Shapechanger's Birth Page 19

  "Jane, where is the rifle you showed us this afternoon?"

  The woman said nothing and dashed out the door, returning within a minute carrying it. Mary took it, checked to make sure it was loaded, and tucked it under an arm. She took an extra loaded cylinder for the rifle, holding it in her other hand.

  Pockets. From now on the cat lady was going to wear something with pockets.

  "Now, I'm going outside and look around. If I want you to come out I'll scream twice. Once means they're too close and to stay in. Don't worry, remember I'll be outside and hunting them while you're inside here." She showed her teeth in a smile that was not a smile.

  She looked around. Had she forgotten anything? She let her mind go free for a few moments to see what it would throw up to her from its depths.

  "Edith, you are in charge of all the whores. Enrico, all the soldiers. Each of you appoint a second-in-command.

  "If you get hurt bad, hide as best you can. I'll come find you. I can't bring you back from the dead, but I can bring you back from unconsciousness and almost any wound. So don't despair if you find yourself losing consciousness before I come back."

  She paused. "Now we're going out there and we're going to kill every one of those ass-holes. I'm going to find their boss and kill him. And then we're going to put the word out. Nobody fucks with the Cork City whores." She grinned. "Unless they pay for it."

  There was laughter all around. Mary went to a room with a side door and turned off its lamp. Then she opened the outside door, listened and sniffed with her senses turned high, then peered around the jamb.

  There was no one near. She slid into the night.

  Five minutes later she had made three spiraling circuits of the mansion, each one further than out than before. Finding no one, she screamed twice and loped to the road into West Passage to wait for her fighters.

  Once all together Mary said, "I'm going to make your night-sight better. This effect will last most of the night. Get used to it while we get into position."

  She went to each of them and esoterically probed their eyes and boosted the color receptors in their eyes. She left their black-white receptors alone because they already worked at the greatest efficiency possible. Then she led them at a trot up the road to the place where the road was squeezed between two hills.

  It was a good spot for an ambush. She placed three of her force on one side and two on the other, staying with those two. From here they would be shooting down, not at each other, and would catch the enemy in a crossfire.

  They waited.

  And waited.

  Jane was on Mary's side. Finally she said in a low voice, "They should be here by now if they're coming."

  Mary nodded. With Jane's eyesight boosted she should be able to see the nod.

  Mary reviewed her estimate of the time of the murder and the time elapsed, and compared it with the time needed for Josiah to travel to West Passage at a trot and tell the enemy that they had to attack the mansion early, then for the enemy to get here. Jane was right; they should have been here at least a quarter-hour before.

  They might have been delayed for several reasons. They had not been ready, they had spent time arguing what to do, they had given up entirely knowing that the dead guard would eventually be found and thus warning those at the mansion, who would put up a fight.

  No. They were coming. No group of thieves could ignore more than a hundred thousand pounds of money.

  But might they wait and ambush the Organization's people when they returned to Cork City?

  Not likely. The money was in one, lonely spot tonight. Wait till daybreak and the Org might take another road back to Cork, even go across hills. The Org might split the money up into several groups. Tonight had to be the time to strike.

  Another road. "Jane. You suggested this mansion. Did you look at the roads in this area? Is there another way to the mansion?"

  "Yes! They can go south to Monkstown, then come in the back way. I remember seeing the start of the back road; it's old and in bad condition, but looked passable."

  Mary leapt the thirty feet down to the road and ran a half-mile east on the road toward West Passage. Stood listening. Regretted that the prevailing winds were from the west, behind her. Otherwise she could have scented as well as listened for the enemy.

  She raced back, waving her fighters down to the road. With them clustered around she said, "I think the ass-holes are coming in the back road. If they were coming this way they should be here by now.

  "Jane, I want you to stay here and keep watch. Find yourself a spot where you can get away quickly. If they show up, make note of how many there are and so on. Empty this rifle into them where it will do the most good, then sneak back to the mansion and pass on what you know." Mary handed the revolving Colt rifle to Jane and took one of the pistols from Jane. With the extra loaded cylinder she had twelve bullets.

  "Remember, only this rifle, then drop it and get away. The information you bring back to us about the enemy is more important than trying to shoot more of them.

  "And, the sound of your shots will tell us they're coming this way after all."

  Mary looked down the hill to the mansion, scanned the area with her weak binocular vision. The enemy had not arrived yet, unless it was a very stealthy scout.

  "They haven't gotten to the mansion yet. Rendezvous with me at the stables. I'm going to run up into the back road and find them, then I'll come back and we'll arrange a reception for them.

  "Now. Trot, not run. Keep together."

  Mary began to run all out at full superhuman speed.

  At the house she told them about the change in plans. Then she raced around the house and toward the back road. The land was flat until about a half mile away, when it began to tilt up for the next quarter mile.

  That's where the enemy was, perhaps twenty men afoot coming down the road at a trot. Cantering along behind were three horsemen. Further behind was a four-wheeled buggy with two men in it.

