by Anton Strout
My gut reaction to Wesker’s plan was alarm bells going off in my head, screaming STUPID STUPID STUPID. But since I had nothing better to offer in the way of cohesive escape, we were stuck with it.
Wesker and I hefted one end of the Faisal carpet burrito onto my shoulder.
“Won’t the zombies try to stop us?” I asked. “I mean we’ve essentially made a giant joint with their master inside of it. Won’t that set their zombie senses tingling?”
It was Jane who put my fears to rest as Wesker moved to help Jane lift her end of the carpet roll.
“Zombie sense?” Jane said, shaking her head at me. “What are they teaching you at the D.E.A.? There’s no such thing, Simon.”
“You sure?” I asked.
Jane nodded. “I don’t think they’ll even notice us leaving. I’ve worked with that lot of undead word processors, and without their zombified brains being directly controlled on a project, they have the functionality of a small child. A regular person might look at us and be able to figure out we’ve got a body in here, but a zombie, like a child, couldn’t figure it out. It’s like if you cover something up with a cloth, a baby will forget it’s there. Object permanence, it’s called.”
I tested the weight at my end of the bundle and it was much heavier than I thought.
“It’s the same for the zombies,” Jane continued. “Unless they’re ordered directly by their master or they see him in jeopardy specifically, they’re not likely to attack.”
“Good enough for me,” I said. “That sounded very professorial of you.”
Wesker cleared his throat pointedly. “If you two don’t mind…”
For once, I was glad to hear him chime in because our carpety coffin was not getting any lighter. Wesker opened the door for us and waved us out.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked.
“I’ll meet you outside,” he said. “I’m going to go a separate way so as to not draw attention to our secret partnership. I’m worried that my cover might be blown, remember?”
“I doubt it,” said. “The way you clocked him, he probably won’t even remember who he is.”
“You’d be surprised,” Wesker said, shutting the door behind him. “These Sectarians are a hardy sort. Still, there might have been enough confusion in the fight.”
Without another word, Wesker headed off in the opposite direction as Jane and I headed for the lobby.
* * * *
Surprisingly, our trip went smoothly. Jane’s arm—still tender after healing from the fall into my alley—began to act up, but she was a trooper and didn’t bring it up until we hit street level along Thirty-Third. Wesker pulled up in a van—God knows where he’d purloined it from—and we loaded Bane clumsily into it, thankful to have his weight off our shoulders. Wesker gave the two of us a few sneers in the rearview mirror but otherwise fell silent for the rest of the ride down, which was fine by me.
Because of Wesker’s deep-cover operation, he decided to make himself scarce just in case he hadn’t blindsided Faisal as well as he thought. That meant that he wouldn’t be able to claim this capture as a victory for his precious Greater & Lesser Arcana department. I knew that would kill him, and I did an inner happy dance over the thought. We were hauling in one big evil fish and I would most likely get all the credit. Maybe Jane would win some points toward convincing the D.E.A. she was much less evil than they’d thought.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d be able to detain Faisal, but we’d see how far we could take it. It wasn’t until we unloaded the van on East Eleventh Street that I began to feel an unexpected excitement from it all. There was a buzz in the crowd as we entered, even in the rich-smelling confines of the coffee shop. Operatives from the graveyard shift perked up at our arrival, and they parted as we hefted our load from the van and headed back toward the office. As we worked our way through the storefront and down the main aisle of the theater, the D.E.A. crowd surged around us and lifted the rolled-up villain out of our hands and continued forward. I didn’t mind, though. I was riding the wave of our high, too busy accepting the congratulations, handshakes, and pats on the back from my peers to care. Most of the other agents probably didn’t even know why they were cheering or what was going on, but they figured anytime someone walked in with a body wrapped up in a carpet roll, it was most likely in the plus column for the good guys. As I continued forward through the throng, my free hand held tight to Jane’s.
