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I’m a musician. I make music, not war. Making audiences happy, sharing my art with people. It’s the foundation of my world. That rare, wonderful, mutual feeling that few music outsiders fully understand.
Given a fair set of choices then, I’d have been perfectly happy just dodging groupies and composing, playing my saxes, and leading a band. For the rest of my life.
Or so I thought.
Funny thing about life, it doesn’t give a fuck what you want or what you think you want.
Riding my Harley across that shrub-dotted landscape, I realized my life had changed forever. I’d just seen another corpse, up close, and not a stranger. Not this time. Dante’s blood might as well have been painted across my eyes for all the red I still saw.
Chiang, whoever—whatever he was, had almost murdered Fan back at Harmony. Now Dante was dead. By all rights, I should have been, too. It wasn’t my time, I guess.
As for the kidnapper himself? I intended to kill him. I didn’t know if I could, but I’d certainly try. Hopefully, he’d tell me what he did with Vicki first, but I wasn’t counting on it.
“He’s remarkably fast,” Sophie said.
“Running?”
“Yes, he’s at near full sprint, and he’s been doing it for several hundred yards now. Burdened. I calculate his current speed at twenty-two miles per hour. If he keeps this pace up, we are witnessing a shattering of all known cross-country records.”
“Transhuman,” I grumbled.
“Undoubtedly,” Sophie agreed. “I’m continuously jamming cell signals emanating from him. He’s implanted with a computer chip, at the minimum.”
“He’ll never run fast enough to out-distance this motorcycle.”
“Definitely not. But he’s aiming for terrain that will make it difficult for you.”
“Like?”
“A cattle fence.”
Shit.
Ahead of me, I made out a flying, blue-gray, oblong shape that grew quickly as I continued racing west and angled away from the highway to the north.
It was Sophie’s drone. “He’s already at the fence.”
“Is there a road through it? Anywhere close?”
“Yes, farther ahead. Not too far, but Chiang will gain ground heading south.”
“What choice do I have?”
“None really. Keep riding west then take the first left turn. I’ll guide you again to my position.”
I traveled until I came to a narrow dirt road that split the barbed wire fence, and then I aimed south again. There was a long metal gate across the road, but to my relief it wasn’t padlocked. I parked, leapt off my Harley, then opened the fence just enough for me to squeeze through. Back on my motorcycle, I revved through the gap and followed the road beyond.
“I’m past the fence. Lost sight of you, Sophie.”
“I see you. Stay on that road. You’re aimed in our general direction. Unfortunately, Chiang is nearing some ranch houses.”
I started breathing even harder. “Can you get to those houses ahead of him? Go warn the people there! Make a racket if you have to!”
“I can. You’ll need to veer off to your right now and angle about forty degrees. Stay on that straight course, and you should see these houses. Less than a quarter mile.”
At that short of a distance, and the speed I was going, I knew I’d see the houses in just a few seconds.
Before any buildings came into view though, a blaring horn blasted, repeated several times, like one of those annoyingly loud air horns you’d use at college football games—or to prank a sleeping dorm mate.
Not that I’d ever done anything so horrible. Well, not sober anyway.
It had to be Sophie.
It was. “There are several adults and children here. Isn’t much time. I’m telling them to lock their doors or flee.” I pushed my Harley even faster, risking my neck, but I was determined to reach Chiang before he got to the ranch. “They do not seem willing to leave.”
“Tell them to call the sheriff,” I told her, no longer only concerned for myself and Conrad’s agents. There were kids.
Sophie’s voice displaced the music in my helmet comm again. “That won’t be possible. I’m sorry.”
“What? Why?”
“If I’m jamming Chiang’s cell transmissions, I have to jam all foreign ones in the vicinity. He is cycling channels. The only reason we can converse without interruption is because I know and control our line. I am not actively blocking ours or having to alter it. Though that’s—”
“I get it! I get it. I wasn’t thinking...”
