The Immortals Trilogy Books 1-3: Tales of Immortality, Resurrection and the Rapture (BOX SET)

by C. F. Waller

  “You don’t have to do this,” I stammer. “We can work something out.”

  “Stop whining,” she barks and reaches under her jacket producing a hand gun.

  My heart thumps in my chest as she gets closer. I’m backing up slowly when she points the gun at my head. When I bump into the back of the car, she quickly closes the gap on me.

  “Here,” she snarls flipping the gun around and handing it to me by the stock. “Stop pissing yourself and come look in the house.”

  As she turns and walks away from me, she reaches under her jacket, comming away with a second gun. Initially I fumble with the pistol, but quickly gather my wits.

  “You did that on purpose,” I shout at her from behind.

  “You should have seen yourself,” she yells back, “I thought you were going to run for it.”

  “Not very professional,” I complain, jogging up to the makeshift front porch to join her.

  “Forgive me, I’ve had a hell of day,” she explains and kicks the front door lightly with the toe of her boot.

  It must not be latched as it swings in with a creak. I am hit with an oppressive wave of smells. I cover my face with a free hand and wince.

  “What the hell is that?” I choke.

  “It’s what I brought you here to see,” she announces, shoving me through the door. “Our situation has changed since they called you.”

  Inside the small room one man sits in a rocking chair. Blood runs down his white shirt, turning pink as it does. His suit jacket and dress pants seem unruffled. He looks just as I would expect Rahnee’s guys to look, except he’s quite obviously dead. Keeping one hand over my mouth, I shuffle over to the rocking chair corpse and poke at the knot in his tie, where the blood seems to begin. When I poke his throat, his head falls backwards slightly, revealing a slashed throat.

  “This your guy?” I gulp, turning away quickly.

  “Yup,” she declares, flipping her glasses up on her head.

  “You left him here alone with her?”

  “Three all together,” she sighs pointing to the only other door in the space.

  The rickety door is closed, but not locked. The scent from the entry way fills this area as well. Inside, two more men lay on a double bed. There isn’t any blood visible, but the men are ashen grey and their chests still. Slowly, circling the bed, I cannot be sure what happened to them. I notice they are not wearing the same style suit jacket and slacks as the near headless man in the front room. These suits are brightly colored, one of them dark purple. Both are double breasted with pinstripes. Reaching down, I feel the cuff of the closest man’s jacket. It’s silk, more than likely expensive.

  “Apparently, they needed a nap,” Rahnee suggests from the doorway.

  “Not a mark on them?”

  “Oh, I am sure there are marks,” she declares, putting her hand on my elbow from behind.

  “How do you know?”

  “She cleaned them up and changed their clothes. They were not wearing this stuff when I left them here,” she explains quietly as she turns me away from the bed, her hand still on my elbow.

  “You find their clothes?”

  “Nope, nothing.”

  “Your guys were armed?” I ask, waving a hand back to the bed.

  Rahnee nods and crosses her arms.

  “Find any guns?”

  “Nope.”

  “We need to search the house from top to bottom,” I cough, putting my hand over my nose again. “Let’s go outside where I can think.”

  We step outside and I make a call. I am told it will be as long as six hours for a team to get here to clean this up. The last thing we need are news cameras and local sheriffs sealing it off with yellow tape. Unsatisfied with this new timeline, but unable to change it, I hang up.

  “Six hours,” I moan, putting the phone in my jacket. “We will have to search the house ourselves.”

  “Already did,” she assures me. “Nothing here.”

  “Was their anything here before you left your guys with her?”

  “Just furniture,” she shrugs. “The stuff you just saw. Nothing personal.”

  “So, she wasn’t living here,” I offer. “How did you find her again?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she shrugs, pulling a small red envelope from her inside jacket pocket. “She knew we were close and brought us here.”

  “So, we don’t know where she was before?”

  “I do,” she explains pushing the envelope at me. “At least where she was at some point.”

  “What is this?” I demand, taking it.

  “She left us a note.”

  The envelope is thick stock, probably expensive. Inside is one sheet of cream colored paper. I pause but Rahnee points at the letter and waits, arms crossed. Unfolding the letter, I get a surprise. The writing has been done with a calligraphy pen. Black ink curls and bends around the paper in perfect letters. Holding it up to my nose the ink smell is pleasant, and recently dried.

  “So, she did away with your guys and then pulled out an ink well and a stylus and wrote me a letter?” I snort.

  “It’s not the weirdest thing we’ve seen today.”

  “That says more about our day than this note,” I snap back.

  “Read it already.”

  My inside jacket pocket holds reading glasses. For some reason my pride won’t let me pull them out, so I hold the paper up close and read to myself.

  To whoever finds this note let me apologize up front for your men. They seemed uninclined to let me leave when I requested to do so. I was forced to persuade them rather aggressively. To be fair, you did capture me by force and try to detain me. To the young woman who brought them here I have a warning. I implore you to heed it, but find myself almost positive you will not. That decision I must leave to you and thus here it is.

