Deathstalker (17 page)

He chuckled appreciatively. At least his enemy was taking him seriously. Real battle drugs were hard to come by outside the military, but Valentine had a supplier, as he had for most things. However, the number of people who knew that were very small. The identity of his enemy was becoming clearer by the minute. He concentrated in a certain way and breathed deeply as a catalyst set off the battle drug lying quiescent in his system. Blood surged through his veins like boiling water. The world seemed to slow down a little as his reflexes speeded up. He chuckled softly and nodded to the Demons.

“Time to get this show on the road, gentlemen. Why don’t you release poor Georgios and let him leave so that we can be about our business?”

The gang members elbowed each other and sniggered. From the chocolate and cream around their mouths, they’d obviously been gorging themselves on Georgios’ creations, and Valentine winced. The confections had undoubtedly been wasted on them. The gang members were quite incapable of appreciating the subtleties.

“Poor Georgios isn’t going anywhere,” said the tough with the scarlet headband that marked him as gang leader. “Our orders are no witnesses.”

“And who gave you your orders?” said Valentine politely.

The leader smiled mockingly. “You don’t need to know that. What matters is the message I have for you. Well, not so much a message; more a warning. Word is, you’ve made a nuisance of yourself once too often, and our employers hired us to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Oh dear,” said Valentine easily. “Another death threat. How terribly dull.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” said the leader, still grinning. “We’re not dumb enough to take a job like that. Kill an aristo, and every guard in the city would be after us. No, we’re just going to break both your legs, both your arms, do a bit of a dance on your ribs, and then walk away and leave you. Our employers want you hurt and humiliated, and we’re only too happy to oblige. Especially for the money they’re paying.”

“Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it,” said Valentine.

The gang members laughed and sniggered again, but the gang leader’s smile disappeared. “It isn’t just the money. It’s a chance to get back at an aristo. You’ve got everything we ever wanted, and you’re still not satisfied. You come slumming down here where we have to live, and laugh at our quaint and picturesque lives. You smash up our bars, trash our women, and make us scramble for the crumbs you drop. We’re being paid a hell of a lot to crush you, Wolfie, but we’d have done it for nothing. We hate you, aristo. You and all your kind.”

“We don’t hate you,” said Valentine. “We don’t notice you, any more than we notice any of the other rubbish that floats past in the gutters.”

The Demons stopped laughing, and the tension in the air was suddenly sharp and imminent. Light glinted on steel as they hefted swords and machetes. A length of steel chain made soft clinking sounds as it was wrapped around a fist. The gang leader nodded to the two toughs holding Georgios, and they pushed him to his knees. The shop’s proprietor was a small, round little man with a shaven head. He looked like a child among boogeymen. The gang leader drew a long slender knife and stood beside Georgios.

“Hold him still. I don’t think our little aristo here is taking us seriously. Maybe this will change his mind.”

He cut Georgios’ throat with a single economic sweep of
his knife. Blood spurted out across the spotlessly clean floor. Georgios bucked and heaved in his captors’ hands, but couldn’t break free. He couldn’t even get his hands to the gaping second mouth in his throat. The strength went quickly out of him along with his blood, and he slumped forward. His captors let him go, and he fell forward onto the floor to lie still in his own blood. He died so suddenly it was hard to tell the exact moment when the life went out of him. Only Valentine was watching. The Demons were watching him. Valentine slowly raised his dark eyes and looked at the Demons, and suddenly there was something new in the air. His crimson slash of a smile had no humor in it, and his mascaraed eyes were very cold. He looked different, and it took the Demons a moment to realize how. He didn’t look helpless anymore.

“Now that was a pity,” Valentine said softly. “Nobody made a pastry like dear Georgios, I’m going to have to punish you for that. Georgios wasn’t much, but he was mine. No one takes anything from me and lives to boast of it. I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you all. I’ll try not to enjoy it too much.”

For a long moment, no one said anything. The Demons stood very still, and tension crackled on the air. And then the gang leader laughed softly, and everyone’s attention switched to him.

