The café was not what I’d envisioned. It was open-air with a smattering of wicker chairs and teetering plastic tables, spread out over a generous expanse of sand. It was sea-side only in name; the crystalline water could be seen lapping up on the shore, bringing strands of seaweed and shells along with it, but was obscured by a ragged line of wind-battered palms that acted as a barrier between the coffee shop and the ocean.
The patrons were a healthy mixture of locals and tourists. Some sipped from small porcelain cups, while others checked their coms or snapped photos of multicolored birds that were bounding excitedly underfoot, pecking at errant crumbs. A few of the more fortunate patrons were beneath an umbrella fashioned from straw. I’d arrived during the morning rush, apparently, because the only available two-seat table was at the center of the café, far from any shade (since the entire establishment was basically comprised of loose furniture on a beach, I’d wondered why they didn’t just pick everything up and move it beneath the nearby palm trees to avoid melting the tourists).
An hour after our agreed meeting time, a slender, serpentine goddess in black lace weaved her way through the sweaty locals and much sweatier tourists. Her dress was so ornately designed it would’ve been an understatement to simply call it a dress – it looked more like a wedding gown without the train and veil. She was painted with inky black lips and matching eyeliner, delicately clutching a Victorian parasol that was as intricate as her gown. My eyes were glued to her, but eventually I tore them away long enough to register the utter lack of reaction from everyone else. It was bizarre. Not a single person, tourist or local even shot her a glance – this picturesque, gothic beauty that could have been plucked from 18th century England and dropped on a rustic South American coast, three centuries and half a world away.
With an elegant stroke she brushed her dress beneath her and sat, keeping her parasol angled deftly overhead. The light was in no danger of touching that make-up.
“So we meet again,” she offered, along with a friendly smile and a firm handshake. Her voice was velvety, but lacked the otherworldly menace it was laced with during our previous meeting.
I managed a quasi-genial smile, not overly concerned whether or not it came off as authentic. “Nice to chat when death isn’t on the line.”
A chunky bearded man in tropical whites breezed over to our table, carrying an oversized water jug that clinked when the rapidly-melting ice cubes bumped up against the glass. He placed a cup in front of her and filled mine for the fourth time before continuing to the other tables.
“Apologies for the location,” she offered, taking a quick sip from her cup. “I can’t be too careful these days considering the political climate.”
“No problem at all.” I shifted in my seat, tugging at my collar. “Look, not to be impertinent, but I don’t have a ton of time right now…could we speed past this part of the conversation and get the good stuff?”
She nodded, and was more than happy to skip the pleasantries and the small-talk and pretending-to-give-a-shit-about-each-other’s-personal-lives. This wasn’t a job interview or a business lunch – we didn’t have to put on this social charade.
“After the incident at your fortress,” she began, “I needed to get as far away from Canada as possible. My butt was on the line. Laugh at their Mounties and maple syrup and donuts all you want, but when it comes to a military presence they’re definitely no joke. Contrary to popular belief they do have guns, and they’re not afraid to use them. Anyone associated with Valeriya’s Red Army was being tracked down and questioned, and who knows what else. I had no stake in her endgame and I wasn’t going down for her cause. I was there because she offered me an eight-figure paycheck, nothing more.” She hesitated, before adding, “And speaking of which…”
I reached into my breast pocket and placed a flat copper key on the flimsy table-top, sliding it towards her. “Twenty-two million in gold, just like you asked. It’s in a safety deposit box at—”
“I know,” She interrupted. The Nightmare scooped up the key and like a street magician concealing a card, with a subtle flick of her wrist, it disappeared. It could have been sleight of hand, or she could have clouded my mind so I couldn’t see where she’d hidden it. It didn’t matter and I didn’t bother asking.
“You know where the bank is, too?” I asked. “And how do you know all the gold is there that I promised you?”
She rapped a black painted fingernail against her temple. “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a loud thinker?”
