Escape to Creeporia: Blood Brothers, #1

By Dean C. Moore

Two of the world's top assassins—fraternal twins separated from birth, but inevitably drawn to the same kind of women—find themselves married to a pair of sorceresses. When their firm schedules the hit men for cancellation, the brothers' one escape is through the women they love into a realm of magic, dragons, and warlocks, which will require both the assassins' and the sorceresses' skills to survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Feb 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9798201195762

Book preview

This is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ONE

Rydell watched the boy through the one-way mirror of the viewing room.  If only his eagle eyes didn’t come with the beak to go with them, forever distracting him from the subject at hand.  Tired of his long hair curtailing his peripheral vision, he tied it back with a rubber band so he could more accurately monitor the range of the lad’s own visual acuity. 

The fifteen-year-old Jared could already fend off virtually any number of attackers in close combat.  He excelled at every form of sparring, taking naturally to his own mixed martial arts style.  The pile of assailants he left prostrate on the floor just kept rising.  It didn’t matter if they blindsided him, got him in a choke hold, knocked the wind out of him, or temporarily incapacitated him with a cheap shot tactic of a desperate, lesser fighter; say a handful of sand to the eyes.  All it earned the few who could get a couple of initial moves up on him was a quicker trip to the morgue.  As exercises went, Rydell wasn’t about playing games.  The trainees were always in it for keeps; they knew that, and it kept them sharp.  If they died before their induction was complete, oh, well; that was the price of mediocrity.  As for the fodder, his budget could always afford more warm bodies to throw up against them.  Even in these dark economic times, governments always had stashes of money secreted away for keeping folks under their thumbs; that was, after all, what they specialized in.

He crossed over to the opposite wall and the other gymnasium adjoining the viewing room.  Like its twin, serving as a playground for Jared, this hangar could swallow a football field, surrounding track and bleachers.  With the surveillance station located near the roof, he was looking down on this arena as well. 

The fifteen-year-old Clay, unlike Jared, he noted, preferred to work from a distance.  He hit bull’s-eyes with a pistol from a stretch away that lesser marksmen would have struggled to hit with a scoped rifle.  Remarkable.  His last shot had penetrated the eye of the sniper hiding in the trees, sufficiently camouflaged that Rydell could barely detect him, even with his 20-10 vision.  The distance typically required a rifle for a kill shot, explaining Clay’s extreme angle of fire and his selection of the soft spot of the eye.  When he threw down the Glock, Rydell figured he might be finished showing off.  But the fusillade of bullets that splashed him from several quarters at once seemed to royally piss him off.  He dropped to the ground and, while rolling, picked up the Shuriken from the other discarded weapons and flung the multi-pointed, star-shaped daggers.  Luckily for him, his assailants had to be a lot closer to their target to achieve the same kind of accuracy.  The bodies fell out of the trees like fruit in summer.

General Cuatro stepped into the viewing area, walking up to Rydell.  He hadn’t gone to seed yet, but somehow Rydell expected he would sooner rather than later.  He was a little too happy issuing orders from the safe cover of a desk.  Not exactly a devotee of Rydell’s close and personal way of working.  His square jaw and head made him look like even more of a chip off the old block than the typical military grunt.  His swagger had all the taint of a man with strong political connections and none of the leopard’s poise and economy of movement that came from one efficient kill after another.  Cuatro took a gander at the boys working through their drills in the coliseum-sized staging areas and said, Aren’t you afraid...?

Let’s just keep a close eye on them.  Who knows?  I might never have to intervene.

And should they become aware of one another?

Let’s see that they don’t.

But if they do?

They’re fraternal twins.  So still no need for them to suspect, unless we give them reason to.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

Rydell could hear Cuatro’s labored breathing from three flights of stairs down.  The once lithe mountain goat looked more like a warthog these days.  He snorted to suit, his lungs unable to power themselves adequately past all the mucous build up in his bronchi, a consequence of overeating, and overdrinking.  Not to mention the other indulgences that quickly marred those who felt they had a right to the cushy life. 

He stood outside Rydell’s door waiting to build up sufficient nerve.  From all the huffing and puffing, he would think Cuatro was doing a take from The Three Little Pigs, trying to blow his house down.  But this was no house of straw, nor was it a bastion made of wood.  It was a cathedral carved in stone dating back to the Gothic era. 

