People came and went from the condo every day. Almost exclusively men. She rarely saw the girls except when they went outside to smoke things or wash in the basin screened off in the parking lot. A few of the men were there every day, stocky hulks with tattoos and darting eyes. Bodyguards. Or maybe just captors.
Four nights before the islanders were scheduled to come in force and extract their tribute from the peninsula, Martin ran in from the other room.
"The red light," he said. "It's up."
Raina ran to the window. Down the street, the condo window glowed an unwinking red. She ran to her room to dress in all black and get on her knives. Martin got out his pistol and stared at it dully.
Mauser tossed his icepick into the air. It spun end over end. He snatched it by its handle. "Stick to the plan and we'll all be fine."
He led them out the back door of the house and they circled around the humid streets to the shoe store across from the condo. Amid the smell of leather and rubber, Raina watched the window from the darkness.
A silhouette exited the side of the condo and peered into the streets. A fire flicked at face-height, illuminating the face of a woman a few years older than Raina. A cigarette bobbed in the night.
"That's my girl," Mauser said. "Be right back."
He crossed the street and exchanged a few words with the girl. In no hurry, he walked back to the shoe store.
"Two of them," he murmured to Raina. "If we're fast, we can use the blades." He glanced at Martin. "Anything goes bad, you shoot them. Don't worry about the noise. Worry about us being strangled."
Martin nodded, pale.
"They killed my dad," Raina reminded him.
"I know."
"And if this goes bad, they'll kill me, too."
Martin's brows rose. He nodded, firmly this time.
Male laughter burst from one of the windows. Some minutes later, a woman groaned, higher and higher. It went quiet. The lantern turned white.
Without a word, Mauser led them across the street.
The woman had left a slip of paper wedged in the lock so it wouldn't latch. Mauser closed the door silently and took them up a flight of carpeted steps. Voices droned from behind the walls. Music played from the lobby. On the third floor landing, Mauser took them down a hall to a nondescript door. Martin pressed himself beside it. Mauser knocked softly.
A naked woman answered. Mauser ushered Raina inside. The white lamp barely lit the room. Two men rested in twin beds. One had his arm around another woman. Smoke curled from a glass pipe in his hands. Raina knew the second man. It was Trig. One of the men who had hurt her mother.
"Hope I'm not interrupting," Mauser smiled. "Manager's special. This one's on the house."
The man with the pipe looked skeptical. Trig grinned. "Looks new. Fresh."
Her ears roared. She stepped toward him, remembering to smile. Mauser drifted between the beds, babbling something affirmative. The man swung his legs off the bed. He was naked and his genitals were wet and wrinkled. He patted his lap. Raina reached for his leg, took out her knife, and jammed it into his throat.
He choked on the blood. The other man yelled. From the other bed, she heard a scuffle, a gurgle. Trig fell onto the floor, kicking at her even as blood gushed from his neck. She dodged his heel and slashed at his warding arm. He yanked it out of harm's way, other hand pressed to his throat. She stabbed him again in the side of the neck, wriggling the blade from side to side.
Her chest heaved. The two women watched with wide white eyes, backs pressed to the wall. Mauser had knocked the other man from bed and pinned him to the floor. The man's hand flopped, went still. Mauser pulled off the top sheet and stood up and wiped himself off.
He held out his hand. "Riches."
One of the girls detached from the wall. Mauser got a rag from his pocket and stuffed it in the dead man's throat wound to stop up the blood. He laid out the sheet and rolled the man up tight, then moved over to do the same to Trig. She cleaned her knife on the sheet, hands shaking. It felt different from animals. Better. She considered granting him to the moon, but she'd never taken a human before. In this case, keeping him was risky. Trig was evil. His presence within her might corrupt her.
But maybe she could learn from him. She had the feeling she might need to do strong, dark things on the path to free her father. Trig's whispers might show her to secret roads she'd be blind to on her own. She'd just have to be careful. Keep him locked up in the deepest places of her heart. Only go to him in times of greatest need.
