The Cunning Mark

Holy crap.

I've gotten 11 pages written in an hour and a half (approximately).

I think I've got a winner here. Lucas Moon is getting some more attention from me.

End of Demented Rambling.

Kill Me Please Part Two

There is a certainty of imminent death brought on by having the barrel of a gun pressed to your temple. I'm on good speaking terms with death, and I don't believe in the cliche of your life flashing before your eyes. I do believe in the weakening of your bowels and also that you might have enough time to regret the decisions that have brought you to the point of death. Exhausted, injured, and utterly without options I pondered on the fact that the whole reason I was in this mess was because one man couldn't follow the rules.

If you try to look up "Lucas Moon" in the phone book, you won't find me there. Certainly there could be some other guy that shares a name with me, and maybe he's in the phone book, but none of my cell phones are listed. I don't keep a Yellowpages ad saying "Professional Hitman, specializes in the supernatural". You want an ad open for the public, I hear there's a guy in Chicago who might fit the bill for you. You want to contact me? It's not easy.

I don't object to taking on jobs. I'm not burdened by a conscious that regrets what I do for a living. Everyone has something that they excell at, and a lucky few are able to translate that natural talent into something that can provide them with money. For me, it's killing. I was born to be a killer, a predator walking among the lambs. It's instinct, it's pleasure, and if I didn't channel it the way I do I hate to think what kind of monster I'd be.

Because I'm good at killing, especially at killing the things that fall "beyond the norm", I'm able to command a high price for my services. I have a stable body of regular customers that manage to keep my schedule relatively full. Some of you may be horrified of that thought, but frankly violence is in our natures, just most of us can't bring ourselves to act on it. Even those institutions held as "good" or "pure" have need to remove someone from this earthly coil on occasion. One of my regular customers is the Church. Yes, the one in Rome. I doubt the Pope has ever seen a line item on the budget that describes paying a hit man, but the checks always cash.

I have strict rules regarding setting up a meeting with me. When you make a name for yourself in this business you run into two main dangers. First, you make enemies who will want to see you dead. Second, there's always some new up-and-comer looking to make a name for themselves by taking out the business's celebrities. With so many people gunning for you, it becomes natural to just assume that you are in someone's crosshairs at any given time. This isn't paranoia, it's just the dangers of the profession, like torrid sex affairs are a danger for politicians and TV elevangolists. My rules are in place to minimize the risks to both myself and my potential clients. All of my regulars understand and accept my rules.

My first rule is simple: You never schedule an appointment with me. I don't answer my phone, I don't have an answering service that keeps a copy of my calander. You want to reach me, you contact a phone number that always go voice mail. You leave details about yourself, and I contact you with a when and a where. This offers me the chance to research any new clients that have been referred to me by my regulars. Lowers the chance of an ambush or being hired for a job that is really a trap. I maintain multiple cell phones, each kept in a safety deposit box at a different bank. When the voice mail gets a message it sends a text message to the phone I keep at my house. I check it once a day, leaving it on only for as long as I need to in order to retrieve missed call messages, and then I visit the phones in question with fresh batteries and listen to the voice mails.

My second rule is also simple: If you're not one of my regular clients, you go through a test. This allows me to see if you can follow simple directions. The test also proves that you have the means to pay my fees, by checking to see if you can handle a down payment. To that end, new clients that have passed my screenings get told to drop a briefcase full of cash at a location and walk away. That simple. If they can handle doing that, and can afford the amount I set, which is a minimum of twenty thousand, then I contact them a second time with the location where we will meet, usually thirty minutes before I want to meet. Failure to follow my rules gets you fleeing in terror and a loss of a briefcase full of cash, with no meeting to show for it. Call it a penalty fee.

Regular customers don't go through this. They've already proven they can follow the rules. They get their own private cell phone number to contact when they want to hire me, and typically can get a meeting arranged almost as soon as I've received their message. That's one of the benefits of being a reliable customer, excellent customer service, and a hit man who likes doing business with you.

My new potential client had been refered to me by Marcus Gioni, who isn't the head of the crime families in the city, but he's the lieutenant who will inherit them. The referal had turned out to be an accountant who double as a mouse of a man. I had decided to set him up for the payment test for two reasons. The first was because I didn't want to anger a regular customer who had sent several good jobs my way. The second was because I couldn't fathom what this guy could want with a hit man whose reputation was centered around taking out supernatural creatures.