“Nice try, aristo. You nearly brought it off. But you can’t intimidate us anymore. There are twelve of us and only the one of you, and odds like that don’t care how important you are. Take him, boys. We’re going to have some fun.”

The gang members moved forward as one, spreading out in a circle around Valentine, who made no move either to attack or escape. He kept his dark eyes fixed on the gang leader, while his hyped-up senses kept track of the others. He could hear every step, every rustle of clothing, and their scents came thickly to him on the close air. He didn’t need to see them to know where they were. His smile never wavered. From the orchestrated nature of their movements, it was obvious to Valentine that the Demons’ enhancements included some kind of cheap sympatico drug. They moved in a synchronized, coordinated way, as though each member knew exactly where every other member was, and they all lifted their weapons at the same time, in the same way. Follow the leader. Of course, if you took out the leader …

Valentine stepped forward impossibly quickly, his movements driven by the battle drugs raging within him, and pivoted sharply on one foot so that the other shot up and slammed into the side of the gang leader’s head. The force of the blow whipped the Demon’s head around, breaking his neck, and he crumpled to the floor, his eyes rolling up in their sockets. By the time he hit the floor, Valentine had already turned on the next Demon.

The various battle drugs were howling in him now, filling his mind and his body with possibilities. The Demons were thrown by the sudden loss of their leader, but it wouldn’t take them long to find a new focus. The Demon before him was a young thing, slender beyond the point of gender, with skin stretched parchment tight over its skull. Valentine hit it in the throat and it sank choking to its knees. Valentine swung on his next victim with dazzling speed, but a new light had entered the Demons’ eyes. The gang had found a new focus, and their gang mind was fixed on Valentine again. Only this time they wouldn’t stop at a beating. Demon blood had been spilled. Only a death would satisfy them now. In his own way, Valentine approved. It showed the gang understood something of honor.

A knife flashed through the air toward Valentine, thrown with more than usual strength. Valentine snatched it out of midair, reversed it and threw it back at its thrower with a single smooth motion. It sank hilt-deep into the Demon’s eye, and blood washed down his face as he fell backward. Another tough lashed out with her length of spiked steel chain. The barbed links whistled on the still air as they flashed toward Valentine’s face. He stepped forward and stopped the chain with an upraised arm. It wrapped itself tightly around his wrist, but the cruel barbs didn’t penetrate his skin. His flesh was different now, stronger and more malleable. It swept up over the links, holding them firm as the demon tugged at the chain. Valentine yanked on the chain, pulling the Demon within reach, and his free hand slammed into her face. The skin of his fingers formed a broad flesh mask, covering her mouth and nose. She dropped the chain and tugged desperately at his arm, but couldn’t move it an inch. Valentine was rather pleased with the effect. He hadn’t tried that particular drug in battle before. It had been originally intended as a sex drug to free the
form of the flesh for more intimate caresses, but it hadn’t taken Valentine long to see it might have other uses.

The Demon’s struggles weakened quickly as her air ran out, and then the other Demons jumped Valentine and there was nothing but the press of bodies and thrusting steel. But quick as they were, Valentine was quicker. He danced among them like a ghost, everywhere at once, his hands lashing out to kill and cripple. He was boosted now, fast and furious, neurons firing at impossible speed, decisions and evasions planned and executed in the spark of a moment. His blows were devastating and unblockable, and the few times a Demon’s steel found a fleeting target, the pliable flesh healed itself in seconds. The Demons cut and thrust with increasing desperation, but hit each other more often than not. They fell one by one as Valentine danced among them, pirouetting with deadly grace in the midst of death. His hands and feet moved too fast to be seen, and the last thing the Demons saw before they fell was his terrible crimson smile.

In the end, eleven dead gang members lay scattered across the patisserie floor, like so many broken flowers, lying still in awkward poses in pools of their own blood. Only one Demon remained alive, sitting shaking with his back to a wall, nursing a broken arm and trying to keep as far from Valentine as he could. His breathing was harsh and his eyes were wide, and shock and pain had driven most of the drugs from his system. For all his clawed hands and pointed teeth and bulked-up muscle, he’d never stood a chance against Valentine, and both of them knew it. He licked his dry lips, stared in fascinated horror at Valentine, and tried desperately to think of anything he knew that he might be able to trade for his life. And trying even more desperately to keep from his face the thought of the one thing that might still save him.

