One-Eyed Jack (16 page)

Good, ’cause I didn’t want my blood getting mixed into his.

“Did some unfinished business follow you to Las Vegas?” I asked.

“Actually”—he braced himself as I was braced, as Jackie was braced—“we followed him. Be careful with this one, my friends. He is dangerous.”

“So am I,” I said, and flipped myself to my feet facing in the opposite direction, and started to run.

The Russian Contemplates the Odds.

Somewhere in Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.

The bullet hadn’t touched the Russian, although he’d broken his nose for the third time when Tribute fell across him and he got a little too intimate with the pavement. White-lit pain receded quickly into difficult breathing. The cool drip of
something
out of the gunshot vampire and the hot blood sliding across his mouth were sensations he didn’t mind if he never experienced again.

Missed twice
, he thought, and tried not to feel as cocky as he sounded to himself. It was luck, and luck could run out. Even his. Because if the stories kept him alive . . . it stood to reason that there must eventually be a story in which he died, correct? Perhaps many stories. Like Robin Hood.

That was good news as well as bad. Because if he could die, the assassin could die also.

He simply had to figure out how. But that was a task for another time, as was understanding why both Tribute and Jackie were apparently—no, definitely—carrying on a conversation with two beings that the Russian could not sense. For the meantime—

The vampire
lofted
to his feet, a movement sudden and effortless as a falcon extending its wings, and began to run in the direction that the American had taken. Toward the gunfire, which had not been repeated. The Russian picked his head up to look, caught movement in an entirely different direction, and cleared his throat. “Jackie—”

“Yes?”

“Your quarry is leaving the bar.”

The Assassin Has a Sense of Déjà Vu.

Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.

The shot had been good, and that damned bloody bystander had fouled it. Still, they’d both gone down, and with any luck, the slug had punched through the man in the long black coat and done enough damage to the primary target to keep him down while the assassin found a vantage from which to finalize the shot.

He faded into the shadows, aware of the American moving toward his position, running recklessly. An easy mark, but the American wasn’t the target. He needed the American alive.

Luck wasn’t on his side, for once. It was a right pisser to discover that no matter how careful the setup, the fates would still intervene on behalf of his opponents as cheerfully as they would on his own. Still, he had time before the American found him—and once the American’s partner was dead, it wouldn’t
matter
if the American found him.

He backed against the rough skin of a Mexican fan palm, the rifle pressed to his chest to disguise its silhouette in the dark, and squinted toward the parking lot.

Just in time to see the man he’d shot between the shoulder blades leap six feet into the air, twist in place, and land like a cat. There was no hesitation; the dead man scurried toward the assassin’s previous position, quick as a scorpion, leaving wet black footprints in his wake.

Maybe the American wasn’t his most immediate problem after all.

One-Eyed Jack and the House of Cards.

Las Vegas. Summer 2002.

I started to run a second before the Russian managed to scramble to his feet and follow, and I kept my lead. I had a couple of inches on him, and I think that limp slowed him down a little. The bad news was that I hadn’t bought socks when I purchased my T-shirt, and my feet sloshed inside my boots. Wet cotton slid and bunched under the arches of my feet, rubbing my heels until each stride felt like shoving flesh against a stove. I was going to have blisters on my blisters.

I didn’t care. Because Stewart was half a step behind Angel, following her like a dog on a leash, and his eyes got wide and strange as I came barreling up. Angel’s hand dipped into her shiny little purse—no sign at all of where I’d hit her with the sledgehammer, her broken arm healed as smoothly as if the damage had been painted on by a makeup team—and I knew she was going for that pistol.

Fucking L.A.

She didn’t have it out yet when a bullet sizzled past from the wrong direction. I was guessing, but it sounded like it came from over by the palm trees, and it was a clean miss; it didn’t touch me or the Russian. It seemed to lend him a little extra energy, though, as he kicked off and dove past me in a beautiful flying tackle.

I put the brakes on, trying to stay out of the Russian’s way, and Angel sidestepped like a pro, making it look easy, a little bob and weave as she spilled her purse and got the flat-sided automatic out of it. The Russian piled into the wall beside the closed door, between Angel and Stewart, with enough of a thump to make me wince; it had been one heck of a tackle.

