Elektra (15 page)

N
OW THAT
S
TONE WAS DEAD
, E
LEKTRA SPRINTED
in the direction of Abby’s voice. They had to be right up here—

“Assassin!”

She skidded to a stop at the sound of Kinkou’s voice, then saw that he had Abby pinned in front of him. Before she could process everything that was going on, something passed between Mark and Abby, a look, a thought,
something.
Whatever it was, it calmed them both instantly, right in front of Elektra’s eyes; Mark stopped his trembling and went utterly calm, seemed almost resigned. Elektra wouldn’t understand why until later, but Mark glanced at his daughter and nodded.

“Finally,”
Abby said. She sounded strangely joyful.

Elektra saw Abby’s hand drop away from where she had been trying to pry Kinkou’s forearm away from her throat. It was such a small thing and it seemed to happen so slowly—nearly in slow motion—that Elektra almost didn’t notice it: Abby’s bracelet slipped off her wrist and fell into her hand, then the girl extended it like a chain. Elektra had known the bracelet was composed of warrior beads, so subconsciously she’d also always known it was long; it simply hadn’t registered until now.

Until Abby whirled it once, switched it to her other hand, then snapped it up and out—

—and wrapped it around Kinkou’s neck.

A single, well-timed and balanced yank whipped the killer over her right shoulder and landed him flat on his back on the ground for the first time in his life.

With the wind knocked out of him, Kinkou barely got the words out for his cohort. “Kirigi! The assassin—”

Elektra registered the arrival of Kirigi and Typhoid Mary, but she was still shocked at this radical change in Abby. She gaped at the girl as, in another fluid and practiced move, Abby pulled off her necklace. Then she dropped into a fighting stance with both necklace and bracelet whirling in her hands like deadly twin
kusari-fundos
—ninja fighting chains. Before Elektra could fully digest what was happening, Abby swung around and sent the end of one of the chains directly into the eye of the crouching, slavering wolf that was almost upon her.

The beast howled and dissolved, leaving nothing but blue haze as somewhere in the forest they heard a muffled cry of pain from Tattoo. With his creature injured, was he bleeding, the ink oozing from his skin like black blood? He must be, because now the rest of his animals were snapping out of existence, leaving nothing but a smoking blue glow as they returned to their master.

Kinkou had pulled himself up and he came forward again, but Elektra shoved him backward before he could strike. He did an admirably agile backflip away and landed on his feet right in front of Mark, and the only thing that kept Mark from being gutted was that he had already turned and was moving toward his daughter. Kinkou’s sword left a six-inch slash across the back of Mark’s shoulder; it hurt, but it wasn’t deep enough to incapacitate him. Kinkou raised his blade again, then found himself in the middle of Abby’s beads as she sped forward to protect her father. They spun and twisted and stung Kinkou in a hundred places before he could take a breath, but he went after her anyway—after all, they were mostly just wooden beads with a few copper ones tossed in for decoration, not the metal chains of a true fighting weapon. Then Elektra was there, and Abby’s father, and all three of them were all tangled up.

Kirigi and Typhoid circled the struggling foursome, watching as Abby demonstrated the martial arts skills she had previously kept such a secret from Elektra. She was quite impressive for a youngster, and Kirigi couldn’t help smiling as he enjoyed the entertainment. “She
is
a little treasure, isn’t she?” he asked, glancing over at Typhoid.

But Typhoid only shrugged and turned up her nose, perhaps out of jealousy. Kirigi smiled wider. “You wanted to kill the assassin,” he said quietly. “Do it now.”

Finally, something that pleased Typhoid Mary. She slid toward the fighters, moving carefully closer as Kirigi unsheathed his sword and joined her. They crouched at the edge of the fight with Kirigi waiting to join in, then Typhoid unobtrusively slid around to the rear of the nearest hedge. She scurried up a tree trunk until she was directly overhead. Kinkou leaped at Abby as Tattoo staggered into the edge of the clearing where they’d all faced off, but Abby’s beads, a double length this time, easily pulled Kinkou off his feet; before she could relax her wrist and withdraw the bracelet in one hand, a spider, the last and least of Tattoo’s little flesh companions, skittered up her arm.