Metal clinked. She whirled, knife out. One of the girls clutched a backpack to her bare chest.
"Easy there, shortpants," the woman said.
Raina lowered the knife. The woman rolled her eyes and extracted a fistful of shining gold chains from the bag. She quickly sorted them into two purses, handing one to Mauser and shaking it to get his attention.
"Do not wear or sell yours here." He accepted his purse and slung it over his shoulder. "Nothing to tip us off to the bossman."
The woman snorted. "No shit."
"Glad we're all professionals. Now get dressed and help us haul these bodies downstairs."
He went to the door and let Martin inside. The boy gawked at the blood-soaked sheets shrouding the downed men.
"Look," Mauser pointed to the brightly-stained sheets. "We made big soppy candy canes."
Martin swallowed hard. One of the girls laughed. The door banged open and a lanky man spilled inside, smelling of a day at sea.
"Hey assholes," he declared, "save any of that for—?"
His gaze flicked between the sheet-wrapped bodies and Mauser and the girls and Raina. He turned and fled into the hall.
"Shoot him!" Mauser hissed.
Martin held up his hands and shook his head. Raina darted into the hall, Mauser pounding after her. The stairwell door clanged.
"If he gets to his boat," Mauser said, "we should just kill ourselves right now."
"I know!"
She entered the stairs a step ahead of Mauser. Guitar music throbbed from the ground floor, washing out the clap of the fleeing man's feet. The downstairs door shuddered open and the man ran into the night. Mauser passed her, leaping down the steps four at a time. He bowled outside. She followed. The air was moist and just cooler than lukewarm and within a few steps she was sweating.
The man ran past the shops toward the docks. Mauser fell back a step. The man turned onto the main road to the marina, Mauser dogging him from a block behind. Raina cut down the delivery lane she'd discovered a few nights earlier. A brick-paved gutter ran down its center. Undistinguished rears of buildings abutted the lane. She burst into the moonlit boulevard right across from the sprinting man.
He was getting away, but Trig's spirit already had a suggestion for her. One so black she nearly laughed out loud.
"Help!" she screamed. "He's trying to rape me!"
The man turned, slowing in confusion. Raina raced toward him. The man looked over his shoulder, trying to spot Mauser, whose feet rang somewhere down the block.
"You all right?" he said to Raina. "Come on!"
She thought she'd seen him on the islanders' boat. She couldn't reach his throat too well, so she drove one of her finger-length knives into his belly instead. He doubled over, shrieking, still running, pinwheeling one arm for balance. She dodged it and lashed at his throat with her hunting knife.
That brought him down. He was still gasping fitfully when Mauser jogged up beside her.
"Nice work," he said. He frowned. "Although as the only adult present, I'm not sure I should be encouraging this."
"We need to get him to the wagon," Raina said.
"I'm not carrying that bloody mess. We need to get the wagon to him."
He dragged the dead man next to the front of a seafood restaurant and headed back toward the shoe shop where they'd waited for the lantern to change colors. Martin was already there, sheet-wrapped bodies piled on a large green wagon they'd taken from a hardware store.
<
br /> One of the women from the house was there, too. Her teeth flashed in the darkness. "All yours."
"What a lovely gift," Mauser said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek. The woman didn't move one way or the other. Mauser glanced across the street at the whorehouse, which continued to play its rhythmic music, candles flickering behind the drapes. "Won't be around for a while. Try not to miss me."
"Deal," the woman said.
Mauser grabbed the handle of the wagon, heaved, and grunted. The wheels turned soundlessly; they'd had plenty of time to oil it and check its bolts. Raina and Martin shouldered their bags. They got a block away from the condo, putting a row of buildings between them, then circled around. At the slope to the seafood restaurant where the dead man waited, Mauser flipped the wagon around and leaned against its handle so gravity wouldn't pull it and its cargo of corpses down the hill and into the sea.
