by Ty Drago
Royals have good hearing.
“Let’s give it about ten minutes,” he said. “Let the parking lot fill up with lots of activity. Lots of witnesses. Then we’ll decide on our next move.”
Ten minutes.
It can be an eternity when you’ve got nothing to do but count the seconds and hope not to die. Best to fill the time somehow, even if it’s with stuff that doesn’t matter.
So I said to him, “Name me three things that Walter Raleigh or one of his reps brought to Europe from the New World.”
He regarded me thoughtfully. Then, with a flash of white teeth, he answered, “Potatoes.”
“That’s one,” I said.
“Tobacco.”
“That’s two,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers.
“And curare.”
I groaned. “Curare! Right! That’s the one I forgot! That South American tribe who learned how to dip their darts in poison.”
“A number of tribes, in fact,” he said. “My personal favorite was called ‘calabash curare’ and was used in the eastern Amazon regions. Those clever people found a way to mix the poison with other plant ingredients to make the curare glutinous, so it would stick to their darts and arrows.”
“Calabash?” I echoed.
“Yes.”
“Glutinous?” Julie echoed.
He grinned. “To make it stickier. By the way, Raleigh didn’t really bring back curare. He just wrote about it.”
“Teachers,” I muttered, shaking my head.
He laughed.
Then, more somberly, he said, “You could learn a thing or two from those ancient tribes, Mr. Ritter. Take, for instance, the salt you employ to destroy us. Your so-called ‘Ritters.’ It takes far less of that substance than you would imagine to generate the necessary effect. A little goes a long way. Your delivery system, while ingenious, is actually rather inefficient.”
Why would he tell me that?
Out loud, I asked, “Why would you tell me that?”
Yeah. I know.
“To help earn your trust,” he replied, looking pointedly at me. “To try to convince you that, unlike the others of my kind, I really am on your side.”
Then Julie asked, “Why?”
The Zombie Prince turned to her. “Why what, Ms. Boettcher?”
“Why’d you pick us?” I asked. “The Earth, I mean. Why’d you pick the Earth to invade?”
He shrugged. “Luck of the draw. The Eternity Stone found you.”
“The Eternity Stone?”
“It’s a crystal, huge and ancient. Nobody remembers where it came from or how long it took our people to learn to use it. But there isn’t a Malum who doesn’t know what it does.”
Julie asked, “What does it do?”
“It scours the universe. Constantly. Searching the cosmos for worlds that resonate a certain way.”
She blinked at him in the bad light. “Resonate?”
“All matter vibrates. From grains of sand to entire planets. In that resonance, one can read much about a world … including, most importantly for my people, the presence of intelligent life.”
“So,” I said. “You look for planets with people on them.”
“The Eternity Stone does, yes. And when it finds one, our entire civilization … or nearly so … drops everything and devotes itself, as though with one mind, to the single purpose of studying that intelligent life … and snuffing it out.”
I’d known this. Not the details maybe, but the gist.
Julie, however, let out a gasp. “You kill whole planets?”
Dillin seemed to flinch at her tone. “We do,” he admitted.
“How many?” I asked. “How many worlds have you un-made?”
“Too many, Mr. Ritter. More than you can imagine. More than I can count.”
My God.
“Why?” Julie asked, sounding somewhere between anger and tears. “Why do you hate everybody?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just what we do … as a people.” Then, after a pause, he added, “But not all of us.”
I’d been fighting Corpses for a long time—so long that, often, I couldn’t really remember what it was like when I hadn’t been. I’d seen victories and defeats. I’d watched friends die. Yet, through all those battles, I hadn’t truly understood my enemy. Sure, I’d had hints, but precious few answers.
Well, here were the answers, standing in front of me.
“What’s a … fifth column?” Julie asked.
I’d completely forgotten Dillin mentioning that term.
The Zombie Prince said, “A ‘Fifth Column’ is a group that works to undermine a larger group from within. It’s an Earth term that my rebel colleagues have sort of adopted. It dates back to your Spanish Civil War.”
“You work against your own people?” I asked.
“I do. There aren’t many of us. Nowhere near enough. We hide ourselves carefully within our castes and communities. Sedition isn’t well tolerated amongst the Malum. At the first hint of it, the traitor is destroyed. No trial. No appeal. Many of us have been lost that way. Friends. In some cases, siblings.”
A crappy way to live. As it happened, I knew a little something about crappy ways to live.
“So how does a member of the Fifth Column end up married to Cavanaugh?” I asked.
He laughed. It sounded very human—the advantage of a fresh body.
