Striper Assassin (37 page)

“Naturally,” Rustin goes on to say, “straight suit that I am, I figured I better turn the evidence over to you. I believe that tapping into secured lines is still a crime, right?”

“Last I heard.”

“Too bad the perp got away. Anyhow, here’s what I found.”

“Scope it through.”

A window opens in the upper-left corner of Kirkland’s monitor, treating him to an interior view of some dingy nightclub, presumably the Seven Circles Club. The view zooms in on two people sitting in a restaurant-style booth. One is a middle-aged Anglo slag with thinning black hair, well-trimmed beard, and neat black suit. He’s also wearing a pleased smile and has a walking stick propped next to him. Also seated in the booth is a slim female in red and black facepaint and synthleather to match.

The vid freezes. “Recognize anyone?” Rustin says.

“Yeah, maybe,” Kirkland replies.

The vid plays on. The guy in the suit smiles and says, “Any problems?”

Striper, the one in red and black, shakes her head. Kirkland recognized her at once. What amazes him is that his old chum must have, too. Never forget a face. That was always Rustin’s motto. Apparently, it still holds true.

The vid plays on. “Good. Very good,” the suit in the booth remarks. “We’ll have to discuss my next target.”

“Now?” Striper says.

“Well, later perhaps. I have other business just now. You understand.”

“Sure.”

“My Leandra. Or did you have something in mind?”

Striper nods.

“Such as?”

“Competition.”

“Really. Someone’s preparing to move against me?”

“It’s possible.”

“You mean they’ve targeted my principal weapon?”

Striper nods.

“What will you do?”

“Maybe I’ll go on vacation.”

The man smiles, then laughs very loudly.

The vid goes on some more, but Kirkland is no longer listening. He brings up another window, opens his Exotech master file, and quickly scans the images from Exotech Personnel. The pic that catches his eye is that of a guy ID’d as Adam Malik, formerly of the Special Projects Section. Malik survived the fire at Germantown, then dropped out of sight. His personnel pic so closely resembles the image of the guy in the booth at the Seven Circles Club that the phrase “exact match” comes to Kirkland’s mind.

“Brad? You there?” Rustin asks.

“Yeah, I’m here. Who’s the cobber in the booth?”

“No clue, old chum. Just doing my civic duty. Hope it helps. Gotta sign off.”

“Right. Thanks.”

“Lemme know when you put your papers in.”

“Maybe next week.”

Kirkland stores the vid in memory, erases the call, then watches the vid again, enlarged to fill the screen. “Good. Very good,” says the suit. “We’ll have to discuss my next target.”

“Now?”

“Well, later perhaps.” he tells her. “I have other business just now…”

Striper nods and stands up, glances around. Practically every movement she makes brings words like
soldier
and
assassin
to Kirkland’s mind. Hands free and empty, posture deceptively casual and loose. She reminds him of another killer, also a woman, one so good at behaving naturally, at blending in, that a young uniformed cop walked right by her without giving her a second look, despite having received her exact description and orders to watch for her only an hour before.

The final few moments of the vid really widen Kirkland’s eyes. Malik is joined in his booth by a group of women, some devastatingly beautiful, others merely hot. All look like redheads. Kirkland stares for several moments, then hurriedly brings up another window. A quick scan of the Exotech files uncovers a pic of one Leandra Forrester, who, unlike Malik, unlike Neiman, Jorge, or Harris, died in the S.P.S. accident up in Germantown. Leandra Forrester is, or rather was, her name. A woman in her mid-thirties, stunning, and a flaming redhead.

Kirkland reverses the vid.
“Who will be my Leandra?”
Malik asks. Kirkland keys his intercom.

“Get everybody in here!”

“Lieutenant?”

“Now!”

“Yes, sir!”

Two minutes later, nearly every detective assigned to the Exotech case is crowded into Kirkland’s office, along with Captain Henriquez and the lieutenant from Major Cases. Kirkland swings his telecom screen around so all the boys and girls can see. The windows on the screen show Malik and Forrester from their personnel pics as well as the scene at the Seven Circles Club, with Malik, Striper, and the redheads all present.

Kirkland runs the vid.

“Who will be my Leandra?” Malik says.

“Oh, great,” Detective-Sergeant Murphy remarks. “Now we got a grade-A psycho using a pro assassin.”

“What we got,” Kirkland declares, “is motive.”

“You mean, if Adam Malik and Leandra Forrester were sharing bed space,” says Detective Shackleford.

Kirkland nods. “Anybody wanna bet?”

No one does.

44

From the start, it’s more than just sex.

It’s a freight train careening down a mountainside, a meteor screaming down through the atmosphere. Riveting, enthralling. Forces too powerful to control send them hurtling ahead. Once isn’t enough. A dozen times isn’t enough. They’re at it for hours, till they’re drenched in it, till the air around them reeks of it, till the only thing left to breathe is the smell of it, the thousand humid, musky scents, mingled and mixed together till the odors seem born not of two bodies but of one.

Tikki changes, assuming her four-legged form. At the start, she won’t have it any other way; in the end, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s felt his teeth gripping the back of her neck, his claws pressuring her hide, that she’s met the animal part of him, felt his power. That’s when she begins to grasp what is really happening, it has nothing to do with whether she likes him or he likes her, nothing to do with love or any other romantic idea. It’s something primal and fierce and wholly inexorable, reaching into their animal cores as forcefully as the moon, and yet also grazing their higher natures, their minds, their emotions, till they feel almost welded together, two halves of a single creature.

“Nothing hurts you,” Raman murmurs.

“Hurts me?” Tikki looks back over her shoulder at him, then stretches out on her side again. A faint smile slowly curves her lips. It feels too good to hurt.

Softly, she laughs.