At the third body, Raina and Martin each took a leg while Mauser took the shoulders. Martin's hold slipped while it was halfway on the wagon and the body's left leg bounced against the sidewalk. Mauser swore and wrestled it atop the others.
"I'm sorry," Martin said, breathing hard.
"No worries," Mauser said. "We're all loaded up now."
"In the room. I couldn't shoot."
"Happens to every man at some point."
"It would have been too loud anyway," Raina said. "It's for the best."
But she didn't believe this, at least deep down where it counted. The man could have gotten away. She'd had to put her life on the line to stop him. Martin couldn't be trusted.
She took point while Mauser wrangled the wagon, ranging a block or two ahead to make sure the streets were empty. When Mauser ran out of breath, Martin took over, leaning against the wagon tongue as if fighting the worst Santa Ana wind Southern California had ever seen. He lasted less than ten minutes before Mauser took back over.
Its wheels thundered lowly. A dog's nails clicked down the street. The condo faded behind them. Now and then when she entered an intersection she looked back and saw its candles burning in the night.
They got off the highway in San Pedro and Mauser called a stop for the night. It was well after midnight. Raina scouted out a house while the men watched over the bodies. She found one with no signs of recent squatting—no food scraps or fire ashes, no telltale stink of feces from the corners or the yard—and they wheeled the wagon into the garage, hauled down the door, and went to sleep. Martin and Mauser took rooms upstairs. Raina laid out her blanket in front of the door to the garage. They had come too far to risk something coming for the bodies in the night.
Mauser got up late that morning, rotating his arms and grumbling about stiffness.
Raina almost smiled. "You wouldn't complain if you saw the guys in the garage."
He looked pained, then sighed. "You can't toy with my morbid curiosity like that. It's like peanut butter to a dog."
He squared his shoulders and opened the door to the garage. Raina trailed him. The men lay on the cement floor, covered by a crusty, bloody sheet. She swept it away. Their fingers were curled. Trig had his mouth open in a frozen scream. His eyes had been put out (and offered to the eye of the moon, though Raina had no intention of telling Mauser that). The three men were shirtless and a rough icon of a helmeted man with an eyepatch and two swords had been sliced into their chests.
"Well, no one can accuse you of lacking initiative," Mauser glared.
"I thought it would be best before they got stiff."
"Spent a lot of time around dead bodies, have you?"
"I used to eat them."
"Not going to ask." The lines around his mouth deepened. He leaned down. "What did you do to their shoulders?"
Raina reached into her pocket for a bloody handkerchief. She unfolded it, revealing two-inch squares of skin inked with black. "They had tattoos. I cut them off to give Jill proof it was us."
Mauser opened his mouth to say more, then shook his head and walked away. They waited until night to move again, wheeling the wagon down lesser-used streets paralleling the main roads. It wasn't yet dawn when they hit the southern coast at the base of the hills.
It was two days before the islanders were supposed to arrive. As the sun rose, Raina climbed up to the crotch of a tree and watched the sea through her binoculars. Mauser and Martin kept watch on the land, hiding out in a lifeguard shack standing on stilts in the sand.
The bodies went slack and began to smell. Their faces and bellies swelled. The night before the Catalinans were scheduled to arrive and take their tax, she and Mauser wheeled the bodies above the tideline and dumped them face-up in the sand. They took turns standing watch in case of animals or strangers.
The tide sighed, coming and going. In the early morning, Raina spotted a sail on the sun-shattered waves. They retreated to a high house a few blocks from the beach. The Catalinans made landfall at the pier and started down the beach. When they found the bodies, they gazed east toward Long Beach.
They claimed the bodies and returned to the boat. Raina struck out toward the Dunemarket, matching strides with Mauser.
"They looked pissed," he smiled grimly.
"They should be," Raina said.
