Elektra (3 page)

She could feel the unfriendly gazes of her fellow students as she crossed the courtyard and headed to where Stick waited in the doorway of his modest cabin. Perhaps she should have been bothered by their displeasure, but she wasn’t—she simply didn’t care. There was no camaraderie for her here, no feeling of family or belonging. She had left her classmates behind almost immediately in the training, and when a student is superior to her teacher, it’s very difficult to find friendship among her so-called peers. Since leaving Matt Murdock behind and losing her father, Elektra wasn’t sure she could feel affection again, for anyone. Still, if she could find anything left in her being that resembled affection, it would be for Stick, the enigmatic blind man she thought of as her rescuer from death.

Funny how someone not particularly tall or broadly built could radiate so much power, so much constrained grace and…
ability.
His age was a mystery to her, his calm face at odds with his snow white hair and the resilient way he trained and carried the trim body beneath the black gi. He stood straight and still, his slender right hand wrapped around a black staff. If eyes were, indeed, the windows to the soul, then the man must surely be soulless, because Elektra could see nothing in Stick’s pale blue orbs but the reflection of herself. She saw that now, reading, somehow, the consequences of all that she had done in the last few minutes in a split-second of sightless eye contact, in the way his left hand gestured at her to join him.

Damn.

She stopped before him and bowed her head slightly in respect, even though he couldn’t see the movement—he would know if she didn’t, she was sure of it. “Sensei,” she said. Suddenly she felt it all—the loneliness of being ostracized by her classmates, the anger in her own heart, even the shame felt by her instructor of being bested by a student. If only she would learn to think with her head instead of her heart, to weigh her choices before acting. Next time, she vowed silently, she would do just that. Next time, she—

“So what do you think?” Stick asked, breaking into her thoughts.

She inhaled. Perhaps, if she answered candidly, there would be no need for a next time. “I’ve got nothing more to learn here,” she replied. “When do I get to do it for real?”

He didn’t answer, just kept staring at her. Elektra couldn’t help shifting uncomfortably. If this was how it felt to have him study her when he couldn’t see, she didn’t dare imagine what it might be like if he could.

Finally, he spoke. “Do you know the way, Elektra?”

She blinked in confusion, not sure how to answer or what response Stick was looking for—sometimes her teachers delved more into the philosophical than she was able to handle. Perhaps this was one of those times?

“Kimagure,”
Stick continued when she stayed silent. “That is the way. The ability to control time, the future… even life and death.”

Okay, this was even more out of her realm. “I don’t understand,” she admitted.

He nodded sagely, still gazing straight ahead. “No, you don’t. And that is the problem.”

Elektra frowned. “I know I’m the best student here.”

Stick’s expression turned regretful. “Not the best— the most
powerful.
You understand violence and pain, but you do not know the
way.”

Elektra stared at him as a chill rippled across the back of her neck and crawled down her arms. Something here wasn’t good. “Teach me, then.”

As they always did, Stick’s crystalline blue eyes stared straight ahead, making him impossible to read. “That is my point,” he said. He sounded like a teacher explaining something for the tenth time to a student who just didn’t get it. “I
can’t
teach you.” He paused. “I want you to go,” he finally said.

She grinned with relief and stood up a little straighter. “On a mission? I agree, Sensei. Who do you want me to… uh, what do you do you want me to do?”

He waited to answer until Elektra started to become uncomfortable a second time. “Not a mission,” he said softly. “Just… leave. Get out.” He gave a curt nod that seemed more to support his own position than anything else. With his back ramrod straight and his light-colored eyes still focused on nothing she could see, Stick might as well have been made of ice. His next words confirmed his sudden coldness toward her.

She suddenly felt suffocated as she tried to fathom what he was saying. This couldn’t be true, it
couldn’t.
This camp—it was the only place she had now, the only place she belonged…or at least the closest she could come. To lose that on top of losing her father and Matt…it was
devastating.
What good was it to come back to life if the smallest of the things you gained by doing so was then taken away from you?

Her hands twisted together hard, bruising her fingers, then she scrubbed at her face like someone trying to wake up from a bad dream. Finally, she looked at him again. Her mouth worked, but shock made it difficult for her to speak. “But, Sensei…I have no place to go. Is…is this a test?” Her voice was small, uncertain.

