Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (Max Quick Series Book 3)

by Mark Jeffrey

  When she was born, for a time, Giovanni was happy. He had a daughter again for the first time in literally centuries. He would delight in playing with her, holding her, walking around Sabine’s little apartment with her in his arms.

  Sabine did not really know much about this man, this mysterious Johnny Siren, with whom she now lived in a small two-bedroom apartment. Giovanni told her nothing of his vast wealth, of his remote mansion in Colorado and elsewhere around the world. He was not ready to give up that much of himself.

  Sabine only knew that Johnny paid all the bills. He insisted she stay at home and be with little Casey. He would leave on short ‘business trips’ now and then but would only be gone for a few days at a time, and return for stretches of long weeks before having to leave again.

  Sabine Cole never questioned it. She was deliriously happy, both with her life with Johnny and her new daughter, Casey. She simply assumed that at some point they would get married and then at last Johnny would introduce her to the rest of his family ‘in Italy’ as he always said.

  She had no way of knowing that his family had been resting in catacombs beneath the now-bustling modern city of Cyranus for over five hundred years.

  When Casey said her first words, her voice sounded exactly like that of little Venetia’s. But what really broke Siren when he heard her laugh. The memories came flooding back too quickly …

  Sabine could not console him. He marched and flailed about the house, weeping and weeping.

  And that was it.

  That was when he realized: he couldn’t do this again. Not yet. It could still happen to him again — Sabine and Casey could still be taken from him. No. He had to finish his task, he had to master the secrets of the Niburians … and then, maybe then, he could return to Sabine and little Casey …

  He stole out in the middle of the night and did not return. He left no note. He gave no goodbye.

  Sabine kept thinking he would return, that he’d left on a ‘business trip’ again and simply forgot to tell her. He’d be back in a few days, sure.

  Days turned to weeks. Weeks turned to months.

  When it became a year, Sabine finally broke down and cried. She couldn’t believe it! Why had this mysterious European swept her off her feet and given her Casey — only to leave? Johnny had been happy, she was sure of it! And he clearly loved Casey … he loved children … what had gone wrong? She couldn’t compass it.

  She began a new life in a new apartment on Royal Ridge Way. She got a job at the bank, to support herself and Casey now as a single parent.

  And not a day went by that she did not think of Johnny Siren with a mixture of love and hatred, for the both best and worst that ever come into her life.

  She could not know that one day soon, her daughter Casey would be immune to the Pocket because her father, Johnny Siren, had once stepped through that Arch into the world of slow-time, the world of Nibiru. She was his offspring: she was thus acclimated to slow-time from birth, the same as any pureblood Niburian would be.

  And that would prove to be a gift beyond price from her father, though he had bestowed it unwittingly.

  Fourteen: White Cadillac

  THE SMUDGE that was Max’s vision took time to resolve.

  Too much time.

  Something was very wrong, he knew it immediately. His body ached terribly, like he’d been trampled by horses (and that had once actually happened). His lungs labored: he gulped air like water. And his body was heavy: he had bones of uranium.

  When he tried to move, a shriek of pain stabbed his midsection.

  “Don’t move,” an old man’s voice said. “You stay still now.”

  In a rush, memory flooded Max’s mind. The Bondsman! Casey!

  But more immediately, where was he now? He didn’t recognize the voice. It was clipped, accented. Its owner slipped away suddenly.

  Then, his vision unexpectedly snapped into focus. He was staring out a dirty, thin window and laying on a small pull-out bed. He was in a mobile home or something.

  A white Cadillac was parked just outside.

  The same white Cadillac that had been tailing him and Marvin Sparkle?

  And the same one that had picked him up off the desert floor?

  No!

  He was in danger here.

  He looked down at his body reluctantly, afraid of what he’d see. But he needed to make this assessment, needed to escape this place urgently. Steeling himself, he looked down. He was wrapped in thick gauze all around his chest and belly. Dried blood coated it. Yes. Bullet wounds. He’d been shot. He thought to try and wiggle his toes, to see if he was paralyzed.

