Rain Must Fall
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Super-powered assassin Jes is done. After spending years performing jobs for the shadowy organization called The Source, he's decided to stop. But with a Seattle PD detective hot on his trail, The Source can't risk him turning state's evidence against them.
But you can never leave.
In a world of highly damaged people, what's one less? Into each life, some rain must fall. This may well be Jes's last storm.
Ian Thomas Healy
Ian Thomas Healy incursiona en muchos géneros diferentes. Es un diez veces participante y ganador del MES NACIONAL DE LA ESCRITURA DE NOVELAS y también es el creador del taller "Escribiendo Mejor las Acciones a través de Técnicas Cinematográficas", que ayuda a los escritores a mejorar sus escenas de acción. Cuando no escribe; lo cual es raro, le gusta ver hockey, leer cómics (y también libros serios) y vivir en el gran estado de Colorado, que comparte con su esposa, sus hijos, sus mascotas y aproximadamente cinco millones de personas más.
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Rain Must Fall - Ian Thomas Healy
Chapter One
EARLIER
The gray and black tabby cat groomed himself in the window of the dingy apartment, trying to enjoy what little light was filtering through the overcast Seattle skies. A storm was coming.
Jesse Costigan sat at the kitchen counter, eating a flavorless cereal from a ceramic bowl. There was a chip along the edge, shocking white against the muted brown of the bowl’s cracking glaze. Jes regarded it while he ate. His hand moved methodically, lowering the spoon into the bowl and raising it to his lips until nothing remained but the slurry of milk dregs and cereal crumbs. He hadn’t enjoyed it so much, but sometimes food was just fuel. He took the bowl and spoon to his sink and rinsed them clean, then dried them with a towel, and put them away.
He shook a cigarette from the pack on his counter, then lit it. The smoke curled back into his lungs, warming him. He closed his eyes, letting his other senses take the forefront as he took what pleasure he could from his first smoke of the day.
A sudden but gentle puff of air blew across his face, tinged with the smoke he’d just exhaled. The cat uttered a low growl and as Jes opened his eyes, the cat slipped under the bed, head and tail carried low. On the chair beside the window, where Jes sometimes sat when he wanted a different view while smoking, sat a plain manila folder. It hadn’t been there when Jes was eating.
Abbot,
Jes said softly, addressing the cat. It’s fine.
The cat didn’t emerge from beneath the bed. Jes considered whether that meant ultimately the animal was wiser than he. He regarded the folder while finishing his cigarette. Nothing was written on it. It wasn’t even taped shut. He could see a piece of paper poking from it, perhaps dislodged by its sudden appearance.
He blew out his final breath of smoke, set the butt in the old soup can he used as an ashtray, and went to pick up the folder. It contained only a single sheet of paper. Sometimes they held many dozens of pages, but this one felt as sparse as Jes’s surroundings. A name was at the top of the sheet: Marty Lyon. It was followed by a picture of the man in question. Lyon was of an indeterminate age, as his look was that of someone trying very hard to look younger than he was. He dressed down in a faded rock t-shirt, with round wire-rimmed sunglasses perched on the lower part of his nose. His greasy hair was slicked back, and a thin mustache decorated his upper lip like a smear.
Beneath Lyon’s picture was a reprinted screenshot that looked like it was from a legal document. It identified Lyon as one of the partners in a club called the Silver Lion. From the club’s address, it was probably a trendy place, in the trendy part of Seattle; not at all the kind of place Jes was likely ever to find himself unless he was working.
This was work, which meant he’d have to go there anyway.
At the very bottom of the page was a ten-digit number. Jes took out his phone. It was a dumb model, unable to do anything but send text messages and make calls. He punched the number on the keypad and held the phone to his ear, waiting for it to connect. It rang three times, and then someone answered, although they said nothing. Jes heard only silence. That was acceptable; he didn’t need the recipient to be polite. He said, Accepted.
With another puff of air, a piece of paper and a small box the size of his hand appeared on his chair. He set the manila folder on his table and picked up the new arrivals. The text on the paper was the same as it was every time. He appreciated the consistency.
Inside the box was a round brass contraption that looked similar to an old-fashioned compass. It was tarnished from hundreds or thousands of hands touching it over the years. The weight of age hung about it. Jes turned it around in his hands, looking at it to see if it was somehow different from all the others he’d encountered in his life. It seemed to be the same. This one might even have passed through his possession multiple times. The Source was nothing if not economical.
He placed his index finger over the round hole along the rim and touched the button on the opposite end of the device. A spring-loaded needle popped from the hole, puncturing his skin. He set the device aside and squeezed the ball of his finger until a droplet of blood welled forth. He regarded it for a moment, then pushed his finger down on the blank line on the paper that had accompanied the device. When he pulled away, a bloody fingerprint remained behind, along with a brief cloud of vapor as the chemicals within the paper fixed and set his blood on it.
