Ironheart (The Serenity Strain Book 2)

by Chris Pourteau

  But the Maestro intended to demonstrate just how much he was still himself. With a steely determination and rigid stare, he advanced on Maggie.

  A flicker of fear displaced Maggie’s sneering confidence. Marsten’s unblinking orb gaped at her, and as he stalked forward, he raised his axe.

  “Now, baby—”

  So hard to stay focused, thought Marsten, so focus on staying hard.

  Maggie gunned her motor, jerking her foot up to catch the clutch. She was shaking so badly her toe missed its mark. Her racing motor screamed in neutral, her bike refusing to move.

  “Maestro…”

  Ignoring the Lady, Marsten dropped the axe to his shoulder and strolled right past the two of them, a lumberjack of old heading for trees to fell. He distracted himself from the wiggling by concentrating on the pavement in front of him, driving his feet forward, putting distance between his axe and Maggie … away from his desire to split her ingrate skull, away from his overwhelming need to explain himself to Id. He walked through TranStar’s open gate and into the spotlit parking lot, past the symmetrically parked police cruisers and the handful of motorbikes.

  Out of the corner of his good eye, Marsten spotted Simpson finishing his loop from the east side of the facility. Simpson changed his course to intercept the Maestro, but Marsten didn’t slow his stride one bit. Simpson came alongside, paddling his bike forward with his legs and matching Marsten’s quick-march.

  “Um, are we starting then?” Simpson asked.

  “Get the whiteshirts off the buses and follow me in,” Marsten said without sparing Simpson a glance.

  “Sure thing, Maestro.” Marsten could hear it in Simpson’s voice: concern at the sudden shift in Marsten’s attitude. “Don’t you want to wait to go in? I can have them marching in minutes—”

  “Don’t rush on my account,” said Marsten, turning up the sidewalk toward TranStar’s front door. “Now get to where I told you to be.” Simpson hesitated a moment longer, then started his bike and roared off, headed for the buses.

  Knowing he could still surprise Simpson, Maggie too, even Id … knowing that shored Marsten up. He’d even surprised himself by ignoring the Lady’s attempt to bring him to heel. He wondered if it was the worms, if they’d fortified him with the mental discipline to do what he just did—that’s what they were supposed to do, right? To make it possible for him to control his own mental processes, to help him make considered decisions.

  Like letting Maggie live, like applying pure willpower to push Id’s influence aside, hard as that was to do. But unlike before, he didn’t feel the chemical castration that had sapped his will to violence. Marsten’s desire to wreak bloody bedlam was stronger than it’d ever been.

  Yes, the worms were back, but the little girl wasn’t. She hadn’t returned to his dreams to steal the axe from his hands and to turn red fate back upon him.

  Best of both worlds, then.

  Maybe he could stand the worms after all if they made him better than he was before, Marsten thought. A murder machine with a tactician’s mind.

  He grabbed and yanked open the front door.

  I guess I’ll find out.

  Marsten entered the lobby, cautious but hungry, and found exactly what he expected: a welcome desk, unmanned, sitting on typically professional-but-not-too-expensive, public-agency faux-marble floors. The main elevators were visible behind it. The walls were decorated with the tasteful artistic equivalent of Luby’s Cafeteria food—bland and safe for retirees. The west side of the building was under construction “for you, the public, so please be patient with our mess.”

  Marsten made sure what he could see of the ground floor was clear, then walked over to the reception area. To the public it was a welcome station, but it was really the first line of security for the facility. Normally, Marsten assumed, a pleasant if somewhat dim former high-school football player with a concealed handgun license and a badge from a box of Wheaties would be sitting there, smiling pleasantly, leering at women’s asses, and fantasizing for the millionth time about helping Bruce Willis take down Alan Rickman.

  Tonight, no one was watching the front door. And why should they be?

  The Maestro circled around behind the desk, glancing briefly through the doors at the activity out front. Buses were still parking beyond the security fence, and he could hear the clacking of his generals’ motorcycles as they made their rounds, rallying the troops like Braveheart on the battlefield. Weisshemden piled out of the buses as a thin orange vapor crawled up the sidewalk toward TranStar’s front door.