Abby shrieked and jerked away as she slapped at it, trying to get it off her. She wasn’t sure where it had gone, and she twisted one way, then another, momentarily distracted from the more imminent danger of Kinkou. When he caught her attention again, she completely missed the spider as it morphed colors and sunk into the fabric of her jacket sleeve—Kinkou was nearly upon her and she didn’t have enough room to retaliate with either of her personal versions of the kusaris.

But no matter the turn of events, Elektra wasn’t about to let anything happened to Abby—she’d been through far too much to quit now. She grabbed Kinkou’s wrist before he could hit Abby, then sidestepped the palm strike he aimed at her cheekbone, coming in under his arm and ramming her shoulder up, hard, into his armpit. A little guidance downward on the back of his neck with her right forearm threw him off balance; she jammed her right knee up and into his groin, and that sent the killer face-forward into the dirt.

Mark saw the already wounded Tattoo go to his knees as Elektra reversed and caught him on the side of the head with a crescent kick, but there was no time to take Abby and run; amazingly, Kinkou came right back up, this time directing his full animosity toward Abby. Mark managed to lurch into his path and threw what he thought was a perfect punch; Kinkou easily dodged it. In fact, he tilted backward, flipping onto his head and gifting Mark with a nasty kick right in the face as he did it.

Mark dropped, gasping, but this was his daughter he was trying to protect. Abby was everything to him, and he, too, was up again, willing to die to keep her safe if he had to. He pulled himself to his knees, then was dismayed to see—knowing all the while that he had neither the speed nor the skill to get out of the way— Kinkou come at him with a perfect spinning kick. As Tattoo struggled upright yet again and Elektra stepped between him and Abby a few feet away, Mark could only lie on the ground and twist in pain.

Kinkou was delighted—at last he could be done with this
gaijin
and be about the more important business of finishing off the assassin. He would kill Mark Miller as Kirigi had finished off Elektra’s agent: execution style, quick and bloody. To be sure he would have enough power in his blow, Kinkou lifted his knife as high over his head as he could—

Somewhere inside Mark was a little more strength, a little more willpower. He pulled on everything he had, and before Kinkou could swing downward, he propelled himself forward and rolled, taking the killer down like a human bowling ball. Kinkou tilted to one side and the surprise was enough to make him drop the knife he’d been about to plunge into Mark’s chest. Kinkou’s body went backward and, incredibly, finally stopped when it was just barely still above the ground—he looked as if he was
floating
only a few inches above it. He sent Mark a triumphant smile, but it blinked away as he saw Mark had picked up his knife.

Too late he realized that showing off had placed him in the worst position possible; when he tried to come back up, Mark jammed Kinkou’s blade downward as hard as he could, slicing through flesh and bone and pinning Kinkou to the ground. He had time only to bellow in fear and pain; then his eyes went wide and blank and the familiar ugly green light began to spill from his body. Spent now, Mark crawled away just in time to avoid the rancid white flames that exploded from the dead man’s flesh and burned him away to nothing.

Elektra was relieved—and a little amazed—to see Mark best Kinkou, but that’s what could happen when a fighter underestimated his opponent. She and Abby were turning to face the coming Kirigi and she could also finally ask Abby the question that had burned into her mind the instant she’d seen the teenager twirling her bracelet and necklace so efficiently. “Who
are
you?”

Abby didn’t answer. From her position a few feet away, she suddenly jerked her arm at something behind Elektra. “Elektra,
look OUT!”

Elektra whirled—

And went right into the arms of Typhoid Mary.

The evil woman had swung down from the branch directly above Elektra and propelled herself body to body, right into her. Elektra went down with Typhoid on top of her, and before she could react, Typhoid planted her mouth on Elektra’s and kissed her. Elektra went woozy instantly, trying ineffectively to push Typhoid away. It didn’t even take Typhoid any effort to simply hold on.

