STAR FALL PEOPLE Chapter 31

Nadia: Hong Kong

(Previous chapter, or start at the beginning.)

Well, this was interesting, Nadia thought, surveying the men invading her flat.

She had stumbled back with the kind of heightened-alert drunkenness that had her constantly checking her purse for Tom’s phone. Mang had informed her of Tom’s weakness for alcohol, and Tom had certainly made that easy to exploit, but it had meant getting drunk with him. It had been a while since she’d last indulged men’s taste for liquor. Like those brothel banquets in long-ago Beijing…depraved drinking games at Versailles… throwing back saloon whisky before having to kiss weathered boys still reeking of their cows.

Ah, she thought as she took the lift up to her floor, steadying herself against the back, the good old days.

Tom hadn’t passed out as expected, but it was all right: she had a good time with him in bed. The booze meant he needed plenty of coaxing, but she enjoyed the way he had been so into her, with the right mix of greed and attentiveness. He had a handsome face and a good frame, despite being middle age. His genetics were diseased, but what did that matter? An alcoholic streak didn’t seem too risky given her womb’s track record of abominations. He was pregnancy material.

If at first you don’t succeed, her sodden brain whirred, try, try again—

The lift doors parted, and she saw the glass from the fire extinguisher’s violated alcove strewn across the floor tiles, and then her bashed-in door.

Shit.

Nadia reached inside her purse and found Bram’s plastic Glock. The compact pistol filled her small double-handed grip. She slid off the lock and stumbled clumsily to the half-open door. Its handle lay crumpled on the floor. Stepping inside, she saw his huge silhouette looming over Frankel, gun pointed at the old man’s head. She aimed the Glock but Bram swiveled and fired first. The hit punched her in the guts, sending her flying back against the inside wall, the Glock flown.

She slumped down in a bloody streak as Bram flicked the light switch. She grunted from the infernal pain. But that wasn’t what scared her.

He still wore his fine suit and tie, his Kahr PM9 deceptively tiny in his fist, but there was nothing toylike about the garish wounds peppering his skull. They were red angry sores, evenly spaced like the pattern on a soccer ball, with the skin puckered up around them. As if his head had exploded in tiny, perfectly equidistant volcanos.

She groaned, “What happened to you—” He unloaded his weapon on her. She screamed and her body danced. And Nadia—

***

Light. Beautiful pure white light. Nothing hurt. Everything felt weightless. Floating towards that glow.

Nadia! Stay with me!

The voice was unknown. It didn’t matter.

Facing the soft warmth of that light, levitating there.

She’s one of them.

One of what?