ROUND 4

I spent three more weeks skulking around St. Louis, gathering information and making plans. When I finally did act, I kept my plans secret from most of the Committee. I knew they’d object.

For some reason, people get very touchy about who you use as cannon fodder. I’ve tried to explain that a life is a life--that none is better than another--but people never understand that. They insist on their own prejudices, and rather than argue, I just nod, smile and follow my plans, anyway.

I’d been staying in the basement that Asher sometimes occupied. I didn’t particularly like the vamp, but I suspected that Asher, Gretchen, Jamil and possibly, the animator, Burke, were the only ones of the group who wouldn’t hit the ceiling if they learned what I planned. Gretchen’s lack of sanity was less than debatable, Jamil had a chip on his shoulder that made Atlas’ burden look like a back-pack and Burke was too astute a Vaudun priest to even stand within five feet of me, much less invite me into his home. That left Asher.

I didn’t see him much during those weeks, though every now and again, he would ghost into the basement room, look over my carefully sorted weapons and my precisely plotted plans, and smile to himself. He didn’t seem to make much distinction between night and day, though I never saw him in the hours immediately following sunrise. He was older and more powerful than I’d first assumed. I think he had plans to set himself up as Master of the City once the Triumvirate was safely out of the way.

That was fine with me. As long as he didn’t get in my way, he could do what he wanted with St. Louis. I’d been stuck in the sorry burb for more than a month, and I couldn’t wait to beat the clinging Midwestern mud from my shoes. I thought Cairo would be fun this time of year. It was hotter than hell, but there was always plenty of work. I’d take another look at the museums, swing past the pyramids again, get some shooting practice, and make a killing. What could be better?

I shook off my daydream and returned to my preparations. The center of my careful plans was making noise again. I’d gone to a whole lot of trouble to steal it, and now I had to make sure that its random noises didn’t give me away. Honestly, if I’d known the damned things were so loud, I would have thought up a different plan.

It was too late to turn back now. I left off my work, pulled another bottle out of the pan of water on the hot-plate and stuck it into the bassinet.

*****

Larry almost went through the roof when he saw it. I’d called in Jamil to help keep the thing quiet and he was trying to change its diaper when Larry walked through the door. He looked at me, at the bassinet and Jamil. His ginger-gray eyebrows shot up into his hair-line.

"Who’s is that?" He half shouted.

"Mine, now," I said, and returned my attention to the wiring I was working on.

"What do you mean, ‘now’?" He sounded like the angry dad in a TV sit-com. I didn’t answer him. I just concentrated on wrapping the red wire around the blue wire; on bundling the fuse so that the slightest jolt didn’t set it off.

"Who’s is it?" He demanded.

I shrugged. "Polly’s."

He waited. When he finally figured out that I wasn’t going to answer, he said, "Who’s Polly?"

"Lukoi," I answered, finishing off the fuse. I stood up and pulled a pink blanket over my efforts. I went over to the table where I’d laid my weapons out, ignoring him.

He turned on Jamil. "What’s going on here? I thought we were all going to plan this. What’s that baby for? Where’d you get it?"

He was about to have hysterics, and I didn’t have time for that.

"Larry," I said, sternly. "That is our lure to get Richard out of the Circus. It belongs to some of the pack. He may not be a boy scout anymore, but if he’s any kind of Ulfric, Richard will feel honor-bound to rescue it without the help of his supposedly human lupa."

Larry stood up a little straighter. He’d been willing to sacrifice a lot of his principals in pursuit of an end to the Executioner, but he was still a fairly decent human being; there were some lines he just wouldn’t cross. When he opened his mouth to forbid me to carry through on the plan, I kicked him in the jaw. He went out like a shattered light bulb.

If anyone ever wanted proof that I was getting soft, they’d have it right there. I was done with Larry. I’d gotten time, supplies and information from him. By my own rules, I should have killed him. But I let him live. I left him sleeping fitfully on my bed with the ratty blanket I’d used for the past three weeks tucked up under his broken jaw.