I arranged for him to drop the money at a construction yard at one in the morning. No lights, no witnesses, and plenty of high places for me to watch how well the mouse followed my rules. I had arrived early and taken a perch high enough to observe his action without risking his noticing me. The moon was half way to being full and hidden behind a patch of clouds.

The mouse, his real name was Arthur Cranshaw, arrived promptly on time and took the briefcase over to the barrel I had indicated as the drop point. I watched as he looked around the barrel, inside it, and then scanned the surrounding area. I waited for him to put the case inside the barrel and leave, just like I'd told him to. And waited. And then still waited. Arthur Cranshaw seemed to have failed to understand what "put the money in the barrel and leave" meant. Instead he was clutching the briefcase to his chest and looking around like he expected me to magically appear.

After half an hour I was annoyed. Forty-five minutes of waiting made me angry. After an hour the moon had come out and I was livid. I'd had time to study Arthur Cranshaw, and my impression of him hadn't changed. He had a small nose, a hairline that had fled long ago, and wire-framed glasses. His glasses were comically large, and I couldn't help but compare him to the Disney mouse. He was slightly overweight, the danger of a desk job, and he didn't look comfortable in his suit, possibly because it must have been purchased when his waistline was smaller. But the most important thing about him was that he was still standing there and not following my rules.

It was around 2:30 in the morning when Mr. Arthur Cranshaw finally did something that set me off. Apparently the fact that he had been standing around for over an hour waiting me to make an appearance I had no intention on making wasn't good enough for him. He must not have felt like a complete fool, because without warning he starte to call out, "Mr. Wolfman! Mr. Wolfman, are you there?"

Let's get this straight. I didn't come up with the name. I hate people calling me it. At one point a man named Gus who works at my favorite pizza parlor decided to use it as a joke. Unfortunately a sleezebag that works for Gioni overheard him, and the name spread like wildfire. I've made a concentrated effort on letting everyone I can know that referring to me as "the Wolfman" was a good way to end up holding your intesitines in your hands.

"Mr. Wolfman, I have the money like you asked."

That was it. I couldn't take it anymore.

I leaped down from my perch and stormed toward Cranshaw, determined to show the mouse what happens when it gets the big bad wolf angry. The problem with playing the part of the big bad wolf is that you have to be angry, and when you're angry you make mistakes.

Like breaking your own rules.

I didn't bother with stealth. I didn't bother with trying to make myself look scary, because you can never do as good a job as what you naturally do when you're furious beyond all belief.

Cranshaw wasn't a heavy man. Even with during the daytime of the new moon I could have picked the guy up with little effort on my part. With the moon waxing half full and feeding my strength I could have launched him past the roof. I settled for slamming him into the nearest girder with one hand, tearing the briefcase away from him with my other hand. His head slammed into the girder with an audible "clang" and I smelled the strong scent of urine. His glasses flew from his face and happened to land right next to my foot. Stepping on them was a sheer coincidence too, I promise you. If I had enough time I'd "coincidence" him into the hospital.

I got my face up close with his, let him feel the heat of by breath as I snarled at him. He must have been far-sighted, because he didn't seem to be having any trouble seeing me right now. I could see the reflection of my yellow eyes in his own. I bared my teeth so that as many of them showed as possible. My teeth are pointier than most people's. baring them at someone tends to get the desired effect.

"Is English not your first language? I gotta speak French, maybe Spanish, to get you to understand? 'Mettez l'argent dans le baril et partez'? 'Ponga el dinero en el barril y váyase'? Do you understand now?" His bladder betrayed him again.

"I... I don't understand, I thought we had a meeting Mr. Wolf- grrck!" He stopped talking because I had dropped the briefcase and grabbed his throat, shutting off his windpipe. My nails were digging into his flesh.

"Don't. Call. Me. That." I barely even spoke at a whisper. I'd narrowed my eyes, and my nose was almost touching Cranshaw's as I kept tightening my grip on him. Cranshaw was starting to turn interesting shades of blue and purple.

"Gack, gurk!" He managed to get out.

