by Barry Reese
Grace stood motionless for a moment, her mouth hanging open in shock. She had seen Mercy die multiple times, always to be reborn within moments—their physical shells were, after all, nothing but manifestations of their souls, the real things having died long ago. But this… this didn’t look something Mercy would be coming back from. And that meant that Grace herself was in danger.
The female assassin turned back to face the Peregrine and saw that he was already moving towards her, the Knife of Elohim cutting through the air. Her sudden fear of returning to hell or being snuffed out completely made her sloppy, and she made only a token attempt at escaping his attack.
The Knife rose and fell, the blade piercing her neck and embedding itself alongside her jugular. She stared into his cold eyes as she began to burn, just as her friend had done. When her body was nothing more than dust being carried away on the wind, the Peregrine glanced over his shoulder to confirm his suspicions. During the battle, the Spook had moved close enough to watch. The villain, in his Day of the Dead-style costume, seemed disturbed by what he had just witnessed.
“So,” the Peregrine began, unable to keep the triumph from his voice. He felt supremely confident now that he knew the effect his blade had on them. “Are you going to surrender, or do I have to send you back to hell with a thrust of my blade?”
The Spook’s demeanor shifted to one of anger, and he strode towards the Peregrine with obvious menace. “I’m impressed, I have to admit, though I should have known you’d be capable of some amazing things. Those girls were trained by the Warlike Manchu, and they’d told me many stories about your prowess—and my own mentor, Doctor Satan, claimed that you were second only to Ascott Keane as a threat to his plans.”
“I’ll have to congratulate Ascott on rating higher than me.” The Peregrine pointed the tip of his blade at the Spook, who came to a stop just outside his reach. “I know who you are. And I know you came here to steal a microwave weapon. I’m not going to let that happen.”
The Spook hid his surprise well, though he wondered how the Peregrine had figured out so much—not that he was bothered by this, nor did he truly care about Grace and Mercy. It all merely confirmed that destroying the Peregrine would be a magnificent victory for him, after all.
“I don’t think steal is the right word,” the Spook answered, lifting up the weapon and displaying it for the vigilante to see. “After all, the previous owner is quite dead.”
What happened next would haunt the Peregrine for quite some time. A figure suddenly appeared, as if out of thin air, directly behind the Spook. It wore a loose-fitting set of cloth robes and an elaborate headdress. The creature’s skin was drawn tight against the bones of his bone, and Max noticed that it was missing several of its fingers, which appeared to have been broken off in a jagged fashion.
“I think theft is the perfect way to describe what you have done,” the mummy roared, speaking in perfect English. He grabbed hold of the Spook’s shoulder and whirled the man around, yanking the weapon free as he did so. “Give me back what was mine!”
The Peregrine moved forward, suddenly understanding his father’s words, and the awful thing that Allen believed he had awakened. It wasn’t the weapon that would be unleashed when that tomb was disturbed… it was the weapon’s owner.
The mummy tossed the Spook aside like he was a discarded piece of paper and turned his gaze upon the Peregrine. The creature’s eyes blazed with an inner fury. “What year is this?” he demanded.
“It’s 1943. I’m called the Peregrine,” Max answered. “And I’d really appreciate it if you explained to me who the hell you are and how you’ve managed to survive all this time.”
The mummy glanced around at his surroundings, his gaze eventually settling on the Peregrine’s plane. He studied it in amazement while he spoke, ignoring the Spook, who was slowly rising to his feet once more. “I am Schaaf, warrior-priest of the Chachapoyas. When my time on this world grew short, I came upon this weapon in the flaming ruins of the jungle. I had seen it come from the stars. It was an obvious gift from the gods, sent to help us liberate our people from our enslavement. But it arrived too late. My aged body was not strong enough to stave off death any longer. Rather than risk giving my weapon to anyone who would unworthy, I cast a spell on myself, to sleep until I was stronger and was awakened by my followers. This… grave robber woke me and damaged my body.” Schaaf held up his injured hand. “But my missing fingers will not slow me by much. Not with the righteous fury that powers me!”