Connor stood by the entrance to the offices and I met his eyes as we approached. If he was there to reprimand me, I wanted to face it head on while I was still full of congratulatory empowerment.
“When I told you to take some kind of action at the Odessa last night,” he started grimly, “I didn’t expect you to bring down the enemy single-handedly. You could have gotten yourself killed, kid.”
“And me,” chimed in Jane cheerfully. “Don’t forget he could have gotten me killed as well!”
“Word has it you’re M.I.A.,” he said to Jane with a sour look.
Connor looked down at our intertwined hands and I faltered for a second, feeling my grip loosen.
“Listen, Connor, I don’t know what to say.” I paused for a moment, unsure of what I wanted to say to justify myself. “I’m a man of action, see…”
“And I’m not?” Connor fired back. “I’m a man of action, too, Simon. Thing is, I don’t go charging into a situation unless I know the score first.”
“Problem here, gentlemen?” the Inspectre said, appearing as if out of nowhere. He looked at Jane. “Well, this should be an interesting story. Last I saw, you were plummeting off a rooftop wearing a black unitard.”
Connor cooled in the Inspectre’s presence, and I relaxed.
Connor regained his composure in front of our boss. “Just giving the kid here a piece of friendly advice. Hoping to prolong his life, that’s all.”
Quimbley stroked his mustache for a moment, looked at me, and clapped Connor on the shoulder. “Well, carry on, Connor, but don’t be too hard on the boy, eh? He is in Other Division, after all, and it’s almost impossible to run wholly by the book around here, isn’t it?”
Connor looked on the verge of saying something pointed. Instead he simply said, “Right, sir. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“That’s a good chap,” the Inspectre said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some interrogation to get to.”
The Inspectre nodded to all of us and was off with a look of excitement in his eyes that I had never seen before.
“We’ll be going as well,” I said and moved toward the doorway.
“About that,” Connor said, blocking my way again. “I’m afraid she’s not allowed in the offices.”
The crowd was surging around us now and I was having trouble focusing.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “What?”
Connor sighed, but made no attempt to move out of our way. “Standard procedure, Simon, you know that. We can’t just let the forces of Darkness into our inner sanctum.”
His words hit me as hard as an actual blow. “Didn’t you see her helping me carry Bane in here? Does that sound like a cultish thing to you?”
“Not necessarily,” Connor said. “But subterfuge comes in many forms and I wouldn’t put it past her to be part of something more nefarious.”
“You have no idea what we just went through,” I said. “He practically killed her!”
“You’re right, I don’t know what you went through,” Connor said bitterly. “That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? You’re working with the enemy and not with your partner.”
“I see,” I said. “This isn’t just about me then. This is about me getting the collar, isn’t it?”
“It’s not about anything,” he said, “except the facts. Until Jane’s been debriefed, I’m not letting her anywhere near our operations center. Understood?”
“Ask Wesker,” I offered. “He can tell you exactly what happened.”
“Oh! Wesker’s in on this, too?” Connor laug
hed. “There’s a name I run to for trust and legitimacy!”
“Go ahead and quote policy to me some more, Connor…”
I felt a tender hand on my shoulder and turned to see Jane, who had stayed silent through all of this. “Go on, Simon. It’s okay, really…”
It didn’t feel okay. What should have been my finest hour was turning south and there seemed to be little I could do to control it.
“Simon,” she started, and turned to my partner. “And Connor, is it? You’re the other one from the lobby at the S.D.L., right? I think you were going to be next on my list.”
Connor nodded.
“Sorry ’bout that,” she said with sincerity. “Look, I don’t expect anyone to buy that I’ve changed overnight. I’m not sure I believe it myself. But, Simon, I do know that I’ve got the patience to go through whatever it’s going to take for you and your friend to believe me. So go.”
Her composure in all this floored me. In the face of all of Connor’s insults, she was holding herself together far better than either Connor or I was.
“You’re sure?” I said, and she nodded.
