The Thirteenth Skull (2 page)

I winced. “Please, don't talk about temptation.”

I got up and went to the window, turning my back to him. I stared down at the street thirty-three stories below.

A delivery truck was parked in the loading zone in front of Samson Towers. A guy dressed in a brown uniform was unloading boxes from the back onto a dolly. The day was sunny but very cold, and the man's breath exploded in curling white plumes over his head while he worked.

Nearly two months had passed since my final showdown with the demon king named Paimon, but the memory of what it offered me was still glittering and sharp.

A little house on a shady street. A kind older man and his pretty wife. And me. I went to school and hung with my friends. And that's about all I did. No adventures. No saving the world from total annihilation. Just a normal life.

Nearly every morning since that day I woke with a little stab of regret for turning down the demon king's offer.

A black SUV pulled up behind the delivery truck as the guy in the brown jacket and slacks wheeled the dolly toward the front doors, disappearing from view. A man in a dark suit emerged from the SUV, talking on a cell phone. One of the guards came out, pointed at the SUV and made a little waving motion with his hand, while the guy on the cell phone tried to juggle his phone conversation with the one happening with the guard.

Behind me, Samuel said, “Whatever the future holds, I will never forget this second chance you've given me, Alfred.”

Before I could say anything, a car sped around the corner, screeched onto Gay Street on two wheels, and then accelerated until it rammed into the rear of the SUV. The sound of the impact carried through the frigid air up to the penthouse. The man in the dark business suit fell forward, colliding with the guard as he stumbled backward.

Samuel's faint reflection appeared behind me at the window. “What happened?” he asked.

The car's hood had crumpled completely against the SUV's bumper, shattering the windshield and deploying the air bag. I couldn't see the driver.

“That guy just rammed into—”

A fireball leaped into the sky, and instinctively we jerked back from the window. The guy in the black suit and the guard faded out of sight toward the front of the building.

A second later they were back, joined by two other guards from the Towers and a few other people who tried to approach the burning car, but I didn't think there was any way somebody could have survived that.

A voice spoke behind us. “Hey, what's up?”

We both whirled around. Samuel reached inside his jacket for his gun.

It was the delivery man. He was holding a large tube wrapped in brown paper. It looked like the kind of packaging posters come in.

“I got a package for a mister”—the delivery guy consulted his clipboard—“Alfred Kropp.”

“I'll take it,” Samuel said. He took a step toward the delivery man.

“All right,” the man said pleasantly. The package turned end over end as it fell to the floor, like it was falling in slow motion, the clipboard falling with it.

The man in brown was holding a sawed-off shotgun. He pointed it at Samuel's chest and pulled the trigger.

I screamed, but my scream was buried under the roar of the blast.

Samuel fell forward, both hands clutching his chest.

The singing of sirens was floating up from the street below, but my mind barely registered them. I rushed the shooter.

The barrel of the gun swung toward my face. My foot caught on Samuel's writhing body and I fell forward. Instinctively my left hand shot out and I shoved the barrel upward just as the guy pulled the trigger, sending the blast into the ceiling. I swung blindly with my right fist, landing a lucky punch square into the guy's Adam's apple. He countered with an elbow to my cheek.

I rolled to my right as he scrambled toward the doorway. I grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back. He kicked me in the groin with the end of his steel-toed boot. I curled up on my side, both legs jerking from the explosive pain of the blow and watched helplessly as he lunged through the open doorway into the reception area outside.

I crawled toward Samuel.

“Alfred,” he gasped. “Don't let him escape ...”

“No,” I said. “I've got to get you an ambulance—”

He shook his head. “No! Must ... who sent him ...”

He pulled out his 9mm semiautomatic and slid it across the floor. I picked it up.

Our eyes met.

“Go.”

I went.

The door to the stairs was clicking shut when I came into the hallway. I kicked it open. I had taken two steps toward the railing when something hard smashed into my lower back—I guess the heel of his boot—and that flung me toward the steps that led down to the next floor. The classic hide-behind-the-stairway-door trick. I should have seen it coming.