The ranch came into view. It had no outlying fence and looked to be comprised of a corral, main house, guest house, and at least one shed. The whole area was dusty soil, devoid of all but a handful of shrubs and one or two trees.
A man was running to the main house.
“Chiang is heading for this home,” Sophie warned.
“I see him!” I rode out from the barrens and into the ranch’s flattened perimeter, a mere hundred yards from Chiang. But I wouldn’t get to him before he reached the house ahead.
A shot barked. Sounded like a shotgun, quickly followed by a second bang. Chiang changed directions and ran toward the next closest buildings. The corral.
“I believe that was the father firing,” Sophie said.
Goddamn right! “Good!” I kept heading straight for the main house. There wasn’t time to do much else. If I went straight at Chiang, I’d probably take a bullet before I even dismounted.
I might take a slug from the rancher instead, but I had an idea.
As I rode at the home, I concentrated my mind onto, well, what else would you call them? Happy thoughts. Nothing but Christmas and puppy dogs!
“Don’t shoot!” I yelled. “I’m with the drone! I’m here to help!” The crying of children came from inside the one-story house, and a large dog barked crazily.
I’d never intentionally projected my emotions before, like I did then, envisioning some ocean waves in my mind, a serene beach scene, anything calming. I had no clue what I was doing, honestly. But the kids inside the house, I’ll be damned if they didn’t quiet down, followed by the silencing of the rancher’s mutt.
Most importantly though—I didn’t get shot.
Taking a chance I had to take, I hard-braked my Harley in front of the rancher’s yard, and a cloud of sandy dirt burped into the air surrounding me.
“You don’t look like the highway patrol!” The agitated voice of a man came from a window with no screen attached. A shotgun stuck out of the window, the barrel pointed straight at my chest.
“I’m not.” I had to think fast. “I’m a bounty hunter. Please stay inside...and call the cops.” He didn’t need to know that would be pointless. Maybe he had a land line though, however unlikely that would be. I swung off my bike, then parked it close to the house and out of sight of the nearby corral. “I’ll deal with this bastard.”
“Where’d he go?” I sensed the rancher’s fear.
“Toward your corral. Horses?” I didn’t imagine this would turn into a Wild West stunt show, but I didn’t want to shoot any animals by accident.
“No. No horses.” That was a relief. “Nothin’ over there but my tool sheds.”
“All right. I won’t be long. Don’t come outside!” I wasn’t so sure it was working, but I was trying like hell to keep those people calm.
Sophie’s drone whirred down from above the house then hovered close. “He’s inside that shed,” she said.
I pulled my double-barrel from its shoulder holster. “You saw him go in?”
“Yes, and I can nearly gauge his exact distance because of that implant in his skull. He’s trying desperately to make a call.”
“I bet he is.”
“Lochlan, are you there?” It was Silana.
I activated my helmet comm. “Yes, I’ve got Chiang cornered.”
“We are tied up with the police and cannot get to you. Perhaps you should wait for help?”
I considered the suggestion. “No. I’m sure more cops’ll be here soon. I need to end this...before more people get killed.” For reasons I couldn’t really explain, I felt I had what it took to stop Chiang by myself. “I’ll update you soon. Gotta go.”
“Loch—Lochlan. If it is possible, Conrad would like you to recover Chiang. Dead or alive. We wish to examine him. And...it would be bad if the police acquired him. They would not understand what they are dealing with. And that would cause...even more trouble.”
I frowned at the ground beneath my boots. “You know more than you’re telling me. Again.”
“Oui.”
I sighed. “What makes you believe I can handle this by myself then?” I could, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“We don’t know that you can.”
That admission straightened my back. “How am I supposed to take that, Silana?”
“We don’t know you can, but this is your test, Lochlan Nohr. No one else’s.” I stared past the corner of the ranch house at the corral fence then stepped over enough to peek at the small cluster of shacks in the corral’s center where I knew Chiang was waiting for me.
“Bon courage! I believe in you. Do your best, and you shall prevail.”
Do my best. I might prevail. Well, wasn’t that all kinds of cheery and heroic?