I snorted. “Yeah I’ve heard that once or twice.”
She hesitated again, as if momentarily lost in thought. “I thought you were in a hurry?”
“No, yeah, please continue. No more interruptions, I promise.”
She glanced around conspiratorially before continuing, as if someone in this sparsely-trafficked café was secretly tracking her. After a cursory examination of the patrons she leaned in on her elbows, angling her umbrella so it shaded my head as well (which provided some much-needed relief from the punishing sunlight – I didn’t care how ridiculous I looked huddled beneath it).
“So there I was,” she continued, in a slightly hushed tone, “In Casablanca, holed up in this quaint little hotel that hadn’t been renovated since the early 1930s. I love Morocco. Saying this place was old-world would be an understatement: all white marble, mixed with some art deco touches and gold columns, more staff than guests, and best of all: no surveillance. Not a CDU or video camera in sight. My room had a freaking rotary phone, for crissakes.
“Anyway, this place was the perfect hideout: I was going to be safe from the Canadians, the Americans, and anyone from the Red Army who might have blamed me for your eventual escape; those guys were pretty hardcore when it came to the whole retribution thing.
“Once I got settled in I took a minute to check the news on my com. I half expected to see a smoldering crater where Fortress 23 used to be. Like everyone else in the know, I figured they were going to bomb the entire place back to the Stone Age just to dot their I’s and cross their T’s. But that wasn’t what was dominating the headlines. It was the scene in Thunder Bay. I saw Sergei Taktarov’s ‘resurrection’ outside of that little hospital and almost everyone was buying it, saying he’d ‘reached across the ethereal plane’ and all sorts of new-age nonsense. Of course I knew it was bullshit. It was a glamour; a parlor trick used by Wiccans and mages and a handful of supers to mask their identity.”
“Wait,” I interrupted, forgetting that just a moment ago I’d promised no further interruptions. “Magic is real?”
She sighed. “Not in this dimension, no, but in alternate timelines, yes. You can use a sigil to...wait, do you wanna hear the rest of this story or not?”
“Sorry, sorry…” I twirled my fingers in the universal symbol of ‘please go on’ before zipping my mouth shut.
She took a quick sip of water before continuing. “I could tell Kenneth had pulled off a glamour because I do it all the time. I’m doing it right now: everyone in this café except for you thinks I’m a four-hundred pound Columbian businessman with a comb-over and a bad sunburn.“
“Huh.”
“So anyways, there I was, spending a month getting oil exfoliations and rhassoul wraps in paradise, just basically pampering myself into a coma. Then he shows up.”
“Kenneth Livitski.”
She pointed at me with a finger gun, cocking her thumb as she pantomimed the hammer ratcheting into place. “Bingo. So Ken is decked out in his new super-suit, cape, the whole deal, and at his side is Valeriya Taktarov. I’ve racked my brains and to this day I have no idea how they found me: I was using a fake name, fake ID, concealing my face behind a dozen different glamours whenever I went out in public – but they found me. I guess it doesn’t matter how, but I’d still like to know.
“So Valeriya tells me that INTERPOL had frozen her accounts and locked down her assets, leaving me several million dollars short, but Ken tells me he has something even bette
r for me: glory. The chance to ‘rule’ at his side and become some sort of a world leader, ushering in this brave new era of blah blah blah…to be honest I completely tuned him out after five minutes. Needless to say I wasn’t buying what he was selling. I’ve heard the whole ‘super villain taking over the world’ speech more than once in the last decade, and it’s never worked out for the villain. He promised that this time it was going to be different, and Valeriya says that they’re going to build a following. Not like the Red Army, fueled by hatred and frustration; those emotions run hot, but they burn out over time. This new coalition they were forming – The Order of the Eye – was going to be built on faith: a foundation so powerful that nothing could break it. It sounded like some Scientology-level nonsense to me, so of course I was skeptical, but now…”
“Now you’re afraid,” I added. She didn’t need to confirm or deny – it was written across her face. Her fear was cleverly masked and concealed and hidden beneath layers of subterfuge, but not cleverly enough.
