Warmongers (Peacemaker Origins Book 2)

by Sean Michael O'Dea

  A narrow set of stairs led him down to a musty basement that housed a massive cast iron boiler with fire crackling through the small slit in the firebox and intermittent belches of steam rising from a topside valve. Delacroix maneuvered around the coal pile and the iron behemoth, enjoying the ambient heat as he did so. Behind the boiler was a plain wooden door, slightly warped, that led to a series of seemingly endless hallways of concrete and mortared brick. Humming electric lights strung along the walls cast a pale orange glow that strained against an unsettling darkness. Delacroix confidently traversed the underground hallways. The staff used them to access the various buildings on the hospital campus during heavy snowfall. Had the humming lights been replaced with oil-soaked torches, one would think they were in the bowels of some ancient pyramid.

  Delacroix’s footsteps echoed as he made his way to a T-junction where the dead-end hallway to the right was unlit. He made his way to the end of it and struck a match he had withdrawn from an inner coat pocket. The small match illuminated a door that resembled a water-tight hatch on a German U-boat. Etched deep into the metal were the words, “QUARINTINE. TYPHOID. KEEP OUT.”

  The match went out as it hit the concrete floor. Delacroix threw his shoulder into the long door handle, and to his surprise, it opened easily and quietly except for the initial squeal.

  An enchanting soprano whose steady voice crackled through a Berliner gramophone sang Schubert’s Ave Maria over airy piano chords. Delacroix stepped through the door into a dark antechamber where stacked crates contained everything from canned food to lamp oil. All the crates, as well as cords of firewood, were nicely organized, visible only by the light from the cracked door beyond. With every cautious footstep Delacroix took the soprano’s voice grew louder, as if a siren lay beyond and Delacroix had no choice but to follow the sweet melody to his demise.

  He stepped into the main chamber.

  The square room looked like a medieval study, one tucked away within a stone castle where court alchemists would tirelessly study, complete with a modest sleeping quarters and a privy that lay just beyond. Book cases containing countless leather-bound tomes filled nearly every wall. The Berliner gramophone rested on corner table. The only unorganized things were the papers, letters, and open book strewn atop the small writing desk in the center of the room. Next to the desk and near the fireplace were two finely upholstered chairs that faced a chess game ready to be played. The surrounding gas lamps barely flickered as a man stood staring into the roaring fire that danced within the stone hearth, his hand resting on the wooden mantle above. He wore a padded red velvet smoking robe and black slippers. He had slick black hair pulled back into a long ponytail and an ageless, hardened look about him with his tan skin, sharp features, and black eyes that shined like polished onyx in the firelight.

  “Now, one would think that the door would be locked,” Delacroix said.

  “In a way, it is,” replied the man with an accent suggesting he was of Persian decent. “Most people would not willingly walk into a typhus ward, Mr. Delacroix, is it?”

  “No, I suppose you’re right. Especially one in the innards of a lunatic asylum.”

  The man, who was tan and carried himself like ancient royalty, laughed subtly as he reached into his smoking robe and pulled out a metal case. He opened it and withdrew a cigarette, placing it between his lips. “The last command the Council gave me was to relocate from Paris. They feared our records would be incinerated by an advancing German army. It was not expected that they would be held up in Belgium such as they are.” He lit the cigarette using a small flint lighter that also rested in the metal case. “What can I do for you, Mr. Delacroix?”

  “I want to know how many of us are left,” Delacroix said, pulling off his leather gloves and placing them in his respective hip pockets.

  “I am not sure,” the man replied.

  “You are the damn Archivist, are you not?” Delacroix lashed out in the voice he used so often from atop his court bench. “It’s your job to know!”

  The Archivist inhaled again and let the smoke slowly cascade from his nostrils. “My family has been tasked with recording and chronicling our society for thousands of years, since the days of Sumerian kings.” He raised his arms and gestured toward all the books. “When I am not recopying old texts or making new entries, I am busy in correspondence.” He gestured to the writing desk. “I use these …” he looked up for the word he needed, mentally sifting through a multitude of languages. “Segments,” he finally decided. “And from these small pieces, I formulate the tapestry that is our past, present, and future.”

