Apocalypse Rising (10 page)

"Had?"

"Yeah, I lost it a couple days ago." Not a lie, exactly.

"So you're homeless?" The man scratches a couple notes in his notebook, and stares at me, waiting for the answer.

"I hadn't really thought about it, but yes, I suppose I am." It makes me sad to think I no longer have a place to call home, again.

"Very well," he says as another little mark goes in his book. "Any family?"

"What do you need that for?" I ask. I do not fear for myself, but if it is a standard question in this room, it tells me a lot about the people inside. Thuggery is unpleasant, as is crime in general, but it happens. I loathe those who would use a person's family as a bargaining chip. If this is the way Hitaratsu operates, then I would just as soon take my chances with Albert. I know he will use family against an opponent, but I know him, so it would be nothing new.

"Now, now, remember who is asking questions here," he says, a smug look on his face. "Family?"

"Kiss my ass," I say. "You want more answers, then you have to give some as well."

"I don't think I like your tone, Justin." The man's voice is deadly quiet. I begin to suspect he is more deadly than the men with guns standing outside the door.

"Look, I don't want anyone else involved, especially family. I'll talk, but I have my limits." I do not trust him one bit, but I cannot afford to have him toss me out or worse yet, call the cops.

He stares at me, trying to plumb the depths of my soul through my eyes. I slam a mental barrier in place, just in case he is something more than human. The whole, ’the eyes are the window to a man's soul,’ thing is true, but only if you actually recognize what a soul looks like.

“Very well, Justin,” he says through gritted teeth, “I’ll not ask about your family, but I warn you that I will not make many such concessions.”

“I understand, and appreciate that,” I say. “I’ll try to keep the requests to a minimum from here on out.”

“Excellent.” He scribbles on his pad before looking back at me. “So how do you know Albert?”

His directness surprises me. “I have a friend who provides certain…services, for Albert, so I run into him often. He probably wouldn’t recognize me if he saw me.” A wave of nausea hits me, and I have to strain to not vomit all over the table. The lie is a big one, and my recent use of the power makes the lie a physical force I cannot ignore. I break out in a sweat, and my interrogator takes note. He thinks I’m lying.

“I see,” he says with a false grin. “These services, what are they?”

“Well, it mostly has to do with procuring entertainment,” I say. The nausea remains, but decreases since there is more truth to what I say. “Albert has some pretty exotic tastes when he throws a party. Getting him what he wants can be a full time job.”

“Are these...services…illegal in nature?” he asks.

I pause for a moment, giving the nausea a chance to settle, while asking a question I know the answer to. “Those cameras are off, right?”

“Of course.” The deception is delivered smoothly; it would have beaten any lie detector.

"Well," I say, pretending to think for a moment, "most of the stuff is perfectly legal, just hard to find. You know, rare foods, expensive wine, things like that, but he does like to live on the wild side a little."

"Go on," my interrogator says.

"He likes escorts. I mean the guy is loaded, right? He could have any woman he wants, but he prefers prostitutes? It’s just weird if you ask me." I let the words come fast, like I am eager to share the dirt I think I have. I am sure the man across the table, or his boss, knows all of this and more, but the longer I stay here the better.

"True, but everyone knows he uses whores," he says. "Tell me something you can't read in every scandal magazine."

He is right, everyone did know that. Albert flaunts it, even makes a big deal about it. A couple of years ago he made some comments about all women being prostitutes at heart, but that escorts were more up front with their pricing. His PR men had worked a lot of overtime to smooth out that particular blunder, and in the end, Albert had a battered women's shelter built with his name on it and the complaints ceased. The experience did not change his behavior; it just made him a little more tight lipped about it.

"How about this; he never uses the same girl twice, and I’ve heard that once a girl goes to him she's never seen again." I sit back with a self-satisfied smirk on my face. It is not worth as much as the man across from me wants, but I make it look like I think I have given him the keys to the castle.

The truth is that the rumor seems to be quite true. I have done a little asking around, and I have never found one of the girls after he has finished with them. I do not run in the same high-end circles that the escorts do, but even I should have been able to rustle up some word on them. It is like they simply disappear.

"I'm sure they're around somewhere," says the man as he writes more notes in his pad.

"I don't know, but it's not like he's paying them so much they can retire or something." I lean back in the chair and say, "personally, I think he's killing them."

I definitely have my interrogator's attention now. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, they go up, but no one ever sees them come down. They're not flying out, they're just gone," I sit back down, and lean forward to whisper, "I hear he kills them himself, and drains their blood for some sort of sacrifice."

"That is a rather wild accusation Mr....Justin, have you got any proof, or are you simply making things up so that I will let you go?" His tone is pleasant enough, but the set of his jaw and the squinting of his eyes tell a very different story. He thinks I am nothing, a liar who is wasting his time. I suppose I am in a way. I know there is more to Albert than the playboy/bad boy persona he shares with the world. I know he is far more involved with crime than anyone even has a clue about, but there is something more.

I look at the nameless, pissed off, individual in front of me and smile. I have no proof, but I do not need proof, I just need something that will make this man wonder enough for him to want to keep me around a little while longer. "I saw an associate of his carrying something out of Archimedes Tower a few nights ago. I didn't think much of it at first, but when they were loading it into the back of a van, I saw a hand."

"A hand?"

"Yeah, it was a woman's hand, well manicured, with a bracelet on the wrist, and blood trailing down to the finger tips."

"Go on," he says.