Typhoid pushed up and onto her hands as she looked derisively at Elektra as her head lolled.
“This
is the legend? The one they talk about in whispers?” She sneered. “I am
not
impressed.” Before Abby could think of what to do, Typhoid pulled Elektra’s face forward and kissed her again, pumping unseen poison deep in her victim’s body. Elektra twitched in her arms as the leaves beneath Typhoid’s palms turned black and crumbled.

Abby gasped and Typhoid lifted her head, focusing on the girl. Ah—her
real
target! This one was done for anyway, so she abandoned Elektra and reached for Abby, stretching out her arms as her fingernails went black with anticipation—

But no. Kirigi’s hand fell heavily on her shoulder, stopping her.

Abby, however, was far from finished. She jumped forward, placing herself in the space between Elektra and the other two, chains spinning smartly in the air.

But to face Kirigi, she was going to have to do better than that.

She whipped one of the jewelry chains toward his face, and he simply sidestepped the beads as if they weren’t there, then reached a hand forward and grabbed the weapon, halting its progress without so much as a whimper. He gave her a dark smile and suddenly snapped it back at her; the copper and wood beads curled around Abby’s neck and tightened, and then she was turning and being reeled toward him like a helpless fish on a line. “The war is over,” he said gleefully, and reached for her.

A stick, old and well-worn, whistled through the air in front of them and neatly parted the length of chain between Kirigi and Abby’s neck.

“The war’s just begun,” Stick said calmly as he stepped in front of Abby.

“Blind man!” Kirigi exclaimed as Abby stumbled backward and yanked the beads away. He looked disgusted.

Typhoid hissed in frustration, but seemed disinclined to attack. Satisfied that she wasn’t a threat, Stick calmly turned to face the sound of Kirigi’s voice. Abby started forward, but her father grabbed her and held her back, staring at the whitehaired man, the one they’d seen in the bar and whom Elektra had called Stick. Worse was Kirigi; with his sword unsheathed, he loomed over Elektra’s spasming body. He seemed to terrify everyone who came in contact with him.

Except Stick.

Kirigi scowled and concentrated, trying to use kimagure on his older opponent. For just a flash, he could see…
something
—himself, charging at Stick, expecting a countermove. But Stick stood still, doing nothing, unnerving in his composure. Kirigi saw himself try again, with the same results.

He gave up and smiled coldly instead. “Hard to read the thoughts from blind eyes.”

But Stick only stared off into nothingness. “Sight is overrated,” he said softly.
“Listen.”

On the ground, Elektra’s eyelids fluttered as she struggled to breathe. Her vision was muddled, filled with leaves and tree branches and… white things, scampering through the branches like nimble monkeys. No, not monkeys…

White-clad ninjas.

They swooped out of the trees like snow eagles, pulling Abby away before Kirigi and Typhoid could react. In a heartbeat Kirigi was surrounded, with no hope of winning the battle—Kinkou and Stone were dead; Tattoo was injured; Typhoid would never be a match for more than a few. It was best they retreat.

“Another day, old man,” Kirigi spat, and then he was moving, too fast to follow. With Typhoid Mary and Tattoo right behind, he circled the tree in which Elektra had hidden herself. When he was just out of Stick’s range of retaliation, Kirigi yanked free two of the
shuriken
Elektra had embedded in the tree and threw them with impossible-to-follow speed and aim. The deadly projectiles skimmed through the air and sliced through trees and leaves with ease, but Stick literally
heard
the air parting as they traveled. He whirled and brought up his walking stick, feeling it tremble as one of them hit it with vicious strength. He smiled as a spot of blood blossomed on his gray shirt. The other throwing star had found its mark, but the wound was easy to conceal—a tug on his jacket and no one knew the difference. Kirigi had impressive skill and sometimes, when the nights were quiet and long, Stick wondered how things would have turned out if the boy had been
his
student instead of the Hand’s.

Stick motioned at Mark, and the younger man obediently lifted Elektra in his arms and, with his daughter watching behind them, carried her out of the forest after the blind man.

