The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1)

by Andy Reynolds

  The Axeboy's Blues

  The Agents Of

  ::Volume I ::

  Andy Reynolds

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places or incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Published by Mosquito Publishing

  Copyright © 2016 by James A Reynolds

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Brandon K Jenkins

  Author Photos by Mars

  This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  For more on the writings of Andy Reynolds,

  visit AndyReynolds.net

  This volume is dedicated to The Agents Of,

  without whom

  I surely would have perished

  many times over by now.

  The following excerpt has been taken

  from the pages of

  The Agents of Karma

  :: Volume VIII ::

  This event occurs late in the Spring of 1934

  File :: [Adelaide LaCoste]

  The sun dipped low and lean along the outstretched curve of the Mississippi, shaking shadows in its fist before throwing them out to bounce along the brick streets and bustling buildings of the Warehouse District. When the shadows finally settled into place, tall and thin, they nodded a polite yet relaxed “hello” as you passed.

  Adelaide nodded back to them as she stalked the brick streets, drawing the attention of more than a few sailors and dock workers. It was not often that they saw women walking those streets who weren't dressed like workers, especially women of color, so she moved quick enough to be in and out of their minds before they could take much notice.

  She wore dark pants with a brown blouse, and from her belt hung an assortment of pouches and compact metal devices she used while hunting. Her dark hair was braided close to her scalp, the long ends tied together and into a ponytail which fell just past the nape of her neck. Eyes barely focused on where she was walking, Adelaide LaCoste dragged the fingertips of one hand through the layers of sound that blanketed the air like thick cigar smoke, using her mind to sift through the past ten minutes of noise like one would peruse the shelves of a library. The sounds mingled and twisted together like after-work revelers at a speakeasy, but she pulled them apart and tossed each away until she was left with the only one that mattered – the nearly imperceptible chorus of trumpets. She was so damned close now.

  Her step quickened and she plunged her fingers deeper into the sounds of the past two minutes, following that faint whisper of trumpets as it ducked in and out of alleys, spiraling up and down light posts. Those trumpets were only seconds ahead of her now. She was moving so fast that, when turning the corner onto South Peters Street, she nearly bumped into a man playing the very species of instrument which she was hunting. He stood across from the entrance to the little dock workers' bar, Ernst Café.

  The man started, woken from his music-induced haze. “Pardon me, ma'am.” He wore the patched-up and frayed clothes of a sailor, with tattoos littering both his arms.

  Adelaide straightened up, composing herself. “My apologies. I was just looking for someone.”

  “I'd love to help, but I don't know anyone in this town.”

  “No, I don't suppose you do. Good evening.” She nodded to him and continued on, then ducked into an alley and listened as he began to play his trumpet once more. She hadn't heard anyone play the trumpet in weeks – not since the people of New Orleans had realized that trumpet players were rapidly vanishing. So many musicians had disappeared that those left were too scared to pick up their trumpets – but this sailor from some other city was oblivious to the danger he was in.

  The people of the city all thought it was a serial killer roaming the streets or some kind of vengeful spirit of a murdered musician – and their theories were not too far off. The one she hunted was not completely of this world, and the sounds she tracked him by were the songs played by musicians whose lives he'd taken – the ghostly sounds of their trumpets hovered around him like perfume. Unfortunately for the poor, unsuspecting sailor just around the corner from her, Adelaide was now using him as bait to catch the one she hunted.

  She stood in the shadowed side of the alley, her back pressed against the wall of a warehouse and her eyes closed while she listened intently to all of the current sounds, nudging the sailor's trumpet playing to the back of her awareness as she waited. She flexed her hands in a set of actions so automatic as to require no thought at all, dipping her fingers into the past hour's worth of the alley's sounds: two cats screeching at each other, one of them knocking over a trashcan as it retreated; several loud trucks rumbling down South Peters Street; the hum of machinery coming from warehouses in every direction; a dozen bits of conversation from people who had passed by the alley. In one hand she grabbed a fistful of these sounds, feeling the familiar hum as they vibrated against her palm and fingers. With the other hand she rotated her wrist, coiling long strips of the alley's noise around her hand and knuckles like rope.

  Not two minutes had passed when she heard the bobbing and ghostly trumpet songs spiraling their way along South Peters Street, moving towards the sailor.

  Adelaide held her breath as the mesh of music rolled closer. Having hunted him for nearly two months, she recognized the whispering thump of his boots on the brick street, his slow and steady heartbeat, the rubbing of wood against leather as he unsheathed his axe. There were sure to be witnesses – he'd been getting sloppy as of late, as if growing desperate.

  Then her prey broke into a run and passed the mouth of the alley, headed straight for the sailor. Adelaide leaped out onto South Peters Street, hurling the fistful of noise towards the sound of the boy's heartbeat. The thirteen-year-old boy was already swinging his axe at the startled sailor when the ball of the alley's sound collided into his back, erupting with a cacophonous boom which sent him crashing into his would-be victim, both of them tumbling onto the sidewalk. The gleaming silver-headed axe clattered across the brick street and came to rest several yards away.

