After the Dark (12 page)

“The troll,” Mole said. “You're sure they called him that?”

“Well . . . no. I'm not sure what the hell they meant.”

“Could be a place.”

Alec made a face. “A place called the Troll?”

“The Fremont Troll?” Mole offered.

Alec shook his head. “No clue. Try English.”

Mole shook his head. “You don't know about the Fremont Troll? How long have you lived in Seattle, man?”

“Fremont Troll,” Alec echoed.

“Yeah. You know the Aurora Avenue bridge?”

“Been over it a few times.”

“Ever been under it?”

Alec gave him a look. “Maybe that's where you take
your
dates, but I'm a little classier kind of guy.”

“No, shit-for-brains,” Mole said, and the cigar butt traveled again, “it's this giant sculpture under the bridge. Looks like a big bearded dude on his belly.”

“What have you been smoking?”

“He's got this car in one hand, like a bug he snatched up.”

“What have you been drinking?”

“Thing is freakin' huge, man. I can't believe you've never seen it.”

“A bearded guy with a car in his hand? You expect me to buy that.”

Mole slapped himself on the forehead and uttered a string of four letter words, in the process chewing the end of his cigar to pulp.

“What idiot thing did he say now?” Max asked, striding into the center and looking down at the seated Alec, still being mothered by Luke.

“Dude never heard of the Fremont Troll,” Mole said, trying to relight what was left of the butt.

Max looked at Alec's pitiful-looking black eye and said, “No way.”

“I'll believe it when I see it,” Alec said. “You're all just jerkin' my chain.”

Crossing her arms, Max eyed the handsome, bandaged-up X5 suspiciously. “And who did
you
lose a fight with?”

“A tree,” was all he said. “How did it go with Logan's uncle?”

She told them. “Any ideas?”

Alec filled her in about his expedition, and he and Mole described their plan for a two-pronged invasion before the scheduled sunup drop-off of the “supposed” ransom—one team going to Gas Works Park, the other to the under-the-bridge troll statue.

“It's a plan,” Max said, nodding.

The Furies were a large, powerful gang, but they were ordinaries, which meant that Max and her crew of transgenics had a big advantage. What the Terminal City team lacked in numbers, they made up for in genetics and training.

“I don't want Clemente down on us for this,” Max said, referring to Detective Ramon Clemente, the Seattle cop who had collaborated with her to keep both the Jam Pony hostage crisis and the siege at Terminal City from turning into bloodbaths.

“Don't give it a thought,” Alec said. “We'll be in and out before the cops even know what happened.”

Mole nodded. “They won't know what hit them.”

“Two groups, then,” Max said.

Another nod from Mole. “I'll go with Alec—you round up Joshua.”

“All right,” she said. “In one hour, we're in position.”

“Better make it an hour and a half,” Alec said. “Luke hasn't finished taping up my ankle yet.”

Mole glowered at him. “Pass for an ordinary long enough, you get to be a wuss like one.”

Alec gave him a sarcastically beaming look. “And yet still you choose me to team up with.”

Starting up a new stogie, the lizard man said, “Somebody's got to keep you from getting your ass beat by another tree.”

Max raised her hands, palms out, calling a halt to the floor show. “An hour and a half it is,” she said. “Be ready, and don't tell anybody. The quieter we keep this, the better off we'll all be.”

Alec said, “You don't know how right you are.”

She frowned at him. “Meaning?”

“Somebody had to tip the Furies off about where Logan lived, right? And who knows that besides our fellow Terminal City residents?”

Mole said, “That cop Clemente—a few others that were around the night Kelpy bought it.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Max said. “Are you suggesting we have a traitor in our midst?”

“I'm suggesting just what I suggested: somebody tipped the Furies off about Logan's private pad. I mean, you didn't tell 'em, did you, Max?”

“No, Alec. It would have to be somebody terminally untrustworthy—anybody come to mind?”

His eyes widened. “Hey—I don't deserve that.”

Max's expression softened. “Actually, you don't. And you raise a good point—someone tipped the Furies about Logan. But we don't have time to find out who. Saving Logan's ass is our top, our only, priority.”