  Better hurry if I want to have some fun solo, thought Marsten.

  The security screens embedded in the desk were dark. He’d hoped to get a bird’s-eye view of the main areas in the building before venturing too deeply inside. No such luck.

  All right then. We do this old school.

  Marsten grabbed one of the helpful visitor maps off the desk. The second floor, labeled Traffic Operations, had rows of observation desks, computer stations ensconced in cubicles. Blocks of administrative offices labeled City of Houston, METRO, TxDOT, and Harris County made up the third floor.

  Operations was no doubt where the action was. Orienting himself with the map, Marsten planned the quickest route to Traffic Ops.

  One of the elevators on the left dinged.

  As the doors parted a woman stepped out, flipping the page of the report in her hand, still engrossed in its contents. Hefting his axe, Marsten stepped in front of her, and she nearly ran into him before looking up. Startled, she stepped back.

  He smiled. Yes, let me show you just how much I’m still myself.

  Marsten watched the woman push her glasses up on her nose and allowed himself the passing observation that she was attractive for a mousy librarian type in her mid-forties. And wearing the cutest little nametag: Alvarez.

  Oo, Spanish.

  “Who—”

  First Alvarez saw the angry, stretched skin that was the left side of Marsten’s face. Then she committed the politically incorrect sin of wincing at his left eye, wide and weeping like a sore.

  Then she saw the axe.

  She followed its ascent when Marsten raised it over his shoulder, as the subject of a hypnotist might follow the swinging arc of a pocket watch.

  Marsten buried the axe squarely into her skull, splitting her eyeglasses. Her arms fell to her sides, the report slipping to the floor in a heavy flurry of stapled paper. The blade caught and lodged into the wet grip of her brainpan, and as her knees buckled, the Maestro eased Alvarez quietly to the faux-marble floor. He wondered if the metal in her dying brain felt as cold as the worms working inside his.

  Marsten peered down the hall past the elevators to make sure no one had heard the ruckus. So far, so good. He’d managed to kill the little brainiac before she’d screamed.

  Old school.

  Marsten placed the hard rubber of his boot sole against the dead woman’s jaw and pried his axe from her skull. The scrape of metal on bone was deadened by the lubrication of brains and blood. Looking at the edge of his blade, Marsten noted the curious absence of worms.

  You’ll have them in there soon enough, Missus Alvarez, he thought. From top to toe and everywhere between.

  The Maestro marched forward.

  One down.

  Chapter 11: Tuesday, night.

  Simpson pulled his bike up beside Maggie and Id, all eyes on Marsten as he entered the building.

  “What crawled up his ass?” asked Maggie. “I thought the sonofabitch was gonna hack my head off.”

  “As did I,” said Id, her voice bouncing along the cold fog pooling at their ankles. She sounded disappointed … and the slightest bit mystified. “Interesting that he did not.”

  Simpson thumbed the motor off and kicked the bike stand out. “No idea. But I have my orders. We’re to storm the building ASAP.”

  “Indeed,” breathed the Lady. Her doubt earlier when she’d questioned Marsten, her curious questioning of a moment before—both s
eemed to evaporate in Simpson’s ears. “Our Maestro is a complex individual, is he not?”

  “He’s a fucking asshole with an axe,” snarled Maggie. She stroked her thumb over her right cheek. The blooming bruise now resembled an under-ripe eggplant. Id’s gaze pierced her and Maggie looked away quickly.

  “Like I said, I have my orders.” Turning to the Lady, Simpson tried to keep his gaze level with hers. Resisting the urge to stare at her ivory breasts was harder than a teenage boy in anatomy class. “With your permission, I’ll lead the Black Hand in securing the building.”

  Id regarded him, a smile playing around her lips.

  She knows, Simpson thought. He could see it in her eyes. Of course she does. She knows what she does to me. To Maggie. To everyone.

  “Go to the top floor and work your way down. Bring everyone who is willing into the fellowship of the Hand. I suspect that is not a priority for the Maestro.” Her words had turned wistful. As if she couldn’t decide whether recruiting everyone in their path, rather than murdering them, was the better course.

