Yeah, it was a good life. That bodyguard he’d hired for Kitten had predictably sucked, completely inadequate to the task, but he looked good to Kitten, and that was what had mattered.
Taggert had his suspicions that Kitten was fine, of course, based on everything he’d heard from the production crew on location, but even if she turned up dead, the second season of Beyond Human was already in the can, and with the death of so many big wheels on the scripted side of Hollywood in the Luxuriant disaster, his star was about to rise, big time. There was a void to fill, after all, and he was just the guy to fill it. Just like I did with that nineteen year-old last night, he thought with a guffaw. What was her name again? Ehh, it didn’t matter.
He left his production office with a song in his heart. The sky was the limit, no possibility too far-fetched after last night. He was gonna make so much scratch he might as well have his own mint. But there was nothing else to do today except “participate” in the mourning by being seen at all the right funerals and wakes. Hands would be shaken, ideas would be batted back and forth in whispers, because the scraps needed to be collected. This town didn’t stop for anyone, after all.
He thought about taking the SUV, especially since Kitten wouldn’t be needing it or the driver, but this was a day where he actually felt like driving, so Taggert headed down to the garage in his production office, keys in hand, ready to take his prize for a spin. Hell, it was older than the women he’d bedded for the last few years, he thought with a laugh. Prettier and less needy, too.
He looked around at the spot where his 1961 Ferrari Spyder had been parked. It was empty.
“What the hell?” Aaron Taggert muttered to himself.
90.
Sienna
When Scott had said that we were going to give Redbeard what he wanted, I’d assumed he meant feeding Kat to him as some sort of bait. Now, I wasn’t merciless enough to think we’d, y’know, stand idly by while he skinned her alive or anything …
Probably. We probably wouldn’t do that.
Anyway, I’d started listening to his plan with the preconceived notion that he was counting on ol’ Karl to want to kill Kat so badly he’d suspend all reason to do so. He had, after all, seemed to fixate on her above all else.
But Scott—wisely, annoyingly—had pointed out that really, Kat was likely the first-string target all this time because Brock had wanted to draw me out here to LA and thought—annoyingly, rightly—that Kat plus Scott would get that job done. And here I was in Tinseltown, so I guess I was the stupid one for stumbling ass over teakettle right into that trap. Me and my dumb nobility and stuff, making me all predictable.
So anyway, Scott then pointed out that, really, Kat coming back after the Luxuriant would really just throw up a giant red flag for anyone with half a brain. And we had to assume that in spite of whatever neurological damage ol’ Redbeard had suffered, he still at least had a brain. Therefore, putting her front and center as bait would probably raise Karl’s worry level when we needed the bastard lulled.
Oh, I wanted to kill Scott. So badly. Because of course, he’d gone and used reason, and suggested that the only person that Redbeard would REALLY, REALLY want to kill that would actually come after him would be—
—naturally—
me.
And so I found myself flying low and slow a few hundred feet above the Elysium neighborhood, working a steady course toward Redbeard’s bolt-hole, which, if Detective Waters had done her job by now, would be empty, along with every house for a block in every direction (because of the bombs he’d planted in his own house, duh).
It was by no means a perfect plan, seeing as the rest of the neighborhood, still occupied, was probably still laced with massive amounts of explosives, but it had all the crazy elements needed—bait, in the form of me, a trap, in the form of the others, and prey, in the form of Redbeard.
Now all I had to do was hope it came together in the least deadly way possible for the people left in the neighborhood.
91.
Karl
She was just flying overhead like an invitation offered right to him, and he drove after her as quickly as he could.
He could see where she was going, of course—right to his old hidey-hole, probably looking for a clue as to his whereabouts. She was so dumb, she was practically fumbling about in the dark without a clue where the light switch was. He watched her descend over the house, coming down to the earth slowly, wafting, gravity causing her to drift downward. He watched her go, driving after her, slow enough not to attract attention.
The neighborhood was quiet, only a few people walking around here and there. Karl had a grin that stretched across his face and hurt the corners of his mouth. He parked a half block away from the house, and she just stood there in the middle of the street for a minute, staring at the house like it was going to blow up on her.
He wouldn’t do that, though. No, she needed to suffer more. An explosion would end it entirely too quickly, and he didn’t intend to let her off that lightly. Not since Kat Forrest—that bitch—had gotten away.
She started toward the house, and he got out of the car, leaving the door open as he stalked down the block. He watched Sienna Nealon disappear down the side of the house behind the wall that separated his yard from the neighbor’s.
Karl came around the corner of the wall that stretched along the front of the neighbor’s house and peeked after her. She was just walking down the side of the house, stalking near-silently along the overgrown lawn, peeking in a window.
This was going to be beautiful.
Karl snuck along the other side of the wall, heavy with dried-out foliage shadowing the ground beneath him, his head out of phase and stuck through so he could watch her. He went quickly, trusting that his footsteps would be hidden enough by the wall separating them to throw off her suspicion. The wall between the yards was about six feet high, a concrete, cinder block creation that had been painted white once upon a time but now was cracked and fading. Karl stalked along quickly, gaining ground on her, his head leaning through the wall just enough to keep an eye on her.
