Death Blows

by D. D. Barant

  “Okay. But the Kid’s not your average lem, is he? Mystic knives, mercury in his veins—and he works as a bounty hunter, a pretty solitary occupation. If he were mistreated by the other Bravos, he might want some payback.”

  “After all this time? What could have triggered it?” I frown. “Maybe not what. Maybe who.” We pull up in front of a nondescript house in Tukwila, a Seattle ’burb. And I really do mean nondescript; Charlie warned me about the effect before we stopped, but it’s still kind of disturbing. Except that it’s not, because that’s part of the enchantment at work. Much like the spell that doesn’t let anyone in this world take the idea of firearms seriously, the spell wrapped around the house doesn’t let anyone think about it too closely. Kind of a standing “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” kind of deal, only it’s a house and nobody ever remembers that they didn’t notice it. Same thing with the firearm spell; not only do people fail to see the possible uses of any sort of gun, they fail to see that they fail to see.

  In any case, there’s a house there, and we go in. I’m pretty sure about that.

  The first person I see is Gretchen. She’s sitting on a leather recliner in the living room, sipping from a cup of tea and reading a newspaper with a bold headline in Cyrillic. She looks up when I enter and says, “Jace. How nice to see you.”

  I glance back at Charlie. “You found the safe house.”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Gretchen puts aside her newspaper—and my eyes widen when I see how large her belly is. The last time I talked to her was only days ago, and she was hardly showing; now it looks like she’s about to pop.

  “Gretch, are you okay?” I say. “I’m fine, Jace.” She puts her teacup down on a table beside the recliner, and shifts the chair into an upright position. “Just a little larger than I was. Well, quite a bit larger, actually.”

  “How far along are you?”

  “Chronologically, about three months. Biologically, very close to term. The spell Saladin used has accelerated the process a great deal more than we expected.” Gretchen always looks precise and ready, but she seems closer to exhausted now. Her usually immaculate suits have been swapped for stretchy pants and an oversize sweatshirt; despite all that, her cheeks are rosy and her smile wide. She looks truly happy. “She’s doing well,” a voice says, and Dr. Pete walks into the room from the adjoining kitchen. He seems a little nervous, even though I haven’t even drawn my gun. Yet. “Hello, Jace. I’m sorry I haven’t contacted you, but—”

  “Agency protocol. I understand.” I can’t quite freeze the air around him, but I’m pretty sure I see icicles forming on his earlobes. “Galahad’s fine, by the way.”

  “Uh, good, good. I really couldn’t take him with me—”

  “I understand.”

  “I wanted to call, but—”

  “I understand.”

  “You can stop now,” Cassius says, walking in behind Dr. Pete. “Dr. Adams was following my instructions. If you want to blame anyone, blame me.”

  “Oh, I do. I’m just so pissed I had extra left over.” Cassius nods, but doesn’t rise to the bait. “I have answers for you, if you still want them.”

  I’d really like to make him sweat a little, but that’s just not going to happen—you could put Cassius in a sauna in Death Valley at high noon and it wouldn’t melt the ice in his drink. Guess I’ll have to settle for yanking his chain. “Yeah? This because you realized I’m indispensable, or because of the chat I had with John Dark?”

  Bull’s-eye. He looks mildly startled, which for Cassius is like screaming, WHAT? I try to enjoy it for the millisecond it lasts. “You had a conversation with Dark?”

  “Sure. About football, mainly. He’s a big Seahawks fan.”

  “We can’t talk here. Follow me.” He strides through the living room and down a short hallway. I meet Dr. Pete’s eyes and say, “Don’t go anywhere.” He nods.

  Cassius unlocks a door at the end of the hall and heads down a flight of stairs. I go after him, but Charlie stays where he is. The stairs are metal and lead down to a secondary door, this one made of thick metal with a keypad lock. A safe room inside a safe house, compartments within compartments.

  Cassius punches in the code and the door opens. Inside, a room with security feeds from all over the house, a small bathroom, two cots, and an office chair. I have no doubt the stainless-steel fridge holds the pire and thrope equivalent of emergency rations—probably beef jerky and powdered blood. Cassius waits until I’m inside and then shuts and locks the door.

