by Rob Rogers
It was Zhdanov, he saw with some relief. Zhdanov had screamed. Coffee dripped from her burned face and she was looking around for a new target. Cain saw Argonaut flying out the front of the restaurant with an elderly man in his arms. It looked like the rest of the bystanders were gone.
Doctor Camelot rose awkwardly from the ground, one arm pointed at Zhdanov. “Be careful,” she said. “She touched Argonaut for a few seconds. She has some of his strength.”
Hell. Cain nodded. Every instinct was telling him to tear into Zhdanov, to hit her while she was distracted, to pull the shotgun from his back and shoot her. The wild demon was free in him and he was itching to fight. Zhdanov was a remorseless killer, a monster who literally stole the lives of the people she touched.
But she was also his patient.
Doctor Camelot had steadied herself now. “On three,” she said.
Cain shook his head. “Give me a minute,” he said. He thought of Detective Salazar Lorca, who had kicked down his door and saved his life, in his own unorthodox manner, all those years ago.
“Olena,” he said, stepping forward, arms at his sides, “it’s time to surrender.”
Zhdanov looked at him, eyes wild, taking in his appearance. “What monster are you?” she spat.
He nodded. “They call me Bedlam,” he said. “And yes, I look pretty awful. But I’m not looking to hurt you, Olena. I want to help get you to people who can give you the assistance you need.”
She looked frantically around the room, eyes cutting back and forth between the front door and the back, considering the plate-glass window.
“You’re not going to be able to escape this room, Olena,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at that, pulling a glass of ice water from a table, dipping a napkin into it, and dabbing at her face.
“Doctor Camelot and I don’t want to use force against you,” he said.
Even through her armor, he could hear Doctor Camelot snorting at that. She was agitated, angry, ready to strike.
He focused his red eyes on Zhdanov. “But we will use force, Olena,” he said, “if we need to in order to keep you from leaving here and hurting more people.”
“Stop saying my name!” she shouted. “Stop trying to handle me!” But she wasn’t moving.
Argonaut stepped into the doorway, but Cain stopped him with another slight shake of his head. Looking from Cain to Zhdanov and back, Argonaut nodded, setting his feet and spreading his shoulders, filling the door. He wouldn’t move unless he had to, but he was prepared. Cain saw a web of wrinkles in the shape of a hand on the man’s cheek. He’d been too tough for Zhdanov to kill during the time she’d had, but she’d hurt him, nonetheless.
Police sirens were approaching. Ambulances, too.
“Why don’t you sit down?” Cain said to Zhdanov, gesturing to a chair with a clawed finger.
She stared at him and suddenly looked tired and sad.
Then she sat down, and it was over.
Incident In The 2900 Block Of Sarandakos Avenue. Devil’s Cape, LA — This evening, members of the Devil’s Cape Police Department are investigating a paranormal assault at a local restaurant. The offense occurred at approximately . . .
— From the DCPD police log
Chapter Forty-Five
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Nine days after the deaths of the Storm Raiders
9:45 p.m.
The night of the building collapse, they’d avoided the press as much as possible. Before she’d pulled Cain and Argonaut from the wreckage, Doctor Camelot had briefly introduced herself to the authorities on the scene in order to convince them to let her lead the rescue effort, and the news media had recorded her doing that. Other than that, everything had been from a distance.
But tonight, they made brief statements, identifying themselves, explaining about the fight at the restaurant, and then answering “no comment” to anything else, including persistent questions about whether they were going to form a “super team” in Devil’s Cape and what they intended to do next.
Argonaut was the most comfortable in front of the camera, Cain the least. He felt the reporters’ fear, the discomfort of people looking at him, the fascination with his demonic form. When one reporter asked him if he was a Satanist, he waved a clawed hand, said “That’s enough questions,” and stomped away in anger.
But then he spotted Detective Cynthia Daigle, directing officers on the scene, making plans to transport Zhdanov away.
He walked over to her, clawed feet scratching at the sidewalk, red-black fur dotted with sweat. “Thought you should know,” he said, “we found out that she had help breaking out of the asylum.” He never used the word “asylum” aloud at work, but used it purposely now to distance Bedlam from Cain Ducett.
He’d startled her, and a cigarette dangling from her lips fell to the sidewalk, smoke rising between the two of them. Daigle swallowed, then narrowed her eyes, trying not to look intimidated by the demonic man standing in front of her. “Yeah?” she said.
He nodded, his horns cutting through the smoke of her cigarette. “It was another superhuman,” he said. “The one called Scion. They had some kind of falling out.” He ground out her cigarette with his bare foot.
“Huh,” she said. She seemed disappointed, a little deflated. She’d wanted it to be him, he knew.
“He took her to that building that collapsed,” he offered. “Maybe you can find something there.”
She shrugged, trying to hide the disappointment, trying to act nonchalant standing in his shadow. “Maybe so,” she said.
He walked away then, feeling her eyes on him, but he knew that he had accomplished what he needed. She wouldn’t be pursuing Cain Ducett anymore.
* * * * *
Jason was helping two SWAT team members and Doctor Camelot secure Zhdanov in a police van when he noticed his father mopping coffee off the restaurant floor, his hands quivering.
