Before the Dawn (4 page)

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 . . .

. . . Kafelnikov's.

Opening a switchblade with a nasty
click,
the Brood's leader said, “Stupid bitch . . . I told you I was going to kill you!”

“I'm getting really tired of you boys calling me that,” she said. “Your manners
suck
. . . .”

With no alternative, and that weight below her, she kept climbing, narrowing the distance between herself and the Brood members on the roof.

Kafelnikov bent down, the knife starting to slice through the thin rope. “Just be a couple more seconds . . . and then nobody'll be calling you ‘bitch' again, rest assured, my dear. . . . Nobody'll call you anything but dead!”

The Russian was carving at the rope, threads popping, his face a pale terrible thing just above her, closer, closer. . . .

“Boss,
no!
” the skinny guy below her whined, but it was too late.

Kafelnikov's blade cut the rope.

Max let go, the rope and the skinny guy tumbling down out of sight, a screaming man riding a snake.

But as she let go, Max launched herself upward, spearing the lapels of Kafelnikov's coat in either hand. Just as gravity took over and started to pull them both over the edge, two members of the Brood grabbed their leader and just managed, barely managed, to keep him—and Max—from pitching to the pavement far below.

And so she hung there, holding on to his coat, Kafelnikov's face only inches from hers—they might have kissed, though she found his breath (what was that, sardines?) offensive—and the other two Broodsters strained to keep their fearless leader from falling, their grip on their superior's arms preventing him from doing anything to rid himself of Max.

Inexorably, gravity tilted them farther over the edge. In his panic, Kafelnikov fought to tear himself from the grip of his own men so he could try to pry Max's hands from his coat; but his loyal boys were just too strong, and kept trying to pull him away.

Just as it seemed the skinny Brood leader and the shapely cat burglar would tumble through the night together, Max looked up at the Russian and smiled.

Kafelnikov's eyes went wide in wonderment and rage—he might have been thinking,
If only she were one of mine!
—then Max headbutted him, breaking his nose, and almost prying him loose from his goons.

Blood sprayed and the Russian howled. Tearing one arm free, he swung wildly for Max's face; but she simply let go of him . . .

. . . and his follow-through carried him back out of sight onto the roof with his two goons in tow.

As Max fell through the night sky, a falling star, she grinned, enjoying the rush of air on her face. Not only did she have what she'd come for, she'd gotten to bloody the nose of the Brood's leader—not a bad evening's work, so far.

As she passed the seventh floor again, she pulled the metal ring on her suit that deployed the chute and a tiny turbine blower that filled the chute with warm air and provided enough updraft to give her an easy descent and a relatively soft landing.

She had hoped not to have to use the chute off the Cap, as she might land in the midst of the Brood members below who had been summoned by the explosions to the street. The plan had been to wait on the rooftop till the sidewalks were empty, as the Broodsters filed back into the building, to investigate the site of the burglary. And then she'd float to earth.

But this would do in a pinch. No help would be waiting below, however—Moody and the Chinese Clan were nowhere to be seen as she drifted toward the street; that didn't surprise Max . . . their job, after all, had been to provide a diversion. They'd done as much, and split. She floated to the pavement, touched down, turned off the blower, and wrapped up the chute.

Then she turned, to see Brood members swarming toward her, dangerous dimwits in tattered denim. The first one fell to a spinning roundhouse kick to the head, the second to a straight kick to the groin, the third to a right cross.

And then Max was running, the gangsters in pursuit. Turning the corner, she found herself flying down Vine Street with half the Brood behind her. She raced down the middle of the street, her shoes pounding on the shiny wet pavement. Just as she passed a manhole cover, Max wondered idly why the street was damp—it hadn't rained today, hadn't rained for weeks. As she heard the manhole cover slide open, Max stopped, pivoted, and dropped into her fighting stance.

Catching a glimpse of silver hair rising out of the manhole, the unmistakable nasty perfume of gasoline filling her flaring nostrils, Max suddenly knew why the street was wet. . . .

