by Peter Roman
And then it was just me and the bald man. He stood up and took off his suit jacket and hung it on his chair and then turned back to me.
“I don’t know who you are—” he began, and I stood up to interrupt him.
“I’m the guy who’s going to beat you,” I said.
He rolled up his shirt sleeves as he considered me. He was a real traditionalist when it came to matters of intimidation.
“I wouldn’t mind if you did,” he said. “But I doubt that’s going to happen.”
That comment gave me a clue as to his nature. He had the utmost confidence in himself despite facing someone who’d managed to find this secret meeting and who was willing to crash it regardless of all the talk of Deep Ones’ tentacles and secret assassination films. That meant he was powerful, most likely supernatural. His statement that he wouldn’t mind if I beat him suggested he wasn’t happy with his lot in life. I guessed it had less to do with depression issues and more to do with sorcerous bindings and such.
“So what are you?” I asked. “Demon? Golem? Ghost?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said as we began to circle each other, kicking chairs aside to make room.
“Me, I’m just a man,” I said. “And you’d be the man of the one I’m looking for, if you were a man.”
“What do you want with him?” he asked.
“I don’t want anything with him,” I said. “I want something he has. Maybe we can work out a fair exchange.”
He chuckled a little at that.
“What do you have?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I admitted. “But I imagine I can come up with a pretty decent IOU.”
“I think I’ll just take you instead,” he said, and we got down to business.
I was expecting the attack to come from him, and I guess it did in its own way. But it mainly came from behind me. There was a scream of metal and I turned in time to see a car frame hurtle out of the shadows at me, knocking over the rest of the chairs. It was one of those huge ones they used to make in the 1970s—two tons of steel if not more—but I couldn’t tell the model because it wasn’t finished. It was unpainted and didn’t have any windows or tires—it screeched along on rims.
I leapt to the right to get out of the way, and even then it grazed me a little. If I’d moved at normal speed it would have driven over me and I would have been just another motor-vehicle statistic. I rolled and came up on my feet in time to see my adversary hop over the car, timing it perfectly, and then the car crashed into the wall behind him. I also had time to note there was no driver. I spun in a quick circle, scanning the room just in case, but I didn’t see anyone else. And I wasn’t driving the car, which left only one other candidate.
“All right, that rules out golem and ghost,” I said and threw a chair at him. I didn’t expect it to hurt him; I just wanted to gauge his reflexes. He let the chair bounce off him, which confirmed my suspicions about him not being human and all. Sometimes I hate it when I’m right.
“And demon,” he said, chuckling. “But we still don’t know what you are.” He waved his hand and suddenly tentacles lashed down at me from the ceiling, striking me in the head and wrapping around my limbs and pulling me in all directions. Only they weren’t tentacles, they were the chains hanging from the belt on the ceiling. The auction had my imagination working overtime.
I figured my opponent was responsible for the chains grabbing me, so I cast about for a connection between him and them that I could sever. There are a couple of different ways of looking for such things—kind of like looking through a night-vision scope, or maybe seeing in infrared. But there was nothing. He wasn’t manipulating the chains. The chains were alive.
Or rather, they were possessed by things alive. I could see them inside the metal, writhing there to make the chains move and pull at me. And they were screaming as loudly as I was now, in their own way.
Souls.
The chains were possessed by the souls of those who had once been alive. I hadn’t seen this sort of thing since the Chinese ghost tank division in the Korean War.
I hit the chains with a minor exorcism spell, the sort of thing every self-respecting priest and tomb robber knows. It did the trick, cracking open the metaphysical chains, so to speak, and releasing the souls to finally die. The physical chains hung limp and I dropped to the ground. But not before I saw who the souls were. They faded into scenes from their lives, moments that summed them up.
A man in grey work clothes watching a woman hang laundry on a line in a yard.
A man lying on a beach, watching a gull circle in the blue sky overhead.
A teenage boy kneeling at the grave of his father, promising he’d look after the family.
And then they dissipated entirely. But they all whispered the same name: Sut.
I stood back up and saw more souls trapped in the car. I freed them the same way. They all said the same name.
I looked at the bald man, who raised his eyebrows at the sight of me unbound and the pieces of the factory no longer doing his bidding.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Sut.”
He bowed his head a little. “Indeed,” he said. “And judging from your training, I would guess you’re a priest. Vatican special collections squad? Or are you rogue?”
“Oh, you have no idea,” I said.
He chuckled. “Well, let’s find out then,” he said and waved both hands at me.
This time the whole factory shook and shrieked and I turned to see a couple of forklifts rushing my way, their cargo arms lifted to impale me. Behind them came what I can only describe as Frankenstein creatures—humanoid shapes cobbled together out of factory parts. Barrels for bodies, hubcaps and tire rims for heads, pipes for legs, strips of conveyer belt for feet, welding torches and metal pincers for arms. An army of them. The human appearance was just for effect—Sut could have just as easily bound souls to individual pieces of machinery and had them come at me. But he struck me as the type who cared about his work. Yeah, I was getting a read on him.
