“I know,” Purdue said guiltily. “Listen, I can't take back what happened...but you have to know I didn't want to kill Mama May...”
“I know,” Jean said. “It was self-defense. I saw. We just should have never been in that position in the first place, you know?”
“Right.” That made sense. “I respect you as a colleague. Our interests are very different, but we both respect the history of this world, and I didn't mean to make a mess of your life after your help in fixing mine. Let me make it up to you, Jean.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” Jean asked. “You going to pay all of the bills I have for this place?”
“I could if you wanted,” Purdue said awkwardly. He had the wealth for it, it just wasn't something that he had considered. “But I hope that this will be enough.”
Purdue revealed the bag he brought with him and pulled out a book. It was Les Prophetites, written by Nostradamus himself. It wasn't exactly the unread, unearthed prophecies that Purdue found in the Paris catacombs, but it was something. It was a bit of a stereotype but one that Purdue found to be true; when you had wealth and needed to make an apology, spending money to buy someone's admiration back was a pretty safe route to go, despite what people said.
Jean slowly took the book and looked it over. “Really?”
“It's a first edition,” Purdue said. “From way back. Cost me quite a pretty penny to get my hands on it.”
Jean didn't look too convinced by this gift. He could see Purdue's plan to try to win his friendship back. Jean pointed at the bookshelves behind him. “I already have a first edition in stock. And yes they are quite expensive. You could have just bought this from me...at least then I would have made some money too.”
Purdue felt like an idiot, but that's how he was feeling a lot lately.
“Ah,” Purdue said. “Well, it's always good to have more than one copy, aye? Just in case.”
“You think it's this easy, huh?” Jean said, waving the book around. “You think you can just buy me an old rare book and I'm going to forgive all of the shit that went down here? I'm not going to forget about all of that so easily, Purdue. Every time I come inside here, any time I look at the floor, all I'm going to see is that old woman's body right there.”
“I know, I know,” Purdue said, and he did realize that. “Listen, Jean, this is the last you will see of me if you need. I just hate knowing that I brought you all of this trouble. Here.”
Purdue placed the book down on the counter and nodded. “You are a good, knowledgeable man. We would have been honored to have someone like you be part of the Order of the Black Sun...but you did decline, I know that. And that means that you shouldn't have any part in the Order of the Black Sun's business. I'm sorry I made that much harder than it should have been for you.”
Jean nodded, easing a little. “I appreciate that. Really. I hate all of this, and I'm glad you are realizing that. All of the shady secret society stuff was never something I wanted to be part of. Ever. I just wanted to find an old witch book. We did that. That was supposed to be it.”
“I know,” Purdue said. “And I'll never involve you again.”
Jean smiled. “I would appreciate that. I have had enough excitement. The only excitement I want now are from the things within these pages. And not from within these...” Jean handed Les Propheties back to Purdue. “I'm not going to be putting a book that I don't need on these shelves. I have standards. Nostradamus may have seen the fate of the entire world, but that kind of apocalyptic nonsense doesn't interest me.”
“Fair enough,” Purdue said. “Then I'll take it back. That book won't be in here ever again. Neither will me, and hopefully neither will any more dead psychics.”
It sounded like a good arrangement, and Jean looked satisfied with it. As much as Purdue enjoyed working with him and as knowledgeable as Jean was about so many things that Purdue needed help with, Jean was just an occult specialist who enjoyed sharing that knowledge with anyone interested. He belonged in his shop, spreading information about some of the stranger parts of life. He didn't belong in the world Purdue was in. He didn't have any real place in the Order of the Black Sun, and he never would.
“Take care of yourself, Jean,” Purdue said, taking Les Propheties back. “If you need anything, I'm just a phone call away.”
“Just stay the hell away from my store,” Jean said. “At least for a while. I have had enough of your craziness for a good long while.”
“I can manage that, but who knows what the days to come will bring?”
It was a harmless joke but Jean didn't laugh. He looked nervous that his life would be interrupted by chaos again. Purdue hoped it wouldn't, but he couldn't make any promises.
Purdue went to return Les Propheties to the deep vault and he found Elijah Dane exactly where he left him, inspecting some artifact. As usual, the curator barely noticed that Purdue had come into the room. It took until Purdue was standing right over him that he looked up from behind his glasses. He peered from Purdue to the book in his hand.
“I do hope you enjoyed it,” Elijah said. “Frankly, I found it to be a waste of time. I do hope you found the unpublished works. Those might be worth keeping in here.” Elijah looked him over for the scrolls and looked disappointed when he didn't see them. “I take that as a no.”
“Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy to collect as I would have hoped,” Purdue said. “And I don't think you'll like to hear what happened to it.”
Elijah pushed his glasses up the ridge of his nose. “Spit it out then.”
“I burned them,” Purdue said.
Elijah Dane was usually a very calm and collected individual, but one thing that got under his skin was the misuse or abuse of rare relics. He hated the idea of priceless items being tarnished or ruined before he had a chance to protect them in the deep vault. That was all that he really cared about and the only thing that he usually showed any passion for. Now that he heard Purdue had destroyed the lost scrolls of Nostradamus, he looked ready to punch him in the face.
“You did what!?”
“I burned them,” Purdue said. “I burned them so Julian couldn't get his hands on them. It was the only way.”