  “Is there a future at this point? The Witchdoctor said The Council was dead. Baron DeLacy was assassinated, and I have heard from no one as of late. Now tell me, how many of us are left?”

  The Archivist walked to the corner of the room and picked up the needle from the spinning record. He placed it back down with a crack and pop, and the airy piano notes restarted. He pulled a chair away from the small chess table and sat down, crossing his legs. The soprano’s soft prayer filled the study again.

  “Most people think that when the head is severed, the body dies, Mr. Delacroix, but that makes the assumption that The Council was the head.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that The Council was not the head. In its lengthy reign, it became the holder of leashes. Now, like the dogs they are, Architects and Viziers alike have torn away and run. Like Dr. Mamba for example, our infamous Witchdoctor. He sent me a formal letter of resignation and told of his intent to run his own enterprise. I must confess that until now, I thought you had done the same. You inquire about our numbers? Most of our numbers battle amongst themselves, killing each other to carve out their own pathetic niches of power. Worse still, some are being hunted by something …” he searched for the word again, “… sinister.”

  “It’s over then?” Delacroix asked. “We are finished?”

  “Not exactly.” The Archivist smiled. “The Council members may have been blinded and subsequently killed by their own ambition, but they had something of an insurance policy in the event something happened to them.”

  “What’s the policy?”

  The Archivist raised his hands again. “Me.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You? You are a secretary.”

  “I’m afraid not. I have been immersed in the annals of our history since I learned my letters, Mr. Delacroix, and for this reason The Council entrusted me with the most sacred and, quite frankly, most unlikely scenario: to rebuild The Council itself should it perish.” The Archivist nodded. “And so I shall.”

  “How?” Delacroix asked.

  “Look around you. This is our Library of Alexandria. It doesn’t seem like much, but I have all the knowledge here I need—all I need to understand those who have led and those who are capable of leading. And when the time comes, I will anoint our new Council, and with your help, they will retake what has been lost.” The Archivist inhaled the last of his cigarette and smothered it in the ashtray next to the chess table.

  Schubert’s piece crescendoed. Delacroix suddenly pulled a long-barreled black Luger from his inner pocket and fired three shots that sounded like they came from a child’s cork gun. Sweet tobacco smoke poured from two tiny holes in the Archivist’s chest. All the victim could do was mouth the words he wanted to say as his lungs filled with blood. It was as though he was inadvertently lip-syncing to the classic song that played. Delacroix returned his Luger pistol to his pocket and disappeared into the antechamber. He returned with a bottle of lamp oil.

  “The Library of Alexandria. Is that right?” Delacroix said as he poured the lamp oil onto the Archivist, who was still moving his mouth like a fish out of water. The oil coated the dying man’s hair and shaved face and soaked into his robe. E.J. Delacroix poured the remaining oil in a line over the writing table and onto one of the bookcases. He dropped the bottle and reached into the Archivist’s inner pocket to pull out his cigarette
case. Delacroix was surprised to see one of his small caliber rounds imbedded in the case. The round fell to the ground as he sprung the case open. The Archivist consciousness started to fade.

  Delacroix withdrew a cigarette and lit it. He shallowly inhaled. “I also study history. And if I recall, the Library of Alexandria burned to the ground.” Delacroix flicked the cigarette into the air, and the Archivist watched as it tumbled end over end until it landed on the belt of his robe, igniting the oil-soaked fibers. The Archivist finally managed a scream as flames consumed him from top to bottom. He rolled to the ground, and a trail of flame found its way to the soaked bookcase through the writing table, which was also set ablaze. The soprano’s voice softened again in the final verse of the prayer to the Virgin Mother of God.

  In the end, the Archivist burned as easily as the paper that always surrounded him.

  Delacroix made his way out through the boiler room and up to the front door, all the while whistling Schubert’s famous tune to the unlikely chorus of the howling that resumed throughout the hospital. It was as though the patients at Danvers could sense the maniacal event that had just transpired in the bowels of the building.

  Delacroix waved at the orderly who allowed him in, adjusted his straw boater, and disappeared into the cold, snow-blanketed night.

