The Art of Possession

by Cari Z

  I took a deep breath, then looked down at Mal, who had rolled over onto his back. He stared at me, his whole face a bit stunned, as if he couldn’t really believe what was happening. “Is it just me,” he said slowly, “or are we being shot at?”

  “It’s not just you.”

  “Oh. So I did nearly just lose my hand. Lovely. So, um… are they gone?”

  “I doubt it, but we can check.” Staying out of the bedroom window’s line of sight, just in case, I snagged a throw pillow off the chair by the door and threw it into the sitting room.

  Pow! A shower of feathers went flying as the sniper’s round disintegrated the pillow in midair. The bullet went on to lodge in the wall by the door.

  “Oh, fuck,” Mal said succinctly.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what do we do now, wait them out?”

  “Nope. You”—I pointed at the open bathroom door on the other side of the bedroom—“are going to crawl in there and get into the tub while I deal with Corday.”

  Mal’s jaw dropped. “She’s coming?”

  “According to Patricia.”

  “But then—the timing of this all, it must mean—”

  “We were set up.” My professional esteem for Corday’s operation was rising by the minute, while my personal esteem for her careened down the toilet. “I know, it’s bad, but we’ll deal with it. Take this—” I handed him my Kahr pistol, then pushed him toward the bathroom. “—get in there, and stay out of sight. Don’t fire unless absolutely necessary.” We were in a hotel with thin fucking walls—it would be too easy to cause civilian casualties with a misfire.

  Mal held the gun like he’d never seen one before. “I—I don’t, I don’t think I can—”

  “Mal.” I cupped his face between my hands, making sure his eyes were firmly on me. His pupils were tiny, his breath short—he was panicking. I couldn’t have him panicking. He’d get himself killed. “It’s okay. Deep breaths. There you go.” I felt his jaw tremble under my fingers before he forced another inhale. “I’ve got this, all right? I’m not going to let a girl beat me up in front of you. I’d lose all my street cred.”

  “I promise you wouldn’t,” he said weakly. At least he was speaking again. “Just—you have to be careful. Please.”

  I would be. As careful as I needed to be to get the job done, at least. “I will, now crawl.” He finally began to move, and I sighed with relief as I pulled my Glock. The moment after his feet vanished, I heard the hotel room door open.

  “Alors,” came a drawling exclamation. I darted a glance into the living room and saw the woman enter, shutting the door softly behind her. She was every bit as elegant now as she had been in London, but her grace had a whole new meaning for me. This woman was no more a dancer than I was—she moved like a killer.

  “I believe this room has rats,” she said, in English now. “It’s a good thing I have an exterminator on call, no? Only, you’re not dead… are you, Mr. Tucker?”

  Engaging her in conversation was a start. Get her close enough to take down without having to fire, subdue her, and use her as a human shield. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  “On the contrary, I’d only be disappointed if you went down so easily. If scaring you were a simple thing, you would have quit after the little accident I arranged at the Strand. And if this were another time, another place, I would be happy to explore all the ways you could try to impress me.” She chuckled. “But I understand I’m not your type. And I know you’re not going to shoot me, Mr. Tucker.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “You’re not. You hate collateral damage, you would never risk your friend’s life.”

  “Just how do you know so much about me?”

  I could practically hear her shrug, silk moving across the smooth skin of her shoulders. “It pays to keep up with these things. A KIS agent in London is always news, especially when he is getting too close to me.”

  What the hell was she, some sort of spy? “You’re pretty well-informed for a thief.”

  She laughed again, louder. “I’m no mere thief, Mr. Tucker! I am to theft what Van Gogh was to Impressionism.”

  “Oh yeah? You gonna cut your own ear off too?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But I might cut your ear off.” I had only a second to register that she was about to fire her gun and threw myself to the right, away from the edge of the entrance to the sitting room. The bullet punched through two layers of drywall, then burst into a spray of birdshot that peppered the far wall. Glaser safety slugs, the same kind of thing air marshals used to keep from penetrating airplane hulls if they had to fire inside.

