“You know who I am,” I growled at the doorway. “If you’re going to take down a death-dealer, you’d better make sure you can do it in one shot!”
Silence.
“I smell cordite – I know you’re in there and I’m willing to bet I can blow your head off before you get a chance to fire another shot. Last warning!”
Silence.
“Your funeral, asshole!” I shouted as I started firing point blank into the doorway. I trudged forward, blasting away until I stood in the entrance. A sniper rifle lay at my feet and the shooter was nowhere in sight. How the hell he’d gotten away without my seeing him told me that I either needed glasses or the shooter was a ghost. I dropped to one knee, disappointed that he’d disappeared into thin air when I heard Sparks’ footsteps in the grass behind me.
“Did you get him?” she panted.
I cocked my head over my shoulder and shook my head. “Nope. And I have a feeling your brain is going to melt again because he vanished into thin air. There’s no exit other than this broken doorway and he’s gone – poof!”
I staggered and everything became fairly clouded. I remember the light headedness I’d felt earlier had morphed into a high grade dizziness and I collapsed. The inside of the crypt was spinning before my eyes and I caught vague glimpses of Sparks as she ripped my shirt off and started applying pressure to my chest wound.
“Hang on, Reaper – an ambulance is coming,” she choked. “Don’t you freaking die on me because I’m going to be in shit up to my eyeballs over this.”
I coughed up a mouthful of blood. “I didn’t know you cared so much, Carol. I need you to get me onto the grass.”
“The grass? The only things keeping you from bleeding to death are my hands on your chest.”
“Just trust me,” I croaked as I struggled to get back to my feet. Sparks helped drag me away from the entrance to the crypt until I was lying on patch of turf. I dug my hands into the earth and it felt warm and tingled against my skin. I could feel the living energy of the grass and trees surrounding me through my fingertips, so I shut my eyes tight and reached deeper and deeper into the swirling stew of living energy. I gathered small threads of it – willing them into a tight bind of power. I opened my eyes and stared at Sparks.
“Get into the crypt and don’t come out until I say so,” I said weakly.
“Reaper, you’re dying in front of me – I won’t let you!” she protested.
I tried to offer a smile, some tiny measure of hope to convince her, but from the look on her face she wasn’t going to budge.
“Carol,” I said through a mouthful of blood. “What I’m about to do is going to kill every living thing within a ten-yard radius of my body. Now get in that fucking crypt now!”
Sparks stared wildly at me for a moment and then grudgingly nodded. She stepped back into the crypt just as I channeled the tight cord of living energy from around me and sucked it into my body through my fingertips. I could hear a faint cry of life ebbing away from the land as I fueled my body with power. I’d have felt a pang of guilt if I weren’t about to die myself, but I needed this body if I was going to find who did this. I rolled my head at the crypt and looked at Sparks. Her jaw was clenched tightly and she had a death grip as she stared at me through a pair of eyes that was probably getting used to seeing the unbelievable.
I could feel the bullets pushing out of my shoulders my leg and chest. The life forces I’d stolen from the earth slowly regenerated my body, the wounds began to close and I took a huge gulp of air as my lungs cleared. In minutes it was over, so I carefully stood up and surveyed the damage I’d caused.
All around me was dead grass, grey and cold and lifeless. A nearby tree had turned ashen, the ground beneath it carpeted with flat grey leaves. Two dead magpies lay with their feet in the air next to the crypt as a cool gust of wind sent relief to my burning skin. I buttoned up my trench coat and then knelt down and picked up the three bullets that moments earlier had been lodged inside my body. Sparks stepped out of the crypt, once again giving me a wide berth.
“I-It’s true,” she gasped. “Everything you told me is real.”
I slowly got back to my feet and said, “Sorry it had to be like this, Sparks. It ain’t pretty … anyway I’m glad you’ve accepted the truth.”
“But how? You were dying, Reaper!”
