Poison Sleep (13 page)

He leaned in toward her, cupping her chin in his hands, and murmured some compliment. They kissed, curling together, the taste of brandy on his mouth, on her lips; underneath, the taste of him, the delicious mouth of a lovetalker. After a while, she pulled away, and looked at him searchingly. His expression was open, inviting, up for anything. “Bedroom,” she said, tugging him up by the hand and leading him toward her room, a slow process as they paused along the way to pull each other’s clothes off. They tumbled onto the bed, their hands reaching everywhere, trying to touch each other all over at once.

“I want—” Joshua said, and Marla had the presence of mind to slip a finger into his mouth to keep him quiet. He
was
a lovetalker, after all, impossible to resist, and Marla knew she’d be lost if he started giving her instructions. She wouldn’t be able to disobey, and then she’d be just another of his many conquests, an eager submissive desperate to please him, and whatever mystique she’d covered herself in by being a forceful dominant woman would disintegrate.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said, grinning, and managed to tear herself away long enough to get off the bed and kneel by a cabinet. She slid open a drawer and pawed through until she found what she was looking for, a bundle of black silk scarves. Joshua was spread out on her flannel sheets, eyes half-closed. Gods, he was luscious. She climbed into bed and draped a silk scarf over his belly, making him laugh. Maybe this was too kinky for him—her last relationship had been with an incubus, and that kind of involvement tended to skew one’s sense of propriety.

She held up a scarf. “Feeling playful?”

“Of course.”

“Open your mouth.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and she told him to sit up. She gave him a deep kiss, then pulled away, balled up the scarf, and tucked it into his still-open mouth. She used another scarf, tied around his head, to hold in the gag. “Too tight?” she asked, and he shook his head. She took Joshua’s wrist and bound it swiftly to the headboard with a scarf, not too tightly, then straddled his chest and bound the other wrist. She looked down at him. He was heavenly in the lamplight, his skin golden and unblemished (she thought fleetingly of her own many scars, and wanted him to kiss every one), the black scarves a gorgeous contrast to his flesh. And those eyes, begging her for pleasure, acknowledging her control over that pleasure; oh, yes, this was the essence of good sex. He was just as beautiful and supernaturally charismatic without his voice, but with him silenced, she could keep herself from fulfilling his every whim, and instead fulfill some of her own.

“My beautiful boy,” she murmured, and leaned down to kiss his neck. She reached down, touched him, guided him in, and began to move gently on his body. She was about to whisper something in his ear when she heard the rattle of coat hangers and a soft footstep from the closet.

Why now?
She moaned inwardly, not with pleasure but with frustration, then rolled herself off Joshua so she could do whatever proved necessary.

Z
ealand was first surprised, and then annoyed, when he heard a man’s voice coming from the living room along with Marla’s. He would almost certainly have to kill the man, too, and he hated killing people for free. He kept his eyes on the screen of his surveillance device, wishing he’d thought to bug the living room for audio—he hadn’t expected there to be conversation to overhear. He preferred knowing what to expect, but whatever happened, he’d deal with it—in his line of work, improvisation was often necessary.

Then Marla and the man—the beautiful, beautiful man, whom he’d never seen up close before—rushed naked into the bedroom and tumbled into bed. Zealand grunted. He hadn’t expected
this
. He’d gotten more of a warrior ascetic vibe from Marla, and Gregor had said that, as far as he knew, she had no lovers at the moment. Watching the lovemaking itself bored him, but this man was so incredibly
captivating
. Zealand’s own taste in men was broad and wide-ranging, but this was the most beautiful human being he’d ever seen. The slim hips, the artfully mussed hair, the skin…Zealand noticed himself beginning to breathe heavily and forced himself to look away from the screen until his exhalations were under control. He could still see the man in his mind, though, stretching languidly on the bed…and he had to be fucking
Marla
. Had to be a breeder. What a waste. Still, perhaps Zealand could eliminate Marla and keep the beautiful man alive, take him to Gregor, and exchange his fee for some sort of love spell…it wasn’t a terribly
practical
idea, but oh, it was appealing.

