Darren Shan - Procession of the dead

Two of the three men with me acted calmly and professionally, diving to the sides, reaching for their holstered guns as they moved. The other soiled his pants, fell to his knees and sobbed for mercy. They all died, caught in a lethal hail of metal pellets from the heavens.

Five seconds later I was standing in a pool of blood with four corpses beginning to steam in the cool night air. The echoes of gunfire were dying away, the walls swallowing the sounds hungrily.

I was stunned. Five seconds earlier I had been on my way to fame and fortune. Now I was a standing corpse-to-be. I looked at my uncle, limp and lifeless, and wondered where we'd gone wrong. We'd had no quarrel with Wain. Our paths had never crossed. What was his beef?

I realized, after a few hazy moments, that I wasn't dead. I looked around the warehouse, blinking stupidly. The snipers were strolling down the stairs from the second landing, smoking, laughing, claiming kills. Neil Wain was standing the same as before, unruffled by the bloodshed. He gazed at me without any apparent interest, then turned at the sound of approaching footsteps.

A burly man came out of the shadows, a face like granite. He nodded curtly at Wain, walked past and stopped before me. He looked me up and down. "You Capac Raimi?" he asked.

I stared at him, mouth open, about half a light year behind the action. I had to be dreaming. I'd wake up in a minute and-

He slapped my face hard. "Are you Capac Raimi?" he asked again, louder this time, not used to repeating himself. I saw murder in his eyes, death if I kept silent. But I couldn't speak.

Another man crossed the room. He wasn't much older than me and had the look of a society gangster. He laughed as he considered me, spat at my feet and cocked his hat back at an angle. "This ain't him, Tasso," he said. "This's just a bum. Let's kill him and split. I've got a date." He raised his gun so the muzzle was pointing a centimeter beneath my chin. "Can I do the honors?"

"Hold it, Vincent," the older guy said.

"Why? It ain't him. This is just some kid with a speech problem. We're wasting time. Let's-"

"I… I'm Capac Raimi," I wheezed.

They looked at each other, unconvinced. "You got any proof?" the older one asked.

My hands scurried to my pockets, searching for cards and tags I knew I didn't have-I'd never been one for credit cards or clubs that required membership. No driver's license. I probably had a passport lying back in the house, but I couldn't have sworn to that.

The assassins saw my hands shaking and began to snicker. "Shit, Tasso," the younger one said. "This guy's just some chump who wandered in." He cocked his weapon and nudged my left ear with it.

The elder statesman shook his head and smiled bleakly. "You haven't got anything on you to prove who you are? Everybody carries credit cards. You must have at least one piece of plastic." He raised an arm and cocked a finger at me. "Your life depends on it, boy. Cough it up or…"

"I don't have anything," I said, voice steady, preparing myself to die with dignity. I looked my murderer in the face and grinned. "So you might as well go ahead and shoot, you bastard." I could have given myself a standing ovation. I was about to die, but I was going in style, head held high, and many a man would have paid a fortune to do the same.

The granite-faced killer scratched his chin. "He said you'd say that," he muttered. "That's what the guy in his dream did. Him and his damn dreams. OK!" He clapped his hands and signaled the milling gangsters back to their cars. "Vincent, you're with me." Vincent nodded obediently and spun off toward one of the limos parked against the warehouse walls, hidden in the shadows of the slaughterhouse. "Wain, take care of the money." He kicked Theo's case across the floor. "Make sure The Cardinal gets his cut."

"What?" Wain's face puckered. "But I was doing him a favor! We helped him out, damn it. I thought the least he'd do-"

"You thought wrong," my captor snapped. "Business is business, Neil, with its right ways and wrong ways. Cutting The Cardinal in- that's the right way. Shortchanging him is as wrong as you can get, short of pissing on the Devil on your way down the steps to Hell."

"OK," Wain grumbled, picking up the case. "I'll see The Cardinal right. I'm no fool."

"Glad to hear it. I guess we'd better be off then, Mr. Raimi. Would you care to go first?" He beckoned toward the limo which was pulling up beside us. I looked at the man, then the limo, then Neil Wain. I didn't know where this night was heading or what lay in store for me, but seeing as how things were so far out of my hands, I decided I might as well go along obligingly and enjoy the ride. Pulling my coat tight around my shoulders, shivering from the cold and shock, I stepped into the car.

We'd been driving through the silent streets of the city for about ten minutes, nobody saying a word. I was starting to feel uncomfortable. The initial spate of shock which had numbed me to Theo's death was receding, and it was easier to talk than dwell upon the memory of his confused expression and ruby-red blood. Recalling the name Vincent had used back in the warehouse, I cleared my throat to break the silence and asked hesitantly, "Are you Ford Tasso?"

He looked over in my direction, face expressionless. "Yes."

"The famous Ford Tasso," Vincent snickered. He was driving. "His name a curse in a hundred languages. Come one! Come all! Bow down and-"

"Shut up," Tasso said softly, with immediate effect. He'd put up with a lot of Vincent's nonsense, but only to a point, and Vincent was cunning enough never to push his luck.

Ford Tasso. The Cardinal's number two. The strong arm of the city's unofficial king, feared almost as much as the only man he would ever call master. If The Cardinal was a myth, Ford Tasso was a legend.

I examined him in the sliding glare of amber streetlights. He was getting on in years, at least in his late fifties. A big man, six-two, bulky like a bear. Thick hair, black as soot. He was sporting a pair of sideburns, relics of the disco age, and a thin mustache. His face was cold and hard. He breathed lightly. Black suit, white shirt, gold cuff links, rings and chains. Dead eyes.

This was the man who'd run the city with The Cardinal for the last thirty years, who'd killed or bulldozed all in their way. He looked the part. Two words came to mind as I sat back and summed him up. They were cold and blooded. But I kept them to myself. He'd had a nickname once, when he was young-the Lizard Man. He didn't like it. The last man to mock him was found dead a couple of days later, his stomach emptied of organs and filled with snakes and iguanas. He'd been plain Ford Tasso ever since.

They drove me to Party Central. Heart of the city. Home and workplace of The Cardinal. The safest place in the world for the invited. Death for any foolish enough to trespass. Vincent pulled up by the front to let us out. Ford dismissed him when we were on the pavement. "Will you want me later?" he asked.

"Nah," Ford replied. "But be at Shankar's early tomorrow. We've got a busy day."

"Ain't we always?" Vincent grumbled, slamming shut the door. He squealed away in a cloud of burning rubber.

I looked up at the massive building. I'd seen it many times but never this close. It was old, full of architectural curves and angles, a bitch to design, a nightmare to build. Imposing glass windows, red brick lower down, rough brown stone higher up. It looked like a renovated church, but I knew every window was reinforced and wired. Every floor was protected by the most expensive alarm systems available. Men with guns stood ready to shoot down intruders, any time of the day or night. It was an impenetrable fortress. Rumor had it there was even a nuclear fallout shelter buried beneath its floors, equipped to last a hundred years.