“Powers all across the world are being sliced and diced,” she said flatly, “and we all know who’s responsible. At first he wanted allies, but now? He just wants to rub us out one at a time. The only supers he has at his side are B-list lapdogs who don’t pose any real threat to his throne. Before long Kenneth will be the last player left on the board, and there won’t be anyone left to topple him. At least no Omega-levels.”
“Wait,” I asked, raising a finger, “did you just use the term—”
“It was for lack of a better term,” she cut in. “I only said it because that’s what you were thinking.”
“Oh. Okay. So back to Morocco: he just let you walk?”
“He said my time was coming,” she sighed nonchalantly. “He said that if I wasn’t with him, I was against him, and yadda yadda yadda. He did most of the talking but I could tell Valeriya was fueling him. That little pre-teen Stalin had been feeding his ego, building him up until he felt like he could conquer the globe. It’s like he was this fire and she was an endless supply of gasoline. So naturally I asked what made him so confident, and why he thought he could take on the world. He said his constructs were indestructible, crafted from pure energy. And now he was fearless. Until I met you I’d never encountered anyone without a fear of death, and right away something felt wrong…I didn’t need to get inside his head to know he was lying.”
“So what does he fear?”
She looked around again, first left and then right. She was savoring the juicy morsel of information as if it were a sublimely cooked piece of steak, just waiting to be sliced open. The suspense was killing me. “He fears only one thing: his power being sapped. He’s an architect, and his abilities seem unlimited, but he’s mortal. He can bleed. And that’s where his power lies. He knows that his blood could be his undoing.”
It made sense. Scientists had been obsessed with superhuman anatomy ever since their discovery. While defense contractors were preoccupied with their only tangible weakness – altering their brainwaves to temporarily drain their abilities – other corporations had gone to great lengths to harvest their blood and tissue, hoping to gain advancements in the ultra-lucrative field of medicine. To date the results had been lackluster, at least from the limited number of samples that had been collected. They were always looking for a sample from increasingly powerful superhumans, hoping to find the billion-dollar genome.
The race to drain a sample from Sergei Taktarov was a poorly kept secret, though that turned out be fruitless as well; the Russians had done everything in their power to obtain a sample from his corpse, but even in death they couldn’t penetrate his skin. Rumor has it that diamond-tipped drill bits were snapping off in mid-rotation trying to puncture his veins. If you got a sample from the right badass-level superhuman, it wouldn’t just be a step for mankind – it would be a leap over a soaring megatower.
It seemed like an interesting lead, but I needed more to go on. “So what you’re saying,” I asked, “is that he’s terrified of someone getting a blood sample. So what? That could just be paranoia.”
She shook her head. “His creations aren’t temporary anymore,” she stated. “He creates something and that thing is a part of him. He can even create organics, but those creations aren’t fully formed – they’re missing a catalyst to realize their potential. They lack the missing ingredient to becoming independent.”
Holy shit. Brynja couldn’t ghost because he’d crippled her abilities by design; brought her back as a small part of a whole. He was limiting her to protect himself.
“I get some of Kenneth’s blood, inject her with it and then she can ghost again. She’s the last Omega. It’s the one power he might not be able to counter…” My mind was flooded with possibilities, but it was still a bit of a leap. And while I may have been stuck with the nickname, it was Brynja who was the real God Slayer. The only known superhuman who could become incorporeal – and that was the key to my strategy.
Weaving reached up the stem of her umbrella and unlatched the locking mechanism, pulling the canopy down with a swift snap. “Sure,” she said offhandedly. “In theory. Get a pint of Kenneth’s blood, mainline it into your girl and she’ll be back to her cheerful self, powers and all.”