My gun skittered and flipped and bounced down the stairs until it reached the little landing and came to a rest.

Then Delivery Dude was on me.

I saw a flash of metal. The blade in his hand was at least a foot long, tapered, thin. It sliced along my forearm as he swung it toward my gut. I smacked his wrist with the back of my left hand while I brought my right fist down on the side of his head. He stumbled back a couple of steps.

First I had to neutralize the knife: one of my long-term goals was never to be stabbed to death again. So I grabbed his wrist and slammed his forearm down as hard as I could against the metal railing. The knife flew from his fingers and dropped down the shaft of the stairwell.

The next step was to neutralize
him
. Unfortunately, he had the same idea, only he executed it just a split second sooner. He threw his shoulder into my chest and drove me backward. My foot slipped off the top step and I dropped about a foot ... a good thing, too, because he chose your classic head-butt-to-the-face move and my face wasn't there to butt.

As his head snapped forward, I wrapped my arm around his neck, sidestepped to the right, and flung him down the stairs to the first landing. It was a pretty good maneuver, since it gave me a few extra seconds to recover. It was also a pretty bad maneuver, because I had hurled him to the exact spot as Samuel's gun.

Fight or flight? If the other guy has a gun and you don't, nine times out of ten, I'd suggest flight.

This must have been the tenth, because I didn't fly.

I jumped.

He broke my fall, but it was too late. He already had scooped up the 9mm. When I landed on top of him, his chest slammed into the concrete, and the breath went out of him with a loud
whumph
! I lay on his back and wrapped both arms around his sides. He came back at me with a reverse head butt, this one landing true, against my nose. I heard a popping sound and blood began to pour.

It achieved the desired effect: my grip on him loosened and he tore free, bringing up the gun as he slid on his back down the stairs toward the next landing.

The muzzle flashed and my left shoulder jerked backward with the punch of the bullet.

I stumbled upward to the top landing, bleeding from my shoulder, my nose and cheek, my forearm; I was throwing off blood everywhere. The steps were slick with my blood. I slipped and tumbled to the same landing I had just vacated.

When I raised my head, he was standing over me, the end of the gun about two inches from my face. He was bleeding pretty badly too, but he seemed pleased with himself.

He sneered one word before he pulled the trigger.
“Pitiful!”

“No,” I said.
“Empty.”

I hoped I had counted right. I was pretty sure I had, but even simple things like counting can get complicated when someone is firing bullets at your head.

Snap.
Then rapidly as he yanked the trigger over and over:
Snap, snap, snap . . . snap snap snap snap!

I jumped up and landed a haymaker to the side of his head. Then another to the other side of his head. Then a gut punch, as hard as I could throw it. He doubled over and my fists kept flying wherever I could land them: head, shoulders, arms, chest. He dropped the gun. It hit the edge of the landing and spun into the open space of the stairwell, disappearing from view.

He fell into me and we grappled like two exhausted prize fighters in the tenth round. He slowly drove me backward until I felt the metal bar of the handrail pressing against my lower back. I didn't need to look to know I was a foot away from taking a thirty-story tumble down the center stairwell.

He freed his right hand, which he used to force my head back, his fingers slick with somebody's blood, mine or his, or maybe both. I grabbed his wrist, yanked his arm down, and pivoted to my left, spinning him around as I went. The momentum carried him over the handrail—and pulled me with him.

Then everything froze. He dangled there with me holding his wrist as I leaned over the railing, my face about a foot from his. There was no fear in his eyes. There was no emotion at all, not even disappointment.

My grip slipped: too much blood.

“I don't want to drop you,” I gasped.

“You should,” he gasped back.

He kicked hard with his legs and yanked free.

I watched him fall. About a couple stories down, the brown jacket tore away and the top of a parachute appeared, one of those small chutes you see stunt skydivers wear.

