Reaper III: Rookies Read online

  There was a pool of yellow urine beneath his knees, floating atop the thick plastic sheet the assassins seemed to intend to use for the clean up of what was no doubt to be his very messy death. The sheet was large enough to accommodate all three of the bound men, with plenty of room to spare for any blood splatters that might occur.

  “Eddie, this is your last fucking warning.” The older man with the knife seemed to be in charge and also the owner of the voice I had heard.

  The Dark Thing’s hunger twisted and ached inside of me at the sight of the large man’s throat, above the collar of his black dress shirt.

  It wanted, very badly, this man’s evil blood in its self.

  “Tell me where it is or I will fucking cut you.” The boss sounded as though he were at the limit of his patience.

  Eddie whimpered with defeat, sobbing freely.

  I wondered how long he had been begging for his life.

  “I don’t know, man, I swear to God I don’t know anything about it, I swear I don’t…”

  “Fuck this shit.” The boss spat.

  “No, please, no, don’t-“

  The large man with the knife had grown weary of the ordeal. He was about to make his move. I could tell from the way he had taken hold of Eddie’s hair and was now wrenching his head back, exposing the younger man’s throat.

  With the Dark Thing’s hunger nagging at me, I decided, then and there, that it was time to intervene.

  Adrenaline flowed through my body, augmenting my courage.

  Forming a multitude of sharp points as long as ice picks out of the backs of my fists, I stepped out of the shadows of the storage crates and made my presence known.

  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, you fat fuck?” I called out to their leader.

  All heads turned in my direction.

  They didn’t seem to know what to make of the new arrival.

  The older man’s wild-eyed stare entertained me when he saw who, or rather what, the new arrival was.

  “What the fuck are you supposed to be?” He asked, nearly dropping his knife in surprise.

  I didn’t provide him with an answer, since the thug nearest me, the Mediterranean-looking fellow with the Beretta, had turned on his heel and begun to open fire on poor defenseless little old me.

  A few of his shots went wild, but a few of them hit their mark, striking me hard in the chest, my abdomen, my left shoulder.

  I was glad for the Dark Thing’s protection.

  I felt a tiny fraction of the force of the bullets as they were stopped dead in their trajectories as the Dark Thing took the brunt of each blast. The thug with the Colt .9mm followed suit and opened fire.

  The exoskeleton protecting my body absorbed the effect of each shot I took, so I stayed on my feet and stood my ground.

  Over the staccato blast of the gunfire, I heard, with satisfaction, the sound of lead bullets falling to the concrete floor, followed by another, more pleasant sound—the hollow click-click-click of the weapons’ firing pins hitting nothing but air.

  Both of the men had emptied their clips and the chauffeur seemed too terrified to act.

  “Finished?” I asked, as they looked upon me in horror. “Then it’s my turn.”

  I brought my spiked fists up and crossed them over my chest, only to fling them out, to unleash the sharp points through the air in a dark and deadly rain upon the two men who had shot at me.

  Many of the thick, long quills buried themselves in the flesh of the two men, piercing skin and muscle, producing screams of surprise, of pain...

  The quills that missed them fell harmlessly to the floor, where I knew they would disintegrate, turning into small piles of grey-black ash, merely because I wanted them to.

  The quills that had made contact fed on the two men and the thugs tore at their own flesh, trying to wrest the quills from their necks and their chests, but it was too late.

  With these remote devices of itself, the Dark Thing was taking the blood of the corrupt for its feeding.

  The chauffeur and the fat man watched, horrified, as their comrades fell to the ground, the quills now fattening and growing from the blood of the thugs. Like leeches, they detached themselves from their victims only when they had taken their fill.

  The leeches that squirmed and moved by their own peristalsis, came back to me and fused with the rest of my body. They melded seamlessly with my feet to augment my strength and the strength of the Dark Thing.

  With their blood, knowledge of their crimes and of the lives they had taken with bullet and blade came to me.

  I decided that society was much better off without them and, stooping to kneel by the man who had carried the Berretta, I honed a blade out of the back of my right hand, between my second and third knuckles.

  I buried the blade deep into the dying man’s chest, into the depths of his beating heart, the sharp edge of the blade glancing through two of his ribs as it made its single intentional mark.

  The fat man’s face was bloodless when I smiled up at him as wickedly as I could manage.

  I imagined that the mask of the Dark Thing had a horrific leer where my mouth lay beneath it…

  “Did you really think that you would never be brought to justice?” I asked him, rising to my feet.

  “Well don’t just fucking stand there, Mario,” he swore at his chauffeur. “Shoot the bitch!”

  Mario shook his head as though to shake himself out of his daze.

  He foolishly lifted his gun to take fire, aiming it at my face.

  I heard the gun fire in the same instant that the bullet nailed me squarely in the forehead, almost throwing me off balance with the force of the impact.

  I swore, upset and walked the few steps toward him, noting with dark humor that his shot became worse the closer I got. Almost all of his attempts to hit me missed their mark. He was walking backward with each step, when his back suddenly came up against the warehouse wall.