  This is going to end badly for not just you, but for everyone involved. Whoever is sending you after us is not aware of the consequences of their actions. Having already exposed me, my fate is almost surely sealed, but there are others. Everyone you touch will meet the same grizzly end as I soon will. Do everyone a favor and stop this hunting of men. There are still those of us you have not tainted. They can remain hidden if you cease your interference and let it end here.

  That said, I must be fair and honest with you. I am not offering you any reward for doing as I ask. No matter if you stop now, or continue your pursuit, you are doomed to the same end as me. When they come for me, they will not differentiate between us. Think on this very hard and do not receive it with a foolish heart. Make no mistake, we are both currently no more than the walking dead.

  This warning given, let me add this, I bore witness to your necklace and assume as a daughter of Abraham you believe in more than Earth, wind and water, some higher power to guide your actions and watch over you. Hold strong to your faith, but know this. Your God, if he exists, cannot change our fates. He did however give you a moral compass to follow. Consult it now, before you choose your next course of action.

  Regrettably,

  Beatrix A. Moffatt

  When done, I flip the page over to see if there is more, but that’s all there is. Looking up I see my partner wearing a smirk.

  “Real uplifting stuff,” she states, rolling her eyes.

  “You said you know where she was living before this?”

  “Sure, look at the envelope,” she suggests pointing at my free hand.

  Turning it over, I see an address hand written on the back in the same calligraphy style. It’s not a New Orleans address however.

  “Covington?” I read off the envelope.

  “An hour from here. While I was waiting for you, I drove over and had a look around.”

  “And this is the reason you were late to the airport?”

  To this she frowns and says nothing. This mystery solved, I am left wondering about the address on the envelope.

  “And the address?” I demand after a long pause that annoys me.

  “
The building is gone,” she informs me, turning to walk to the car as she talks. “It’s an empty lot. I asked around and a guy who owns a place down the street said they tore it down when he was a kid.”

  “And when was that?” I beg, walking along beside her.

  “He couldn’t remember,” she sighs as she reaches the trunk of her car. Using the key fob, she pops the latch. “He looked like the Crypt Keeper. He’s at least seventy and that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “So, there hasn’t been a building there since the end of World War II?”

  “Nope,” she mutters, flipping the top off a Styrofoam cooler in the trunk revealing cans of beer. “But, he said it was apartment buildings. He said the whole block was apartment buildings.”

  “We can check that out,” I respond excitedly, watching her pop open a can of Heineken and take a drink. “There will be records.”

  “There is no building,” she groans, handing me a can. “There is no dispute here. She wrote that on the back to give her story corroboration. She wanted me to go check it out.”

  “It’s a starting point.”

  “It’s not a bread crumb Einstein, it’s a bibliography.”

  “Funny,” I sigh, taking a drink. “Real funny.”

  The beer is ice cold and I cough just a bit when I swallow too quickly. I flash back to my grandmother’s lake house in Michigan. The scent of a cold can of Budweiser cracking on a hot day. The Tigers game on the radio in the kitchen. Me, eight years old, standing to one side observing the grownups as they play cards.

  Rahnee sits on the bumper, leaving the deck lid open and sips. I toss the gun she gave me in the trunk on top of some duffle bags stuffed by the cooler. She watches me do this and then goes back to drinking.

  “This is really cold,” I comment, leaning on the rear quarter panel.

  “Salt,” she explains, but then sees me thinking her answer over she adds. “I put salt in the water. It makes it colder.”

  “Right,” I mumble, actually thinking about something else. “Where did you learn that?”

  “I grew up in Israel. It’s hot there.”

  “Point taken,” I nod. “So, where have you been keeping yourself for the last decade?”

  “I was pursuing another career opportunity.”

  Tilting my beer up and finishing it, I crumple the can between my hands. Rahnee puts her hand up without looking over and I set it in her tiny palm. As she digs in the cold water for another, I walk around in front of her, kicking at rocks on the drive. She casually pulls out a beer and tosses it to me. I catch it and we stare at one and other.

  Her eyes are dark, probably brown. Small beads of sweat glisten on her forehead. She’s wearing a similar leather jacket to the one she used to wear years ago. A V-neck red tee shirt is also part of her normal attire. The sweat trails down her neck and I’m following it with my eyes past her pendant when she speaks.

  “Ah-hem,” she faux coughs to drag me out of my daze. “I’m up here.”

  “Sorry,” I stammer. When we worked together that first time in Sweden you knew why we were there,” I suggest, watching her reaction. “You were read in on all this.”

  “You’re talking about the immortality fairytale she replies mockingly, using air quotes while trying to hang on to her beer.

  “That’s right,” I counter, popping the can and taking a drink. “And they just let you put in your two weeks’ notice and walk away with that knowledge?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay, then how did you manage that? If you left, they would have sent someone looking for you.”

  “They did,” she says, popping another can. “They actually sent more than one.”

  “And they said what?”

  “They told me that I was,” she grins, pausing to make a gun out of her hand. She puts it to the side of her head, as if she was going to blow her head off. “They said I was cordially invited to come back to work.”

