Maranatha - Chapter IX, as told by Reiner Kierkegaard
#9 of Maranatha
M A R A N A T H A
© Osfer, December 2004
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May only be distributed for free.
May not be altered in any way.
Contains material of an erotic and homosexual nature which may be illegal to
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Available on paperback in 2005
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Chapter IX - As Told By Reiner Kierkegaard
Getting head while driving's one of my favourite things. Being clear-headed is
another, and as luck would have it, I get both tonight. The hare's lips are warm
and well-cared for, probably for this exact purpose. The ease, patience and
effortlessness with which he goes down on me shows that he's had hours and hours
of practice, probably on a daily basis.
I look around at the other traffic, and they seem to be just cars and buses. No
more military vehicles, no more psychotic flashbacks, just the dying trickle of
night-time traffic, the throaty cough of the engine and the soft wet noises from
Cannit's busy mouth. I could drive like this for hours.
Of course, I can't actually drive for hours. Malloy said that if I didn't get an
antidote for what he injected into my neck within the hour I'd die, and that
leaves fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to take on an ambitious minor crime boss
with a substantial amount of muscle behind him - some of which, it's true,
Malloy managed to take out, but... There were many more men at the warehouse than
at the club. And something tells me that many of those are now with the tied-up,
drugged-out-of-his-mind wolf I saw in the cellar. My quarry.
Cannit, despite my warning that he should take it slow, starts deepthroating me.
It feels kind of nice - real nice, in fact, so I can't bring myself to complain.
My foot leans a little harder on the gas pedal, and I pass a black van, then a
yellow Volkswagen which just looks ridiculous.
At this point something occurs to me that I hadn't realised before. At first I
was distracted with panic, then desperation to find Owen and save my own life.
Then there was the hallucinatory episode, which I'd like not to remember, then
the quick hump under Cannit's pretty tail, the stroke of luck with Cannit
getting called up by Sharpish, telling him to go to St. Claudia's hospital...
What occurs to me is this: why the fuck does Malloy want me to get Owen back?
It makes no sense! That dog's too pro-active to just sit back and hope that I'm
competent enough to pull it off. Maybe he wants me dead? No, then he'd have
killed me, he had the chance. Or maybe he realized that Mister Ferrum had
double-crossed him, so he wants me to go after Owen so I'll have to go up
against Sharpish and Sharpish will think I was sent by Ferrum and will take
action against him and... Hold on. Where was I?
No, no, this is no good. I don't have the brain for this. If the plan's
complicated I don't stand a chance of figuring it out. Maybe it's something
simple, then?
I had a sergeant once, who said there were two types of strategists. Both of
them make detailed plans for all possibilities beforehand. However, one kind is
dedicated to seeing their plan through to the end, while the other plans on
planning some more once they get to the problem point. I'm the first kind, it's
all I'm good at. Malloy, clearly, is the second.
There was more, though, more that the sarge had to say. Not every problem has a
solution, after all, sometimes there's just no way out of a situation. In that
case, all you can do is try to change the problem, alter the situation. Sprinkle
around some chaos, go nuts, see what happens, since it's unlikely it'll be any
worse than the current state of affairs.
That must be what Malloy's doing. He's trying to start a shower of chaos so
nobody'll know what's going on any more than he does. That makes sense. When
you're stuck in close quarters, outnumbered three to one, just toss a smoke
grenade. Evens the playing field.
But where does that leave me? Malloy can't possibly expect me to succeed. If he
wants that wolf so badly, he's have insisted that I go with him as backup,
because if he died, there'd be no antidote for me. Yeah, that'd make more sense.
Wait, maybe he did want to kill me, but he didn't want a body lying around,
traceable to him, so he sent me off on some idiot quest so I'd die far away from
him...
Stop it, Reiner. You're thinking 'maybe' too much. Think about what's certain.
Malloy injected you with something and it made you flip out, but it seems to be
over. You're in a stolen police car, which by all accounts should have been
noticed by now and you're a fool not to have thought of that before. And you're
getting a truly excellent blowjob. So first things first.
I throw my head back and groan nice and deep, over the rumble of the engine as I
start ejaculating in the hare's mouth. He's ready for me, eagerly slurping it
all up, diving down to bury his pink nose in my crotchfur, locking lips behind
my knot and letting it all just flow down his gullet. God damn fuckadoodle, he
is good.
My foot sort of slips off the gas pedal and my hands sort of let go of the
wheel. Not a whole lot, mind, but enough for me to veer a little over the line
of my lane and my happy daze Is rudely interrupussed by the sound of a car horn
blaring and brakes screeching a little, it's all really dramatic for what only
amounts to a minor traffic infraction. And what the fuck, I'm driving a
goddamned police car so whoever's in that van had better fucking watch it,
hadn't they.
"More?" asks Cannit softly. He's pulled off me, licking his lips, but keeps his
head resting on my thigh in case I want to spend more time in his mouth.
I shake my head, which is technically wrong since I do want to spend more time
between those skilled lips, but I have other things to think about. I smile, and
Cannit probably thinks I'm smiling because I'm post-orgastically happy and
smiles back as he starts tucking me away and zipping me up again, but I'm
actually smiling at a thought I had.
When things get complicated, look for the simplest answer. It's a gamble, but if
you stick to it, it'll give you more confidence than guessing, and being
confident may sometimes be more useful than being right. And you know what the
simplest reason is why Malloy did what he did to me? I do.
I take Cannit's cellphone out of my jacket pocket. Dial a number. It rings
twice, then I hang up, and redial. It's picked up immediately and a groggy,
trembling voice answers.
