The Bodyguard Page 4

  Shade continued to gape at him, and it occurred to him that his eyes were dilated- the idiot was high, and perhaps, he thought hopefully, he believed him to be nothing more than a hallucination. A trippy side effect of whatever the hell he was on.

  He would try to go with that, and see where it led him.

  He stepped back slowly, moving toward the door, as though if he moved slowly enough he might wipe away his presence from the drummer's addled memory.

  This was not the case, however.

  Proving himself far more lucid than he'd perceived, Shade leapt for a nearby phone, smashing his finger against the buttons, and already yelling, “Help, please someone-” before the call had even been picked up.

  He lunged forward, and smashed into Shade with the heft of his weight. He slammed him to the floor of the dressing room, knocking down a chair in the process. The corded phone dangled over the edge of the table, swinging through the air, and he could hear the voice on the receiver beckoning, asking what it was Shade wanted.

  He grabbed the phone, and slammed it down against the receiver before Shade could call for help.

  But then he turned, and saw that Shade was making his way for the door- he'd wormed out from beneath his weight in those fleeting seconds, without him even noticing.

  He lunged forward after him, but Shade's hand was already on the doorknob, pulling the door to the hall open wide.

  “No! Fuck, fuck, no!”

  He leapt, closing the distance between the two of them, and managed to grab Shade by the ankle as his body came down. The drummer's world was pulled out from under him, his body collapsing forward like a timbered tree. His head hit the door, which then slammed back shut, and he hit the ground hard, knocking out a tooth, which spiraled across the floor with a bloody red stream spurting out in its wake.

  For God's sake! It wasn't supposed to go like this... It just wasn't!

  He had to think fast in order to divert catastrophe...

  He... He would tie him up!

  Yeah, that's what he would do...

  Stuff a rag in his mouth and tie him to his chair, keep him from alerting anyone to his presence until he'd managed to make his escape.

  It might work... It might actually work!

  Except it wouldn't.

  Shade, the son of a bitch, was writhing like a fiend beneath him, struggling to get back up and escape.

  “Help! Somebody!”

  “No! No! Shut the hell up!”

  He didn't want to hurt this little bastard, yet every little thing Shade did was compelling him more and more to do so, making it necessary that he do just that.

  He crammed a gloved hand against Shade's face, cupping it over his mouth and holding it there tight. Shade's muffled voice continued to come through at a lower volume, and his attacker looked down crazily into those dilated eyes of his, trying to drill the point into his thick skull.

  “I said shut the hell up! I don't want to have to fucking hurt you!”

  Despite his tooth having just been knocked out, and his mouth likely being in terrible pain, Shade was undeterred as he opened his jaws wide, then brought them crushing down around his attacker's hand, squeezing them like a vice, and leaving him howling with pain.

  “GAHHHHHHH!”

  What happened next wasn't something he did consciously.

  It took place completely out of reflex- a response to pain that he had zero control over, but whose consequences cast this whole operation into a whole new level of seriousness.

  His free arm seemed to function independently of him as it pulled out the knife, lifted it up into the air, and zoomed down in a vicious arc, right for the center of Shade's heaving chest. He was actually shocked as he felt the blade sinking in, ripping through flesh and muscle, the hot spurts of blood bubbling out, spilling onto his clothes.

  What the hell had he just done?

  His eyes wide, he lifted his weight up from off of his victim, his entire body shaking.

  Shade's eyes were wider than ever, unblinking, but he wasn't dead yet. Instead he was in shock, his mind still struggling to catch up with what had been done to his body, unable even to begin to process the horror of it.

  His attacker felt sick, and actually felt tears beginning to dampen the eye holes of his mask.

  It wasn't supposed to go like this... This wasn't supposed to have happened...

  Shade's jaw worked through the air, and little sounds piped out from between his lips, like he was trying to form words, but had lost the ability to do so.

  Looking down at the wound in his chest, his attacker knew there was no way he was going to survive... All he had left were the throes of death, which would be both painful and, quite possibly, very noisy.

  It was better to spare him the agony of those final moments, and better for him to avoid the sound of his dying, which might attract highly unwanted attention to the scene of the crime.

  Very slowly, he brought his knife forward again, genuine remorse in his eyes as he looked down into Shade's dying face. He almost, almost found himself saying “I'm sorry” before finishing him off.

  But then he second-guessed himself...

  No... He could show no remorse.

  If he humanized him, he might not be able to bring himself to do what needed to be done, much less make a run for it once the act had been completed.

  He needed to be relentless... Unmerciful...