“Everything has its time,” I said grimly as I pointed to the dead tree. “The land surrounding us is gone now, and it won’t come back, either. I sucked the life right out of the earth – it was the only way to save this body. That’s why I wanted you to step into the crypt. If you hadn’t, you’d be as dead as those two magpies over there.”
She quickly composed herself and tugged sharply at her blazer. “You need to get the hell out of here now, Reaper. In about two minutes this place is going to be swarming with police.”
“You’re wearing my blood, Sparks,” I said, pointing to her hands. “How are you going to explain that away when the start asking questions?”
She threw off her blazer and tossed it to me. “Take that with you and get rid of it. As for my hands, I’m going to give them a dirt bath. Is there any more blood on me?”
I gave her a quick once over and shook my head. “You’re clear,” I said. “I’m going to cab it over to my truck and then head back to my flat. I need some rest.”
She knelt down and started scrubbing her hands in the dead earth. “That makes one of us at least. I’ll be up all night doing a report on this. I’ll probably get a freaking reprimand, too, for losing the guy.”
“I’m … sorry about that, Carol.” I said earnestly. “My hunch is the shooter has a set of skills that aren’t exactly from this plane of existence if you know what I mean.”
“You think the guy who was asking about you is the shooter. You believe he’s supernatural or something then?”
“Probably,” I said, stuffing her blazer inside my trench coat. “Damned if I know who it is or why he shot the shit out of me. You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“Right now, yes. When I get home later tonight and crawl into bed, probably not. But I’ll mend. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“I gently placed both hands on her shoulders. “Thank you, Sparks,” I said warmly. “I mean that.”
She glanced at my hand and to my great surprise; she didn’t place me in another hammer lock. “When this is over, you’re paying the bills for my shrink.”
12
I took a taxi back to Fairview Cove and hopped in my pickup after tossing Sparks’ blazer into the Bedford Basin. My chest hurt like hell – just because I’d managed to heal myself doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the after-effects of critical injuries. And damaged tissue isn’t the same after traumatic injuries. After being shot to pieces, I reckoned the whole thing had knocked at least twenty years off the natural life span of the body I was occupying.
As I tore up Kempt Road past the Windsor Park Naval Barracks, I started thinking about how my would-be assassin managed to pull off his disappearing trick. If he was mortal, I should have seen him running from that crypt and I didn’t see a damned thing. If he wasn’t, then hell has got some pretty damned good sharpshooters. Trained snipers are masters of camouflage. A good one can stand up behind you and cut your throat before you’ve had a chance to realize he’s killed you.
I flipped a cigarette into my lips and took a deep haul as I nodded to a couple of the ladies on Robie Street when I decided that Sparks would have called me by now if the guy had been hiding in plain sight. It was pretty clear the guy shooting at me had to be the one Dane Woollcott warned me about. Were the few pot shots taken at Sparks and me connected with the killing of four angels and four demons? Whatever the motivation, I’d just survived a clear-cut attempt at a hit and that kind of professional fire power costs money whether the assassin is human or something else entirely. And he or she would have had to be following my movements to know that we’d stopped at the McDonald’s for a bite to eat.
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br /> I glanced at my watch. It was 11:15 PM, and Boyzies wouldn’t be flooded with people for another hour. Maybe some of Dane’s contacts might know something. I chucked my cigarette out the window and turned onto Gottingen Street. It had been a long day and I needed time to piece together what little information I had about the murders, so I pulled into the parking lot behind Boyzies and chambered a round inside my Beretta. I wasn’t about to allow someone to try another head shot without my getting a round off first. I had been caught with my pants down at the cemetery and I resolved never to drop my guard like that again.
As I hopped out of my truck I noticed a couple having a major spat in a blue Cadillac Deville across the parking lot that I immediately recognized. It was Emil Vachon in his pimp-mobile complete with a gold grill and matching gold rims. Every window save for the front windshield was blacked out with a limousine tint, but the orange glow from the streetlight provided enough illumination so that I could see an attractive brunette wedged in tightly next to Vachon’s steroid-laden enforcer. Vachon, a man with probably less fashion sense than me was covered with tacky-looking bling and seated comfortably behind the steering wheel and bellowing at the girl.
