Jonathan Maberry - Assassin's code

If he grew up.

My tears mingled with the blood on my face.

“Okay,” I gasped. “Okay…”

He moved slightly back, easing the pressure that held me within the shattered crate.

“You will be remembered as the first of your kind to-”

“ Fuck you,” I snarled as I tore my loosened other shoulder free of the splinters and clamped my right hand around his balls.

Full-fist grab, hard as I could, backed by all the terror and desperation that howled in my mind.

Grigor’s eyes flared wide and he tried to simultaneously back away and twist his body free, but I clamped down and held on with everything I had. I came out of the crate with a spray of bloody splinters, and hit him across the face with my left. Once, twice, twisting his nuts as each punch landed. His scream was so high and loud that stalactites trembled loose from the roof and fell around us.

So I spit right into his screaming mouth. There might not be enough of garlic in my bloodstream, but there had to be a lot of it in my saliva.

Even in the midst of his pain, he stared at me in blank surprise for just a moment.

Then he hit me.

A third straight punch to the center of my chest. My hands and feet went instantly numb. I lost my grip and I lost my ability to stand as the punch sent me crashing back into the crate. I hit the corner of the big one and spun off and down, landing on my face near my fallen flashlight. For a single burning moment I could not feel my heartbeat, and I was positive that the shocking force of the blow had stalled it in my chest.

I gasped like a dying fish and could not move.

The Upierczi had begun to laugh like spectators at the Roman circus, amused at my defense but delighted by Grigor’s apparent victory.

Then their laughter died.

My body seemed to be catching fire. My chest was a solid knot of agony. I collapsed down as the darkness closed around me like a fist.

Behind me I heard Grigor gagging and keening as he staggered away from me, but he wasn’t clutching at his groin. I could just barely see him through the gathering haze. He was clawing at his own throat. His pale face was turning red, and I could see his chest labor as he fought to suck in a breath. All he managed was a high-pitched wheeze as the allergic reaction shut down his upper airway.

It was the garlic in my spit. Maybe even what was in my bloodstream. He’d tasted my blood after all. I’d eaten a whole lot more of it than Ghost had.

At least I hurt him, I thought as I lay dying. At least I did that much.

Then there was a huge sound as Grigor suddenly dragged in that lungful of air. His chest and abdomen expanded with it and he blew it out. He took another breath. And another. His color was still bad, but my trick hadn’t been enough.

He looked at me and began to laugh. It was hoarse and phlegmy, but it was a laugh of triumph.

Well, fuck me, I thought. The trick hadn’t worked after all.

Then something came out of the dark and moved at me and across me and over me. A monstrous white creature that howled like a demon from the pit as it leaped into the air and struck the King of Thorns like a thunderbolt.

The vampire’s laughter turned into a terrified shriek.

Ghost.

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:29 a.m.

Maybe it was that Ghost could sense me teetering on the edge of the abyss.

Maybe it was the sound of vulnerability in the knight’s shrieks of pain.

Maybe Ghost just plain had enough.

Whatever the reason, my dog had clawed his way back from helpless terror. His eyes blazed with bottomless animal hate, and his teeth flashed as he bore the King of Thorns backward into the darkness.

I think that’s when my heart started beating again.

The Upierczi howled in mingled shock and horror as their master went down with a white dog tearing at him. They hesitated at the edges of inaction, stepping forward but not attacking. My pistol lay on the floor and I wormed my way toward it. My chest was on fire and I knew that something inside was broken, but I stretched bloody fingers toward the gun.

Grigor tried to fend Ghost off, slapping and punching at him, but there was no art or skill in his defenses. He was absolutely terrified of Ghost. Of the fetch dog who had suddenly become the thing he and his kind truly feared.

Ghost tore at Grigor’s flailing hands, slashing with his fangs, biting. I saw a couple of fingers arc through the air trailing streamers of blood. Grigor screamed for the Upierczi to help him and suddenly they were moving, rushing forward, converging on Ghost.

I clawed the pistol butt into my hand, racked the slide, rolled over, aimed.

Sudden thunder filled the chamber. The whole line of Upierczi closest to me went down but I hadn’t fired a shot.

The Upierczi spun and looked up.

And more of them died as bullets tore through faces and chests.

I heard a voice, leathery and deep-chested, bellowing one word over and over again.

“Echo! Echo! Echo!”

And the slaughter began.

The Iran-Kuwait Border

June 16, 6:30 a.m.

Charles LaRoque sat hunched in one corner of the limousine as it raced toward the border checkpoint between Iran and Kuwait. Forty miles and they would be out of the accursed country.

Across from him, Father Nicodemus appeared to be dozing.

LaRoque’s phone rang and he snatched it up, looked at the screen display, and punched the button.

“Where are you?” asked Vox.

“Nearly to the border. We’ll be out of the country in less than an hour.”

“Good. Things are going to hell here. Get out and lay low, and I’ll call you when the dust settles.”

“What about the bombs?”

Vox laughed. “You’ll know if they go boom.”

“Goddamn it, Hugo.”

“Look, Kuwait’s safe ground. Grigor isn’t targeting that. But once you get to the airport go somewhere really safe. Outside of the prevailing weather patterns. Fallout drifts, you dig?”

LaRoque glanced at Nicodemus, who was smiling in his sleep.

“How could so many things go wrong all at once?” asked LaRoque. “I thought you said it was all under control.”

“Yeah, well,” said Vox. “Shit happens.”

Vox was laughing as he disconnected, and LaRoque frowned. His father had trusted Vox, but his grandfather had not. Now LaRoque wondered which one truly knew the man.

“Father-?” he asked.

Nicodemus opened one eye. “What is it, my son?”

“That was Vox.”

“Yes,” said the priest, as if he had heard the conversation. Perhaps he had. He was sneaky like that.

“Were we wrong to trust him?”

“‘We’?” The priest smiled. “I wouldn’t say that we were wrong to trust him.”

LaRoque stared at him in puzzlement, confused by the inflection.

“I’ve always trusted Hugo. Ever since he was a boy.”

“What? But I… I thought… you said you didn’t know him before this.”

“Oh,” said Nicodemus. “Yes, that was a lie.”

“What?”

“I do that,” said the priest. “Lie, I mean.”

“What are you talking about?”

The priest gestured to LaRoque’s pocket. “Look at your mirror. Tell me what you see.”

Deeply confused, LaRoque removed the compact from his jacket and opened it. The top mirror showed his own troubled face, mouth turned down in a frown, brows knitted. Then he angled it to show the bottom image.

It was the priest’s face. It was not the first time LaRoque had seen the priest in his mirror, but there was something different about it. The face was much younger, less seamed and spotted. A healthy face that was nonetheless un healthy. Diseased in a different way. The face was grinning-the merry, devious grin of a trickster.