E
LEKTRA SAW THE SKY, AND THE TREES, AND THE
clouds. There was sun, too, but it kept fading in and out, lost behind huge gray and black thunderheads that swept in from nowhere to blot out the light. Maybe she was dreaming, or—

“Is she going to die?”

—already dead, because she kept seeing Stick’s face superimposed over it all but through a sort of watery vapor. His image wavered in and out of her consciousness like a weak ghost, a specter that couldn’t quite hang on to this reality. Most of the time she had her eyes closed, losing herself in the volcanic heat that surrounded everything that she was and would ever be. It was like lava running through her veins and her head, and oh, she thought she would sell her soul and everything she was for just a cold, cold shower and, maybe, a tall, bottomless glass of ice water.

“I don’t know. A body can’t be brought back twice.”

A body? Whose body? And brought back from where? She had to be alive—she was certain that dead people didn’t hear voices, didn’t have thoughts, even the disjointed ones floating around in her consciousness. Hadn’t she been dead once? Yes, she had, and she had felt nothing—it was just blackness, an eternal sleep where the foreverness of one’s state of being is all and nothing, incomprehensible, nonsensical. This, then, could not be death—

“If she leaves this time, she won’t be back.”

Was she leaving? She must be, because she was alive, and dead people don’t go anywhere. Where was she going, and who was saying that? Her father? Matt? No, wait—it was Bullseye, that vicious Irishman who had tried to eviscerate her with her own sai—

He smiles blackly at her from only inches away and she can see the indentation of scar tissue on his forehead, that strange self-made target pattern. Already in pain, she has a moment—only that—to think about how she would so like to take a weapon and push it through the center of that scar, then he rams the sai into her stomach and drives it upward, pushing and pushing until it parts blood and organs and tissue and bone and finally breaks through the leather of her top. There is nothing in the world as it happens except for that core of complete and utter torture, and she feels every centimeter of the blade as it goes through—

The ambulance screams through the night, but she can’t hear the sirens, can’t even hear the paramedics even though one is leaning directly over her and telling her something. Then her hearing abruptly comes back, but it’s choppy, and while she can hear him, the sound cuts in and out, like an
old record skipping on a turntable. His voice is filled with urgency and he calls out something to the other one in the back—
“Clear!”—
then light hammers through her body, filling her up with heat. The hollow heaviness inside her chest heaves and stutters, then returns to that same choking emptiness. The light fills her again, more heat on top of the heat in the center of her body, more wasted effort to make that silent, still muscle in her chest wake up. The light comes a final, useless time—

Elektra sees her mother on the bed, lying there motionless and serene, while a white-coated man, the coroner called by the police, bends over her and scribbles on his clipboard. The blood surrounding her is… different this time, not so red, duller and drained of color. Her father stands at the window and stares outward as though he is searching for someone or something; his face is drawn and helpless, eyes ringed with purplish shadows. Elektra hears a sound behind her and she turns back toward the bed, just in time to see the coroner jerk his arms outward. The movement sends a white sheet billowing outward and it settles over her mother’s form, and then another one floats downward, and another, and another, like gently falling snow. The child-sized version of herself walks over and takes the necklace, reaching beneath the layers of white, and then she turns and screams as a demon shrieks at her from the window, screams and screams and screams—

Elektra sat up, gasping and sweating.

A nightmare, that’s all, just old, bad memories all mixed up and boiling in her mind. The ones that never seemed to go away, no matter how hard she worked to keep them buried.

Where was she?

She was in bed, but not hers. The sheets—no blankets—were all startling white with no frills, very much like a hospital’s. Elektra realized her hands were clenched into fists around the top sheet and she forced her fingers to let go so she could scrub at her face. When she did, her fingers came away slick with perspiration and slightly oily, evidence that she’d been lying here for a while. Her hair was tangled and lank, her bedclothes—more plain white, a long sleep shirt that she was already finding way too warm—were wet and stuck to her skin.