I stuck to the shadows as I walked across the parking lot just in time to hear Emil start cursing in French as he slapped the woman across the face so hard that her neck snapped back. I was quite prepared to ignore what was going on until I saw Vachon’s enforcer pull out a long-bladed knife from inside his leather jacket. He pressed it against the woman’s throat and she immediately opened up her purse and dumped the contents. Vachon rifled through what had been poured on the driver’s seat and then gave the woman a hard back hand. He nodded to his partner who quickly maneuvered his blade onto the girl’s right cheek.
That did it. I wasn’t going to stand for watching a pretty face like that get wrecked by a low-life like Emil Vachon.
Yeah, whatever. I have a soft-spot for hookers, I told you that.
I ducked behind the rear of the car and snuck up to the passenger window. I tapped it with the pistol grip of my Beretta and the window slid down with a mechanical sounding buzz.
“How’s it going, Emil?” I said easily, as I drove the pistol grip of my Beretta into his thug’s face. There was an audible crunch as the cold metal connected with his cheekbone, so I smashed it into his face again for good measure and the knife fell from his hand. “Not sure who your enforcer is, but there’ll be no cutting up of the ladies in my neighbourhood. They gotta earn a living just like everyone else.”
Vachon threw me a menacing glare. His left hand slowly moved down to between his seat and the door when I cocked the hammer on my Beretta and pointed it over his now unconscious enforcer’s massive shoulders.
“Tim Reaper,” he snarled. “You look like shit … are those bullet holes?”
I nodded as I opened the door and pulled his thug onto the cold pavement. “Oui-oui! And blood, too!” I said in the world’s worst ever French accent. “Now Emil, you know I’m a good client, but when it comes to cutting up their pretty little faces, I like to think of myself as Occupational Health and Safety for working girls. Get your hands where I can see them.”
He placed both hands on the steering wheel and grumbled something in French as I eyeballed the brunette to assess the damage. She looked to be in her early twenties and her face didn’t have that threadbare appearance that prostitutes usually get after a winter of working the streets of Halifax. She had shining black hair that dropped neatly to her shoulders and lips the colour of raspberries. She tensed up for a moment as her brown eyes gazed out over the hood of the car. She took a deep breath and then she straightened her back and started putting everything back in her purse. In a few seconds she slid across the seat and then stepped out of the car.
“It’s business, Reaper,” Vachon said angrily. “This one here came up short.”
“Uh-huh – you know, the smart pimps are getting their girls off the street and onto the Internet. Some of ‘em even go so far as to register their business as a corporation and offer free dental and drug coverage. They also drive nicer cars than the kind you usually find at a retirement villa. How much is she short?”
“Five hundred,” snapped Vachon as his thug groaned beneath my feet. I drove my foot into the goon’s ribs to keep him on the pavement and then I kicked him one more time for good measure.
“She’d be worthless with a scar, Emil, and your buddy here seemed pretty keen to cut the girl up. My hunch is this little tiff is about something that you’re taking personally. She’s trying to buy her way out and you were going to take her money and leave her with a life-long memento of her services in the sex trade, weren’t you?”
He shot me a defiant glare. “She’s cattle, Reaper. All cattle wind up wearing someone’s brand. She’s no different.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the woman and she avoided my gaze. “You want me to whack this asshole because, you know, I can do that. I never liked French guys anyway.”
She shook her head. “There’s always someone else willing to take his place … are those real bullet holes?”
“Yep – another outfit ruined,” I said casually as I directed my attention back to Emil. “Now, Frenchie, you know that if anything happens to her after you and flat nuts here leave the parking lot that I’ll be coming for you, right? It’s been a crummy day and I’m not in a charitable mood, so you’d better think very carefully about what you’re going to say next.”
