Cake (58 page)

He moved fast. He had his hand on the collar ring and was yanking me off my feet and over the edge of the bar before I could stop him. But as I slid over the surface I got my hand up and slapped it on his forehead, ripping into his mind as hard and fast as I could. He fought against the invasion. Monahan was strong willed, and that meant if he wriggled out of my grasp, I was up shit creek without a paddle.

Let go.

He didn’t. I might have caught him off guard, but he was a stubborn bugger. I rewound his memories, looking for some pain in his life, and then I intensified it. He dropped his hand from me as his head exploded in agony, and I had to make sure I kept physical contact with him until I could bind him. I really wasn’t sure I could take him again if he got free.

Once I had him bound I took the time to really search the rest of the house with my thoughts and discovered that there were two more minds somewhere close, both asleep.

Forcing a vocal binding on Monahan to go with the physical one, I knelt before him, smiling triumphantly.

“
Okay, I lied,” I told him gloatingly. “Marcus isn’t dead. He came close to dying tonight, but he’s alive and he’s out there, a little weak…but mostly pissed off. You should consider yourself lucky that I’m here instead of him; you know he has that nasty streak. He would have liked playing with junior rapist over there. He would have made him suffer far more than I did,” I said, jerking my head back towards the dead body of his son.

Absolute hatred shone back at me through his faded brown eyes. I ignored his look and started scanning his thoughts. I didn’t have the same finesse as Marcus. But then, from what I understood, Marcus was special. His thought-reading ability was a gift that was rare and therefore precious. He called it “mind walking”. Me, I was just like a kid in a candy store, eagerly ripping open jars looking for the good stuff. Since I wasn’t going to leave Monahan alive, it really didn’t matter how much damage I did anyway.

Monahan grimaced as I went in deeper, and his eyes closed as he tried to fight against me. He knew I was looking for something in particular, something recent, and something that should never have happened.

There had been a phone call made last night. I couldn’t quite make out the voice, but it was telling him where Marcus was going to be. It was male. I scanned back further, probing harder until…

“
No.”

The denial fell from my lips, and I stilled in disbelief. It couldn’t be him! I searched some more, not caring that I was leaving a path of disrepair through Monahan’s head. Damn it. Damn it. Damnitdamnitdamnit.

Listen to me. Open your eyes.

Monahan obeyed, glaring at me through the pain I’d inflicted.

“
He did kill me. Marcus fulfilled his contract to you. But you never said that I had to stay dead.”

I dropped my fangs and snapped on the crystal vision that showed my glowing blue eyes off to him. Monahan panicked, but I was ready for him. His instinctive jerk was just a twitch, and I kept my hand over his forehead.

“
I may be beautiful now, but there was a hell of a price to pay,” I told him. “Marcus fucked me over physically and mentally to get me like this. I want you to know what I went through. I want you know what you started. And I want you to know that I am killing every living thing in this house tonight. This is for my family, and the pain you put them through. If you had just given them a body to bury, none of this would have happened. Also…this is for my new family,” I added. “Nobody touches them. Marcus is mine. And nobody touches him for any reason whatsoever, not without swift retribution being dealt out.”

Monahan had heard me. He had seen my fangs and my eyes, and he knew that I was no longer the fat bastard that he had tormented in the past. I rampaged through his thoughts, shredding all the happiness I could find, intensifying his feeling of despair and agony, discovering that I hadn’t been the only employee of his that he had harassed over the years.

Interns were assaulted. Secretaries were raped. He’d been introduced to a man’s wife and daughter at a company picnic and he had seduced both women. The girl had become pregnant, and when her father found out, Monahan had framed the father for incest, and now the man languished in prison. What had happened to the girl and her unborn child was not in his mind. He saw; he conquered; he forgot it. Bastard.

I let go of him with a push, and he fell backwards, hitting his head hard on the bar sink. His body began to shudder and twitch as it lay on the floor, and his eyes rolled up into his head. I watched him die, feeling nothing. He deserved nothing.

After all this time, I had finally found out why my death had been ordered. Monahan hadn’t been smarter than me. It was just bad luck that I’d been found out. I’d been downloading the latest project and had taken a quick bathroom break, when he’d rifled through my desk. Apparently he rifled through my desk often, and I’d always thought it was the night maintenance people had been doing that. I’d been fucked over for bad timing and a weak bladder.

And it had taken a year for me to die.

I slipped off the bar and stared around the room. There were only two more hits on my radar, and then I could leave this place behind me.

Shade?

I wasn’t sure if she would answer as we were miles apart.

Xavier. Are you all right?

I let myself relax a little, nodding my head and then feeling foolish as I realized that Nightshade was across town and couldn’t see me.

I’m good. It’s done. Make your kill quick, and get out of there.

Dawn is starting to break, Xavier. Remember to keep out of the light.

Yes, Mom. I’m on my way. See you at home.

Killing came a little easier for me when I had to start up again, which I was glad for as I really didn’t want to think about it. Just squeeze the trigger and move on I thought as I took out the sleeping housekeeper with the gun I’d retrieved, firing the shot through a pillow, trying to silence the small blast as much as possible. One more to go and I was done.

