by Barry Reese
“He’s always in trouble,” Warren said and Josh found himself laughing along with his friend’s father. The elder Davies finally paused and lowered his voice. “Actually, I’ve been watching you—everyone in this house, in fact. And I know what you’re suffering through. I can’t give you peace of mind about your cousin, I’m afraid. He’s back in hell, paying for a series of sins, some so awful that don’t want to know about them. But I can give you a measure of peace regarding Nettie.”
Josh’s eyes opened wide as Nettie moved into view, emerging from the shadows. Her frail form seemed free of pain for the first time in ages, and she was smiling from ear to ear. Josh forgot his fear in that moment, bounding from the steps to wrap his arms around his aunt. Unfortunately, his hands passed right through her. As he backed away in surprise, Nettie began to laugh.
“The look on your face!” she cackled. “You should see it.”
Josh grinned, too, and then he grew more serious. “Are you really dead?”
“You couldn’t touch me, could you?”
“Then… why aren’t you in heaven?”
“Because I’m here with you. Mr. Davies has told me that you’re sulking like a two-year-old, and you need to stop it, you hear? Wasn’t nothing you could have done to help your cousin. He made his bed and then he had to lie in it.”
Josh felt tears begin to sting his eyes. “I’m going to miss you so much.”
Nettie stared up at the big man who would always be like a child to her, through death as in life. “I’ll try to keep an eye on you, Josh. I’ll always be there with you, even if you can’t see me.”
“You have to go,” Warren said, interrupting them. He looked directly at Nettie as he spoke. “I’m breaking protocol by bringing you here and letting him see you. There are going to be problems if we stay too long.”
Nettie nodded and moved away from Josh, who started to reach for you. “You be a good boy, Josh. You always have been. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Josh whispered, watching as both Nettie and Warren began to fade away. “I’m going to make you proud, Nettie… I swear it.”
* * *
“Thank you for doing that, Mr. Davies.” Nettie walked through the field of mists with Warren at her side. She felt stronger than she could remember, and there was so much happiness in her heart that it made her feel like a little girl again.
Warren kept his eyes ahead of them, towards a bright light that was waiting for them. No, he reminded himself, it was for Nettie, not for him. Not yet. “My son loved you a lot,” Warren said. “I know he’d have wanted Josh to have the chance to say goodbye to you.”
“And I appreciate it. I really do.”
Warren started to say something else, but he suddenly paused, reaching up to clutch his head. In his undead state, he rarely felt pain—and even in life, he’d never felt anything like this. It was like someone was reaching into his brain and jabbing at the gray matter with a knife. He felt new directives being carved directly into the core of his being.
“Mr. Davies? You okay?”
Warren closed his eyes and nodded. When he looked upon her again, he was smiling once more. “I’m fine, Nettie. You go on up ahead and enter the light. I’ll see you soon.”
Nettie seemed concerned, but she finally nodded and shuffled away. “You take care, Mr. Davies. Your son grew up to be a fine man.”
“Thank you.” Warren watched her until she vanished in the mists, and then he felt a cold prickle of hate wash over him. His son… his only son…
His son was going to die, and his own father was going to help lead him into death’s embrace.
“I’m ready to serve you, Lord Dracula,” Warren Davies said aloud.
CHAPTER XVI
Danger at the Louvre
“I love Paris,” Max whispered as he tugged on the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. At his side Jenny Everywhere fidgeted in the expensive dress he’d bought for her. “You should stop fidgeting,” he muttered under his breath, smiling at several handsomely-attired couples that were moving past.
“I don’t usually dress like this,” Jenny complained. She nearly toppled off her high heels, and Max saved her with a quick gripping of her elbow. “Why are we here again? I’m pretty sure nobody said we have to stop by the Louvre on the way to stopping Dracula and Hitler.”
Max frowned sharply. “Keep your voice down. Speaking that name is bound to get some attention around here. Because of the Germans, the Louvre’s greatest treasures were removed back in ’39. It was only after the liberation of Paris last year that the art started to come back. It’s a touchy subject, to say the least.”
