Edith took a deep breath and imagined all the mems she'd met, imagined them all standing around her, relying on her. Her hand flexed open and then clenched into a fist, and she imagined having the Extraction Glove wrapped around it – imagined the utter weight of the thing pulling on her shoulder. “I am your Protector,” she whispered to the imagined mems as she stood up straighter, looking around at all the people eating beignets and drinking their coffee, but now Edith saw the people merely as flimsy barriers between her and her purpose.
Calmly Edith walked up to an empty table which was still littered with dirty dishes. She stepped up onto an empty chair and then on top of the table. “Your attention please!” she bellowed. She looked over at the band. “Stop playing!”
Their song tumbled apart as the musicians stopped playing and looked over at her.
The waiter that she'd spoken to came up to the table she stood upon. “Ma'am? We don't need a situation.”
“I am Edith Downs!” she yelled out to the diners, ignoring the waiter. “Member of The Agents Of and Protector of the Memories of New Orleans! I need to use a phone that has a line to the living world. Any help that I receive will be remembered. Any help that is not offered,” she paused and looked down at the waiter, “will also be remembered.”
The waiter's eyes were filled to the brim with spite. “We don't need any problems with the Agents.”
“The Agents Of don't need any problems with you. All we need is a phone.”
“Please get off the table and follow me,” he said.
Edith stepped down onto the chair, then onto the ground. Everyone had stopped eating or drinking and was staring at her. Some looked scared, some suspicious, and some looked like they'd stab her in an alley if they got the chance. She followed the waiter into the building that housed the kitchen. He took her down a hallway and then opened a thin door. Inside was a broom closet, filled with different sorts of cleaning supplies, with a pay phone mounted to the wall.
“Your help is appreciated,” she said.
“Undoubtedly. Use ghost coins for calls inside Necropolis, and coins from your side of the world to reach the living. Hope you have some, cause I don't.”
Edith fished around in her pockets and found a few coins. She pulled out the card Roman had given her, put the coins in the slot and dialed.
File 65 :: [Julius Marcos]
Julius and Mars walked down the lowering ramp that circled the fountain of Spanish Plaza, descending into the lamp-lit stone hallways below.
“So now we set up around Trumpet Fest, right?” she asked.
“Yes. I'll have Adelaide rest while we set up, and you'll help me with a few things while Roman finishes setting up The Gateway at Dauphine and Press. I'll have you check on the Noisician Coalition before Trumpet Fest starts.”
“Got it.”
When they got to the medical room, Adelaide wasn't there.
“God damn,” muttered Julius.
“Maybe she's just going to the bathroom,” said Mars.
Julius shook his head. “Let's drop this stuff off.” He motioned to the duffel bag and the pair of goggles he held.
They went further down the hallway and into the lab, where Adelaide was talking on the payphone mounted into the stone wall.
“Who is it?” asked Julius.
Adelaide looked up at them smiling, and her eyes were wet. “It's Edith.”
Mars ran across the room and Julius tossed the duffel bag onto a table and followed her. Mars grabbed the phone from Adelaide. “Edith! Are you alright? Necropolis? That fucker told us you went to the Tartarus Realm! Oh, you did? Roman's not, but Julius is – he's right here.”
Mars handed the phone to Julius as he walked up, and he held it to his ear.
“Edith, where in Necropolis are you?”
“I'm at Café du Monde,” she said. It felt so good to hear her voice.
“We'll come pick you up. Roman is setting up a device called The Gateway that we'll use to get to the ghost worlds – in fact, he should be done by now. We'll come get you from Necropolis, then you can tell us what you know on our way back here to Trumpet Fest.”
“No,” said Edith, her voice utterly calm and sure of itself. “There's no time. There are four rooftops with about two dozen trumpet players per roof. The Axeboy wasn't killing trumpet players, he was kidnapping them – trapping them in his axe. The Angel of Death is working with The Axeboy, and they have some kind of magical horn that's making the musicians all play music at once. The sky – Oblivion – is bending and changing.”