  He had no place to go…and he was out of bullets.

  Not that they had done him any good, anyway…

  Without hesitation, I closed the distance between us and was soon burying the blade of my right hand under his chin. I willed it to grow longer, into his Italian brain, as the blade punched through flesh and bone.

  Visions of a particularly violent couple of years in the fat man’s employ ran through the forefront of my mind, but they didn’t linger as I kept the link brief.

  I heard the fat man’s footfalls as he attempted to flee, running away from Eddie and the plastic sheet, heading instead for a rear entrance, somewhere behind me.

  I tore my fist away from Mario’s throat and turned on my heel, leaving the dying chauffeur’s body behind me, just as I had disposed of so much human garbage before him.

  “Not so fast,” I warned the fat man, but he kept running.

  Forming a few sharp quills in the back of my left hand, I whipped my fist in a punch-like maneuver in the fat man’s direction and delighted in hearing his short-lived scream as the projectiles burrowed into his back and his left leg, hobbling him.

  As I walked to where he lay, swearing under his breath, I saw the quills fattening, taking their feeding.

  It was amazing, really, how the Dark Thing seemed capable of so many things, how it had so many applications.

  It could be manipulated to the extent of my imagination, it seemed, with little limitation. I had used the quills many times before, other projectiles as well to the same measure of success.

  The Dark Thing could transform at less than a thought and needed only guilty blood to keep it strong…it would have its fill tonight.

  The fat man rolled over and I saw that he had knocked out a front tooth where he had fallen.

  Blood flowed freely from his mouth.

  “So this is it, huh?” He laughed, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Curtains for Old Benny, huh?”

  Benny.

  I wondered…

  “Benny the Blade, I presume?”

/>   “The one and only,” said the criminal, trying to pull out one of the quills from the back of his left leg. He tugged on it hard, but it would not budge. He laughed loudly and I wondered, for a moment, if maybe Old Benny had lost his mind. “It’s sure stuck in there good.”

  “It sure is.” I said, standing over him, a conqueror of the guilty.

  “You know, I could use a girl like you on my team.”

  “Sorry. Not interested.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s been my experience that everyone has a price. Name yours.”

  “Alright. How about your head?”

  “My head?” He spat a mouthful of blood and laughed loud and hard. Quite possibly, it would be the last obnoxious laugh of his life. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “So I hear.”

  “I kinda need my head.”

  “Seems I do too. So we’re at a bit of an impasse.”

  “How are you gonna do this, huh?” He asked me. “Slit my throat? Bleed me to death? Or stab me in the heart, like you did to Tony?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of decapitation.” I replied, in honesty, willing the blade of my right hand to retract back into the Dark Thing’s flesh, right before his very eyes.

  In its place, I began to grow a set of crab-like pinchers between my thumb and index finger, the edges between them as sharp as all the other edges I had honed out of the Dark Thing.

  I let them grow until the pinchers were a foot long and then opened and closed them experimentally, testing this new weapon.

  “I’ve never done it this way before,” I told him, more honesty, light glinting off the gleaming edges of the black blades. “However, I’ve been wanting to try it for a while…so this will be a first for both of us.”

  “I don’t think so, bitch!”

  It was then that I saw the small handgun in his right hand, a two-shot .22mm Derringer, likely pulled right out of his coat pocket. He fired both rounds into my abdomen and then smiled sheepishly when I merely shook my head at him in disapproval as the flattened leads fell harmlessly to the warehouse floor.

  Obviously his attempt to kill me hadn’t worked.

  In fact, I had barely even felt the impact of the small firearm.

  “Aw, shit, it was worth a try.” He surrendered, lifting his head to offer me his neck. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  “No, I suppose I can’t.” I said, taking a handful of his hair in my left hand, much as he had done to Eddie only a few minutes before.

  It was funny, how life could turn the tables around on you at any time.

  What goes around comes around, I thought, as I opened the pinchers wide and put them right under his chin.

  “Just make it quick, will ya?” He asked. “I don’t want to feel it comi—“

  I gave the doomed man his last wish and closed my modified hand before he even knew what hit him.

  His body, spurting blood, fell away from where I had made the cut and I held his head up by the hair, his lifeless eyes staring toward me in a way that was almost creepy.

  It was as though he could see me, even in death.

  His death face didn’t seem to approve of the turn his destiny had taken…

  I discarded Benny’s head, setting it near his headless body on the cold concrete floor.

  The quills snaked their way back to me, full of his blood. I picked one up and watched it merge into my hand, just as I wanted it to.

  The others reconnected with me through my feet and I had passing visions of Benny’s sins, so many of them reeling in my mind that it made my head swim.

  I heard a man groan and then remembered the man with the Colt .9mm, who I had not, as of yet, completely disposed of.

  Walking back to him, I made a quick, deep slit into his throat, all the way through to his spine, dispatching of him quickly.

  I saw three pairs of fearful eyes, watching me intently.

  I glanced at the men on their knees and offered them one promise.

  “The police will be on their way soon, if someone didn’t overhear the gunshots already.”