Jenny allowed Max to lead her through the crowd that thronged the great hall of the Louvre. She managed to keep her balance, though only just barely. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are we here?”
Max stopped their progress against one of the walls and he turned to face the crowd. When a waiter walked past with a tray of drinks, he grabbed two of them, handing one to Jenny. To Max’s amusement, she downed it in one gulp. Carefully sipping his own, he said, “Before we go traipsing through the underground, I want the most detailed maps possible. Then we can spread the Claws team out at the most likely exits, trapping our prey inside.”
“And they have maps of the catacombs here?”
Max inclined his head towards an approaching woman. “She does. She works here.”
Jenny’s eyes widened as she saw the woman who was moving across the grand room. She was flawlessly put together and more beautiful than most of the masterpieces that hung on the Louvre’s walls. A mass of golden yellow curls famed her doll-like features. Those curls dropped like rain over creamy shoulders left bare by a strapless red evening gown. Her generous curves swayed easily as she moved past the adoring eyes of every man in the room, and Jenny had to tear her own eyes away from the woman’s delightfully bouncing breasts to notice that she held a tube of some kind under one arm. “Wow,” Jenny said when she could finally draw a breath. “She’s a stunner.”
Only Max’s status as a happily married man prevented him from joining in the admiration. Still, Max couldn’t help but smile as his friend came to a stop before them. “Hello, Carolyn.” Max gestured to Jenny and introduced her. “Jenny, this is Carolyn Manchester. She works here at the Louvre rounding up black market artworks, but her side interest is in the macabre.”
“You make me sound positively morbid,” Carolyn said, her accent carrying strong traces of her British heritage. To Jenny she said, “I have a fondness for cemeteries, tombs, and the like. And Max and I dated briefly years ago.”
“That’s kind of in keeping with the interest in the macabre,” Jenny said, and Carolyn stared at her for a moment before bursting out in laughter.
“You’re a little charmer, aren’t you?” Carolyn said. “I’m just glad you two were able to come and meet me here. I’m obligated to be here, so I couldn’t really get away.”
Max cleared his throat. “I hate to you be rude, but I really need those maps.”
Carolyn held out the poster tube and Max took it eagerly. “So what’s the rush? The underground isn’t going anywhere.”
Before he could reply, a waiter stepped forward and tapped Carolyn on the shoulder. “Excuse me, mademoiselle, but I believe I have something that belongs to you.”
Carolyn turned around, confusion on her face. Her expression quickly changed to fear as she saw the waiter was holding a gun under his tray of drinks. It was pointed directly between her breasts. “What in the world—?”
Max sprang forward, yanking Carolyn to the side while simultaneously striking out with his free hand. The map tube was tossed aside, as Max knew he was going to need both hands for this. His actions knocked the gun askew and the tray of drinks flew into the air, landing atop a group of men standing nearby. The gun discharged, as well, sending a bullet bouncing off the wall. Screams began to fill the room, and there was pandemonium as some raced for the exits while others turned towards th
e sound of gunfire.
The waiter was recovering quickly, making Max realize that this man was a professional killer. The waiter brought his gun back around, but Max was in the process of delivering a powerful karate chop as he did so. The blow came down hard on the waiter’s wrist, breaking it. The gun fell to the floor and Max backhanded the waiter, knocking him backwards.
The waiter grunted as he staggered back against a nearby table filled with pamphlets. He snatched up a small statuette that was balanced on the edge of the table and brought it up with his non-injured hand. As Max came in to finish him off, the waiter lashed out and brought the statuette down hard against Max’s skull. Blood began to flow quickly, and Max barely had the sense of mind to duck under the next blow. He responded with a punch to the man’s midsection and finished off the waiter with an uppercut that left two of the waiter’s teeth flying into the air.
As the waiter tumbled back to the ground, the museum’s security forces finally descended on the scene, pushing back the gawking bystanders and staring at Max with open suspicion.