“What?!” yelled Julius. “They're starting already?!”
“It sounds crazy,” said Edith, “but I think they somehow created Trumpet Fest to throw us off – to keep us busy.”
Flashes of The Angel and her mocking smirk inundated Julius' mind as he let out a growl. “Ok.” He took a deep breath. “Where are the musicians set up?”
“They're centered around Bourbon and Toulouse. There's a large building there where The Angel and Axeboy are set up. The Axeboy was unconscious, but he might not be anymore. The Angel was bringing trumpet players up there to play the horn that makes them all play. The other four rooftops were about half a block from that building.”
“Alright, is there any other information that you think is important?”
After a moment Edith answered, “No.”
“I want you to get to Dauphine and Press as fast as you can. We're going to open The Gateway, grab you from Necropolis, and then we'll all go to the Tartarus Realm. If you run, you should make it there around the same time we do.”
“Understood.”
“We'll see you soon.” Julius hung up the phone.
“So what in the hell is going on?” asked Mars. “We're going to the Tartarus Realm? What about Trumpet Fest?”
Julius looked from Adelaide's bandaged face to Mars'. “There is no Trumpet Fest. It's a ruse. The Axeman is being summoned as we speak.” Julius let his anger at The Angel be overcome by his appreciation for having these two Agents by his side. He nodded to them. “It's time to suit up.”
Adelaide walked over and started ruffling through the duffel bag she'd been taking with her to watch over Frenchmen.
“You won't need the goggles,” Julius told Mars. “In the Tartarus Realm everything is visible.” He grabbed the bag they'd taken to the ghost bar and emptied it out onto a table, then went over to the shelves and started shoving devices into it. “I need you to grab rope, grappling hooks, and rope ladders. We're going to need to scale walls.” He turned to Mars and she was already holding the giant metal net-gun that they'd demonstrated inside of Flanagan's. “Yes, you'll need that too.”
She nodded. “I call it the Bitch Gun.” She shoved it into an empty duffel bag, then she ran over to the rope and started loading coils of it into the bag.
“Do either of you have any ideas about disrupting noise?” asked Julius.
“One of Roman's devices?” asked Adelaide.
“Nothing he's made will contain four rooftops worth of trumpets,” said Julius.
“Noisician Coalition!” said Mars.
“There's not enough time,” said Julius. “We would need all of them, and I want us in the Tartarus Realm in twenty minutes.”
Mars pulled her duffel bag over her shoulder and ran across the room, grabbing a device hanging from a hook on a wall. She spun around and raised it into the air. The device was a metallic tube about six inches long with buttons along one side, and was used to turn on mechanical and electrical devices. “Will this turn on a car?”
“Yes,” said Julius.
“I've got it, but I need your help.”
“What's your idea?”
Mars smiled. “Can you drive stick shift?”
Julius raised his hand and his stump. “I could once.”
Mars twisted her mouth. “Hmm...”
File 66 :: [Roman Wing]
The neighborhoods of The Marigny and The Bywater were as peaceful and lazy as any Saturda
y morning. People leisurely walked past colorful shotgun houses and the occasional small mansion on their way to coffee shops or breakfast places for brunch. Roman was at a place that some would call the border between the two neighborhoods, though getting any two New Orleanians to agree on such a border was an impossibility.
He had The Gateway almost completely assembled in the large, flat loading area for an abandoned warehouse on Dauphine Street just beside the tracks[31]. The frogs that inhabited the perpetual ponds in the fields surrounding the tracks had been very vocal – they knew what he was doing, and they didn't approve. The frogs in that particular location were actually channels for the dead – though unfortunately any ghosts wishing to communicate in such a fashion could only do so in the language of frog. He didn't know exactly what they were saying, though, since frog was one of the few languages he hadn't found the time to learn yet.