More like do my best and try not to get my fucking head blown off!
“I’ll get back to you,” I grumbled at Silana. “Sophie, turn the music down, please. Maybe give me something else... I dunno...”
I don’t know if it was the anger still pumping adrenaline into my veins, but I was fearless. I was, if anything, getting impatient. I wanted this over with. I wanted to find Vicki, go home—pretend none of this insanity had ever happened.
So, I wasn’t really that surprised at Sophie’s next music selection. It had just been that kind of week.
War drums pounded in my headphones, followed by low, brassy horn blares, and long, bold tones thundering over the syncopated hammering of timpani.
It was unmistakable.
“Conan the Barbarian.” The original, not that half-baked remake. “You’re funny, Sophie.”
“I have my moments.”
Fine. I’m sure I struck the figure of a modern barbarian, in my leather riding garb and helmet, muscles flexing, feet planted, waiting for my brain to order legs into action.
The music worked. My rage built up steadily as I prepared for inevitable conflict.
I walked around the ranch house and into full view of the not-very-distant corral.
“Chiang!” I stalked forward, my eyes alert behind my Ray-Bans, searching for any sign of my enemy. Any sign of another gun, grenade—a nuclear bomb.
“Chiang! Come out! Surrender!” I continued forward, steadily. “It’s the only chance I’ll give you. You aren’t murdering anyone else. I know you took Vicki.”
A window opened in the corral's front shed closest to me, but I resisted the urge to run for cover.
I couldn’t spot Chiang in the window. I presumed he was standing to the side or crouched below it. “You are one persistent fellow...really. I’m beginning to admire you.” Chiang’s voice was distinctly British. No doubt about it. “You probably shouldn’t come any closer though, um—what do I call you?”
I stopped then knelt down with the hand cannon pointed up from my hip toward the open window. “Call me Hugh.”
Chiang guffawed uproariously. “So, it is you then. You fit the description.” I squinted, guessing what that meant. “Connie never has had much self-control, the poor dear.”
“Pizza’s hard to resist.”
More laughter rolled out from the window. “So it wasn’t just you, it was pizza! I have come to enjoy that very much.”
That admission rang oddly in my mind. Have come to enjoy?
I stood and prepared to rush the shed. “I’m sorry, I’m feeling kinda naked out here, and this James Bond villain routine of yours is skeeving me out. How ‘bout we cut to the fucking point! You surrender—and I don’t end you.” I thought back to the wreckage of Dante’s corpse and what was left of the Cadillac. “Start by tossing that pistol of yours out the window.”
“I guess I could do that,” Chiang replied. “But honestly, Hugh, you will be hard to miss, don’t you think?”
I ran.
Chiang’s chrome pistol appeared in the open shed window and fired twice in quick succession.
Both shots hit me in the side, just below my right armpit. And let me tell you, they hurt. Hurt like motherfucking hell. But I didn’t stop running. I broke into a full sprint and Chiang shot at me once more.
And missed.
I prepared to hurdle the low wooden fence ahead of me, to veer out of Chiang’s line of sight, and was stunned to see a flying red horse cut from a flat piece of lumber nailed to the fence as a decoration. The red horse from my dream.
I leapt over the pegasus and the fence in one bound, then dashed for the side of the white-walled shed Chiang had just shot me from, making damn sure to avoid the window opened at me from that direction. The ribs on my right side were stinging painfully.
I gingerly touched where I was hit, fearing to look down, and my fingers reflexively flinched away from hot metal. I did look down then and it amazed me to find no blood. Instead, two flattened bullets had torn through my t-shirt, stopped by Conrad’s black armor.
I scraped the metal blobs off my vest with a flick of my wrist then watched them drop into the dirt.
I cannot understate the relief of not dying. I knelt next to the window and sucked in some searing breaths as pain emanated from my ribs.
“Are you dead? You really should be.” Annoyingly, Chiang sounded like he was enjoying himself.