Alec nodded. So did Mole, and Dix in his command chair, even though he wasn't supposed to be listening in, and Luke as he taped the bandage around Alec's ankle.

“What we're up to,” Max said again, “stays among us, and Joshua—just the core group . . . Now, let's jet.”

Ninety minutes later Alec finally met the Fremont Troll.

Under the north end of the Aurora Avenue bridge, the reclining stone troll rose eighteen feet, nearly bumping its head on the underside of the bridge. The troll looked just as Mole had described him—long-haired with one shiny metal eye, crawling on its belly, the fingers of his right hand spread, its left fist closed around a gray hulk of a car.

Alec and Mole climbed up behind the troll peeking out from the darkness under the bridge. Rolling his head on the column of his neck to ease the stiffness, Alec settled in for a wait.

No telling how long it would take the Furies to get there with Logan, but a glance at his watch told him it could be up to two hours till the scheduled hostage/ransom exchange.

“Mole,” he said. “I'm beat.”

“Sleep, then,” he said. “I got it covered.”

“I'm just gonna shut my eyes. Rest a little.”

“Go ahead.”

When his phone trilled and he bolted upright, Alec had no idea how long he'd been out. The tiny ring echoed like a church bell beneath the bridge.

“You answer it,” Mole growled, “or I break it.” The lizard man still had a lit cigar clamped between his teeth and had apparently managed to stay awake through Alec's nap.

Quickly, Alec fished the phone out of his pocket and punched the button on the start of the second ring. “What?” he asked.

“Anything?”

Max's hushed voice. She'd be at Gas Works Park, with the others.

“No,” he said, but looked to Mole for confirmation. With a derisive snort, the lizard man nodded—nothing had happened. “How about you?”

“Nobody,” she said. “And they're overdue.”

“Well, they'd stop here first, surely—to deposit their hostage.”

“You'd think. But Joshua's stood ground while I've roved the area—nobody sniffin', nothing.”

“What's your read, Max?”

“Either something's gone wrong, or the Furies are playing some new game.”

“Hate when that happens . . . Maybe they're just waiting for you to leave.”

“Nope,” she said. “I got an A-plus in recon. Trust me, they're not here. And that bag's just sittin' there—even the bugs aren't goin' near it.”

“Not good, Max.”

“Almost two hours after sunup and nothing—something has definitely gone wrong.”

The bag she referred to was a leather valise they had packed with a cake of bricks and newspaper, under a frosting of smaller bills. If anybody picked the thing up, it'd weigh enough to pass for four million dollars, and a casual opening would reveal money on top. Only a more aggressive search would reveal the ploy.

But from what Max was saying, no one seemed interested enough to even look and see if they were being ripped off.

“We need to make a move,” Alec said, surprised that Mole had let him sleep this long without kicking him. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Any ideas, Max?”

“. . . I think we should visit the Furies' home.”

“The four of us . . . just drop by?”

“That's the plan, Alec.”

“And you say
my
plans suck.”

“You up for it?”

“Yeah. No problem.”

“Sit tight. Fill Mole in, and Joshua and me, we'll be right over—then we'll blaze.”

Gunning her Ninja, Max flew through the open gate of Lakeview Cemetery, Joshua clinging on behind her, hanging on with just his left hand, the valise full of bricks, newspapers, and a few dollars swinging from his right hand.

On Alec's motorcycle, the handsome X5 and a lizard-faced passenger were trailing a bike length behind. The engines roared throatily as they cut across the lawn away from the paved road. Though the road sliced through the cemetery and ended near the Furies' HQ, Max didn't want to take the direct approach. The Furies would have numbers, so that meant it was important that the transgenics have surprise on their side.

Immediately, as arranged, the speed on both bikes was cut and their engine roar settled into a humming purr.

Max made a quick hand signal and Alec peeled off to the right, his bike gliding across the grass, in and around gravestones, Mole looking vaguely disgusted having to hang onto the X5. Max and Joshua took off to the left, also keeping the speed and engine sound minimal. The idea was to come at the Furies' HQ from two sides.