  “Afraid we’re being spied on?” I say. “Or do you just not trust your own people?” It’s a cheap shot, but I’m still feeling vindictive.

  “I protect my people, Jace. That means not exposing them to information that could get them killed—or would you prefer I just let them in on everything I know? Maybe tattoo a big target on their foreheads, too?”

  “What, and clash with mine? Oh no. Besides, once everyone starts doing it, it’s no longer cool.”

  “I’m sorry you feel singled out.”

  “Getting used to it, actually. Sometimes it even makes me feel special.”

  He leans up against the steel counter that runs beneath the mounted security screens. “Let’s stop this, all right? I need you. Gretchen needs you.”

  “Oh? Is catching the killer of her child’s father going to accomplish some kind of postmortem paternal voodoo I don’t know about? Will it give her some of her life back?”

  He looks down and to the side, at the monitor showing the living room. Gretchen is carefully getting out of the recliner, with help from Dr. Pete. “No. All we can offer her is justice.”

  “Can we? I mean, justice is a very ill-defined word, especially in our line of work. And it seems to get thrown out the window pretty damn quick when it conflicts with justice for someone else higher up the food chain. You want me to investigate, but you don’t want me to rock the boat—once someone in the Hexagon is involved, suddenly all the rules change. One of them gets murdered, and suddenly the shaman that can send me home is ‘unavailable’? How stupid do you think I—”

  “Jace.” His voice is hard, cold, and suddenly so is his face. He doesn’t look like an affable eighteenyear-old surfer any more; he looks like a very old, very ruthless demon who’s skinned the face from an eighteen-year-old surfer and stapled it to his own skull. “I protect my people.”

  “I get that. I just don’t know who your people are.”

  “Then it’s time for a demonstration.”

  That sounds ominous. And here I am in a sealed room with one of the most dangerous men I know… one who swore allegience to a powerful and very secretive organization long before my great- grandfather took his first breath. “It’s time to go, Jace,” he says. Uh-oh. “You know,” I say, “this reminds me of the very first time we met.”

  “Yes. You pointed a gun in my face then, too.” I’m as far away from him as I can get, but it’s not a big room. “Actually, I shot you, remember?”

  “Yes. In the chest.”

  “And the face.”

  “Fortunately, you were only using steel-jacketed bullets.”

  “Not anymore. Carved teak, tipped with silver.”

  “I know. I hear they’re quite effective.”

  “You don’t seem worried.” He sighs, and crosses his arms. “I’m not. I have three questions for you, though.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “If I wanted to get rid of you, would I do it myself?”

  “Uh—” Suddenly I feel less threatened and more embarrassed. “Probably not.”

  “Second, would I do it while Charlie was around?” Now I feel stupid and disloyal. I let the gun drop. “Never. Too dangerous.”

  “And third—would you like to meet the rest of the Bravos?” I holster my gun. “Yes, please,” I say meekly. He laughs. “That is the worst attempt at contrition I’ve ever seen.”

  “That’s because it’s entirely insincere. I’m still mad at you. But I’m goi
ng to go upstairs and take most of my anger out on Dr. Pete, so you won’t have to suffer through my horrible acting for long.”

  “Don’t take too much time. We have a fairly lengthy drive ahead of us.” He unlocks the door and heads back up the stairs. “Where to?”

  “Mount Saint Helens.” We rejoin the others. Gretchen is lying down in one of the bedrooms, Charlie is talking to Dr. Pete in the kitchen. “Hey,” Dr. Pete says when we walk in. “Charlie says I’m in trouble, but he won’t say why.”

  “Not my call,” Charlie says. “But I will tell you one thing.” He takes his hand out of the pocket of his coat and flicks it, almost casually, in Dr. Pete’s direction.

  Something flashes through the air almost too quick to be seen, and then a silver Blood Cross is sticking out of the wall about three inches away from Dr. Pete’s right ear. “You better make it right,” Charlie says, his voice soft. He turns his back on Dr. Pete and joins Cassius in the living room.