“So how do I get the blood?” I asked her, stupidly blurting out the question before taking the time to think it through.
“You promised payment, and I promised I’d reveal his greatest fear. That was our arrangement, and I never go back on my word. But that was the extent of our arrangement, Mister Moxon.” She took a final sip of her water and dropped the empty tumbler on the tabletop with a dull clunk.
“You have power,” I said. “Maybe even more power than Livitski. Help me: join my team and I’ll double the gold. Triple it. Whatever you want.” I was coming off desperate, I’m sure, but I’d never been much of a negotiator. Plus she was a mind-reader – no use playing it cool when someone can hear the clumsy, frantic thoughts colliding in your brain.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but didn’t really sound like it. “I don’t take money for things I can’t provide. Technically, yes, I can turn someone’s fears against them, but Kenneth…he’s in class of his own now.” She extended an open palm, pressing it forward as if she were a mime pushing against an imaginary barrier. But it wasn’t imaginary. Her fingertips illuminated, radiating a white-hot energy that I could feel from across the table. The bones in her hand became visible through her flesh like an x-ray. “Even now, I can feel him,” she said, her eerie black gaze locking on mine. “His power and influence swells. I can feel the fear and respect of his followers rippling like waves, spreading exponentially…”
“So aren’t you afraid that you could be next? If he found you once he could find you again.”
She closed her hand and snapped off the light show with a fizzle of electricity. Then she sighed wistfully and leaned across the table, and pressed her soft, dark-painted lips into my cheek.
“I’m no hero, so I’m sitting this one out. When the dust settles, I’ll choose my side.”
She produced a twenty dollar bill from somewhere (again, I don’t know how – it was like having brunch with Houdini) dropped it on the table and placed her empty cup on top, ensuring the salty ocean breeze wouldn’t carry it away. She stood, flattened out her dress and walked away.
“What if The Living Eye wins?” I called out.
She answered without turning around. “I guess I’ll become a Scientologist.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It took a day to complete my other stops around the world. By the time I’d returned to Fortress 18 in the South China Sea, few of my other fortresses remained intact.
A simulcast in New Zealand reported that my remote Lees Valley research facility (Fortress 11) had been eviscerated by flames when a faulty gas line exploded. My security footage showed otherwise. A blur of fists and energy that looked vaguely like The Living Eye streaked through the steel and concrete laboratory, tearing the glimmering six-level str
ucture to pieces. It was left pocked with entry and exit holes, six-inch bullet proof windows smashed like delicate stemware, and towering concrete walls plowed down as if by a wrecking ball.
And it didn’t end there.
My fortress in Newfoundland had been torn to pieces, and what remained was concrete strip footing attached to the cliff face overlooking the North Atlantic, with threaded galvanized rods bent out in awkward directions like dislocated fingers. The fortress itself was gone: it had been shorn from its foundation, bobbed in the waves and then capsized, sinking to the ocean floor.
My Siberian stronghold – a dome roughly the size and shape of an NFL football stadium – had been pried open as if by a giant can opener, and was ransacked in a matter of seconds.
It went on and on. Every place I could possibly be hiding was being systematically destroyed, and only Fortress 18’s cloaking device was keeping me off the radar. At least for now. For how much longer, I had no idea.
I gathered the gang in the conference room, knowing it would likely be the last time we’d gather in that spot. There was a sobering finality to it all, and I was suddenly overtaken by a stomach-twisting melancholy; sadness that I had a difficult time suppressing. But there needed to be a leader now, and I had to push my personal feelings aside. Easier said than done.
Once seated, I stood at the head of the oval conference table with a reinforced steel briefcase sitting ominously before me.
“What’s in the case?” Karin asked, plopping down into a leather seat. She was rolling back and forth on her toes, dragging the wheeled chair across the plush white carpeting like an impatient grade-schooler.
“You can’t just blurt it out like that,” Brynja scolded her. “I’m sure there’s some really cool story behind it.”
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