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  WAITING FOR MISTER COOL

  Gerard Houarner

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2013 / Gerard Houarner

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Gerard Houarner fell to Earth in the fifties and is a product of the NYC school system and the City College of New York, where he studied writing under Joseph Heller and Joel Oppenheimer and crashed hallucinogenic William Burroughs seminars back in the day. He went on to earn a couple of master’s degrees in psychology from Columbia University so he could earn a living. He’s worked in Hell’s Kitchen, on the Lower East Side at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and in the Bronx at the start of the crack epidemic before settling into a quiet, contemplative and genteel career as an uncivil servant at a psychiatric hospital.

  His publishing career includes four novels – a three book series about Max, a supernatural assassin, and a fantasy – and over 280 short stories, with over 50 earning Honorable Mentions in various editions of St. Martin’s Press’ Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Best Horror of the Year anthologies, with dozens gathered into four collections.

  He has edited and co-edited three anthologies, and serves as Fiction Editor for Space and Time Magazine.

  For the latest news, visit www.gerardhouarner.com or www.facebook.com/gerardhouarner.

  He continues to write whenever he can, mostly at night, about the dark.

  Book List

  Novels and Novellas

  In the Country of Dreaming Caravans

  Inside the Works (with Tom Piccirilli and Edward Lee)

  The Bard of Sorcery

  The Max Series

  A Blood of Killers

  Waiting for Mister Cool

  The Beast That Was Max (Resurrection Cycle, Book 1)

  Road to Hell (Resurrection Cycle, Book 2)

  Road From Hell (Resurrection Cycle, Book 3)

  Short Story Collections

  Black Orchids from Aum

  I Love You and There Is Nothing You Can Do About It

  Painfreak

  The Oz Suite

  Visions Through a Shattered Lens

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  Visit our DIGITAL and AUDIO book blogs for updates and news.

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  CONTENTS

  WAITING FOR MISTER COOL

  A Preview of A BLOOD OF KILLERS

  A Preview of THE BEAST THAT WAS MAX

  WAITING FOR MISTER COOL

  Chapter 1

  The strip of road unwound in the Ford Bronco’s headlights, a pale snake curling out of the darkness ahead and leading them through the pine-covered hills under a sky without stars. Thunder rumbled over the sound of the swapped-in 460 engine. Lightning limned the clouds crawling behind them, and Kueur and Alioune stared through the tailgate window, bobbing and weaving to catch the flashes as if they were semaphore signals from the world they’d come from, the one they’d left behind long ago.

  Their hair was short and straight this visit, their skin like honey in sunlight. Even at night, they glowed, the smoldering coals of their limitless energy burning secretly from within. Max wondered what they’d been eating lately, but knew better than to ask. They always teased him with supernatural nonsense about heritages from Asian dragons and African gods. He’d always meant to ask what kind of education his money was paying for, but between work and entertaining the twins with appropriate hunts and barely controlled skirmishes with the Beast, much less dealing with the kind of trouble his adopted daughters got themselves into, he usually forgot.

  Lee held on to the wheel with both scarred hands, sweating in the humid air. The Bronco wasn’t going particularly fast, but he was, with lips moving to the silent conversation he was having with himself. Max sat beside him, arms crossed over his chest, gauging his tight, thick torso against his comrade’s softer body, with its paunch protruding over the too-tight belt line of his jeans. He worried about his old partner’s health, but pushing the subject usually earned him a contemptuous ‘fuck you.’ Besides, he wasn’t getting any younger, either.

  “It was an ambush,” Max said, more to calm the Beast within him roaring in its rage than to let anyone in the car know what he was thinking.

  “No, that was just an accident,” Lee said, loud and fast, checking the rear-view mirror again.

  There was no one behind them. Max didn’t think Lee was interested in the lightning show following them. Any faint suspicions he might have entertained of enemies tracking them in this wilderness was not enough to have spooked him so thoroughly.

  It was the girls. Max understood. The twins had that effect on people. He should have taken them out by himself to clean up their mess.

  On the other hand, if there was something he should know about Lee, this time and place was better than most to find it out.

  “A single old Jimmy, off the road,” Max continued. “Skid marks on the other side. Oncoming vehicle, from the direction we’re heading in, forced that car off the road. And there were shell casings–”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve got Superman eyes that can pick up thunderbolt reflections on metal in the middle of the night along the roadside.”

  “If you ask–”

  “Please, just a bunch of drunk teenagers out for a lark lost control. They’re probably in the woods fucking their brains out. If they’re lucky. Or sleeping it off. The rain’ll wake them up.”

  “No one’s left alive.” The Beast concurred, but Max knew better than to trust its enthusiasm for blood.

  “Maybe,” Kueur said, from behind.

  Her sister made a noise in her throat that made the Beast rumble, before it remembered it didn’t like the girls.