Roman looked up from the halo of tools scattered around him when he heard loud music approaching. Two buses were driving towards him down Dauphine – both were converted school buses, one having been painted black while the other was bright purple. They were “party buses”, one of the newer phenomena in the city. As he understood it, people would rent them and have a roaming party through The French Quarter or other parts of the city, drinking and dancing and playing extremely loud music.
The blasting electronic music turned off and the buses pulled up into the large loading zone where he was setting up The Gateway.
Adelaide stepped out of one of the buses with her hands over her ears. Her face had been rebandaged, and it looked like some of the swelling had gone down.
Mars hopped out of the other bus.
“The music-making device in your bus is broken!” Adelaide told Mars.
“Nope,” said Mars. “This music is called 'bounce'. And... it's kinda freaking awesome. As far as I know, it's strictly a New Orleans thing. It does kind of sound like a skipping CD sometimes. You should really see a live performance, it would blow you away.”
“CD?” asked Adelaide.
“Uh... like little shiny records from space. We use them instead of records.”
Julius stepped out of the black bus and looked at Roman. “Hope you can drive a bus. It was a real pain in the ass. I had to have Adelaide steer while I shifted.”
Roman nodded towards the buses. “Were these a last minute idea?”
“Everything's changed,” said Julius. “We're going in as soon as you get The Gateway open – and we have to make a pit stop at Necropolis to pick up Edith, who should be at this same location.”
Roman grabbed a tool from the ground and kept working on The Gateway. He lowered his voice so that Adelaide wouldn't hear him. “I assume you've figured out more parts of The Angel's deception then?”
“Yes,” said Julius, and Roman didn't have to look to tell that Julius was speaking to him through clenched teeth.
“This thing looks like a giant grab claw,” said Mars. “You know, from one of those arcade claw machines. The Gateway looks like the claw part, only upside down.”
“That is true.” Roman turned and looked at her. “Could you grab that wrench there and help tighten these up?”
“Does it spin?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, pointing at the bolts he wanted her to tighten. “It spins very fast, and these pumps flood it with a mixture of Wonder and Ichor, along with a few other smaller ingredients that I've concocted. They run through these rubber hoses which shoot them out here.” He pointed to the small holes that ran up the outside of each part of the “claw”. “Normally the liquid would just spray all over, but the unique bond between the two fluids causes a very strong attraction, so the fluid inside the spinning Gateway actually calls the fluid outside of it back towards it. So it starts cycling extremely fast, creating a small tear in the fabric between this world and the lands of the dead.”
“Groovy. What's Ichor?”
“Essentially, it's ghost blood.”
“Gross.” She grunted as she pulled a huge bolt tight. “So we aren't going to be able to say that no ghosts were harmed in preparation for this mission?”
“Ghosts aren't the ones in danger,” said Julius from behind them. “Not this time.”
File 67 :: [The Axeboy]
It was January of 1934, and The Axeboy was still twelve years old. Prohibition had just fallen apart less than two months earlier, not that it had stopped anyone from drinking booze. Still the people of the city celebrated its demise, although their celebrations were short-lived – for what had wrestled prohibition to the ground and finally snubbed it out was the fact that the whole world was poor and starving. The Depression, they were calling it.
But none of that mattered to The Axeboy – to him it was just people changing what they complained about. He knew who was rich in the city, and as long as he was careful he could sneak through the ghostly and living realms and take anything he wanted – at least when he wasn't being imprisoned by those his mother assigned to guard him.
As he walked through The French Quarter, he kept an eye out for anyone paying attention to him – anyone that could alert his mother to his whereabouts. The sun would be setting soon, and the air was getting colder by the minute. Winter reached into the holes of his tattered coat and dragged her icy nails across his ribs, and he pulled his scarf tighter around his mouth and neck. The scarf smelled of sweat and mold – but there wasn't much he could do about that when he was on the run. People had been predicting all winter long that it would snow, but of course they were wrong – people in this city were always wrong.
Mist began falling from the sky, mixing with the fog that rolled in from the Mississippi.
