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

by Andy Reynolds

  Mars nodded and put her hand on Huggy's shoulder. “I'll be careful! Stop worrying.” She managed a smile. “Smile! We're about to save the whole city!”

  “I'm sure you are.” A couple of people came into the pub and sat down at the bar. Huggy gave Mars a knowing nod and walked over to help them. Mars took a tiny sip from her coffee, wandered over to the curtain and walked through.

  The room was dim and painted red, with a giant metal ram skull emblem with horns and a mohawk sticking out of one wall, the outline of the image making a fleur de lis. It was the mascot/logo for Flanagan's, and Mars had always had an affinity for it because of her chest tattoo. There were a couple of booths along one wall, a few tall tables with stools along the other, and a large pool table in the center.

  Julius was at one booth, just waiting. When he saw her he slid out and got to his feet.

  “Roman's on his way,” Mars said. “He's helping Edith extract a gajillion memories from Adelaide's brain pan.”

  Julius nodded. He seemed so calm, and Mars realized that Huggy knew something that she didn't. This wasn't going to be an ordinary meeting.

  Mars grabbed a chair that was sitting against a wall, spun it around and sat down facing Julius with her arms folded across the chair's back.

  “Mars, Roman and I have been keeping you and Edith in the dark about certain things.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.” She sipped from her coffee.

  “We normally would not – and in the future we will not – but the situation at the moment is very fragile. So I'll need you to promise not to tell Edith or Adelaide about anything that transpires in this room. Not until after this Axeboy business is taken care of.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “Good. Roman told you of The Axeboy and his mother, The Angel of Death.”

  Mars nodded.

  “Well, The Angel is currently helping The Axeboy take trumpet players to the Land of the Dead, so that they can lure The Axeman out of Oblivion.”

  “Got that part. I didn't know that she was involved, though.”

  “The Angel is secretly helping us. You see, The Axeboy will be sent back through time to The Agents of Karma in 1934, after we capture him. He ends up changing his ways, changing his path, and eventually confides in his mother and helps her work with us to take him down in what is our present time.”

  “So she's like a double agent? Sent by her son to take down her son?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Awesome, sounds like something right out of the Terminator movies – but hopefully the timeline stuff makes more sense.” She slapped her hand on the table. “And I get to be Sarah Connor! Called it first!”

  Julius blinked a couple times as he registered what she had said, then he continued. Mars was glad that he was getting used to her kind of weird – it was imperative for anyone who wanted to work with her. “It's important to remember that The Angel is not one of us. You must not fully trust her.”

  “Got it. So are Edith and Adelaide just wasting their time out there?”

  “When Adelaide comes back to 1934, she knows nothing of this. So Roman says that we cannot let her find out. I tried to be the one to work with her, but she insisted on Edith, so we have to keep Edith in the dark as well. Also, like I said, we can't trust The Angel. If we can somehow grab The Axeboy before he tries to bring his father back, then we will do so. But Roman does not believe that we can. He believes that time is fixed, at least to an extent.”

  “But you aren't so sure.”

  “All Roman can tell you are theories. I work with what's in front of me. You should also know that your friend The Function and his partner Scape are helping The Angel, making sure all the pieces fall into place, according to what she's told us of her interactions with The Axeboy after he gets sent back.”

  Mars nodded and took a swig from her coffee.

  Julius glanced at the curtain and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Be on your guard. Don't ask any questions about what is going on, just act like you know. You can ask me afterwards.”

  “After what?” Julius put a finger to his lips and Mars glanced up at the curtain. “Wait,” she whispered, her heart beginning to pound in her chest. “Who the fuck are we meeting with?”

  File 54 :: [The Angel of Death]

  As The Angel sailed over The French Quarter, all of the glimmering life below her dangled upward like so much gaudy plastic jewelry, wishing only to be broken loose of its fake gold-painted chains. Every living thing secretly wanted her to free it, to cut it loose from its endless struggles and boring, useless turmoil.