  He needed to place his own survival, his own escape, beyond any and all other factors...

  He narrowed his eyes, turning this from an act of necessity into an act of sheer hatred.

  He lifted the knife once again, and sliced, cutting a neat line across the center of Shade's neck.

  _____

  Desiree hadn't heart a single moment of any of it, not a single sound- nor had anyone.

  Now, though, she did hear the swelling of the crowd beyond the stage, chanting for her, “Desiree, Desiree, Desiree!”

  A glance at the clock then confirmed for her what she already knew- it was almost showtime.

  “Desiree, you better get things wrapped up in there, we're about ready to start here very shortly.”

  She nodded, as though the speaker on the other hand could somehow perceive her doing so. Across the room, Julian took note of the gesture, and their eyes met. She gestured to him to come over, and he crossed the room obediently.

  “Hey, we're about to get started here in a few minutes. Do you think you could run and get Shade for me? Assuming he isn't high as a kite at the moment...”

  “I dunno, that seems like a pretty big assumption to make,” Julian said with that typically beautiful grin of his. Desiree laughed, and he turned to go. “Sure, I'll go get him.”

  She looked after him with lust in her eyes as he made his way to the door, unable to avoid watching his beautiful ass as it shifted from side to side in his jeans.

  It was so beautiful that it almost made a girl want to cry...

  Just then, however, Desiree looked back and saw that several of her adolescent fans were just as interested in Julian's ass as she was, the sight of it almost as much of an attraction as Desiree herself to their female teenage minds. She felt a hot wave of jealousy swelling inside her, and the contempt she'd been feeling toward these spoiled kids finally congealed completely in her chest.

  “Alright,” she said, forcing a smile that was bizarrely convincing, “I'm afraid we're going to have to wrap things up now, I'm about to go on stage. It was so lovely meeting all of you!”

  Who would have thought those acting classes she'd taken in high school might one day have paid off so handsomely for her?

  Julian, meanwhile, made his way down the hallway as instructed, not anticipating in the least the events that were about to unfold.

  He walked up to the door of Jason and Shade's dressing room, then rapped a “shave and a haircut, two bits” knock against the door.

  “Ground Control to Major Tom,” he called in, “Desiree told me to come and get you, you
're on in like five minutes.”

  He waited for a moment, anticipating a response. There was none.

  He was more irritated than worried at first- this was not atypical behavior for Shade. In spite of his proficient drumming and his key contributions to Desiree's performances, he often had the tendencies of a slacker, and it wasn't always the easiest thing in the world to try and get him motivated.

  “Ay! Shade! We need to get a move on!”

  He knocked again, this time more forcefully.

  Still no answer.

  Was he even in there?

  “Shade, let's go!' he said a third time, twisting the doorknob, and intending to push his way inside.

  The door, however, remained resolutely in place.

  “What the hell?”

  He pushed again, but it refused to budge.

  He furrowed his brow.

  He placed an ear against the door, listening for any signs of his presence.

  Was he even in there, or had he run off someplace right before the show was about to start?

  It was then that Julian's eyes fell downward, and he saw something that made his heart skip a beat.

  A pool of red liquid oozed its way slowly from beneath the door, expanding nearly to the tips of his shoes before he managed to make sense of it in his mind.

  “No... Oh no...” he stammered, reeling with fright. He stepped back, and slammed his body hard against the door, trying his damnedest to bust it in.

  “Come on! Come on!” he grunted, striking it repeatedly, to no avail. He stopped, his shoulder aching, the door refusing to budge an inch.

  Then he turned his head.

  Dozens of feet away, way down at the opposite end of the hallway, a figure stood. He was watching him intently, peering through a ski mask, clearly with a vested interest in the proceedings underway.

  Julian didn't think. Didn't hesitate for a moment.

  He simply reacted, going off like some volatile chemical mixture.

  “HEY!” he boomed, bolting toward the man.

  The killer was off.

  He shoved through the stage door where he'd been standing emerging into the outside world and disappearing from view.

  Julian thundered down the hall at top speed, spanning the distance in a matter of seconds, though it felt in his desperation and urgency as though it took somewhere in the vicinity of hours.

  He stumbled out into the dim light of the late evening, the sunlight still lingering in the sky, and the neon lights of buildings taking on the role of illumination. A few passersby gave him an odd look as he stood there, his eyes scanning the surrounding, and he disregarded them in search of his foe.

  There appeared to be no sign of him anywhere, the task of locating him not made any easier by the dying light of the evening.