Jason turned to Doctor Camelot. “You got this?”
She nodded, holding Zhdanov rigidly in place with an armored hand while the police officers added additional restraints.
He walked into Zorba’s, closing the door behind him. He and his father were alone.
“You okay, Pop?”
Pericles leaned on the mop and wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. He nodded. “And you? How’s your cheek?”
“I’ll be fine.”
Pericles nodded again. “There’s ice,” he said. “You know where it is.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “I’m okay.” His father’s hands were still shaking. His hands on the mop looked like those of a World War I flier fighting the throttle. “You should maybe sit down, Pop,” he said, resting his hand gently on his father’s shoulder.
Pericles carefully rested the mop against the edge of a table and lowered himself into one of the booths. “Costas brought her here,” he said.
Pushing his cape out of the way, Jason sat across from his father in the booth. A half-eaten gyro and plate of fries sat in front of him and he shoved them over to one side. “I know,” he said.
“I was afraid she would kill you,” Pericles said.
“I was afraid she would kill you.”
His father guffawed, a single eruption of noise. He sat up straighter. “You make me proud,” he said.
Jason smiled. “You, too, Pop.”
Pericles sat there, the shaking in his hands subsiding. “So,” he said. “It’s Argonaut, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And Julian? He’s the other one I’ve read about? Scion? Who rescued Mikey Orfanos from the police?”
Jason lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Me, too.” Pericles picked up a napkin and brushed some crumbs off of the tablecloth.
“He’s the one who let me know,” Jason said. “That Uncle Costas was bringing that woman here.”
Pericles shook his head. “He sent you, but he didn’t come.”
Jason didn’t know wha
t to say to that.
“Those golden threads were real,” Pericles said softly.
“What?”
His father stared at a sculpture on the wall, a recreation of a piece of one of the friezes on the Parthenon. Two riders on galloping horses, one of the horses actually flying, all four of its feet in the air. “Not too long before you were born,” he said, “actually, a little more than nine months before you were born”—he smiled devilishly at Jason—“your mother and I went home on holiday.”
Home meant Greece.
“We visited family. We visited beaches. We drank wine and ouzo and danced a lot.” His eyes went back to the frieze. “It was good for us,” he said. “Time away from Costas and our uncle Ilias.”
Jason nodded.
“And one day, a peddler approached me with two small urns. They looked very old. They were painted with Greek warriors.” He gestured at a picture hung on the wall. “Like that,” he said. “He told me that they were very, very ancient, that they held threads from the Golden Fleece.”
Outside the restaurant, the police van holding Zhdanov pulled away.
“He said to me, ‘You will think I am trying to trick you, but that’s all right.’ He smiled at me. ‘I will sell you these urns for fifty American dollars each.’ ”
Pericles shrugged. “It was not a fortune, and they looked very nice—I could hang them in the restaurant. I haggled with him, told him I only wanted one urn. ‘You need both,’ he says to me. ‘You will have twins and then you will believe me. You need both. They will become like the Argonauts.’ ”
Jason sat up straighter. “This is before we were born.”
Pericles nodded. “He was very insistent, a little crazy, maybe. So I bought the urns, thinking I’d hang them in the restaurant.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Oh, I did,” Pericles said. “Until you were born. And then, the night before your baptism, I had a dream about those urns and the threads the man said were inside.”
A dream.
“And you opened them up?”
Pericles nodded. He told Jason about the peculiar baptism he’d dreamed about, the one he’d performed on Jason and Julian. “There were golden threads inside, one in each urn.”
“Not exactly Greek Orthodox, Pop.”
Pericles smiled sadly. “It is a lot of responsibility, what I’ve done to you and your brother.”
Jason wondered about the peddler. He wondered where Julian was, what he knew. “It’s okay,” he said. He reached across the table and rested his hand on his father’s shoulder.
Pericles stiffened. Jason pulled back his hand, but then realized that his father wasn’t reacting to him. He was reacting to something outside.
Costas Kalodimos was standing at the window, staring at the two of them, glowering.
* * * * *
When Jason walked outside, his Uncle Costas was standing across the street by the ruined flower cart, hands in his pockets, staring at him. Never one to waste anything, Costas had pinned a fallen yellow rose to his lapel.
The smart thing to do would be to keep his distance from his uncle, but there was an urgency in the old man’s eyes. Taking his time with it, Jason walked across the street to him. “Something you need, sir?” he asked.
Costas glowered. “Cut the crap, Jason,” he whispered.
“I don’t know what—”
Costas held up a finger. “Don’t insult my intelligence,” he said. “I don’t see you so often anymore, but I see Julian every day. He works for me. You two try so hard to be different, but you can never get away from each other—you’re the same underneath. And I saw you with your father.”
Jason stared back at him.
Costas shook his head. “I know Julian’s secret and now I know yours, but that’s not the point here. The point is that you might not have meant to do it, but you screwed me over here. This”—he gestured at air, but it was clear he meant Rusalka—“was my chance at surviving the next few weeks, and you took it away.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Jason said.
