Shadowrun: Streets of Blood Part 19

She trailed him cautiously to the derelict house. A pair of orks emerged soon afterward, smiling and stuffing wads of money into their pockets. Another pair of dupes, huh? This time, my friend, she promised herself, it's going to be very different.

He was alone, she was determined, and he didn't hear her until she had her knife around his throat from behind. He was kneeling, just about to finish packing his case, and he made the cardinal mistake of having his back to the doorway.

By G.o.d, man, over-confidence is a real failing, Rani thought grimly. And one you're going to pay for dearly.

"h.e.l.lo, sc.u.mbag," she said. "You spammed my family. My rakking family, you w.a.n.ker."

Pers.h.i.+nkin froze as he felt the cold metal cutting into his skin, hardly daring to breathe while his eyes flashed from side to side trying to get a glimpse of the woman hissing death into his right ear.

"The run out to Cambridge, remember? Poor Imran?

'Just get some suckers,' wasn't it? Well, looks to me like you're the sucker now. Prepare to die, sleazeball." Revenge was sweet but Rani had already waited so long for this moment that she wanted him to beg for his life first.

He obliged her. "Look, I didn't know! I didn't know! It wasn't me! It was the people who hired me. I'm only the man in the middle," he whined. "You gotta believe me." He was scared now, very scared indeed.

"Won't do you any good, ratface. You're going to die anyway. Better say your prayers."

"No! Wait!" he whimpered. "Look, the men who gave me the job, I've got a meeting with them tomorrow night. I swear it. It's true, it's true! If I tell you where we're to meet, you can show up instead. Was them who hired your family to get killed. What have I got against you? Why would I harm you?"

She hadn't expected that. "Tell me where and when, you stinking slime. Now!"

He was too afraid to negotiate, his wits too scrambled to realize he couldn't just give it all away. He stammered out the place and the time of the meeting in a voice wracked with sobs.

Then Rani tightened her grip on the knot of straggly hair at the back of his head and drew the blade in an arc across his throat from ear to ear. She didn't give herself time to regret what she was doing. When she finally released her hold, the body slumped forward onto the grimy floor like a heavy sack of laundry.

She wouldn't tell the others about this one. Not yet. It was family honor. She'd tell them after she'd dealt with Smith and Jones.

It was well past ten o'clock when Rani got back to the men. She'd found her Mary Kellys at last, and a complete waste of time they'd been, too.

Once in the musty-smelling upstairs room she dumped herself into the vacant chair next to Mohinder. The men were becoming restless now. Yes, they'd been paid well, whether or not they had to work this weekend or not, but the adrenaline was pumping. And a few other good chemicals, Rani judged, from the stimulant patches and broken vials she saw lying among the pizza boxes and burger bags littering the room.

"You look tired, little sister." Mohinder grinned at her, knocking back another of an endless series of coffees. "Have a burger," he said, handing her one. "Regal Burgers' very best, with the chili and black bean sauce. Lovely grub."

She declined the offer with a shudder. "Thanks anyway. "

"What you been up to?"

Rani sighed in apparent fatigue. "Hunting for someone called Mary Kelly. She's the person we think is going to be killed, a prost.i.tute. I been running around trying to find anyone who fits the picture." She made herself sound laconic and weary, not wanting to mention anything about Pers.h.i.+nkin. Mohinder might not be at all pleased about that.

"You don't say?" Mohinder's expression changed totally. "And you couldn't find her?"

"Between me and my friends we've found scores of Mary Kellys, but they're all dead ends. No one fits the bill."

The samurai twisted in his chair and called to the men. "Hey, Scirea! You know Typhoid?"

Scirea grinned. "Sure do. Crazy blooming decker. Bit of a trancer, head full of drek with too many rags she shot up and some of that tanking stuff. She used to work for me. Wasn't bad when she was younger. Used to take payment in kind sometimes."

The men around him sn.i.g.g.e.red unpleasantly. Rani realized they were talking about one of the women Scirea's family pimped for. She was disgusted by them as they laughed again.

Meanwhile, though, Mohinder was tapping a number into his telecom. A vacant-faced girl appeared on the screen. She had hair dyed black, mascara that looked like she'd put it on with a spoon, black lipgloss, and an expression somewhere between hopelessness and complete despair.

Rani's mind triggered a memory: the Toadslab restaurant. After she'd sold Mohinder the Predator. Her.

"Yeah." The woman's voice was virtually robotic. "Typhoid? What you doing right now?" Mohinder was grinning like a crocodile.

"Mohinder? Hey, guy, thanks for the little loan, y'know. Pay you back soon as I can." Her expression, and all of her vacant hand-waving, did nothing to suggest that it would be too soon.

