Free Nightlife by Brian Hodge

into the guard’s back, barbed tip breaking off just under his shoulder. He went down with a grunt, and Kerebawa was already loading and aiming the second. Before the other guard, nearer the house, could make sense of his fallen comrade, the next arrow had sunk into the soft flesh just below the breastbone. The curare made short work of them both, rapidly relaxing muscles past the point of any movement. First the limbs, then inward until the lungs and heart themselves were stilled.
    Kerebawa rushed the house, acutely feeling the exhilaration of bloodshed, born into his blood and spirit. He tried a side door, recessed into a covered little walkway, but it was locked. He used the stained machete blade to slice an opening into a nearby screened window and slid through. Dropped to a crouch, looking furtively about.
    The house smelled of too much wasted space and idle hands. The machete he carried aloft, ready to swing. Around his neck hung the bamboo quiver. The bow and arrows themselves were too cumbersome for inside.
    He was in a small bedroom and padded out to the hallway. The walls were the color of bone, and he stood out against them like a man risen from a tar pit. South American artwork of both Spanish and Indian origins hung on the walls. Kerebawa crept deeper into the house, ears pricked for alarm raised by the discovery of the fallen guards.
    Up a flight of four steps, a wider central hallway. Footsteps, shoes on the polished wooden floor.
    “Qué tal?” he heard a man gasp upon looking out a window overlooking the back.
    Kerebawa pressed in close to the wall as the man rushed around the corner. Surely no older than himself, wearing a black shirt with a gun suspended in a leather shoulder rig. His hand was just closing on the gun when he rounded the corner and saw Kerebawa. His eyes widened even as the machete chopped straight across them and the bridge of his nose. Bone splintered into brain, and he was dead on his feet, and Kerebawa eased him to the floor.
    Another guard was on the second floor, his back in view as Kerebawa crept up the stairs. Oblivious to everything going on around him. Kerebawa came up behind him and clamped one hand over his mouth and reached around to drive a bamboo arrow point up into his heart with the other. He waited until the man quit spasming beneath his hand, then laid him to one side.
    What tales he would have to tell when he got back to Mabori-teri! Tales that would be told to children and grandchildren of the village for generations to come. Kerebawa, a true Fierce One, creeping into a strange enemy’s shabono even before nightfall and spilling the blood of many a foe.
    He would be legend. And Angus would be avenged.
    He found no more guards on the rest of his silent trek through the dark of the house. But he found the big man himself at the opposite end. Hernando Vasquez, in his bedroom. The man was older than he had appeared at a distance, hair rapidly graying, his face tight and leathery, with jowls just beginning to turn heavy. Droopy eyes. He was almost grandfatherly. Vasquez wore a silk robe and was with a woman less than half his age. She saw the intruder first, the stalking dark shadow, and gave a startled cry. Dropped a champagne glass to shatter on the floor.
    Kerebawa, knowing the advantage of surprise was gone, charged in with the machete high, cocked, and ready to swing.
    “Carlos! Diego!” Vasquez yelled. He had twitchy eyes. A rat’s eyes. After a beat he called for them again.
    “ Muertos, ” Kerebawa said. Might as well let him know that he could scream his lungs out and help would not come.
    That a man should live in such splendor and unused space was repugnant. As if Vasquez had to surround himself with trinkets and baubles to distract himself from how empty his life truly was. Such a man was impossible to understand. Truly foreign. Which made Kerebawa wonder: How much more foreign did he seem to Vasquez? How much a part of another world? Probably far more so