Why would he site his command headquarters anywhere where there was an ounce less history?  The temple was from an era when men had genuine character, nothing like these clones they were turning out.  Rydell had other reasons for choosing this location that men of Cuatro’s ilk wouldn’t understand.  Doubtful if men of a hundred years from now would understand.  A few shamans and high priests might get it, if they weren’t buried in the past, but they too would never have grasped the applications to which he’d put his fortress of solitude. 

Come in, Rydell said, impatiently, tired waiting for Cuatro to summon the necessary courage to face him.

General Cuatro pushed his way past the oversized oak-wood doors that were at least twice his height.  Their heft was meant to slow transgressors, not that Rydell needed the time advantage.  But they also discouraged men like Cuatro from entering, sparing him the onslaught of mediocrity as well.

You better take a look at this.  Cuatro inserted the DVD in the player. 

Clay’s latest assignment.  The boys didn’t know that, even after all these years, their every move was being monitored from afar.  Drones, not humans did the surveying.  The boys were a little too well trained for any human tracker to get close enough.  The drones, moreover, could be equipped with special cameras adapted from satellite technology for getting in close even from afar.  And their computers could readily access city grids for cameras that might offer superior vantage points, editing the footage together on the fly, as they were doing here.

Rydell saw what he thought he’d never live to see: a mark getting the drop on Clay.  He’d walked into a room figuring he could do his work and get out before anyone had time to react. Since his nervous system was jacked up relative to ordinary mortals, and even to trained guards, Rydell could understand the overconfidence.  But this was a locked box.  One way in and one way out.  And the goon behind him, blocking the door, could likely only be moved with a crane. 

Before Clay could pull his gun, the boss man had his bearing on Clay, and so did his henchmen.  Even if he could shoot faster and truer, he couldn’t dodge this many guns.  This was why he never worked in close.  Too many variables.  Too messy.  Just easier to do his sniper routine from a distance.  So why had he broken his golden rule? 

Rydell watched as the guns aimed at Clay turned gradually on the shooters.  No matter how much they resisted, they couldn’t combat the impulse to point the barrels at themselves.  Nor could they do much about the temptation to pull the triggers.  Simultaneously, the guns fired, and the shooters fell.

As to the boss man, Clay seemed to have forgotten about him.  Boss Man, trembling, fired far too late, but still a little too soon for the preoccupied Clay.  It didn’t matter. 

The bullet was stopped midair.  And it traced a trajectory back to Boss Man’s forehead, as if he’d decided to become Hindu in later life, adorning his sixth chakra—the symbolic exit point for kundalini energy—with a lovely red dot.  The bindi, or red dot, was said to retain the kundalini in order to strengthen the body.  The gods must have been offended by the pretense to spirituality in such a cheap goon.  Cheap maybe, but a pain in Rydell’s side, considering his extensive mob contacts.  Precisely why he’d sent Clay after him.  But Clay’s actions were far more telling than anything Boss Man was guilty of.

Cuatro fast forwarded the footage.

Across the world, in Prague, Jared was executing his assignment.  In a noisy, darkened bar, an assailant took aim at the back of his head with a concealed weapon that none of the frenzied nightclub attendees would have noticed.  The 9 mm pistol was hard to detect looking at it straight on, camouflaged by the cloth napkin draped over it.  Jared didn’t stand a chance if the shooter was any good.  This guy reeked of professionalism.  Seated across the bar, he neither saw nor heard the man, far less the cock of his pistol.

As he fired, Jared nonetheless ducked the bullet, swung around, and put a decisive shot in Killjoy’s forehead, all in the same fluid motion.  Killjoy, being one of the world’s top assassins, had been marked for death by Rydell the moment he started encroaching on his operations. 

What the hell is that? Cuatro said, shooting spittle out of his mouth.  Spidey sense?

Yeah, efficiency is one thing, but we’re the government.  That much talent and people will talk.  Rydell chuckled at his own joke.  The boys have served their purpose; I think it’s time to put in the cancellation orders. 

But if we could harness those powers?

What do you think we’ve been doing all these years?  Only, they are now surpassing our ability to control them.  Pray it’s not already too late.

TWO

Ellen cracked her eyelids just enough to see, slipping out of the room and out of the house—for the hundredth time—a man that she only idly called her husband.  As soon as she heard the door catch, she sat up in bed.  That’s the last time you sneak out on me, Mister.

The next day, she roamed the streets of Morocco, poking her head in one stall after another in the marketplace.  There were people definitely selling all sorts of contraband, just not the illicit items she was looking for. 