  Mr. Vault, Mr. Steel, and Mr. Black

  December 13, 1914

  Mr. Black’s Cottage

  Jekyll Island, Georgia

  The blue Victorian cottage sat stilted above the marshy grass and nestled between two ancient, enormous oak trees that wept Spanish moss. Mr. Black had the cottage built years earlier only a half mile from the infamous Jekyll Island Resort, the seasonal getaway of choice for the nation’s wealthiest and most influential business moguls. He chose an old Indian burial mound on which to construct the home, convinced that a sacred power lie beneath—a power that, if properly harnessed, would slow down the aging process. At the age of 75, his doctors assured him he was the picture of health for his age and could easily live another 10 years. Mr. Black disregarded their forecast. With every cough, with every sniffle, he thought his demise was imminent. As a result, the scientists, witchdoctors, alchemists, and medicine men he secretly had in his employ worked around the clock at one of the many sanitariums he funded along the east coast, searching feverishly for the coveted secret to eternal life.

  Three months ago, Mr. Black nearly had the breakthrough he was looking for when he discovered Dr. Fredric Fatum at Kellogg’s Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. However, Fatum’s process failed to produce the solution to human mortality, and instead created mindless, pale husks from unwilling subjects. And so, Mr. Black continued his quest.

  It was his Apalachee medicine man who recommended the building site on Jekyll Island, only a stone’s throw into the Atlantic from the Georgia coast. Four men were hired out of Jacksonville to dig deep into the burial mound, down to the bedrock, meticulously saving every skull and bone, which were later bleached and polished. That took them the better part of a six months. It took the four men almost another year to build the cottage over the hollow they so irreverently carved out. For their backbreaking labor, they were each promised enough compensation to retire, but instead, their bleached and polished bones were added to Mr. Black’s growing collection.

  The inside of the wooden cottage impressed every visitor with its elegantly carved furniture, lavish upholstery, artisan rugs, a medley of impressionist paintings, and countless crystal fixtures ranging from simple door knobs to elaborate chandeliers. The windowed sitting room, situated in the small turret off the dining room, overlooked the shore and was a favorite place for visitors to drink the finest scotch and watch afternoon storms roll across the sky. Beneath that room, however, through a hatch hidden under the Byzantine rug, was a staircase that led down—down into the humid and ancient earthly tomb, which was the favorite place for Mr. Black and his associates.

  The three of them now sat in their respective gilded thrones at the center of the cavernous space. Mr. Vault sat in the middle, Mr. Steel to his left, and Mr. Black to his right.

  “God, this is how I want to die. Just like this,” Mr. Steel said in his unmistakable Scottish brogue. He sat in his black robe, his golden goat mask lifted up to his forehead, his face buried in a blindfolded girl’s breasts. She giggled as his crisp white beard tickled her skin. He came up for air. “I can think of no better way to go! How about you, Mr. Black?” he asked. Mr. Black scoffed, the sound echoing inside his golden snake mask that he wore with his own hooded black robe. Mr. Steel dove back into the girl’s bosom.

  There were a total of 18 girls traversing the smoothed bedrock floor and fumbling around the large damp cellar that was once the final resting place of a tribe’s bravest warriors. Warriors whose skulls now provided makeshift sconces and whose bones lined one of the walls, creating something akin to a Parisian catacomb. All of the women were under 30 and wore only brown loin cloths and maroon blindfolds. Their skin ranged from a milky peaches-and-cream to a sun-drenched olive, their breasts ranging from small, firm apples to round, luscious cantaloupes. Mortimer Blake, the Triumvirate’s head of security, lured them there, convincing them all they were auditioning for the lead role in Edwin Porter’s next silent film. The peculiarity of their current situation did not currently faze them, thanks to the laudanum and alcohol they consumed hours earlier. And when they had served their purpose, Mortimer would give them a dangerously high dosage of the bitter-tasting liquid opium. Those who survived would wake up in Brunswick, Georgia with no recollection of their “audition.” Those that didn’t would be new additions to Mr. Black’s perverted catacomb.

  Mr. Vault, the Triumvirate’s founding member, breathed heavily under his golden lion mask. Two of the girls sat in his lap, so intoxicated they hardly felt his groping hands. “Do try and enjoy yourself, Black,” Vault said. “I believe we have earned a reprieve.”