Elijah raised a brow and glanced over at the empty display case. “So your ridiculous plan to release Julian Corvus turned out to be just as bad of an idea as it seemed from the start? You took two things from this collection when you left. The first edition of a well-known book and the only immortal man in the world. I must say, I wish you had come back with that psychopath than that useless almanac.”
Purdue nodded. “Me too.”
“Did you even get a chance to read any of the unpublished pages? Please tell me you at least were able to salvage that much. Writing is useless if you don't have a chance to read it.”
“I'm afraid not.”
Purdue walked over to the display case that Julian had been kept it and stared at the empty glass box. It shouldn't have been empty but he could see right through it. There was nothing inside anymore and there might not ever be again. He had let one of the most dangerous creatures that he had ever encountered out of that cage, put on a tight leash, and thought he was in control. He should have known that it was better to just leave Julian Corvus in that box. Now, that demon was out in the real world again where he could do whatever he pleased. Purdue knew firsthand how dangerous it was to not know where Julian Corvus was, to just be stuck waiting to see what kind of new chaos he would bring to everyone else in the world.
The whole point of putting Julian there was that he would always know where he was and always have the satisfaction of knowing that he managed to beat him and knew that he couldn't harm anyone for the rest of his endless days from behind that reinforced glass. It was so satisfying—but that satisfaction and reassurance was short-lived. If only Purdue hadn't become so desperate, been pushed to do something so desperate out of nothing but frustration. It was a stupid move, and now he was paying for it. He let one enemy make him for
get just how dangerous another was, if only for a brief instant—but that was all Julian needed to get away.
Nina appeared beside him. He hadn't even heard her come in.
“It's not your fault.”
“Of course it is. I was the one that decided to let Julian out in the first place. I was the one that stupidly thought that I could get him back in. Just give his ass a kick right back into his box.”
“Yeah,” Nina said. “You're a regular Pandora, letting loose all of the bad in the world from out of a box. You can't just blame yourself. We all played our part. I was the one that accidentally gave that psycho immortality in the first place, remember?”
“Accidentally, aye, you're right,” Purdue said. “You didn't mean to do it. You didn't choose to do it. Mine was entirely my decision. You and Sam fought me on it but I did it anyway. You tried to warn me that this would end badly...and here we are...at the end. You were right. I was wrong. This one is all on me.”
“No,” Nina said, shaking her head. “No, this one is on that bastard Julian. He is the one that decides to do as much harm as he does. We just had to try to react to that lunatic as best as we could. This all starts with him. We may have gotten him away from people for a short while, but we can't put all of that responsibility on our shoulders. Julian is the type of person that would eventually figure out how to get out anyway.”
“So we just let him walk then? Let him roam the world hurting people or planning to hurt us? That doesn't sound great, eh? It sounds like we'll just be waiting for him to come burn down another one of our houses.”
“He's alone this time,” Nina argued. “He doesn't have the Order of the Black Sun anymore. We do. We have the advantage this time.”
That made Purdue feel slightly better, but only slightly. There was definitely strength in numbers, but Julian had a way of attracting horrible people to his cause. Soon enough, he would probably have a new legion of murderers at his disposal. A new army to wreak havoc with or to plague Purdue.
They would have to be ready—the new Order of the Black Sun would have to be ready.
OUT OF THE BOX
Julian Corvus could go anywhere he wanted now, for however long he wanted. It was freedom in its truest sense. He was free from the confines of that horrible display case he had been trapped in. He was free from David Purdue, Nina Gould, Sam Cleave, and the Order of the Black Sun that they had taken from him and then turned against him. He was free from the wrath of the infamous Old Lady and her band of sycophants. He was free from all of the burdens of the past and could look just at the possibilities of the days to come.
With the scrolls burned, he may not have known what to expect exactly, but he didn't have much to worry about. There was very little on the entire planet that could hurt him, and very few people that scared him. He was untouchable, unable to be brought down by even death itself now. He would never allow himself to be stopped again, and he would certainly never be thrown back into another box because this time...this time, he knew that he would never have a chance to get out again. He would be trapped for eternity, and he wasn't going to waste his everlasting life in some cage. No, he may have lost most of his previous power, but he still had himself. Julian Corvus didn't need allies. He didn't need subordinates. He didn't need the Order of the Black Sun anymore. He would do just as well on his own.
All he had to do was figure out what was next. There was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to immediately start enacting a plan to get vengeance on David Purdue for taking the Order of the Black Sun from him, but that seemed meaningless at this point. If he wanted his vengeance, he could have easily taken it back in the catacombs. No, he wasn't interested in settling that vendetta at the moment. He would figure out a much better way to hurt Purdue in the future. It was his obsession with going after Purdue that got him in the mess he was in. He still wanted his enemy to suffer, but he could put it on the back burner for a while until it felt like the right time. It would be so much more satisfying that way.
For now, he just needed time to himself. He needed to devise a new plan for his immortality and what he was going to do with the gift he had been given by the Spear of Destiny. He wouldn't let it go to waste anymore. He had an endless supply of time in front of him, he just needed to figure out the best way to use it. For the moment, he could just take a breath and appreciate that he wasn't looking at an eternity of imprisonment anymore. He was moving toward countless lifetimes of freedom. He could spend millennia doing whatever the hell he wanted now, as long as nothing terrible happened to ruin his plans.
Julian Corvus wouldn't know what was coming in the future, but he was excited to see how all of it would turn out.
END
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The Nostradamus Scrolls Page 18