  “All clear?” she asked lightly. “That’s how you say it, no? Do you understand my advantage now, Mr. Tucker? I can shoot at you without fear, but if you shoot at me—” She tutted. “So dangerous. Not to mention, I have my friend on the line. I can simply tell him where you are, and he can shoot through walls to get to you. He has no compunctions about hitting anything or anyone.”

  Fuck. She had me in a corner, and I knew it. “You’ve made your point. What do you want?”

  “I want my treasure, obviously. Things have gone rather to hell here in Marseille thanks to you gentlemen, so it’s time to pack up and move on. C’est la vie.”

  Okay, this provided me with an opportunity. “You want the scepter. Tell me where it is, and I’ll bring it to you.”

  “Oh no,” Corday chided me. “I don’t think so. I want your friend to bring it to me, your professor. I know he’s in there with you. I want him to walk over to my bag—the one by the window, naturally—and very slowly, take the scepter out. Then I want him to bring it to me, and you, Mr. Tucker, will not move so much as an inch from where you are or I will have my friend fire on you. Do you understand? And Mr. Armstrong?” she called out, a little louder. “Do you understand as well?”

  “I—I understand,” came his shaky voice. A moment later he poked his head around the corner.

  “Mal—”

  “Alex, she has us dead to rights, I’m afraid.” He looked pale, spooked, but he was handling it. “I’m not going to let her shoot you just because you’re stubborn. I’ll play porter if I have to, in order to keep us alive.” He stepped out into the bedroom, and I felt my heart clench like a fist in my chest. But he didn’t start to bleed, so at least the sniper was standing by his partner’s word. I watched Mal walk—carefully, like he was afraid he might stumble—over to the window and reach into the bag there. His breath caught, and a moment later he withdrew a long, blue felt-wrapped object. He hefted it gently. “I—is this it?”

  “Do you see anything else in there shaped like a scepter?” she asked. “Bring it here.”

  He moved, toward me and then past me, his eyes darting from my face to the bullet hole like he couldn’t believe I hadn’t been perforated. Honestly, I couldn’t quite believe it either. He entered the sitting room, and I moved so I could keep an eye on him.

  “Ah-ah.” Corday’s gun was trained on me. “No sudden movements, Mr. Tucker. I have you in my sights, after all. Mr. Armstrong.” She smiled coyly. It was an expression that suited her. “You’ve been such a gentleman, I feel like doing something nice for you. Would you like to see what you’re about to lose forever?”

  “Please don’t do this,” Mal murmured, barely audible. “Please, don’t—let me take it back to London, let me return it so it can be loved by the world again.”

  She shook her head. “When art and history combine with beauty, these are things people pay a great deal of money for. Men and women would die to be where you are right now, holding what you hold in your hands. This is your last chance to see it for yourself.”

  The temptation was too great for Mal. He stared at the felt packaging as if mesmerized and began to pull back the layers.

  “Just the top,” Corday cautioned him. “I do still have to walk that out of here, and all that gold is quite eye-catching.”

  He switched to the top, unsticking the felt and peelin
g back the blue until gold—bright, brilliant gold that reflected almost red in the light of the setting sun—could be seen. He finished clearing the top off, and—even I had to admit it was something to see in person. The pictures didn’t do it justice—the central dome was bigger, brighter, the petals more delicate, the engraving more precise. Mal looked like he was having a religious experience.

  Corday suddenly thrust her free hand out, breaking the scepter’s golden spell. The five feet of distance between us felt like five hundred feet. “You’ve had your gift. Give it to me now.” Mal looked at her with glassy eyes. “Slowly.”

  “Of… of course.” He began to extend the scepter, struggling a bit as the weight of it pulled him forward. I watched the way his arms moved, the way he shifted on the balls of his feet—the way he was pulling my gun out from his pocket—

  I jumped to my feet just as Mal threw my gun right at Corday’s face. She hadn’t been expecting that—it hit her forehead, and she reeled backward. I lunged for her, knocking Mal to the side. A moment later, a new bullet hole appeared in the wall behind us.

