Devils in Exile

Snowflakes

Maven cruised past the granite marker embedded in the stone wall next to an electronic gate. The driveway curled into the trees, the house a mystery from the road. Royce renting an unsold mansion in the down real estate market.

Maven pulled over some fifty yards past the gate. Adrenaline was sending weird panic impulses to his head, his deep oxygenating breathing fogging the windshield.

Ricky lay against the passenger door, his head against the cool window. The rain was fading, and the faint shadow of it sliding down the glass made Ricky appear to be melting. Maven’s aunt had once taken him to a wax museum when he was a kid, and Ricky resembled those figures now — neither truly alive, nor quite dead either.

Maven went over the thin stone wall with the gun bag, ducking through wet hemlock trees to the edge of the lawn. He was wide left of the driveway, the big house shining brightly before him, every window lit as though for a party. The rain was turning to light snow, lit brilliantly by prowler lights glaring down from the high corners and up onto the house from the ground. Even the drive was ringed by low accent lights.

The man standing outside the front steps was a clear silhouette, hands in his pockets, smoking a cigar. Maven slid the rifle out of the gun bag. No wind, but the falling snow played with his one-eyed perception, giving him a sensation of rising.

No sound cover either. Maven relaxed his shoulders and sighted the target. He did not want to fire twice. He squeezed the trigger and the rifle cracked and the silhouette went down. Cigar smoke hung in the air a moment before dissipating.

Maven exchanged the rifle for a Colt and started out from the tree cover at a jog. He was twenty yards from the corner of the house when a figure appeared in a second-floor window. Danielle, dressed plainly in sweatpants and a T-shirt, looked down at him without any shock or scream.

Maven slowed but did not stop, continuing along the side of the house, down wet stone steps. He came out in back to a courtyard centered on a pedestal birdbath, bordered by low shrubs, angled off a protruding addition. No other gunmen lurked on the grounds that night: they were back in Quincy, in the apartment below Ricky’s.

Through tall French doors, he saw a library. A college football game played on a wall screen; a gunman wearing a shoulder holster was eating a sandwich.

Maven unzipped his slicker and tucked the Colt inside the front of his waistband. From the gun bag, he lifted the Benelli 12-gauge, a beauty he had taken off a Vietnamese guy outside Codman Square. Maven pumped and fired, pumped and fired — blowing out both door hinges with slug loads, kicking his way inside.

The gunman knocked over his sandwich trying to clear his holster, Maven drawing his Colt and shooting first, neck and shoulder.

Royce was in the first-floor study changing his internet radio-station preferences when he heard the shotgun blasts. He stood, knocking his chair over. He looked around for his Beretta, and, realizing he had left it upstairs, grabbed his cell phone and went to the door.

Termino opened it, looking for him. Termino had a wire in his ear. “Your little possum slipped his trap.”

Royce swallowed. Quincy was a good twenty minutes away. “Stupid fucks.”

“Good help is hard to find,” said Termino, pulling his pistol out of his belt, doing a brass check. “He’s all mine now.”

Maven heard gunmen coming and grabbed the gun bag and ran to the kitchen, stopping at the door to the hall. One gunman had gone to the library, another remained at the stairs. Trying to hold him down here, maybe drive him back outside.

Maven slid the bag out into the foyer, and the gunman turned and opened up his tiny, full-auto Steyr on the decoy. Maven rushed out, cutting down the gunman at the stairs, then firing down the side hallway to push back the gunman returning from the library.

Then he grabbed his bag and took to the stairs. He leapt up onto the oak handrail to get a look at what awaited him on the second-floor landing.

One gunman. Maven held the bag in front of him like a shield, firing, diving into the first room on the right.

Royce dropped the armored vest over his head, tightening the Velcro fasteners one-handedly as he slid off the Beretta’s safety, rushing into Danielle’s bedroom.

He found her seated before a three-part table mirror in the far corner. She was adjusting the straps of one of the new dresses he had bought her, running her fingertips along her décolletage, as though getting ready to go out.

“What the hell are you—”

More gunfire. Danielle just looked at him, all three of her in the mirrors.

Royce grabbed her by the arm, pulling her out of the room toward the servants’ stairs.

Maven cut through an adjoining bath into a large, furnished bedroom. He paused there to switch guns, and the lights went out. A few rooms at a time — Royce’s goons switching off circuit breakers — everything going dark and silent, the heat going off in the floor registers.

Maven dropped to a crouch. The exterior security lights still worked, shining in the windows from below, throwing dramatic shadows onto the ceilings. Maven loaded up from the bag, knowing he had to leave it. His empty eye ached. He shed his slicker, revealing twin holsters and extra magazines taped to his vest.

Maven went low around the corner, back toward the head of the hallway. He heard footsteps on the stairs, and some in the wide hallway.

“Maven,” said Termino, calling out from somewhere nearby. “Why don’t you—”

Maven didn’t wait, he darted out and started firing, striking the body on the stairs. Someone opened up on him from the other end of the hall, and Maven returned, holding him off long enough to duck through another door.

Maven bumped up against a wall and smelled cedar. He realized he was inside a broad, empty closet. He rushed back out, taking rounds in the side and back, his vest repelling them as he folded inside the next doorway.