He laughed again as I sighed. “You could just surrender and deliver yourself into my power,” he suggested.
I shook my head. “I’m just warming up,” I said and I waded into his minions.
By the time I was done it looked as if I’d exorcised every single piece of equipment in the factory. I was surrounded by piles of debris, and I’d gone through so much grace so quickly that I had to lean against one of the forklifts for a moment. It had been possessed by a man whose favourite memory had been drinking alone in a dark bar where the televisions were broken. I was curious before, but I was angry now. There had been hundreds of souls trapped in the nuts and bolts of the factory here, some of them for decades. All of them by Sut, if their whispers were to be believed. He couldn’t have bound them all in preparation for the annual meeting his little group held here, which meant he must have done it for personal reasons. Which told me exactly what he was. Because there was only one being that would bother with such an odd form of torture.
“So you’re a djinn,” I said.
Sut didn’t say anything, just studied me with narrowed eyes. The smile was gone now that I’d wrecked his toy army.
I could have stood there all night, making small talk while waiting for my second wind to arrive. But I didn’t have all night, so I got on with it. I forced myself away from the forklift and managed a smile.
“And if you’re a djinn working for someone else, that means he’s bound you to his service,” I said. “Which means you’re no different than this bunch.” I kicked a crushed oil can at him. The head of one of the creatures that had tried to take off my own head with a portable power saw.
That made him mad enough to finally come at me himself. Which saved me the trouble of going to him.
He didn’t charge me like I’d expected. Instead, he ripped apart in a whirling cloud of shirt and tie and skin and every
thing underneath. It looked a little like a dust storm in the desert. Then he covered the distance between us in an eyeblink and just like that I was at the centre of the storm.
This day just kept getting better.
I had a hard time breathing, as he was sucking the air out of my lungs while simultaneously battering me with a thousand tiny pieces of himself. It was a handy trick on his part, and had probably served him well over the centuries. How do you beat a dust storm? But he’d never fought anyone like me before. Or maybe he had, but he hadn’t fought me before.
I grabbed a piece of something hurtling past my face. It was warm and wet and, yes, squishy. I tightened my fist around it and ripped it free of Sut. A handful of bleeding flesh.
He screamed a little and the storm around me faltered for a second, the wind dropping as he tried to figure out what had just happened. I used the opportunity to grab a few more bits of him—best not to dwell on which parts—and ripped them free as well.
Sut redoubled his efforts then, whipping himself into a real storm, one that tried to scour the flesh from my bones. I caught more pieces of him, until he broke away from me with a cry and reformed himself where the podium had stood before. Now he was breathing heavy and bleeding from various parts of his body. He looked a bit misshapen, like he’d put himself back together without all the parts.
“What the hell are you?” he asked.
“Close,” I said, and then it was my turn.
I leapt across the room to him and held him in place by the throat when he tried to dematerialize again—holding him bound in his physical shape with the help of some grace. His eyes widened. I guess no one had pulled that one on him before. Every day is a life lesson and all that.
For a moment we struggled against each other, will against will. But then I grabbed a screwdriver off the floor and went to work on him with all the ferocity of an angel, and eventually he fell to his knees with a cry.
“Master!” he said in surrender.
“I’m not your master,” I said. “But you can tell me who he is.” I was growing curious. Whoever Sut was working for had some formidable tricks up his sleeves to be able to bind a creature such a djinn. That feat would be a struggle even for an angel.
“Jonathan Edwards,” Sut gasped. “His name is Jonathan Edwards.”
I shook my head. “Don’t know him.”
“He is a Collector,” Sut said. He pronounced it in a way that called for a capital C.
“I gathered that much,” I said. “And I’m also guessing he’s collected Mona Lisa. The real one. Am I right?”
Sut shook his head. “I’m forbidden to speak of such things,” he said.
I prodded him in the chest with the screwdriver, but he held up a hand. “See for yourself,” he said. He opened his mouth and spoke but no words came out. He went on like that for a moment and then shrugged. “I have told you everything I know,” he said.
I wondered if it was some sort of spell specific to djinn or if it had broader applications. It would have been handy to have for some of my past neighbours.
“What if you write it down?” I asked, but Sut shook his head.
“It just comes out as random lines,” he said.
“Lip reading?” I asked.
“Random words,” he said.
I thought things over for a moment. I had to admit it was an interesting approach to keeping secrets. Very Tower of Babelish.
“Mind if I get off my knees?” Sut asked. “It’s a little uncomfortable.”
I nodded him into a chair and then picked another one out of the debris and sat down across from him.
“All right, you can’t talk about Mona Lisa,” I said. “Can you answer yes and no questions about her?”
“I’m not really certain,” Sut said. “It’s not a common topic of conversation.”
“Let’s give it a try,” I said. “Does Jonathan Edwards have the real Mona Lisa in his possession?”