  But before he could do so, the darkness took him once again.

  THE NEXT time he was conscious, it was night.

  He found that his breathing still came in wheezy rasps, and he tasted dried blood on his lips. In fact, it was a sudden gagging sensation that awakened him: a fit of retching rattled his bronchial tubes. He realized then that his lungs had likely been punctured by Casey’s bullets. And his ribs ached — they felt like broken wet twigs. They were probably fractured as well.

  He was in no condition to run away.

  Unless … his power could somehow heal him?

  But no, he thought. It couldn’t. That wasn’t its nature. His power was a kind of battering ram, extremely potent but imprecise. It was not fit for the delicate task of regenerating blood and mending bone.

  As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that his dressing had been changed; there was no deep crimson staining the gauze that wrapped him like a cerement. He tried to prop himself up on his arms, but he was too weak, too weak. His body simply couldn’t hold the weight. He collapsed back onto the makeshift bed, panting, and found himself looking at the white Cadillac through the window again.

  During his long life, he’d broken many, many bones. He could recall a number of these times now that his cryptomnesia was lifted, and his memory restored. Max knew specifically what a broken bone felt like — that peculiar vibrating painful sensation at the break point. And Max had been stabbed, clubbed, beaten, burnt, frostbitten many times in the deep past — almost any injury that wasn’t lethal, he’d experienced at some point.

  He would heal. He wouldn’t die from this. He knew that.

  Abruptly, Max realized that someone was blowing smoke in his face. It was a vividly pungent cloud that suddenly cloaked his face, clogged his nose. He coughed. He turned his head and beheld a small, old Indian man with a face like a raison. He puffed on a long cob pipe with a feather hanging from it.

  “What — what are you doing?” Max gasped between thin breaths. “I — can’t — I …”

  “You can breathe,” the Indian said. “This will help. This is healing medicine.”

  “Who … “

  “I am a friend,” the Indian replied to the unspoken question. “You have been shot. And not by just any gun. The bullets are from the Red Roses, a very special set of guns. I recognize them.”

  “Is that your car?” Max managed to cough out. This old guy was going to choke him to death with his stupid smoke.

  “The Cadillac? Yes, it is mine. I call it the White Cloud.”

  “You … been following …?”

  “Yes. I’ve been trying to pluck you from the company of Marvin Sparkle. He means well, but I knew that he would lead you away from the true path. Twice, I almost had you. But Marvin Sparkle is crafty, and not easily misled, and he clouded my path and vision. And the general occlusion of the Bondsman’s grip on this world has weakened my sight in some ways. When I say ‘sight’ I do not mean this literally, of course.”

  The Indian leaned into the light. To Max’s surprised he saw that he wore wrap-around sunglasses — and from the way he was constantly shifting his head slightly this way and that, he clearly had the mannerisms of a man with no sight.

  “My name is Logan White-Cloud,” the blind Indian said. “And these bullets were shot from the Red Roses: eldritch and ancient weapons forged for Case
y Cyranus, who is their owner and master.”

  Max blinked. Logan White-Cloud? Impossible! Wasn’t that was the blind Indian from Casey’s tale of Arturo Gyp!

  How could he be here in the real world?

  Instantly, Max’s suspicions were aroused. Arturo Gyp, a Western town, had been a construct of Casey’s subconscious. This Logan White-Cloud had been part of Arturo Gyp.

  Therefore, this person before him now was an imposter. He had to be.

  “You are wondering how I can be here?” maybe-Logan said, a sly smile spreading on his thin, dried lips.

  Max managed to wheeze, “That’s right. The real Logan White-Cloud is a dream. You can’t be him.”

  Logan laughed a puff of smoke at that. “Listen to yourself! The real is a dream, and I am the forgery — yet here I sit before you! You say this because Casey and Sasha woke up in the Pyramid of the Arches. You think, therefore, that what they experienced was ‘just a dream’. And that this dream was unreal. That what happened there was of no consequence. Nothing could be further from the truth!”