  The boy pushed himself up and looked at Adelaide from underneath a head of shaggy black hair. She wasn't sure what she expected to see in the boy's eyes – perhaps fear, anger, or a sense of survival. What she didn't expect to see was such unrelenting purpose – a soul so utterly sure of itself and its actions as to have no doubts whatsoever.

  Adelaide's other hand and arm were already moving as the boy turned and leaped at the axe. She let fly the lengthy strip of woven sound, which uncoiled through the air and wrapped tight around his ankle, then she clenched her fist around the strip and jerked it backwards, sending him crashing onto his face. She pulled it quickly with both hands, dragging the boy across the bricks as she moved towards him. Putting a knee on the boy's back, she unclipped from her belt a palm-sized device with a small vial of purple gas screwed into the top, and used it to fire a purple mist at the boy's face.

  Looking up at the sailor, who'd gotten to his feet and was clearly wondering which one of them to help, she yelled: “Run!” As he turned and took her advice, the boy's arm reached out and Adelaide gasped as the axe jumped flying off the road to land right in his hand. He threw his elbow back and hit her leg, throwing her off balance, then rolled underneath her and swung up, striking the side of her head with the flat of the axe and sending her rolling onto the sidewalk. As he got to his feet, he struck her leg with the back of the axe; she screamed out and rolled away.

  Adelaide grimaced against the pain and looked up to see
the boy backing away from her, his nose and lips bloody from being dragged across the ground. He pointed his axe at her. “I'm going to take back what you Agents stole from me! I'm going to set things right!”

  She picked up one end of the length of sound she'd made, then struggled to her feet, her eyes falling on the broken device with the shattered vial sticking out of it. Another attempt at subduing the boy had failed.

  Rotating her wrist, she began recoiling the length around her hand and knuckles. “No, you're not.”

  Like a mirage he was gone. No sound of his heartbeat, no sound of the trumpets that followed in his wake. He had once again shifted into the worlds of the dead to escape. Adelaide touched her head and pulled her hand away, but there was no blood. She turned and scanned the street around her, seeing his blood on the sidewalk where she'd dragged him, as well as the sailor's trumpet a little further away. Then something else caught her eye. She limped over and picked up a heavy metal chisel, and her breath caught as she realized the significance of the object. Perhaps the day was not a total loss.

  Her grip tightened on the chisel as, from behind her, she heard the boy's heartbeat once more, followed by the heavy breathing and the chorus of ghostly trumpets.

  “I'm going to need that back,” said the boy.

  Turning towards him, she slipped the chisel through one of the loops on her belt. He stood several yards away from her.

  “You're not getting it back.” She grabbed at scraps of sound with her free hand and used her fingers to pack them together like clay.

  The boy ran at her and she was already throwing the ball of sound towards his legs when he vanished. The ball erupted against the street, sending up clouds of brick dust where it left a large indentation in the road. Adelaide leaped to the side, lashing out with the length of sound as he reappeared slashing his axe towards where she'd been. The length wrapped around his leg and she pulled, turning him in the air and sending him crashing onto his shoulder. He rolled onto his back and swung towards his boots, cutting the length of sound and freeing himself, then jumped to his feet and backed up quickly into the front wall of Ernst Café.

  Adelaide screamed into her hand and hurled the scream at the wall next to him, where it burst spiderweb cracks across the bricks and sent the boy spinning to collapse onto the sidewalk. He rolled onto his elbows, then clenched his eyes shut and shook his head, trying to stave off the effects of the blast.

  “Axeboy!” Adelaide's voice boomed like a summer's storm rolling over the Mississippi as she limped towards him, her teeth gritting against the pain in her leg, one of her hands gathering up random scraps of South Peters Street's sound. “I, Adelaide LaCoste, am taking you into custody under the jurisdiction of The Agents of Karma. You have brought nothing but terror and sadness to the city of New Orleans, and your reign ends this day.”

  He struggled as he used the wall to slowly push himself up into a crouching position, still gripping the axe as he spat a thick gob of blood onto the street, glaring at her.

  “Lay down the axe!” she yelled. “Don't make me do this.” Even if she missed, she was close enough and he was wounded enough that the concussive blast might do worse than knock him out.

  He shook his head, his blue eyes wet with purpose. “No one makes you do anything – you either follow your destiny, or you leave it to starve and die.” As soon as she heard the friction of his foot twisting against the ground she threw the scraps of sound, but he vanished and they shattered the glass of the bar's front window.

  Immediately she heard the ghostly trumpets from within the bar, realizing he'd gone into the land of the dead and then come back on the other side of the wall. He was able to retreat whenever he wished, but getting the chisel back must have been worth the risk of getting caught.

  She grabbed up two sloppy handfuls of noise and stepped towards the open bar door, but then heard a confusing whirlwind of sounds coming from down the street – turning, she saw a huge wave of rippling and shifting air rolling right towards her and the bar. The wave was so large it took up the entire width of the street, and was only a block from her and closing in fast. Inside the body of the wave, she could see colors and hear noises that didn't fit with the world around her.