“Your followers are long gone,” the Peregrine tried to explain. “This isn’t your time. Not any longer. And you’re… you’re not even human anymore. You’ve become a member of the undead.”
Schaaf did not seem disturbed by that pronouncement. “If my people are dead, then that merely frees me from my obligations to them. There are still many things I can accomplish in this new world. My magicks allow me to understand your tongue easily enough. I am certain I will have no problem adapting.”
The Peregrine chose that moment to strike, kicking out with one heel. The blow knocked the microwave weapon out of the mummy’s hand and it flew into the tall grasses. Before Schaaf could respond, the vigilante drove his Knife of Elohim through the mummy’s chest. He pulled it back and repeated the attack, hacking away at the creature with all his strength. Schaaf howled in pain as the mystic blade attacked him not just physically, but spiritually, as well.
Schaaf tumbled to the ground, his eyes growing dim. The Peregrine stood over him, panting with exertion, wondering if he had actually managed to win the day with such relative ease.
And then he heard the sound of applause from behind him. He turned to see the Spook, weapon tucked under one arm, clapping his gloved hands.
“Bravo, Mr. Peregrine. Bravo. I will reward you for your excellent work… by giving you a quick, though painful, death.”
The Spook raised the weapon and pressed the red button in its center, bombarding the Peregrine with microwave energy.
Max felt the pain almost immediately. It rose up within the pit of his stomach and spread outwards, like someone had detonated a firebomb inside him. The heat exploded outwards in all directions at once, and the Peregrine knew without any doubt that he was seconds away from an awful death.
As the Spook began to laugh, the Peregrine jumped to his left. The villain turned with him, trying to keep him within the path of the invisible beam, but the Peregrine was too fast and managed to stay a few steps ahead of the attack. Max gripped the end of his knife and hurled it, taking a tremendous risk in doing so. Hitting a target while running at full speed was hard enough, but doing so while your insides felt like they were on fire was doubly difficult. If the blade missed its mark, it would sail into the high grasses and probably be lost for the duration of combat.
The knife flew with remarkable accuracy, a testament to the incredible skills that the Peregrine possessed. The mystic weapon struck the Spook in the right shoulder, embedding deeply. The villain howled in shocked agony and dropped the microwave device, using that hand to reach up and yank the Knife of Elohim from his body. He threw it to the ground, also, jerking as if he’d just touched a hot stove. The wound the knife had made was bleeding freely, his undead blood a sickly green in color.
The Spook staggered back, his anger lacing his words. “Damn you! I didn’t think I could feel pain like that anymore… not in this world, anyway.”
“If you mean that you thought you could only be hurt in hell,” the Peregrine said, drawing his pistols, “then all I can say is that I plan to send you back there as soon as possible.”
“Bullets won’t hurt me. Without your blessed knife, I’m immune to you. And I won’t die as easily as my pets did.” The Spook concentrated, trying to seal up his knife wound. The ragged hole did close slightly, but it remained open.
The Peregrine smiled coldly. “Looks like that knife hurt you more than you were expecting. Let’s see what these silver bullets soaked in holy water will do to you.�
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“No!” The Spook held his hands before him. He slowly reached up and removed his mask, revealing the features of a sweaty young man with a pallid complexion. Dark rings lined the underside of his eyes. “Listen, please… don’t send me back to hell. You can’t imagine what that place is like, and I was never that bad of a person. Honestly! My father was always pushing me, trying to shape me to be just like him! I never had the freedom to choose who I wanted to be. In his eyes, if I wasn’t just like him, I was a disappointment, every step of the way.”
Max tightened his grip on the trigger. “And you think that excuses the things you did? It makes it okay to work with a man like Doctor Satan?”