“Absolutely.” She took off her delivery hat, leaned in, and kissed me gently on the cheek. “Now get in there and enjoy your moment in the sun.”
Had the shoe been on the other foot, I’m not sure how I would have handled all this, but here she was taking everything in stride.
“Are you going to be okay?” I asked. Jason Charles, our friendly neighborhood corporate headhunter, was still out there. Looking, waiting…I didn’t want to abandon her again.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, squeezing my hand. Then she turned to Connor. “And as for you, Mister Man, I look forward to you questioning me someday. I can’t wait to see what you’re like when you’re not treating me like a crazed cultist. Simon speaks quite highly of you, you know.”
It was Connor’s turn to smile, but it was mixed with a look of suspicion.
“Yeah,” he said. “Well, the kid’s got talent, that’s for sure. I’d hate to discover that someone was using him for it.”
“So would I,” she said with conviction, and with a final look at me, she headed through the crowd and toward the door.
32
I went to change back into my street clothes, and after I finished shaking hands and pushing my way through the crowd to the office, Faisal had been unceremoniously dislodged from his carpety burrito. Seeing his face as they secured him to a sturdy metal chair further diminished my good vibe.
The feeling had faded pretty darn fast ever since Connor had turned Jane away at the door. Oddly, all the well-wishing didn’t seem nearly as important without her present. A gold star on my permanent record here at the Department was still a gold star, so I tried to keep my spirits up.
Seeing Faisal sitting stoically in the chair made it hard, though. The urge to smack him around like a piñata on Cinco de Mayo was overwhelming, and I stayed to the back of the room to keep myself in check. Besides, I was pretty sure that if I took a swipe at Faisal with my bat, he wouldn’t be filled with candies or little plastic toys. What would be the fun in that?
We had taken over one of the lesser used conference rooms even though it was already doing double duty as a storage area. Space was at a premium at the D.E.A. and the mounting clutter of paranormal research—spell components, cursed items, and boxes containing the unknown—piled up faster than the crates of antiques in my living room.
Luckily, this meant that due to our space confines, most of the departmental looky-loos had to be shooed out. Only a handful of divisional leaders (excluding Wesker, of course) were present along with Connor and me.
“Hroom!” the Inspectre sounded. Everyone settled quietly into their seats. “What’s say we get this unpleasantness out of the way, shall we? Why don’t you start, Mr. Bane, by telling us why you stole that wooden fish from Irene Blatt and what is it used for?”
I was surprised by the impressive figure Inspectre Quimbley cut. I admired the old man, but there had been many times when he appeared almost comically grandfatherly. Seeing this side of him when it came down to hardcore occultism reminded me that the Inspectre could really pull out all the badass stops.
This, however, did not mean that Bane would actually give up any information under Argyle Quimbley’s interrogation. In fact, Bane looked more composed than ever. He was devilishly handsome, and not a single strand of hair looked out of place, even though he had been wrapped in a carpet for the past half hour. Most people would have looked a little rough around the edges, but Faisal looked ready to pose for the cover of Occultist’s Quarterly. The only thing that looked out of place was the thick coil of rope lashing him to the chair. It held him tightly in place, not that he was making any effort to strain against it. This surprised me.
I’d expected him, as the villainous head of fanatical cultists, to be full of wrath and rage in the face of his capture. Instead, he sat calmly, passively, and worst of all, unansweringly.
The Inspectre looked exasperated by Faisal’s silence as well. He paced back and forth, stroking his mustache. Every so often he would drop down in front of Faisal as if he had heard the cultist say something, but if he had, I couldn’t hear it. This slow process dragged on for another twenty minutes, each moment of silence seeming longer that the last.
Again the Inspectre got in Faisal’s face.
“What’s that?” he asked. “Eh?”
Silence.
“I’ve got all night,” the Inspectre said. “Or would you rather I start asking you more about this?”