She paused and he froze, her back tensing through her crumpled suit as she looked around to either side. Karl dodged through the wall and minded his footsteps, careful to stick to the loosest patches of grass. He listened for her, trying to tell if she was moving, turning around, trying to see if someone was stalking her.
If she thought she was about to surprise him, she had another thing coming.
Karl braced himself just on the other side of the wall from where he’d seen her. She hadn’t taken a single step, hadn’t moved at all, based on sound. She was just standing there on the other side of the wall, though she probably wouldn’t be for much longer. Now was the time to act, now was the time to—
Karl lunged through the wall, turning himself insubstantial as he passed through, the bottoms of his feet going solid again as soon as he was through. He sprang out into daylight—
And caught Sienna Nealon with her back turned.
Karl smiled uncontrollably and plunged his hand into her back, turning it solid as he reached her heart. This was the end of her, he thought as his fingers turned solid and he ripped open the muscle that let her live.
This was the end, at last.
92.
Scott
Steven took them through the Elysium neighborhood, flying around corners at high speed, rushing for the rendezvous. “Make it. Make it in time,” Steven was muttering under his breath.
Scott was trying to decide if that was something he was rooting for, too, his fingers pressed into the leather padding on the car’s door. He still wasn’t sure.
93.
Sienna
When someone sticks their damned fingers into your heart, it hurts. A lot. In fact, it’s usually a fatal sort of injury, so maybe you could just imagine how much it hurts, since most people wouldn’t live enough to tell that it hurts. It does. Lots and lots.
Fortunately, I was not a n
ormal person, and more than just being abnormal on my own, I also carried with me the power to summon a crazy serial killer who could heal more wounds than time alone.
See, Wolfe said, for that insult I should just let you die.
My old response would have been something along the lines of, Fine, we’ll all die together, then, crazy, because Wolfe was really kind of chickenshit about “dying” again. He wasn’t exactly living it up in my head, but apparently going into the great beyond was a little much for him to contemplate.
But I’m trying to be the new me, Sienna 2.0, kinder and gentler, so instead, what I said was, Pretty please, Wolfe? With sugar on top? Heal me?
And grudgingly, he said, with a growl that hinted he was a little taken off guard, All right …
The torn and shredded, painful muscle that was my heart closed up around Redbeard’s fingers, and my ribcage started to heal around his arm. He grunted in surprise, and I knew I had him, though probably not for long.
Gavrikov, I said to myself and was rewarded with an angry curse in Russian, apparently directed at Redbeard, but which he would not hear, or even understand if he had. Yob’ tvoyu mat! Gavrikov yelled in my skull, apparently not happy with ol’ Red targeting his sister. I surged into the sky, dragging Redbeard with me, his fingers still in my heart muscle, his arm buried in my back up to the wrist.
“Wheeeee!” I yelled as I surged into the sky, Redbeard stuck with me as I zoomed two hundred feet into the air. I twisted my head around to look at him. He looked appropriately scared shitless. “Bet you weren’t counting on that when you went to kill me. That’s called the tables turning, you m—”
Redbeard went insubtantial and the holes he was holding open in my heart and back were suddenly vacant, causing me pain again, as well as a sudden desire to black out. It also caused him to drop, a very frightened look in his eyes. I would have enjoyed it, but I was busy bleeding out.
Wolfe …
Mmmm, on it. Now go eat his eyes.
“I’m not that hungry,” I said, regaining my strength. “Also, he looks unwashed.”
More spice for the—
EWWWWWWWWWWW.
Redbeard came in for a hard landing on the roof of his bolt-hole, and suddenly that already-discounted house was due for a pricing adjustment. I wondered at first why he would have bothered going solid, and then I realized he was probably using the marginally less hard material used in the roof to soften his landing, because otherwise he would have come crashing right onto the concrete sub-floor of the foundation with only a little carpet to maybe break the fall.
I went after him, but slower, hoping that he’d done a real number on himself, or better still, been knocked unconscious. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see very well because of the curtains. The hole in the roof was a big shadowy pit without a hint of what lay within.
“Oh, these are always the best situations,” I muttered to myself as I descended into the house. The sky was a little cloudy, occluding a lot of the light that would have been visible at this time of morning. The sun wasn’t totally up just yet, so it wasn’t as bright as it had been the last few days. I squinted into the dark, just hoping Redbeard was a puddle on the floor, but knowing that a fall from that height was probably not enough to kill him. I actually had no idea how his power would work in relation to falls; for all I know he’d opted to go insubstantial after crashing through the roof and was halfway to China by now.
I flipped upside down and stuck my head into the house first, experimentally, figuring it’d be better if a) I could see and b) if he had to jump to throw a punch at me. What I saw when my eyes adjusted a second or so later did not fill me with warm, happy feelings.
He’d landed in here, all right. The floor was busted up enough that I could tell he’d impacted, in between all the pieces of roof debris that were scattered on the tile. He was also not here any longer, which was more vexing.
“How are you still alive?” Karl’s voice echoed through the house.
“I could ask you the same,” I said, trying to triangulate his location. “But for me, it’s like that old Nietzsche quote—‘That which does not kill me really, really pisses me off.’”