“It’s okay,” Carolyn said, moving forward to reassure the men. “He saved my life. This man”—she gestured towards the fallen waiter—“tried to kill me.”
Jenny watched as Carolyn took control of the situation. She was pretty sure that Max would find out quickly why his friend had been attacked, but she Jenny’s mind was elsewhere. She was getting a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d learned to trust these feelings, which she usually thought of as her “Jenny Sense.” Like a certain wall-crawling superhero, she often sensed when she was in the way of danger, and that feeling was certainly present now.
Jenny scanned the crowd, and finally found her gaze resting her gaze rested on a thin man wearing a dark suit. While all around him the crowd buzzed with shocked excitement, this man was watching Max while ignoring all else.
“He’s a member of an assassins’ guild,” Max saying and Jenny turned to see that he was kneeling beside the fallen waiter. He’d rolled up one of the unconscious man’s sleeves and was pointing to a small tattoo in the form of a skull surrounded by lightning. “I’ve run into them before,” Max continued. “I’d be willing to bet that Carolyn’s ticked someone off with her efforts to round up black market antiquities.”
Carolyn crossed her arms over her ample bosom and sighed. “You’re probably right. I’ve received a few death threats lately.”
One of the guards gave her a stern expression. “You should have reported this to us.”
“Max?” Jenny asked, tugging on his coat sleeve.
“What’s wrong?”
“That man over there… do you know him?”
Max followed her gaze and his eyes widened. The man smiled softly and then stepped behind a crowd of people. He seemed to vanish completely, and despite the fact that Max was now standing tall and sweeping the crowd with his eyes, there was no further sign of him. “That’s impossible.”
“Who was he?”
“A dead man. His name was Jacob Trench. He…” Max suddenly swayed forward, an awful pain hammering inside his head. He felt Jenny reach out for him, and there was something wet dripping from his right nostril. A trail of blood oozed forth, falling to the floor. This was the worst pain he’d ever felt from one of these visions, and he wondered what was making this one so different.
The sounds of the Louvre faded behind him, and Max found himself standing in the foggy landscape of the void. His father was nearby, looking more ashen-faced than normal.
“You nearly blew my head off!” Max warned. “What was that for?”
Warren Davies clenched his jaw, and Max sensed that he was straining to say something. “I’m sorry, son… but this is important. That was Trench you saw—he’s escaped from the realm of the dead, and he’s gotten control of the Spear. If you want to stop him, you have to go straight to the Latin Quarter. There’s an abandoned bistro there—Maurice’s. It’s located not far from the Sorbonne University. That’s where Trench is going to perform a ritual that’s going to make all of Paris a sacrifice to some ancient god.”
Max sighed. “Okay, but what happened to Dracula? Or Hitler?”
“Both dead. Trench got them. There’s no time to waste, son. You have to get going.” Warren swallowed hard before speaking again. “And you need to go alone. I can’t tell you why—you know how vague these messages have to be sometimes. But trust me, don’t take anyone with you.”
Max was about to ask something more when he was suddenly shoved away from the void. His mind was dropped back into his body with such force that his head tipped backwards and his teeth slammed together, drawing blood from his wounded tongue.
“Max? Are you okay?” Carolyn was looking stricken, and Jenny was still holding onto his arm.
Max pulled away from both women. He spat out some blood and tried to regain control of himself. “I have to go… I have somewhere to be. Jenny, I need you to take those maps to Sally and the rest of the Claws team. They should be landing any minute. Tell her to go ahead and go into the catacombs without me. I’ll catch up.” Max didn’t pause for either of them to ask any questions. He would certainly do as his father had said, but that didn’t mean he was going to abandon his previous plan. Trench was potent, but stopping both Dracula and Hitler seemed a bit beyond him.
Max reached up and wiped away a bit of blood from under his nose. And when all this is over, my father is going to tell me why he’s acting like this, he mused.