Sut opened his mouth to speak but only more silence came out. He looked at me and shrugged again.
“Why don’t you just try nodding or shaking your head?” I suggested.
“I did,” he said.
“All right,” I said. “Can you talk to me about Edwards?”
“I think so,” he said.
I leaned back and folded my arms across my chest, in order to look more intimidating. Also to rest my sore back.
“Let’s hear what you know then,” I said.
“The Risen are the alpha and the omega,” Sut said, then stopped. He looked at me. “That’s not what I meant to say,” he said.
“Go on,” I sighed.
“The Risen are the first and last,” he said. He shook his head.
“Those don’t seem to be random words,” I pointed out to him. “Who are the Risen?”
“The Risen are the beginning and the end,” he said, then added, “I didn’t know about this one. I’ve never had any problem talking about him before.”
“It was probably triggered when you submitted to me,” I said. I got to my feet, then paused as I thought of something.
“How did Edwards bind you?” I asked.
“The Risen are the alpha and the omega,” Sut said again.
“When did he bind you?” I asked.
“About 400 years ago,” Sut said. “He freed me in an archeological dig in a desert that’s no longer there.” He stopped and raised his eyebrows at me.
I nodded. “Looks like he didn’t cover all the bases,” I said. “So he dug you out of the ground—”
“Actually, I was in a burial urn in the well-preserved tomb of a pharaoh whose name I dare not speak for fear it will summon him,” Sut said.
“Whatever,” I said. “How did he dig you out?”
Sut looked confused. “The usual way,” he said. “With shovels and picks.”
“I mean, how did he free you from the urn?” I asked.
“The Risen are the beginning and the end,” he said.
It went on that way for a few minutes, until I was satisfied I wasn’t going to be able to find out anything else about Edwards beyond what I already knew. Which was almost nothing. Just a typical day at the office.
Now it was my turn to roll up my sleeves. I added a little flair of my own by picking up a metal pipe.
Sut looked up at me with a resigned expression on his face. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Time to bury you again,” I said.
“But I’ve co-operated with you,” he said. “I’ve submitted to you.”
I nodded. “This isn’t for me,” I said. “This is for all the people you bound in this place.” And then I went to work on him with the pipe.
I could have killed him, but I didn’t. I left just enough to keep him conscious. And then I bound him into the oil can I’d kicked aside earlier. I took the oil can and hid it deep inside the factory, in a place I was pretty sure only I’d be able to find again. Then I left that place, hoping the sleight that hid it would last a thousand years.
Hey, I never claimed to be a saint.
PENELOPE REVEALS A MIRACLE
Penelope and I left for Japan the day after we found the postcards in the Montparnasse cemetery. Japan was still at war with half the world, but I’d learned over the centuries that you couldn’t let some conflict get in the way of your travels. If you did, you’d never be able to go anywhere.
Of course, trying to get into a country at war was more difficult when you were coming from one of the enemy states. We couldn’t just catch a direct flight to Tokyo.
We packed our lives into our suitcases and took a passenger plane to Istanbul, where we spent two days waiting for a replacement for some arcane part in the engine. I didn’t want to step foot out of the hotel because of what had happened last time I’d been in Istanbul, back when it was known as Constantinople. There are things with very long memories in
that city. So we stayed in our hotel room the whole time, making love some more and reading some travel guides we’d bought about Japan. It had been a while since I had been there. Centuries, probably. I’d travelled there after the Shimabara rebellion, when I’d heard Christianity had been outlawed. It had, but one of the other things history has taught me is that prohibition rarely works. Okay, never works. There wasn’t any place for me to hide from my past in Japan either, as I kept running into secret Christians who reminded me who I was.
From Istanbul we flew to Karachi and switched modes of transport, boarding a cargo ship I knew of that sailed under a flag so worn and faded it was blank. The flag had once borne a nation’s symbols, but that nation didn’t exist anymore. The crew didn’t look too closely at us, partially because it was their business not to look too closely at their cargo, and partially because I’d cast a sleight on Penelope and me to make us look like an unattractive older couple from some northern clime that did horrible things to one’s skin. I took it off when we slept together at night so we could still enjoy the bloom of new love and all that.
We sailed from Karachi to Hong Kong, where we paid some money to a British man who looked like Buddha and switched to a regular passenger vessel flying the Japanese flag. We entered Tokyo with the accompaniment of a warm rain. On the way, I adjusted the sleight to give us more of a south Asian appearance. Still old and ugly though, so as not to attract attention.
It probably wasn’t wise to speak English, or any other European tongues, given the war and all, but the few words of Japanese I remembered were so woefully out of date that the dock workers just stared at me when I tried to ask them where the nearest accommodations were. But we were able to find a cab driver who understood our mimed gestures of sleeping and took us to a hotel.
We slept off the trip into the afternoon and ate breakfast in bed. Then we dressed and went down into the street and began our hunt. If the people we met were curious about our lack of the local tongue, they were polite enough to not show it.