  Logan — or the man claiming to be him — blew more pungent, cinnamon-smelling smoke into Max’s face.

  “Cut that out!” Max coughed. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “No. In fact, you should be dead. You soul was wandering from your body. The smoke brought it back.”

  Max tried to raise a hand to clear the smoke, but again, he was too weak.

  “Your soul is not sticking to your bones yet,” Logan continued. “I must keep up the medicine, so that the sheets of your spirit once again find their proper winding about your chakras. That is why you cannot move. Your ghost moves, but your body does not, because body and soul are not yet reconnected.”

  “I can still talk,” Max rasped.

  “Yes,” Logan agreed, leaning forward. “And you do not trust me, even though I saved your life. But perhaps I should be the wary one. Tell me, Max Quick, one marked for death by the very Bondsman himself, why did you jump in front of the bullets of Casey Cyranus? Why would you protect the Bondsman?”

  Max thought for a long moment and then said, “Because it wouldn’t have worked. You can’t kill the Bondsman with bullets.”

  “I know Casey Cyranus. And Sasha Fwa. I trained both in the use of their magnificent guns, which were their birthright. But you I do not know,” Logan pressed. “Casey believed she could kill the Bondsman, and you prevented her. Why should I trust you?”

  “Because something terrible would have happened,” Max replied, flinching skitters of the Machine flashing in his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t have the background.”

  “It is because the Bondsman wants us to fight him,” Logan replied. “He thrives on hate, and on fear, as do his Masters, the Archons. You see? I do know something of this.”

  Max weighed this and then changed the subject. “How long have I been here?”

  “Nine days,” Logan replied.

  Nine —?

  Anything could have happened to his friends in that amount of time.

  Seeing the look on his face, Logan turned and said, “It doesn’t matter.”

  Growling, Max said, “If you actually know Casey and Sasha, you’d care what happens to them.”

  “I never said that I didn’t care,” Logan said, indignant. “Time is not what it was. It is slipping. You experienced this in Raffle’s Pass, no?”

  That got Max. “How did you know about that?”

  “I see far with my sightless eyes,” Logan said with a dismissive wave. “All times are becoming one. Soon, the whole world will feel what you did — that time has no order any more, and jumps forward and back in the blink of an eye. Cause and effect will have no meaning. Tomorrow will mix with yesterday and today will be both.” He put his face right near Max’s and became more intense. “You’ve seen the fanged weather of this world, no? The earthquakes. The tornadoes. The foul insects and bent animals skittering in the forests. Those were just the beginnings of the breakdown, the first stage. When the world leaves time behind, that will be the second stage. Can’t you feel the world speeding up? The Bondsman is not nearly done with his appointed task, no.”

  “He can’t ruin things back past 1912,” Max said, hoping to dismay Logan in case he turned out to be an agent of the Bondsman. “He can’t reach back before — before the Machine was destroyed and started all this.” Max didn’t know whether Logan would know of that or not. “At least we’ve got that.”

  “Not if all times become one,” Logan whispered. “When time is itself a thing of the past.”

  “And this is the Bondsman’s doing,” Max said.

  Logan paused briefly, seemingly unsure of how to frame what he would say next.

  “Wait. Do you know who the Bondsman is?” Max asked intensely, intuition leaping.

  “No,” Logan answered quickly. “No, I do not. But I do know why nobody does.”

  Bam. Max’s eyes widened. He couldn’t wait to hear this.

  “He has caged the information that is his name. To know the name of thing is to have control of a thing. All magical traditions and fairy stories speak of this. Remember the tale of Rumplestiltskin? Once you knew his name, he was yours to command. Some even say God has a name nine billion letters long, so that none may ever know it for the same reason.”

  “What do you mean … ‘caged’?”

  “He has placed his name in an information cage. By this, I mean the name is literally unknowable. If you were to read his name, you could not remember it. If you were to see his face, you could not recognize him, even if you knew him previously. The thought of his name exists in only one place, and cannot exist anywhere else. It is chained to an object.”