  “Thank you,” said Eddie, barely able to look at me, for fear of everything he had already seen.

  I knew that my face looked monstrous, with its layers of scales, gargoyle-like bony prominences and pitch black eyes.

  Monstrosity had been my silent wish, after all.

  And my wishes were always granted me by the Dark Thing.

  I left the way that I had come, got into my car and drove away. I didn’t meet a single squad car until I pulled unto a busier street, where a police cruiser was set up as a speed trap, parked on the side of the road. I knew from the lack of police presence that no one in the warehouse district had heard the gunshots—or if they had, they didn’t call it in.

  So, I drove until I saw a solitary pay phone, outside of a Seven-Eleven.

  I parked just down the street from the Seven-Eleven and then walked back to the convenience store to make the call.

  The recording that I had heard several times in the past filled my ear.

  “If this is a fire emergency, press one. If this is a police emergency, press two. If you need medical assistance, press three. If you do not have a touch tone phone, please stay on the line and—“

  My winter gloves covering my fingers so as not to leave fingerprints, I punched in two and was soon routed to the emergency operator.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” The man asked.

  “I’m calling to report a few dead men at the Blue Water Shipping Company, at the West end of North Pier Road.” I said, flat in tone. I nearly let out a yawn. Despite all of the excitement I had just been privy to, I was tired and wanted to go to bed. “There are also three men who have probably lost the circulation in their hands already, they’ve been tied up so long. That is all, thanks.”

  Leaving the operator’s follow-up questions to the wind, I left the receiver hanging from its cord, certain that the police would be along soon to dust it for fingerprints, as they had no doubt searched for evidence on the other phones, the origins of the calls I had made in the past.

  As far as evidence, I didn’t worry about my footprints.

  I had already left some at the Blue Water Shipping Company and my civilian winter boots were a common enough model that I didn’t have to fret about them ever being traced back to me. Even then, I had coated them in my second skin, so they weren’t likely to leave any useful evidence.

  My black Chevy Cobalt, parked down the street from the Seven-Eleven, would not have ended up on the convenience store’s video recording devices. The tread marks from my tires were again, common enough reproduction that I didn’t have to worry about the car being traced back to me.

  All I really had to concern myself with was my license plate, but I doubted very highly if anyone had seen it. There had been no eye-witnesses to tonight’s murders, except for the three men bound and deserted at the scene of the crime.

  I felt sorry for the police who would be answering this call.

  They were going to be swamped with paper work and evidence that they wouldn’t be able to interpret, from the claims of all three men that their savior had been a bullet-proof creature who could form knives out of the back of her hands, some of which she could throw as projectiles.

  Not to mention, those projectiles had turned into leeches on contact and slithered back to rejoin her body once finished with their gruesome, vampiric work.

  A lot of paper work, indeed.

  I crawled into bed with a conscience that was, as always, struggling to fully believe that I had done the right thing.

  The Dark Thing, whatever it was, wherever it had come from, had once again helped me deliver justice to victims of the criminal element.

  The notorious mobster, Benny the Blade, was now permanently out of business.

  Someone was likely waiting in the wings to take his place in the hierarchy of things…but not without the thre
at of the Wild Animal Killer on the loose as a constant concern, a fear looming in the back of their mind.

  -6-

  In the morning, Phil greeted me with a mischievous smile.

  “Late night at Schroeder’s?” He asked knowingly.

  “What, is my aura telling tales?” I replied, sarcastically. “Are your psychic powers whispering my secrets to you?”

  “No.” My partner chose to sit on the corner of my desk. “The shadows—the bags under your eyes, they say all I need to know.” He probed deeper. “So what did you get up to last night?”

  “You’re the psychic,” I told him. “You tell me.”

  “It was a Friday night,” he mused. “So I’ll guess that you were raising a little Hell. Out and about.”

  “Actually, I was at Neal’s,” I told him, which was half of the truth.

  He was aware of the blossoming relationship between Neal and I, if you could call it a relationship. I wasn’t sure what to call it. I mean, we had never really talked about it and I preferred it that way.

  I didn’t want to have the relationship talk with Neal.

  Not yet anyway.

  I was still just getting to know him.

  “Ah, yes,” said Phil, reading a note he had made on his clipboard. “Young love. I remember what that was like. Burning the candle at both ends just to have another hour, another minute to be in my lover’s arms.” He sighed at the fond memory. “Ah, but then me and Carla got married and that was the end of that.”

  I was a little irritated with Phil.

  Love seemed to be a strong word for what Neal and I had.

  “I think it’s a little early in the game to call it love, Sarge.” I told him, firmly.

  “Speak of the devil.” A smile broke out on Phil’s cocoa-skinned face. “Officer Schroeder.”

  I looked in the direction that Phil was looking and found Neal walking directly toward my desk, a warm smile on his lips.

  “Good morning, Sergeant Conner.” He greeted Phil and then looked at me, his blue eyes burning brightly with barely checked desire. His voice lowered to a note that warmed me to the core. “Officer Bennet. See me tonight?”