“I was never given the option of being my own man,” Derek Taylor continued. He held up the Spook mask. “Even now, I have to hide my face so that I can feel like someone else. If you’ve never been through that, you can’t know what it was like… to end up just being a product of your father’s desires and not your own.”
Max let out a deep, rolling sigh. “Actually, I understand better than you’d believe.” The Peregrine fired again and again, making good use of his specially-modified pistol, which allowed him fire dozens of shots before needing to reload. The Spook tried to de-solidify his body, but it did him no good. The wound from the Knife of Elohim had anchored him to the mortal plane, and the silver bullets did their work, ripping him to shreds. His body jerked back and forth and he screamed, not from the pain of the bullets but from what he saw on the other side of death: a hungry and vengeful dark lord who was about to reclaim his escaped pet.
The Peregrine lowered his smoking pistol and shook his head. “You can’t blame your father for what you are,” he said, with a steady voice. “He may have pushed you to the edge, but you were the one who stepped over the brink.”
Just like me, Max mused. Just like me.
There, in the ruins of the dead, the Peregine tried once more to forgive his own father, and accept who and what he was.
THE END
DEAD OF NIGHT
An Adventure Starring the Peregrine
Written by Barry Reese
CHAPTER I
Waking the Dead
July 1937—Eastern Germany
The rain soaked into the already moist earth, turning it to mud. Slowly, down through the layers of rock, dirt and bugs, the water seeped down upon the face of a living dead man. Baron Rudolph Gustav had slept for a very, very long time, his body slowly recovering from burns and stab wounds that had almost ended his supposedly eternal existence.
The vampire’s eyes opened, filling with dirt, and he was driven by hunger and rage to begin digging himself out from his grave. Using limbs powered by superhuman strength, he began to emerge, finally bursting from the earth with a roar of triumph.
He pulled himself to his feet, his finery caked with dirt and blood. The rain washed over him and he felt a sense of elation, causing him to laugh aloud. He was in a heavily wooded area that had once been his home, but there was no trace of his fine house or of his servants now. He looked up to the sky and saw a full moon shining overhead.
Gustav felt a rumbling in his stomach and he looked about, sniffing the air like a dog. He sensed the presence of warm living flesh nearby and he ran into the woods, sometimes dropping on all fours, forgetting his original humanity. At moments like this, he was a beast, with beastly appetites and mannerisms.
The baron came to an opening in the woods, a small hill that overlooked a country house. The chimney down below was sending up smoke and a young girl—no more than sixteen from the looks of her—was standing along the side of the darkened house. Times had not changed enough that the baron couldn’t recognize this scene: the girl had snuck out of her home to await the arrival of a nocturnal lover.
The baron noticed the suppleness of her form and the graceful curve of her neck. Normally, he would have liked seducing the little wench, making her beg for it in the end, but he had no patience for that at the moment. He jumped from the hill, landing close to her and snarling, baring his elongated canines. The girl opened her mouth to scream but there was no time for her to do so. The baron was on top of her, driving her to the ground.
It took less than a second for the girl’s neck to be made available to him, the baron’s strong hands holding her in place. His teeth pierced her warm flesh and blood filled his mouth, which he drank greedily. He felt her struggles begin to wane and a soft moan escaped her pink lips. She moaned in pleasure, shifting against him, and then that too faded, as she grew too weak to do anything but die. He held her like a lover as she bled out, slaking his thirst.
Gustav sat up, feeling refreshed. Blood dripped from his chin and he wondered idly where the girl’s boyfriend was. He wanted dessert after such a fine meal…
The baron rose, wondering what had become of the world. Would he be able to find a place in this strange new existence? And what had awakened him? He took a moment to reach out with his vampire senses, seeking out those others who called him brother…
He felt them, many of them, waking all at once, from their own deep slumbers. A smile danced across his lips as he mouthed the words, “The Kingdom of Blood.”
