Those old eyes. That young face. That blood.
Knowing. Knowing where the blood comes from that keeps him so fiddle fit, it does something. ‘Cause I scrabble out a living. I don’t turn down what comes to me on a plate, but it’s not offered too often. Mostly, I hustle or hunt for what I eat. It’s not raised in a cage for me. It’s not bred for me. It’s not slaughtered for me.
I kill for myself.
His eyes, they may or may not know if I’m lying, I just don’t fucking care anymore.
So I look right back into them, and let him play it how he wants.
He blinks. Which means fuckall. But he does it.
– I’d be interested in knowing through what channels that message was sent.
– Telephone.
– He told you that?
– He told me they picked up a phone when they were safe inside, called him, so he’d know.
– The girl, her unborn baby, and who?
– The baby daddy.
He turns, waves over the enforcer with the phone, takes it and looks at the screen again, taps, hands it back, looks at me.
– And they’ve not left?
I’m at the bottom of my skanky little smoke, the last drag burns my lips, but I take it anyway.
– You’re the one with the stakeout. You tell me.
He nods.
– Yes, but if they got in without our seeing.
– Yeah, sure, they might get out. But as far as I know? Inside.
His hands go in his pockets.
– And your interest in this?
I push myself off the concrete and stand.
– I know the girl’s dad. He asked me to find her.
– So you are a humanitarian.
– He offered me a shitload of money. Enough I thought I could maybe get off this rock and go find someplace new to hide.
He gives a little smile.
– New Jersey, perhaps.
I smile myself.
– Yeah, something like that.
He loses the smile.
– You can get inside?
– If your boys don’t shoot me first, I think maybe yeah.
His phone guy shows him the phone again.
– And you can get them out?
– Hell if I know.
– Some confidence would help your case, Pitt.
I’m doing a seven-finger roll.
– Some confidence would be a lie. I haven’t seen anyone in there for over a year. And things were tense. Sela could rip my head off on sight.
– But not the Horde girl.
– No. Maybe. Could be. I don’t know. Any case, she wouldn’t rip my head off herself, she’d have Sela do it.
He sends the phone guy away.
– It does sound very like a win-win for me. Either you come out with the girl and her baby, or Horde and Sela rip your head off.
I light up on another spavined reject from the cigarette family.
– Or I squat in there and you can go fuck off.
He nods.
– Well.
He gestures at the preparations going on around us.
– I wouldn’t count on squatting unmolested for very long.
– There are time issues.
– So I gather.
– But there would be advantages to having them out. The girl and the baby. The father I do not care about.
– Sure, I get it. You don’t want to see the symbol of the future accidentally shot.
He’s unrolling his sleeves.
– Symbol of the future. Indeed. I think it might be more apt to say that they are a symbol for the virtues of proper birth control practices. But not everyone is as clear-minded. The Coalition is purely socio-political in nature, but even here there have been whispers of the significance of the unborn. Until I can eliminate that whiff of mythology, I’d rather avoid any unfortunate mishaps that Bird might publicize to his advantage.
– Always best to minimize the potential collateral dead bodies before you go crashing through the windows.
– We will be using doors. It is not a spectacle we are performing here. It is an action. One made unavoidable by the untenable presence of the Cure house on Coalition territory. It has become hermetic. Information does not flow out. We cannot have a mystery box full of infected, lorded by a mad girl, in our midst. Not now. Not with tensions as they stand.
– Especially not when you don’t know if they’re secretly allied with the Society and the Hood.
He buttons his cuffs.
– Irrelevant.
I run a hand under my shirt and over my chest. I can feel a couple knobs of bone where the ribs have healed out of true. They don’t hurt, but they’ll be weak points that will snap easy the next time they take a shot.
I point at some of the action going on in the garage. Weapons being stripped, blueprints reviewed, a couple laptops set up in the back of one of the SUVs, a tiny mobile communications center.
– Pretty heavy action for irrelevant.
He reclaims his jacket from an enforcer.
– They have been starving for months. They possess no coordination as a military force. But in the absence of any knowledge to the contrary, we must assume they are a threat to expose themselves at any moment. However many of them are left inside, they must emerge sooner or later. When they do, they will not be in control of their appetites.
– So this is a mercy mission.
He slides his arms into the jacket.
– No. This is a tactical operation that will eliminate a threat to the Coalition.
I’m looking at some guns that look big and useful.
– Always thought this kind of action on your turf was verboten.
– Events progress. We must adapt.
I point at the guns.
– Can I have one of those?
He squints.
– One moment while I think. No, you may not.
I point at the ramp.
– Whatever’s going on in that place, it’s gonna be hairy. I know you won’t be shedding tears at my funeral, but the point is for me to save the girl and the baby, yeah? Get them out before you come in with the goon squad. I may need to be armed to make that happen.
He shakes his head.
– No. You are far too spontaneous in how you choose to distribute bullets.
He looks up at a flickering light fixture.
– But yes, you should have something. The knife and the garrote you were carrying.
– I’d rather not have to get so intimate if Sela has a beef with me.
He looks down from the light.
– Truly, Pitt, if Sela is no longer amused by your monkey tricks, do you believe a gun or any number of bullets will keep her at bay?
I think about Sela, six foot plus of weightlifter muscle grafted onto a Vampyre and combined with the particular hormonal imbalance of a pre-op tranny. She is unique and dangerous and I don’t understand a thing about her. Except that she’s one of the six most dangerous people I’ve ever met. And she once took on two of the others at the same time and came out on top.
– No, I don’t think it would help much. But I do like to have a gun.
An enforcer approaches with my wire saw and amputation blade. He hands them to Predo.
Predo slips a few inches of the blade from its rubber sheath.
– Have you ever seen one employed by a surgeon?
– Can’t say I have.
He pulls it the rest of the way free.
– To amputate a leg above the knee, one must wrap their arm around the limb, from underneath, bringing the blade toward oneself, angling the tip downward. The goal is to cut into the flesh deeply, to the bone, while whipping one’s arm away, unwinding it from around the leg. When perfected, the maneuver leaves a single incision that circles the femur. A moment’s work with a bone saw and the leg is off.