The Beast That Was Max

LICENSE NOTES:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
 
This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
 
If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.
 
If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy.
 
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

BUY DIRECT FROM CROSSROAD PRESS & SAVE

Try any title from CROSSROAD PRESS – use the Coupon Code FIRSTBOOK for a one time 20% savings!
 
We have a wide variety of eBook and Audiobook titles available.
 
Find us at:
 
http://store.crossroadpress.com

When Max pulled up to the corner of Lisbon Place and South Moshulu Parkway, Lee came out of the building entrance alone. That was not part of the plan. Max took a deep breath, fought through the sluggishness of a sated predator, and raised himself to his killer's edge.

The Beast within him rumbled, its suspicion dulled by the evening's pleasure. Still drunk on blood and pain, the Beast rolled over Max's memories of their fresh excesses and barely acknowledged Max's alarm or its cause.

Max put the Lincoln Town Car in neutral, turned off the headlights, and stepped out into the brisk early-April air. He put his hand on the Ruger in the back holster under his old French surplus motorcycle duster and scanned for an ambush. A half-dozen eight- to twelve-year-olds played under a set of lit ground-floor windows. Locals hurried past, burdened with bags or focused on their destination, taking no notice of him or Lee. Spiced meat and pizza scented the breeze. Latin and hip-hop music melted into the rhythm of passing cars and buses, children's voices, TV commercials. Ordinary stimuli, he decided.

The roofline and darkened building windows drew Max's attention, along with the cars parked along the street, then the buildings to either side and across the wide avenue, where they were obscured by gloom and budding trees. Lee waved, as if to distract him. Max's heart beat quicker, and the Beast pricked its inner ears. The avenue provided long lines of sight, but neither Max nor the Beast caught the sense of watchers behind cars or trees targeting them. The Beast resumed its slumber. Sensitive to the terror of prey, Max felt something was going wrong, that he was slipping into danger. But there was no sense of another predator's focus. At least, not yet.

Without a clear target for his suspicion, Max let his hand fall from the gun. He drifted toward the trunk, checked the curb and roadbed for blood. The seals were good. And, of course, there were no stifled moans or cries for help coming from under the hood.

Lee held both hands open and out as he closed the distance between them. Max nodded his head, acknowledging Lee picking up on his discomfort. Lee's weathered face, surprising Max with the age folded into its terrain, brightened at Max's acceptance. The man's army fatigue jacket flapped in a gust, showing the slight paunch covered by a skull T-shirt and the unbelted waist of a pair of black jeans. No weapons showed.

Before Lee could speak, Max leaned back on the Lincoln, pressed his hands against the cool metal, and asked, "Where is she?"

"Change of plans," Lee said, joining Max in leaning up against the car. "We have to pick her up."

"I have my own plans. I need to get her done, then dump the bodies."

Lee jumped off the Lincoln, glanced at the trunk, paced three steps back and forth in front of Max. "Dump the bodies? What bodies? What do you mean, get her done?"

Max went to the back, checked for anyone nearby, opened the trunk. A stench rose out of the car.

Lee stared, coughed. "Damn, Max. You were going to put her in there?"

"Of course. After I killed her. I was going to have her get in the back with you, behind the front passenger seat. We were going to take a ride on the Saw Mill River Parkway. I was going to reach across and put a round in her head when we got off on the Tuckahoe exit. You were going to help me get rid of the bodies."

Lee closed the trunk for Max. "But you're not supposed to kill her. And you're sure as hell not supposed to do that shit to her," he said, waving a hand at the back of the car. "What the hell, are you having a South America flashback or something? We're not in Guatemala anymore. You're supposed to take her to Omari's safe house and protect her."

Max froze. The Beast hissed. "What?"

"Weren't you briefed? Aw, fuck," Lee said, stamping his foot and shoving his hands into the jacket side pockets. "They set me up. They didn't want to tell you themselves, so they put me up to do it. Goddamn, I hate when they do that shit."

"I'm not a guard."

"Yeah, I noticed. But you're all they have left." He stopped in front of Max. "The FBI's being a bitch over the World Trade Center thing, and the Russian mob's acting like they know how to fix and launch the missiles they stole. The President's in town for an international summit, so there go the best of the locals. The NSA is going through an identity crisis trying to find a new Great Satan, so it's best not to attract their attention right now. The best security team available is a couple of freelancers in town catching Broadway shows, and the pick of third-world embassy guards."

"You do it."

"With my schedule? You see I'm working as a runner. The regular guy got popped. All we found in his car were a pair of eyes and a heart on the front seat. And a shitload of blood. Figured the organs and blood belonged to him, since that kind of action isn't in his profile. Just what we need in the middle of all this: a goddamn human sacrifice." Lee glanced at the trunk and waved exhaust fumes away. "I have another handoff tonight, then an Air Force flight out of Plattsburgh. Got an insertion into Bosnia, though I'm not sure if I'm supposed to bury bodies or dig them up.”

