The Rising(37)

Rathman seemed to ponder that briefly. “These Zarem—”

“Za-reem.”

“—do they bleed when you kill them?”

“They do indeed. Just like us. Strangely. They look just as we do. It’s how they’ve managed to walk among us undetected for so long.”

“Then how do you—”

Marsh felt his phone vibrating and jerked it from the clip on his belt, the rest of the big man’s question lost to him as he read the text message on his screen.

“Ah, it appears one of my teams is closing on the latest target now.”





36

A BIG STICK

THEY’D JUST ENTERED THE bar, dragging the night’s chill in with them, something all wrong about their eyes. Not their actual eyes, more the way they looked about. Raiff was a firm believer in patterns, the comfort zones in which the behaviors of people nestled. You walked into a bar, you looked for a table, booth, or stool to do your drinking, and you made a beeline for it.

But the men who entered this bar swept their gazes about without that priority in mind. The four of them were big and broad and wore long, dark coats baggy enough to conceal any weapons held beneath. Trackers for sure, then, as opposed to the other enemy committed to Raiff’s destruction. Flesh and blood as opposed to steel and cable, dispatched by Langston Marsh with no clue about the war into which he had inserted himself. If the modern-day Fifth Column commanded by that madman succeeded, they would effectively be ensuring the demise of their own world.

Raiff was considering that irony when he spotted the first pair of eyes falling upon him, lingering there. The man started toward him, the three others quickly falling into step. Raiff was proficient, expert, even, in the use of any weapon, all manner of guns and knives included, but he most preferred the one that had accompanied him here eighteen years before.

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

Teddy Roosevelt had said that, one of Raiff’s all-time favorite characters lifted from this world’s history. He read a lot, especially loved reading about men he considered heroes for one reason or another. Raiff’s stick, meanwhile, was nothing like the one Teddy had been thinking of when he coined his famous phrase. It had been formed of subatomic, programmable particles based on nanotechnological principles. The particles responded to his thinking on command, first lengthening into baton size and then either hardening to the texture and weight of titanium steel or softening to be more like a whip. Raiff’s mind could sharpen the stick to a razor’s edge capable of cutting a man, or drone, in half.

For now he left it dull and hard, like a cop’s nightstick. He continued to follow the Trackers in the mirror, their approach slowing when he failed to respond as uncertainty entered the picture. He was just baiting them, of course, but the Trackers could just as easily have thought they were closing in on the wrong target, in which case the right one could be getting them in his sights right now.

Raiff sprung in the moment frozen between action and doubt. He came off the stool in a blur, stick whipping from left to right and impacting the lead Tracker square in the temple. Taking out the leader first always made for the best strategy. Rudderless, the others would hesitate for the mere seconds Raiff needed to overcome their advantage in numbers.

The second man fell quickly to a lashing blow to the back of a knee that followed a deft feint. Still enough time for Trackers three and four to draw their weapons. Before they could fire, though, Raiff’s blur of motion became a whirlwind. Barely any pause before a blow against the ribs of one and a lighter blow across the face of the other that turned his nose into a bloody memory. The one he’d slammed in the ribs with his stick was trying to right himself, all bent over to one side, while the other, still-conscious Tracker lurched toward him.

Dealing with that one was as simple as kicking the stool over in his path. The Tracker’s foot caught within its spokes and he went flying, literally, straight past Raiff. This as the Tracker all bent to one side from his fractured ribs managed to get his pistol out and half steadied. Raiff snapped his stick outward, its composite softening to something like pudding held in a flexible tube. Then he lashed it out in whip-like fashion and spun his hand to twirl it around the man’s wrist. He pulled and the pistol came free, a single errant shot taking out one of the cheap light fixtures held to the ceiling by a rod.

The air was raining tiny glass shards and Raiff felt them settle in his hair. The edge of his consciousness recorded the fact that the Tracker he’d used the stool on was lumbering back to his feet, while the final Tracker stood at the far end of the bar. He had a broken bottle pressed against a woman’s throat, her head jerked back by the hair to expose her jugular.

“Right there!” the man screamed at him. “Don’t move!”

Raiff did as he was told, let his stick that had morphed into a whip dangle by his side.

The Tracker started backpedaling for the door, dragging the woman with him. Raiff had never seen her before but he’d seen a thousand like her in bars like this. Single or long divorced, wearing too much makeup and perfume and letting her gaze drift toward the door every time someone new entered in the hope it would be a familiar face, which it never was.

“Stay where you are!” the Tracker ordered. “Don’t come any closer!”

Raiff didn’t hesitate, didn’t wait. He snapped his stick outward and watched it unfurl, seeming to lengthen through the air as it went, like a disembodied tentacle. It wrapped around the Tracker’s throat and Raiff dislodged the man’s hold on the woman with a simple yank that further tightened the whip-like weapon in place.