Wight

by Dorien Vincent

He parked his bike in his garage and entered the giant's mansion.

  Gregory was waiting inside.

  "Haliburton's probably fucked, but I saved the day regardless."

  "Judging by the amount of destruction on the news this morning, you're quite lucky the werewolves shut down all the video cameras and sabotaged the local news 'copters."

  "Not that it matters, but why'd they do that?"

  "Vampires can be videoed, but a horrific dog titan? It would be worse than big foot, and people may react to him in Europe."

  "Yeah, sorta hard to give a shit about the Himalayas when only thirty five or forty people live there and they're all yuppies anyway."

  "That was cruel."

  "I'm hungry and tired, give me a break."

  Gregory harumphed and strode out. "I'm going to go do some research - these wolves were in league with your enemies ne vampires ne the thorns."

  Tset had a small container of hummus from the fridge in his hands. He sucked a gob off of his fingers and said, "No shith?"

  Within a few minutes he was wearing nothing but a bathrobe, with a bag of pita chips and his hummus, watching DVDs and relaxing.

  A smile, tired-edged, was plastered on his face underneath weary, obsidian eyes.

  The depth of his contentment was hard to explain, especially given immediate circumstances leading up to the feeling.

  Good-Byes, Third Act

  A few days later, Tset got a call from Francois, "Monsieur," He said, "This is not an 'Aliburton mission, official. But we must meet. It concerns Liz."

  "Er. I'm over her." Tset missed the gravity of the word 'mission.'

  "No, monsieur, she is in danger. We must meet now."

  Tset sat up from the couch where he was watching a Simon Pegg movie, "What?" He was still wearing his bathrobe. He'd been taking showers or runs through Gregory's gardens since he'd come home and not much else.

  "Yes. 'Ooever your enemies are are using her to get to you still. Zis is a trap, surely. I'm also to be bait, unfortunately."

  Tset's eyes narrowed, "What do you mean?"

  "I got ze call. If zey wanted you alone, zey would have called you, no?"

  "Well then keep the fuck out of it, you jackass!"

  "No can do, monsieur-" "Stop that monsieur shit!" "-I am being called to asseest anozer 'Aliburton agent. I cannot disregard zis."

  "Then I'll just knock your ass out - where do we meet?"

  "I'm sending to you ze address. Be zere. But zis eez 'Aliburton." Emphasis on is.

  "So?"

  Francois chuckled, "Don't dress like a, how you say, jackass. Goodbye Tset. I will see you soon."

  Tset hung up and imitated Francois, "Don't dress like a how you say jackass lalalala. Fruit."

  Gregory came in. "Girlfriend?"

  "Ex."

  "Oh?"

  "Yeah." Tset was somber.

  "I was just kidding."

  "No, it's just seriously fucked up. Look, I need my cocktail party clothes."

  "They're where they always are."

  Tset stood up and walked past him and up a flight of stairs.

  Gregory called after him. "We're too close, Tset! Tie up what you need to, but I've almost got the names of those gnats who have been buzzing our ears for so long."

  Tset was back in two minutes, wearing his black silk ensemble with blacker pinstripes in the pants and jacket. "How's that relate?"

  "It was a serious euphemism for 'don't die, Tset.'"

  "Oh, haha, touché. Whatever, haven't done it yet, I'll see you in thirty."

  He stepped out the door.

  An hour later he was in Francois' workshop. Francois was with him, in a fine denim suit and off-white shirt and no tie. He had on his loafers.

  After hellos, "Zey 'ave 'er in anozer compound."

  "Who is they, Franzy?"

  "Actually, I do not know. 'Owevair, zey are 'Aliburton. Zis eez Z Section again."

  "Fuck them. They're off the rosters."

  "No zey are not."

  "Yes 'zey' are." Tset opened his phone and dialed a number to a cell phone in the Bahamas. "Bonjour, I need a blank check."

  The Man was mumbling, "What?"

  "Blank check, carte blanche."

  Tset heard him rubbing his face, "What time is it?"

  "Here it's about one in the afternoon." Tset checked his watch.