"Typhoid, baby, tell me something simple. What's your real name? I mean, we all call you Typhoid Mary, but what's the real thing?"

She was suspicious. Panda eyes narrowed sharply through her chemically a.s.sisted fog. "What you want to know for? You freelancing for the poll-tax hunters?"

"Come on, honey, you know me better than that. Tell you what, we'll forget those few nuyen. Just speak your name to Mohinder."

That persuaded her like nothing else ever could. She spoke the words slowly, in a childlike voice, as if remembering what she'd been called in a dim and distant past when someone actually cared about her.

"Kelly," said Typhoid Mary. "Mary Jane Kelly."

Geraint whooped in delight. "My G.o.d, even the second name is right. Mary Jane Kelly, a young hooker in Whitechapel. This is it! This is b.l.o.o.d.y it!"

Serrin and Francesca grinned back at him. All the tension of the day evaporated from the room like a puddle on a sunny day.

"She isn't in any register because of the tax evasion, and if she's a decker she can make enough to stay out of sight and pay people to lie about her. This has to be the one. No time to run the a.n.a.lysis programs and we don't have the additional data, but we're ready now. They're on their way to protect her, Rani says, Greatorex Street, Whitechapel. If they plan to kill her tomorrow, we'll be there almost an hour in advance. Come on, people, this is it. At last."

32.

The Saab screeched into Greatorex Street at eleven minutes past the hour. They'd been delayed by a random police patrol, in which a pair of blase officers had tested the alcohol levels of Geraint's breath. To everyone's fury, they'd had to sit for more than ten minutes behind a line of five other cars stopped for the same reason. The only good thing about the delay was that it gave them time to pay the samurai in the car.

Heading down the right road at last, they could see two figures standing under the streetlight outside the address Rani had given them. Geraint picked out the Indian girl easily; the other he didn't know. Serrin was leaping out of the pa.s.senger door almost before Geraint had parked the car.

"She took off!" Rani was calling out. "We told her someone was out to hurt her and she should stay put until we got here. Said we would only be a few minutes, but she got crazy and she's b.l.o.o.d.y gone and left," Rani yelled breathlessly.

Serrin turned and slammed his fist into the roof of the car.

"It was my fault," Mohinder said calmly. "I shouldn't have warned her. Should have come over without saying why. But she's so unpredictable she might have gone out anyway." He grinned at the elf. "h.e.l.lo, pixie. I won't shake hands." The retractables flashed from his fingers.

"I sent my people out to look and talk to folks, and made a couple of calls," Mohinder continued as Geraint and Francesca joined the listening throng. "There're a couple of places she might go, and a bar or two where we might find her. She doesn't have many places to go to ground. We'll get her. You can bet on it."

"But how long will that take?" the n.o.bleman demanded.

Serrin stifled Geraint's impatience. "Look, Geraint, if we can't find her, then neither can they. And we've got local people to give us an edge in the search."

"Unless the killers already had the place staked out with spies of their own," Francesca muttered. She looked up at the elf in a moment of understanding, and he switched his perceptions immediately, probing for a mage in the area. He had to be there. Serrin found him for an instant, before the masking shut him out. He got a strong impression of movement, receding into the distance, and that gave him a fix.

"Just to the southwest. He must be in a car. They're heading just south of west. It's got to be them."

"Bury Street." Mohinde'r was emphatic. "She knows old Jen, the owner of a flophouse there. Takes her food and stuff sometimes. She used to work near there when she was still on the streets, I remember. If she's gone that way, that's where she'll be. For sure."

They were already piling into the car as Scirea and the dwarf joined them from the shadows. Mohinder was phoning his other samurai, telling them where to meet up. There was no time to drive around to pick them up now.

"Didn't know you could get seven people into one of these things," Francesca grumbled.

"Honey, you can't. Come sit on my lap," Mohinder suggested, licking his lips.

She scowled and opted for Rani's instead.

The group of samurai whipped out of the darkness of an alleyway as the Saab hurtled down the road. The fire from their automatic weapons ripped into the car, but Geraint had installed a strobe blast that augmented the headlights. He flicked the anti-strobing window modulators as everyone inside the Saab ducked their heads and the back windows wound down. The windscreen could take one good burst for sure; after that it was down to luck and a prayer.

Then Geraint stopped the car on a dime. Because of the stroboscopic lighting one of the samurai couldn't get out of the way in time, his cybereye mods become useless. From the impact Geraint guessed that he'd knocked the guy down, but he probably wasn't out. The second samurai had taken an expertly directed burst from Rani's Uzi as the car hurtled toward him, and the gaping holes in his body armor showed that ballistic had been no protection against the volley of bullets.

Though Serrin had a protective barrier spell running, the column of fire he saw s.h.i.+mmering down the street told him he wasn't going to be able to keep sustaining the spell because he'd need his concentration somewhere else.