  Mr. Black scoffed again. “One does not get to my status by taking a reprieve, Mr. Vault.”

  “Sometimes, Black, you simply have to sit and watch your investments pay off,” Mr. Vault replied, still fondling the women on his lap.

  “The war has stalled,” Mr. Black snapped. “In order for investments to pay off, there have to be people to pay them off. Thousands are dying by the day. Entire countries will perish! What then? What do you say to that, Vault?”

  “I’d say that if you are invested in the technology responsible for those deaths, then we are doing tremendous. And when those countries perish, they will rebuild themselves with the money we loan them. Besides, I can’t even imagine what the demand for oil has done for you coffers, Mr. Black. Hmm?” Mr. Vault said, gloating.

  Mr. Black, whose frailty could not be disguised by his loose robe, coughed in aggravation. “All your technology,” he scoffed.

  Mr. Vault giggled as one of the blindfolded girls tickled his sides. “Oh have faith, Mr. Black,” he replied, composing himself. “We are currently in negotiations for a new weapon that will undoubtedly turn the tides of war.” His hands began exploring new terrain on both women in his lap.

  “What new weapon?” Mr. Black snapped.

  Mr. Steel giggled.

  Mr. Vault ignored the question.

  Dammit, Vault! Tell me! We agreed there would be no secrets amongst us!”

  “In due time, Mr. Black. In due time,” Mr. Vault replied.

  Mr. Black clenched his fists. “And who will receive this new weapon? The Germans? The British? Your discretion is unnerving, Vault!”

  Mr. Vault turned his head, his roaring lion mask shining in the candlelight. “Whoever bids the highest, Mr. Black. Whoever. Bids. The highest.”

  Mr. Black lifted himself from his chair. “Damn you both,” he said. His old bones cracked as he made his way to the far end of the room, where the small staircase led up to the cottage sitting room. Then he stopped and lifted his mask. He pulled a flask from an inner pocket of his robe. It was a concoction his doctors, alchemi
sts, and medicine men had devised. He drank the creamy substance unceremoniously.

  “Good evening, Mr. Black.” A man suddenly materialized from the darkness as he struck a match and lit his cigarette. He had a black bowler hat pulled down low and a three-piece midnight suit that absorbed all the flickering light in the room. He stared at the bedrock floor and flicked the match across the room.

  “Jesus, Mortimer. You nearly scared the life out of me.”

  Mortimer Blake inhaled deeply and held it. Then he exhaled a sinister-looking plume of smoke. “I get that a lot.” His voice was soft and reptilian.

  Mr. Black screwed the top of his flask back on. “Sometimes, Mortimer, I’m not sure why you signed on for this detail.”

  Mortimer snickered. “You know, when I was a child,” he started, “my father carved me a slingshot and told me to get rid of the rabbits infesting his garden. Said he’d give me a penny for every carcass I gave him.” He inhaled more smoke, recalling the memory, and exhaled again. “I killed 23 rabbits in three days.” He paused. “He had to work a day’s overtime to pay me. It wasn’t enough, though. Not for me. I scoured my neighborhood. I killed 14 more rabbits, 16 squirrels, three pigeons, and a stray cat. I kept their rotting carcasses in my father’s shed. Eventually, my sister Estella found me there one day wrapping the neighbor’s dog in butcher paper and told my parents. My father, he asked me ‘Why? Why would I do such a thing?’ I didn’t tell him. He shook the livin’ hell out of me. Whooped my hide till I cried. I still didn’t tell him.”

  “Why did you do it, then?” Mr. Black asked.

  “Because I liked it. I liked staring into their dead eyes,” Mortimer replied with a twisted little smile. “When I was a teenager, he sent me off to Texas to live with my uncle. Thought hard livin’ would do me good. My uncle was a cattle rancher, you see, outside San Antonio, only he didn’t carve me no slingshot. He gave me a gun. I perfected my aim on the coyotes, on the prairie dogs, sure, but late at night …” he pulled his coat to one side and rested his hand on his revolver. It had a rabbit fur grip.