  "Who is this? What, never mind, what do you need?"

  "I need a carte blanche blank check get out of jail free warrant to shoot and kill and fire or lay-off anyone I think might be Z-Section."

  "But Z-Section-!"

  "No no, shut up, look, just give me the green light. I'll make shit happen. Keep on your merry little vacation out there, in fact, buy real estate."

  There was a long pause, during which the Man rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes, fighting an oncoming head ache. "You got it."

  "Good. Anything you need?"

  "Don't call me?"

  Tset's smile was slightly cruel. "You know I wouldn't keep that promise."

  "Well, good night, or morning or afternoon." There was a beep.

  Tset closed his phone.

  In the silence of the workshop Francois had heard both sides of the conversation and knew who Tset had been talking to. "'Ow did you...?"

  "Connections and favors." Tset had turned his smile on Francois.

  Francois threw his hands up and turned to his drawing table. "Okay, zis is ze compound." There were blue prints and little pins stuck in places.

  "How'd you get all this?"

  "Connections and favors. Zey recruited Elkin a few weeks ago and he does sings for me still."

  "Should I remember not to kill Elkin?"

  "Yes. 'E is, ah, cool."

  "Right, so what's the plan?"

  The plan was a frontal assault. The lot in front of the compound was big and open but closed to vehicles.

  Tset would be taking out the rooftop snipers and creating a diversion while Francois snuck in the front door.

  "From zere, Elkin will 'elp us get to Liz and zen we get back out."

  "Okay. I'll have to get my Enfield."

  "Enfield? Zat's an English club! Why would you want an Enfield? What about your rifle?"

  "My," Sarcastic, "rifle is clunky and heavy. My Enfield with its peep sight is plenty good."

  "Take ze ozair rifle, just for me, oui?"

  "Fine, nothing like a scoped automatic, anyway."

  Francois was alarmed, "Scoped automatique? Your sniper rifle is automatique?"

  "'Course." Tset snickered. "Tristram's a tinkerer."

  "Zat bastard! 'E - and you! - are too much! Why don't you retire?"

  Tset cleared his throat and affected an accent, "No can do, monsieur. I am being called to asseest anozer 'Aliburton agent. I cannot disregard zis."

  "Not right now! Someone 'as got to absorb ammunition! And my clo'es are too expensive."

  "Right, back to planning, this is getting dumb and it's getting late."

  "Oh, yes, well, we must do zis now."

  "Now? It's one thirty. The police are still awake."

  "But ze beasties are still dormant."

  "Augh, let me pull some more favors."

  "What?"

  "Give me a sec." Tset was dialing his hotline number to Captain Larry White. "White? This is Dargent."

  "Yessir! At your service. Good to hear you're still alive."

  "Yeah, look, I need to ask you a favor."

  "Yes?"

  "I'm about to run an emergency errand with some hot lead payoff in the Industrial District. Can you make sure your men are the only ones to respond if they ask for badge intervention?"

  "Sir. What are your parameters?"

  "I can't ask you to..."

  "I insist. At least I need to know what my men will be getting in to."

  "It's a base for a load of assassins from a firm called Haliburton," Tset winked at Francois, who was incredulous. "They kidnapped someone and I need to get her out."

>   "Well, a kidnapping-"

  "No, not where you can get a warrant. It's twisted. I won't lose my job if I go in there guns blazing, dig?"

  "Yessir."

  "Bring an extra armored van, though - I could use that."

  "Okay, I can do that, for sure."

  "Okay. I hope not to see you, but I'll give you a ring either way later today."

  "Later today?"

  "I'm going now."

  "Oh. Well..."

  "Gotta go, but you've got my back if I need it, right?"

  "For sure, Dargent."

  An hour and a half later, Tset was in the parking structure on the south side of the building - the entrance faced east.

  He had left his automatic .50 cal a level below and now crouched, in the bright sun, less than fifty feet from his first target. He peeked - the assassin wore a face mask and wielded an automatic rifle with a bullpup mag.

  Tset inhaled, held it, exhaled, and was in motion.

  Cleanly the bolt slid back and forward, chambering the first, but not nearly last, three-inch lance.