  * * *

  Two officers stood in a little break room, muttering quietly. Marsten saw them out of the corner of his good eye and jerked back behind the elevators for cover. They were armed, not some paper-pusher nerd-girl who wasn’t watching where she was going. Perhaps he should stop for a moment and plan.

  Aw, the hell with it.

  Both officers faced away from him, so Marsten stole quietly around the corner, axe in hand, his pace picking up as he approached. The officer on the left held a steaming cup in his hand and was gesturing with it to make a point, barely avoiding spilling his coffee. The one on the right rested against the wall, one hand resting lazily on his holstered weapon.

  The leaning officer saw Marsten first. It was late, and he was tired. It took him a moment to react. His eyes widened, then he blinked twice as if to confirm the broad, bald biker with the fireman’s friend in his hand wasn’t an apparition born of fatigue. Then the officer stood up straight as his buddy stopped talking and turned around to see what had caught his friend’s attention.

  Fueled by his desire to keep breathing and rage against anyone wearing a badge, Marsten’s powerful strides quickly closed the distance between them. He brought the axe up in both hands like he was bunting to first base, and as Cop #2 fumbled at his holster with a groggy right hand, Marsten knocked both men into the wall behind them. Cop #1 yelped as hot coffee splashed onto his face, the liquid scalding his skin.

  Marsten popped the head of the axe with a sharp, flat crack into Cop #2’s face, breaking his grip on the butt of his pistol. Cop #2’s hands rose instinctively to protect his head as he fell against the wall. His feet slid in the spilled coffee and he struggled to keep from falling. Marsten avoided the coffee himself, made sure #1 was down for the count, and slid the smooth grain of the axe handle through his palms till he held the base firmly in both hands.

  The heavy weight of the axe head at the far end felt good, like it meant business. Like the number cruncher earlier was just an appetizer. Like it was starving to taste blood again.

  His back against the wall, Cop #2 had his mind in the game again and unsnapped his holster.

  “Don’t tell me,” said the Maestro, backswinging the hungry axe to knock the gun to the floor, “you brought a gun to an axe fight?” Marsten allowed the blade’s weight to pursue its own momentum upward. He flipped the head around as it cleaved the air and buried it in the soft tissue of #2’s neck, just above the clavicle. Dark blood from the officer’s carotid artery shot into the air like Marsten had just struck crimson oil.

  The cop shuddered and jerked, but after a brief smirk of satisfaction, the Maestro put him out of his mind. In the fading blur that was his open left eye, Marsten saw #1 recovering, despite his burns. Marsten jerked the axe from the gurgling corpse-to-be in front of him, expecting it to slip free.

  Stuck again. Sonofabitch.

  The officer behind him was babbling something from the perp manual about getting down on the ground and putting his hands behind his head. Marsten stopped in place, his chest heaving with bloodlust. He turned, slowly, to face the first officer.

  The man’s eyes were wild, his face splashed with angry burns. But Marsten noted those details only in passing. His eyes were glued to the dark, black hole at the end of the 9-millimeter’s barrel facing him.

  “I said get down on the goddamned ground!” shouted the officer. “Now!”

  But Marsten didn’t move. He felt the worms turning in his head like gears, tilling the earth of his options.

  The officer with the shaky gun hand was in his mid-twenties, maybe just out of the academy. Marsten recalled the stripes on the arm of the blood bag fountaining on the floor behind him. Maybe he’d just taken out Junior’s senior partner. Maybe Blood Bag had been Junior’s instructor at Cop College. Maybe they’d even cuddled on the long, warm evenings after PT, sweaty together in their shared lust for dispensing justice on Houston’s streets. Batman and Robin and all that shit.

  “Brought an axe to a gun fight, I see!” the young man laughed, clearly thinking he held the upper hand in all things, weaponry and punnery. “Last chance! On the ground now!”

  Old school. Always best.

  Marsten peered behind the young officer and yelled, “About goddamned time! Shoot this prick!”

  Though his pistol pointed squarely at Marsten’s mid-section, #1’s eyes darted toward his shoulder, trying to see behind him. Charging, the Maestro turned his thick body sideways to minimize his target profile. #1 jerked his hand up, getting off one round before Marsten’s vice-like grip jerked and twisted his gun hand.