“Not by choice,” he replied. “I told you: the Queen has to marry a Royal. My brood is Royal. I drew the ‘lucky’ straw, as humans say.”
“But she doesn’t know you’re Fifth Column?”
“If she did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he snarked. Then, more somberly, he added, “But it was … an opportunity. We all knew that the Queen’s consort would be provided a rare chance, one that no other Fifth Column had ever before been given.”
“What chance?” Julie asked.
“The chance to come here … to Earth. The chance to do some real good.”
“Is that what you’re trying to do?” I asked him, unable to entirely remove the suspicion from my voice. What can I say? Old habits die hard. “Good?”
“Yes,” he said, meeting my eyes in the dark. I noticed he was still holding Ray Exler’s wallet in his hand, as if dropping it or even pocketing it would be disrespectful. “Though I admit I didn’t know exactly what kind of ‘good’ I could do. I mean, one Malum, however well intentioned, can’t stop an invasion, can he?”
“One Malum could kill Cavanaugh,” I said. “I’ve seen how you move. You’re fast and crazy strong … like her.”
He nodded. “It’s a Royal trait, bred into us. And, yes, I suppose that … before today … I could have arranged to destroy my wife. Of course, scheduling an audience would be difficult. The consort does not summon the Queen. The Queen summons the consort and, aside from a brief meeting when I first came through the Rift four months ago and was told who I would be and where I would work, she hasn’t so much as contacted me.”
“Doesn’t sound like a great way to … breed,” I said.
“True. But that aspect of my role is at the Queen’s behest, whenever … if ever … she’s ready.”
“TMI!” I groaned.
“But you see my situation. Despite my ‘elevated’ position as the Queen’s husband, I couldn’t just knock on her door and assassinate her … however much I might want to. Besides, doing so wouldn’t end the invasion. You know that better than anyone.”
“Me?”
“The killer of Kenny Booth. That single act made you infamous on my world, and your exploits since have only enhanced your reputation. So, imagine my wonder when I suddenly encountered you … of all the Undertakers … and in my own school. We Malum don’t subscribe to the concept of fate, but we know good fortune when we see it.”
“And so your plan became … what?” I asked. “To help us? How?”
“I have informa
tion you need.”
“So tell me.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
He looked hard at me. “Because I don’t completely trust you, Mr. Ritter.”
I admit that one stunned me, though it shouldn’t have. After all, I sure didn’t completely trust him. “What? Why not?”
“’Cause you’re you,” Julie said. “You’re their boogeyman. And nobody trusts the boogeyman.”
Dillin didn’t agree with this, though I noticed he didn’t deny it either.
“So then what is your plan?” I asked.
“Arrange a meeting with your chief, the esteemed Tom Jefferson, whose reputation is only slightly less infamous than your own. But he’s the leader of the Undertakers and, by all accounts, an honorable young man.”
“So … you’re saying you’d trust Tom to not waste you the instant you gave him your ‘information,’ but not me.”
“I’m sorry if that offends you.”
And the thing is: it did offend me. There’d been a time when I’d struggled with the idea of actually killing a Corpse, once and for all, despite their evil. These days I did it—well—a lot. But did that mean I’d become so callous that I’d really betray a man—
Not a man!
—a being who’d been nothing but nice to me? Had this war really turned me into someone who would give his word and then break it, violently, the minute he had what he wanted?
Offended? That wasn’t the word for it, exactly.
I felt—demoralized.
Look it up.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get to Philly.”
“Soon,” he told me. “Things are happening out there.”
And they were. As we’d been talking, maybe a half-dozen police cars had rolled into the parking lot. It’d been hard to miss their arrival—all sirens and tires on gravel. Plus, there were voices out there. Lots of them. Cops investigating a murder scene. Right away, they’d have found two bodies: the old armless one that Dillin had been wearing, and the poor lady who’d been killed when her dog had gotten possessed.
I figured, that, by itself, would keep the police busy for a while.
The other side of the coin was that Parker would almost certainly be among them, which meant his toolbox monsters would be nearby.
And, sooner or later, the boathouse was going to get searched.
“I wish I could call Haven,” I said.
Dillin tossed something to me. Instinctively, I snatched it out of the air, though it wasn’t until I held it in my hand that, given the bad light, I knew what it was.
A cell phone.
“Compliments of Ray Exler,” the Zombie Prince said, his white teeth visible in the gloom. “Let’s see how long you can hang onto this one!”
Chapter 14
BLIND MAN’S BLUFF
Tom
“Don’t look so surprised,” Tom told the two girls and one woman around his conference table. “You tellin’ me you ain’t never wondered what’d happen to my Sight when I went adult?”