Finally, exasperated, she footed it back to the guy with the sat phones, radios, and TVs.  At least it was electronics gear.  He worked out of a canvas tent.  You again.  You look, you look, but you don’t buy anything.  Get out.  He shooed her out of the store with his hands.

An Arab merchant chasing a wealthy American out of his store?  In what alternate reality?

It’s reverse psychology.

I’m looking for something hi-tech.  I just don’t see it here.

What, exactly?

At least he was no longer chasing her out of the store.  But he hadn’t precisely backed away.  His brutish off-balance pot-bellied body towered more than a foot over her like the shaky edifice of a building ready to topple at any moment.  I need to do some spying.  Where would I go for something like that?

Look no further, madam.  You have come to precisely the right place.  He pressed a button on his remote and all the counters flipped over or rotated and in a flash there was nothing in the store that wasn’t spy-tech.

Oh, my God.

Now, you wish to invade a small country, or start a coup right here at home?  I just want to know what kind of budget we’re talking.

I need to follow my husband.

Not a problem.  Home?  Work?  Everywhere, anywhere, twenty-four-seven?

I just want a homing device that’ll let me follow him to wherever he’s going.

Ah.  Not a problem.  He showed her a watch.  Get him to wear this.  And here is your tracker.  If you prefer, I have virtually any type of wearable jewelry from which you’d care to choose.  I can even give you things to stitch into his clothes.

I think the watch’ll be fine.  I’ve been threatening to buy him one.

Not a problem.  He bagged everything up for her.  That’ll be five thousand, American.

I thought we agreed I wasn’t invading a country or starting a coup.

He gestured helplessly.

Fine.  She paid the man the money and slipped back into the street.

No sooner was she out of the tent than Fidel jumped on his cell phone.  Just to let you know, your wife bought a watch with which she could track you.

‘With which she could track you?’ Who talks like that?  ‘...a watch she could track you with!

I’ll have you know, I speak perfect English, unlike you Americans.

Fidel felt his blood pressure rise at what he was hearing on the other end of the line.  He dialed down the volume on the earpiece accordingly, and patted his perspiring forehead with a handkerchief.  What do you mean, ‘Did I give her a discount?’  I told you we were friends.  I charged her double!

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

What does it look like I’m doing?

It looks like you’re standing in front of the bathroom mirror applying makeup.

Jared sighed.  Look, if you can’t get with the whole metrosexual thing, the least you can do is put on that evening dress I got you.  He shut the door in her face.

Ellen started to scream at him and decided better of it.  She padded back into the living room and continued tidying up.  Fifteen minutes later, she went and knocked on the bathroom door.  What’s taking you?

I’m giving myself a pedicure, honey.  I’ll be out any minute.

If she kept clenching her jaw like this, she wasn’t going to have any teeth to use in her old age.  She stomped back to the kitchen, where she started scrubbing the counter—for the third time.

Ten minutes later she tromped back to the bathroom door and pounded until her knuckles were raw.  Ignore me all you want; you can’t camp out in the bathroom all night.

He opened the door.  Such a drama queen.  You want a front row seat to see me pluck my eyebrows, who am I to deny you?

I’ve never known a man to spend more time dolling himself up.

Image is everything.  How many times have I told you?  Now, why don’t you go put on that swank black V-neck gown I got you?

We aren’t even going out!  We’re eating in tonight.

It’s all about the fantasy, darling.  You’re the one who wanted a romantic evening in.

He had her there.  Fine, maybe if I can just get in the bathroom for five minutes.

Of course.

She grabbed her dress and makeup bag from the bedroom and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.  Fifteen minutes later, when she exited, he was going over the lacquered table that she had already buffed to perfection—just not well enough for him, apparently.

What in God’s name are you doing to that table? she said.  I polished it five times tonight.

It takes more than OCD to stay ahead of the dust in this God forsaken town.  It’s these damned windows open to the street.  How these people can live like such savages is beyond me.  Thank God I’m incapable of sweating in this heat, or I’d just slit my throat right now and get it over with.

How do I look?

Commendable—under the circumstances.

She knew what that meant.  He wouldn’t get within a ten foot pole of her.  She may as well have leprosy.  She sighed, I’ll get dinner.

He hovered over her shoulders the whole time.  Everything on ice, like I told you.  Excellent.  You can forget slaving over a hot stove and doing romance in the same beat in this town.