  She descended onto the cracked street, several people quickening their step to get away from her, though their minds wouldn't let themselves fully see the large black wings that stretched out in her wake. The Angel pulled out a tube of lipstick and applied it as she stepped up onto the sidewalk and into the dingy bar called Flanagan's.

  The customers at the bar all shuddered and hunched over their drinks, and the tall, broad-shouldered bald man tending bar glanced up. He nodded to the side room, the entrance to which was covered by a black curtain, but she walked up to the bar.

  “I don't suppose you can make a halfway-decent martini out of any of this.” She nodded to the bottles of alcohol around him.

  “Don't suppose I can,” he said, not smiling at all. “I'm afraid I only know how to make exceptional martinis. You want a half-decent one, there are several establishments on Bourbon Street I'd be happy to recommend.”

  “Well, then, I suppose I'll settle for an exceptional one.”

  He glanced behind her at her wings. “Do you carry money? I'm not serving you for free.”

  “Nothing is free.”

  He just kept her gaze, not moving, so she reached into her purse and pulled out a ten dollar bill, placing it on the bar.

  “How do you want it?” he asked.

  “Hendrick's, dry.”

  The bartender nodded, turned and went about making her martini.

  The Angel always enjoyed watching a good bartender make a martini. The sound of ice against metal, the pouring liquid and the shaking and straining – the rhythm of it all creating a particular kind of song. That song was what she tasted on her lips when it was all said and done. It reminded her of taking the life of someone who had used their life properly, not wasting it on things that didn't fulfill them – things that didn't make them feel alive.

  Those lives always tasted exquisite – the rest were a waste of her time.

  File 55 :: [Mars]

  The hairs on the back of Mars' neck and arms stood erect as the black curtain was swept aside. She knew that it wasn't Roman who was going to walk through that curtain.

  The woman's blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun, the angles of her face were sharp and flawless, and in one elegant hand she held a martini with a lone olive swirling around the bottom. She wore a white button-up shirt, a dark skirt and pumps. It was not with her hand that she had pushed the curtain aside, but with one of the massive, dark wings that followed her through the entrance and into the room.

  Suddenly what Huggy had told Mars made sense.

  “Hello, Julius,” she said. The woman's eyes flicked over Mars as if flicking a fly out of her face. “You must be Mars.”

  Mars tried to talk but her words caught in her throat. She cleared her throat and then spoke: “You know who I am?”

  “There are those in this city who think highly of you, and value your... safety.” She said the word safety like it was a word that only held value in fairy tales told to little children.

  “Thank you for meeting with us,” said Julius. “Roman isn't here yet.”

  The Angel of Death took one of the stools along the wall, pulled it up to the pool table and sat across from the two of them, crossing her legs as her wings folded up behind her. “I still think meeting at all, let alone in broad daylight, is completely idiotic. I expected more of you, Julius.”

  “I don't want any hitches.”

&
nbsp; She raised an eyebrow. “Hitches? What do you call beating my son half to death?”

  Julius twisted his neck until it cracked. “Right now your son is a danger to the city. I cannot refrain from hunting him down. If he had stuck to the plan and waited until Trumpet Fest to get his trumpet players, we wouldn't have an issue.”

  The Angel of Death pulled a cigarette out of a silver case and lit it up. “He doesn't know about the damned plan, and in case you don't remember, my son from 1934 doesn't care much for me. It's hard enough to get him to do what he's supposed to, especially with you calling me out to meetings like this. Do you know what my son is doing right now? Because I surely don't. I'm here for no apparent reason, talking to a washed-up reincarnated god and a newbie Agent.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she peered at Julius, and she leaned forward as her eyes looked all around him like she was looking at his aura. “Well... that's new. How long has that been true?”

  Julius licked his lips. “Bes and I have made a number of decisions about the future of the Agents, and the future of this city.”