I closed my eyes then concentrated, reaching my mind out toward the interior of the shed, and sensed Chiang easily. There was amusement, but I also detected a note of...confusion. Not the fear I’d hoped for, but I’d take what I could get. He was on a diagonal from me, next to my window.
“Very alive, thanks!” I winced. Talking stretched my ribs, and the pain was excruciating. I pressed the talk button on the side of my helmet comm then whispered, “Cut the music, Sophie.”
“Done,” she responded.
“How extraordinary. You’re not another niggling robot, are you? That flying one has been quite the annoyance.”
I grimaced, then spoke deliberately. “One hundred percent organic. You though, not so much.” The pain from my ribs had subsided by half.
“Ah, just so, just so. Well, then. I must admit, I’m not used to this level of complication. I suppose I still have much to learn...”
My forehead wrinkled. Learn?
“So, you give up then?” My ribs still protested, but again, the pain was less than before.
Chiang laughed.
Grudgingly, I grinned. “Yeah, didn’t think so.”
“Only one of us can walk away from this, Hugh. It would have been so much easier if you had just died along with your friend.” That remark wiped the grin off my face. “Excuse me...”
A distinct scratching like sandpaper on metal sounded, followed by the unmistakable chewing of air by fire. I stood flat against the shed, making sure not even the point of my helmet’s mouth guard could be seen from the building’s interior.
“Just having another smoke, if you don’t mind. I do love these bloody things.”
My eyes rolled reflexively. “They won’t kill you today.”
Chiang coughed and laughed loudly. “Ah, very good, Hugh. Yes, very good. You may be right.”
That was enough chit-chat.
I took a breath and the prior stabbing pain was almost entirely gone. “I guess you’re not going to tell me where Vicki is.”
“Can’t do that. Against the rules.”
“Is she alive?”
“Alive? Oh, surely. Didn’t go to all the trouble of transporting her this far...only to bury her.” I let out a sigh of relief. So, she was in Nevada at least. “But...how long will she live? I’d guess not too terribly long. No, not much longer at all, really. The moon keeps rising.”
The fucking moon. “What d’you want for her? Money? What?”
“Money?” Chiang paused. “This is not about money, boy.”
The moon climbed above the sunset. The blood moon was coming all right. The sight made my guts harden, and my teeth grit.
Instead of being filled with despair though, I got angrier. “I’ll rip your arms off, I think. You can die slower that way.”
“Oh, now! That’s not very civilized. And here I thought we were getting to know one another.”
I ignored him. In a whisper, I asked, “Sophie, you think you can lead me to Vicki?”
“I have a clear log of Chiang’s recent travels. It’s not impossible,” Sophie replied.
“That’ll have to do,” I admitted. It has to.
My nose suddenly itched. On the inside. The pungent taint of gasoline was in the air.
“What are you doing, Chiang?”
“As much as I’ve enjoyed our little repartee, I must be off. More of you will soon show up, I’m sure. And that will just not do.”
By then I sensed where Chiang stood inside the shed. His initiative glimmered like a beacon in my mind’s eye.
I pointed my pistol at the wall—what I hoped was nothing more than aluminum, wood beams, and plaster board—then emptied half my clip, rapid firing both triggers. Dust and wood splinters erupted from the tight grouping of holes in the shed close to the window, and small debris peppered my face, but my sunglasses and mouth protector shielded me.
“Argh!” No more Mr. Fun Chiang. I felt him move, and the very next second a crash and bang came from the south side of the shed.
I readied myself and aimed at what I guessed was a shed door. No sooner had I pointed my gun then Chiang came charging into view, his chrome pistol out and ready. I barely had time to recognize that he held a hatchet in his other hand.
Chiang was in terrible shape. He was bleeding from his face and his right leg and maybe the groin, too. He’d even put his suit jacket back on, and his suit and hair appeared soaking wet. The whole spectacle made my lips draw back from my teeth in horror.
I fired both barrels once, then backpedaled north around the shed, toward the ranch house.
Unfortunately, my shots missed.