  “Oh, fuck...” She'd heard of these phenomena, but hadn't actually seen one before: It was a rip in time.

  She turned and ran away from the bar and the time rip, towards the corner, then jumped down Lafayette Street, the edge of the wave picking her up and tossing her further down the small street. Letting go of the sounds she held, she rolled into the fall and tumbled hard across the cobblestones. She got to her feet, looking and listening for any sign of another wave coming, as well as any sign that she'd been pulled into a different time. Seeing and hearing none, she limped quickly back towards the bar and stepped inside. The bar had high, tin-printed ceilings and an ornate tile floor. The long wooden bar was full of people ordering drinks and talking.

  The first thing she realized was that the boy was not inside the bar. The second was that several people in the bar were dressed strangely, obviously not warehouse workers or sailors, and that a few of them were women who were also not dressed like workers.

  “Hey Sheila!” yelled a man at the bar, wearing a distractingly bright shirt with trees printed on it. “Jack Daniels is only five cents! Can you believe the happy hour here? I love this city!”

  Another man had a tiny electric device feeding music into his ears.

  The bartender, an older man in a vest whom Adelaide had spoken to years earlier on one of her assignments, took the ordering man's money and held it up in the air. “What's your game, pal?” He slammed the bill down on the bar. “You trying to pay me in play money or something? Pull out some real currency or get out!”

  Adelaide stopped paying attention to the strange scene, instead sifting through the sounds of the past minute. The boy had indeed been inside the bar, and then the sounds of his heartbeat and the trumpets quickly dwindled away and were gone – yet the sounds didn't end abruptly as if he had escaped to the worlds of the dead – he must have been pulled through the time rip when it went through the bar. Suddenly she heard the mesh of twisting sounds that meant another wave was closing in. She had no idea what had caused the rip – hopefully her fellow Agents of Karma could figure it out. Stepping out of the bar, she turned to see the other time rip rolling downriver along South Peters Street.

  She didn't know what time she was going to be thrown into, or if she'd ever see The Agents of Karma again.

  Adelaide only knew one thing as the wave barreled towards her: She had an Axeboy to catch.

  End excerpt

  The Axeboy's Blues

  The events of this book, the first Volume detailing the actions and accounts of The Agents Of, take place roughly four months after the tragic events which unfolded at the end of The Agents of Fateful Encounters Volume XV : A Legacy of Traitors. All thoughts, emotions and memories used in the making of this volume were given freely with the permissions of the owners, or extracted in the presence of a licensed Louisiana notary under the terms of the Fair Memory Act.

  File 1 :: [Edith Downs]

  It was a weeknight and The Lower Garden District was unearthly quiet. Perhaps the night was as sore and utterly exhausted as Edith was. Even the normal sounds of the neighborhood were muffled as if someone had turned down the volume. She could barely hear the squeal and rattle of the streetcar a couple blocks away on Saint Charles Avenue, or the cars rushing and bumping down the pot-hole ridden streets in every direction, bounce music spilling from their rolled-down windows. Walking down the cracked and crooked sidewalk, underneath the tall oak trees that stretched up to the black and gray sky (trying with all their vigor to pull the stars out from their hiding places), it wasn't so hard to filter out the traffic sounds, letting them turn to wind in her mind as she passed by all the cute little shotgun houses and crazy-huge mansions.

  Being early March, the weather was warm and the sun had been hanging out
a little longer each day. The cicadas had just begun to call out from the tops of their giant oak trees. By the time July came around the cicadas would be making so much noise that you'd be able to see the vibrations humming through the air, halos of shivering color surrounding every tree. If you got close enough, you could reach out and run your hand through the vibrating air, making all the hairs on the back of your hand stand on end. Of course if you got too close you'd lose your hearing for a day.

  The building she lived in had been a swanky guest house a hundred years ago and had long since been converted into apartments. It was long and two stories tall (which in New Orleanian terms means about three stories tall, given the cathedral ceilings). Like any place in this city worth living in, the building both oozed charm like a moldy sponge oozes odor and leaned with such a slant that it threatened to tip right over if you sneezed on it.

  The familiar ding from the depths of her purse told her that her phone had a text message. Probably work. What was she thinking? Of course it was work. No one else ever texted her.

  The rusted gate squeaked open with a kick of her foot and she made her way through the large, somewhat-tended-to courtyard garden beside the house. Adjusting the paper grocery bags in her hands, she trudged up the stairs and up to the front door. Already she could hear scratching coming from the other side. The door groaned as she unlocked it and shoved it open with her shoulder. Maurice rolled out onto the doormat and was immediately meowing up at her.

  “I know, I know,” she said to the little gray fur ball. “I'm such a jerk.”

  She stepped over him and into the little two room apartment. Dropping her purse on a table and clicking on a lamp, she walked into the tiny kitchen and put the grocery bags up on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. Maurice, of course, complained at her heels the whole way. She grabbed the box of food from the top of the fridge and poured some into his bowl, abruptly ending his stream of complaints – though she was sure that if he could eat and complain at the same time, that's exactly what he'd be doing.