The paper and device popped out of Jes’s apartment like they’d been erased from reality. The only indication of their passing was the brief puff of air.
Jes’s masters were apparently satisfied at his completion of the ritual, and several stacks of cash appeared on his chair, neatly bound in their wrappers. He nodded to himself. Cash was easy to dispose of and hard to trace. Jes wasn’t a materialistic person; he paid his bills in cash, or paid someone else to pay them electronically for him. He lived a Spartan, frugal existence, giving away much of the cash in anonymous donations to whatever organization seemed like it would benefit most from an influx of liquid capital. He suspected a lot of his donations never made it past the person who found them. People were greedy, and self-serving. Maybe he’d made a difference in their lives in a way besides ending them.
Later, he’d have to go to work. For now, he’d stay in the apartment with his cat. Abbot would eventually emerge from beneath the bed, and then he would want to sit with Jes until the memories of mysterious arrivals and disappearances faded.
Outside, it began to rain.
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Chapter Two
NOW
Jes walked away from the police station quickly, head down against the chill precipitation. They would almost certainly have someone following him. He couldn’t give them any reason to take him in again. If they did, it would be under arrest and not merely a person of interest. He frowned. He’d spent so much time building up the various levels of his alibis that he shouldn’t have been astonished when they worked. Jolie had done exactly what he paid her to do. Her word, plus that of the poker players at Albert’s, might have been enough for the police to simply let him go.
But that singer had lied, and he didn’t know why.
He needed to get out of the sleet. No, more than that, he needed to find a deep, dark hole to dive into and close it up behind him. The Source would know he’d been brought in for questioning. The shady organization had its hooks into everything. Surely, they would have a source at the police department, and they would be extremely interested to know that one of their contractors had been brought in for questioning over a murder.
Under the pretense of looking both ways before crossing the street, Jes glanced back. He could see the unmarked car a half block back of him. Its lights were off, but its wipers were flipping back and forth. It was a dead giveaway for someone used to watching out for potential threats.
Jes’s normal move would be to steal a car to get away, but he’d left his special tool behind at Albert’s when the police came for him. If they’d searched him and found it, they’d have had probable cause to arrest him, and then they could get a judge to deny him a bond. He’d be stuck in jail, and knowing The Source, he’d likely die there as well.
He spotted a Night Owl bus, slowing for a stop up the block, and broke into a run. The driver was just about to close the doors after letting off a couple of drunk riders when Jesse stepped onto the first step. He handed the driver a twenty dollar bill. Hey, what am I, a bank? Use the app, asshole,
the driver said.
Jes handed him another twenty, and the driver shrugged, pulling the bus away from the curb. The police tail was still behind the bus, he knew. This time of night, he wouldn’t be able to lose himself in a mass of pedestrians by the university or in a shopping center. He would have to do something clever. He rode for a couple of stops until he spotted a large grocery store that he knew was open twenty-four hours and requested the next stop.
A peculiar, irritating tickle in his ear made him dig a fingertip into it, trying to scratch it away. It persisted, and he clenched his teeth against it as he stepped back out into the cold rain.
The unmarked car pulled into the lot as he hurried across it. It had its lights on, but Jes could tell it was the same vehicle the way it crept across the lot, staying far enough back to presumably avoid suspicion. Once inside the store, he grabbed a cart, stripped off his coat and hat, and set them both inside it. Like most stores of its ilk, it carried its holiday stuff right by the front door, as well as selected apparel items. He grabbed a large Seattle Kraken hoodie and a beanie from the apparel section, a fake Santa beard from the holiday section, and a non-alcoholic cider from the impulse display right by the checkout. As he finished checking out, he saw the tall, bald detective step into the entrance, look around, and head toward the back of the store.
Good. He might not have been spotted yet. He finished feeding cash into the self-checkout, wheeled his cart to the exit, and then left it behind. The hat, though. He’d miss that hat. He pulled the hoodie over his head, put on the beanie and fake beard, and slipped the bottle into his now-empty shopping bag. As he left the store, he affected a change of gait, moving with the careful, slight stagger of the perpetual drunk, and crumpled the bag around the bottle.
The maddening itch in his ear grew worse. As he moved around the corner of the building, he felt like he could have cheerfully inserted a grilling skewer into his ear if it would stop the itch. Trying to ignore the discomfort, he hurried along the building’s edge, toward the alley behind it. The detective would look for him there, but there were lots of shadowy places to hide in behind grocery stores.
Something flapping crashed into him from out of the darkness. It hissed and spat like a nightmare, reaching for his throat with bony hands that had a grip like iron. The figure’s face was pulled tight across their skull, cheekbones showing as sharp planes beneath deeply shadowed eye sockets that held glowing sulfurous eyes. The itch in his ear seemed to spread throughout his entire head. The person or creature was wrapped in a flowing, ragged black cloak like it was the very shroud of Hell itself.
