The First Face of Janus

by Valentine, Phil

  “Yeah, I guess. These guys have to be First Facers.”

  “We can’t be sure.”

  “Oh, come on. Delacroix is this Nostradamus fanatic and we see him with a group of grown men in hoods trying to conjure up Nostradamus’ visions?”

  “Or they could be just what you said, Nostradamus fanatics. I can’t imagine if the First Face of Janus already has the Unriddled Manuscript that they’d need to resort to such tomfoolery. More like a bunch of kids playing with a Ouija Board.”

  “What about the muscle?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they treasure their privacy.”

  “Look, I’ve done the Ouija Board thing. We didn’t hire thugs to make sure our moms didn’t find out.”

  “I don’t mind telling you, that was freakin’ me out,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know. I’m getting chills just thinking about it.”

  Rosenfeld shuddered. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

  The distant sound of glass breaking at the other end of the house startled them both.

  “What the hell was that?” Rosenfeld whispered.

  “I don’t know.” Crow concentrated on the hallway leading to the bedrooms. “I’m going to find out. Stay here.”

  He grabbed the candlestick and started sneaking toward where he thought he’d heard the sound. Only after getting halfway there did he realized he was defenseless. He looked around the den and homed in on a poker hanging beside the limestone fireplace. Armed with the iron weapon, he continued his trek toward the source of the sound. He eased down the hallway. One of the wide planks creaked below his feet. He stopped. Lightning lit the hallway for a brief second and the thunder crashed a second later.

  Rosenfeld jumped in her seat. She hugged herself rubbing her arms and looking warily around the room.

  Crow could hear something coming from one of the rooms down the hall but it was hard to tell which one. He began creeping again, gripping the poker tighter. He felt a knot in his stomach. He approached the room on the right and could hear some kind of commotion, but it sounded muted or muffled like someone rummaging through a closet. He was at a disadvantage in opening the door, since he held the poker in one hand and the candlestick in the other.

  A chill came over Sidney Rosenfeld and she shivered.

  After some studying on the situation, Crow set the candlestick on the floor next to the doorway and eased up to grab the doorknob. He counted down from three in his mind to prepare himself for what lay beyond the door. Three. He clasped the poker tighter. Two. Sweat beaded above his upper lip. One. He threw open the door and burst inside. The candle shone up from the floor enough for his mind to piece together what he was seeing. A window was slightly ajar. His eyes shot down to what appeared to be shimmers from pieces of broken glass on the floor then back up to the window. The wind was pushing it in and, once the wind subsided, gravity was pulling it back shut. He retreated a step and knelt to reach the candlestick behind him. He shone a light on the floor. The light revealed the broken drinking glass that the window had knocked to the floor when the wind first blew it open. Crow knelt to pick up the broken pieces. He set them back on the table and stood up relieved that he had only allowed his imagination to get the best of him.

  And that’s when he felt it. The hand on his arm was as terrifying as anything he had ever felt. Blood rushed to his head as if he were in some sort of nightmare. He was acting on pure adrenaline and reflex. It was like watching himself from afar no longer in control of his own muscles. He dropped the candlestick and the flame extinguished plunging the room into darkness. He spun around and away from the hand, grabbing the poker with both hands above his head like a medieval executioner’s axe. His biceps tightened. In that tiny moment he knew he had only one shot at it. His mind channeled all of his strength and energy into that one singular action of bringing the iron weapon down on the head of his assailant.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “It’s me!” the voice rang out in the darkness.

  The flood of built-up power drained from Crow’s arms. They dropped and dangled limp by his side. “Damn, Sidney! You scared the hell out of me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t like sitting there in the dark all by myself.”

  Crow fumbled on the floor for the candlestick. About the time he had both the candlestick and candle in hand, the lights came back on down the hallway. Rosenfeld tripped the switch by the door and lit the room. Crow reached over and secured the window. They looked at one another and chuckled with relief.

  “Are we freakin’ out maybe a little too much?” she said.

  “We can’t be too careful.”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t be killing each other either.”

  “You shouldn’t be sneaking up on people.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I was creeped out in there. You shouldn’t leave a girl all alone like that.”

  “Oh, I should’ve sent you in here with the fireplace tool?”

  “It’s been a long day,” she said. “We need to get some sleep.”

  Crow looked around. “I’ll take this room. There’s a master across the hall. You can have that one.”

  “See you in the morning.” she said.

  “Yeah,” Crow said. “See ya in the morning.”

  THE CRATE WAS unloaded from the transport plane at the aduana—the Spanish word for customs office—along with dozens of other packages. The crate was a square box encased in wood. The ceiling fan barely made a dent in the heat. A clerk dressed in short sleeves with sweat stains under his armpits scanned the label to begin processing the package. He read over the paperwork. The sides and top were stamped ‘FRAGILE’ in both English and Spanish.

  “I will handle this one, Miguel,” said the man who seemed to appear out of nowhere. “It is your break time.”

  The clerk looked up. “I do not mind. I have already begun processing it.”

