Max Collins - Before the Dawn

The safe was where it was supposed to be, and the dial was normal sized. For as elaborate as Moody’s plan had been, this seemed to the experienced young cat thief a routine heist. Putting the knife away, Max tuned up her hearing, placing her ear to the safe’s metal door, and started turning the dial.

In less than fifteen seconds Max had the thing open; in five more she had found the security plans to the nostalgia museum, and in another second she had them tucked into her fatigues. A large pile of cash to the left proved too tempting, as well, and that disappeared into other pockets.

Moody needn’t know about that; she would call it a bonus.

Finally, satisfied with her haul, she turned to leave. That was when she sensed the first dog.

She had heard the Brood kept dogs to deter intruders, though Moody had been dismissive about these “rumors.”

But the big, black, beautiful beast, its shiny eyes and razor-sharp white teeth glowing in the moonlight, was no rumor. The dog, some kind of a Doberman mix, moved forward, in a low, suspicious approach, its muscles undulating like shadows beneath its taut skin. The animal growled low in its throat, a disquieting greeting.

“Nice puppy,” Max soothed, her hand reaching out toward the dog in a slowly offered, underhand gesture of peace, showing the animal an empty, unthreatening palm.

The dog snarled.

And the canine sentry was not alone...

She could hear their paws padding down the hall, and four more appeared in the hallway, and entered the room — very trained, none scrambling on top of each other — fanning out in almost military fashion, growling, holding their positions. Each was at least as big as the leader, with saliva dripping, fangs showing, the quintet snarling in unholy harmony as their leader edged closer.

Max rose to her full height. The soft approach had failed; so, making her voice loud and sharp, she said, “Sit.”

The lead dog barked once, the canine equivalent of Fuck you.

Max let out a long breath. “Your choice. I didn’t want to do this, but you’re asking for it...”

And cat prepared herself to meet dog, lowering into a combat crouch.

The first dog leapt and Max swiftly sidestepped it, the Doberman smacking into the wall with a yelp and a dull thud. As the second and third dogs came after her, separating to hit her from either side — a sophisticated outflanking maneuver coming from canines — Max jumped up on the desk, just as the two animals collided, and rolled away in a yelping ball of paws and claws and tails.

One of the two remaining in the military line inside the doorway flung itself at Max, who vaulted up and over, the dog’s head snapping back around to try to bite her as Max soared over it, hit the floor in a tuck, somersaulted to her feet, and sidestepped as the last dog lunged.

Rushing out into the hall, Max pulled the splintered door shut behind her; with the lock snapped, the door wouldn’t hold the animals back for long, and she knew the beasts would be hot on her heels. Their pissed-off barking said as much.

She ran to the elevator, wishing those doors would magically open before she got there, and... they did.

Only now she found herself face-to-face with Mikhail Kafelnikov and half a dozen members of his Brood. They all looked as pissed as those dogs, Kafelnikov especially.

Wait till he sees his portrait, she thought.

Tall and thin, the Russian immigrant was nonetheless well muscled, with close-cropped blond hair, penetrating blue eyes, and rather sensuous pink full lips. He wore a brown leather coat, knee-length, an open-throated orange silk shirt with gold chains, black leather pants, and black snakeskin boots.

Moody had said it best: Kafelnikov cultivated both the look and the lifestyle of a pre-Pulse rock star, which his late father had been, or at least so it was said. The son supposedly had musical talent, too, but just figured crime paid better than music, particularly in a time when the entertainment industry had gone to crap.

The Russian might well have struck Max as handsome if not for the expression of rage screwing up his features; handsome, that is, for a homicidal maniac.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, momentarily frozen in the elevator. Studying the small form in the watchcap, the Russian said, “It’s a girl... just a girl...” His boys surged out with him, even as he bellowed at them, “Who is this little bitch?”

Before she could respond in any manner (and words would not have been her first choice), she and the Russian and his men turned their collective head toward a crunching sound down the hall...

... and the pack of dogs burst through the already ruptured office door, and galloped down the hall toward them, fangs flashing, tongues lolling, saliva flying.

Turning back to Kafelnikov, Max said, “I’m the dog walker you called for — remember?”

And he winced in confusion for half a second, before Max delivered a side kick to the Russian’s chest that knocked the wind out of him with a whoosh and sent him reeling back into the elevator, taking his underlings like bowling pins with him.

Not sticking around to admire her handiwork, Max took off down the hall, the dogs dogging her heels. When she all but threw herself into the room she had originally entered, the lead dog was less than two feet behind her. Diving forward, arms extended in front of her, as if the waiting night were a lake she was plunging into, Max sailed through the round hole in the window, wishing she’d cut it a tad larger, the snarling dog right behind her.

She caught the waiting rope and swung in a wide arc away from the building. The dog, misjudging the hole slightly, slammed into the window pane, yiped, and reared back into the office, dropping out of sight. The other dogs, evidently having learned from their leader’s misfortune, stopped short of the window, their heads bobbing up in view as they barked and yapped at Max, dangling just out of the range of their jaws. One even edged its head out and took swipes at her, biting air.

But by this time Max was shimmying up the rope, and their snarls turned to growls as they watched in impotent rage as she disappeared toward the roof.

Below her, she heard voices. Still shimmying up, she looked down, and saw Kafelnikov’s pale enraged face, head sticking out of the hole in the window like a frustrated victim with his neck stuck into a guillotine.

“I’m going to kill you, you bitch!” he yelled.

“I don’t think so!” she called down, smug, calm.

His response was nonverbal, and he hit himself in the head, possibly cutting himself on the glass.

Laughing softly to herself, she continued to climb, knowing the Russian’s men were already on their way to the roof to intercept her. Looking down again, she saw Kafelnikov’s face had been replaced at the window by one of the Brood members from the elevator. A skinny guy with long dark hair reached tentatively for the rope and, just as he touched it, Max nimbly kicked off the side of the building, jerking the strand away from the guy’s grasp. He nearly tumbled out.

“You bitch! ” he yelled, eyes wide as much with terror as rage.

These boys sure have a limited vocabulary, Max thought, as she kept climbing.

Beneath her, the guy ducked inside, then came leaping out into the night. He snared the rope, and his momentum threatened to rip the tether from her grasp. Surprised by his boldness, she could feel his weight at the far end of the rope, and knew the line wouldn’t support both of them...

“The rope won’t hold!” she called down, warning him.

“Fuck you, little girl!”

That limited vocabulary seemed suddenly ominous...

Feeling not so smug now, climbing even faster, she moved toward the rooftop, the guy now climbing the rope below her, chasing her toward the roof, heedless of the peril he was placing both of them in. As she looked up the last ten feet, she could see the rope straining against the twisted metal of the roof’s distorted edge. Beyond that, the stars hung bright and glittering in the sky, as if lighting her way, until they were eclipsed by a face...