"What the hell're you doing with Cannit's phone? You didn't hurt the boy, did
you?"
It's Malloy, and he doesn't sound well at all. He's got that sort of
stomach-clenching croaking sound to his voice that people get when they really
need to throw up, but can't. I look to my side and see the hare looking into the
passenger sunshield mirror, stroking his ears back. I wonder how Malloy
recognized the number - or rather, how often he uses this boy. He's got good
taste. "Cannit's fine," I say with a smirk. "Malloy, am I really-"
I hear laughter, and not just from Malloy. There's other men's' voices, and a
woman's too. "No, no, sweetheart," Malloy says, still chuckling and I feel rage
pumping through my veins. "You're not gonna die. Probably not, anyway. You've
just had a seriously bad trip, but it should be starting to wear off by now.
Sorry I had to put you through that - well, not really sorry, you're still a
two-faced cunt - but I just wanted to borrow your."
"My phone," I reply, grinning. It didn't do me a whole lot of good, I didn't
think of it in time, but I still figured it out before I was told what the score
was. All Malloy had wanted all along was to get my phone, without leaving a
body, dead or unconscious or otherwise. "Yeah, I figured that. Good luck finding
your friend," I say and I hang up. The north-south off-ramp's just now coming up
so I give the wheel a hard yank and swerve off the ringroad and toward the inner
city, a car horn blaring again, but I ignore it. I've got to report this
nonsense to Mister Ferrum, get the other Shadows and go out and kill somebody.
Malloy, probably. The motherfucker humiliated me more than anyone n recent
memory...
Weird thing is, though, I'm not really that mad at him. He wanted to save his
friend and did whatever he needed to help him, he thought on his feet... He'd have
made a good Shadow himself, but for a few minor details. Especially considering
that he went from beaten-up and handcuffed to a raging goddamn killing machine
in thirty seconds flat. That's a good thing to remember, that is... if Ferrum does
send us out to take him down, I'll have to insist on some more manpower than
he'd usually deploy.
Cannit's phone rings again. He's opened his window, letting one arm dangle out.
His right ear flops in the wind, and it looks kind of funny. I'm really going to
have to find a place to dump him. And the car, too. Maybe both together. Two
birds, one stone, sort of thing. On the other hand, I might just take him back
with me. The boys'll have fun with a kid like him.
My mind's so taken by the sight of the hare next to me that I totally
unconsciously pick up the phone and put it to my ear. "Kierkegaard." Then I
realize what I did. On the other end of the line, there appears to be laughter,
same mixture of genders and species as before. "What the fuck?"
"We're not laughing at your last name, Reiner," Malloy says, sounding a little
better now that he's in good spirits. "It's just... Are you, by any chance,
driving a stolen police vehicle?"
I check my rear-view mirror and there's nothing on the road behind me but that
damned black van. And somebody in the passenger seat, waving a phone at me.
"The Maranatha ring road's fucking cursed," I say out loud, my jaw hanging slack
as I gaze into the rear-view.
"Okay!"
"Shut up, Cannit."
"Okay!"
"Where are you going, Reiner?" Malloy's voice still shows signs of the trembling
I heard there earlier, though that does nothing to mitigate the unmasked
contempt there, too. "It's a miracle that you haven't been spotted by actual
cops, yet. Every police unit's been alerted. How long d'you reckon your luck's
going to hold out?"
Fourteen years ago. The day I first got laid. Birgit was the girl's name and she
could have been my sister, we looked so alike. That was pretty goddamn profound,
that experience, though it amounted to little more than an awkward standing-up
fuck in the janitor's closet in high school after classes. I was there for chess
club and she'd just finished cheerleading practice.
She'd seen me try out for the basketball team the week before - try and fail,
pretty humiliatingly. She had come to me afterward and asked why I'd tried when
I obviously wasn't tall enough, and I said I did it to impress her. Then came a
week of kisses and glances and smiles, casual brushes of hands on knees, then
higher, then higher still, until our daily make-out session escalated, zippers
went down and our bodies did something we'd only vaguely heard about.
The truth was, of course, that I'd tried out for the team to impress not Birgit
but Anne-Marie, another cheerleader, but that demon-bitch laughed at my failure
with the rest of her group and when Birgit came to me, I didn't look a gift
horse in the mouth, and told her what she wanted to hear so I could at least get
some pussy out of the debacle. It's funny how fickle a fifteen-year-old's
emotions can be when mixed with good old-fashioned testosterone.
So that was profound. But what was more profound, was something I heard as I was
walking through the school's empty, echoing corridors on my way to chess club. I
felt ten feet tall and my usual hunched lope was replaced by a strut as
confident as ever you saw. But I passed an open door on my way, it was open just
a crack. Bible study, I suppose it must have been. An older man's voice was
speaking, and what he said I remember literally.
"There is no such thing as luck. There is coincidence, and there is God's will.
They're pretty hard to tell apart," he said and the kids in class laughed. I
stopped walking, to listen some more. "There is no such thing as bad luck,
either. But when you're convinced that it can't be coincidence, then you have to
ask yourself the question: is God setting his will against me to test my
resolve, or does he want me to stop what I'm doing?"
Five minutes later we've taken a detour into the industrial zone of the city.
After some gasoline siphoning, sprinkling, and igniting with matches the cop-car
is now a burning wreck, the flames helpfully removing such pesky things as
fingerprints. A keen forensics team that feels the need to compete with those
CSI guys on that TV show might, I don't know, find some generic evidence or
whatever, but it's doubtful they'd go to that much trouble. If they do, hell,
this'll just be a fall job and I'll be out in a year or two, if I even go down
that long.