Ellen had to admit, the prawns on ice, and other exotic dishes—which he’d prepared himself—all meant to be served chilled, from the main course to the dessert, looked perfectly delectable.  It would taste bland, she knew that.  It was all presentation with him; all surface, no substance. 

He always got like this before he went out to work.  A high end salesman, the sales didn’t come often, just enough to turn him from something vaguely human into this monster.  She supposed she couldn’t blame him.  The pressure of keeping up appearances was all the more acute in a down economy.  He couldn’t let people know he was struggling.  If she had an ounce more compassion, she’d be supporting him more and not fighting him every step of the way.  But she was getting tired playing second fiddle to his success.  Besides, she was starting to think this alter ego was the real him.  He got far more jazzed up playing the part. 

Tonight she would know the truth.  She would follow him to the edge of the earth to find it out.  She was not going to live a lie any longer.  Maybe if she hadn’t come from money, she would feel more secure about herself and his real motives.  But she could just be his fallback plan.  His way of maintaining this lifestyle even in the absence of sales—if that was even what he was—a salesman.  The money did come in infrequently and in large sums, which supported his story; the occasional big sale, he said, landed the one whale to keep him going for another six months.  Still... Something didn’t sit right.  Something more than just the two of them being forever out of sync.

The last dish set, he pulled out a chair for himself, thinking nothing of sliding out a seat for her; no one could accuse him of being a chauvinist. 

She set the watch in front of him. 

His eyes lit up.  It’s absolutely divine.  It had the big watch face which was all the rage.  And her husband was not one for flying in the face of fashion.  She figured he’d like it.  He immediately donned the timepiece.  It’s just a couple seconds behind.  Give me a moment to adjust the second hand.

She rolled her eyes as she took her own seat.

Later, when she was doing the dishes, he came out of the bedroom in his tux and, as he toyed with his cufflinks, said, Got to go, darling.

She dropped the knives and forks in the sink with a clang.  Who does business at these hours?

The rich and famous, and this is me at their beck and call.  He held his hands wide so she could appreciate the this-is-me part.  Adjusting his tie at the neck, he said, They don’t keep normal hours like the rest of us mortals.  That would be entirely beneath them.  Far too common.

He stood an awkward distance away and craned his long neck toward her like a heron.  She growled as he gave her a peck on the cheek—making sure not to get any of her soapsuds on him.  Toodles.

She waited to hear the bolt catch on the door, then she wiped her hands, fished her tracker out of her purse, and darted out of the flat behind him.

ELLEN DIDN’T LIKE WHERE this was headed.  The tracker was pointing her into a notorious nightclub for...  It could just be rumor.  She’d see for herself.

They didn’t want to let her in.  Not a good sign.  She slipped the guy at the door five thousand, American—the price for anything in Morocco if you were American.  He let her pass.

She tried to find her courage as she snaked by the Ringling Brother’s freak show.  There was only one freak she was interested in.  There.  Just when she thought she’d gone blind processing all the alternative lifestyles.  There was Jared cross-dressing as a French maid, and hitting on one of the guys.  Maybe that was more than cross-dressing.  Maybe that was transvestism.  Or worse.  Was he squirreling money away for a sex change?  She nearly lost consciousness.

She backed out the way she’d come in.  You wanted to know.  Why did you want to know?  Maybe this is the lie, Ellen.  Maybe he makes his money as a high-priced gigolo.  Maybe this is someone else’s fantasy he’s living out.  He did say he was in sales.  He just didn’t say he was selling his body.  Ironically, she felt relieved at the thought.  She could handle being married to a gigolo.  But it still meant she was living a lie.  This was the life he fancied.  This was the thing that made him feel most alive. 

No sooner was she out the door, than Jared turned to Blaire.  Well, how did I do?

The handsome Blaire, with the flattop haircut and the seventies-sideburns, a fellow agent who he’d actually done a mission or two with once upon a time, said, She’ll never be the same.  You’ll be lucky to be kissing anything but a zombie from here on out.

What’s she gonna do?  When the truth’s this ugly, it’s just easier to live the fantasy.

She shouldn’t have to.

What else do I have to give her?

If she can handle this, she might just be able to tolerate the truth.

The woman spends her days drawing dragons and devas. Trust me; she’s not in the market for the truth.

He went to finish his drink.  But it didn’t smell right.  That acute olfactory sense of his that played well to his metrosexual alter ego’s lifestyle and his gourmet affectations.  Why, Blaire... After all we’ve been through.

Nothing personal, Jared.  Just business.  You know how it is.