  “No, no, no,” the first man said. “This is a large shipment. It could take some time. Go. Enjoy your break.”

  “Are you sure?” the clerk asked.

  The man with the gold tooth smiled widely. “I insist.”

  THE HYPNOTIC SOUND of water rushing in the river below had lulled Crow into a deep sleep. He leaned against his favorite rock, pen in hand resting on his notepad. The horn blowing from the truck that had just been cut off in traffic on the road at the top of the embankment brought him back to reality. Eyes wide open, he looked at his watch and jumped up cramming his belongings into his backpack. He climbed the hill and hurried onto the seat of his bicycle.

  He had planned to only miss one class then sneak into second period gym class unnoticed. Too late for that now. A friend had signed him in at homeroom, but the school had gotten wise. They now required roll to be called just after lunch. He could grab something to eat at home. His mother was at work, so she’d never know. After a quick sandwich, he could peddle up to the back of the school unnoticed and blend in with the other kids changing classes. Skipping a full day would raise the suspicion of that Nazi Rotch. As long as his homeroom teacher didn’t do a head count, which she never did, he would be fine.

  He peddled as quickly as he could and rounded the corner onto his street. His heart sank. In the driveway was the now-familiar ugly green car. So was his mom’s car. Busted. They would be waiting for him in the den, Rotch with that pathetic smirk on his face. His mom would almost be in tears, chain-smoking, pacing. Crow slowed his roll. Why hasten the inevitable? He dropped his bike in the dirt and slowly opened the screen door to the kitchen. He was prepared to take his medicine.

  He walked into the den. No one there. He thought he caught the scent of his mom’s perfume, the one she put on only when she was going somewhere nice, which was almost never. He could see her in his mind in that white dress she always wore when she wanted to impress. The one that accentuated her leathery tan skin. He was just before calling her name when he heard it. Faint at first, but as he crept closer to her bedroom in
the back of the house, the sound was unmistakable. The rhythmic tap of her bed’s headboard lightly beating against the wall. As he approached the door, he could hear her soft sighs of ecstasy. Almost in unison was the unthinkable. The grotesque moans of Vice Principal Rotch. Crow was gripped with rage. His jaw tightened and his nostrils flared like a demented beast. He wished he had access to a gun. He was sure he could kill them both. He stood there at the door, unable to move, listening, seething, crying. The tapping of the headboard and sounds of raw, animal sex began to be replaced by a low whine in his head that seemed to be in four parts. He frowned. The room blurred into an effulgent white almost blinding him. The four sounds would hit the same pitch momentarily then diverge only to intersect again. The whine seemed to get louder and louder.

  He jolted awake and struggled to get his bearings. His head jerked to the left then to the right. He was in France, in a farmhouse. He willed himself wide awake and, once there, knew exactly what the sound was. He could see the shadow of it on the sheer curtains in the morning light. He hit the floor just as the first shot came through the window shattering the window pane. The bullets thudded in a row into the mattress shooting foam and fabric into the air. Several other shots were fired while he scrambled across the floor. Dressed only in his pajama pants, he was out the door. He ran into Rosenfeld in the hallway in a nightgown wondering what the hell was going on.

  “Drone!” Crow shouted.

  They huddled together outside her room.

  “All we have to do is keep away from the windows, right?” she asked.

  “I wish it was that simple. Some of these drones can launch grenades.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I write about stuff like this,” he said.

  “How do they know where we are in the house?”

  “Heat signatures. That damn thing can see us anywhere in the house.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I have an idea, but I need you to stay right here. You promise this time?”

  Rosenfeld nodded.

  “I’m going to draw its fire.”

  “But—”

  Crow was gone. He dashed without fear down the hall and through the den. Glassware on the table shattered behind him as the bullets tore through the windows. He flattened himself against the wall. His heart was racing. He knew what he had to do, but getting there was the problem. He had spent the time Sidney was preparing dinner exploring the old two-story farmhouse and was now glad he did. He found something that might save them, but it was all the way upstairs, and there was a bank of windows over the front door that exposed the stairway. He wondered why the drone hadn’t launched a grenade, but then it hit him. If they were tracking heat signatures, the resulting fire from a grenade would be a nightmare for the drone. Setting the house ablaze would not only make it harder to find them, it would surely attract the attention of the neighbors at the nearest farmhouse.

  Crow had to get upstairs, but even running up those steps at full speed, he’d be easy pickings in front of that bank of windows. The drone would have to reposition to the other side of the house, but the distance from where he was to the front foyer might be just enough time to do that. He knew he couldn’t make it to the top of the stairs without the drone getting off a clear shot. It hovered like a nervous bumble bee at eye level at the rear of the house.

  “Sidney!” he called down the hallway. He had a line of sight to her.

  “Yeah?”

  “I need you to do something for me. Walk down the hallway slowly toward me. I need you to draw the attention of the drone.”

  “You want me to draw fire from that thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Well, no, not really draw fire. Just fool it.”

  “How?”

  “When you get to the edge of the hallway at the den I want you to stop then prone yourself like you’re going to run through the den.”