The black van's pretty spacious on the inside, one of those SUV affairs, but
it's more than a little cramped at the moment. There's Malloy in the passenger
seat, with a bull behind the wheel, who's wearing a black bomber jacket like the
one Sharpish' guys wore. I didn't catch his name, since he was introduced to me
by a really, really pretty young lioness as her new boyfriend.
She cuts quite the stunning figure, that lioness does. She's wearing almost the
same outfit as her sister, who's a little flatter in the chest, but equally as
fine. Both are smooth-curved, golden-furred, with melt-your-heart eyes and those
thin black feline lips that God destined for cocksucking. Cannit was pretty good
at it, but something tells me that these two girls could keep me hard for hours
with merely the odd kiss on my balls.
Although they'd have to look at me nicer. Particular the one called Alice, she's
looking at me with some fire in her eyes. She may be dressed as a raver-grrrl
looking to get her bar bills paid and the ever living light fucked out of her,
but she's looking at me like I stole her wedding ring or killed Santa Clause.
The other one, with the bull for a boyfriend, looks like she wants to eat my
brain, using my dick as a spoon.
The atmosphere of aggression aimed at me, I'll have to admit, is kind of a
turnon.
There's two others in the van, a raccoon and a tigress. The 'coon looks the most
normal of the bunch, dressed in jeans and a hoody. He's the only person in the
van with more than one percent body fat, an average he beats by a fair margin,
too, and second to Malloy he looks to be in the worst shape of the bunch. His
cheekfur's matted and he's obviously been crying, and the tigress next to him
seems to have as well. At this point, I don't really care what their problem is.
Malloy, as expected, takes charge and alters the seating arrangements. The coon
goes in the passenger seat, what with him being one of the bigger people in the
bus, while the lion sisters and the tigress sit in the middle seats. I could
seriously go for a pile-up with those chicks, good Lord but I do, but Malloy
puts me on the back seat, sitting down beside me. He tells Cannit to get in the
trunk-space behind the back seats, which the stupid hare does without complaint.
Really, I gotta get me one of him.
"So, Reiner," says Malloy, patting my knee like he's my teacher or something
and, try as I might, I can't keep my lip from curling. He's not even worried I
might attack him, even though his eyes are showing more white than they should
and his shoulders twitch randomly. "You stole a car, you picked up some tail...
You've been an industrious little sod, ain't you? I wonder, though, how
carefully you spent the hour you were allotted. Did you find out where Owen was
taken?"
I sit up straight, crick my neck and spread my arms across the backrest of the
chair, one of them behind him, lazily draping it over his shoulder like we're on
a date. "Might have done, might have done. What's it to you?"
Malloy nods to the front of the van and I'm momentarily worried they've got some
fucked-up plan, but it's just a signal to the bull to start driving and as we
pull out, there's a police car coming in the opposite direction, heading toward
the burning wreck of a cop-car.
"Have you heard the name Lombardi?" he asks. I don't twitch, but he doesn't look
to see if I do either. Detective Lombardi I know only too well. "Lombardi of the
Maranatha police department will shortly be in possession of a cellular
telephone which, though it lacks a SIM chip and a P-K descrambler, still carries
enough fingerprints and interesting internal features to warrant some intense
investigation as to its origins."
"Hell, your fingerprints are all over it, too," I snap back at him, but even as
the words leave my lips I think he's probably already thought of that. God damn,
I wish Mister Ferrum had given me Malloy's file to look at before sending me out
with him. I'd be damn interested to know where a small-time dealer like him got
the balls, not to mention the skills, to do the things he's done. Hey, that
reminds me. "By the way, Malloy?"
"Fake tooth with a PCP-laced cocktail inside," he replies before I can even
finish asking him how he managed to get out of his restraints and blast his way
out of that nightclub. I don't know whether I just don't believe him, or
disappointed - I'd hoped for something dramatic like divine intervention, or
that he secretly picked the locks and that he had special forces training... But
no. Just a tooth, probably the one knocked out of his mouth, with a hollow space
inside and enough narcotics to give his muscles a little boost and his
pain-nerves a little downer. I should recommend that to Mister Ferrum; I'm sure
it'd come in handy some time. "Any other questions?" I shake my head.
Christ, what is it about Malloy that makes me feel like I'm in the principal's
office? He looks like shit. His lip's split and his eye's swollen, he's got a
sweater wrapped around his houlders, shivering with cold despite the humid,
lingering warmth of Maranatha's autumn. His eyes are showing almost as much
white as Sharpish' and can't seem to focus on any one thing in particular. I run
a quick tactical.
I swing my arm ad punch Maloy in the throat. He gurgles and clutches for his
collapsed adam's apple, doubling over in time for me to grab him by the ears and
bang his head, hard against the side door. I move forward and to the right,
around the side of the middle cluster of passenger seats in the SUB. On my left
is the tigress, who poses no challenge. A punch to her face elicits a startled
scream from the 'coon in the passenger seat, but he's too big to retaliate in
any kind of speedy fashion.
One of the lionesses slashes through her safety belt and springs over the other
two females. There's a lot of fight in this one, the round-breasted one and her
feline claws are razor-sharp. I could dodge her pretty easily in the open, but
in the cramped confines of the SUV my efforts only serve to knock the back of my
head against the ceiling and as black spots sparkle in front of me I feel the
icy stab of five sharp claws digging into my forearm.
I twist at the hip, grabbing her by the elbow. Blindly, I grab for the
side-door's latch and gamble that it's still unlocked and with that twisting
motion I pull the door open and the lioness toward me, tossing her over my hip
and out the door, where she disappears onto the dark pavement that rushes by
with a thump, a crunch and half a scream.