Yeah, I suppose I do, Jared said, slipping the knife under his sleeve between Blaire’s ribs straight into his heart, and resting him on the counter.  The knife had already retracted to its cocked position.  The heart stopped like that; there wouldn’t be much bleeding.  No one would notice in this dark hell hole, certainly.  He was just another passed out drunk as far as they were concerned. 

Jared slipped the bartender five thousand bucks for the hassle of carting the corpse upstairs to a sofa where he could sleep it off in a back office, or to throw him out in a dumpster, more likely, the second Jared’s back was turned.  All the better for Jared.

And he exited the bar with just a nod from the bartender.  Pity nothing with Ellen was ever so clean.

BACK AT THE FLAT, ELLEN returned to her cleaning.  There was always more cleaning to do in Morocco, with the winds carrying the perpetual dusts.  It was good cover for her OCD, and for having an anal-retentive husband who was a perfectionist about such things.  In this country, everyone was just like her, so there was nothing to feel ashamed of.  Still, she was living a lie, and that much was no longer just a nagging suspicion.

She had just one hope.  To win him over she would have to make her life with him more enchanting than that other life.  And she could do it, too.  She knew just what he liked.  She could press his buttons far better than any stranger could.  One day he’d come home to her not as some act, but as the real Jared, and a real husband.  She knew she was lying to herself; that she was choosing the fantasy over reality.  But from a young girl, when had she not? 

THREE

Myrna grimaced as she walked through the abattoir.  One stuffed animal after another lined the walls and ceilings, cluttering up the walkways, as well, forcing her to brush up against them—an even more uncomfortable reminder of the cruelty that went into fostering this collection.  I wish you could see how much more magical these creatures are when alive, what blessed grace and joy they bring into our lives.  A piece of our souls is lost every time one of them is lost, she said, catching up to Clay at his workbench in the center of the room.  He had his killing utensils—the marksman’s rifle, the knives—all laid out, making sure nothing was missing, like a good boy scout.  He hadn’t heard her, his concentration was so focused on what he was doing. 

She roared like a grizzly, and he came out of the trance, perking up at the prospect of a good hunt.  Summoning animals had long been a gift, since a very young age, so she was not surprised she could fool even a trained hunter.  When do you leave? she said.

Soon.  A hunting party is paying top dollar for me to lead them through this big game paradise.  Ironic, when you consider you can’t throw a stone without hitting some critter.

Please, just keep it far away from the cabin.  I don’t want to discourage the creatures that live nearby and consider my home their home from coming by.

That’s our agreement.  I remember the day I signed the truce.

You could stand to go out further still.  The report of one of those rifles is enough to keep me up nights, and the canyons around here play with sound, carrying it for miles.

Slinging his thirty-odd-six over his shoulder, he said, That’ll mean more gas and transportation costs, cutting into my already slim margins.

Please.

He made a turned-down-lips expression of resignation and nodded.  He’d had time to load up the rest of his weapons in the time it took her to admonish him, being far more efficient at dispensing death than she was at dispensing words. 

She had fallen into a trance herself, imagining the worst of the worst, when the sound of his jeep firing up brought her out of it.  She heard him drive off, the whine of the 4 x 4’s engine surprisingly like the tenor of their past arguments on this subject.

One of the kids that came from miles around to see Clay’s natural history museum had his face pressed up against one of the many square window panes framing the long wall in the sixty by twenty foot shed.  The sheets of glass ran from the mid wall to the sixteen-foot-high ceiling.  She had frosted all the bottom row vantage points to keep the children from seeing in and thus spreading the hunger for this sort of thing but, to her chagrin, she had apparently missed a spot.  The cold was forever causing the frosting to flake off.  She went over to the window and sprayed the pane, preventing him from seeing in. 

Myrna could hear his sigh of disappointment from her side of the glass.  It was high time she started leading some expeditions of her own to train the next generation of nature lovers to offset the work her husband was doing.  Nature abhors a vacuum.

She tripped on her way out of the room, sending some cylindrical device scurrying under the lower shelf of a workbench.  Since she was now on her knees anyway, she stretched her hand to see what it was.  It took her a while to realize what she was holding; his rifle scope.  How could this have happened?  He’d been so methodical with checking his equipment.  Maybe the catch securing the eye piece had finally given way.  He wasn’t going to be doing any long distance marksmanship shots without it, which meant he couldn’t rescue the creature after some poor sap in the hunting party with half his training and professionalism butchered the kill.  Myrna reconciled herself to