CHAPTER XVII
Death Under the City
Jenny wasn’t exactly thrilled to be playing messenger girl. She’d come into the past to help save the world, and she wasn’t sure that she was going to do that this far from the Peregrine’s side. Of course, she didn’t do these things for the glory, so if Max did defeat the vampire horde without her help, she’d be okay with that. But who wouldn’t want to be there when Vampire Hitler got his head handed to him?
After leaving the Louvre, Jenny had changed clothes and then gone to find the Claws team. She had passed the map on to them, as Max had asked her to do. They’d quickly divided up into three groups, each of them taking the likeliest exits to explore. Catalyst, being the most powerful of the group, went alone, while his wife was paired up with Revenant. That left Jenny to go exploring with the behemoth named Vincent.
The two of them crept past the walls lined with skulls, Jenny holding a torch in front of her. The flames cast weird shadows on the wall, and if she’d been a less confident woman, Jenny knew she’d be experiencing a major case of the creeps at the moment.
“Someone’s dead up ahead,” Vincent whispered, his voice sounding dry as sandpaper.
“Someone’s dead right here,” Jenny said with a grin, gesturing to one of the multitude of skulls that were built into the walls. When she turned to see the dour expression on Vincent’s face, she dropped her good humor and asked, “What… you mean somebody current?”
“I mean that someone has died recently, yes. I recognize the scent of death.”
Jenny sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something coppery and foul. She felt Vincent touch her shoulder, holding her in place while he moved past to take the lead.
They came to a small room where a nearly-nude young girl lay facedown on the floor, in a small pool of blood. Vincent knelt and turned the girl over onto her back, his eyes immediately fastening on her ruined throat. He reached forward and pushed back some of the mangled skin, noting that there was no doubt that something had feasted on her.
“Poor thing,” Jenny whispered. She fumbled around in one of her pockets while Vincent stood up, and she finally came away with a small silk flower. She placed it on the dead girl’s chest and carefully arranged her hands so that the flower was cradled between them.
Vincent watched her for a moment, touched by her kindness. He’d only known Jenny for about an hour, but there was something about her that seemed so pure and unpretentious that you couldn’t help but like her. No matter what situation she
ended up in, he had a feeling that Jenny would be quite at home in it.
“Are you really from the future?” he asked, as he led them further into the dark passageways. They’d come back later and take care of the corpse, but for now there was nothing to be done for it.
“Sort of. Yes. I mean, I don’t really remember where I started out. I’ve been way in the future, deep in the past, and so far sideways I almost forgot who I was.” Jenny’s infectious grin began to return. “Why? You want to know who’s going to win the World Series next year?”
“No.” Vincent glanced back at her, and the seriousness in his eyes made her pause. “Do you know anything about what becomes of me? Do I ever find acceptance? Do I ever find… a lover?”
Jenny heard the slight tremor in the big man’s voice, and her heart went out to him. With his grayish-tinted skin, the thick veins that pressed against the flesh of his arms and chest, and his stringy hair that plastered a scar lined head, he was, admittedly, a horrific sight. But within that awful shell was a man, with the same needs as anyone else. “I’m sorry… but no. I don’t have a clue. If you want, I can try to check when I get back and send a message back to you, but it might not mean anything. There are lots of different versions of reality out there. So if I go back to 2009 or 1972 or whatever, it might not be the same 2009 or 1972 that I went to the last time. Parallel timelines, alternative universes… it gets really complicated.”
“Ah. So there’s no way of knowing whether or not I’ll ever find someone willing to look past… this.” Vincent gestured to his face, and Jenny could do nothing other than shrug, her eyes wide.
Vincent nodded and moved ahead a little bit faster. Jenny could tell that she hadn’t eased whatever internal suffering he’d been going through, but she never lied if she could help it.
She was still mulling over Vincent’s situation when she felt him stumble back against her. His weight was so much more than hers that she nearly collapsed beneath him, but she managed to push him aside, and he fell against the wall.