She spun away and ran for all she was worth—which was plenty—even as she heard the
whoosh
of the gas igniting. Some of the Brood screamed, but she assumed it was more out of fear than pain. Moody wouldn't let them get close enough to be caught in the fire . . . probably.

The idea was to stop the pursuit, not to incinerate the pursuers, though a few charred casualties wouldn't have Max or Moody losing much sleep. Looking over her shoulder as she ran, Max saw the wall of flame separating her from pursuers who were folding back into the night, scurrying home to their tower of broken dreams.

And she saw that Moody had disappeared back down the manhole, as if he'd not even really been there, a ghost haunting what had once been Hollywood's most famous street.

“Thanks,” she said to the night, and was gone.

Less than an hour later, with the security plans to guide her, Max negotiated the electronic locks and first-floor laser guards of the former office building and current home of the Hollywood Heritage Museum. Her new goal lay at the far end of the second floor, in a locked room guarded by more lasers, mines, and a special alarm under the object itself.

Only two guards patrolled the museum at night, and one of them was already napping at the security desk on the first floor.

There wasn't supposed to be anything of real worth in the museum, strictly nostalgia on display; but Max—thanks to Moody—knew better. Many of the exhibits from the history of American filmmaking displayed objects of value only to wealthy collectors of pre-Pulse memorabilia. None of the kitschy artifacts could compare to the literal jewel that awaited her at the end of the hall.

The first floor contained many remnants of the days that the placards posted next to exhibits referred to as the “Golden Age of Silents.” The cane, bowler, and black suit of a “comic” named Chaplin, some kind of Arab outfit a feminine-looking actor named Valentino had worn in a couple of “silent” movies, and even a train engine that the placard proudly stated came from a Buster Keaton movie called
The General.

Silently climbing the last few stairs to the second floor, Max found herself prowling a hallway whose placard boasted of material from the “Golden Age of Studios.” For a place with so many “Golden Ages,” Max thought, there seemed to be precious little actual gold around. Creeping along the hallway, keeping close to the wall, Max's cat eyes registered the facility's other guard, a heavyset fella heading for the far end of the hall, her enhanced hearing picking up his heels clicking on the tile floor.

She kept moving, sliding past raincoat-clad figures from a “musical” called
Singin' in the Rain,
and a quartet of mannequins dressed as a lion, a crude robot, a scarecrow, and a pigtailed girl in a blue-and-white-checkered dress, holding a little dog; the latter grouping represented something called
The Wizard of Oz,
though Max couldn't see how these characters had anything mystical or magical about them, and the only wizards she knew about were Harry Potter and his friends.

What waited in the room beyond the hallway had nothing to do with the “Golden Age of Studios,” but it was the most secure room in the building . . . so this, of course, was where the most valuable exhibit was housed.

Max watched from the shadows as the plump guard checked the door at the end of the hall, then disappeared into the stairwell, to continue his rounds on another floor. She waited to make her move, listening to the door click shut and the guard's footsteps—he was going down—on the metal stairs dissipate.

Then she all but soundlessly sprinted (
This is the Golden Age of silents,
she thought) the last fifty feet to the exhibit's door, circumvented the alarm, picked the numeric push-button lock, and took a long deep breath.

The lock and the alarm were the easy part. Mines, activated only when the museum was closed, lay beneath the floor, and lasers hooked to infrared beams crisscrossed the room with barely a foot between them. Taking one last look at the floor plan Kafelnikov had so thoughtfully provided, Max memorized it, tucked it away, and plotted her course of action.

She opened the door, slipped inside, and eased it shut behind her. The chamber was windowless and silent, reminding her of the solitude of the barracks at Manticore after lights-out. Half a dozen glass cases stood around the room, each bearing props from a movie called
Titanic.

A tall display case in the corner contained a mannequin wearing an old-timey diaphanous white gown, while a similar glass case in the opposite corner held a mannequin of an attractive if baby-faced young man in a tuxedo.