  “Okay, since you keep bringing it up, do you want to go back and check it out?” Lee asked. “You’ve still got an armory in the back. Want to go night hunting, is that it? A little something to distract you from your little family emergency?”

  “No,” Max said. “Cleaning up after the girls is the only thing that’s important. What happened had nothing to do with us. I’m certain of that.”

  “Really. Maybe the girls want to–”

  “No.” Alioune’s voice hung in the air like the humidity, sticky, electric, dangerous.

  “I’m saying something happened back there,” Max said, letting his hands fall to his thighs and opening his eyes wide to take in the night. “It’s important to notice these things. We don’t want to get caught in the crossfire of someone else’s war.”

  “But you think whatever happened back there is over.”

  Max listened to the Beast, who was never satisfied, always on guard. Its appetites were usually marked by gradations more than satiation. “That episode is over. Ours is not. Another few miles, girls?”

  Both looked sheepishly to Max. “Yes,” said Kueur. A bump in the road sent them all jumping into the air for an instant.

  “Did he deserve what you did?” Max asked.

  “Yes,” Alioune answered, and the word delivered on the promise of her voice.

  “Interesting distinction,” Max said. He ha
d discovered, researching their victims’ pasts, that the prey they chose was rarely as innocent as appearances portrayed. It was as if the twins were drawn to corruption, like sharks to blood. Not that it mattered to him. But their selectivity, apparently unconscious, perhaps as instinctual as their terrifying appetites, was only one of their mysteries that kept him as off balance as Lee in their presence.

  Lee cleared his throat. Max knew he wanted to say: nobody deserves that. But Lee didn’t dare judge their actions in front of them, as he had with Max. “I hate it when I get caught up in these errands of yours,” he’d said. “Those girls are too young for this kind of shit. And they’re always too young. What’s up with that, anyway? Don’t they ever grow up? It’s like they love luring these sick fucks out of the woodwork and screwing around with them harder than anything those jerks ever gave out.”

  Perhaps he thought he deserved what the girls had to give, as well.

  Max felt vaguely reluctant about losing a valued associate. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  The Beast shifted in expectation.

  They rode in the cocoon of their silence, leaving Max to wonder what powers of transformation were at work inside them, and what kind of entity would eventually break free from the wrappings of all they never said to each other. He flexed his legs and arms, worked his fingers into fists.

  Lee fingered through the tapes and CDs in the plastic bin between them, but Max knocked his hand away, preferring quiet.

  A sign post flashed past them announcing they were entering a new county. It looked just like the one they’d left.

  “We’re close,” Alioune said. She stuck her head out of the driver’s side window, contorting her body and resting a hand on Lee’s shoulder.

  He flinched.

  Kueur did the same on the other side, catching death’s scent on the wind.

  “How often do you have to do this?” Lee asked. Again. Louder than the last time, in a bar, where Max had explained what had to be done.

  “You’re the one who wanted to come along.”

  “So we can move on and hit the airport and get to Cairo and finish that Palestinian thing so I can go on vacation and not have to think about this shit for a minute.”

  “Where are you going on vacation?” Kueur shouted from outside.

  “Someplace far away.”

  “Will there be killing?” Alioune asked.

  “Not if I can help it,” Lee answered.

  “That’s what they all say,” Kueur said.

  The Beast caught the scent first.

  If there’d been any blood spilled in the wreck they’d passed, it had been carefully cleaned up, and it was that complete lack of blood scent that had first aroused Max’s suspicion when they passed the Jimmy by the road. What was on the wind now, however, was plain and obvious. Human remains, living biological processes abruptly terminated and exposed to the elements. No apologies. Perhaps even the slight trace of a boast, the dare of unnaturally gifted killers to anything mortal coming across the remains: look at what I’ve done; study it; chase me, I wait.

  People, animals, even insects rarely disturbed the remains of the twins’ pleasures. If they did, there was something wrong with them, perhaps a connection to what the twins were, a kinship of blood and fang. Max had never wanted to find out. He’d no interest in meeting overly enthusiastic admirers, followers, or hunters tracking the twins through their atrocities. He had enough of that in his own life with the Blood of Killers at home. And he didn’t need authorities filing reports, entering information into computers, tracking patterns, perhaps even anticipating the twins in their careless, impulsive moments. Through his experience with authorities, like the ones who hired him, or the ones who tried to stop him, even the stupidest of bureaucrats could stumble over a truth by accident. And that might lead to an inconvenience. For an assassin, even for a killer like him, too many variables at play in his life could result in unfortunate consequences.

  It was bad enough he’d taken the twins under his wing. Even he didn’t quite understand why he’d done that.

  The Beast roared, shaking Max’s diaphragm though he’d pursed his lips to prevent any sound from escaping.

  You can’t kill everyone, Max told his demon, as if it could understand words, logic, reality.

  The twins’ sharp intake of breath made Max whirl around, hands up and ready.

