fun. But then, without warning, she pinned the little bugger with her paws and peeled open its abdomen. Not the slightest change in expression while she did it. The cat just flipped onto her back and went on to play with the mouse’s entrails. The cute little kitty didn’t react to the little rodent’s spasms. She didn’t so much as blink as it died. She was indifferent. It didn’t even occur to her that she should feel anything. It wasn’t in her programming. It wasn’t part of her design. To kill as easy as you breath…that’s the nature of a true predator.
Rei slid her boxcutter up under the tall man’s breast, driving the thin piece of metal deep into his muscle.
As blood oozed out of the wound, the tall man screamed.
“Who?” she purred.
The tall man stuttered nonsense. Spit dribbled from his mouth. The pain must have been incredible.
One summer, I got my hands on a copy of a translated KGB torture manual. (The good people of Nevada like to be prepared for the Enemy.) The manual said flaying was one of the best techniques to use during a rapid interrogation. There were many ways to extract information if you have more time—but if you were in a rush, they recommended flaying, crushing digits, or electrocuting the genitalia. (Say what you will about the Russians, they certainly didn’t beat around the bush.) Flaying had one obvious downside, though. You can’t lose half your skin and walk away. The tall man wasn’t playing to save his life. He was playing for a quicker death.
Rei cocked her head and frowned. The tall man’s stuttering was still indecipherable. She sighed and peeled off his left ear. It was hard work. There were snags. She inspected the floppy piece of meat before tossing it behind her shoulder.
I shuddered uncontrollably. I didn’t even know that was possible. And his screams were so guttural and unnatural that they raised the hairs on the back of my neck. Blood was spurting everywhere. It pitter-pattered onto the linoleum floor. And through it all, Rei’s face remained serene. She acted as though she were prepping the veal cutlets for the evening special.
As she waited for the tall man to catch his breath, Rei examined the blood covering her hands. A shiver coursed through her body, and her eyes went hazy. Her body tense, she swallowed, and her hand went towards her nose. For a moment she looked conflicted, resisting her hand’s motion.
“It’s not like he’s a citizen,” she muttered.
Her eyes broke focus, and she licked her hands clean.
My jaw dropped. I didn’t understand. Why was she licking the blood off her hands?
The tall man looked up and started to cry. “Oh, Jesus Christ, you’re one of them. I told you,” he said between sobs. “I—don’t—know. We’re wiped during assignments. It’s standard procedure. I don’t get my memories back until I complete the job. It’s standard—” He gasped and started shivering. Having been there, I recognized the signs. Pain was overloading his senses; he was about to pass out.
Rei’s eyes flashed. “Wait!” she hissed. “Not yet, damn it!” She smacked the tall man across the face. Blood splattered across the walls, and he returned from the edge of consciousness. “Just tell me the parameters, you insipid pofátlan.”
I could see it in his eyes. The tall man was broken. His body was torn to shreds. Ruined. And the pain wasn’t going away. It was easy to see he didn’t care anymore. He probably just wanted to close his eyes and die. Frankly, it was understandable. He mustered the last of his strength and looked up at Rei with unfocused eyes.
“Cross-country bus arriving at noon at New York Grand Central Station from Chicago. Intercept and retrieve one Dieter Resnick: Male. Age, 17. Height, 6’1’’. Brown hair. Light complexion. The package is Imperiti. Threat level is nominal. In event that the package has obtained a chaperon, termination of chaperon takes priority. For exit, proceed to 36th and 7th. Taxi will conduct pick-up after one pass of your party.”
“That’s all?” Rei asked. She looked somewhat disappointed.
The tall man nodded, and his head slacked.
Rei stared at him. That hazy expression was waxing over her. For the next ten seconds she stood motionless as though locked in trance. Then shook herself, walked forward, took the tall man’s head in her hands, and snapped his neck with twist. A few spasms later, he was dead. Rei sighed. She was looking at one of the walls, her hands tight on her hips.
“Fasz kivan!” She aimed a kick at the desk, huffed, and then plopped down on top of it. Cursing again, she buried her head in her hands. “What an unmitigated disaster.”
She was still sitting there looking pensive when her body tensed. My heart sank. I’d been a fool to get so close, and now that she wasn’t distracted…Rei gripped the desk with her hands and prepared to spring. I braced myself. Running didn’t seem like it would help. But just as suddenly, Rei’s face transitioned to one of confusion.
“Dieter?” The light timber had returned to her voice. “Dieter Resnick, is that you lurking out there?”
I was locked in a wave of overwhelming terror…but my Sight wasn’t doing its doom and gloom routine.
“Um. Well. Yea,” I squeaked.
The tension in Rei’s muscles eased. She exhaled deeply. “Excellent!” she exclaimed. “And here I thought I had fucked the dog!” She swung her legs back and forth like she was on a swing set. “Good job not dying. You are much more durable than you look.” She smiled jovially. “Now why don’t you step into my office?”
I swallowed.
“Sure thing, Ms. Bathory.”
Chapter 9
WHAT ARE
YOU?
I didn’t consider running. She had just taken care of the three most badass men I had ever seen in my life. The guy I couldn’t even dent with a pipe was sitting like a peeled orange in the corner. Refusal was probably on the same page of the playbook as kicking dynamite. I shuffled in. It was the best I could do after the adrenalin twisted my quads into knots. After stepping over yet another pool of blood, I surprised myself and looked up to match her stare.
I couldn’t sense a hint of killing intent. Rei looked back with a relaxed expression on her face. I must have looked nervous, because she was trying for a gentle smile. But my mind was already cranking away. Why was it that she never smiled fully? Even when she talked, she only spoke with her mouth half open. The train of thought was ludicrous, but then again, there were people shooting lightning out of their fingertips. I felt I had a bit of leeway on this one. I considered what I was about to imply and chose my words carefully. They needed to be vague enough to not get me killed.
“So…” I began. Rei cocked her head to the side. The clotted blood kept her hair matted to her head. It looked like she had an enormous cowlick. “You do exist.”
Rei’s smile dropped like a rock. For a moment she sat very still. Then she raised an eyebrow and smirked. “More impressive still,” she purred. She leaned forward and rested her chin in her hands. “Truthfully, are you of the Imperiti?”
“Imperiti?” I asked.
Rei merely smiled.
Frankly, I had really hoped for a blanket denial. Instead, Rei was measuring me again, just like she had been doing all along. I didn’t like it, but Rei didn’t seem willing to give me any more hints. She was just sitting there giving me that easy stare, waiting to see what I could put together. I smirked. Monster or not, I could recognize a prick when I saw one. I couldn’t bear to turn down her challenge.
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