At the top of the long hill leading down to the merchants' blankets and stalls, Mauser stopped and clucked his tongue. "Know what, we can do better. I'm a man who likes to make an entrance. Right now all we've got for Jill is a story and your three bloody postage stamps. Why don't we wait a couple days and see how the Catalinans respond?"
They had been away from the Dunemarket for a couple weeks and Raina wanted nothing more than to go straight to Jill and demand a place at the table. But Mauser was right. And waiting a few days more wouldn't cost them anything.
They turned off the road and found a new house a few blocks away. Their water was low again and they collected some from a canal and boiled it.
Mauser was right. Righter than Raina would ever have believed. Three days later, the Catalinans declared war on the Osseys.
14
"Stop!" Lorna yelled in Spanish. "We're not here to hurt anyone!"
Another shot cracked from the buildings. A bullet crashed into the sidewalk behind Walt and whined away. Windows stared by the dozens. Walt peeked around the bumper of the Suburban. A rifle roared again, smashing the rear window in a sharp-edged shower.
"We have to get off the street," Walt said.
"They'll steal our car," Lorna said.
"So what? It'll be easier to set up a new one than to try to steer that one using ghost-hands. Count of three, run to the hospital. Zigzags. Don't give them an easy shot."
She gritted her teeth and nodded. He counted down. On three, he dashed from the safety of the car, arm held over his head, reeling in unpredictable vectors. Two shots chased him up the sidewalk. Lorna hollered. He glanced back to make sure she was unhurt, then yanked open the hospital door and held it for her.
He followed her into the deeply shadowed lobby. She vaulted the reception desk and dropped behind it. He did the same, banging his shin in the process.
He clutched his throbbing leg. "Couldn't see where they were shooting from. There's like a thousand windows out there."
"They'll just wait us out," Lorna said. "Shoot us as soon as we step outside."
"Sounds like we should stay in here. Start a new race of hospital-people."
"Sun sets in an hour. If we haven't figured something out by then, we might as well bring ourselves to the morgue."
His pistol hung from his hand. "If I know where they are, I can take them out."
She laughed dryly. "Such confidence."
"More in the weapon than myself."
Lorna's gaze dropped to his gun. "Get to an upstairs window. I'll make them show themselves."
"By dressing up as a target?"
"Any better ideas?"
"Not unless you saw a tank in the basement." He leaned in and kissed her. "Don't get shot."
"Then don't miss."
&nbs
p; He winked at her, stomach sinking, then ran to the stairwell. It was pitch dark on the stairs and he flicked on his Zippo to light the way. The echoes of his footsteps chased him to the fourth floor. He ran into a room with two skeletons sharing the single bed, a third in the armchair, and a fourth draggling the sheets on the floor. He went to the window, careful not to disturb the blinds.
The hospital faced banks of dusty offices. The sun had sunk behind the buildings, leaving little glare, but most of the windows were too dark to see through clearly. He let his eyes drift, seeking movement. The window had a crank that allowed it to open just far enough to extrude his pistol.
Lorna screamed from downstairs. Across the street, a gun flashed in a window on the fifth floor of a pastel yellow office. The report sounded an instant behind it and echoed from the buildings.
The nice thing about a laser was that it provided its own sight. Walt depressed the trigger-buttons wrapped around the handle. A blue beam licked across the air, incinerating particles of dust. It sent smoke curling from the edge of the shooter's window frame. Walt moved his wrist fractionally, sending the beam swooping into the silhouette in the office. A man screamed in pain. Walt moved the laser up and down, then let go of the triggers.
A second gun went off three windows over from the first. Glass splintered, hailing into Walt's face and bare arm. He flinched, swearing, bleeding from several small cuts. Across the way, the woman in the other window pulled back the bolt of her rifle. Bright brass caught a beam of light and spun toward the pavement. Walt steadied his elbow on the sill and fired back. The laser struck her somewhere in the upper body. She collapsed from sight.
The Breakers Series: Books 1-3 Page 85