  They’d converged in the middle of the back bench seat, under which Max kept part of his arsenal. They’d reached forward and closed the side windows, and a hush had settled over them, as if they’d been caught again indulging in their hungers.

  “Something flew by overhead,” Kueur said, almond-shaped eyes narrowed, her hands curled into claws.

  “Something bad,” Alioune said, with excitement tinged with a dash of fear.

  Max frowned. “Helicopter?”

  “Company,” Lee said. Ahead, the snake of a road had had its body cut off by a blockade of vehicles. Figures moved across the bright headlights.

  “Damn.” Max reached back. The twins slipped off the back bench, worked the hidden releases to the seat cover until its supports popped up, exposing the hidden gun rack and ammunition canisters.

  Max picked a pair of mini-Uzis and gave one to Lee, along with loaded clips. The twins took grenades. They’d been playing with them recently. They liked the feel of the concussive force of their explosions, particularly the kind Max constructed, having picked up a few tricks in Ireland and Palestine. For him, a couple of extra meters of kill zone made all the difference. But for the twins, what mattered was the sound the grenades made went they went off, echoes lingering like a scream. He’d had to keep close watch over them in populated areas the last time they’d come for a visit from their Paris boarding school, as he’d come up short on the armory inventory within days of their arrival. They never admitted to the theft, and there were no reports of bombings during their stay in New York, or when they returned to Paris.

  He couldn’t imagine what they’d done with the grenades, but most of him hoped they’d had fun.

  “You figure they’re cops?” Lee asked, slowing down and holding the wheel with his knees while checking his gun.

  “Hard to believe someone would find the bodies out here so soon,” Max said. He turned to the twins and asked, “You’re sure this only happened yesterday?”

  “We swear,” Kueur said. “He picked us up at the gas station, while you were in the hotel. We went along, because we were bored waiting for Tonton Lee, and he took us out thinking we were innocent, and we turned on him.” They giggled.

  “Hunters make the best prey,” Alioune said, sobering first.

  “Maybe this character had friends,” Lee said.

  “We hope so,” Alioune said.

  “Or they’re connected with whatever happened back there,” Max said. He opened his window and listened for the backwash of a helicopter. But the noise from the car and the wind would have drowned out a well-maintained stealth chopper, which did not improve his mood. He really did not want to step into someone else’s affair. Or worse, an operation run by people he had, or might yet, work for. That was a needless complication.

  The Wagon coasted to a stop in front of the blockade. No one came forward to challenge them. With all the engines off and the background cicada buzz faint, clothes rustled, soles scratched the road bed and kicked through underbrush, weapons clicked and clattered. A few conversations carried to the Wagon, but Max couldn’t pick out a specific threat. He might have been at a gun show, with enthusiasts eager to annihilate stationary targets so they could move on to the celebratory beer.

  Lee had his finger on the trigger, but Max patted his knee, then stepped out, holding his weapon high to show he was armed. He glanced back at the girls, and they understood: wait. Lee slid out of the truck on his side, keeping one foot in the cab and his weapon braced against the open door.

  Max moved toward the line of men and vehicles, taking small steps, listening for flanki
ng maneuvers and the snap of safeties.

  “Lights,” a man said. The cars ahead turned off their headlights, leaving the Bronco’s high beams to illuminate a dozen men in jeans and sweat-stained T-shirts, armed with automatic weapons, standing next to two pickup trucks, a Cherokee and another Bronco. Only one man was wearing a police uniform, and he was doing his best to stay in the background.

  Max stopped, dropped his arms, kept his finger at the ready but off the trigger.

  “Mister Cool,” a stout, heavily-bearded middle-aged man on the wrong side of forty said, stepping forward, holding out a hand.

  Max shifted his weapon to his other hand, exchanged a quick shake, and knew the other man was as impressed with his grip as he was with the stranger’s. He’d been around, done things. Like Lee. Though Max didn’t think he’d ever had Lee’s skills and talents, even during his better days. Still, he was part of the profession. Killer to killer, they nodded.

  “I’m glad you made it,” the man said, giving Max a quick once over, then cocking his head to the side as if he could look into the Bronco through the lights and see its passengers. Something drew his attention overhead, and he smiled, frowned, then smiled again.

  Max resisted the temptation to follow his gaze. Neither he nor the Beast sensed anything.

  “Any trouble?” the man asked, finally.

  “None worth mentioning,” Max said, gliding along, the smell of all the men not nearly enough to drown out the twins’ kill. The body couldn’t have been more than twenty-five yards off the road. If it had been daylight, Max could have found the tire tracks of the victim’s car going in, and the ones the girls had made taking the vehicle out to head back to town. He’d never guessed they knew how to drive. “How about you?” he asked.

  “A couple of the boys bagged a perv up the road. Just for fun, really. Things got a little out of hand, is all. You probably passed it. Don’t worry, though. Sheriff’s office has everything in hand.”