Turning back I swing my arms to catch the tigress across the face and knock her
back against the second lioness, who is by now mightily distressed. My other
hand connects with Malloy, on his face, maybe. His battered body is pushed back,
but the seat bounces him forward and as he does so, doubling over as if going
for my groin, I catch sight of the gleaming metal of a gun stuffed down the back
of his pants.
An instant and it's in my hand. It's heavy, for so sleek a gun, well-balanced
and solid and cold despite being to close to Malloy's fever-hot back. It's up
and around just in time to pistol-whip the other lioness, who lets out a
surprisingly feral yowl when she dives at me across the now-unconscious
leopardess, but before I have a chance to remember whether it really is only the
males of the species who yowl, the gun's butt connects superbly with her temple
and she's sent sprawling onto the back seat next to Malloy.
"You motherfucker!" yells.... I don't know, somebody, I wasn't really paying
attention. The raccoon! That's who's yelling. He's turned around in his seat,
but he's got himself all tangled up in his safety belt.
I lay the gun's muzzle to the back of the leopardess' neck and he freezes. "Cool
it, tubby." At this point I see no reason to say that I'm going to shoot her
unless he co-operates. It's pretty obvious, I think. "We're going to the
Sargasso building, got it?" He nods and sits back in his chair, though he glares
at me as if he could burn me with his eyes, the bull turns the wheel gently and
turns down a side road-
Whoops, no, that went wrong. I completely forgot about the bull. He could have
turned the wheel at any second - he'd probably have done so about the time I
would have thrown that busy lion chick, his girlfriend no less, out the door. I
give it a moment's though, but I seriously doubt I can think of a tactical which
includes the bull where I make it out of the car alive, let alone get to the
Sargasso building.
Malloy gives me a light slap on the cheek and I have to blink in surprise. "Hey,
sunshine," he says to me. "You sort of zoned out there, for a bit. You were
about to tell me where Sharpish took Owen."
I pull my head out of the simulations I was trying to run and turn to face the
dobermann beside me, giving him my looking-down-my-snoutest stare. This guy's
got nothing. He may have had the stones to take out some of Sharpish' muscle
when he was off his knocker on PCP, but he's too smart to kill one of Ferrum's
men, I know that now. I'll just tell him to turn himself in and odds are he'll
do it. He'll gamble on Ferrum's admiration for his cojones to survive
But before I can even formulate a snide, in-your-face "fuck off" comment, a
cute, lapine face pops up from behind the seat's backrest, smiling right between
my face and Malloy's. "Sharpish? Oh, he's at St. Claudia's. Can you guys give me
a lift there? Oh, and anybody want a blowjob?"
The bull behind the wheel, of all people, is the first to start snickering. The
low sound thrums through the van's interior, quickly joined by a musical giggle
from one of the lion sisters. I can't fucking believe this and my first reaction
is to fucking give that fucking buck-toothed cocksucking motherfucker an elbow
in the face, but Malloy, against all odds, grabs me by the wrist and stops me
just shy of bopping Cannit on the nose. The stupid slut never even blinks!
They're all fucking laughing at me, it's like I'm back in fucking high school or
something. I'm so angry my muscles won't co-operate and when Malloy pushes,
weakened though he is, I slide backward. I half-fall off the chair and notice a
whooshing, rumbling sound to go along with the goddamn laughter and a hand wraps
around my other arm, pulling me backward and the next thing I know is I'm flying
backward, arms wide as wings and legs apart like a whore's.
I don't even feel it when I hit the wet ditch on the side of the road, just
tumbling, spinning three time around and then a hard thud as I smack against a
tree. There's a sharp pain in my - well, no, there's pain all over the place and
the taste of mud in my mouth and slime on my face when I land, and land hard.
And with that, ol' Reiner leaves the story...
No, fuck that. I'm not done.
I roll over on my side and reach out to the tree to help pull myself up,, but my
arm won't move. I turn my head to look at it and my neck aches something fierce,
and as I peel back my jacket I notice a bulge in my shoulder that really doesn't
have any place there. Dislocated. Well, at least now I know the source of one
note in this symphony of pains.
My other arm's fine, or at least in much better shape. I grab a gnarled branch
and haul myself up, spitting out some of the filthy muck from my mouth. Well,
there's one advantage to having a jackal's dark fur: dirt don't show as clearly.
So I probably still look half-decent in the face department.
I grab my busted arm below the elbow and tri to tug my shoulder back in its
socket. I bite my teeth together to keep myself from biting off my tongue or the
insides of my cheeks. It's been out of its socket before, which is no doubt why
it popped out again so easily this time.
Those of you who've had it happen likely know that while the dislocation hurts a
fair bit, putting it back in place hurts more. The only thing that hurts yet
more than that is a slow and botched attempt to fix it. I don't think there's
words I know that can describe quite what it feels like, so I'll just skip that.
During the second attempt the pain is of such a caliber that I actually see
visions.
Not like the others, not long ones. They're just jumbled up images that move a
little, but they're interesting nonetheless. There's Birgit's happy groans in
that janitor's closet in high school, the warmth inside her and that feeling,
that unbelievable feeling of holding someone by the hips, kissing soft,
sweet-flavoured lips and sharing your first real sex-orgasm together. It's gone
in a flash, that feeling, and then there's cold and dark. I recognise it, but it
could be anywhere. The solitary cell where Mister Ferrum first came to talk to
me, or the barn where I hid out after killing a rube in my first honest-to-god
bar brawl, or any other cold and dark place I've ever been. After that...