  “What—what’s this all about, Jace?” Dr. Pete says. He reaches out to touch the Blood Cross, then thinks better of it. “It’s about your past, Doc. You might have thought it was dead and buried, but someone’s disinterred the corpse. A thrope by the name of Tair.”

  If he recognizes the name, he hides it well. “Tair? I don’t know any thrope named Tair.”

  “He sure as hell knows you. He’s the guy who’s been hanging around the anthrocanine shelter—but it’s not the were dogs he’s interested in. It’s you.” Dr. Pete shakes his head. “I don’t—”

  “He says he represents your former employers. The ones who dealt in blackmarket lems.” This time he does know what I’m talking about, and he doesn’t try to hide it. “Oh, no.”

  “So it’s true.”

  His voice is both sad and ashamed. “Yes. It’s true.”

  “Care to explain?”

  He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I’m—God, I don’t even know what to say that won’t sound self-serving. I did bad things, Jace. I was young and stupid and broke, and none of that excuses my actions. I’ve tried to make up for it. Maybe I never can, but—”

  “Whoa. How about telling me what you did before asking my forgiveness?”

  He stops himself. “I—I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  He looks miserable. “I signed documents, Jace. Other people were involved. I can’t tell you any of the details, or I’ll go to prison.”

  Great. More secrets. “Then I’ll tell you what’s been happening to me, okay? This thrope you claim not to know runs with a gang of wrappers—one of which put that Blood Cross in my forearm as deep as it would go. Then this Tair shows up while I’m chasing you and nearly decapitates a little old lady just to get your attention. Didn’t work, though—guess you’d already hightailed it out of there. Next time he might come after Galahad, or even Xandra.”

  Now Dr. Pete looks sick. “I didn’t know. And I swear I don’t know who he is.”

  “Well, he seems to know you pretty well. And while you were hiding in this safe house, he was targeting the people you presumably care about to draw you out.”

  I yank the Blood Cross out of the wall and slip it into my pocket. “I want to help you, Doc, I really do. But going up against this guy without knowing his deal is liable to get me and who-knows-who-else killed. So give that some thought—then we’ll talk.”

  I walk out of the kitchen. “Let’s go,” I say.

  “Mount Saint Helens erupted in your world on May 18, 1980,” Cassius says. We’re in his car, all the glass heavily tinted, him driving and Charlie in the backseat. “Here, that event occurred on November 18, 1956, and was far less catastrophic—at least for the local population. For the members of the Kamic cult, apocalyptic would be a more apt description.”

  We’re on the highway, heading south. The smoked glass cuts out so much of the light it’s almost like driving at night, except none of the other cars on the road has its headlights on—they’re all just dark, dim shapes hurtling past.

  “We knew they were preparing for another ritual murder,” he continues. “A young female thrope and her daughter. Our plan was for our two stealthiest members to slip into the house and try to locate the hostages first.”

  “The Sword of Midnight and the African Queen?” I guess.

  “Yes. The Sword was not only a pirate but also one of the best thieves in the world. The Queen is a hunter, able to stalk the most elusive game without ever betraying her presence. They entered through an upper window, found the hostages on the third floor, and got them out.

  “My job was essentially air support. The armor doesn’t let me fly, but the Queen’s sky-shield could support both of us easily. We rose to a hundred feet and turned the night into day.”

  “How about Transe?” I ask. “He was a pire, too.”

  “Transe was prepared, wearing a daysuit he’d made tearproof with magic. He was our big gun; we held him back until we needed him. The Quicksilver Kid and Brother Stone were our first wave.”

  “Foot soldiers,” Charlie says.

  “They were the best tactical choice. Both were close to indestructible, plus the Kid’s knives could take down most threats before they even got close. And Stone insisted on going in first.”

  “Tell me about Brother Stone,” I say.