  “Chained? Chained how?”

  “He has Written it down, with immense intent and power. On what it is Written, I do not know. It could be a stone tablet, or a piece of paper. Done properly, whatever is Written cannot be known by anyone else. It is erased from every mind and every other place where it is merely written.”

  Max nodded, suddenly remembering a tale Enki had told of him — no wait, Max thought correcting himself, cursing the confusion of his still-returning memory. Max himself was actually there, back in the ancient days; he was recalling this event firsthand.

  In ancient Sumeria, the Niburians kept golden tablets called Mi. Written on each were various pieces of knowledge — how to grow crops, for example, or metallurgy, or which plants could heal what ailments. They had locked this knowledge in the Mi to keep humans from gaining access to it — and idea of Enlil’s of course, who greatly feared that these Primitive Workers might revolt.

  When certain knowledge was required, the Mi was removed from storage and downloaded to the mind of the Workers who needed it — but only temporarily. Because it had been Written, the knowledge could be controlled. Once the Workers had farmed or mined or engaged in metallurgy, and the task completed, the knowledge was erased from their minds and they could not access it again.

  There was an incident, however, where the Niburian ‘goddess’ Inanna decided that she wanted to move the Mi from Enki’s city of Eridu to her own city of Uruk. She traveled there in a Sky Chamber, and found Enki ‘in his cups’ as they said then. Drunken, Enki complied. But when he sobered up, he realized they were missing when the Primitive Workers — early humans — could no longer function. None of them knew how to plant and sow crops, or weave their looms. They wandered the fields, aimlessly, staring at the plows as though they were utterly incomprehensible items.

  The key point was this: because the physical objects that contained the knowledge were physically missing, the knowledge — made physical itself — could no longer be accessed. The knowledge was literally stolen out of everyone’s heads.

  Just like what the Bondsman had done with his name.

  This was a Niburian art; yet more evidence that the Bondsman was connected to Nibiru.

  Max recalled the deep anger of both Enki and Enlil at Innana�
��s betrayal. They went to Uruk and demanded the Mi be returned. But Innana refused, and really, held all the cards. A truce was reluctantly negotiated by Enlil, who feared the wrath of Anu, his father, should a war erupt between Niburians on Earth that would interfere with the critical mining of the gold for their homeworld. The uninterrupted extraction of gold was infinitely more important than some spat between who controlled what resource in what city.

  But in the end, Innana was the loser: Enki and Enlil conspired to trap her in a ‘place of shades’. Max believed at the time that this was some sort of underworld, but in a flash of intuition he now realized that someone — probably Enki himself — had trapped Innana inside some sort of Book, much as Enki had later trapped Jadeth.

  And with that, the Mi were recovered.

  “So. Somewhere, there is an object with the Bondsman’s name Written on it. That’s what you’re telling me,” Max said.

  “Yes,” Logan nodded. “There is indeed such an artifact. You must find this artifact and destroy it. It is the only way to learn the name of the Bondsman. And it is the only way you will defeat him.”

  Max nodded as best as he could, given his wracked body. Then he asked, “How do you know about this?”

  “There was a man,” Logan replied. “An old friend, a very brave man. His name was Armand Ptolemy, an adventurer of sorts. And a very skilled magician, acrobat and fighter. A very physical man, though not a dumb wig-nut as many such men are: he was highly intelligent. Educated at Oxford. He was not skilled in the arcane arts of the Dreamtime himself, but he knew of them, and trafficked with those of us who were such practitioners.

  “Armand Ptolemy arrived here in our 1977 from 1912, it might interest you to know.”

  “What? How? All the Arches were destroyed …?”

  “That particular secret he did not share with me,” Logan replied. “It was not via the Pyramid of the Arches, and it was before time began to slip, so neither one explains how Armand Ptolemy was able to jump forward.

  “But he told me that there was a danger in the knowledge of how he had accomplished such a thing, and revealing it to me would would imperil me. And perhaps he caged this information using the very technique I have just described to you.”