Path of the Tiger, стр. 25
Pedro Hernández had occupied a high position in Sigurd’s global network of human traffickers, and the Spaniard and his henchmen had also conducted a number of other decidedly unsavoury activities in the United States and Mexico. Much of this had been done under the orders of the Alliance, of which Sigurd was one of the most high-ranking leaders.
With growing excitement William checked the number that had just called. When he discovered that the call had come from Bangkok, he smiled humourlessly to himself; his suspicions had been correct. He knew that Sigurd had a base in Thailand, and now he had a more precise location.
‘I’m on to you, Ice Bear,’ he muttered darkly. ‘The Tiger will have his vengeance.’
At that moment an entirely different piece of music cut through the silence; this time it was Iggy Pop’s Search and Destroy, one of William’s personalised ringtones.
‘Ricky,’ murmured William to himself with a smile, and the seriousness of the previous moment dissipated into the morning air as he answered the call.
‘Hey old friend. Yeah, I’m doing well, mate, doing just fine. Come on over, we can continue that chess game.’
After he hung up he smiled to himself, with the riotous anarchy of Search and Destroy still ringing in his head.
‘Christ Ricky, I remember when you and I jumped to that song like possessed madmen at one of Iggy’s shows in Los Angeles in ‘78,’ he mumbled to himself, lost in the effervescent bliss of reminiscence. A look of sadness clouded his eyes as the realisation of what he would soon need to do, what he had been putting off doing for years, came to the fore with the sudden shock of a car wreck. ‘I’m going to have to cut you off Ricky. As it always is, with this curse of mine, this … this…’
He pounded his scarred fist against the wall in frustration, and tears of both anger and sorrow filled his eyes as he thought of all of the mortal friends he had watched grow old and die over the years, as he recalled all of the people he had had to cut out of his life to protect them from his terrible secret, the curse that had been with him since that fateful encounter with the enchanted beast all those years ago.
‘Well,’ he muttered to himself, ‘if it’s going to be a final goodbye to an old friend, I may as well make it one worth remembering.’
He walked over to his liquor cabinet, an ornate Ming Dynasty antique, and rifled impatiently through its contents.
‘Come on, come on, I know I’ve got just the right thing for the occasion, it’s in here somewhere…’
After a few moments he selected a bottle, and then picked up his phone and dialled a number.
‘Hello, is that Rosellini and Sons? Yes. This is Ben Young,’ he said, ‘and if you check your records, you’ll see that I’ve made fairly regular use of your moving and storage services. Ben Young, yes. Listen, can you get your boys over here tomorrow? I’ll need the whole apartment, all the antiques and furniture, packed up and stored. I’ll be gone by tonight, so it’s very urgent. Emergency business out of the country, y’see. I’ll pay cash, as usual. Great, thank you.’
The sadness at the thought of having to cut yet another friend out of his life would not be placated, however hard he tried to get his thoughts off of the matter. And in the darkest corridors of his mind, clawed, scaly feet scampered from shadow to shadow, whispering their mutinous blasphemies.
Yes, the creatures murmured to William, there was a way to escape the sadness. It would be temporary, but it was guaranteed to work.
‘No,’ he whispered to the empty apartment. ‘Not now. I have to stop this, I have to. I can’t keep relying on the … on the junk, the fucking junk.’
But as he stood up the pain came back with a bayonet charge, impaling his body with a thousand thrusts of sharpened steel. All these lives, all these years, all this lost and wasted love, all this terrible, soul-withering sorrow. It was overwhelming, indefatigable and utterly, completely crushing.
‘Take the medicine,’ the dark beings whispered, caressing William’s skin with the razor-tips of their talons. ‘Take it. Just a little, just enough to push out the pain.’
An image of Ricky’s innocent, trusting smile thrust its way to the forefront of William’s vision, and he dropped to his knees as tears began to stream down his cheeks. His hands started to shake, and a sob clawed its way up his throat.
‘All right,’ he whimpered. ‘All right, all right, all right … just one hit. Just a tiny one. Just the littlest of hits. That’s all, that’s all, just to kill the pain. Just a little, little one.’
Then he struggled onto his feet and trudged over to the drawer where he kept his heroin.
***
A few hours later a knock at the door awoke William from his semi-stupor with a violent start. He scrambled up in a panic from the floor where he had passed out and yanked the hypodermic syringe out of his forearm. Drugs had a much shorter effect on beastwalkers, with their special blood, so he was alert right away. With a pounding heart he grabbed his revolver and crept up to the CCTV monitor, pressing himself flat against the wall. He kept his firearm trained on the door and his finger on the trigger, breathing in in short, shallow gasps. However, when the monitor revealed the portly, hunched-over figure of Ricky standing outside the door he exhaled a sigh of relief, and hurriedly hid the gun and the drugs.
A few seconds later he opened the door, beaming with joy as Ricky let out a loud, chattering laugh; one of his friend’s many delightful idiosyncrasies. The two old friends embraced with warm, unchecked affection and