  “Get out!” I shouted at him, wrenching Corday’s gun away even as I positioned both of us in front of the hallway to the door. Her friend would have to shoot right through both of us to get to Mal. “Get out now!”

  Cradling the scepter like a baby, Mal nevertheless moved quickly, down the entryway and out the door before three seconds had passed. Unfortunately, three seconds were all my opponent needed to get back in the game.

  She wrapped her free hand around the back of my neck, then smashed her forehead against my face. I felt my nose break, hot, salty blood gushing over my lips and into my mouth, and my eyes teared up so badly for a moment that I couldn’t see.

  Corday followed her elbow up with a vicious knee to the balls, a strike that would have completely incapacitated me if I hadn’t already been reeling back out of her range thanks to the head butt. The impact was still enough to double me over, almost retching with the throbbing pain but not so far out of it that I wasn’t able to grab her leg before she could knee me again.

  You wanna play rough, bitch? We’ll play rough. Gritting my teeth, I grabbed her behind both knees, lifted her up, and did a high double-leg takedown that put her straight through the glass-topped coffee table.

  The noise was intense, way worse than the breaking glass of the door. I was on top now, exposed, not an impossible shot for her sniper to take, and yet no shot came. That meant whoever it was had changed targets and was probably hunting for Mal. I needed to give him as much time as possible to get away from the hotel, away from both of them. As much as I wanted to turn around and run after him, I had to stay and fight it out.

  Corday was stunned, spluttering, but holding on to my hips with her legs. I reared back and began to throw punches, simple, brutal hammer fists, down onto her head. Fuck being a gentleman; this woman was a better, and definitely a dirtier, fighter than me. I needed to end it, fast.

  She protected her head well, though, keeping her hands down by her face and leaving her elbows up to deflect my blows. Five strikes in she wrapped up my right arm with her left, looping around it like an eel and drawing me in close, then—crack! She brought her right elbow around for a vicious strike to my face. It hit my cheekbone and not my disaster of a nose, thank fuck, but it was still enough to knock me onto my side.

  Glass crunched beneath me, shards glittering like diamonds against the cream-colored carpet, dotted with red splotches from my still-bleeding nose. Corday spun to put her feet between us, seemingly oblivious to the sharp glass beneath her, and lashed out with her foot, kicking me just below the sternum.

  I exhaled heavily and grabbed ahold of her ankle before she could reel it back in, clutched it to my stomach and twisted, hard, to the left. I wasn’t much of a grappler, never had been, but I was versed enough to know that if you could isolate a limb, it would be that much easier to break. I didn’t want to kill this woman, but I wouldn’t mind wrenching her tendons out of place so she couldn’t fucking kick me again.

  She rolled with the movement of my twist and ended up flat on her stomach, trying to stand. She was hurt, the plethora of cuts on her back welling with blood, but it wasn’t slowing her down at all. I kept my grip on her foot, got up onto my knees, and jerked her flat just as she was raising her other foot to strike at me.

  She hit the floor with a smack, and I took the opportunity to get back onto my feet. I needed a weapon—where had my gun ended up? Hell, her gun would do too.

  There. Three feet over, beneath the wall-mounted television. I dropped her foot so I could go after it, saw her hand move out of the corner of my eye—

  Instinct made me cover my face with my arm, and a second later a handful of broken glass scattered off it that would otherwise have gotten me in the face. “Fuck,” I snarled. Dirty, dirty fighter. Two could play at that game.

  By the time she got to her feet, I had my hands on her gun. I held it on her with one hand as I wiped blood off my face with the other. She stared at me, wary, her palms cupped against her pants.

  “Drop the glass,” I said hoarsely. She scowled but obeyed, shards falling from her own blood-drenched hands and tinkling merrily against their brethren on the floor. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “I still don’t think you’re going to shoot me, Mr. Tucker.” Even now, with her long dark braid an unkempt mess, with scores of cuts and seeping blood and panting for breath, Corday was incredibly composed.

  “Who do you work for?”

