The Adventures of Lazarus Gray (10 page)

"Assuming they’ve really
undergone ninja training? Yes. Quite."

Samantha looked back at the
fence. It was about ten feet high and cobblestone, which actually
made climbing a bit easier. There were plenty of places for hands
and feet to find purchase. "I say we go inside," she said at
length.

Eun grinned, admiring her
spirit. They were the two youngest members of Assistance Unlimited
but they rarely spent much time together. Eun was a private man
with a lot of anger in his heart. As such, he actually found it
easier to work along Lazarus, who rarely pushed or prodded him on
an emotional level. But that didn’t mean that he didn’t love
Samantha and Morgan. They were all part of the Assistance Unlimited
family, despite their differences in methods. "Last one over is a
rotten egg."

Samantha arched an eyebrow.
"Are you challenging me?"

"Are you afraid of
losing?"

"Oh!" Samantha stifled a
laugh. "You’re on." The slender girl kicked off her high heels and
stuffed them into the small handbag she was carrying. She slipped
the leather bag straps over her left arm and threw herself against
the fence. She scrambled up like a monkey and threw herself over
with abandon. She landed in a crouch, her skirt billowing about.
She looked up triumphantly to see that Eun was already there,
leaning against the fence.

"Sorry," he said with a
shrug and a cocky grin. "I do believe you’re the rotten
egg."

Samantha stood up and
quickly put her shoes back on. "Scoundrel," she said
teasingly.

The two of them grew quiet
as one of the ninja rounded the corner. The black-garbed man didn’t
see them and he stopped so that he was standing with his back to
the house. He pulled away the cloth covering his face and Eun saw
clearly that he was Japanese. As they watched in silence, they saw
him take out a cigarette and light it. He had just begun to smoke
it in earnest when Eun crept up next to him and put the barrel of
his gun against the ninja’s head.

"Make a sound and I’ll kill
you," Eun promised. It was something of a hollow threat since none
of Assistance Unlimited killed unless it was absolutely necessary
to save either his or her own life or someone else’s.

The ninja’s eyes widened as
Samantha came into view. "The two of you are making a mistake," the
ninja said with only the faintest hint of an accent. "Turn and
leave now and you might get out of here alive."

Eun tapped a symbol on the
black cloth. There was a circle surrounding a heart, with blood
dripping below. "What does this mean?"

"We are Black Heart," the
ninja said, obviously thinking that would be explanation
enough.

"I’ve heard of them,"
Samantha said. "I didn’t know they were… ninjas or whatever you
called them. They’re killers for the mob."

"We perform a needed
function," the ninja retorted. He flicked his cigarette to the
ground. "We do jobs for the mob but that doesn’t mean we work for
them."

"Then whom do you work
for?" Eun asked, pressing the gun harder against the man’s head.
"Mr. Goodwill?"

The ninja struck quickly,
driving an elbow up against Eun’s arm, knocking his gun hand toward
the sky. The ninja kicked Eun in the stomach before turning on
Samantha. From the look in his eyes, he obviously expected to make
quick work of the girl.

Unfortunately for him,
Samantha Grace was far more than she appeared. Raised by
philanthropic parents who were willing to pay for any tutelage she
desired, Samantha was a mistress of several forms of martial arts.
She nimbly stepped aside when the ninja lunged for her, delivering
a powerful chop to the back of his neck as he passed. She then
finished him off, kicking him hard in the rump, knocking him
headfirst into the tree where Eun had been perched only moments
before.

Samantha held out a hand
and helped Eun get back to his feet. "Hope you don’t mind that you
were saved by a rotten egg."

Eun brushed himself off.
"Not at all. Thank you."

The two of them peered
around the corner and saw that they were momentarily in the clear.
They sprinted across the yard and ducked inside a side door on the
house. Once inside, they paused in a hallway, keeping their voices
barely above a whisper.

"Now what?" Eun
asked.

Samantha shrugged.
Originally, they were supposed to nose around and look for clues
about how Goodwill tied in to those papers. But given the number of
Black Heart ninjas running around, it seemed that the man was
involved in something dirty no matter what. She was about to say as
much when they heard voices from a nearby room. She crept over and
placed her ear against the door, confusion making her eyes widen.
She recognized one of those voices but the impossibility made her
doubt what she was hearing. She looked over at Eun and saw that he
was watching her closely.

The first of the voices,
which was unfamiliar to both of them, was speaking in hurried
tones. "He’ll be back soon. If you’d just wait, I’m certain he’d
want to speak to you."

"I don’t have time for
that," the other man responded. It was this person that had evoked
the frightened response in Samantha. He spoke with a German accent
but he was quite fluent nonetheless. "Tell Mr. Goodwill that I want
those papers and am willing to pay for them. This is not open to
negotiation. If he tries to withhold them from me, I’ll kill him
and everyone who stands at his side. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I’m quite clear on
that."

"Good. Tell him I look
forward to hearing from him soon."

Eun and Samantha flattened
themselves against the wall, hiding as the door opened and the
German emerged. He was dressed like an undertaker and he leaned
heavily on a walking stick that was topped by a roaring lion’s
head. His progress carried him away from the Assistance Unlimited
agents but Samantha was certain that this was Walther Lunt, the
cultist who had tried to work with the vile Doc Pemberley during
the group’s most recent case. The right side of Lunt’s face was a
ruined mass of flesh, scarred by an acid attack years
before.

"That’s him," Samantha
whispered when he’d vanished down the hall. "That’s the man who
turned his cane into a lion. He tried to kill me!"

Eun frowned. "That doesn’t
make sense. That cane’s back at headquarters. Besides, you said he
was dead."