The last image lasts a while, and I'm glad of it. Cannit's on his back, in a
warm bed. There's light coming in through the window and the mattress is so soft
it doesn't even creak under us. The only sounds are my groaning and the hare's
incessant babbling. He's talking about hiking or something ridiculous like that,
but I'm actually enjoying the sound of his voice now, strange as that may seem.
His long, lanky legs wrap around my waist and he smiles at me, pleased that I'm
having a good time.
I've been doing this all night, just fucking him. It's not my usual style, I'm
not doing it just for the relief I need. I'm fucking him for the fun of it. I
stroke his blunt snout, stroke his lips, run my claws lightly through the
downy-soft fur over his supple abdomen. I take pleasure simply in having a
beautiful, naked body beneath me and fucking him is... soothing. My arm can move
again and while the pain returns, in shoulder, knee and stomach, the memory
lingers.
I look to either side of the road, but obviously it's empty. It's the brink
where the suburbs meet the commerce district. Lots of empty space with fake
wilderness in the form of regularly planted trees. It's dark, night-time, but
the sky's overcast and the glow of the city's streetlights is reflected back
down and everything's that useless kind of orange only economically-minded city
planners can think of.
Taking off my jacket's a chore, what with the sore shoulder and all, but it's so
muddied I can't be seen in it. I have work to do, after all. A quick check of my
back pocket shows, aside from a firm, bounce-a-quarter-off-it jackal-butt, the
fragments of Cannit's cell-phone.
In the service I hated marching, but I loved double-pace. Nothing like a good
jog to make you forget all about your aches and pains. By the time I arrive at
the Sargasso building's gate I'm actually hard again - the thought of fucking
Cannit in a bed, sappy though it may be, played in my mind a bit, with this
obvious result. I wish they'd tossed Cannit out of the car as well, thn I'd have
something - somebody to do on my way to Sargasso.
This is the only building in the district that actually has a gate around it.
Most others have a plaza, or simply fill up the entirety of their allotted
landspace and have their front door on the street. Not Sargasso. Sure, the outer
wall runs to the side of the street, but the first two floors are sheer, blank
masonry, the windows don't start until about twenty feet up. In the middle front
of the building is an empty space , hollowed out in the solid base of the
Sargasso tower. It's about a quarter of the building's width and four floors
high, and even though the architect made an attempt at 'opening up the space',
as I once heard someone put it, by including windows on the courtyard's side
walls and adding some stairs at the end of it, leading to the building's
entrance, it emanates a silent threat no matter what the light's like.
It's unpleasant. It's like a mouth, an unpleasant-looking one, or a gate to
somewhere unpleasant. I shiver at the mild cold, and wish that I'd kept my
jacket just as surely as I know that the sodden garment would only have chilled
me more. By the side of the gate there's a massive panel with nameplates and
buzzers, and four screens in a row, all now black. I press the buttons for
Thomson & Harcourt, Accidyne and Sargasso Holdings Accounting Department at once
and instead of the buzzer that would have been heard, had I pressed any one
button - followed, no doubt, by the polite admonition that the office I buzzed
is, at present, closed and would I like to come back on the next business day -
all four screens flash dark blue for a split-second. I count to ten, then speak.
"Kierkegaard here. I have an appointment with Mister Ferrum."
It's a pretty simple, straightforward code. We're the Shadow detachment, me and
my buddies. We don't make appointments, we get summoned and we show up. So we
got together, some of us, and decided to plan for some eventualities. Like in
this case. I have a problem, one that's harmful to myself and Mister Ferrum,
which I want to fix before he finds out. It's slightly dishonest, I know,
especially since he's such a good employer, but I think everybody's gonna be
happiest if this problem goes away without it ever reaching his ears. Knowing
him he probably knows we do this now and again and since he's never berated us,
I can only assume he approves.
The leftmost screen flickers on with some buzzing and crackling noises and some
very un-digital bursts of noise as the Shadow signal splices into the building's
central feed and I trot over to it, casting a few quick glances over my shoulder
to make sure I'm not being casually spied on. I lean my forearm against the
panel, covering the screen with my body. It's Cole, a black lab, who's on
screen. There's sweat on his face and he's breathing through his mouth, showing
a little blood on his fangs. "Reiner! Jesus," he says and closes his mouth the
second he sees who he's talking to. I must be quite the sight. "Guys, quiet
down! It's Reiner!" he yells over his shoulder and the clamour of voices that
had distantly underscored Cole's voice vanishes.
There had been grunts and yells, groans, snarls. Looks like Tiber gave them a
boy to play with while I was out doing the really hard work, the lucky
sons-of-bitches. Actually, considering all the guys that clamber around Cole,
jostling for a place at the security monitor to greet me on the screen, that's a
pretty accurate term: by some fluke all the Shadows on duty tonight are canids.
All of them are sweating, too, and more than a few of them carry bruises that
could be a match for the ones on me. Nobody's got his pants off, though a few
have shucked their shirts. "Mister Ferrum lent you his Suffer, did he?" I ask,
bu I don't need an answer. "There's a problem needs fixing," I say and I don't
even need to gell the guys what exactly's up. Cole nods and turns off the
screen, and then I sit down on the curb, trying to rest to let my muscles work
through their aches, and I wait.
Maybe it's a little stupid, but I actually jump up when the black van
approaches. I honestly think it's Malloy, coming back from his mission to St.
Claudia's hospital, to take revenge for bad information or just to tie up loose
ends, or maybe even to kill me for laughs. I feel as scared as I did in those
alleys and unconsciously I keep my hands pressed together at the wrists as if
they were still cuffed.