In a quick return, Chiang fired at least four shots at me, but by some miracle two missed, one grazed my helmet, and the last caught me low on the left shoulder—just below the armored t-shirt—before I sprang behind the corner.
“Fuck!” My shoulder burned horribly, but it was only a flesh-wound. I’d gotten lucky.
Though out of sight again, Chiang’s feet were crunching dirt. He was still coming.
I’d almost forgotten about the baton Conrad had given me, but my survival instinct awakened—the next thing I realized, I’d swapped my gun to my right hand and pulled the baton out of its belt case, then fully extended it into three feet of skull-crushing steel.
When he appeared, Chiang snarled at me like an animal. He wielded his pistol, a chrome Desert Eagle, and I was in no hurry to get shot by the damn thing again.
I came down hard with an overhand chop that cracked into Chiang’s forearm.
Incredibly, he didn’t drop his pistol, but I knocked his aim off, to the ground at our feet—instead of at my big, stupid head. The Deagle barked, followed by the satisfying click-click-click of its empty magazine.
The pungent stench of gasoline was so bitter now I nearly gagged. Chiang was soaked in fuel. So distracted was I by the stink, I almost got my head taken off by Chiang’s left-handed hatchet swipe.
I dodged backward and the small axe sliced the air where my neck had been.
Chiang attacked and moved like an experienced martial artist. He dropped his empty pistol to the dirt then assumed a sideways stance, his hatchet swapped to his right hand and ready for a stronger swing.
His eyes were alive with hatred. Hatred of me, hatred of everything. Hate seethed off of him like the fumes of gasoline that stung my nose. It was a stark contrast to the polite, mocking words that had been coming out of his mouth earlier.
In that moment, I might have questioned my resolve. Such a desperate, inhuman opponent could end me. He didn’t care about my heroics, my quest for Victoria. He had to escape—and murdering me was his only way out.
But never underestimate the power of adrenaline and fear, especially in a frame my size.
I planted my feet like a sprinter, then—
Barbarian timpani beats filled my ears even louder than before.
I smiled. Feral and vicious.
And then I charged.
The whites of Chiang’s eyes widened as he understood that I was on the attack again. He swung his hatchet with both hands in a wild overhead chop at my skull, but I stopped his blow with the steel baton in my right hand, pushed his strong arm up and away, and shoved my double-barreled pistol into his gut as we collided. The last two rounds left in the twin magazines of my 2011 roared into Chiang, and his blood—and some of his intestines—sprayed across the spotty grass and dirt of the yard, followed quickly by the tumult of our two bodies falling together.
Chiang shouted in a language I’d never heard before, a combination of sharp consonants and guttural syllables. The body crushed beneath my own went instantly cold. Cold as a bathtub full of ice. I pushed off him and rolled away to put distance between us—and especially his hatchet—because I wasn’t sure what had caused the icy chill.
Chiang laughed, half choking, between splutters of blood that bubbled from his mouth and nose. But his legs didn’t move.
I knew it was over. “You’re dying.” I lifted up on an elbow. “Tell me where she is! Chiang! Tell me what you did with Victoria!”
I rose to my knees, and as I did, Chiang’s empty hand removed a lighter from the left pocket of his jacket
He sparked the lighter into flame before I could form a word, and then Chiang turned to glower at me. He spit out one last glob of blood. “I’ll see you again,” he said, then dropped the lighter onto his chest. His gasoline-soaked suit, tie, and shirt caught fire, and, in seconds, his entire body was engulfed in flames.
At first Chiang only laughed. It was surreal and horrible, his limbs not even twitching, simply burning up like one of those suicide videos of Tibetan monks. But not long after the laughing ended, he screamed, shouted out and cursed—in Mandarin, I believe.
Eventually, horribly, Chiang was finally silent.
Seared bone and flesh popped and snapped, as smoke from his burning remains churned up at the rising moon.
The smell was disturbing. Thick and nauseatingly sweet.
I turned away and holstered my gun.
“Chiang has been eliminated,” Sophie said.