  Mary stopped to assess the situation. It was not good. There was no land behind her where her forces could ambush the enemy, even if they were with her.

  She needed to delay the enemy and notify her troops where they were. There was an easy way to do both.

  She studied the targets and extrapolated the effects of several attacks, chose the most productive one.

  She lined up the pistol sights on the heart-point of the front horseman, and squeezed the trigger. The shot was a flat spatting sound out in the open like this, no danger to the ears. But the flashing stab of light was one to the eyes, at least to their dark adaptation. And even more so to her super-dark adaptation.

  Damn! She should have foreseen that. So much for the idea that a super-mind would make no mistakes!

  Mary shook her head and blinked her eyes, then used her extrahuman body control to wash away the after-images in her eyes. She looked over her pistol sight again, seeing that what she had hoped had happened. The reeling and now falling body of the horseman, to her speeded-up time-sense not yet hitting the ground, had caused his horse to veer into the path of another. The collision felled the second rider and one of the horses. Meanwhile she was lining up her second shot, on one of the front men in the two rough lines of jogging men.

  This time when she squeezed the trigger she closed her eyes. Her muscle memory was so good that her pistol remained well on target till the pistol fired. Allowing a half-second for the flash to disappear she kept her eyes closed while she skipped a half-dozen feet to the right. By now the enemy would have seen where the second flash came from and be targeting her. Too bad there was a half-moon in the sky; a completely dark night would have hidden her better.

  In her new spot Mary knelt on one knee and used the other knee as a rest for her elbow. Cradling the pistol in the supporting hand she sought another target .

  The buggy at the rear, that was a good target. It was still coming on and had two men. This time she shot the horse in the carriage.

  She was only pe
ripherally aware of the buggy crashing and throwing the two men when she opened her eyes this time. She sought another target. The third horseman — no, he was racing away back toward Monkstown. He could be dealt with later, whether he went all the way or doubled back.

  The jogging men were scattering. She picked off one. Two more bullets in her cylinder. She moved a second time to the right, knelt again, searched for a target.

  The men were now dropping to the ground. With her time-sense slowed she was able to line up on one man while he was still falling, tracking his body until he struck ground. Then she fired.

  And missed because he was still moving, rolling over and over. This time she waited until he stopped and brought up his gun, a pistol. This time she did not miss.

  The pistol was empty and she swapped in the loaded cylinder. Definitely she was going to wear pockets the next time she was the cat lady!

  Even as she thought that she was herself rolling on the ground, moving to the left this time. The last two times she had moved had been to the right. Some of the enemy would be anticipating that she would continue that way and be aiming to that side.

  She fired six more times, taking out three of the enemy, one maybe just to a wound. Then her pistol was empty. Still, it could be used as a missile. She threw it whistling through the air but missed. The irregular geometry of the pistol made it difficult even for her to aim it well and predict its flight. That was not true of the empty cylinder; it struck one kneeling man in the upper chest and, if it did not kill him, at least put him out of the fight.

  She was in a fix now. She had no more weapons that would strike from a distance. And they did.

  As she rolled over a stone she gave a chuckle and stopped. Of course she had some distance weapons.

  She raised her head a bit to look for stones and heard a bullet whip by. If she had not had her fear responses turned off it would have scared the crap out of her. It had a nasty little moan amidst the flat cracking sound .

  There! She scrabbled on hands and knees, hardened to leather armor to protect from them from the rough stone beneath, to a little group of stones. None of them were rounded, unfortunately, so they would not fly in a nice straight path, but they would do.

  She fisted two in one hand and the best of the lot in the other. Twisting on the ground to look at the men she saw most of them lying on the ground shooting at her. The flashes were bright in her dark-enhanced vision. If only she could block out the flashes somehow...

  Even as she thought it her brain was coming up with a solution without her conscious direction. It filtered out the flashes as it processed the images coming into it. Light still desensitized the dark adaptation of the light receptors in her eyes, but this effect was not great. The flashes were fairly small and dim at this distance, and dark adaptation was an averaging over several seconds: the color receptors over about a second and nighttime receptors over about five seconds.

  Mary neither knew nor cared how her biological computer was doing its job. She just knew that she could suddenly see everything much better, the flashes washed out to ghosts of themselves.

  The whipcrack-moan of passing bullets was also being filtered to near-silence also. Mary had wished the sounds to be less distracting and her brain had granted her wish.

  Mary heaved her body up and whipped over her head the hand holding the one stone. It shot away at almost three hundred miles per hour, to be quickly followed by the two stones in her other hand. Then Mary was falling and rolling over and over to avoid being targeted.

  She did not totally succeed. A bullet plowed into one breast and turned it into a ragged tatter. Her body blocked off the shock and repaired the wound, her flesh flowing like water till the wound was gone. So was the breast; her body had sucked all the remaining fat in it into her body. It did the same to her other breast.

  Mary did not notice nor would she have cared that she had been turned into a double Amazon. She was working on two problems: where were some more stones, and what to do about wounds. She found the solution to both and willed her skin to turn to leather armor. It did so as she scooped up more stones and looked for targets.

