Path of the Tiger, стр. 434
Hrothgar stared into the assassin’s dead eyes, and even he could not help but shudder at the terrifying lack of anything even vaguely resembling a soul in the dull brown irises. Still, the body was alive; a heart, however cold and reptilian it may be, pumped blood through those veins while lungs drew in air as the man’s muscular chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.
‘Let me do that,’ Hrothgar grunted.
He retrieved his tablet from a drawer in the table and sent a message, already composed, to Mira, informing her of the success of phase one of this evening’s plan, and the resultant demise of her fellow board members. After this he stuffed the tablet into one of his pockets and turned back to CC-105.
‘Listen CC-105, I am an emissary of the Mighty One,’ Hrothgar said. ‘And as such, you must obey my every command, yes?’
CC-105 nodded expressionlessly.
‘Well then, turn around. Put your hands on the table.’
He watched intently as CC-105 capitulated, and lust throbbed with hot violence in his temples.
‘Good, good,’ he growled as he began to unbuckle his belt. ‘Now spread your legs apart. Yes … yes…’
Before he could go any further there was a hammering on the door, and Hrothgar felt the telltale tingle in his blood and bones that heralded the presence of another beastwalker. As desperately aroused as he was, sex would just have to wait; this was either Joao and his troops, or Gisborne and the Rebels, and if it was the latter, things were looking dire for him and CC-105.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Stand up, hurry!’ he said to the assassin, who complied immediately.
He dashed over to where he had dropped the sawn-off shotguns and picked them up with deft haste. The banging on the door continued, and Hrothgar tossed one of the shotguns over to the assassin. Extra shells had been duct-taped to the exterior of each firearm, and both Hrothgar and the assassin ripped off the tape and snapped the barrels open to reload the shotguns.
‘Behind the table, hurry!’ Hrothgar hissed. He sprang back and crouched behind one end of the table, aiming his shotgun at the door, upon which the hammering was growing increasingly frantic.
‘Don’t fire until I give the command,’ he whispered to the assassin, who gave him a subtle nod.
With a sharp crack the doors gave way. From the darkness of the corridor outside with its hellish flickering of red from a malfunctioning emergency light stormed Joao, brandishing his trademark pair of gold-plated and diamond-studded Desert Eagles. He was accompanied by a squadron of his own troops, loyal only to him and not the Huntsmen, for now that the Alliance had been so quickly and violently dissolved, the Huntsmen had become as much Hrothgar’s enemies as the Rebels.
When Hrothgar saw that it was Joao, he breathed out a sigh of relief and eased his finger off the trigger.
‘Joao, my comrade!’ he shouted. ‘So good of you to finally arrive!’
Joao’s nostrils flared and his thick-lidded eyes narrowed as he lowered his twin Desert Eagles.
‘Dey in, an’ they done gone take out whole Huntsman force on d’ ground floor,’ he half-growled, half-wheezed.
Before Joao had become a beastwalker he had survived a gunshot wound in which the bullet had passed through his throat. Although the projectile had missed his spine it had irrevocably damaged his vocal cords, beyond what the power of his beastwalker blood could heal, and this meant that when he spoke, he sounded like a survivor of a laryngectomy.
Hrothgar stood up, straightening himself up to his full seven foot height and stretching out his broad soldiers, subtly asserting his physical prowess before Joao’s ragtag band of thugs of various nationalities, some of whom had been soldiers under his command in the war, while others of whom were members of various criminal gangs from around the world.
‘Then the whore Adriana has escaped, as planned,’ Hrothgar said, ‘and has let the Rebels in. Good, good. Everything is going according to plan so far. The whore is the key to snaring Gisborne as well. We must take him alive at all costs. Your men know this, do they not?’
Joao nodded, his heavily scarred face twisted into a permanent sneer from a network of deep gash-scars; souvenirs of a survived torture session, while a prisoner of war during the Mozambican Civil War.
‘Me an’ m’boys know ‘dis, Hrothgar. We take d’ Tiger alive. D’ others, d’ Rebels … we leave none alive.’
His men murmured in agreement, cocking their weapons.
Hrothgar nodded. ‘We take Gisborne alive … we have to.’
‘You send d’ messages, you send ‘dem yet?’
‘Shit, I sent one, but almost forgot the other one.’
He reached into his jacket and took out his tablet, and then punched in his password and then swiped through to his email, where another pre-composed message was waiting to be sent. The recipients were all of the Alliance beastwalkers who were scattered across the world, and the contents of the email told them exactly what had just happened here: the abrupt dissolution of the Alliance by himself, Joao and Sigurd, and the immediate and irreversible consequences of it. They were informed that from this moment on they would be actively targeted by the Huntsmen, and that their only choice at this point would be to either join the Rebels or his new organisation, which was allied to an ancient power that was rising from the ashes of history.
He clicked ‘send’ and then smiled grimly.
‘It is done; the Alliance is officially dead. We will see now who joins with us, and who flees to the ranks of the Rebels. They have no other choice now; outside of these two options, there is only death.’
As Joao was about to reply an electrical sizzle needled both beastwalkers’ skin, so they swung around and raised their weapons. Before they could squeeze the triggers though, a female voice cut