  “He’s a monk, from a very esoteric and secretive sect. It’s not that unusual to see lems in the priesthood today, but back then it was almost unheard of. Like the Quicksilver Kid, he’s a singular creature; according to legend, he was a granite statue brought to life by prayer.”

  “Doesn’t sound so different from other lems,” I say.

  Charlie grunts. “Except for the granite part. Granite ain’t exactly what you’d call a fluid medium—except in the good Brother’s case. Not only could he walk and talk, he could also reshape his body into any form he wanted.”

  “Statue and sculptor, all in one?”

  “Yes,” Cassius says. “And he was a formidable fighter, as well—his strength was incredible. Between him and the Kid, the cult’s members took heavy initial losses. Any pires who panicked and ran outside were incinerated. When we thought we’d softened them up enough, we sent in Transe, with the Sword protecting his back. Which is when things stopped going as planned.”

  He pauses. Cassius’s car is some late-model sedan I don’t recognize, with no obvious trademarks anywhere, and the engine is as whisper-quiet as a library at midnight. The silence and the dimness begin to make me feel less like I’m in something with four wheels and more like a passenger in a submarine.

  “Wertham was in the basement, overseeing preparations for the ritual with John Dark. When they realized they were under attack, Dark sent Wertham to confront us.

  “They’d conducted three previous rituals, and had amassed a great deal of power by doing so. Wertham was a genuine threat. He declined to take the stairs and burst from the floor into the central foyer of the mansion. And then—”

  He shakes his head. “I couldn’t see at first. But Stone and the Kid were both thrown through the wall and the battle was suddenly outside.

  “It’s difficult to describe the chaos that followed. Wertham, for all his power, was unskilled. He simply amplified the natural energy of every spirit within range, and told it to assault us. Trees, insects, furniture, rock—things grew to sudden, monstrous size and attacked. His inexperience made the energy driving them unstable, causing some things to merge into unholy combinations: I remember battling mass of thorny vines that had sprouted moth wings and taken to the sky…”

  His voice is distant, his mind far away. I try to imagine what it would have been like, to have everything around you transform into a walking monsterscape that wanted your blood, and found it far too easy to do so. I’ve interviewed a lot of schizophrenics in my time, and this sounds all too familiar—the difference being, of course, that this is history as opposed to fantasy.

  “Though the official version describes Doctor Transe defeating Wertham, it om
itted an important detail. Transe wouldn’t have been able to get near Wertham if Brother Stone hadn’t done something he swore he’d never do.”

  Cassius’s voice becomes quieter. “He took a life.”

  “Whose?”

  “Wertham himself. Stone shaped his hand into an ax blade, his forearm into a lengthy handle. Granite doesn’t hold much of an edge, but when driven by the kind of strength Stone had… it took Wertham’s head right off.”

  “Hold on,” I say. “I thought Transe was the one who beat him?”

  “Transe dealt with the aftermath. He used the Balancer gem to divert the energy Wertham was channeling into the earth—if he hadn’t, it would have killed all of us. Unfortunately, we were fighting on the slopes of an active volcano. We barely had enough time to get away before it erupted.”

  I nod. “So Wertham really is dead?”

  “I thought so. Dark managed to escape, but he always had a contingency plan.”

  “I’ve seen the original designs for the comic,” I say. “Dark is in it, but it doesn’t mention Stone killing Wertham.”

  “Stone wouldn’t allow it. Even though he knew it was necessary, it troubled him deeply. He’s never been the same.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “You’re about to see for yourself.”

  We turn off the highway and onto a narrow, winding dirt road. It snakes up through forest that’s only an indistinct shadowy wall on either side of the car. A sign goes by that I can barely read: something about a temple, either twelve or seventy-two miles ahead.

  “He founded this place at the foot of the lava flow,” Cassius says. “It’s dedicated to the thirteen people that lost their lives in the eruption, but it’s really a monument to something else.”

  “Guilt,” I say.

  The temple is a blocky stone building jutting out of the cooled lava flow itself. There’s no sign out front, no parking lot; it seems more like some kind of industrial outbuilding you’d find behind a hydroelectric plant than a religious retreat.