  She shook her head. “I work for myself, of course. That’s what thieves do.”

  Bullshit. “Most thieves aren’t trained in Krav Maga and jiujitsu.”

  She smiled. “You recognized it! I’m surprised, since you seem to know so little of the arts yourself. Look at you, you big, strong man. You have five inches and fifty pounds on me. You should have been able to stop me in the first five seconds of the fight.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but then, I’d never been much of a hand-to-hand fighter. Lots of Green Berets weren’t—we were weapons experts, not ninjas. “You chose a hell of an opening move.”

  “And you must have balls of steel. I salute you.” She looked from me to the gun. “So. What do we do, now that you have me at your mercy?”

  “Who were you going to sell the scepter to?”

  “Were?” She raised her neatly-manicured eyebrows. “I dislike your use of the past tense, Mr. Tucker. I’m still going to sell the scepter, and for an enormous amount, I might add.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t even have it anymore.”

  She smiled. “By now? I’d wager that neither does your dear friend, Professor Armstrong.”

  The jab hit home. What did she know that I didn’t? It was amateurish, I knew that before it happened, but I couldn’t help it—I glanced toward the door. That was all the time she needed to make her move.

  Corday jerked the round, gold-colored pendant on her necklace off and twisted it somehow. Too late I realized that it was a tiny pepper spray gun. It didn’t have much of a charge, but it didn’t need one—the burst of aerosolized irritants was already so close to my face that all she needed to do was jettison it and run, while I bent over coughing. Fresh agony roared through my face, and my groin ached sharply. As much as it hurt not to run after her, I couldn’t.

  I staggered into the bathroom, turned the shower on to cold, and got in, heedless of the mess I was leaving behind. Water hit my face, and I winced before relief finally began to come. It was short-lived, because I had to reset my nose and that was never fun, but at least that pain was familiar.

  I got out as soon as I felt like I’d be able to stand upright and see where I was going. I checked my reflection in the mirror and—holy shit. I never had been much of a looker, but I definitely wasn’t gonna win any beauty prizes for the next few days. My nose was a purple, swelling mess, my cheek had a bright red bump where her elbow had connected, and my shirt was covered with blood.
r />   Oh, well. At least my nuts had stopped bitching at me.

  I found my gun—both of them, actually, the one I’d given to Mal had ended up against the far wall—and took hers for good measure, then wrapped the spent pepper spray pendant in a pillowcase and took that too.

  Just as I was about to leave the room, the manager appeared in the door. Her mask of disapproval melted into horror as she took my appearance and the wreck of the room into account. “Mon Dieu, qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?”

  I headed straight for the doorway, not about to let her stop me. Luckily, she shrank out of the way, her hands pressed to her mouth like she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. “Mais… mais… qu’est-ce….”

  “Lady trouble,” I said succinctly before running—well, jogging—okay, hobbling as fast as I could—toward the stairs.

  I needed to find Mal, fast, before Corday and her partner did. I tapped my earpiece as I made my way down the stairs, waiting for Patricia to respond. Nothing. I tried again. Still nothing.

  Shit, had Corday’s partner gotten to Patricia too? Was she—had she—

  “Putain de merde!” She went on before I could express either my relief or my need for her to help find Mal. “I was negotiating for a goddamn boat while he had a goddamn Jet Ski, he was right there in front of me, and I couldn’t get to him in time to—”

  “Patricia!” I shouted as I got to the ground floor. “Focus. Which way did he go?”

  “I don’t know! Perhaps into the hotel, perhaps behind it, why?”

  “Because Mal has the scepter, Corday got away, and now her partner is looking for him too.”

  There was a moment of silence, then a heartfelt, “Fuck. I’ll head for the paths along the water, and you go toward Charles Livon. We’ll find him. He’ll be all right,” she added gently.

  He’d better be. A memory of Mal’s face in the hotel room flashed before my eyes, pale and scared, but so ready to face death if it meant rescuing what amounted to a hunk of precious metal. He didn’t see it that way, I knew—it was so much more to him. Worth fighting for. Worthy dying for.