  Only after about twenty seconds did it occur to him that, once he'd made it outside, the man would likely have removed his mask in order to appear less suspicious. Once he'd made this observation, he focused in almost immediately on a man in the distance, almost two blocks away at this point, whose body type seemed equivalent to that of the man he'd seen fleeing through the stage door.

  He looked around in all directions, making sure that he wouldn't be passing up a better lead in pursuit of this particular suspect, then strode his way toward the man as quickly as he could without being conspicuous about it.

  Several blocks passed, and Julian grew more and more confident that this was his guy the closer in he came. He was looking around nervously, but slyly. It was subtle enough that no one would likely notice had they not been looking for it, but obvious enough that to Julian it was unmistakable. His head tilted left and right, his eyes sometimes looking back over his shoulder, checking his surroundings. He had on a dark hoodie- probably black, though he couldn't tell for certain in the dim light, as well as a baseball cap of some kind and sunglasses.

  As if these collective details weren't evidence enough, Julian at last came in close enough to catch sight of blood spattered across the back of the hoodie.

  That was all the proof he needed...

  But now, how to get close without him taking notice?

  He dipped and dove among the crowd of New Yorkers, totally oblivious to the game of cat and mouse taking place between the two of them. Any time the man's head would turn, Julian would quickly slip behind the tallest or fattest person in his vicinity, or behind the wares of some street vendor, many of whom cursed him out before he continued his way along.

  “Come on... Come on...” he muttered under his breath, growing more and more nervous as he drew near, certain that at any moment the man would catch sight of him and bolt for it.

  He didn't seem to be, though...

  He was getting closer and closer, closing in from his right side. He gripped the pistol he carried with him in his pocket, hoping against hope that he didn't need to use it. The area he was in was so crowded, so flooded with people, that having to fire a gun could result in tragedy. It all hinged on how the man reacted upon his approach, and how effectively he would be able to get near him without being subjected to violence.

  He was almost there now... Almost there...

  And the man saw him.

  He shot through the crowd like a bat out of hell, bumping people out of his way and racing down the street.

  Julian broke into a run, more carefully weaving through the crowded street and trying not to hit anyone, all while keeping the man in his sights and trying to keep him from getting too far out of range.

  “Damn it!” he yelled, unable to navigate the crowd, and finally he had to run out into the street, needing a clear path if he had a hope in hell of staying caught up. Cars honked at him as he raced down the road, taxis frequently missing him by a fraction of an inch as he moved, but his determination so great that it seemed little more than incidental to him, of no real genuine concern.

  He needed to catch this man... Needed to stop him before he got away completely, which could reasonably happen at any moment.

  And then, for a brief instant, he thought he'd done just that.

  “No... No!” he said, looking around, unable to figure out what had become of him, in the instant it had taken for him to run past a lamp post.

  But then he found him again, his cap just disappearing down the entrance to the subway.

  Julian snarled, and plunged down after him, taking the stares two at a time in pursuit, lucky he didn't break his neck with each rough landing.

  He got to the base of the stairs just in time to see the man shoving an older woman out of the way to the ground, to shouts of profanity from the crowd around her. Several people rushed to help her up, and the man proceeded to hop the turn-style onto the subway platform, holding an arm up over his face, Julian assumed, to avoid it being recorded on the subway's closed circuit cameras.

  Julian rushed after him, careful not to shove anyone as the man had done- he nevertheless received a similar hail of insults, as though by chasing the man who'd knocked the old woman down, he was somehow just as responsible for her fall.

  A police officer came up to him as he was leaping over the turn-style, telling him to hold it. Julian wasn't about to stop though, and by the time the officer had attempted to pass through the turn-style without paying, got stuck, tried similarly to hop over it, failed, and finally swiped his metro card to get through properly, both men were completely out of sight.

  The killer ran along the platform as fast as he could, and despite his determination to bring the bastard to justice, Julian wondered just how the hell he was managing to go so long without stopping to rest, given how badly his arms and legs and lungs now hurt.

  He supposed the drive for survival could make one capable of rather incredible feats, under the right circumstances...

  Down here, the thinner crowds of bystanders made a concerted effort to stay clear from the path of the chase. Whenever the two men came into their proximity, they suddenly all cleared to either side of the platform, reminding Julian w
eirdly of Moses parting the Red Sea.

  Julian had a brief spark of an idea that was gone almost as soon as it had come. He'd thought about pulling out his pistol and shooting the killer in the leg, given how much clearer his shot would be down here, and how less likely it would be that he might hit someone.