“Yes.”
“But the truth is,” Mishy laughed then, cutting the tension of the moment, “the bloodthirsty bastard wouldn’t have been nearly as pissed off if you’d killed her as he was because you fucked her. Then you took the bitch back and just gave her to him, and I really wanted to kill you then, but then what does she do? She runs away from him to be with you. Which totally destroyed the bastard. I think you’ve actually caused the bastard to suffer, and now I think I’m ready to have all this finished permanently, so...” He stood up slowly and stuck his hand out. Hammer walked forward and shook his hand. “How can I help?”
“I need you to kill me.”
Tarent watched again as Mishy’s men mowed a limping Conner “the Hammer” McVee down. Her body lay limp and bleeding on the ground. He looked at the other monitor where Jason Hunter sat in his car with Elantra on the seat beside him, crying and screaming obscenities. Her hands were cuffed.
“We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes, and ya got ta let me in, boss,” Jason was begging. “Mishy’s men are on my ass, and the cops are everywhere.”
“I’d heard that Rank had come to and fingered you as the shooter. The door will be open. Bring Elantra straight to my office. I’ll have the doctor waiting, and he can take care of all those horrible memories clouding Elantra’s judgment.”
Tarent called the doctor and ordered his presence. He told the computer to undo the lockdown on his floor, and prepared to deal with Jason Hunter and his daughter. Jason would have to be killed, Elantra deprogrammed, and then finally life could get back to normal. With no more Hammer McVee, the only fly in his ointment would be Mishy. With Hammer out of the way he could easily deal with Mishy.
He watched in the monitor as Jason’s car pulled up out front, and as ordered, his men went to escort Jason and Elantra into the building in a cone of protected firepower. His computer glitched. There was a flickering on all his monitors, but then it was back on, and everything seemed to be going as planned. In mere minutes Elantra was standing in front of him, still handcuffed and in tears, but alone.
Tarent’s brow furrowed. He’d been watching on the monitor. “Where’s Jason? The others?” He started to stand, and his chair helped him to do so. He hit the security button on his desk as he watched the cuffs fall off Elantra’s hands. Then behind her Hammer McVee strode in the door, weapon in hand.
“All drones! Kill Hammer McVee!” he screamed.
She laughed at him. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Tarent, your security system isn’t exactly working.”
She took aim, and he knew she was going to fire. “Elantra... I’m your father.”
“You’re a murdering creep,” Elantra said, still crying, though only now he realized the tears weren’t for McVee.
He did the only thing he could think of – he moved quickly to put Elantra between himself and McVee. Knowing what he was doing, McVee fired, but the nail barely missed him, hitting instead the window behind him. It hit just right, too, because the “bulletproof” glass behind him shattered, and then blew out in a shower of shards, each no bigger than a dime.
Tarent grabbed Elantra and slung her towards the now open window. As he expected, McVee slung her weapon down and made a mad dash across the room. Tarent made a run for the door of his office and ran out, only to find Mishy standing there flanked by his men.
“This one’s mine, boys,” Mishy said, and the last thing Tarent Powers heard was Mishy laughing.
Conner jumped, throwing herself at the window. She barely caught Elantra’s hand as Elantra went through the broken window. She crashed to the floor with enough impact to reopen her wound. Elantra’s hand gripped hers tightly.
“Hang on,” Conner ordered.
“Like I was thinking of letting go!” Elantra screamed back.
Conner pulled Elantra in the window and into the safety of the room. She hugged her tight. “You all right?”
“No,” Elantra cried. She held Conner tightly with her one good arm. “I knew eventually you’d pull my arm out of the socket.”
James looked up at the cyborg cop and the mobster’s daughter and smiled. He wasn’t actually expecting a visit from them, and said as much.
“We were here anyway,” Conner said nodding towards the sling on Elantra’s arm.
“And they wanted to keep you,” Elantra said in a scolding tone.
“I feel fine. Hell, they even managed to get most the purple gack off,” Conner said, shrugging.