Samantha swallowed hard.
"He is. I saw him die. Heck, I went with the Chief to drop his body
off at the morgue. That’s how we found out his name. He’s a big
muckity-muck in Berlin." Eun started to suggest that maybe the man
had a twin but he fell into silence when Samantha grabbed him by
the sleeve. "C’mon," she said, "Let’s follow him."

"What about
Goodwill?"

"Forget him. This is far
more important!" She locked eyes with Eun and leaned in close.
"Remember, Lunt said he knew who the Chief was. If there’s any way
we can help Lazarus find out about his past, we have to do
it."

Eun considered it briefly
and then nodded, following her in pursuit of Lunt. He’d been the
first of the group to find out the truth about Gray’s amnesia and
he knew how much it ate away at their employer. She was right:
nothing was more important than finding out the truth.

***

Malcolm Goodwill stood
outside 6196 Robeson Avenue and stared at the imposing black doors,
adorned with only a single metal placard. The words "Assistance
Unlimited" were embossed on its surface. A small buzzer was located
beneath the sign and Goodwill considered it for only a second
before he pressed it with one gloved hand.

A mechanical-sounding voice
responded at once. "I’m sorry but all agents of Assistance
Unlimited are currently away on missions. If you would like to
leave a card with your name and number, you may slip it beneath the
door and someone will get back to you as soon as possible. If this
is a matter of life and death, please press the buzzer twice more:
one long and one short."

Goodwill paused, both
amused and perplexed. He’d spent a good twenty minutes wandering
around the building and had no obvious means of entry. All the
windows were barred and shuttered and the doors had a strange kind
of lock on them that he’d never encountered before. The somewhat
strange method of breaking in by ringing the doorbell had finally
presented itself as the only possible thing to do. Now a mechanized
voice was walking him through the process of getting inside? It was
bizarre, indeed.

After pressing the buzzer
twice, with one long and one short, Goodwill took a step back. The
twin obsidian doors slid open quickly and the voice returned. Was
it his imagination that it now contained a note of
urgency?

"Please enter immediately.
The doors will close behind you so make sure you have all
companions and belongings with you."

Goodwill hesitated a
moment, uncertain what he should do. Would he be trapped inside? In
the end, he jumped inside, hoping that he’d be able to find his way
back out when the time came.

He found himself in the
large foyer that greeted all guests of Assistance Unlimited. As the
doors hissed shut behind him, the locking mechanisms sliding into
place with a loud clang, Goodwill approached the small receptionist
desk that lay straight ahead. The building had once been a hotel
and there were still a set of boxes behind what had once been the
front clerk’s area, though there were no longer keys for each room.
The mechanized voice returned, startling Goodwill. The man jumped
and then immediately felt stupid for having done so.

"To your right you will
find a small sitting area. Please wait there for someone to assist
you. If you need medical assistance, please pick up the courtesy
phone on the counter. It will dial a doctor who is on call 24 hours
a day and they will be here within fifteen minutes."

Goodwill glanced about but
was unable to pinpoint where the voice was emanating from. He
tapped his fingers on the desk and frowned. This whole thing seemed
absurd. What kind of security system allowed anyone inside, when
all they had to do was lie about it being an emergency? And now he
was being asked to sit still, when he had the freedom to wander
through the entire complex? It certainly seemed that Lazarus Gray
wasn’t the genius the papers made him out to be.

Goodwill spotted an
elevator as well as a set of stairs. He took several steps toward
them but came to a halt when he bumped into something hard and
unyielding. He rubbed his nose while reaching out carefully,
tracing it with his fingers. There appeared to be nothing there but
upon close examination he found there were virtually invisible
barriers all around, blocking access to anywhere but the foyer and
the sitting room. Evidently, they had slid down from the ceiling
when he’d entered the building.

Cursing, Goodwill
reconsidered his earlier impression about Gray and his security. He
drew out his handgun and pointed it toward one of the barriers. He
pulled the trigger and immediately regretted the decision. The
bullet ricocheted off of the barrier and narrowly missed embedding
itself in Goodwill’s shoulder. It struck the wall behind him and
flew back again and Goodwill fell to the floor, covering his head
with his hands. The bullet continued whizzing back and forth for
what seemed like an eternity before the room finally fell into
silence.

Slowly rising back to his
feet, Goodwill forced himself to take several deep breaths. He
strode toward the front doors and pushed on them, only to find that
his worst fears were confirmed: the doors were locked and no matter
how hard he pushed, they refused to budge. The building was in sort
of lock-down mode, triggered by his foolhardy decision to claim he
was in the middle of an emergency.

For a moment, Goodwill gave
over to his rising anger. He kicked and screamed like a petulant
child, so caught up in the moment that he dropped the false British
accent he usually used. In those moments, he spoke once again like
the Pennsylvania boy that he truly was.

When he was done venting,
Goodwill found himself thinking back to how this affair got
started. The infamous Doc Pemberley had fearfully come calling at
Goodwill’s front door a few weeks back, claiming that he’d narrowly
escaped capture. He needed quick money, he’d said, and had offered
Goodwill a number of interesting items in exchange for enough cash
to get him into a new safe house. Goodwill had grown bored with the
entire affair until Pemberley had brought out several ancient
pieces of paper, claiming that they had been written by the devil
himself. How Pemberley had acquired them had never been explained
but Goodwill had felt something rush through him when he’d held
those papers. He only had the barest familiarity with Latin but he
could understand enough to know that these pages were priceless.
Even if he wasn’t able to make them do the things that Pemberley
claimed, he could sell them to collectors and make a
fortune.

It was only after he’d
summoned Sazar that he’d realized why Pemberley hadn’t used the
spells for himself. There was a price to pay for magic like this:
Sazar could kill him easily and would have no qualms about doing
so. The only thing holding her in check was the words that bound
her to his will.