---

 

The park around the Arch was bright and green and hot as Hades. The humid air was like a boiling lake; it seared my lungs, and made my long pink sun-dress wilt like a cut flower.

I don’t usually go girly when I’m killing, but the dress was part of my disguise. I’d caught my shoulder-length brown hair up in a fluffy pink clip, my eye-shadow was a faint, quaint blue and rosy blush gave some color to my cheeks. The lipstick I wore was a shade called "Frosted Lilac".

If I hadn’t been out to kill, I’d have died of disgust.

The dress, the hair and the make-up went with the frilly pink stroller and chubby, pink-cheeked baby that slept within. I wasn’t Death; I was a suburban mom, out for an afternoon stroll in the park.

I spotted the Ulfric across the lawns, took a deep breath, removed my sticky right hand from the stroller and waved it in the air.

"Yoo-hoo! Mr. Zeeman!" I shouted like I knew him. Several of the wandering tourists turned around to look at me. Some of them smiled when they saw the baby sleeping peacefully in the stroller.

The werewolf looked surprised that someone was shouting at him. When I’d stolen the baby, I’d left a note in its crib.

ULFRIC,

THE ARCH. 2:30, WEDNESDAY.

COME ALONE.

He hadn’t come alone. They never do. People have a hard time believing that kidnappers will kill their hostage; it never happens that way in the movies. There were various members of his pack scattered throughout the park, pretending to be human.

"Over here, Richard!" I called, smiling, waving my hand in the air and attracting more attention from the other people in the park.

To his credit, the Ulfric didn’t go furry and rip me to bits right there. I’d heard he had a temper. His reaction to my initial move was the one part of my plan that had worried me. Surprisingly, he managed to stay human-looking at the sight of me, and he even waited until he was close to me to start making threats.

"I don’t know who you think you are--" He started.

"Death," I interrupted. "Make a move I don’t like, and I’ll blow the three of us into the Afterlife. If you stop to take a breath, you’ll smell the explosives under the baby’s blanket."

He reigned in his anger, but just barely. His eyes went yellow, and his voice came out sounding somewhere south of human. "I’ll kill you."

"And even this city’s corrupt cops will nail your ass to the chair. There are fifty people in this park who saw me wave to you; who heard your name, and saw you come over to me. Mere involvement in a suspicious death is automatic execution for lycanthropes. You know that."

He smiled, flashing jagged teeth. "And what makes you think the cops will catch me?"

I smiled back, the old cloying, saccharine Becca smile that flashed dimples and shouted innocence. "I don’t care that they do. Either way, you and your bed buddies are out of St. Louis.

"Once you’re away from your power base here in St. Louis, you won’t last long. There’s a whole line of monsters waiting in the wings to step in and punch your ticket. My involvement is more a matter of personal preference than of necessity."

My voice was grim, but I kept the dimples on. If anyone had been watching us, they would have seen a pretty, happy, young mother talking to a tall, handsome, young man. Only I was close enough to see that the man’s teeth had grown pointed, and his eyes yellow and bestial with suppressed rage.

And only the monster beside me could hear the emotionless surety in my voice; only he was close enough to see the psychotic glint in my dead gaze. "Besides, Richard, you and I both know that, in the end, Death always wins."

The wolf was really angry now. He let out a low growl that made some of the pedestrians around us jump with fright.

"Careful, boy. Don’t lose the game now. Play by my rules, and this kid might actually live."

With a struggle, he calmed his beast.

"Wave your wolves away, and walk a bit with me."

He gave a small jerk of his head, and the wolves that had been filtering through the crowd toward us withdrew like they’d been kicked.

"Edward would never have used a bomb, and it’s not like the Committee to take hostages," he said as we walked into the dark shadows beneath a copse of trees. "Which side of the game are you on?"

I laughed then; a real, solid, genuine laugh. "You may be bad, but you’re still a boy-scout, aren’t you? You have to have things either black or white.

"Here’s a news flash, Ulfric: Edward is dead. We’re not playing by his rules anymore, we’re playing by mine. I tried to do this his way, and it didn’t work. So now, the game--my game--begins anew."

 

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