  The Angel of Death smirked and took a sip of her martini. “Am I the first non-Agent to know that you will not reincarnate?”

  Julius shrugged. “I don't bother with gossip and public relations. It makes no difference to me who knows or does not know.”

  “I'm sure that's the case.” She took a sip of the martini, which was cradled in the same hand that held the cigarette.

  The curtain opened and Roman walked in carrying a long black duffel bag. “I apologize for being late.” He said the words as if it were a completely memorized phrase he didn't know the meaning of.

  “You're right on time,” said Julius. “Go ahead and show her.”

  Roman set the bag on the pool table and opened it up, then took out a large device that Mars had seen him working on in the laboratory. It looked like a massive two-handed gun from a sci-fi movie, only Mars knew that it couldn't actually be a gun or any type of real weapon, because Roman wouldn't have been able to touch it. It was mostly white armor plates with the black insides visible between the plates. “This is the net gun.”

  The Angel stood up and looked down at it. “It looks a little over-kill.”

  “We wanted this to look intimidating, so I made it large,” said Roman. “Most of this just lights up and makes noise. But it will shoot a net made of light that will wrap around you.”

  “Then you pretend to be affected by it, and you go down,” said Julius. “So that when The Axeboy is sent back, he doesn't know you betrayed him.”

  Roman flipped a switch and the gun began vibrating and whirring, and a small light show emanated from between all the white metal parts. He pointed it at one of the stools on the wall and pulled the trigger. A bright glowing web shot out and wrapped around the stool and stuck to the wall behind it. Turning the gun off before setting it down, he walked over to the stool, pulling at the light with his fingers. “It's virtually weightless. I call the substance 'sticky light,' and it'll work in the Tartarus Realm.” He pulled the stool and the net came with the stool and left the wall, floating down to stick to the floor. “I watered it down so that it'll disperse within twenty minutes. You will have complete functionality the whole time. The light may make it hard for you to see, and the stickiness may feel annoying on your skin, but those are the only effects.”

  Mars had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from telling Roman how badass the “sticky light” was. She tried her best to wear her this-is-just-another-day-at-work face.

  “Which one of you is supposed to shoot this at me?” asked The Angel.

  “If all goes according to plan,” said Julius, “it will be Mars. But if it ends up being Roman or I, you should be able to see the gun, with it being so enormous and lighting up.”

  The Angel looked over at Mars, who had to fight a chill from visibly rolling down her spine.

  “Did you bring the map?” asked Julius.

  Mars didn't realize that she'd been holding her breath until The Angel pulled her eyes away and took from between the long black feathers under one arm a long, rolled up piece of paper. She unrolled the paper onto the pool table and it was a map of Fulton Street Promenade. Mars stood up and approached the pool table.

  The Angel of Death pointed at the gazebo in the center of the cobblestone pedestrian mall. “This is the stage where the trumpet players will perform. I will likely be on the rooftops here...” She gestured towards the roofs along the river side of the promenade. “The festival begins at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, with the last act going on at five. At around six the show will end, the MC will invite all the performers onto the stage to take a bow. The wooden floor of the gazebo will give way beneath them, and when they fall below the gazebo my son will grab them and pull them all into the Tartarus Realm.”

  “Then we follow you,” said Julius.

  “Yes,” said The Angel. “I shift to the Tartarus Realm with my son, and we will prepare to bring The Axeman back from Oblivion. I will have us set up at Dauphine Street and the railroad tracks, between The Marigny and The Bywater in the Tartarus. We will be atop one of the warehouses.” She looked over at Mars. “You will shoot that light net at me, I will go down, then all of you will take my son down before he calls his father back.”

  “What about The Function and Scape?” asked Julius.

  “They'll be at Trumpet Fest, in case I need them. I figure you can bring them to the Tartarus afterwards, if you choose. It doesn't matter to me – I can't see why you'd need them at that point.”