I watched his jaw tighten and his eyes narrowed sharply. “Fine … whatever. She’s yours, Reaper. She’s always been more trouble than she’s worth.”
“And the rest of her exit fee? You’re going to write that off, yeah?”
“Sure,” he said, his eyes panning over to the woman. “You’re free, Danni. Consider this an early Christmas present.”
“See? That was easy enough,” I said, stepping back from the car. Vachon’s thug slowly got back to his feet and crawled into the passenger seat. I shut the door behind him and the Cadillac roared to life. The rear tires spun hard against the cold asphalt and left a trail of acrid blue smoke as the car tore out of the parking lot.
I gave the girl another look-over as I fished a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. “So, yeah … I guess, you know, go and sin no more or something. You’re too damned pretty to be working on the streets of Halifax. What are you, like nineteen?”
“I’m twenty-four,” she shot back. “And you’re covered in blood!”
“Thanks for pointing out the glaringly obvious.”
She reached into my trench coat and pulled out my package of cigarettes. She deftly yanked one out and placed it between her lips. “Well … are you going to explain how those bullet holes got there and do you have a light?”
I handed her my Zippo and she lit her cigarette and then took a deep haul. “The bullet holes? Just an on the job hazard, that’s all. I’m all patched up now. So, yeah … what kind of name is Danni? Only a parent in the porn business would name their daughter Danni.”
“It’s Amy – Amy Curtis,” she said. “I always hated working in this neighbourhood … oh shoot.”
“What?”
She took another deep haul on her cigarette and then said, “I can’t go home – Emil owns the condo. He owns all the furniture, too.”
“But you were trying to buy your way out,” I said. “You mean that little prick owns your place?”
“He owns the apartment and everything in it,” she said with a groan. “I had it worked out that if I turned enough tricks for six months, I’d be able to pay off Emil and have enough left over for a damage deposit on my own place. He said that he’d let me go after the last one.”
“And you believed him? Jeez, I thought working girls had street smarts!”
“Apparently not – anyway, thanks for being here tonight,” she said. “I can’t believe he was going to cut my face. The worst I’d ever seen him do was to slap around some of the girls, but never something like that.”
I dug my hands into the pockets of my trench coat and started heading out of the parking lot. “Yeah – well, never work for a French guy. Also, you know, maybe carry a gun or something. It can’t hurt.”
She raced up to me and grabbed my right shoulder. “You’re not leaving are you?”
I spun around on my heels to face her. “That was my plan.”
“But where will I go? I have no money and no apartment. All I have are the clothes on my back. Please – could I just-“
There was a look of quiet desperation in her eyes which was odd given that I’d just secured her freedom. So what the hell did the girl want with me now? She tried to force a smile but that didn’t work, so then she hit me with the one thing in a woman’s arsenal that I’m pretty much useless at defending myself against: she started to sob. Tears rolled down her cheeks and then she buried her face in my chest as my nostrils filled with the apple-cinnamon scent of her hair. Once again, I’d managed to get myself knee-deep in woman troubles and I freaking hate that. I placed both my hands on her shoulders and gave her a slight push.
“Amy is it?” I asked.
She sniffled loudly and nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re about three sobs away from asking if you can stay at my place until you get back on your feet, aren’t you?”
“It would just be for a couple of days – until I get in touch with my family in Toronto.”
“Do I look like a social services agency?” I groaned. “I have enough complications in my life and I don’t need another one.”
She let out another loud sob and sniffled loudly as I started to walk away. The sobbing continued until I’d left the parking lot and it was at this point that I got a strange feeling that might have been guilt or gas – I couldn’t tell which. I continued walking, trying to ignore her blubbering but the strange feeling I was experiencing stopped me dead in my tracks. I turned around to face the parking lot and a weary sigh.
Immortal Remains: A Tim Reaper Novel Page 10