The third samurai was changing a clip, ready to pump lead into the back-seat pa.s.sengers as they got out of the car, but he never got the chance. Scirea had his sleeves rolled up as the car entered the street, and the tube strapped to his forearm delivered a small metal globe straight into the samurai's torso. It must be some kind of grenade, Rani thought, but she couldn't guess what sort or how it was fired. The demitech worked, though. The samurai reeled back, sticky flame burning and licking across his clothes and body. His screams were like needles in her ears.

They poured out of the car, reflexes boosted to maximum one way or another. Others were working on pure unaugmented adrenaline, but they were all afire.

Serrin moved to the side of the road, into shadow, concentrating on combating the raging elemental bearing down upon them. Here we go again, he thought gloomily. Why do I seem to spend so much of my life trying to deal with these fraggers? Francesca moved to his side, covering him with her pistol.

On the side nearest the house they sought, Scirea backed up to the wall, pistol readied, a grenade in his left hand. He lobbed it down the street ahead of them, and a wall of smoke began to rise where it landed, some twenty yards away.

Good thinking, Geraint thought grimly. If that's where their mage is, they may have other back-up there. They've probably got the equipment to see through the smoke, but maybe not all of them can. There were so many possibilities.

Mohinder had dispatched the injured samurai with one sweep of his hand razors across the man's throat, but now his cybereyes were scanning the doorway, a machine pistol in one hand and the Predator in the other. Geraint was just behind him as Mohinder sprayed an armor-piercing clip through the closed door. Perhaps it was a scream they heard from inside, but it was impossible to tell beneath the rattle of the guns. A spurt of automatic fire burst into the road from a middle window of the three-story house, then all h.e.l.l let loose at the far end of the street. Wild fire was streaming through the smoke, and everyone was grateful for the ballistic body armor they wore for protection. Ricochets pinged off the surface of the street.

"Get inside!" Geraint screamed, but that wouldn't do for all of them. Francesca and the dwarf were returning fire into the open window of the house, the dwarf switching his attentions from the north end of the road where he'd been watching for any sneak strike from their rear. He seemed to move with effort into position to shoot back, and Francesca saw that his armor was shredded from bullets.

He's been hit, she realized, with a sickening chill through her body. Then she saw the hint of a figure behind the flash of the automatic weapon, and she took extra care with her aim. If that slint was firing at the dwarf, it gave her a little edge. She got lucky; three close-timed Colt shots were enough to stop the chatter of the other man's gun.

The dwarf was urgently plastering patches on his side, but Francesca screamed at him to take cover. It was brave of him, trying to get to her to protect her, but he could hardly walk and she knew he was gravely hurt. Two men with pistols, one also hefting a ridiculous-looking axe, were running toward them from the end of the street. Francesca was leveling her gun again, but the dwarf croaked the word "Friends" to rea.s.sure her. Thank heavens the cavalry is here, she thought.

The elemental came roaring through the smoke just as Mohinder crashed the door open enough for Scirea to lob a grenade through it. The Italian reeled back as he took a chestful of shots, then collapsed lifelessly onto the ground like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut.

Mohinder waved Geraint and Rani back as the grenade blast exploded in the room, sending shards of gla.s.s and splinters of wood flying everywhere. It was a minor miracle none of Geraint's team was blinded by the stuff, but somehow they'd all managed to turn their faces away just in time. Mohinder was the first in after a Uzi sweep by Rani had cleared whatever might still be alive in there.

Serrin was struggling desperately. He clutched at another spell focus and poured himself into denying its force, grinding it down, forcing it away into banishment.

Francesca was emptying her gun into the smoke, hoping for the best. She had a horrible feeling some amorphous forms were beginning to storm through from behind the blinding brilliance of the flame pillar. Just then, one of the reinforcements dropped to his knees as the axeman waved comically and toppled over backward. People were coming out of the smoke, but the kneeling man's launched grenade turned the ones in the front to mincemeat. Frag me, she thought as her stomach lurched sickeningly, this is one heavy-duty business.

Automatic fire ripped through plaswood floorboards as the heavy gunners fired through the ceiling. Geraint screamed at them to stop, they were trying to prevent Mary Kelly being killed.

"Too late for that, term," Mohinder yelled at the top of his voice as he slammed a new clip into the machine pistol. Rani moved to cover him as he headed up the stairs to the landing. They seemed to be working well together, each covering the other at just right moment. A troll slumped in the stairwell was playing possum, feigning death, but that couldn't save him. Just to be sure, Mohinder emptied the rest of the Predator's clip into the body. The troll twitched to death in a bloodspattered spasm.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Mohinder kicked down the last door on the top floor. Rani darted out from behind him to empty the last of her magazine into the elf by the window before he could complete his spell. That left two of them standing over the hideous, eviscerated body, staring at the three people in the doorway. For the tiniest instant, they were frozen as if in an old still photo: one bloodied corpse between them on the filthy mattress and an elf off to the side, with an expression of fatal surprise on his face and a half-dozen holes in his torso.