  There is a short silence and then we both start laughing. Without asking, I assume she killed the men sent after her, but I’m surprised she was able to evade the organization all this time. Even stranger, that she is back working for them now.

  “Okay, so what was the career move?” I ask, forcing her to slide over so I can join her on the bumper. “Was it a promotion or more of a lateral move?”

  “Neither,” she explains. “I hired on as security for those big boats that haul containers back and forth from Asia.”

  “You were keeping them secure from what? Theft of poorly made baby clothes?”

  “You’re a riot,” she replies shaking her head. “I was there in case of Pirates.”

  “What, like those Somalian gangs from that Tom Cruise movie?”

  “You mean Tom Hanks,” she corrects me, making a toast in the air, downing her beer and dropping the can in the trunk.

  “So, you and a team of guys rode along on the ships. I thought they were not allowed to have guns on board?”

  “No team of guys,” she declares, standing up and pacing around in front of me. “Just me.”

  “This has to be a good story,” I assert, pulling a cold beer out and pointing it at her.

  “It had its moments,” she snorts.

  “Here,” I say, tossing her the beer. “Come have a seat and tell me all about it.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you ever run into actual pirates?”

  “Once,” she chuckles, cracking her beer. “Just once.”

  Chapter Four

  Arron Wessker

  The sun cuts across my face when the door opens, causing me to squint. A quick peek at the table by my front door reveals that I have misplaced my sunglasses at some point this week. Grumbling at the loss of my Faux-bans, I scoop up my keys and pull the door shut behind me. My apartment used to be a cheap hotel, but someone thought they could make more money out of it by turning it into condos. That plan fell through in the crash of 2007. It’s now low-cost housing. Extremely low cost.

  Three buildings are shaped in a horseshoe around a pool that sits baking in the sun. There’s not a drop of water in sight, a statement which includes the pool. I turn right and look down from the second-floor walkway through rusted steel handrails. The pool is full of patio furniture and tree clippings. Several basketballs and Frisbees have also fallen into the Six-Star Court’s private black hole. I travel down a flight of stairs past the skeleton of what used to be an ice machine until I reach the parking lot. Sitting outside the office are two scantily clothed women in triple decker high heels, hair piled on top of their heads in one solid ball of hairspray. One is wearing a blue sequined mini dress and the other a yellow strapless number that would be around her waist if it wasn’t for the invention of silicone. There is no point in trying to avoid them, so I don’t.

  “Hey baby, how about a loaner this morning?” the blonde in the blue dress begs in a scratchy voice. “I’ll get you back.”

  “It’s noon,” I smirk, pulling out my smokes and looking to see how many I have. “Morning is long gone.”

  “We work nights,” she counters. “This is the crack of dawn for people like us.”

  “It’s the crack of something,” I agree.

  Finding half a pack remaining, I pause to give Morgana a smoke. Her name is actually Stephanie, but in her defense, her stage name suits her. Mid-thirties and going nowhere fast it boggles my mind that we inhabit the same building. I pause and recall that other than the people I work with, these two might be the only people I talk to on a daily basis. This depressing revelation makes me wince.

  “Got one for Melody?” she begs, putting hers between her lips and lighting it with a zippo she pulls from some unseen place on her person. Dressed as she is, unseen leaves few hiding places.

  “Melody doesn’t smoke,” I chuckle, having sat out here on more than one occasion with these two miscreants.

  “I’m thinking of taking it up,” she states in a mousey voice after bein
g shoulder bumped by Steph. “I mean, if I had one, I would try it.”

  Stopping to roll my eyes at Melody, I snap the pack open in Steph’s direction. The angle here is obviously to get an extra smoke out of me. She draws another cigarette out and hands it to her friend before giving me a wink. Long fake eyelashes bathed in blue glitter stick her eye shut for a moment. She uses the back of her hand to open her eye nearly burning herself with the business end of her smoke.

  “You ladies have a nice day,” I offer, refraining from commenting on the near miss with blindness. “Be safe.”

  “You working later?” Steph shouts as I walk away. “Thought I might come up and get a drink on the house.”

  “Security would toss you out,” I lecture her.

  “I wouldn’t be working,” she assures me. “Just a social thing.”

  “Your work is a social thing,” I admonish her. “I recommend you don’t.”

  “Fine,” she yells angrily, her temper triggering at the drop of a hat. “You tie wearing clowns think you’re better than us.”

  I keep walking and don’t look back. We have this exchange several times a month. She will apologize later when she wants something from me. Last time she dropped by for a cocktail she propositioned my manager and got tossed out. By tossed, I mean momentarily airborne before hitting the pavement. While I got the impression my manager was initially curious about the particular act that was offered, he reacted poorly once he realized I knew her. I am under a direct order to keep her out of the casino.

  “How did I get to be on hooker duty?” I chortle to myself.

  Walking down the cracked sidewalk, I unhappily stop short of lighting up myself as you can’t smoke on the bus. Cars rush by on the four-lane road next to me. Minivan taxis with billboards on top advertising shows of every kind zip past. The sidewalk is covered in dirty fliers featuring pictures of half dressed women. Six blocks from the strip and people are still trying to sell me the dream.