“So... how’d ya do it?” Rank asked.
She told him first how she’d captured Jason Hunter, after which he thanked her for saving his life.
“Yeah, yeah, anyway. We made a tape of Mishy’s boys pretending to shoot me and me dying. Then I told Jason if he didn’t make the tape with Elantra for us to show to Tarent, I’d make good on my promise to kill him, which was a hell of a lot worse than jail. I’d never had any luck hacking into Tarent’s systems, but Elantra had hacked her way out and past his security on more than one occasion using stuff she’d gotten through the access on her tutorials. See, it’s an open-ended link. So we hacked in easily using that access, and fed the images to Tarent when we wanted them fed to him. When he loosened his security to let “Hunter” in, we used that link to take his security systems entirely offline. We used a loop so that he only saw what we wanted him to see. So we killed all his goons, and then we just walked right into the building. It was easy. Except for him throwing Elantra out the window, which wasn’t part of the plan.”
“So what ya gonna do now? I’m sorry, I can’ tell ya how sorry I am. If ya wanna come back ta work for Brackston...”
She interrupted him with her laughter. “You’re kidding, right? You know I got all the shit ta prove how dirty Tarent was now. Mishy can’t take credit for taking him down, so it’s my collar. Since I did it as an independent agent, that means I’m going to make a fortune. Hell, I might buy Brakston and you can work for me.”
Conner put her arm around Elantra, and she put her good arm around Conner and rested her head on Conner’s shoulder as they walked out of the hospital.
“Tired?” Conner asked.
“Yes... Conner, what are we going to do now? I mean... we don’t even know where we’re going to sleep tonight.”
“Well, then I guess the first thing to do is rent a hotel room.”
“Then what?” Elantra asked.
“Then we’ll do whatever you want to do.”
“What about what you want?”
“That is what I want.”
About the AUTHOR
Selina Rosen lives in rural Arkansas with her partner, her parrot, Ricky, assorted fish and fowl – both inside and out, several milk goats, an undetermined number of barn cats and her dogs, Spud and Keri. Besides writing, editing, and taking care of the farm, she’s a gardener, carpenter, rock mason, electrician (NOT a plumber), Torah scholar and sword fighter. In her spare time she creates water gardens, builds furniture, and adds to her on-going creation of the “Great Wall of Kibler”.
Selina’s short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies including Sword and Sorceress 16, Such A Pretty Face, Distant Journeys, three of the MZB Fantasy Mags, Tooth and Claw, Turn the Other Chick, and Anthology At the End of the Universe, just to name a few. Her critically acclaimed story entitled “Ritual Evolution” appeared in the first of the new Thieves World anthologies, Turning Points, and her second TW story, “Gathering Strength,” appeared in the new TW anthology, Enemies of Fortune. The Bubba Chronicles is a collection of her short fiction which features – strangely enough – bubbas.
Her novels include Queen of Denial, Recycled, Chains of Freedom, Chains of Destruction, and Strange Robby from Meisha Merlin Publishing, and The Host trilogy, Fire & Ice, HammerTown, Reruns, and novellas entitled The Boatman and Material Things.
Bad Lands, a gonzo-mystery novel co-written with Laura J. Underwood, is due out from Five Star Mysteries in 2007, and Sword Masters, the first full-leng
th fantasy novel by Selina is also due out in 2007.
In her capacity as owner and editor in chief of Yard Dog Press, Ms. Rosen has edited several anthologies, including the award-winning Bubbas of the Apocalypse, The Four Bubbas of the Apocalypse: Flatulence, Halitosis, Incest and… Ned, International House of Bubbas, and two collections of “modern” fairy tales – the Stoker-nominated Stories That Won’t Make Your Parents Hurl and More Stories That Won’t Make Your Parents Hurl.
You can contact Selina through her personal website www.selinarosen.com, or just Email her at selinarosen@cox.net.