The prophesied golden age for vampire-kind was underway, at least potentially. The first spell had been cast, awakening those who slumbered. But there was a second component to be activated, and without that, all you had was a host of active vampires.
It’s probably doomed to failure, he thought to himself. I’ve seen too many attempts at this to believe in this one’s success.
Regardless, the baron was now active once more. He heard the stealthy approach of footsteps and hid in the shadows, leaving the dead girl’s body where it lay. There was the faintest wisp of a smile still on her lips.
A brawny youth sauntered into view, obviously expecting to find his girlfriend waiting for him. He came to a sudden stop when he saw her on the ground and for a moment, his mouth moved up and down in a comical fashion.
The baron leapt out from his hiding place, a soft chuckle escaping him. “There you are,” he said with a taunting grin.
And then there were two bodies to be found in the morning.
* * *
March, 1940
Gustav had never been to the Alps before, but he found Brenner Pass to be an extraordinarily beautiful place. While Hitler met with Mussolini during the day, hammering out the details of their alliance against France and the United Kingdom, Gustav lay slumbering in a pine box. But at night he emerged, ready to walk the hillsides, a thrilling sensation racing through his heart. Though he had died long ago, his peculiar form of existence allowed him to see, hear, and even taste things that would escape a normal human. He relished existence and desired more and more in the way of experiences.
He wore the uniform of the German Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary force known around the world as the SS. Gustav had quickly acclimated himself to his new surroundings after his awakening in ’37, learning that Hitler’s forces were gearing up for war. Given that the baron was used to wielding power, he had quickly made the decision to ingratiate himself into the Nazi ranks. Given Hitler’s obsession with the supernatural and his powerful desire to feel “special,” it had been all too easy for the ancient vampire to quickly rise to the rank of trusted advisor. His position within the SS allowed him access to the kind of power he craved and he’d taken the steps to create a small band of VSS soldiers—a vampire SS who answered to only him.
The Kingdom of Blood had failed to come to pass and Gustav had pieced together what had happened over the past few years. An American vigilante known as the Peregrine had slain the mastermind behind the plot, a female vampire named Camilla. This same masked man had gone on to foil the machinations of Nyarlathotep, the Warlike Manchu, and Rasputin. The baron held high hopes that he would eventually have the opportunity to face this Peregrine for he seemed to be a highly capable foe… and Gustav believed that a man was defined by his enemies.
Gustav was standing on the
terrace of his small apartment when the door behind him opened. He did not need to glance back to know who it was. The smell of the man was familiar enough, along with the tread of his walk. “My Fuehrer,” the vampire said in German, “I am so glad you decided to join me tonight.”
Adolf Hitler moved to stand next to the vampire, looking up at him as he did so. The German leader was five feet seven inches tall, which made him look like a dwarf next to the baron’s six-foot-three-inch frame. “Benito would not shut up after dinner. Otherwise I would have been here before now.”
The baron nodded, all too aware of the Italian leader’s penchant for talking. “I think this alliance is going to be a very good thing, Adolf. I am glad you took my advice.” Few men dared talk to the Fuehrer with such intimacy, but Gustav felt comfortable doing so, and there was never any sign that Hitler took offense.
Hitler nodded, stepping away long enough to pour himself a glass of brandy. “Your guidance has been a blessing, Herr Gustav. And your very presence is proof that the forces of the supernatural are with us.”
“I am not gifted with prescience, but I cannot see how we can possibly fail in this war,” the Baron said, eliciting a pleased chuckle from his patron. In truth, Gustav could foresee a dozen different scenarios by which the Fuehrer’s plans could be stopped… but until one of them came to pass, he would continue to play the loyal confidante. It was amusing and it afforded him many pleasant opportunities. “How is working progressing on your super-agent program?”
“Very well. I expect to have two or three active before the end of the year. Project: Black Zeppelin should be the first to roll off the assembly line, so to speak, but the Iron Maiden project is progressing nicely as well.”