He looked back at the screen in time to see Marla gagging the man. Zealand could think of
much
better uses for such a mouth. Then Marla bound the boy to the bed with scarves and straddled him. Zealand wasn’t terribly kinky, himself, though he could see the appeal of power and control, and it didn’t surprise him to discover that Marla liked tying knots and being on top. And now that she
was
on top…

Ah
. There was a possibility here. Zealand’s adjusted plan had been to wait for Marla and the man to fuck themselves into exhaustion, then creep out of the closet and put a knife through Marla’s eye, into her brain. But now the man was tied down—effectively neutralizing him as a threat—and Marla’s back was turned. She was gasping, and the man was moaning around his gag, and they both seemed utterly absorbed. What better time to strike than now?

Zealand set his surveillance screen aside and eased open the closet door, slowly, slowly, so as not to create any breeze against Marla’s bare back. He took a garrote from his pocket—the easiest strike from here would be to loop the wire around Marla’s throat from behind and jerk her backward off the man.

Then Marla leaned forward, laying her body on top of her lover, and Zealand stifled a sigh. He placed the garrote on the floor and unsheathed a hunting knife. He would creep a few steps closer, then leap onto the bed, landing his weight on Marla’s back and driving the blade through her back and into her heart, if his aim was good. And even if it wasn’t, well, he could just pull the knife out and plunge it in again. Marla was strong, but Zealand weighed about 240 pounds, and she wasn’t
that
strong. She’d have a hard time using magic on him with a knife ripping into her back, too.

He took a step—and then the vertigo that had assailed him on the street before hit him again, making him stumble. His shoulder touched a coat hanger, which clattered into
another
hanger, and for a moment the whole room flickered, replaced by a vast plain of yellowed ivory, dotted by a pool of green that might have been an algae-covered lake in the middle distance and mountains far beyond. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, opened them, and was relieved to see the room had returned to normal. His balance seemed mostly restored, too, the vertigo more a breaker than a tidal wave this time.

He was rather less relieved to see Marla roll off her lover and fall to the floor in a crouch. She spun to face him, then reached under the dresser and came out with a knife of her own—well, of course, she was the type to have weapons secreted around her room, wasn’t she? Zealand cursed. This wasn’t an assassination anymore. This was
combat,
and he was much less comfortable with that, though he could manage in a pinch. Marla’s lover was bleating through his gag and jerking around on the bed, trying to get out of his bonds, but for now, he was still irrelevant to the situation. Zealand hesitated for a moment over the choice of weapons—he had a pistol holstered under his arm and a stun gun hanging from his belt—and by then Marla had
launched
herself at him. He rolled out of the way, pulling the stun gun loose, and when she came at him again he brought the flat black device up, hitting her firmly in the breastbone, and pulled the trigger. Light pulsed from the weapon. There was a chance a stun gun to the heart could kill her, but she just cried out and fell to the ground, twitching and writhing. Only when she fell away did Zealand notice the bloody knife on the floor and register the pain in his arm—her knife-strike had hit his shoulder, the blade sliding across and gashing him. She’d been aiming for his neck, probably.

The beautiful man on the bed moaned.

Zealand took a moment to look at his body. “We’ll talk later. And maybe do more than talk. But first…” He glanced down at Marla, who was staring up at him, her body twisted at the foot of the bed. He reached for the pistol under his arm.

Fucking stun gun.
Marla had been hit with one before, and it had taken her a couple of minutes to get her power of movement back then. She didn’t have a couple of minutes here. The knots holding Joshua weren’t all that tight, but even if he did free himself, he was a lover, not a fighter. And since he was gagged, he couldn’t even sweet-talk this man into laying down his arms.

The attacker was a stranger to Marla—he was tall and broad, dressed casually, dark hair, face lined and middle-aged. He was clearly skilled, a pro, so—shit. “Zealand,” she slurred.

He looked at her, surprised, his pistol half drawn from its holster. She was gratified to see blood running down his arm. Made her wish she’d poisoned her knife, though having poisoned knives hidden around the place was a bad idea for obvious reasons. Then he nodded. “Ms. Mason. Nice to meet you. Sorry about all this. Just business.”

He
was
the renegade slow assassin, then, here in town for a job—and she was apparently the job. Who’d hired him? She didn’t bother asking. He wouldn’t answer willingly, and she didn’t have the leverage to force him.

It occurred to Marla that she was about to die with an assassin’s bullet in her head, and she wouldn’t even know who to blame.

