Private

A BLACK HYUNDAI van with a cable TV logo on the side cruised the streets of Los Feliz.

“I’ve got your pigeon on the grid,” Morbid said to the guy sitting next to him in the back. “She just left her house. She’s going to bite. She’s going down.”

“I’m ready,” said Jason Pilser in his role as Scylla. A freakin’ Greek monster. Six heads. “Let me do this. She’s all mine, right?”

Morbid gave the keyboard to Scylla, who watched the tracking icon that stood for Marguerite Esperanza as it traveled across the GPS map.

Scylla tapped on the keys, sending a text message to Marguerite using the name of this guy, Lamar, who’d been texting Marguerite for a couple of weeks.

And Marguerite was answering.

After some dialogue and a change of mind, she said yes. She’d meet “Lamar” at Pizza Hut.

Scylla felt the sweat gather at his hairline. He patted his jacket pocket, put on his fresh gloves.

He listened in on Marguerite’s call to her grandma over the speaker, and when she’d told her good-bye, Steemcleena parked the van on Rowena. Maybe twenty yards from the pizzeria. No more than that.

Scylla watched Marguerite’s icon on the GPS grid close in on the icon for the van. He looked through the dark glass of the side window as the girl came up the sidewalk past the stationery store.

“She’s a babe,” he said.

“And she’s all yours, Scylla. She’s your babe. Think you can handle her?”

For a few seconds Marguerite would be between the dry cleaner and the van, like an eclipse of the moon.

“Scylla. Go,” Morbid said. “Go now.”

Scylla pulled open the van door and got his first good look at the target. The girl was bigger than he’d thought.

She was at least five ten and looked ripped. With only seconds to make his decision, Scylla leaped to the sidewalk, came up behind her, and threw a cloth bag over her head, cinching the drawstring.

She screamed incredibly loud, and she fought back too.

Scylla clapped his hand over her mouth. He was so filled with adrenaline, it took nothing for him and Morbid to lift her off the sidewalk and throw her into the back of the van.

Morbid slammed the doors closed and slapped the divider to signal Steem to go, go. Then he and Scylla threw their bodies on top of the struggling girl.

“Gotcha,” Scylla said. “Now be a good girl.”

Morbid yelled at her, “If you shut the hell up, we’ll give you a chance to win.”

Scylla’s mouth was dry. He was so pumped. Even if he wanted to, there was no backing out now.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Give me a chance to win what?”

Chapter 37

THERE WAS A screech of brakes as the black van jerked to a halt. The doors ground open, and Scylla and Morbid hoisted the girl out by her long arms and legs. They carried her quickly away from the street and tossed her to the ground.

Suddenly she was a blur as she pulled off the hood and got to her feet in one startlingly fast movement. She lashed out to clear the space around her and faced Scylla, who was in a wrestling crouch only a body’s length away.

He grinned, a ski mask covering most of his face. She was nothing like the combatants he’d faced on Commandos of Doom. Her reality was startling and exciting, but most of all, it was a challenge.

“Hey, Tigerpuss. Here, kitty kitty,” he said to the girl.

“Who are you?” Marguerite screamed back at him.

“I’m the one who’s going to test you,” Scylla said. “It’s me against you, Marguerite.”

The girl looked around, and Scylla saw her take in the scene. They were on Rowena, past the strip malls and stores, right on the bank of the reservoir, a place as desolate as the dark side of the moon. Cars zoomed by beyond the fence that walled off the reservoir from the road.

Morbid and Steem danced around Marguerite, executing martial feints that Scylla had used innumerable times on Commandos of Doom. It not only kept the target off balance, it blocked her escape.

But where some girls would have begged and cried, this one lunged. She shot out the heel of her hand and connected with a cracking sound, square on Scylla’s nose.

He fell back with a howl of agony and held his face with both hands. He saw the girl turn to run, dodging the others as if she were weaving through defenders for a layup in a playground basketball game.

Steem reached out with a long arm, grabbed the girl’s hair, and yanked her right off her feet.

Then he let go of her and stepped back. This wasn’t his turn.

Scylla thought he knew what to do now. He went straight for the girl, visualizing throwing her to the ground and choking her with a headlock-but she was much faster than he was.

She spun around, chopped at him in some kind of judo move, then followed the chop with a kick to his groin. He saw the kick coming and deflected it so that it connected with his thigh, but it still hurt like hell. Another hard blow landed on his forearm. Had she cracked a bone?