  Julius nodded. “Thank you. I feel we all have a clear idea of what is going on. Unless anyone has any questions, I think this meeting is over.” He looked at Roman and Mars. Roman shook his head and Mars wanted to ask at least ten questions but shook her head instead, since Julius had told her to do as much.

  The Angel of Death quickly drank the last half of her martini, then tipped the glass even higher to roll the olive up onto her tongue, which wrapped around it and brought it between her lips. She set the empty glass on the tall table along the wall.

  “Do you want to keep the map?” asked The Angel.

  Julius put two fingers on his temple. “I've got it in here.”

  She rolled it up and it vanished into the feathers under one of her arms. “It's been a pleasure,” she said dryly between drags of her cigarette, then one wing pushed back the curtain as she walked out of the room.

  Julius walked with a slight limp towards the curtain after she'd left, waited a moment, then lifted the curtain and peered out. Julius nodded, and Mars had a feeling that he was nodding to Huggy. Julius turned and walked back to the pool table, which still had the empty duffel bag and the gun on it. He pounded his one fist against the top of the table and licked his lips.

  Mars raised a hand in the air. “Um, can I ask a question now?”

  Julius was biting his bottom lip. He looked at Mars and nodded.

  “If The Angel of Death is on our side, and she wants us to take down The Axeboy, then why do we have to wait until the very last moment to bring him down? That sounds kind of stupid, unless there's something I'm missing.”

  Julius shook his head. “There's nothing you're missing.”

  “The premise that The Angel of Death is building upon,” said Roman, “is that The Axeboy in the past, after he has been sent back by us, has divulged to her the whole story of how everything transpired in our present time. So, in theory, she is trying to recreate the entire scenario so that everything happens in the same fashion, so that the timeline stays intact.”

  “But it's all her word we're supposed to take as fact,” said Mars. “The Axeboy didn't end up telling you two any of this?”

  Julius shook his head. “Not in very much detail.” She could see the veins bulging on the top of his one fist as it pressed into the pool table.

  “So she could be lying,” said Mars.

  Julius looked from Mars to Roman and back. “She is lying, and she isn't hiding it. I've known
she was lying from the beginning. This was always going to be a battle between The Angel of Death and my Agents, to see who can out-lie one another. What do you see, Mars?”

  “She's vulnerable. Emotionally vulnerable.”

  “Towards her son?”

  “I'm... I'm not sure.”

  “She could have loyalties towards her son's father.”

  “That could be. What does it matter? We should have taken her down while she was here.”

  “Then her son would have run loose,” said Julius. “He has the potential to be extremely destructive.”

  “Also, even if we managed to take her down,” said Roman, “keeping her imprisoned for any length of time would be nearly impossible.”

  “I have to believe that she does not want our city to fall into chaos,” said Julius. “She knows that she is dependent on the city. She is dependent on life.” He looked at Mars, and she swore that she could see at least a couple of other lives buried beneath those golden eyes. “She is double-crossing us, but I have to believe that she is not going to bring back The Axeman. Sadly, she may be double-crossing us simply out of boredom. She's had this job for a very long time, and I question her sanity.”

  “So what's the plan?” asked Mars.

  “We follow her lead, for now,” said Julius. “That way she won't know what our move is. Adelaide and Edith will be at Trumpet Fest for the duration of the festival. Huggy was recording The Angel of Death's frequencies from the next room, and tomorrow morning we'll use those frequencies when we go to the Tartarus Realm to find out where she's really setting up with The Axeboy, because hell if I believe she's anywhere near Dauphine and Press Street. Then we'll determine whether to stage our attack at Fulton Street, so we can hit them when they come through at the gazebo, or to stage it where they're setting up to call The Axeman.”

  Mars looked around the pool table at the other two Agents Of. She took a drink of her Jameson-flavored coffee. “Let's take the bitch down.”

  File 56 :: [The Angel of Death]