Making my way quickly along a thick carpeted corridor I ran towards my next target as the mullioned windows began showing a brighter shade of dark as daybreak approached. Hurry your ass, Xavier.

I opened a door, intending to make my kill on the person within the room, and sensed…innocence. I paused in my tracks. There was a purity here that didn’t belong in this house.

Taking a couple of steps forward, I spied a tiny, little head covered in yellow curls lying on the pillow. It was a young girl, and she was dreaming peacefully, her mind full of sugar plums and ponies. Monahan had sheltered his daughter from his evil world, I realized. She wasn’t anything like her father and brother. I turned and headed out of her bedroom.

A sleepy voice called out to me. “Who are you?”

I closed my eyes in regret. She knew I was here. She was a witness. I tightened my grip on the gun. “Sweetheart,” I said softly, turning back around to face her. “I am the Angel of Death.”

“
If you’re an angel, where are your wings?” she queried.

Turning to show my back, I willed my wings out, keeping a groan trapped in my throat as my feathered appendages tore through my flesh. I shook my shoulders and as my wings shivered, the sound of rustling filled the bedroom. I stretched them wide for her to see and admire, and then I let them fold to rest on my back as I walked over towards her bed.

Her eyes were wide and her mouth had formed a silent ‘oh’.

“
You came for my Mommy when I was just a baby,” she told me.

“
It was time for her to go,” I said. God, I was going to burn in Hell for lying to this child. Just ignore the whole killing spree I’d been on tonight…This was unforgivable.

“
Is it time for me to go and stay with Mommy?”

I swallowed hard. “Do you want it to be? I had to take everyone else in the house. You will be left alone if I don’t…take you.”

She stared at me for a moment, and then she shook her head. “I want to have babies. Lots and lots of babies,” she said, smiling.

I placed a hand gently on her forehead. “Then lie down and cover up, and I’ll send you to sleep.”

“
You’ll sing to me?” she asked with a giggle.

“
No, little girl, you really don’t want to hear me sing,” I said, smiling at her as she lay down and closed her eyes.

Sleep. Sleep until the police arrive. Tell them you met an angel, but you can’t remember his face.

When she was slumbering quietly, I slipped out of her bedroom and made my way back to the monitoring room, where I stayed until I had erased all recordings of the night’s events. And finding a pair of sunglasses in a drawer there, I put them on as I walked out into the palest pink morning.

Driving Monahan’s stolen sedan, I was squinting by the time I got to the outskirts of the city. And before I could even reach the heart of the city proper, I was virtually blinded by the brightness and couldn’t drive any more. The sunlight was searing into my eyes and I was starting to feel weak.

I decided to ditch the car. There was a trench coat lying on the front seat with a wallet in the pocket. Shrugging into the coat, I took out the wallet and snagged all the bills from it, tossing the empty leather onto the floorboards. Then tucking the gun I still had into the waistband of my pants, I hailed a cab.

The driver kept looking into the rear view mirror, staring at me intensely. I knew, by flitting into his mind, that he recognised me from somewhere. I pulled up a recent memory of a prostitute he’d come across and poured myself into the mix. The interest in his eyes faded to disgust and he drove faster to my destination. He couldn’t wait to get me out of his cab, which was fine by me.

Getting out of the cab I tossed the money for the fare at him and then walked around the block to Marcus’s address, keeping to the shadows as I quickly headed down into the sheltered parking garage, knowing that I was appearing on the closed circuit screens long before I stepped into the building.

The door from the garage to the entryway opened easily, I didn’t even have to buzz my way in. I was tired. I was so fucking tired. And all I wanted to do, as I stepped into my room from the concealed staircase, was sleep.

Shade, in her favorite red panther form, was lying on a padded bench, and the dark grey rifle case that I’d taken from the assassin’s trunk was lying beside her.

“
You got it! How did you get it here?” I asked, surprised.

Ever try dragging a gazelle into a tree? Legs and horns everywhere, trying to rip your fangs out of your mouth. Compared to that, a gun case was easy. I saw you looking across the building. I figured you wanted it.

“
Thanks, Nightshade.”

The bench she was sitting on looked so inviting, but I knew that if I sat down on it with her, I was going to be sleeping there and waking up sore.

Chesterton appeared in the room, carrying a warm mug of blood.

“
Is that what I hope it is?” I asked him.

“
Yes, Master Xavier,” he answered with a smile.

I took the mug o’ Marcus and breathed in deeply, inhaling the scent of apples. I missed him.

“
How do you get essence in here anyway? I thought this was bagged blood,” I said to Chesterton.

“
House secret, Master Xavier,” he replied, tapping the side of his nose. “Shall I take your coat?”

I handed back the mug to the waiting butler and slipped out of the coat, letting it fall to the floor as I reached behind me and pulled out the hidden gun. Knocking the safety off, I pressed the muzzle to Chesterton’s forehead, right between his eyes.

His had been the voice that I had pulled out of Monahan’s head, his civil, cultured British accent telling where Marcus was going to be tonight.