But then I recognize the van and I realize how stupid I am. It looks just like
the one that Hector drove when Malloy had us go to that warehouse. It looks just
like the one that would have no doubt been waiting to pick me and Hector up at
that nightclub, and if we'd been just twenty seconds quicker, we'd have been
inside it and driving back to the Sargasso building to have some fun beating the
shit out of that fierce tiger that Mister Ferrum keeps as his Suffer. Don't ask
me what the word means. And don't ask Mister Ferrum either, because he's likely
to subject you to one of those speeches that just makes your head spin. It's
half-mystic, half-sexual, but all I know is that every now and again he sends
that big feline down with orders to be a good kitty and let us take turns on
him, or to put up a fight so we really have to hold him down, or he calls one of
us up to take the tiger on in a fair hand-to-hand.
When the van's side door slides open and two of my buddies help me in with a
strong grip on my arms, I can see he was sent down to put up something of a
fight. Everybody's got scratches and bruises, wiped clean and hastily bandaged
before they pulled their uniforms on, but visible nonetheless. "Detective
Lombardi may be in possession of my cell-phone. The guy responsible for giving
it to him was heading to St. Claudia's hospital, half an hour ago."
There's no point beating about the bush, when it comes to admitting you've been
fucking, fucking, fucking stupid. I plonk my ass down on the bench lined along
the van's left wall and wait for the barrage of insults and growls as I pull my
shirt off to start wiping my face with it... But it doesn't happen. The driver, a
dobermann twice Malloy's size named Malcolm, simply pulls out onto the road and
the rest of the guys start doing weapons checks. And I get it.
An hour ago, they heard that Hector was killed. I saw it happen, myself, right
in front of me. Between Malloy's threats and the dope he spiked me with I had
plenty of distractions, but these guys must have been climbing the walls with
frustration - no wonder Mister Ferrum sent them his Suffer to keep them busy.
As I pull my pants down, crouching awkwardly in the low-ceilinged van, there's
no jokes about whether maybe I should be the 'boy' sometime, with an ass as fine
as mine. Nobody even asks why I've got a boner.
Naked, I accept my uniform, a plain black jumpsuit, and toss it over my lap as I
start pulling on the protective undergarments. Padded jockstrap, wristguards,
elbow-pads and knee-pads. Hector's gone. I haven't lost a comrade since I joined
up with the Shadows, I realise as I pull my jumpsuit on, thoroughly grateful for
the others' silence. Hector's gone.
Malloy would be dead in ten minutes if I told the guys he was responsible for
our team-mate's death. They might even leave him alive and take him back to the
Sargasso basement where we spend most of our on-duty time when we're in
Maranatha. Put him in one of the Clean Rooms and spend a couple of hours working
him over...
There's this lynx that Mister Ferrum sometimes employs, the scariest
motherfucker I've ever met. Scarier than Malloy was in my moment of panic in the
alleys. I've seen the bodies of peple he 'worked on', and they made even my
stomach turn. That is what we'd do to Malloy, if we got hold of him.
First things first, though. We have to get that phone out of the detective's
hands. He's hounded Mister Ferrum for years, since before even the Shadow
detachment was formed. Mister Ferrum gave us explicit orders never to attack
him, never o 'accidentally' let him become collateral damage. He seems to like
Lombardi. He says people like him are valuable, because they keep you on your
toes. If I had Mister Ferrum's brain, weird as it is, I might think the same way
about Malloy. Having a good adversary reminds you where you stand, as Mister
Ferrum told us.
I check my pockets and start loading up. Flasbang, extra mini Mag-lite, couple
of smoke canisters and flares. Lock-pick, acid spray, autohacker with the five
standard data cables. Underarm holster, another at the hip, both containing
standard nine-millimeters.
Cole's sitting beside me, helps me check my gear. He looks as depressed as all
the rest, trying to keep his mind on the job to keep it off thoughts of Hector.
Hell, chances are I did more good for these guys by bringing them this job than
any number of headshrinks could have done. "We'll approach it like last year's
op in Munich. Everyone but me and Reiner will make a quick charge through the
apartment to the left of the 15th precinct station, gather as much attention as
possible and egress at the back. In and out in forty seconds, max. If Lombardi's
on duty, he'll come out with the officers that rush to the scene. He likes
playing hero, so he'll drop whatever he's doing and come out to help. If he's
not on duy, that makes it easier for Reiner and me when we break into the
precinct. Lombardi's office is on the second floor, facing the rear of the
building."
Diego, the rotweiler onmy left, scrratches the scar over his eye like he walways
does when he's trying to ponder something with that slow-ass brain of his. "So
how're you going to get out?"
"Just like in Munich," I inform him, sharing a glance with Cole the causes us
both, shallowly, to smile. "Out the front door."
The van makes a circle around the block surrounding the 15th precinct station.
It's a small police station by all accouns, housing maybe twenty officers and
some miscellaneous staff. Only the ground floor and second floor are actually
used for police 'work', the basement houses some holding cells and the two upper
floors are used for weapons practice and hand-to-hand training. They've got a
pretty nice dojo set up there, a good deal bigger than the ones Mister Ferrum
has us train him, and unlike ours there's hardly any blood-stains on the mats.
Cole and I are sitting at the side door, his hand on thel atch, looking at the
laptop Diego's holding up for us. It shows a rough schematic of the street, with
our position highlighted as a red dot and the field of view of the station's
three rear perimiter cameras highlighted in blue. As we pass through the blind
spot Cole yanks on the latch, rips the door open and I dive past him, with the
Lab following me right on my tail.