The HQ had at one time been a mausoleum constructed after the Pulse, not far from the graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. Max had actually visited the graves before, not long after she'd come to Seattle. The graves had reminded her of the old days, back at Mann's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, living with the Clan, with her mentor Moody and the young man named Fresca. Back then, Moody would run movies in the theater from time to time. One had been this really cool kung fu flick called
Enter the Dragon,
and had starred Bruce Lee.

She had seen the late kung fu star's son Brandon in a movie called
The Crow
, but that had been on a cheesy video player with a bad tape. Before the Furies took over, the mausoleum HQ had been that of an Asian street gang called the Crows, so-called in honor of the late Brandon; but Badar Tremaine's forces had wiped them out, six or seven years ago.

The mausoleum stood maybe fifteen feet tall and was at least twenty-five yards long and almost as wide—suitable to house the remains of a small town.

And even that had not been big enough for the Furies, the cement wall at one end serving as a brace for a lean-to extension that had been cobbled on. The doors at either end were wooden now, the weathered coffins that had formerly been stored inside now stacked outside like so much cord wood.

Within seconds of each other the two motorcycles arrived on either side of the mausoleum. Max kicked her cycle to loud, throbbing life and Alec followed suit. Their timing synchronized, the two motorcycles broke down the doors at either end of the mausoleum as they crashed splinteringly through.

Barely inside, both Max and Alec braked, burning rubber, screeching to a halt; they laid their bikes down, the four of them rolling off and coming up in combat stances, ready for action, expecting anything . . .

Just about anything.

They froze.

All around them, Furies lay dead.

Blood painted the walls in vivid splashes, recent enough to still be a dripping red; the floor, the meager furnishings, dribbled gore. Tables and chairs were overturned, TVs smashed, and a long wood bar that ran along one wall was pocked with bullet marks.

Max and her transgenic brothers had come prepared for a fight; what they found instead was a massacre.

Bodies lay everywhere, sprawled in various postures of surprised violent death—shot, stabbed, slashed. Whoever or whatever had done this had accomplished it with great speed and no mercy. Easily a hundred of the Furies, probably every member, had been slaughtered, and from the looks of things, they hadn't had time to put up much of a fight.

This was not the aftermath of a battle. Some spent cartridges lay scattered around, but any sign of casualties the Furies might have inflicted on their opponents were gone, if there ever had been any.

“God,” Mole said.

“Damn,” Alec said.

“Logan,” Max said, the word spoken with the reverence of a prayer, edged with the sort of sorrow that had been present so often at graveside services nearby.

Without being told, Alec and Mole went back to the doors on either end, standing guard in case whoever committed this carnage was nearby or planned a return. Max and Joshua crept through the roomful of bodies, walking gingerly, as if to not wake them, and searched for Logan.

Max recognized members of the kidnap team among the corpses. The night of Logan's kidnapping, they had presented little trouble to her, until the Tazer came out of nowhere; but whoever did this was working with heavier artillery. It was plain to see that not only had the bangers been shot to death, someone had obviously walked along strafing the bodies with automatic weapons fire, just making sure. Others had been sliced and diced—machetes, she thought—like so much meat being prepared for a giant cannibal's stew.

Amid all of this Max walked, terrified that she would find Logan among the dead . . .

. . . though if she found him, at least, she would
know
. How terrible not to find him, and never to know what happened to him . . .

From the other side of the room, Joshua said, “Logan not here, Little Fella.”

Though he kept his voice low, it boomed off the mausoleum walls and seemed to echo in her skull. She thought that gunfire in here, this much gunfire, would have sounded like the end of the world—reports rocketing around the walls, bouncing this way and that.

“Sad,” Joshua was saying. “So sad.”

They had come to fight these Furies, to kill if necessary; but to see this massacre was to pity the victims in death, whoever, whatever, they might have been in life.

Her half of the room revealed no sign of Logan either, but there was the cutout in the far wall that led to the wooden add-on they had seen from the outside. As she approached the shadowy hole, Max's heart pounded and she wondered if the others could hear it, echoing off the blood-spattered walls. Beads of sweat pearled her forehead, even though it was still cold both outside and in this unheated mausoleum.

There was light beyond the opening, but she couldn't make anything out yet, and no one had called out to them; of course, Logan might have been tied up, and gagged . . . But if so, the marauders who'd committed this atrocity would hardly have spared him.