"They covered it back up and drove off. I would have followed them, but I don't have a car, and I can only run so fast." He is hooked, or at least nibbling at the bait. "I thought I'd see if it's a regular thing, or if it was just a one timer, so I started keeping an eye on the loading dock when my friend provided entertainment."

“Why would you do that?” he asks.

“I wish I could say that it was so I could turn Albert in to the police, but I figured that kind of knowledge might be worth something, if I promised to keep my mouth shut.” I manage to keep from vomiting, but a loud belch escapes from my mouth.

The man frowns with disgust and says, “You were going to blackmail Albert.”

“Not my smartest move,” I say with a shrug.

"So what did you find?" he asks, his pen scribbling furiously in his pad.

"The same guy making another pickup, carrying out another rolled up tarp about the same size," I say as I sit back in the chair.

"Very well, Justin, you have piqued my interest. Stay here and I'll see about some coffee for you," he says as he stands up and walks to the door. "Please don't try to leave just yet. I think you and I have more to talk about."

He closes the door behind him, but there is not the sound of a lock sliding into place. I might be able to open the door, but I am willing to bet that there is a large man with a gun standing on the other side of it. I am sure he has been told to keep me in here.

I consider leaving the room, or at least trying, just to see how much latitude I have, but it will probably be a waste of time. I sit and stare at the little black camera in the corner. One of the upsides to using my powers again is that it makes it almost impossible for anyone, or anything, to take a decent picture of me. Direct contact with the Light distorts artificial images, and I am very okay with that at this moment. Anyone watching me on the live feed can see me just fine, but if they try to play back the recording they would lose all usable details.

Something grabs my attention, a sound, a flicker of light, a smell, I am not sure what, but I turn toward the door and focus. Instinct is a mortal interpretation of the way the minds filters through the massive amounts of data they take in every moment. Being a former Angel, I can process even the smallest anomalies faster than even animals are capable of. I stand and walk to the door. I know something has changed. I open my mouth to warn the guard outside, but I am cut off by the explosion that sends the door rocketing back, slamming me into the wall, and consigning me to darkness.

I choke and cough on smoke and dust filled air. "What's going on?" I croak as I pull myself out from under the door. There is no response, except for the crack of gunfire echoing through the hall. I do my best to muffle my coughing as I stumble toward the doorway. I peer around the corner, and see no one. The smell of gunpowder fills the hall and makes me sneeze. The guard who had been watching over me is on the ground, bleeding from numerous holes in his body, and a large gash in his neck. I bend down to check his pulse, but he is quite dead.

The warbling screech of a fire alarm drowns out all other noises. A chill runs down my spine as it occurs to me, that whoever is attacking the building is most likely after me. It is hard to imagine that even Albert would be so brazen as to assault Hitaratsu’s headquarters, in the middle of downtown, during the middle of the day. I know that what I saw was enough to make Albert want me dead, but this is simply insane. I step into the hall just in time to see a pair of men, dressed in black and toting assault rifles, step through the smoke. I freeze, a deer in headlights, right until one of them yells, “there he is!”

I turn and run, staying low, zigging and zagging to make it hard for them to kill me, but I do not really have much hope of escaping. Bullets bounce around me, spraying me with shattered plaster and concrete. I am reminded how much I hate guns. Warfare, and people, became a whole lot less pleasant once bullets started flying around. Give me a sword, or a bow and arrow, any day. It took real skill to use those weapons and you had to look the other man in the eye. You knew you had taken a life, and you certainly felt the weight of their death on your conscience.

There is something very motivating about the sound of bullets whizzing past you. I find myself saying, "thank you," repeatedly as I run. I trip over my own feet and fall as I turn the corner. I get up quickly and keep going. The lack of bullets flying by does not convince me to slow down, because I know they will be back if I do not get out of this place. I am running deeper into the building, turning down every hall I find, trying desperately to lose my pursuers. I just hope I do not get so lost that I cannot get back out again.

I hear a loud clicking sound that reminds me of a castle portcullis being ratcheted up. Someone is coming through the door at the end of the hall, so I dive down a side corridor. It is probably Hitaratsu security trying to reestablish control of the building, but I do not want to become the victim of a, "shoot first, ask questions later," policy. I run down the hall, and find an emergency exit. Salvation! I push the bar, only to set off an ear-splitting alarm.

I head through the door and find myself in a stairway leading up and down. The smart move would be to go up, away from the way out, because they would not be expecting that, but smart really is not on the table at the moment. Albert sent an army after me, so even if I get away from them, and Hitaratsu is able to kick them out of the building, I am still going to end up in a whole lot of trouble. I take a deep breath and run down the stairs, praying that the exit is closer than the gunmen following me.

When I clear the third flight of stairs, it occurs to me: I never left the first floor. The security guards dragged me to the interrogation room, but we never got in an elevator, and there was not some big ramp upwards, so we never went up. That means that I am heading into the basement, not out of the building. What kind of a jackass marks a stairwell as an emergency exit when it takes you further into the building?

I hear the click of the door before it opens. I stand still, my back pressed against the stairwell wall, hoping that whoever is up there will not hear me and decides that only an idiot would head for the basement.

The waiting is brutal and short. Apparently, when two armed gunmen enter a stairwell they will decide to check both directions, just to be safe. No sense trying to be quiet now, I take the stairs three or four at a time, trying to buy as much distance as I can while looking for a way out of this deathtrap of a building.

Deeper and deeper I go, and I know the armed men are following close behind. I can hear them, their combat boots stomping down the steps after me, unrelenting in their pursuit. I hear their yells, and occasionally one of them even takes a shot at me. I should be more frightened, but I push the fear back and focus on getting out alive.