  Using the cement wall as a brace, Tset fired.

  The opposite assassin twisted, his right arm swinging free, then he slipped over the edge of the roof and bounced against the sidewalk.

  Not that Tset had time to watch. Ting! went the casing and spun to oblivion, kSHAK went the bolt. Tset braced, fired: a boom.

  The assassin standing on the far end of the compound was thrown clear of the roof and landed on an executive car.

  Tset inhaled again, letting it out and firing and killing again before he was done.

  The final, and furthest assassin lifted his radio, eyes locked on Tset.

  Tset would've smiled back at him in a charming way had he not been worried about Francois - he didn't have time - instead the next lead spike punched a hole in mask and throat. This assassin did not tumble, he crumpled.

  Tset bounded and slid, ruining his pants but reaching the gap that would take him lower.

  He swung and dove for his automatic, and, ignoring the scope, blew out most of the windows on the nearside of the glass-faced building.

  He heard his collarbone and shoulder break under the repeated, shattering impact of the rifle butte.

  He dropped the rifle, stepped to the wall and dove again, throwing himself horizontally across space and through the smoking remnants of the windows.

  He rolled and pulled his .45s, blasting a couple of shell-shocked individuals to a totality.

  "Elkin?" He asked over his comm-link.

  "Right here." Came back, from Tset's left.

  "Good. Point me in Liz's direction then get Francois there."

  "We have a problem."

  "Problem? Already?"

  "Francois' down."

  "No..."

  Elkin nodded, "He was captured."

  Tset's mind raced. A plan came forth. "Okay, good. Take my gun and take me prisoner."

  "What?"

  "I've got two, plus some other niceties." Tset slid his gun across a desk to Elkin, laced his fingers behind his head and said, "March."

  Elkin looked down at the gun in his hand, put it to Tset's back and walked him along.

  "I'm going to start killing people without prior notice so fall to the floor when that happens."

  Elkin swallowed and nodded.

  "Okay?"

  "Yes, yes, fine."

  "Good."

  Elkin took Tset to a steel-walled basement room, it was large, with minimal furnishings.

  Liz was there, and Francois. Francois had a gun to his head and Liz was merely cuffed to a pipe.

  In addition to Tset's friends were a couple of other assassins Tset had briefly seen around the original Haliburton building.

  One, the best dressed, turned when Tset entered. "Ah, so you arrive."

  "I got him by surprise, Harrison." Elkin said, shoving Tset forward.

  "Is he armed?"

  "No."

  Tset's smirk was crooked and his eyebrows angled steeply downward. "Not like it matters."

  His right fist smashed Harrison's face to tatters, sending the body end over and into a table.

  Before the other assassins could react Tset had slaughtered one with a round from the remaining .45 and opened the other's throat with his stiletto, his arms crossing one another in their deadly sweep.

  The two stumbled and sprawled. Harrison slid from the table and thudded to ground.

  A pause. Tset holstered his pistol and the stilletto whickered back into a fold and away in his jacket.

  Francois, "Tset, you are much faster zen last we were in ze shit."

  "I try." He broke the cuff around Liz's arm. They looked at each other but didn't say anything.

  Tset then attended to the Frenchman.

  "Elkin, give me my gun back." Elkin handed it over and Tset holstered it.

  Liz's voice was a quiet plea, "Tset."

  He looked over at her, rolling his eyes, "What's it, sugar?"

  "Look."

  She lifted the hem of her dress. She was standing on a small plate, the plate was wired to explosives which were wired, presumably, by the fat wire going into the AC vent, to more explosives.

  "Oh shit." Came Elkin's quiet oath.

  "Elkin tell me what's happening right now." Tset became stern.

  "This is obviously a switch - one of us has got to die."

  "Tell me quick." Tset was planning again, tearing around for a solution.

  "Basically, it's an alternating switch - Liz has got to put balance on one side of it for a time, and then on the other, so the bomb doesn't go off. Harrison over here uses these a lot - he thinks it's cute. Or thought, until you smashed his face."