  The drone operator’s screen showed two heat signatures in the house. One up against the wall in the den and the other easing down the hallway. His finger hovered over the red button.

  Sidney reached the end of the hallway and conformed her body to that of someone getting ready to sprint across the room. Crow could see her in position. She trembled in terror.

  “Now, when I say ‘go,’ I want you to run one step into the den then turn immediately around and run back to where you are. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “No more than one step, real quick, then back to where you are. You got it?”

  She nodded again.

  “OK. Three, two, one, go!”

  Rosenfeld sprinted the one step out. Crow tore through the den and into the foyer then up the stairs. The drone fired two shots where it anticipated Rosenfeld to be, but by the time they hit, she was back in place. Crow opened the armoire in the hall upstairs as fast as he could. The camera on the drone scanned the downstairs. It only detected one heat signature. It tilted its camera toward the upstairs and saw the figure of Crow standing in the hall. It immediately shifted to reposition itself heading directly above its prior position toward the top floor. Crow unfastened the latch and threw open the windows.

  The screen showed the side of the house as the drone ascended. Crow was fumbling with something when he came into view on the drone’s screen. The infrared tracking device locked in on him and a green square lit up to frame him. The drone operator placed his thumb on the red firing button.

  Crow pumped the Mossberg 500 All Purpose shotgun once and fired from the hip. The drone was no more than a few yards away. The shot was a direct hit. Sparks flew from its gaping hole. The propellers that remained intact spun the craft out of control. It gyrated about in midair until it lost power and the bulk of what was left of it dropped like a smoldering cinderblock to the ground.

  “Throw some clothes on and grab your bag,” Crow yelled, descending the stairs with the shotgun in one hand and a canvas duffel in the other. “I don’t know if there’s another one of those damn things nearby, and I’m not waiting around to find out.”

  They threw their bags in the back seat of the Benz. Crow put the pump action shotgun and the canvas duffel of shotgun shells under a blanket in the floor of the back seat. In less than three minutes, they were in the car and speeding down a backroad through the French countryside.

  Delacroix’s right hand was just a few inches from the cellphone that sat on the desk in his office, but his hand didn’t even flinch when it rang. Crow heard the voicemail message in French. “Hello, this is Jean-Claude Delacroix. I am unable to take your phone call. Please leave a message.”

  Crow anxiously waited for the beep. “Jean-Claude, this is Benson Crow. We had visitors at the house. We’re heading to Avignon. Call me back. You’ve got some explaining to do, my friend.”

  Delacroix was reclined in the chair at his desk. His right hand casually rested on the desk. His left hand was limp by his side.

  The crimson semi-circle that reached from his left ear underneath his chin and over to his right ear still oozed with blood. His shirt was drenched in dark red. His eyes stared straight ahead never to witness another secret again. Whatever he harbored was now lost to the ages. Standing in front of the desk staring down at the lifeless figure was Marcus Foster.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was Thursday morning. Just fifty-two hours until the wedding, if they had interpreted Nostradamus correctly. Crow and Rosenfeld drove north toward Avignon and, for a time, were too shocked to even speak. Had what just happened really happened? Crow had seen it before. The stealthy, sinister nature of a drone attack. He had described it to Rosenfeld, but his depiction didn’t do the horror justice. The feeling was violent and terrifying. The disorientation of such a silent but brutal attack was psychologically violating and demoralizing. It shattered one’s sense of security. It could appear anywhere any time without warning. Now she understood why Crow scanned the sky.

  “Who
the hell was that?” Rosenfeld finally asked, looking out the window.

  “There’s no way to be sure. It looks to be the same people who killed Grumbling and his housekeeper, whoever that is.”

  “It’s the Custos Verbi,” Rosenfeld said. “It has to be.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “They want those quatrains.”

  “Which would explain why they didn’t torch us.” Crow took a deep breath. “We have to go to Avignon.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s where the Palace of the Popes is. Delacroix believes that’s where the Custos Verbi is.”

  She pulled a tube of coral lipstick from her purse and pointed with it.

  “OK, so explain something to me. Why are we now going looking for the Custos Verbi if they’re trying to kill us?” She placed the lipstick to her full lips and looked into the mirror on her visor. The coral made her lips glisten.

  “If the CV really are behind this, I need to tell them what’s going on. Make sense?” Crow said.

  Rosenfeld pushed the visor up, leaned forward, and gazed up at the sky through the windshield. “Not in the least.” She turned back at Crow. “Can I ask you another question?”

  “Sure.”

  She threw the lipstick back in her purse. “Have you lost your frickin’ mind?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about some guy who was just hunted by a drone who now wants to walk into the headquarters of the guys with the drone and say, ‘Hey, fellas, this has all been some huge misunderstanding.’ If they’re trying to kill us—and it is us now—you won’t get anywhere near them before they blow you away.”

  “Relax. I have a plan.”

  “Mm-hmm, yeah, I’ve seen your plans.”

  “Look, I’m not stupid. I’m not going to just walk into the lion’s den.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”