Another bedroom. This one smelling of perfume. Danielle, he thought, though he was alone there — for the moment. He waited behind the door, ears ringing, unable to hear footsteps.

Flashlights now. In the hallway. Going door-to-door.

Maven got low and stayed that way.

Two flashlights and submachine guns pushed inside, scanning the room. Their beams picked up a three-part mirror in the far corner, bouncing their light and movement around the room. They opened fire on the perceived ambush, shooting wildly, everything staccato and strobed in the room. Another gunman rushed in to join them, and Maven fired low from behind, dropping all three.

The flashlights fell, throwing odd slants of light across the floor. The gunmen groaned, gasped. Maven stayed where he was.

Termino moved inside. His flashlight playing over the faces of his wounded men, looking for Maven.

By the time his beam found the shattered mirrors, Termino understood what had happened. He never turned. He didn’t bother.

He saw his reflection in the glass fragments remaining in one side of the mirror. Maven standing behind him, gun out.

“Fine,” said Termino. “Whatever.”

A single gunshot punctuated the barrage of automatic fire on the floor below. They got him, Royce thought, belt-tucking his Beretta, keeping hold of Danielle’s arm as he dug out his phone.

“Termino,” he said, using the push-to-talk function. “Lew. Lew?”

Maven’s voice answered, “He’s unable to take your call right now.”

Royce hardly believed it. Danielle squirmed under his grip, he was squeezing her biceps so tight.

He recovered, reasserting himself, a note of command in his voice. “You listen here, Maven. I’ve got Danielle with me, so be very fucking careful where you—”

Ponk! Ponk! Ponk!

Three chips cracked open in the floor around Royce’s feet. Maven, firing blindly up at them. Royce staggered backward, unhit.

He had only three guys left upstairs with him. He grabbed a submachine gun off the nearest and shoved the guy toward the stairs.

“Hold him off!” said Royce, pushing Danielle toward the bedroom door at the end of the darkened hall.

Maven located the side stairway, rushing up to the third floor. He exited the alcove and entered the middle of the hall, behind the gunmen watching the main stairs. Maven had the drop on them.

Then a three-round burst from behind ripped up the back of his vest. Maven twisted, went down, fired behind him.

It was Royce, spitting flame from a door at the end of the hall.

The gunmen, alerted by Royce’s volley, spun and opened up on the end of the hall, half-blind.

Maven rolled to face them, firing from the floor, shins and knees, dropping them.

He rolled back to face Royce, who had closed the door by then.

Maven rolled back again, finishing off two gunmen, a third alligator-crawling into a doorway to die.

Maven crabbed into a room to reload.

Royce dumped his phone and the Beretta onto the dresser, needing both hands free for the Steyr. It carried a thirty-round magazine, but he had no time to check how many were left.

He went to the east-facing window and looked down into the security light shining upward. A lower corner of the roof was near enough, but then what? A long fall onto the courtyard and two broken legs.

Barricading the door would be an idiot’s play. He wanted Maven blundering inside, didn’t he? Walking right into the chain saw.

So he set up along the shadows of the side wall, ten feet laterally from the door. He gripped the Steyr, ready to open up on the first person to walk inside. All he had to do now was to provoke Maven into making one final mistake.

Royce looked to Danielle, standing at the dresser with her back to him, her eyes catching some of the window light, teary, glowering.

“Call him,” hissed Royce, crouching against the wall with a tight smile. “Call to him!”

Maven was sore from the armor hits, but still not carrying any lead. His breath was short and shallow, coming from high in his chest. He couldn’t get enough air.

He had finished reloading when he heard Danielle’s voice.

“Neal! Neal...”

Like stabs from a knife. Driven by thoughts of Samara, he rushed into the hallway. A thin strip of silver light lay at the bottom of the door at the end, small fingers of light reaching out from bullet holes in the wood.

Royce was behind that door. Maven didn’t hesitate, starting toward it, pistols up.

Bang! Bang-bang!

The reports stopped him. He expected more holes in the door, but the shots had remained inside the room.

He ran at the door, striking the knob square with the heel of his boot and busting it open, crashing inside.

The barrage he had expected — the one he was relying upon to tell him the source and direction of his target — did not occur.

Instead, he found Royce on the floor at the base of the shadowed side wall. A puddle of darkness was expanding beneath his neck. The Steyr was inches from his hand, though he showed no interest in it.

Maven turned. Danielle stood in the shadow of a dresser, smoke rising from a Beretta pistol cradled in her hands.

Maven looked back to Royce. He kneeled on his chest. Royce’s mouth was open, but he made no attempt to talk. His eyes were full, staring up at the snowy shadows drifting against the ceiling.

Maven waited. He waited for Royce to look at him.

Royce never did. His eyes stayed on the ceiling, amazed by the tumbling black flakes. He died watching them.

Maven stood after a while. Danielle came up behind him.

“He was going to kill you,” she said.

The emptiness Maven felt was acute, like the hole in his head where his left eye used to be. He said, “We were going to kill each other.”

Danielle reached out to him one-handedly, like a child uncertain whether the thing she wanted to touch was hot or cold. “I did it for you.”

Maven took the murder weapon from her other hand and dropped it onto Royce’s chest. Then he turned and started back through the broken door. He was walking away.

“Neal?” she said, a note of panic in her voice.

Maven kept walking.