The Axeboy walked closer to the buildings along Conti Street, letting the balconies and overhangs shield him a little form the rain. He could feel the excitement in the air, and it sickened him. Mardi Gras was looming in the distance, and soon enough these streets would be rampant with debauchery, music, and mayhem – the citizens of the city were yearning to drink their worries away and take out their aggression on each other. It was the perfect time to start his plan – to take back the life that was stolen from him.
Looking around to make sure no one was watching, The Axeboy pushed open a thin gate between two buildings and slipped through. Closing it behind him, he walked into the dark alley, stepping over a man curled up and unconscious on the ground, then up to a large metal door. He knocked on it three times and a rectangular slat was pulled away from the other side, revealing a hole in the door with a set of eyes peering out. The Axeboy stood on his toes so the eyes could see him and pulled the scarf down to show his face.
The hole in the door was closed and the door opened.
The Asian man who opened it was towering, broad-shouldered and completely bald. He stepped aside and The Axeboy walked in, the warmth of the room hitting his freezing skin like needles. “You know the rules,” the man said, his voice thick and heavy with the knowledge of foreign lands.
“Yes,” said The Axeboy, pulling off his scarf.
The entry room was small and lit by lanterns, the red walls covered in tapestries depicting robed women surrounded by Asian temples and twisted trees.
“You know the way,” the man said.
The Axeboy nodded, then pushed aside a red curtain and walked into the large room beyond. The room was dimly lit and covered in similar tapestries. It was filled with large, ornate pillows and plants, with dozens of people either passed out or talking with each other, smoking from all manner of strange pipes and devices. The air was thick with the smells of burning plants and chemicals.
He walked to the far wall of the large room, which had a half dozen small booths that were hidden from the rest of the room by curtains. The Axeboy pulled off his jacket and slipped into one of the booths.
A few moments later the curtain was pushed aside, revealing a dark-skinned man with a very large smile and dead-looking eyes. He wore a long black coat and a wide-brimmed hat.
; “Pleasure to see you once again,” said the man, pulling off his wet hat with a gloved hand to reveal his shining, bald head. He placed his hat on the table, pulled off his coat and slipped into the booth across from The Axeboy, the smile never leaving his face.
“It should be me thanking you, Mr. Nimble,” said The Axeboy.
The man across from him shrugged as he pulled off his thick gloves and rolled up the sleeves of his burgundy shirt. “Who says there isn't enough genuine appreciation to spread around? You and I, souls who are forever untouched by things like this 'Depression' that everyone is fretting over. Untouched by things like The Great War.” He folded his hands on the table. “I have heard that you've... named yourself?”
“I am The Axeboy.” He felt the name roll over his teeth and lips.
“Ha!” said Mr. Nimble. “Splendid! Your father would be proud, let me assure you.”
The Axeboy pulled from his coat a heavy metal chisel and set it on the table. “I acquired what you asked for. It's the one my father used.”
“Well done.” Mr. Nimble leaned forward and lowered his voice. “How does it feel... to hold it?”
The Axeboy looked down at the tool. “It feels good. Holding it makes me feel like I'm close – like I'm closer to seeing my father.”
Mr. Nimble leaned back. “Do you know what this city is built upon?”
The Axeboy nodded, licking his chapped lips. “Lies.”
“Ha! You're so very, very close! This city, my friend, is built upon belief. This city shouldn't even be here, you see. Do you know what should be here? An extremely dangerous, poison-filled, alligator-infested swamp.” Mr. Nimble motioned to the curtains and booth around them. “What you see around you when you walk the streets of this city, is belief and belief alone. Belief manifest as leaning buildings and squealing streetcars and cracked streets. Belief is the only power here, the only currency that matters.” He nodded to the chisel on the table. “That is why my employers and I have decided to give this to you, as a gift. You see, Mr. Axeboy, we believe in what you stand for. We believe in what you are about to do.”
The Axeboy's Blues (The Agents Of Book 1) Page 34