Max watched a dented delivery van go by on the other side of the Grand Concourse. "I'm not babysitting meat," he said, trying to catch telltale antennae sticking out from the undercarriage.

"Yeah, well, I'm not the one to talk to. Come on, let's dump the shit in the trunk and get going." Lee headed for the passenger side of the Town Car. "Hey, I don't mean to get personal, but is this guy the girl's boyfriend, or are you, like, switch-hitting these days? Should I worry about turning my back on you?" Lee's smirk showed teeth like thorns, sharp enough to pierce.

Max closed his eyes. The Beast rose to challenge Lee's taunt, but Max assuaged its rage with memories of work performed with the operative in the hidden arenas of Southeast Asia, South America, Eastern Europe during the Warsaw Pact days. Blood spatter and screams filled his head. The Beast remembered, growled, slinked back to its nest of pain.

Max sympathized with the Beast's caution. He preferred working alone, keeping as little contact as possible with the people who contracted his services. But tactical and political imperatives sometimes demanded partnerships. Almost always, he felt more endangered by the people he worked with than by the opposition, precisely because of the kind of chaos unfolding around him. Often, driven by the Beast or by his own judgment, he had eliminated his team members along with targets because they had provoked his inner demon, or simply to ensure his own survival. Lee, in his prime as good as any Max had ever witnessed, reminded Max of himself. Calm in the face of obstacles, he passed no judgments on assignments and never let personal preferences, agendas, or desires interfere with the work. He was consistent, a rock limited only by the frailty of his human body, and the darkness writhing in the crevices of his face. He trusted Lee more than anyone else involved in their kind of work.

Which did not prevent him from scanning the street one last time when he opened his eyes, got up from the car, and slowly walked to the driver's-side door.

"He belongs to the twins," Max said, at last answering Lee's good-natured taunt.

"Looks like he died a happy man."

"But I don't think he was happy to die."

"Still cleaning up after them?" Lee asked, trying the handle on his side of the car. It was locked. He gave Max a quizzical look, picked up on his counter surveillance routine, and joined Max in studying the vicinity.

The area still felt secure. Max let himself be drawn to the children play-fighting, dancing, showing each other moves learned from video games and TV wrestlers. He envied their boundless energy, the innocence cocooning the darkness within them. He had always had an abundance of the first, though during the past decade the Beast had provided him, through its madness and abandon, with more of the prowess he had taken for granted in his younger days.

Innocence was foreign to him. He had lived another kind of life when he was their age. Now, when the Beast was not pacing in the cage of his mind, he wondered what it would have been like to be innocent, to be as vulnerable, and as ignorant of vulnerability, as children, his targets, or his victims.

Max hesitated before opening his door, let his gaze linger on Lee. In contrast to the youngsters, he looked even older than Max remembered. The reality saddened Max. The darkness Lee harbored was wearing him out. The killing and torture and agony he had witnessed, the atrocities he had performed, clouded his eyes, haunted his expressions. Time itself, as if in punishment, had slowed him, dulled his senses, and sapped his strength. The shreds of his youthful innocence still ran through him, but instead of infusing him with vigor and charm, the vestiges of his early life served only to expose his fragility. He was no longer in his prime.

Max caught himself. Of course, time had worn him down, as well. The hard, fast current of years had run through them both, ripping youth and its blessings from their grasp. Time was part of the bond Max shared with Lee. With it had come the trust built on shared hunts and kills. The other part of the bond, for Max, was the piece of himself he saw in Lee, the man he might have been without the Beast. He saw that man on the other side of the Lincoln: weak, flawed, crippled by the conflict between needs and appetites.

The bond, he was certain, ran both ways. Lee also looked at him as the model of a man he might have been: a stronger man, if only his gifts and appetites were as terrible and voracious as Max's, if only his human needs did not war with his dark nature. Not even Lee knew about the Beast. For Lee, Max's strength, talents, and hungers were unusual, but mortal. Max understood that his image to Lee was a man who carried himself with the self-reliance of a pure predator. Max, and even the Beast, found cruel gratification in their role as the occasional companion Lee shared a kill with, admired, envied. Hated.

It was the Beast within him that separated Max from Lee, and from everyone else in the world except, perhaps, for the twins. The Beast filled Max with power, obliterating the desire, space, and interest to build stronger connections with his surroundings. Power protected him from time's ravages, made him feel he belonged to something greater than the meat of his body. The Beast was the vision of order and meaning in his existence; the luck protecting him from the consequences of his acts, contracted and personal; the comfort, cold and savage, in the lonely midnight hours between his hunger's satiation and the roaring, all-consuming madness of his appetite.