Like an old vaudevillian stage magician, the Inspectre rolled up his tweed sleeve and waved his hand through the air with a flourish. The manifest that Jane and I had taken from Faisal earlier appeared at the Inspectre’s fingertips. Faisal’s eyes moved to it and flickered with interest for the first time since we had brought him in.
“Ah yes,” Faisal said with a grin. His eyes left the manifest and turned toward me at the far side of the room. “The item retrieved from Ms. Blatt…I do wonder, though, is she still around?”
I didn’t like hearing her name on his lips, but I honestly didn’t have a clue as to where Irene had disappeared to since last night. I kept quiet.
With faux innocence in his tone, Faisal asked, “I wonder, Simon, does our precious little Janey know about her?”
His eyes actually twinkled and a wicked grin sprang upon his face, a grin that ran clear down to his dark soul. I felt the hair on the back of my neck bristle, but I held my ground. I could give silence as good as we had been getting it from him.
“Now, now,” the Inspectre said as he stepped directly between us. “You leave the boy alone. I’m asking the questions here.”
“Yes,” hissed Faisal. “And I see how well that’s working out for you…”
“Well, at least we’ve got you talking now, haven’t we?” the Inspectre fired back caustically.
Faisal fell silent again, then cast his eyes toward the door. “Not for long apparently.”
I turned to see mayoral liaison David Davidson standing in the doorway. As usual, he was impeccably dressed. Even the knot of his tie was perfect, and he looked every bit as composed and unruffled as Faisal had when we captured him. Davidson’s eyes scanned the room briefly before coming to rest on Faisal and the Inspectre.
“Sorry to do this, gentlemen,” he said with that friendly I’m-about-to-screw-you-so-bend-over tone of his. “I’m afraid I can’t allow you to continue with this line of questioning.”
“Coming to the rescue of cultists again?” I snorted.
“Sectarians,” Davidson reminded me with a waggle of his finger. “They’re officially referred to as ‘Sectarians.’”
“Your timing is impeccable as usual,” I said. “Do the Sectarians have you on their payroll as well?”
Davidson shook his head and resumed his politician’s smile. “The Mayor is trying to look after all his constituents and their needs, Simon. He doesn’t play sides.”
/>
Perhaps the Department had a mole or a leak that had alerted Davidson. Perhaps it was Wesker who was really playing both sides and he had called Davidson in. That mystery would have to wait, though. Right now I was too busy having trouble just moving.
Davidson’s words had an immobilizing and calming effect, the same one that I had experienced during our initial encounter at the Sectarian Defense League. Davidson made his way to Faisal and started undoing the rope, and although I wanted to stop him, I could barely move. The best I could muster was a leisurely stroll down the aisle toward them.
The Inspectre seemed to be the only one unaffected. “Seems to me that no matter how you dress it up, Mr. Davidson, evil is still evil.”
I think his understanding of the politics of it all was the only thing that kept the Inspectre from laying a hand on Davidson as he released our prisoner.
“Everything okay, Mr. Bane?” Davidson asked as the last coil of the rope fell to the floor. “Are you hurt?”
Faisal stood, brushing the creases out of his suit. “Only my pride, Mr. Davidson. Only my pride. Somehow this young man here got the drop on me in my offices and gave me a bit of a wallop. Not sure how he pulled it off really, but perhaps I’ll press charges.”
Although I didn’t like the idea of having charges pressed against me, I was somewhat relieved that we hadn’t blown Wesker’s cover.
“You’ll have to take that up with the police,” Davidson said. This seemed to disappoint Faisal, and he frowned.
“Took your time getting here, didn’t you?” Faisal said with a sneer.
Davidson’s smile faltered for a second. “The wheels of justice are ever turning, Mr. Bane, if not always briskly.”
By the time the effects of whatever Davidson had done wore off, I found myself standing next to Inspectre Quimbley. His eyes were fixed on Connor. Something unspoken was happening, but I didn’t know what. The Inspectre put his hand lightly on my shoulder.
“Simon,” he said, “be a dear boy and hand me that clipboard over there, would you?”