Costas jabbed a thick finger at him. “You tell that to your aunt when you’re putting flowers on my grave,” he said.
Getting angry now, Jason pushed the pointing hand down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He lowered his voice. “And besides,” he said, “who says I would bring flowers?”
Costas’s eyes grew flinty. “These freaks,” he said, “this Cirque d’Obscurité. They’re going to kill me.”
His uncle’s breath smelled of onions. Jason was getting tired of standing there with him. He pulled back. “We’ll take care of them, too, in due time,” he said.
“Jason!” Costas hissed, moving close. “You want those bastards? You want to take them down? You take them down, and I’ll make it worth your while, you understand me?”
“I don’t need your bribes,” Jason said. “And I intend to take you down, too. We’ll track them down, and then we’ll turn our attention to you.”
Costas ignored the threat. “Track them down?” he said. “Track them down? Is that what you need?” He mopped at his sweating forehead with a handkerchief, then leaned forward. “Jason,” he whispered, “I can tell you where they are tonight. I can tell you where they are right now.”
The beautiful illuminated clock tower of Lehane University is one of the most popular symbols of Devil’s Cape. It also offers ones of the best possible views of the city. Alas, that’s a view denied the typical Devil’s Cape traveler.
In the late sixties and early seventies, the tower was a notorious gathering place for small groups of college students. They’d go up there to make out, to get high, to plan protests against the war or against police corruption. But in 1975—on Mardi Gras night, of course—a handful of students went a bit overboard in their carousing and pranks. They painted the clock face to resemble the masked skull and crossbones symbol the pirate St. Diable. They dressed the antique gargoyles that decorate the tower’s rooftop in lingerie and painted their horns in nail polish. And they accidentally sent one gargoyle tumbling to the sidewalk far, far below. It took the university thousands of dollars to restore the tower to its usual appearance, and it invested in a sturdy security door that keeps visitors and students out of the upper levels to this day.
— Excerpted from A Devil’s Cape Traveler’s Guide
Chapter Forty-Six
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Nine days after the deaths of the Storm Raiders
10 p.m.
As she soared through the Devil’s Cape sky between Argonaut and Bedlam, Kate sighed at the anger in Samuel’s voice.
“This is nuts!” he shouted at her over the communicator. “You’re going to die, Katie! You understand me? The Storm Raiders fought together for years, we were experienced and tough, and they murdered us in the space of a minute.”
“They caught you by surprise,” she said.
“The hell they did! We expected them. We’d spent the flight down from Vanguard City planning for the fight. And they killed us anyway.”
News helicopters were approaching, alerted to their battle with Rusalka, trying to catch aerial footage. When the pilots spotted the three heroes, they began to detour around to follow. Seeing them turn, Argonaut caught the others’ attention and pointed. The others nodded and the three of them veered off, flying low through a stand of trees in Lady Danger River Park.
“The three of you couldn’t take down Rusalka by yourselves,” Samuel said. “She was handing you your asses and you had to be rescued by a seventy-year-old man with a cup of hot coffee.”
It would have sounded ridiculous to correct him by saying that it had been a thermos, not a cup, so she let it go. Turning away from the park at a ninety-degree angle, the three of them headed over a residential neighborhood, buzzing over shingled roofs and satellite dishes, then ducking even lower until they were just a few feet above the gently curving streets of the area, turning this way and that unti
l the helicopters lost sight of them.
“I’m not going to sit here and watch you die on these monitors, Katie,” Samuel said. “I’m just not going to do it. Call in the Southern Sentinels or the Guardians. Let an experienced team handle this.”
“The mayor has told other teams to stay away,” Kate said. “They’ll either do what he says or else at least alert the city that they’re coming. That’s what happened to you. At best, there will be a delay. At worst, they’d wind up with another ambush or time for the Cirque d’Obscurité to hide. We could lose them. It has to be tonight.”
The roar of the helicopters now far in the distance, Argonaut gave the others the thumbs up, and they regained altitude, pointing themselves once again at the location that Argonaut had learned from Costas Kalodimos, a mansion in Doubloon Ward.
“You could find them again, Kate. You could find them and bring a whole army of superheroes on top of them. I could call some people I know—”
“I am not going to let them get away again!” she shouted. Beside her, Bedlam turned his head, looking at her curiously. The sound dampeners in her armor should have prevented her from being overheard, even at a shout, but Bedlam had heard her anyway. She hadn’t realized his senses were so sharp.
There was silence from her communicator.
“Uncle Samuel?”
Silence.
“I shouldn’t have yelled like that,” she said. “Are you there?”
Silence.
“Damn,” she muttered to herself. She had cameras mounted in the Juan Marco Quintana Memorial Laboratory, of course. Pressure sensors. She pulled them up on one of her screens.
He was gone.
“Damn,” she swore again.
* * * * *
They were all silent at the beginning of the flight, lost in their own thoughts. Jason was relieved at his father’s safety, glad they had captured Rusalka. But his face still ached from the woman’s touch, and his side still hurt from the injury the night before. He still felt weaker than normal, though most of his strength had returned. And he wondered what they were doing. He’d wanted to help take down the Cirque d’Obscurité, but were they ready to do it tonight?