  Two men were running away, two were running toward her — a nice symmetry, a remote amused part of her thought.

  She did not know it but the two men running away were the survivors of her first three missiles. The first missile had crushed one man's lower jaw and throat, dropping him in his tracks. The second had struck a rifle stock and turned it into splinters. It had blinded one of the escaping men in one eye. The third missile had taken an ear off the second running man, panicking him into literally shitting his pants and racing away from whoever was shooting at him with such deadly and silent accuracy.

  The two men running toward Mary were instantly targeted and killed, the first with a stone missile striking him midbreast and shattering both breast bone and the heart behind it, the other with a missile between the eyes that was aimed at his heart.

  A third man was on his knees and aiming at Mary. She dropped to grab for more missiles. She was struck twice in the torso before she hit the dirt. These were rifle bullets with massive hydrostatic shock that paralyzed her entire system for a good part of a second before her body began to handle the damage.

  Two men were now standing, shooting at her with pistols. Few shots struck her, some of them were far wide of the target. But it only took one to clip the slick hard leather skin protecting her skull and the rest of her body. The bullet glanced off, leaving behind a gouge and a concussion that threw Mary into unconsciousness.

  The standing men continued to fire until the screaming of another man penetrated.

  "Stop! Stop! You idiots! Save your ammo for them down there!" He was pointing down at the mansion.

  The firing stopped. The men looked at each other and down the hill. One man looked at the two retreating men, yelled "Hey, Charley! Come back! We got him!"

  The two escaping men paid him no heed, except that the blinded man knelt then fell to the ground. The earless man continued to run all out.

  The men walked quickly up to Mary's body. One shot twice into it before being shouted down. One of the shots clipped her heart and it began to bleed. Her repair system patched the ripped blood vessel and slowed the heart to reduce its load. Repairs began to reshape the heart.

  "You idiot! Can't you see she's dead?"

  The half-moon gave them just enough light to see that it was indeed a woman on the ground.

  "I was just making sure he was dead."

  "She! She! Don’t you have eyes?"

  "Holy shit! You're right. Do you think this is that cat thing?"

  One man kicked her body and jumped back as it rolled lifelessly over.

  "Nah, that's just a myth. See, she's just some chit in a costume."

  Another man knelt, fingered Mary's cool flesh. Her repair system had pulled all blood from the exterior of her body into the interior. She certainly felt dead to him.

  "It doesn't look like a costume," the kneeling man said. "See, it's all over her body. And it's hard. But you're right. The body's already starting to cool." He stood up.

  "Maybe we should shoot her some more. They say you can't kill a were cat."

  "Look at those wounds. What could live through that? And anyway, see they're not bleeding. That means her heart has stopped. Man, nobody comes back when that happens." What had actually happened is that her skin had scabbed over the wounds as soon as they were made.

  "What if there's more than one? I don't want to meet anymore like this."

  "Idiot! They've got millions of pounds in there. And jewels. One of the guys is wearing a turban with an emerald as big as your fist."

  "Where’s the boss? What does he say?"

  "Sullivan's gone. Probably funked out. That makes more for the rest of us."

  One man kicked the body on the ground a couple of times and followed the rest of the men jogging down the road.

  Mary came back to consciousness. She remained still, ears
tuned as sensitively as they could be. She heard no one nearby moving, breathing. She heard all sorts of night noises, grass whispering as it bent before the wind, insects chirping, a distant owl hooting. A horse was crunching grass perhaps a hundred feet away. Another lay on the ground not too far away, making a little snuffling sound that Mary identified as pain.

  She heard no human heart beating within hearing range, and she would have. The distinctive sound could penetrate even densely loud sounds, much less those of a normal night.

  She slitted her eyes open despite this, then opened them fully. She twisted her head to look all around, then sat up. She could see several bodies on the ground up the road, and at the very crest of the hill a man still running, whose heart would give out before he stopped.

  She saw the two horses, one grazing, the other rocking on the ground and shivering. Further up the hill lay a third horse, dead.

  Down the hill ... There were the remaining men, moving rapidly.

  Mary took stock of herself. She was repaired minimally, and her body was refining some of the repairs. Her heart and a knee had been damaged. The heart was functioning, the knee not. Her repair system had fused it into a whole.

  Mary willed the ongoing repairs to wait for a better time and got to her feet. Limping over to the hurt horse, she reached down and slit its throat. Normally she would have fixed it, but she did not have the time and bodily resources now. A lot of her body fat had been used up protecting and repairing her.

  She looked down the hill again. The sight of the men still jogging toward the mansion galvanized her. Her children, her whores, were in danger.

  She picked up several stones and began a hobbling trot downhill, after the men who were now walking rather than jogging. She grinned and began to hobble faster. The cat lady's hobble was as fast as a normal man's jog.

  As she neared the men she could see that they had stopped to catch their breath. She lifted one of the stones and paused, cursing herself. She had left several dead men at the battlefield behind her — probably with loaded guns. She was worse off than she thought.