I can still see the schematic in my head, the building's green outline against
the black background and the sweeping cones of the cameras. It's like a computer
game, really, which is probably why Mister Ferrum encourages us to play them
when off duty. Never played a game that really got my blood pumping, though,
always ended up crushing the controller when I got frustrated.
Four seconds, that's how much time we've got to get from the street to station's
back courtyard. There's no more people on the streets here than there were in
the commerce district, which isn't unexpected at this time of night. There's a
few lights on in the apartments across the street and some cars in the sitance,
but nothing worth worrying about.
I run up to the gate arund the rear courtyard, turn, kneel and slam my back
against the gate's bars just to the left of the main entrance. I brace my foot
against the cement block behind me, link my gloved fingers and cup my hands in
front of me. Cole, always the slower sprinter, comes running up to me like a
ghost, all black, already trailing the lifeline behind him, planting his boot in
my hands and leaps as I boost him up.
The fence isn't that high, and it's an easy jump, yet he still does a
somersault, as if to show off once again that he makes up for his slow running
with his agility. He clears the fence and lets the lifeline slide between the
pointed tips at the top. I catch the end of the line and leap, letting his
weight help carry me upwards so that when he lands in the courtyard I can put my
boot against the fence's upper edge and hop over.
We rush across the courtyard, the gravel by the fence soon giving way to the
smooth, sticky silence of asphalt and we crouch at the side of the cop-car by
the building's rear entrance just as the beeping, flashing, conspicuous camera
sweeps in our direction. Cole and I press close together so as not to make any
shadows on the ground, just in case there's a really alert cop at his station.
You never know, after all!
"You're hard, you horny devil," says Cole in a low whisper after a five-count,
then hops over the car's hood with an unnecessary backflip. We're in plain view
of anyone sitting at the desks on the other side of the building's windows, a
mere four or five officers in a space with desks for a dozen, but the odds of
any one of them seeing us are pretty slim, for all the time we spend in view.
Cole's in front as we race toward the building's entrance and I know I won't
overtake him before we get there, so I unclip one end of my lifeline from my
belt. Cole repeats my maneuver, turning and lettinghis back slam against the
wall next to the entrance door, where I can clearly see the shadows of two
people through the doors' frosted glass windows. Just a few more seconds...
I step in Cole's cupped hands and find myself flying. It feels just like it did
when I was tossed out of Malloy's van, the freedom of it, excpt I'm flying up
this time, and not sideways and when I land, I land softly and not hard. I grab
the drainpipe on the wall with my left hand and pull myself upward, putting my
foot against the pipe as wel and pushing sideways so I can brace my other foot
against the frame that carries the center camera, while my right hand goes down
to grip the lifeline.
I grab the cable just as I feel the tug of Cole's weight and hoist him upward,
ignoring the creak of the camera's frame and the drainpipe. The doors are
opening and light streams into the courtyard. For a second, I worry that Cole
might not clear it in time, but he pulls his legs up in a splits and rests the
toes of his boots on the top of the exit's doorframe. Both of us look down at
the two cops that walk out. One of them hands his polystyrene cup of coffee to
the other and gets in the driver's seat of the car we'd used as cover, while the
other gets in te passenger seat. They take for-fucking-ever strapping on their
seatbelts and bullshitting and sipping their coffee, but aater a while they
start their engine - this car sounds every bit as shitty as the one I stole -
and drive out the gates, which open for them.
Waiting a few seconds to make sure we're in the clear, I haul Cole up ashe
climbs up the lifeline, grabbing the bottom of the camera's frame with one hand
and my hip with the other. I reaffirm my grip and stance, since I'll be carrying
most of Cole's weight as well as my own, while he unzips my thigh pocket and
pulls out the small periscope. With a flick of the wrist he extends it, unfolds
the mirror and holds it up to peer over the edge of the window-sill we're under.
"So why are you hard?" he asks me as he peers through the periscope's eyepiece.
It's amazing, but he's right, I'm still fucking hard. All my muscles burn with
ache and bruise and overuse, yet the ol' pole's rigid as can be.
"Met this really sexy hare," I reply.
Cole gets the joke. The idea that, while Hector's heart was spray-painted on the
pavement, being scooped up by a forensics team, I was out getting laid, is sick
and ridiculous, when you think about it logically. But for guys like us... Some of
us are confirmed nutballs, snapped under torture in some foreign prison or just
mentally unstable from birth; hell, Diego's got two Y-chromosomes according to
his file, so that can't be all good. For guys like us, these things do happen.
We do them. I feel no guilt over having put Hector out of my mind so soon after
his death, and Cole knows it. He'd have fucked Cannit, too.
"Lombardi's in his office. Let's wait for the distraction. Hey, we should go
pick him up when we're done here. I'm in the mood for bunny tonight," says Cole.
He hands me the periscope and steps on my knee to push himself upward and grab
on to the window-sill above us, just so he's in place when Lombardi leaves. I
let go of the camera's frame, hearing the drainpipe creak, and put the eyepiece
to my eye.
The picture's remarkably sharp. Most of these things are cheap but rugged,
decent but ultimately pretty crap in terms of optics. I've got our dear Lombardi
in view, a panther who seems to think that all detectives in the world should
wear raincoats like Columbo's and does his part to keep up that tradition. He's
hunched over his desk. So many trinkets and lights cover it that it might better
be called a workbench, and he's peering at something with a magnifying glass and
some sort of electronic probe, occasionally checking green-on-black text that
appears on his old-fashioned monochrome computer monitor. Fuck, that thing
probably dates from times when it was still called a VDU and I don't even know
what that stands for.