She peered around but there wasn’t much to see. The one-window room was just as plain as the sheets— the window had a light-block shade and there was nothing on the walls above the two other pieces of furniture, a small table and a straight-backed chair. It took her a few seconds to focus, but Elektra could finally make out her own clothes, folded neatly, lying next to both of her sais. She could see from her position on the bed that the broken one had been expertly repaired.

Typhoid Mary—yes, now she remembered. Elektra looked down at her hands, then turned them over and flexed the fingers. There was no dirt under the finger- nails or bruises on her knuckles. The rest of her body was the same, no cuts, bumps, or scrapes, so she must have been here—wherever
here
was—for some time while she healed. The memory of Stone tossing her through the air as though she weighed no more than a beach ball was still vivid, and that should have left her black and blue for a couple of weeks, but when she ran her fingers experimentally over her lower back… nothing. She thought she remembered Stick, but that couldn’t be right; that recollection was probably nothing more than a hallucination brought on by the typhoid fever that had rampaged through her body. She was lucky to have survived—most people would’ve been worm food by now.

Moving carefully, Elektra brought her legs to the side of the bed and tested them, making sure she was strong enough to carry her own weight before trying to stand. She could, but she was going to have to go at it slowly—her muscles were weak from disuse and the sickness, her balance shaky. When she felt confident enough to try, she made her way carefully across the small room to the door on the other side. When she twisted the knob and pushed it open, it only took a glance to know exactly where she was.

Elektra stared outside for a few moments, taking it all in. Finally she closed the door and worked her way over to the small table and her pile of clean clothes. She would
make
her body recover,
make
her muscles and stamina return, even if she had to do it by sheer force of will. She’d rested enough.

It was time to get dressed and return, once more, to the living.

It felt like a hundred years since Elektra had been at the camp, but the humiliation of having Stick kick her out so long ago was as fresh today as if it had happened yesterday. It didn’t help that many of the instructors were still there, and every single one who saw her, of course, recognized her instantly. At least the students had all rotated out, the ones she’d trained with and bested gone on to whatever assignments the Chaste had seen fit to give them.

But her former embarrassment wasn’t important now, and as she stood next to her mentor and watched Abby train in the same classes that she herself had trained in years ago, Elektra couldn’t help feeling a mixture of pride and jealousy. The young girl was a natural, as much or more so than Elektra herself had been, slipping and ducking and parrying in the sparring class as though she had been in this class for years and should be teaching it rather than learning in it. Therein was the difference—Abby had, perhaps, a touch of Elektra’s arrogance, but none of her anger. Elektra had never possessed the patience to mentor anyone else, but someday Abby would make an excellent instructor.

As Elektra watched, Abby finished with her sparring lesson and moved immediately to join a group of students practicing with
Rokshaku-bos
—bo staffs. Abby was the youngest in the group, and clearly the most talented; she moved effortlessly, anticipating every blow, feint, and parry. Elektra well remembered wearing the same uniform, a light-colored gi made of a gauzy fabric that was so lightweight it felt like you were wearing nothing at all. With Abby’s hair dyed the same color as Elektra’s, the teenager lacked only the headband that Elektra had used to keep her thick hair out of her face; she had no doubt that if Abby had known about that, the girl would have included that in her emulation of Elektra as well.

The class was an enjoyable thing to watch, and when Stick stepped into the middle of the students and brought them to a halt, it brought Elektra a faint, almost aching feeling of wanting to join in. “Don’t look for your opponent,” he told the students. “Know where he is. I’m blind and I can see more than any of you. Because I
don’t
look.”

He stepped out of the circle and the practicing began again. Elektra couldn’t help admiring Abby above everyone else in the class—she could see the girl’s level of combat and competence rise immediately. She stepped up behind Stick and spoke, not expecting to startle him. She didn’t.

“You tell her, she gets it right away,” Elektra said.

Stick nodded. “She can listen.” He paused, then added, “It was the one gift you lacked.”