Angel was just Hollywood fast.

Stewart recoiled, a helpless hands-raised flinch that I didn’t have time to watch and hurt for the way I hurt for it, because Angel was still sidestepping, her gun out and leveled, and the Russian was pushing himself to one knee, blood flying as he shook his head, and somebody was going to get shot if I didn’t do something
now
.

They tell cops that fifteen to twenty-one feet is the inside limit beyond which an armed officer cannot safely control somebody with a hand-to-hand weapon. I wish I could say I made the considered, logical choice to put that to a test. Instead, a handgun barked twice somewhere behind me, days’-worth of fear and grief tumbling on me like somebody pulling the bottom card out of a fifteen-level tower. I rushed Angel like a pissed-off jackrabbit just as she was swinging her gun to try to cover me and the Russian both.

She put her back against the wall and pulled the trigger once, bracing her right hand with her left. As luck would have it, the bullet didn’t even crease me; I grabbed for Angel’s wrist and shouldered her into the wall, the impact hard enough to jar my teeth. She went under it before I managed to flatten her. She dropped and kicked out, using my grip as a fulcrum, and hooked my ankle with her foot as she swung down.

We landed on our asses, legs tangled together, all four hands pyramided over our heads as we wrestled for the gun. Her fingernails worried my left wrist like teeth. I heaved, got a leg under me, and threw myself at her, going for the pin. Something in my ankle creaked; sharp pain raced up my calf. I never even saw how she got her knee in the way, but the next thing I knew she was rolling out from under me while vomit tried to bubble up the back of my throat and out my nose.

Remind me never to get in a fight with a girl half my size.

I fell against the pavement, gagging, curled around the seasick agony of my testicles doing their best to vacate the premises. I had to get up. My arms wouldn’t support me when I pushed, but I knew I had to get up, because Angel was up, and Angel had the gun—

A heave got me onto my back next to the Russian, who’d dragged his gun out of the holster and braced himself against the wall, spraddle-legged like a colt. Blood still ran down his face, a thick trickle that splashed my hand and arm as I pressed against warm concrete, trying to shove past the pain and use the wall, force myself to my feet. The Russian brought his gun up, staring Angel dead between the eyes, obviously half-expecting to get shot before he could pull the trigger and coldly unconcerned by the possibility.

Except Angel was pointing her gun at
me
.

“Jackie,” she said, tilting her head so a lock of dark hair drifted across her eyes. “I wish I could say I was going to regret this.”

In the movies, it would have been slow motion—the tightening, whitening of her manicured finger on the trigger, the hammer striking the primer, the bullet tearing itself free of the cartridge casing and flying down the barrel, wreathed in languid curls of smoke—

All I saw was a blur. Golden hair and black and red fabric, everything stark in the streetlight, as Stewart exploded out of
nowhere
, stepped in front of the Russian and me, grabbed Angel’s fisted hand and yanked the gun muzzle up against his belly. The sound of the shot was muffled. The ejecting cartridge must have burned his hand, because he jerked it to his mouth and sucked it like a bee-stung child, his other hand pressing into the wound that dripped crimson below his sternum in front, between the shoulder blades behind.

He staggered. Angel swung the gun back toward me. The Russian chambered a bullet with a sound like a guillotine’s blade. “Give me a reason,” he said calmly.

And Stewart sagged to his knees.

I don’t know how it happened next. I don’t. I was up, somehow, up and then down, lunging to my knees to catch Stewart. And he was in my arms, eyes bright, teeth shiny pale squares between the blood staining the crevices between them, and Angel must have looked at me and looked at the Russian because she threw the gun in his face and
ran
.

He followed her about three steps and checked hard. I bent over Stewart as Stewart’s eyes grew dull. His lips moved; there was no breath behind the words, but I knew what he was saying anyway.
Back in a second, Jackie
—

“Bother,” the Russian said, as I closed Stewart’s eyes, kissed the right one, and looked up. “That didn’t go very well at all.”