I have excellent hearing, beyond what anyone would expect possible. I heard the click of the bolt action of the rifle closing. My anger drained from me instantly as my survival instinct kicked in. I threw Cranshaw to one side as I dove to the other. Maybe the shooter would get confused and hit him by mistake. Maybe he'd just be surprised and slip on squeezing the trigger a fraction of a second. I didn't really care so long as the end result was that I avoided a bullet wound. This all assumed that I had correctly predicted where the shot would be coming from based on the direction of the sound of the click. For all I knew, I could be leaping into an even better position for the shooter to hit me.

The bullet didn't hit either of us, though it took a large chunk of the ground out. I landed in a roll, my eyes darting back and forth as I tried to pick out where the shooter was. I noticed Cranshaw land in a heap some distance away, sucking in large amounts of air. I also noticed that the briefcase of money was only a few feet from where the bullet had impacted. If I wanted some profit out of this exchange, I was going to need to put myself back into position to take a bullet in the head.

I should have known. Whenever someone breaks the rules, something bad happens. It's the universal rule. And it never gets broken.

Kill Me Please Part One

In my life I have found several activities that should be avoided to guarantee a long and happy life. Most of them were discovered while I was in the midst of performing those activities. This case proved to be no exception. So let me state with some authority that if you are ever placed in a situation where you must choose between staying in a moving car with an unconscious driver or leaping from said moving car, you will not be living a long and happy life. You might have a promising career in being a smear on the highway, but there's really no room for advancement in that.

Faced with two undesirable options I chose the one that offered the greatest life expectancy. As the sedan sped a minimum of eighty miles an hour down the highway toward the guard rail and the abrupt lack of ground beyond, I forced my door open and propelled myself into the air. Like a carnival stuntman fired from a cannon, or their idol Gonzo the Great, I sailed through the air until gravity and the laws of physics forced me into a landing. I scraped along the asphalt, over the curb and into a nice soft patch of dirt filled with not so nice sharp rocks. Behind me I left a fair portion of skin and blood, and some tatters of denim and cloth from my clothes. I had landed on my right side but everything hurt like hell. I decided not to focus on assessing my injuries at the moment and instead paid attention to the sedan I had abruptly exited.

Two of Marcus Gioni's goons had been keeping me company in the soon to be airborne sedan. One, the driver, was slumped down in his seat unconscious from the force of the kick to his head I'd given him. His body weight was shifted just right so that his foot was apparently still pressing down on the accelerator. The other goon was trying to grab the wheel but kept losing his balance as the car swerved violently. He actually did manage to grab the wheel, but he turned it too far and the car, already going beyond the speeds most drivers can safely control, skidded too much and suffered a side impact with the guard rail that actually flipped the sedan over the rail without causing more than a large dent to the metal. The highway we had been on crossed over a busy road, and the drop was rather spectacular. I couldn't see the landing, but the crash was loud enough to make up for it. A few moments later I heard that unmistakeable sound of two automobiles colliding, and I new some unfortunate driver had been unable to move out of the way before it started raining sedans. His bad luck, but my good fortune; if the goons had somehow survived the fall the second car smashing into whatever was left from the sedan had surely killed them.

I heard the screech of tires coming to a sudden halt behind me. I half rolled, half flopped as I turned to look at the source of the noise. I had forgotten about the second sedan, this one filled with four more of Gioni's goons. Cursing whatever dieties chose to listen, I forced myself to take a quick assessment of my injuries. My head ached in complaint, but I quickly determined that I scraped a good portion of myself off on the highway and the whole right side of my body from the shoulder down stung horribly. My shoulder was radiating pain and didn't look right. I hoped that I had only dislocated it and not suffered worse, but with the speed that Gioni's goons would be upon me I didn't have the luxury of time needed to try and pop it back into place. My vision was off, though I couldn't quite figure out how, and I worried that I'd suffered a concussion. I stopped my assessment long enough to notice that Gioni's men were pulling guns. Knowing Gioni he'd outfitted them properly. Having a client who knows your weaknesses turn on you was a very unpleasant thing.

I forced myself to my knees with my left arm, then stumbled to a half-crouching, half-standing position as I swayed in place like a flower in a strong headwind. One of the goons was a poor shot and a bullet bounced a few feet off target, spraying me with dirt. That was all the incentive I needed and I began to run. Well, I ran as best I could, but whatever was wrong with my vision had thrown my balance and depth perception off and I would honestly have called it more like power-walking than running. Any form of locomotion was better than being an unmoving target and I kept trying to build more momentum. More bullets sprayed dirt around me and I took a moment to praise Gioni for getting his goons from an after-market mercenary source. Name brand goons would have already splattered my gray matter on the ground. Hell, quality goons would have simply ran me over with the car instead of stopping. And the more I focused on making bad jokes about Gioni's hired help the more likely they were to actually become accurate shots. I needed to put everything I had into building up speed, and beyond that I needed a place to retreat.

