Matt Hilton - Judgement and Wrath

'Do not move!' someone shouted.

Neither of us was of a mind to listen.

Dantalion swung towards the FBI commandos swarming into the room and fired. The bullet passed above their heads, but it had them dropping for cover. Then he swung back towards me and a smile played across his lips.

One FBI man lifted his rifle and a red dot blossomed on Dantalion's chest.

'Drop your weapon or I will shoot,' yelled the commando.

'No you won't, asshole,' said a familiar voice. I heard the racking of a pump-action shotgun. The laser dipped away from Dantalion.

I didn't have to look to know that Rink was there.

Dantalion knew he was there as well. 'I owe you for ramming me off that bridge, Rink,' he said. 'Stick around and I'll kill you too.'

Rink laughed.

'He's all yours, Hunter,' my friend called.

I ran at Dantalion.

Dantalion jerked the trigger.

There was only the empty click of a firing pin in an equally empty chamber.

In my mind's eye I saw an innocent old lady lying dead on her table. I thought of Bradley brutally wounded. And, thinking of Marianne Dean — of what this beast intended doing to her — I barrelled into him with my shoulder, hooking my arms behind his knees, lifting and throwing him backwards at the same time. He slammed down on his back with me on top. The SIG went flying from his hand. I struck him in the chest with an elbow, holding him there even as I crawled up and sat astride him. His arms were free and he gouged at my face with his horrible fingernails, but it was futile. I drove my fist into his face, once, twice, three times.

His face was flecked with blood, and his pale eyes rolled up at me from swelling eyelids. His mouth opened in a grin and I saw tusk-like teeth. 'You're wasting your time, Hunter. I can't die. But you can.'

Peripherally, I caught the blur of movement. Men shouted and over the top of them all, I heard Rink's warning. My brain wasn't so clouded by drugs that it hindered my natural response.

I caught Dantalion's right wrist in my left hand. He continued to push, and he was surprisingly strong. The blade pressed against the flesh below my ribs. I felt the prickle of steel, but that only served my determination. Squeezing with all my might, I felt his bones grating together. The pale-faced bastard must have had something wrong with his bones, because I heard them snapping like green twigs.

Dantalion screamed. The knife fell from his nerveless hand.

'You can't die, huh? Let's see about that.'

I snatched at the book trailing like an abnormal appendage between his legs. It was attached to him by a silver chain and I wrenched it from him. He was stunned by the pain of his broken arm, but when he saw me holding his book, strength flared. He bucked upwards, grabbing at the book with both hands.

'Give it back!'

Hooking my heels under his kidneys, I rode him like a rodeo bronco. Then I slammed the book against the side of his head and jammed his face against the floor. He squirmed beneath me, spittle shooting from his mouth as he cursed me. His hands clawed towards my face again, so I grabbed his broken wrist and gave it an extra squeeze. He shrieked in agony. Both hands dropped on to the book and touched it spasmodically. I wrenched it from him.

'What's so fucking important about this damn thing?' I demanded. I flicked it open and saw nothing but row upon row of numbers written in a scratchy style.

The numbers meant nothing to me.

Evidently they meant everything to the killer.

'You want it back, do you? Well, here you are! Have it!'

I tore pages from the book, crumpled them in my fist, then as he shouted in alarm I jammed the wad of paper into his open mouth. He gagged, but I forced the wad further in. Then I held his mouth shut and placed my other hand over his sealed lips and nostrils. Adding to the pressure, I threw my weight on top of him and stared into his eyes. We were inches apart and I saw his pupils dilate in realisation that he was wrong. He could die.

There were shouts of consternation from behind me. A rush of bodies. Hands clawing at me. But I trusted Rink to keep the FBI off me long enough for it to be finished. Dantalion thrashed under me in one final attempt to break free but there was nothing he could do to stop me now.

It didn't take long.

I wasn't sure he was dead until I felt a hand on my shoulder.

'He's dead, Hunter,' Rink said. 'You can relax.'

I looked down at the man beneath me. Marianne and Bradley would be safe now. The old lady was avenged.

His eyes were bugged wide, pale and milky in death.

The flesh round his mouth was blackened, lips blue. Blood vessels had erupted all along his jawline.

'That put a little colour in his cheeks.'

Rink and I made an unscheduled visit to the local FBI field office. We were in cuffs and treated like we were the ones responsible for slaughtering upward of two dozen people. But then Walter Hayes Conrad IV arrived and a few asses were metaphorically kicked. When we walked out of the FBI building it was with handshakes all round and congratulations on a job well done, even if the plaudits weren't reflected in the faces of the men doing the congratulating. Maybe the way in which I'd killed Dantalion had something to do with it.

Not that anyone lamented Jean-Paul St Pierre's passing. He was a psychopath with delusions of grandeur. He was responsible for murder from a very young age. He'd murdered his mother, an uncle and a school friend when he was only thirteen years old and had spent the next eight years incarcerated in a high-security hospital. At age twenty-one, he'd been released into an unsuspecting world. He had enrolled in a school for performing arts where he'd learned all about theatrical make-up and the assuming of other personas. Later he'd trained to be a stuntman and studied driving, guns and unarmed combat. He should have stuck to the fantasy world of movies. His training was all make-believe. All fake skills when it came to the very real, very serious world of a contract killer. He thought he was a professional, but he wasn't. He was simply crazy. But that was what had made him so dangerous.

Walter didn't hang around.

He stayed only long enough to remind me that his debt to me was cleared.

'Nothing like this can happen ever again. I can't keep on advocating murder, Hunter.'

'Won't ever come to that again,' I promised him. But we both knew our words were hollow.

Violence follows me around like stink on a mangy dog.

Anyway, my treatment of Dantalion wasn't murder. The fact I'd stopped a maniac who'd murdered dozens outweighed my 'drug-clouded' actions and I wouldn't be facing any charges.

Rink took a flight out of Miami International, headed across the country chasing the setting sun. I promised him that I'd follow in a day or so, as soon as I'd finished up here. I told him to give his mom a kiss for me.

'Kiss her yourself when you get there,' Rink told me. 'She isn't going anywhere. She's getting stronger all the time.'

I called Richard Dean.

We met at a diner a whole lot nicer than Shuggie's Shack. The food must have been good judging by the clatter of cutlery on plates. People talked and laughed with each other. Patsy Cline was playing on the jukebox.

It wasn't the kind of atmosphere I wanted, so I led him round the back into a service alley. The smell of garbage rotting in a dumpster was more conducive to setting the scene. It kind of fitted my mood.

I felt like smashing him in the face there and then. But I didn't. For all that Marianne had been an inconsequential pawn in his scheme, his daughter still loved him. I wasn't going to hurt her by hurting her father.

Plus, he was a pathetic man when all was said and done. Beating him wouldn't have proved anything.