Valentine Wolfe brushed himself off and made a quiet moue of distaste at the blood that soaked his garments. Little of it was his, and his wounds had already healed. He’d dumped a universal cutoff and flush into his bloodstream, and the various battle drugs had dissipated quickly, leaving his mind sharp and clear and his body whole and relaxed. Nothing like a good workout to focus the mind. He looked about him at the dead Demons and felt no pity for them. They should have chosen a different target for their class anger. Of course, they had no idea what kind of fighter they
were taking on. No one knew about his martial skills, or at least, nobody living. He’d gone to great pains to keep his abilities secret, including killing his trainers. It suited Valentine that his enemies should always underestimate him. He loomed over the sole surviving Demon and smiled down at him. The Demon winced away from the smile and pressed back against the wall behind him, but there was nowhere left to go.

“Eleven men dead in under three minutes,” said Valentine conversationally. “There are only three men outside the Arena who could match that, and I’m two of them. I know, I’m not at all what you expected, but then, that’s life isn’t it? I’m really rather annoyed with you. Poor Georgios is dead, my morning has been ruined, and my clothes are a mess. The only reason you’re not dead and frying in whatever afterlife you believe in is because you have information I want. Someone set you on my trail, and you’re going to tell me who. Because if you don’t, I’m going to take the morning’s frustrations out on you, and you’d be surprised how inventive I can be when I’m annoyed. Talk. Now.”

The Demon spat a thick wad of blood onto the floor between his outstretched legs and tested a loose tooth with the tip of his tongue. He wouldn’t meet Valentine’s eyes. They upset him too much.

“I don’t know their names. They didn’t offer them, and for the kind of credits they were putting up, we didn’t ask. Never saw their faces, either. Had them hidden behind holo masks. Man and a woman. Young, rich, arrogant; aristos like you, by their accents. But they did leave something behind; something that might interest you. It’s in my pouch, over there.”

He nodded gingerly in the direction of a hip pouch lying abandoned on one side of the fight. It was still sealed. Valentine walked over and picked it up with one thumb and forefinger. He brought it back and dropped it in the Demon’s lap. He winced at the impact, and Valentine smiled down at him.

“Open it. And be very careful. After all, there might be a booby trap of some kind, mightn’t there?”

The Demon smiled mirthlessly and fumbled at the pouch’s straps with shaking fingers. His face was pale and blotchy and the comedown from the drugs was obviously getting to him. Valentine watched him dispassionately. Amateurs had
no business meddling with drugs. He looked back at the front door. One of the Demons had activated the “Closed” sign embedded in the glass of the door. That, together with the swiftness of the actual fight, had kept anyone from breezing into the shop in search of Georgios, but it wouldn’t do to hang about too long. Some people, such as those of Valentine’s rank, would only see the “Closed” sign as a challenge. They might even kick the door in, if they were sufficiently annoyed. Valentine would have. And the last thing he needed was to be found surrounded by dead bodies and soaked in their blood. It would be difficult to explain and harder still to cover up. The authorities would take a great deal of expensive soothing, and his father would be furious. Valentine winced. No, that wouldn’t do at all.

It occurred to him that the Demon was taking an uncommonly long time to get the pouch open. He stepped forward impatiently and then stopped dead in his tracks as the Demon opened the pouch, reached in and pulled out a disrupter. Valentine froze where he was, his mind racing. The energy weapon changed everything. There was no way a small-time street tough could have got his hands on a disrupter through normal channels. It was death for such as him to even possess such a weapon.

But the gun in the Demon’s hand was real enough, which suggested the Demons’ mysterious patrons really had been aristocrats after all. Valentine ran quickly through the drugs still available in his system. He’d used up most of the useful ones, and he was pretty sure the Demon would shoot him if he made any move for his silver pill box. He could still jump the tough and trust his reflexes were in better shape than the Demon’s. He could also get himself killed. He decided he was going to stand very still and wait for an inspiration to strike him.