“Why didn’t you chase her?”

“The assassin’s still around here somewhere.”

“Friend of yours?”

His eyes met mine, incredulous, and then he smiled and glanced down at his pistol, sliding the magazine out to replace fired rounds. “Something like that. And maybe working with your enemy, yes?”

Stewart shimmered into pixie dust and I brushed him off my hands. Stepping in front of a bullet meant for somebody else must count. Sweet boy. “Maybe is a mild word for it—”

“Come on,” Stewart said, stepping out of the bar. He bent down and quickly kissed the top of my head. “Let’s get the other one, if he’s still out there—”

“—and my partner,” the Russian interrupted.

“And Tribute,” I finished, trying to sort my bones out enough to stand. “And let’s do it before the cops show up.”

The American Asks Questions Later.

Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.

The American was screwing the barrel extension onto his modified Walther when he marked his quarry again. Motion and a flash of light on glass caught his eye as the assassin lifted the long rifle, aimed it toward the parking lot, and sighted through the scope.

The American leveled and aimed his pistol, a hard-earned reflex that cost him no more thought than smiling at a girl. He hadn’t had time for the scope, and the iron sights were less than perfectly accurate, but the Walther was almost an extension of his hand; he could reach out and place a bullet in a target without much more difficulty than he could reach out and tap the brim of a friend’s hat down with a fingertip.

The weight was comfortable. The trigger pressed against his finger, resilient, eager. Twenty yards off, the assassin readied himself; the American could read measured breathing, relaxed mind in the stillness of his stance.

He’d only get one shot.

The snap of his pistol was lost in the staccato of the rifle. The American cursed, moving forward, already knowing he’d missed as he pulled the trigger—

A curvaceous shape clad in skin-tight black patent leather landed on the assassin’s shoulders as if she’d materialized in midair. The assassin went with it, clinging to the rifle inside a shoulder roll that brought him to a tucked-in crouch. He ducked his attacker’s first side kick and turned into the next one, using the rifle to parry an overhand blow.

The American ran. Concrete jarred his knees and hips and his suit coat tightened across his shoulders as his arms pumped. Not fast enough, though; the assassin knocked the woman sprawling. She jumped to her feet, ready for war, and they met again, in silhouette, an exchange of blows that even the American’s trained eye could barely follow.

The woman was good.

The assassin was taller, heavier, had more reach—and he was armed with an improvised club, while she had nothing but her hands and feet. The assassin brought the blunt end of the rifle around and forward, a jab with the weight of his shoulder behind it and plenty of follow-through. He slammed the gun into the woman’s gut. She doubled over, fists raised in an ineffectual face guard, and he whacked her again, a sidearm blow that nearly made the
American’s
ears ring. She flew back, sprawled and skidding, a landing hard enough to knock the air out of anybody.

The assassin raised his rifle, a jerky unhesitating motion like a man about to shoot his own horse.

The Englishman’s partner
, the American realized, and stepped into the puddle of streetlight between the assassin and the girl. His gun rested in his right hand, a casual waist-level grip. His hair had fallen down into his eyes. “Pick on somebody your own size,” he purred, and watched the assassin’s eyebrow arch.

A calm voice, autocratic. “Step aside.”

“Out of the question. I can’t permit any harm to come to this young lady. My partner would never forgive me.” The American permitted himself a coy little smile. “Besides, you can’t shoot me, can you? I’m no good to you dead.”

A moment of composed consideration between the two of them, the assassin testing the American for hesitation—and then the assassin’s gaze flicked over the American’s shoulder, and he frowned. He pursed his lips and stepped back, keeping the gun carefully—meticulously—level. “Enjoy it while it lasts,” he said, and slipped back into the night.

The woman in the leather jumpsuit climbed to her feet and started brushing herself off. The American popped two shots after the assassin; he knew he hadn’t hit anything, but he waited ten counted breaths before he lowered his gun anyway. He turned his head to glance over his shoulder; Tribute stood there, as he had suspected, one white finger thrust through the clean-punched hole in his calfskin coat, examining the damage.