The cloaked man was middle-aged, flabby-faced, a bushy, positively Victorian mustache wavering above full, fleshy lips. His hands were still twitching, the fingers and hand razors covered in gore. The black bag lying on its side by his feet had disgorged its collection of surgical scalpels, scissors, saws, and retractors across the floor; now they were abstract, s.h.i.+ning slivers glinting amid pools of deep crimson gore.

The samurai next to him was a surprise: neatly besuited, almost all machine. Yet he stood still, the ghost of a smile playing over his features until the burst from Geraint's heavy pistol ripped away his jacket. Some flesh remained, but not much. He slumped to the floor very slowly, his legs collapsing under him, pistol falling from the lifeless hand.

The three a.s.sailants edged around the monster by the mattress.

"Got you, you rakking b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Geraint yelled in an ecstasy of victory as the man backed up against the far wall. His face was expressionless, already dead. His teeth and jaw ground together and he collapsed in a heap.

"Drek! b.l.o.o.d.y suicide implant," Mohinder roared.

They were all fumbling at the medkit but it was too late.

"Mohinder, get back outside and cover the others," Geraint ordered. "We can't do anything else here," He was searching furiously for any ID on the bodies. The Ripper was beyond any medkit now.

But Mohinder waved Rani outside instead. Scanning the scene, he saw something bizarre happening to the Ripper's body. It was beginning to decompose before their very eyes, at an impossibly rapid rate. The flesh lost definition and form, deliquescing into a heap of shapeless tissue. Geraint was astounded, staggering back from the horribly degrading corpse. For an instant he almost didn't notice that the scanner he'd brought in was indicating that this monster had no headware chips.

"Oh G.o.d," he moaned softly. "How are we ever going to prove what happened here?" His mind was racing. "The police-"

Mohinder jerked back from him. "No way, term. No police. They'll be here in a tick, but none of my people are gonna wait around to greet them."

Geraint nodded numbly, thinking there was wisdom in the samurai's words. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to explain his presence at this gory scene tonight. It was time to grab up the evidence and run for it.

When they got outside, they found three of their own dead. The troll from Mohinder's group had never arrived and Scirea they knew about, but the dwarf had bought it while unleas.h.i.+ng one final burst of shots at the samurai who'd come running out of the smoke. Rani had arrived at the door of the house just in time to cut the last one down as she fired at his flank. Of the reinforcements, the axeman had breathed his last and the grenade expert had made off into the night as soon as the shooting stopped.

Can't blame him, Francesca thought. He's done his job. Saved my life, too. Go on home, man. You've earned it.

Serrin was unconscious, having succ.u.mbed to the drain of dispelling the elemental. Francesca had taken a ricochet in her calf, but she smiled wanly at Geraint's concern. "My turn to visit your doctor, I guess." She was also aware that the ballistic armor over most of her lower body was shot to ribbons. She was lucky that all she got was a leg wound, and she knew it-but that didn't stop it from hurting plenty.

Mohinder and Geraint ran back upstairs to frantically search the samurai while an exhausted Rani helped Serrin and Francesca into the back seat of the Saab. They didn't have to worry about the opposition, but the all-too-predictable sirens were beginning to wail in the distance.

Coming back down again, Geraint thought the flophouse looked like something out of a war flick: six dead bodies littered the blood-soaked street, a couple more sprawled in the distance, and the house was equally full of corpses.

No, Geraint thought, I don't think we want to be here when the police arrive.

"He'll live," Francesca rea.s.sured them. Serrin's breathing was shallow but regular, and it was obvious that he would come around eventually. Her own wound was still bleeding even after the application of a trauma patch, but the additional hemostatics seemed to be doing the job slowly. It would leave a nasty stain in Geraint's car, though.

Oh, well, time to get another one anyway, Geraint thought, scowling through his fatigue. In the meantime this one would need a spray of paint. He was sure the Saab had taken damage from the automatics, damage that would be somewhat hard to explain.

"We got a little bit of ID from those goons," he told the others as they rode along. "It might be enough. The pistols will be licensed and that should do it. The tissue samples I took from the samurai and the mage upstairs may help, too, but it's a d.a.m.n nuisance my portacam got shot up. I never even noticed it. If I could have gotten pictures of the Ripper and his victim, we'd have been home free."

Mohinder turned to him and smiled his reptile's grin. "Null perspiration," he said, his eyes squinting slyly.

"What do you mean?" Geraint asked.