Then there's a scream. Lombardi looks up from what he's doing, knocking a torn
yellow envelope from his desk, but isn't alarmed enough to move yet. The scream
was distant, muffled, but is soon followed by another, and then more shouting..
That's the Shadows at work, and Cole and I share a grin of pride.
I wish I was in there with the other guys, and so does Cole, I'm sure. feels
much the same way. The urge is strong to jump up and burst through the window
like the other guys are doing, kicking in doors, tossing smoke grenades,
shouting "Police!" to keep anybody from shooting when the see our guys' guns.
But as frustrating as it is for me and Cole, it's got to be worse for the other
guys, swingin' their iron without letting it pop. When you bash the doorknob off
a door with the butt of your shotgun you've always got the urge to flip it
forward and pump some pellets in whoever's on the other side, but when it's a
sleeping family or just some kids having a go at each other in the girl's
parents' bed, that ain't such a good idea.
They gotta be having fun, bursting through the building to the side of the
station. There's a lot of movement on the inside now, cops rushing from their
desk out the front door, or back to the armory to pick up a piece, or down to
the cells to make sure everything's in order there.
I groan, which is something I don't often do, but the beating my body's taken
today has worn out my stamina and my muscles are already at their wits' end. I
need to move, soon, and Cole needs to stop fucking leaning on me. I push the
periscope into Cole's hand, leaving mine free to grab the camera's frame again
and to give me just a little bit of relief from the strain, maybe buy myself a
few more seconds. Speaking of seconds, I can already hear the van coming down
the road, getting ready to pick up the four or five guys that are about to
shoulder their way out the building's back door.
"We have to move," I whisper and I don't need to tell Cole why; he knows me well
enough to know I wouldn't ask for something I didn't need, so he takes the
periscope between his teeth and grabs the ledge of the window-sill, lifting his
weight off me.
I take the lead this time, as I hear the next door building's back door crash
open, grab the window-sill and pull myself up for a second, just a second, to
see if Lombardi's leaving.
And then I see it. And I understand. And through the din of it all, I can hear
Malloy's trembling laughter.
Do you know what I see?
I see Lombardi, still sitting hunched over his desk, looking at the window, at
me... and looking away when he sees me.
"It's a set-up," I whisper and before I have a chance to do anything more I hear
wheels screeching, and in that second my muscles finally give out, I close my
eyes and I'm flying for the third time today. Down, this time. With my eyes
closed, in that half-second that it takes for my body to drop a floor and a half
onto the stairs below, I see everything that's happening.
A police van with a battering ram comes speeding out of the alley across the
building the Shadows are just exiting, ramming into the side of our van, pinning
it against the building's gate and cutting off the Shadows' exit to the street.
I see cops very purposefully marching through the apartment, pushing people back
into their homes, rushing to prevent the Shadows from doubling back, stepping
out into the rear courtyard in a firing formation. The smoke pouring out of the
building shows the laser sights from surrounding rooftops pinning them like the
spokes of a bicycle wheel.
I see the window above opening, the panther in his Columbo jacket leaning out
lightning-quick to slap a handcuff around Cole's wrist before firing a tazer's
darts into his neck at point blank range, Cole going limp and dangling off the
cuff on his wrist.
I see two images superimposed over one another, one of the Shadows dropping
their weapons and raising their hands, another of them roaring and opening fire,
only to be mowed down by police weapons.
I see myself flying, sideways out of Malloy's van, up over the police fence in
that wonderful moment where I felt competent again, down toward the ground now...
Not flying. Lying in a prison bed, listening to a fight. Lying in that
king-sized bed, with Cannit straddling my hips, idly stroking his chest as he
raises his hips up and down over me. Lying in a cheap-ass coffin and being slid
into the crematorium furnace with no-one in attendance but the janitor.
I see Lombardi, finding an envelope on his desk with a cellular telephone inside
and a hastily scrawled note in the handwriting of some bum Malloy paid to take
his dictation. I see him scanning the words, reading that this anonymous
benefactor has procured this phone from one of Ferrum's employees, that it
should be studied quickly, lest it be disabled remotely, that the employee has
been alerted to the phone's location and to expect the employee to return to
retrieve it, possibly in force.
I see Lombardi arguing with his chief, demanding a massive expenditure of
manpower in what may well be the quickest ever sting-operation in police
history. I see snipers being woken from sleep or sex, astily pulling their pants
up as they take position on the rooftops assigned to them.
I see Mister Ferrum's face and the calm murder in his eyes. I see Milos for a
second, then Hector with the hole in hs chest, and finally Malloy, but when I
look at him I feel like I feel when I look at Mister Ferrum. He isn't just a
worthy adversary. He's my better, and I know it. I'd flatter myself by thinking
of revenge, thinking I was somehow his nemesis, but if Malloy has one, It isn't
me. I wonder what sort of man that would have to be.
I see the stairs rushing up to me. I must have my eyes open. Well, no point in
wasting my last moment. I close my eyes again and try to think of the most
pleasant thing in the world. I want to think about what it would have been like,
fucking Ann-Marie doggystyle, her in her cheerleading outfit, skirt tossed over
her back, me in my basketball gear. The image doesn't come. I want to think
about my first time with Birgit, how deeply in love with me she was and how good
it made me feel to be wanted so badly. That image doesn't come either. I want to
see myself in the bed, enjoying the comfort of soft sheets while Cannit rides my
pole but instead I see myself humping him from behind, half-crazed, by the
roadside, with him on the phone.
It's okay, though. I'm used to making do with second-best choices. I'm out.
To be continued.
Available on paperback in 2005
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