  "Okay, move over, Liz, you guys get the fuck out."

  "No! Tset! You can't do zis!"

  Tset gave an annoyed shout and then, "You think I'm suicidal?"

  Everyone else in the room stared at him. He was perturbed to note the way Harrison's head had landed made the one glassy eye also look at him with an expression of consternation.

  Tset ignored him. "I just run faster."

  "You got forty-five seconds after you take your foot off that plate and then everything goes sky high."

  "Good, you got five minutes after you walk out of that door."

  "Good. And good luck. Nice to finally meet you."

  "You too, Elkin."

  Then Tset waited, after they'd left, shifting his foot, smoking a cigarette and glowering at the very dead Harrison for putting him in this situation.

  The others raced. Five minutes wasn't a lot of time, and if Tset lost count and gave them some extra, which he did until he realized he just could just count a minute each time he had to shift his foot, they still might be too close to the blast. They worried about Tset separately - he could be described as 'plucky and resilient' which is actually how Geoffrey had referred to him once. They knew he would make it out.

  However, there was a hitch in the plan: The police.

  Captain White's sergeant, Thoms, was a junior member of Haliburton in Precinct 9, and knew about Dargent, and wanted to make a name for himself.

  On the basis that the police were being undermined and influenced by an outside source, he had White placed under arrest before entering the building to kill Tset and anyone else inside.

  He knew Elkin personally which is why Elkin did not die when the group came crashing around the corner and into the lobby - though Elkin couldn't see through Thoms' mask.

  "Halt! Hands up!"

  "Oh, shit." Elkin said again.

  "What is zeese? Where is White? He is working wiz us! He knows zis is legit!"

  "Legit nothin', Frog, on the ground and keep your hands where I can see 'em."

  Sergeant Thoms proceeded to read them their rights.

  Downstairs Tset stretched, cracking his back and using the timing of the trigger to measure the amount he stretched either hamstring.

  When he was ready, he darted, pounding hard and noisily up
the stairs.

  When he came around the same corner he hit a police officer, "No! Outside!" He screamed when he realized what'd happened. The cop grabbed him. He had seconds.

  "Dammit! No! Out!" Then he saw Francois, Liz and Elkin all arranged on the lobby floor. Past them, the vans, and Captain White, being guarded and sitting with handcuffs.

  No time. He grabbed the police officer who was still pathetically grappling with him and used him as a battering ram against the front windows, despite being fired on.

  He screamed even as the bullets tore through him, "Liz! Francois! Elkin! G-"

  The rest of it was lost in an explosion.

  Tset blinked his eyes awake, he couldn't see. He thrashed.

  The sheet fell back and Tset sat up, swinging his legs off of his gurney and onto the cool floor. He slipped and fell - the sudden movement ruptured his burnt and cracked skin, spilling fluids onto the ground.

  He knocked over the gurney next to him in his scramble to regain balance. There were some charred remains. By the radio now molded into the ribcage he guessed it was a police officer.

  With violence he threw it away and it broke against the far wall.

  Tset realized he had no breath, so he sat in his own stewed juices and tried to regain it. He was exhausted.

  He also realized, then, that he was naked, and covered in a full body scab.

  A glance at the door told him he was in the morgue. The sign told him, "Morgue."

  He struggled again and felt pain in his wrist, he looked into the reflective bubble eye of an IV.

  'An IV in a morgue?'

  Then came the voices. "Seriously, this one had no pulse, but, regrew his skin on the way over. He also started breathing again, shallowly, but still no pulse." The coroner, Tset somehow remembered this from a brief time of helicopters and cool air on his scorched body, until the chafing bag.

  "I want to see him."

  "Okay, Captain, but don't expect too much - I'm surprised you lived, and you weren't even in there. I hooked him up to an IV, by the way."

  The doors pushed open and White, bandaged slightly but still in uniform as well as a balding, mustachioed and be-goggled man entered.

  Tset was holding himself up between two gurneys and staring at them incredulously. The white sheets were smeared with yellowish dermic fluid. "Do you mind? I'm fuckin' naked!"

  The doctor paled and stepped outside. White remained.