She couldn’t work magic—she was too paralyzed for gestural spells, and purely vocal spells were beyond her ability at the moment, too. Incantatory magic tended to be complex, and she couldn’t manage much more than muttering curse words—

Or maybe even Curse words. Rondeau was teaching her to swear the way he did, misshapen syllables of creation that rippled reality. You could never be sure what the effects would be, but she was about to be killed, and it wasn’t likely to be worse than
that.

So she Cursed, a string of guttural syllables that felt as if they tore her throat coming out.

The ornate mirror on the wall
jumped,
glass breaking as it moved, and slammed into Zealand’s back. He spun, looking behind him, and she Cursed again. The lamp on her bedside table exploded with a noise like a gunshot, and the iron bed-frame groaned as if it were bending, bringing a sound of alarm from the still-bound Joshua. Zealand looked around wildly, and Marla Cursed again. The room jolted as if in an earthquake, her night table fell over, and car alarms began going off in the street. Marla still couldn’t move, and by now Zealand had realized she was doing this, somehow. He pointed his gun at her.

Desperate, she Cursed once more.

The lights in the apartment brightened, the vibrator by the bed came on with a buzz, her clock radio began blaring industrial music at earsplitting volume, and the stun gun hanging from Zealand’s belt pulsed brightly. He fell like a bag of sand, and Marla managed to grin. A quarter second of contact from a stun gun was enough to repel someone, and a couple of seconds was enough to put them in the state Marla was in now. The stun gun had buzzed against Zealand’s body for five or six seconds before the effects of the Curse dwindled and the weapon turned off, along with the radio and the vibrator.

The bed creaked, and Joshua sat up, having finally managed to free his arms. He pulled the gag off and tossed it aside. “Are you all right, Marla?”

“Ngh,” Marla said. All that Cursing had tired her out. She was beginning to feel some measure of muscle control returning, but she couldn’t get up yet. “Yes,” she managed.

“Who
is
that man?”

“Killer,” she said. “Help.”

“I was afraid he’d murdered you.” Joshua crawled across the bed and looked down at her. His face above her was lovely, his expression one of infinite concern and tenderness.

“Tie…up. Him,” she said.

“Ah,” Joshua said, and went to get the scarves from the headboard. He returned, kneeling by Zealand. Marla managed to sit up, finally, though she still felt all jangly and stretched out.

“Lousy date,” she said. “Sorry ’bout that.”

“Still interesting, though.”

Marla prodded Zealand with her foot. He groaned. “I won’t kill you if you give me an alternative,” she said. “But I am going to need to know who sent you. I know, code of killers, yadda yadda, but you bailed on the slow assassins, so I know you don’t have
that
much honor.”

“I…feel…dizzy,” Zealand said. Joshua was tying his wrists together quickly and efficiently.

“I’d think so,” Marla said. “I sure as shit did when you hit me with that stunner.”

“No…this…different,” he said. And then he disappeared.

Joshua sat, holding the silk scarves in his hands. They were still knotted, but the wrists they’d been tied around had disappeared. “Magic,” he said.

Marla groaned. “Damn it.
That’s
a good trick. Wish I’d invested in some teleportation of my own. Shit.” She glanced around. “At least I’ve got some of his
stuff,
though. He dropped a garrote and a knife along with the gun, and he’s got a whole bag back in the closet, it looks like. I can get Langford to track him using that, assuming they’re possessions he’s owned for a while. We can keep him from flitting away again, and then I’ll find out who wants me dead
this
week. I—”

Joshua reached out and put a hand on her knee. She stopped talking and looked at him, captivated by his regard. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s order Chinese food.”

Marla stared at him for a minute, then started laughing. “I had Chinese earlier. How do you feel about Thai?”

“I feel pretty good about it.”

Zealand lay staring at the ceiling as that beautiful, beautiful man tied him up, wishing desperately that their positions were reversed. He was a big man, with a strong constitution, but he didn’t think he’d recover from the effects of the stun gun for several minutes, and by then Marla would be in a position to make him talk. Or worse. She knew his name, which meant she’d probably spoken to one of the other slow assassins, maybe even Kardec himself. Marla might be willing to let him live if he cooperated, but his former brothers and sisters would not. They were patient, though. They’d let him die
slowly.
He resolved to tell Marla whatever she wanted to know in exchange for freedom. After he left town, he’d return the advance portion of his payment to Gregor. He rather doubted Gregor would be alive to receive it, of course—not after he told Marla that Gregor was the one who’d paid for her death—but Zealand was an honest man when it came to his business dealings.