About the Cover Artist
Brad W. Foster is an award-winning artist who has had work published in over a thousand books, magazines, comics, and indefinable small press publications—the man needs a hobby!
Brad has created three covers for Yard Dog Press publications—Illusions of Sanity, Wolf’s Trap, and now HammerTown.
Brad draws to live, and finds it interesting that he also lives to draw. You can find out even more about Brad and his work at:
www.jabberwockygraphix.com.
Yard Dog Press Titles As Of This Print Date
A Game of Colors
John Urbancik
Adventures Of the
Irish Ninja
Selina Rosen
All The Marbles
Dusty Rainbolt
Almost Human
Gary Moreau
Ard Magister
Laura J. Underwood
Blackrose Avenue
Mark Shepherd
The Boat Man
Selina Rosen
Bobby’s Troll
John Lance
Bogie Woods
Laura J. Underwood
The Bubba Chronicles
Selina Rosen
Bubbas Of the Apocalypse
Edited by Selina Rosen
Chronicles of the Last War
Laura J. Underwood
Dark & Stormy Nights
Bradley H. Sinor
Deja Doo
Edited by Selina Rosen
Diva
Mark W. Tiedemann
Dracula’s Lawyer
Julia S. Mandala
The Essence of Stone
Beverly A. Hale
Extensions
Mark Tiedemann
Fire & Ice
Selina Rosen
Flush Fiction, Volume I: Stories To Be Read In One Sitting
Edited by Selina Rosen
The Folly of Assumption
Lee Martindale
The Four Bubbas of the
Apocalypse: Flatulence,
Halitosis, Incest, and... Ned
Edited by Selina Rosen
The Four Redheads of the
Apocalypse
Linda L. Donahue, Rhonda Eudaly, Julia S. Mandala, & Dusty Rainbolt
The Garden In Bloom
Jeffrey Turner
The Golems
Of LaramieCounty
Ken Rand
HammerTown
Selina Rosen
The Happiness Box
Beverly A. Hale
Hell Hath No Fury...
Five Bardic Tales
Lee Martindale
Honor Bound
Lazette Gifford
The Host Series:
The Host
Fright Eater
Gang Approval
Selina Rosen
Illusions of Sanity
James K. Burk
In the Shadows
Bradley H. Sinor
International House of Bubbas
Edited by Selina Rosen
The Leopard’s Daughter
Lee Killough
The Long, Cold Walk To Mars
Jeffrey Turner
Marking the Signs and Other Tales Of Mischief
Laura J. Underwood
Material Things
Selina Rosen
Medieval Misfits
Tracy S. Morris
Mirror Images
Susan Satterfield
More Stories That Won’t Make Your Parents Hurl
Edited by Selina Rosen
The Mourning Edge of Iron
Everette Bell
The Necronomicrap: A Guide To Your Horoooscope
Tim Frayser
One Way Ticket To
Midnight
Gary Jonas
Playing With Secrets
Bradley H & Sue P. Sinor
Prophecy of Swords
M.H. Bonham
Reruns
Selina Rosen
Shadow Lord
Laura J. Underwood
Shadows In Green
Richard Dansky
Star Bound
Lazette Gifford
Stories That Won’t Make Your Parents Hurl
Edited by Selina Rosen
Strange Twists Of Fate
James K. Burk
Tales Of the Lucky Nickel Saloon, Second Ave., Laramie, Wyoming, U S of A
Ken Rand
Tell Me a Story: The Saga of the Turtle Knight
Brian A. Hopkins
Texistani: Indo-Pak Food From A Texas Kitchen
Beverly A. Hale
That’s All Folks
J. F. Gonzalez
Through Wyoming Eyes
Ken Rand
To Stand As Witness
Lee Martindale
Veil Of the Soul
Trey R.Barker
Wings of Morning
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Double Dogs:
#1:
Of Stars & Shadows
Mark W. Tiedemann
This Instance Of Me
Jeffrey Turner
#2:
Gods and Other Children
Bill D. Allen
Tranquility
Tracy Morris