That was enough for me. I raced back up to the hallway and hit the button on the express elevator. There was no time to check on Samuel, not if I had any chance of catching this guy.

The elevator door slid open. “Sorry, Sam,” I muttered, and stepped inside.

I dialed 911 on my cell phone.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency?”

“There's been a shooting at Samson Towers. Penthouse suite,” I said. “You gotta send an ambulance down here right away.”

“Someone's been shot?”

“You bet someone's been shot, otherwise why would I be calling you guys?” I shouted. I watched the floor numbers ticking down:
25, 24, 23 . . .
They seemed to be moving in slow-motion.

I heard the dispatcher say something to someone else like, “Another one from Samson Towers! Yeah, that's what he says.”

“Hello?” I shouted into the phone, watching the floors slide by:
15, 14, 13 . . .
“You gotta send an ambulance! Samson Towers!”

“Sir, someone's already called for an ambulance at that location.”

“That's probably for the dude in the explosion. This is someone else.”

“Another explosion?”

“No, a shooting.”

“A shooting! How many people?”

“One! Just one!”
5, 4, 3 . . .
“Penthouse suite. He's in the inner office, farthest one back through the main doors.”

The door slid open. I stopped a couple steps past the door to the stairs. He'd fooled me once with the hiding-behind-the-stairway-door trick. Maybe he thought I would think he wouldn't try it again, but if it were me I wouldn't race onto a street swarming with cops.

I kicked open the door and stepped inside. I found the discarded chute and harness, his jacket and, lying on the bottom step, the empty 9mm, but no Delivery Dude. I scooped up the gun and dropped it into my pocket. At some point, Samuel would want it back.

The lobby was swarming with people. I saw the red flash of emergency vehicle lights on the street outside and the red hulk of the fire engine beside the smoldering wreckage of the car.

I pushed my way through the crowd and spun through the revolving doors into the freezing air outside. The brown delivery truck was pulling away from the curb as a cop trotted beside it, shouting for the driver to stop. I stood there for a second, unsure what to do. Then the driver pulled into the center of the street and floored the gas.

The entire block had been roped off, but I didn't think Delivery Dude was going to let that plastic yellow tape concern him. His front bumper clipped the back of a cop car as he roared forward, sending the car spinning into the curb.

I didn't spend much time mulling over the options. My car was in the parking garage two stories below the pavement. I ran to the nearest police car and flung open the passenger door. A young cop sat behind the wheel, writing on a clipboard. I dropped into the seat beside him and shouted, “Follow that truck!”

He hesitated for a half second before answering, and then he said, “No way, kid.”

I leaned over and pressed the muzzle of the empty 9mm against his temple.

“Follow that truck.”

“Okay!”

“I'll take that,” I said, and pulled the gun from his holster.

“The guy in that truck tried to kill me and it's important I know who—and why,” I shouted as we lurched from the curb. “Hit the siren!”

He did, and soon we were clocking eighty up Gay Street. The truck had a four-block jump on us though and I couldn't see it anywhere.

“It's gone!” he yelled over the wail of the siren. He looked only a couple years older than me and scared out of his mind. Maybe this was his first high-speed chase.

“He turned somewhere,” I yelled back. “Slow down a little. You check left and I'll check right.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror. I twisted in the seat and looked behind us. Two cops were giving
us
chase as cars swung into the curb to get out of their way.

“Don't stop!” I yelled at the young cop. “If you stop I'll shoot you!”

Of course there was no way that would happen, but he didn't know that. For all he knew, I was out of my mind. I wondered what he thought when he looked up and saw me sitting beside him, my face and clothes covered in blood and bruises.

“There, there, there!” I yelled, pointing down a narrow side street. “Turn, turn!”

He yanked the wheel hard to the right. The back wheels locked and the car slung around. The two cars behind us slammed on their brakes and barely missed us as we accelerated through the turn. The truck made another hard right and I didn't have to tell the young cop this time; he matched the truck's arc, getting us so close the bumpers almost touched.