As the hours wear on it goes from rough to gentle to almost tender. After one particularly satisfying bout, she pounds her hand against his chest, and he takes her hand, opens it, draws it around to his back, drawing her close. She snarls softly into his face. He covers her lips with his mouth. To her surprise, she doesn’t mind the closeness, the cuddling. Usually, she likes her space after sex, from the moment the male slips out. Now, though, with this one, this male, Raman, everything is changed. Tikki isn’t sure if that’s good or bad, but there’s no denying the fact.

She’s half asleep when a strange scent brings her suddenly wide-awake. She’s been breathing it for who knows how long, maybe only seconds, maybe minutes, before she realized how starkly the odor clashed with every other scent in the air. Instinct shouts at her so loudly she jerks, thrusts herself up, lunges across the mattress for the Kang, but the gun flies from her grip even as her fingers close around it.

Then it’s too late.

Standing a few steps away is a human female. She has an extravagant mane of blonde hair, but her features are delicate, refined. She holds a long black cloak tightly about her body and wears boots with impossibly high heels. Her expression hints of wry amusement.

Tikki exerts herself to maintain a façade of perfect self-assurance. “Give me my gun.”

The female smiles, a smug look. “You have no need of it at present.”

Tikki struggles to control her emotions. Fear and outrage battle for supremacy. The female smells of herbs and potions, like a magician—whether mage or shaman, it makes no difference. Either means trouble. Tikki glances quickly at Raman, whose face shows displeasure.

“Her name is Eliana,” Raman tells her. “We have worked together. I did not expect her here.”

“That’s quite true,” Eliana remarks.

Tikki smells nothing of lies.

“What are you doing here?” Raman asks the magician.

“You need my help,” Eliana says.

Raman hesitates, looking surprised, then says, “I do not think so.”

“You are wrong.”

Abruptly, Eliana tosses her cloak back from her right shoulder and thrusts out her right hand, fingers curled like claws. Tikki reacts instinctively, jerking away, banging back bodily against the wall. Eliana smiles and murmurs something under her breath. What happens then is so strange that Tikki goes rigid with alarm. What happens could only be magic.

The entire character of the room instantly changes, as if transformed from a full-color pic into a holographic negative of black and white. The bed, the low platform under it, the plastic plants, practically everything in the room
and the very substance of the room itself
become somehow insubstantial, as if mere illusions, ghosts of solid objects in a strange, deceiving dream. Eliana changes too. She becomes a figure of radiant white against a background of darkness. Her face takes on the features of a strange, ethereal cat. The hand she holds extended becomes like a paw. Traceries of a white even more brilliant than her form coil around her neck and arm, pulsing, flowing, seething to and fro like a thing alive.

Tikki struggles to get to her feet, but the very air seems to resist her, holding her in place with greater and greater force, till she is straining with all her might, quivering with the effort, and making no headway at all.

“You will stay where you are,” Eliana says, her voice so resonant it smothers all other sounds. “There is something you must see. Look down, Weretigress. Look at yourself.”

Now added to Tikki’s fear of being caught in a magician’s dream comes the frightening realization that the mage must know what she is. Tikki struggles to keep her fear hidden—and looks down. What she sees makes no sense. Her own body is like the magician’s, radiant and white. Strange traceries of a white even more bright than the rest of her form lie on her breast like necklaces. They seethe and pulse just like the traceries coiling around the mage’s neck and arm.

“Now look behind you.”

First, Tikki struggles to lift her arm, lift one hand to her breast, and it’s more like trying to lift a building from its foundations. The muscles in her arm strain to the point of agony, yet nothing happens. Her arm remains motionless. Incredibly, though, she is able to turn her head with no more effort than it takes to breathe. What she sees as she looks over her shoulder puzzles her as much as everything else. A pulsing cord of brilliant white runs from somewhere near the back of her neck to the wall.

“Do you know what you are seeing?” Eliana asks.

Tikki looks at her, says nothing.

“It’s a leash,” Eliana says adamantly. “An astral leash. You’re in the thrall of a powerful mage.”

“Liar!”

Tikki’s own reply shocks her. The word carries as vibrantly through the air as every word Eliana has spoken, and yet Tikki did not open her mouth. She did not even mean to utter the word aloud. It was only a thought.

Another voice fills the air.

Raman’s voice. “No… she does not lie. When the she speaks, she speaks truth. There is something she wants. That is why… why she is doing this. Showing us this.”

“Listen to the he,” Eliana says. “He is wise.”

Tikki is almost too frightened to think, never mind listen. Being gripped by a power she can neither fight nor escape threatens to engulf her in terror. In desperation, she wills the change.

Nothing happens.

She loses it—strains with every last drop of will and physical strength to make the change and break free of the magic, screaming until the sound deafens her. But that lasts only moments. Tikki suddenly sinks into a blackness as full and deep as sleep.

When she comes around again, she is leaning back against Raman’s chest. The magician stands facing her from the steps in front of the bed. The sight sets her off. Again, she struggles to make the change, but cannot. The change just will not happen, and Tikki doesn’t know why. Raman’s arms grip her as if to crush her. She flails against him with her hands and arms and elbows till they’re both splashed with his blood and she’s panting with the effort and he’s roaring into her ears, “STOP! Stop fighting!”

Then, abruptly, she slumps. The magician murmurs a word and Tikki’s eyes shut and she falls asleep. When she wakes, she’s leaning back against the wall behind the bed. Raman’s arms hold her tightly. The air smells of blood and terror, and strangely none of it effects her.

She feels very calm.

“Do not fight me,” Eliana says. “You will lose.”

Tikki believes it.

“Your he is right,” Eliana continues. “There is something I want. Help me get it and I will help you, but do not try my patience. There are many who are eager to serve me, many I could use. I offer you a service. Understand that. Remember it.”