“No, it’s
not
a test.” Stick’s voice was harsher than she had ever heard it. “Now
go!”

So with her soul swelled with rage, Elektra turned her back on her sensei and stalked out of the compound, determined to leave it behind forever.

A SECLUDED MOUNTAIN SKI LODGE
IN SWITZERLAND

I
N
SOMEONE
ELSE’S
LIFE
,
THIS
WOULD
HAVE
BEEN
A
picture-perfect evening.

But as he swirled the fragrant, dark amber liquid in his glass, DeMarco could think of only the one thing in his life that made perfection impossible:

Fear.

The exquisite, snow-covered mountains that overlooked this multimillion-dollar vacation home were like implacable witnesses to the terror that was boiling inside him. DeMarco had the best of everything— this house, with its twenty-four rooms filled with the most tasteful of everything—a Rolls-Royce, a Mercedes, a Hummer, and three other SUVs in the garage, a closet full of designer clothes so handsome that most movie stars would drool over them. Even the scotch in his crystal glass was sixty-year-old Macallan, the rarest and most expensive in the world, a treat for the richest of the rich, something in which even he rarely indulged.

Of course, if he was going to die tonight, he might as well drink the stuff, the whole damned bottle. It wasn’t as if he was going to get another opportunity.

DeMarco stared at the fire burning cheerfully in the stone fireplace, then let his gaze wander around the room. Did they have scotch in the afterlife?
Was
there an afterlife? He’d had a good run on this earth, so he didn’t have much to complain about there. Perhaps he should have taken pains to take it with him, like the ancient Egyptians. Even before he’d come into money, back when he was a very young man, his piercing blue eyes and slender good looks had made him a legendary playboy with the ladies, and they certainly hadn’t hurt him when he’d proposed to his first wife. She had been a millionairess who met an unfortunate end in a skiing “accident” only two years after their wedding on the slopes of a mountain much like this one (which actually had belonged to his
second
wife, Beverly, whom he laughingly referred to in conversation as
one of my former wives
).

Becoming a widower had given him the capital to get started and, of course, the marriage itself had launched him into the appropriately moneyed circles; from there, he had taken only a few short and brutal stepping-stones until guaranteeing himself a slot at the very top of the money web. And if he hadn’t been such a…
nice
person along the way, then so be it. He’d like to meet the person who could honestly say he’d gained his billions—yes,
billions
—by being “nice.”

And therein was his trade-off.

DeMarco took a drink of Macallan and couldn’t help wondering how long he would have lived had he chosen a different path in life. What if he and Claudette, that nearly forgotten first wife, had actually gotten along, and what if she hadn’t threatened to leave him if he cheated on her again? In fact, if he was
really
going to go the morality route, what if he
hadn’t
done exactly that—cheated on her and gotten caught? Claudette might still be alive, they might even have had a couple of children—ones who actually liked him—and done the whole happily-ever-after thing.

Nah. That just wasn’t him.

“How much longer do I have? Minutes? Hours?”

DeMarco hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud until the head of his security force, a middle-aged man named Warren Bauer, answered him from where he was stationed at a bank of security monitors. The bright green screens showed armed personnel in all the key places around the estate, and all were fit, alert, and ready for trouble. There were no slackers on Bauer’s crew. “You’re gonna be fine, Mr. DeMarco.”

DeMarco glanced over at him and frowned slightly. Bauer was a nice enough–looking guy who took his job very seriously. He even dressed the part, sporting a crewcut above a heavy-duty flak jacket and double holsters crisscrossing his chest, with each side holding a no-screwing-around Llama 9mm Omni. He didn’t know what they were loaded with—he’d always had the money to leave the unpleasant things like that to paid employees—but with circumstances being what they were, DeMarco was sure Bauer had gone for something particularly nasty.

Bauer adjusted the state-of-the-art headset pushed into his ear. “Perimeter, what’s your status?” There was only a one-or two-second delay before the security man received a half dozen crackling reassuring replies. With a slightly self-satisfied smile, Bauer settled back on his stool, then turned to study DeMarco. “You’re gonna be fine,” he repeated. “Just go easy on the sauce, sir.” The way Bauer raised his eyebrow made his boss wonder if he really believed there was going to be a problem at all. Some people, no matter how smart, could be spectacular fools. He himself knew about that. “In case we have to move you,” Bauer added.