The creature wrapped its fingers around Jes’s throat, cutting off his air supply and his ability to use his power at the same time. It was clever to have done so. He thrashed around the back of the store, fighting against an opponent who was both stronger than he, and apparently able to fly, for their feet didn’t touch the ground at all.
But Jes was heavier, and took advantage of that to swing his opponent around, smashing them against the back of the store. There was no point in trying to wrestle their hands away from his neck. He only had seconds as it was, and that would be a futile waste of them. Instead, he raised his own hands to his opponent’s face and dug his thumbs into those gleaming yellow orbs of its eyes.
The creature shrieked and loosened its grip on Jes’s throat for a moment, and that moment was all he needed.
"Bang!" he shouted, and his power blasted away half the creature’s head, decorating the side of a semi trailer parked at the loading dock. The fingers around his throat fell away and the maddening pain in his head ceased as quickly as if he’d turned off a switch.
Sides heaving, Jes looked down at the remains of his would-be killer. Now he could see them in the lighting back of the store, he saw it was a person wearing that voluminous cloak over regular street clothes. He thought it might be the parahuman assassin called Shroud, given the killer’s appearance and method of attack. He’d never met Shroud in person, but heard about them once from Mr. Gray. They used telepathy to hunt down their victims, and their preferred method of dispatch was strangulation.
They’d nearly succeeded with Jes. His throat burned and ached at the same time. He was lucky to still be alive.
He cast aside all pretenses of being a bearded drunk and ran, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the store before that detective found him again. The police must have a mole in the department, one working for The Source. When he’d been brought in for questioning, they’d reported back to the local operations managers, whom Jes knew as Mr. Gray and Mr. Mountain. They must have been afraid he might finger them to the police in return for protection and sent Shroud after him. What should he do? If he called out Gray and Mountain, they’d send someone else to finish the job and retire him for good. Or they’d put a full Source contract out on him, and then his remaining lifespan would be measured in hours or even minutes.
No, he’d play dumb and follow procedure. They’d be expecting him to call in, to report the completion of his job. He’d be expecting payment, and they’d arrange the meeting to deliver it.
It would be a trap, but at least he would be expecting it.
And then, once he sprang that trap, he’d have to go have a talk with Gray and Mountain himself.
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Chapter Three
EARLIER
The patter of rain against the pane played counterpoint to the hiss of traffic on the sodden street below. Bejeweled droplets gleamed purple and orange and white. Jes sat in his darkened apartment, a cigarette curling its blue smoke to wreathe the still blades of the ceiling fan. It was his second smoke of the evening. The first lay crumpled in its ashtray like a tombstone amid a graveyard of ash. He raised the cigarette to his lips and regarded the fading ink within his skin. A younger version of himself, one for whom symbols had carried far greater meaning, had spent good money to get a tattoo of an ace of spades on the back of his right hand. At the time, he’d thought it was the kind of thing that made him cool, that made people fear him when they knew what it represented.
He didn’t regret the decision then, and he didn’t regret it now, so many years later. Jes wasn’t the sort to dwell on past mistakes—or past successes. In his line of work, wins and losses came frequently, often within moments of each other. As the song went, into every life some rain must fall. In Seattle, in December, rain was a given.
Another lungful of smoke joined its clan, lazily swirling into the shadows. He watched the droplets run down the glass and dribbled ash into the tray. A faint purple glow rose from the street below as the delaminating LED streetlights bravely fought their losing battle against encroaching darkness. The building across the street was one story shorter, and its gray face swallowed the light, becoming a shadowy monolith against the gunmetal clouds. Somewhere up there, Jes knew, spun the Moon, the Sun, and an entire universe of possibilities. But down below, in a nameless Seattle apartment building, there was nothing but rain and silence.
Abbot broke that silence, chirping as he sprang to the windowsill. The tabby was an uncomplaining companion, tolerant of Jes’s comings and goings. Sometimes, when Jes sat in the chair he currently occupied, the cat would deign to sit in his lap, or across the back of the chair behind his head, twitching his tail against Jes’s cheek. Other times, he would stretch and dig his claws gently into Jes’s leg. The cat had a sense of when his company was welcome and when it was not. This was one of those times when it was not, so Abbot sought other sources of entertainment. The cat stood on his hind legs, batting at the raindrops as they rolled down the glass. Then, satisfied he had asserted his dominance, chirped again and dropped to the floor. A moment later, the cat curled himself into a tight ball on the bed, eyes squeezed shut. He was unconcerned with Jes’s successes or failures. Like all cats, he simply lived in the moment. Jes tried to do the same.
Jes ashed into the tray again. He was smoking too much these days, but sometimes there wasn’t anything else to do. He didn’t have a smartphone, or a computer, or even a television. It