  “Brought a gun to a fist fight, eh?” Marsten breathed, rank and heavy into the terror-filled face of the officer. The Maestro felt the other man’s right hand going for his belt. “Oh, no-no-no,” he said, dropping his axe and catching that wrist too, squeezing until the officer dropped the Taser. “Now whatcha gonna do?”

  “Help!” yelled the cop, his attention riveted by Marsten’s evil eye. “Officers need—”

  Now, now, I can’t have you yelling like a little schoolgirl.

  Marsten yanked the man close and ripped the side of his neck out with his teeth.

  * * *

  When they heard the shot, Simpson led the Weisshemden into the building. Cackler sashayed along beside them at a lope, like Quasimodo the Cheerleader, keeping the herd moving. His troops were a sea of white-clothed warriors with black half-arms, thousands of muttering men and a few hundred women, all of them about to engulf the unsuspecting personnel of TranStar.

  “I see the Maestro cleared the way for us!” smiled Cackler, licking his lips. The corpse with the nametag “Alvarez” on its blouse lay in the middle of the floor. It looked like lightning had split its face in two.

  “That’s one hellacious Harry Potter scar,” Cackler said gleefully.

  The troops flooded in, filling the reception area but giving the dead woman a respectful distance. The ocean of seething psychopaths made way around the corpse, as if touching the body or treading in the blood would somehow disrespect the Maestro.

  Waiting as their numbers built to critical mass, Maggie and Simpson held their soldiers near the elevators.

  “We just gonna stand here all day or we gonna taste a little of Peter’s action?” asked Maggie, as entranced by the dead woman as she’d ever been by Id. Alvarez’s head was turned to the side. Maggie stared hard at the corpse’s fractured skull. The blood hadn’t yet begun to cool, so gravity did its work.

  Drip … drip … drip.

  Simpson glanced her way as the mumbling enthusiasm of the whiteshirts echoed off the tile floor, building on itself. There was a constant drone of half-conversation, and it was starting to build in intensity. The potential energy of anticipation longing to be kinetic and sated. As more whiteshirts funneled in, the orange ground fog that heralded Id’s coming crawled through the door at their feet.

  “I think we’re ready to rock
,” he said. “Take half the hand and flood the first floor, Maggie. Let’s go, Cackler.”

  The gangly drover-boss pushed the elevator’s up-button and the little bell sounded.

  “No, you imbecile,” said Simpson. Anytime he dealt with Cackler, tapping his inner-Marsten came as easy as slipping into a favorite mood. “The stairs. Lead them up the stairs.”

  Cackler smiled uncomfortably, nodded, and located the stairwell. “Come on, men! Time to scour this place!” He opened the door to the stairs, cycling his arm like a windmill. “All the way up. Caw, caw, caw!”

  One after the other, Simpson’s half of Id’s army thundered its way to the upper floors. First dozens, then hundreds of Weisshemden sounded the clarion call of Id’s Black Hand on the warpath.

  “Get after them, Cackler!” Simpson shouted with full lungs. “Keep them in line up there!”

  “Caw, caw, caw!”

  Cackler responded with a thumbs-up and followed them. Simpson found a hole in the herd and mounted the stairs behind him.

  * * *

  Iris Dufresne sat quietly on a toilet in the second floor ladies’ room. It was one of the few places she could get space to herself since TranStar’s on-duty personnel had been trapped here by the storms. Her mind returned to its constant refrain since the hurricanes passed. Stranded here and she hadn’t talked to Mark since Friday—almost five days ago?

  Jesus, she thought. It feels like five weeks. She wrapped her arms around herself, wishing they were his for the thousandth time.

  Sheltering in place with Frank and the rest of the TranStar staff, taking semi-showers in sinks and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up—that had been their life since Glenn. TranStar’s separate power source kept it functional during crises like the hurricanes, but when everyone else was offline—EMS, law enforcement, the wrecker services—all she and her colleagues could do was sit and wait and be ready when the rest of the world came back to the twenty-first century. Then it was their job to make it possible for everyone else to do theirs.