DeMarco almost chuckled. Instead of obeying, he lifted the glass and took a long, exaggerated sip of the buttery smooth scotch. He rolled the liquid over his tongue, wishing he could appreciate it, then swallowed. “Why bother?” he grated. “You can’t stop her. Nobody can stop her.”

Bauer sat up a little straighter, all ears. Until now, his wealthy boss hadn’t said a word about why they were here, other than he was afraid he’d become the target of an assassination assignment. Bauer had assumed a corporate hit attempt, probably a couple of well-trained ex-soldiers turned mercenaries like himself. Now Mr. DeMarco’s words opened up a whole new arena of interesting possibilities. “Her?”

DeMarco ground his teeth and stared at his glass for a long moment. What the hell—it was well past confession time. He’d done so many things wrong in his life that he ought to be able to own up on his last night. “I didn’t tell you,” he admitted. “I was afraid you wouldn’t take the job.” He paused, then ran his fingers through his carefully styled hair, leaving it shaggy and out of place. He didn’t care. Bauer almost didn’t catch the rich man’s next mumbled words. “I never should have hired you.”

But Bauer was more interested than afraid. He’d taken a chance with DeMarco—under normal circumstances, he would have never hired on in an information vacuum, but DeMarco was paying damned well. It looked like now he was finally going to get the goods he’d wanted since signing on to this gig a week ago. “Who do you think’s after you?”

DeMarco took so long to answer that Bauer almost gave up. It wouldn’t have been the first time the guy had stonewalled him, and he’d learned a long time ago that there are certain times when you just couldn’t push rich men. But finally…

“I’m told her name is Elektra.”

Bauer’s mouth fell open, then it was all he could do not to bust out laughing. The most he would allow himself was a condescending smile. “She’s an urban legend, sir. That woman died years ago.”

DeMarco cleared his throat, then polished off the last of the Macallan and set his glass aside. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought. Until last month.” With DeMarco studying his hands and Bauer studying DeMarco, neither noticed something move on one of the monitors, a sort of
flash
moving too fast for the eye to follow, the glimpse of something long and red before it was yanked out of sight.

Bauer had heard stories about this Elektra woman, sure—you couldn’t run a high-dollar security business like his without hearing the tales. He still believed they were nothing but urban legends, probably something started on the Internet that had spiraled into the realm of uncontrollability. The guy with the flat tire and the trunk full of torture tools at Wal-Mart, the five-dollar bill being returned by the honest serial killer, the missing child one whose place of origin changed as often as the moon went into a new cycle, and, of course, the incredible Iraq camel spider photo. Still, Bauer found himself listening to DeMarco in spite of himself, in spite of the fact that he knew this couldn’t possibly be true. If he had to justify his attentiveness, he’d have to say it was because of the older man’s fear—DeMarco was so saturated with it that Bauer could practically
smell
it on him. He could certainly see it in DeMarco’s body language, in the way he went from staring at his own hands to gripping the arms of his chair so firmly that his knuckles were white. DeMarco’s vivid blue eyes were bloodshot, testament not to drinking but to the sleepless nights of the last week or so, and his gaze kept darting around the room as if he expected someone, or
something,
to simply materialize in front of his eyes at any moment.

DeMarco hauled himself out of his chair and went to the antique sideboard. Ignoring Bauer’s earlier warning, he plucked a clean crystal glass from the silver tray in the center of the sideboard, then snatched up the bottle of Macallan next to it. DeMarco’s hand was shaking badly and Bauer’s pulse jumped when his boss nearly lost his grip on the bottle of sixty-year-old scotch, but the other man caught himself and sloshed a more than generous amount into his glass. He turned and held it toward Bauer invitingly, but Bauer just shook his head. Tempting—when would he ever have the chance to taste scotch like this again?—but saying yes in situations like this had a way of coming back to bite you in the rear end.