He didn’t respond to my obvious misquotation, but I heard him moving around in the shadowy house. I looked around, trying to figure out which direction he was going to come at me from. I pulled out Shadow and readied myself, keeping my gun hidden out of sight so that he wouldn’t see it coming when I started shooting at him.
“It doesn’t matter how angry you are,” he said from somewhere off to my left, “it’s a pittance compared to how pissed off I am. Righteous indignation—”
“‘Righteous’ might be overselling it, loser.”
“—fuels the soul,” he said, getting way overdramatic. “It inflames the spirit. Those who are wronged but are given the course to redress those wrongs—”
I yawned theatrically, making it last like, ten seconds. That shut him up. “I’m not in the mood for a lecture, okay? Let’s just cut to the chase and fight to the death already.”
“It’s a common characteristic of the oppressors to try and dismiss the grievances of the oppressed,” Redbeard hissed from somewhere in the dark.
“And it’s a common characteristic of infants who don’t get their way to throw a tantrum, too,” I said, glancing around. “You’re a little older and a little more powerful than most of them, though, so naturally your tantrum has to have deadly consequences for people who have had nothing to do with your sad and pathetic self-inflicted butt hurt. Just use the toilet brush for its intended purpose and stop experimenting already—”
“You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“Uhm, the earth?” I asked. “Of course, if you were a man about it you’d just bury your inability to function in everyday life inside and deal with it instead of blowing up like a volcano, thrashing around and hurting others. You want attention, like a toddler, you want someone to notice you,” I made my voice do that baby-talk thing, “to tell you you’re soooo pathetic, and of course it’s okay to be angry, little baby, to validate you and make you famous, because no one ever paid attention to you before. You want your face on a thousand channels, your name whispered in awe. Congrats, Redbeard, you’ve got a god complex, and you’ve confused notoriety and infamy as something actually desirable. It’s the least of your problems, but it’s causing most of ours.”
“You don’t know me,” he spat, stepping out of the darkness. “You know nothing about me.”
“You think I don’t know anything about how shitty life can be?” I pointed a hand at my chest. “Moi? You think I don’t know anything of hurt, you who just put a hand through my freaking heart and ripped it open? I know pain, asshole.” I glared at him. “I know more about pain than you ever will, but it’s not a competition, is it? Because here’s the difference between you and me—you want to be a victim—”
“And you make victims,” he shot at me.
“—and I refuse to be one,” I said.
“Oh, classic,” he said with a sneer. “Your argument is ‘bad shit happens, get over it’? Typical oppressor.”
“Whine and lash out,” I said, “typical baby.” I took aim at his feet and shot.
He flinched slightly. “I’ve decreased the amount of flesh that I’ve made substantial to only a few microns. That won’t work anymore. It’s like pinpricks.”
“I agree you’re probably carrying a pin prick,” I said, saving my ammo for later. “But anything else you said, I’m tuning out.”
His face twisted. “You think you can ignore me?”
“Well, I’m not going to give you any more attention than I need to in order to deal with you, I can tell you that much.”
“You keep telling me I’m having a tantrum,” he said with a furious satisfaction, “but you’re ignoring the fact that I’ve killed hundreds of people.”
“And you’ve done it for truly glorious reasons,” I said, nodding my head, “You’re not even a
proper nihilist. I mean, carrying out a real estate scheme for a guy like Buchanan Brock … that’s righteous.”
Redbeard flushed, and I could tell I’d scored a direct hit. “It’s not like that.”
“Oh, it is,” I said, keeping a straight face. “You’re blathering on about changing the world, but really all you care about is changing the property values of this area for an already wealthy real estate tycoon.”
Redbeard backpedaled. “You don’t understand. He provided the explosives so that I could change the world—”
“He provided the explosives so that you’d work for him, you corporate shill,” I said, and I could tell I was fishing with dynamite. Redbeard’s face was horrified, his internal motivation compromised in the worst way. “You act like you’re some glorious fighter for the common people or whatever—honestly, it’s all a bit blurry and crazyass to me—but really, you work for the highest bidder. I mean … you’re not even planning to really go out in the blaze of glory here in the neighborhood, are you?” I smirked at his horror. “You’re gonna … what? Get on a private plane and go somewhere sunny, aren’t you?”
“No,” he shook his head in fury. “I mean—I’m going to change things—”
“You’re going to change the size of your bank account, but I doubt the world is going to go rolling off its axis because you move a few zeroes into your assets column.”
“You don’t understand anything,” Redbeard said, near tears. “Not anything!”
“Yeah, you’re upset because I totally don’t get you,” I said with my usual dollop of sarcasm. “Or, alternatively, you’re currently mad enough to cry because I’m calling you out on all your bullshit instead of building you up like the news media has been doing—lionizing you into this spooky guy with a cause and a crusade. You’re just a paid hack, another guy with a job who’s sold out his so-called principles for the almighty dollar, another whining crybaby who can’t get his shit together enough to—you know what? Screw it. You’re not even worth talking to.” And I drifted out of the hole in his roof.
Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change Page 31