Felon watched the dining room through a two-way mirror studying his old companions for signs of strength. The assassin always searched for strength first. Successful human hunters did not look for weakness alone. Weaknesses were obvious. Vulnerabilities drew a predator like a magnet. Since Felon trusted his instincts his intellect was free to focus on potential dangers. So as in the case of the group before him, he looked for the strongest. That’s the one he had to worry about.
They were former Regulators, once paid by nascent Authority in the early days of the Change to deal with the uncooperative dead. Regulators would be sent in to quash riots and settle disputes. That was usually done with heavy caliber machine guns, machetes and bulldozers. When the political price of Regulators grew too high, they were “deputized” into the growing Authority forces, or declared “undesirables” and hunted down like criminals. Felon freelanced with Regulators but never considered himself one of them. The legal vacuum they represented was often a convenient place to hide a hit. But the majority of them were amateurs.
This trio wanted nothing to do with Authority ranks so formed a larger group of criminals with similar tastes that they called the Wild Bunch. Felon had known the trio, and others from their gang for decades.
But looking at them now, he felt nothing. They’d worked together over the years, off and on, Felon bringing them on as hired guns. The whole thing had almost blown apart on a northern lake five decades after the Change. They had been a tough well-organized team of outlaws at the time, hired to help him track down an informant who was in the protection of some lowlife detective trying to make a name for himself wearing clown makeup. The informant was an Authority Operative who could prove the Prime was going to manipulate election results to get into power.
The pressure was on and time was short so Felon needed lots of extra bodies to track them down. He farmed out some of the work to independent contractors. That was a mistake. Amateurs and hangers-on were brought. The detective got wise and Felon almost got killed. The clown had unexpected allies. Felon killed him, but the informant got back to the City of Light. News of his existence brought a whistleblower out of the political woodwork, and that had slowed the Prime’s takeover for a decade. Felon didn’t get paid, and rightly so. He’d made the mistake of letting his feelings get involved. He underestimated the detective.
But these gunmen had proven themselves over the intervening years. Tiny was the brains of the operation, sharing leadership with the Texan, Driver. Felon appreciated Driver’s comprehensive knowledge of the art of killing, and had on many occasions discussed the finer points of it. He was a daring and experienced getaway man as well and so his name. Tiny, on the other hand, still carried some of his pre-Change bourgeois attitudes. He still believed a man’s measure came in how much cash was folded in his pocket. Felon did not trust him as much when it came to action.
Bloody was a problem. He was a big reckless murderer who hid behind a thin visage of education. Felon knew that education was easy. Wisdom was something else. He’d proven that when Bloody turned a stupid argument over guns into a reason for Felon to kill him. Eight years before, Felon got to a job early and Bloody was the only one there. He was drunk and aggressive. He started into an argument over whether his weapon, a. 45 magnum Colt, was better than a. 9 mm automatic because of its killing power.
Felon held that accuracy was everything. The big gunman insisted that fear won a gunfight, and the bigger the gun, the greater the fear. Felon wasn’t afraid of anything. A gun was just a machine. You had to fear the man holding it.
Bloody took that as an insult and reached for his. 45. It got caught in his belt, which was another criticism Felon had offered about its antique shape versus the. 9 mm’s sleek design. The assassin drew his. 9 mm and shot the gunman eight times.
The assassin had left then, and did not return. There was a good chance that Bloody’s friends would want revenge. He’d prefer talking to them at a distance, after tempers cooled.
But they hadn’t talked since. Looking at Bloody now, Felon could see that the dead gunman had allowed himself to dehydrate and grow stiff. His movements spoke to that. The fool wouldn’t be much in a gunfight, but Felon didn’t think he’d pose much of a threat to him either.
“Well,” Felon heard Driver’s voice through the hidden microphones. “Where in hell is he?”
But Felon was already moving. He slipped out the pocket door behind him and stepped into the hall that ran parallel to the dining room. There were two men with guns approaching. That wasn’t part of the plan.
The black man on the left was tall. He reached for an Uzi on a sling under his arm. That was his mistake. Felon’s suspicions immediately crystallized.
The heavyset man on the right was average height and build. He had an automatic with extended clip in his hand.
They weren’t supposed to be here. The assassin knew that. And they knew that. They were behind schedule. If the black man hadn’t touched his Uzi they would have had him.
With one hand on the doorknob, Felon flicked his right into his coat, came up with the. 9 mm. The silencer was on, so the kills would be quiet. He took his time as the two gunmen lifted their weapons. The tall black man took a bullet to the face. The other man took three to the heart. They dropped.
Something caught the corner of Felon’s vision-movement to the left. He spun and fired a couple more bullets. These caught a dwarf in ridiculous Victorian livery. The top of his head blew out from under the powdered wig.
Felon replaced the clip and hurried over to the dwarf. There was something wrong about him. It resembled the Marquis’ servant but the legs were too thick and the arms long. The assassin flipped the body over and recognized the distended and twisted features of an Eyesore. A stench of vomit and urine rose from the body. Wurn had smelled like that.
Felon turned and ran toward the dining room.
Gunfire suddenly erupted in the hall ahead. The assassin threw himself against the wall. He listened, counted weapons. Driver’s automatics were clattering. Tiny’s. 357 boomed, so did Bloody’s. 45.
He also recognized. 38 caliber gunfire, rapid maybe automatic, followed by the unmistakable monster howl of autoshotguns. Authority?
It was a trap! The Marquis was in on it. But why attack them openly? He quickly saw the plan: gun Felon down in the observation booth and murder the others while they were distracted at the table-it was stupid, amateur-and it almost worked. Its sheer simplicity might have been the key. Felon was expecting something malignant and premeditated. Or whoever made the decision didn’t care if it worked. Was it played out to delay or distract them? A jolt of adrenaline caught his breath.
Footsteps, running, coming from the direction of the dining room were followed by the clatter of a machine weapons. Then a squat heavy-limbed shape lurched into view. Like a dwarf with cow’s hooves for feet, and long frog-like hands, the Eyesore moved with incredible agility. Its face expressed human surprise as Felon put a bullet in its eye. The thing dropped like a bag of gravel.
The assassin hurried forward into a haze of gun smoke. He could see ahead that the hall turned toward the dining room. There was another Eyesore and a man crouched, taking shelter. The wall opposite the entrance was peppered with bullet holes.
Felon shot the Eyesore twice. The plume of brains and skull bone alerted the man who heaved his autoshotgun around, but the wall behind him exploded, was ripped to pieces by the heavy caliber weapons inside. The man’s ribcage blew open and outward and he hit the carpet seconds after his guts.
Felon moved forward just as Bloody stepped into hall. The big gunman had a couple of ragged furrows cut into his left temple by bullets. He turned his sunglasses to Felon but his expression was unreadable. He swung the. 45 at him. The assassin did not hesitate. He lifted his gun, hoping it would be strong enough to drop the gunman-blind him, hoping his Kevlar vest would stop the big bullets because Bloody fired twice.
And missed. Felon had dropped to a crouch and was ready to fire, when something heavy hit the ground behind him. He rolled across the carpet-gun still centered on Bloody’s face, and got an angle where he could see two dead Eyesores. They’d come out of one of the Marquis’ damn pocket doors. It was open behind them. Their heads were ruined messes.
Felon looked at Bloody who watched him reload.
“The woman!” Felon allowed some emotion into his voice. He ran toward the basement. Bloody followed reloading.