DeMarco made his way unsteadily back to his seat, but Bauer didn’t think DeMarco’s legs were shaking because he was drunk. “When you’ve lived the life I have,” DeMarco said as he settled back onto the Italian leather, “you make enemies. My private security detail were ex–Secret Service.” He nodded to himself. “The best money could buy.” He lifted the glass to his face and inhaled, savoring the rich scent of the scotch. “She killed nine of them and crippled two others,” he said flatly. “All of it in less than half an hour. I barely got out of the building.” He paused and tilted his head contemplatively. “In fact, it felt like she
let
me go.”

Bauer’s eyes narrowed as he took in the information. An impressive tale, but was it really the Elektra of modern legend? Maybe, but it sounded more like the work of a highly trained team than one person.

DeMarco inhaled, then tilted his glass and let a generous part of the liquor slide down his throat. “She found me two days later,” he said in a raspy voice. “In Monte Carlo. And she let me go
again.
I escaped by helicopter to Monsanto’s estate.” He squinted at Bauer. “You’ve worked for Mr. Monsanto, haven’t you?”

Bauer nodded. “A couple of times.”

A corner of DeMarco’s mouth pulled up in an unpleasant grimace. “He won’t be needing you anymore,” he told his security man. “He’s dead, along with a good chunk of his private army.”

Bauer jerked, unable to mask his surprise. Monsanto and the best of his security crew were dead? Monsanto’s private “army,” as DeMarco had put it, was almost as legendary as this fictional Elektra. The couple of times he’d pulled duty for the Japanese tycoon had only been on special occasions when Monsanto had needed to fatten up the ranks, such as during his daughter’s wedding. Even then Bauer and his men had been relegated to the most menial of assignments, such as patrolling the parked vehicles, while Monsanto’s own men had carried out their usual hawk-eyed supervision of the sensitive areas.

“So,” DeMarco continued, “I’m here. No one else would have me. Thanks to her, this is as far as I’m going.”

The screen at the far right on the bank of monitors behind Bauer flickered, but neither man noticed as a hand reached into view and plucked the headset from the body of a downed guard. A second later the guard’s limp body was dragged offscreen, leaving nothing visible but his empty post.

DeMarco gestured to the impressive room around him. “You know what’s funny? I forgot I owned this place. It was a ski chalet for my second wife—I always had a fondness for skiing—and a good place to store liquor.”

Bauer stared at DeMarco, feeling his own features work their way into a frown. In spite of his disbelief, DeMarco’s story was getting to him, working its way into his head and starting that damnable tickle of doubt. That was bad—a man in his position not only needed to show confidence, he needed to
be
confident, absolutely sure of himself and that his men could handle anything that might be thrown at them. He couldn’t let himself start to think that just one woman might be able to undermine all that. DeMarco’s next words didn’t help.

The rich man leaned forward. “Listen, Bauer, why don’t you…?” DeMarco’s voice faded for a moment and he swallowed, as if he had to force himself to say the words. “Why don’t you take your men and go.” It was a statement rather than a question. “Save yourselves.”

Bauer blinked, then set his jaw. He’d be damned if some feminine fairy tale was going to run him or his men off the job, especially when there wasn’t anything supporting the story past one semidrunk billionaire. Forget it. “Relax, Mr. DeMarco,” he said with a joviality he didn’t really feel. “I don’t know about those other guys, but we’re going to protect you until you—”

An alarm sounded on one of the monitors behind him.

Bauer whirled and stalked back to the console, then flipped a set of switches below a monitor that was showing nothing but an empty stretch of landscaping at the outside southeast corner of the estate. “How’s it going out there on the perimeter?” he asked crisply. He glanced at the other screens and scowled when he realized that he couldn’t see any of his men. It seemed his team of bad-ass professionals had virtually vanished. His voice sharpened. “Delta, what’s your status?” he demanded.

Nothing.

Before he could ask again, Bauer jerked as the computer monitors began blanking out, one by one. Within three seconds, all that was left was a nearly complete line of downed screens. They looked like black, oversized ghostly eyes staring at him.

“The better the assassin,” DeMarco said softly, “the closer he—or she—can get before you even know they’re there.”

Only the last one still showed a man on patrol at the front door, and even as Bauer grabbed for the switch to warn him over the intercom, the guy—his best one— was jerked out of view. An instant later that screen went as dark as the others, and a split second after that, Bauer gasped as he heard a gunshot.