Trained instinct and keen perception allowed me to take stock of my surroundings as I ran. Not far away was the drop that had claimed the sedan I had lept from, behind me was the gaggle of guntoting goons, but the ground began a more gentle descent not far away, and beyond the steep hill I could see a concrete utility squatting below. Reaching the building was not beyond the realm of possibility, but it would not be an easy feat. I reached the beginning of the descent and paused to try and figure out the safest me to descend on my unsteady feet.

One of the goons got lucky.

Pain tore through my hip on my right side and I fell. I slammed into the earth, falling into a roll that brought me the speed I'd wanted but with the side effect of a rather bumpy ride the whole way down. On the bright side, I was no longer quite so attractive a target for the goons. They would have to stop at the top of the hill or risk taking a tumble themselves, and the longer they stood still at the top the greater the distance between us. They hadn't proved capable shots so long as I was moving and if I had any luck left to me they wouldn't spontaneously develop sniper-level marksman skills.

I reached the bottom of the hill and kept rolling, covering a better distance than I could have made running in my condition. The goons continued to waste ammunition by filling the air around me with lead, and adrenaline kicked in. I got my feet and was running before I knew what I had done. My injuries from leaping out of the sedan no longer hurt as much, and my head felt clearer. The healing was slow during the daylight, but it gave me the edge beyond that of mortal man, enough that I still had a chance of making it to safety. The building was forty yards away. Thirty. Twenty. Bullets came too close to me for comfort, but none struck me. Fifteen. Ten. Angry shouts behind me and a pause in the barking of gunfire alerted me that the goons were starting their own descent. Five.

I hit the door and bounced back. It was easier than slowing my momentum, even if it did drop me to the ground. The andrenaline was abandoning me now. I didn't have much time. I pulled myself back up and tried the door. Locked. I cursed in several languages, my favorite being in Italian, and I looked around for an alternative. I spied a ladder to the roof further down. It was suspended fairly high off the ground, probably requiring some sort of tool to hook onto it and disengage it so work could be done on the roof. I didn't have any kind of tool like that, so I was just going to have to try and jump.

If I'd been human I doubt I could have made it. As it was my injuries, and the fact that it was daytime, sapped enough of my strength that I was barely able to grab the bottom rung with one hand and hang there suspended in mid-air. I flailed about with my right hand to try and grab the rung and start hauling myself up, then I remembered that I had dislocated that shoulder. Gritting my teeth, I tightened my grip on the rung and started swaying there, building up my momentum before I slammed myself into the concrete wall in an attempt to pop my shoulder back into place. It didn't work, so I tried it again. And then again. A fourth time, and by now my left hand was getting sweaty and I was afraid that if I swung again I'd lose my grip and fall.

A bullet impacted with the wall a little to my left. At least one of the goons had reached the bottom of the hill and had decided  to start shooting again. Out of time and out of options, I forced my right arm to reach for the next rung and held on as tight as I could, pulling myself up. It hurt - gods did it hurt! - but I managed it. I was now able to brace my knee on the bottom rung and managed to start pulling myself up the ladder. More bullets thudded into the wall and a fine white dust showered over me. I kept my concentration on pulling myself up. At the top of the ladder I swung myself onto the roof and kicked back against the ladder to push myself away from the edge, leaving the goons without a target.

I started to laugh to myself, knowing that they'd never make the jump up to the ladder. I doubted they'd pull off some sort of cheerleader's pyramid to let them reach the ladder. I had time to rest and recover. Not much, but something was better than nothing, and even with my natural healing slowed I would still take whatever I could get.

The sound of the ladder creaking and coming dislodged stopped my laughter. I must have jostled it too much when I kicked off against it. The ladder crashed into the ground. I stared at the edge of the roof in shock. Times had been tough lately, and I was beginning to think some higher power had it out for me.

The first of the goons crested the top of the roof and walked over to me, his swagger telling me that he was confidant that I was done for. I found it hard to argue with him as he put the gun to my temple.

Scopata, I thought to myself. It's Italian. Go look it up yourself.