Elektra didn’t answer. What was there to say? He didn’t need her to tell him he was right—he already knew that. They both did. They kept watching, and Elektra again had that feeling of enviousness about the teenager’s incredible abilities. After another moment, he said, “She’s everything they say.”

Elektra sucked in her breath as her mind ticked away at the facts, sliding them into place like one of those old-fashioned car puzzles, the tiny ones with plastic squares that kept the kids occupied in the back seat. The answer had been there the entire time, but realizing it still left her more than a little stunned. “This whole war with the Hand,” she said softly, “it’s all about her, isn’t it?”

Stick didn’t say anything for a moment, but finally he answered. “They call her ‘the treasure.’ She was a prodigy from four or five. Her father had those martial arts schools, and word got around fast.” Stick shifted his weight and tilted his head slightly, and Elektra knew he was still monitoring the class even as he was talking to her. “The Hand wanted her for themselves. They tried to steal her, but her father took her and fled.”

“So when Mark refused,” Elektra put in, “they decided to make sure no one else would get her.”

Stick nodded and they stood together in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Elektra asked the biggest question that had been plaguing her. That it came out from between her grinding teeth was unavoidable. “You hired me, didn’t you? The contract with McCabe—you set all this up.” Stick turned toward her, a look of surprise on his face, but Elektra was not deceived—she knew him too well, knew the expression he would use if he were feigning something. “The Hand has killers of its own, and who else would care? Except you.”

A reluctant smile played across the older man’s mouth as he relaxed. “Some people need to figure the way out for themselves. Your mind is more agile than it once was.”

She wanted to be angry, but she was too tired for that. Not just from her bout with typhoid fever, but from all of it—the running, the killing, the deception. The…
loss.
“You knew I wouldn’t kill them,” she said in a low voice, “a girl and her father.”

Stick only gave her an enigmatic glance. “Did I?”

Her eyes widened and she scowled. “It was a test, Stick. It was
all
a test, wasn’t it? From the day you threw me out of here.”

That same knowing smile slipped across Stick’s face. “I knew what you would do. I just wanted to make you
do
it. The decency of your soul has always embarrassed you.” She let an unladylike snort evidence her skepticism, but Stick only gave her a mocking laugh in return. “There are some lessons that can’t be taught, Elektra. They must be lived to be understood. When you came to me, you were boiling over with anger. Whatever grace you once had was squeezed out of you by violence and tragedy. This is not the way. It is not our way.

She pressed her lips together. “You always talk in riddles, Stick.”

His unseeing eyes gazed at the students going through their lessons. “Yes, I’ve heard that before. It keeps my students from getting lazy.”

Elektra folded her arms and turned to face him. He didn’t bother to do the same, preferring to remain in place and monitor Abby’s class. Despite her exhaustion and the smile that wanted to materialize at Stick’s rare self-humor, she couldn’t help feeling a tiny flare of the old anger. She hadn’t seen his body, but she knew McCabe had died because of his efforts at protecting her, Abby, and Mark—died because of Stick’s perpetual game playing. And he had almost not been the only one. “What if the Hand had killed me? And her?”

Stick didn’t even move a muscle. “It was a chance I was willing to take. Anyway, I had faith in your abilities.”

Elektra stared at him, trying to find her way through her own conflicting feelings. Praise was something she seldom got, and certainly not from the mentor she’d adored but who had rejected her years ago. Most of the time she’d rather fight, but… “It’s not my war, Stick,” she said aloud. “You had no right to drag me into this.”

Now he did move, swiveling only his head in her direction. “I drag in who I want,” he said flatly. “Who I
need.”

She ground her teeth. “And now you’re dragging in Abby.”

Now Stick shrugged. “As long as Kirigi’s alive, she’s only safe here anyway. She’s got no choice.”

“And no freedom,” Elektra muttered. But really, what was there left to say? He was right, so she finally just turned and walked away. There were no more arguments about it—as so often happened with life, it was what it was. This situation with Kirigi had to be resolved or Abby, and Mark, would never be safe. Was it better to be safe and restricted, or doomed and free? She already knew the answer.