“But … you’re not eighteen yet!” Helene protested.
“Maybe it ain’t about a number.” Tom shrugged. “Maybe it’s about other things.”
“Physiological changes happen when a body reaches full maturity,” Susan suggested.
Sure, Tom thought. Let’s go with that.
Jillian said, “But … Sharyn’s the same age as you. Exactly the same. You’re twins! Has she lost it too?”
Tom shook his head. “Not so far. Just me.”
As he said this, he watched them. Helene had gone quiet, her slender face drawn and pale, as if he’d just told her Santa Claus had opened fire in a shopping mall. Susan Ritter wore a troubled frown, as though he’d posed a math problem that needed solving.
Jillian seemed fidgety. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
Tom replied. “Step down as chief.”
“What?” exclaimed Helene. “You can’t!”
“Gotta. I can’t run the Undertakers without the Sight.”
“You could just stay in Haven!” the girl insisted, even going as far as slapping the tabletop. “Not having Eyes only becomes a prob when you’re topside … when you’ve got to know who’s a danger and who isn’t. But you can still run things from down here!”
“No,” Tom replied.
“Tom!”
“No.”
Susan placed a cool hand over his. “She’s right. We need you. You’re still chief. No matter what.”
“Thanks,” he replied, meaning it.
He couldn’t tell them what he really thought: It ain’t so simple. We got Rules and Regs, even for this. Ain’t never needed ‘em before today, but Karl wrote ‘em up with the rest. The Chief of the Undertakers has to be an Undertaker. And, despite the one exception we made for you, Mrs. Ritter, all Undertakers are Seers. Doin’ it another way means anyone could be chief, even an adult. And not having my Eyes makes me, at least by the Undertakers’ dictionary, an adult. No way am I’m handin’ Haven over to an adult. Not even if that adult is me. Not ever. Period.
Out loud, he said, “Maybe somebody could run this place without the Sight. But I ain’t that somebody. No, my mind’s made up. I’m steppin’ down.”
“Then … who takes over?” Helene sounded defeated.
“Sharyn, in the short term. Then we’ll probably have an election.”
Susan sat back in her chair. “Who else knows?”
“Just you three. And, for now, let’s keep it that way. Once Sharyn and the others get back, I’ll pull her and Will in here and tell ‘em what’s happened. Then we’ll figure out the best way to explain things to the rest.”
“Then why tell us at all?” Jillian asked.
A smart question.
No flies on her.
This was the part he’d been dreading. The truth wasn’t an option, at least not yet. That old saying, “the truth shall set you free,” was straight up—except when it wasn’t. Except for those times when the truth could get you and everyone you loved killed.
The truth is two of you are just cover. There’s only one of you I’m really talking to right now.
Out loud, he delivered a long, measured sigh. “Because … I had to tell somebody.”
Susan’s hand found his again, giving it a gentle squeeze. Helene slowly nodded. Jillian looked thoughtful.
“What do you need us to do, Chief?” Will’s mom asked.
You’ve turned into a helluva Undertaker, lady. Karl would be proud.
“There’s more,” he said. Then he twisted around in his chair, took a folder of papers from his desk and dropped it on the countertop, where it mixed with the pictures Helene had taken.
The three of them looked perplexed.
“What are these?” Jillian asked.
“Printouts from online worm searches. Articles and press releases from the last couple o’ weeks.”
Helene sifted through the pages. “They’re all about … police training?”
He nodded. “I’ve had the Chatters monitorin’ ‘em for me.”
“Why?” Susan asked.
“Because I started gettin’ the feeling that something’s comin’. Had that feeling ever since I kicked Cavanaugh out that window. Philly took her ‘suicide’ hard.”
“If they only knew,” Will’s mother replied.
“Yeah. But ever since then, stuff’s been happenin’.” He held up one paper. “Two hundred new cops hired. New ‘urban peacekeeping’ training exercises planned around City Hall. New police procedures put into place. Then, just this morning, two new ‘interim’ co-police chiefs get hired: Griffin Parker and Spencer Cole. Today’s their first day.”
“Pretty boring,” Helene noted, scanning the pages.
“Yeah,” Tom agreed. “In fact, the way it’s laid out, it almost comes off as a little too boring. Maybe … deliberately boring.”
Jillian said, “L
ike they’re doing something they can’t cover up, but that they don’t want anyone to really … notice.”
“Straight up,” Tom told her.
“You think Cavanaugh’s behind this,” Susan said.
“I think it’s possible. Her people basically run this city. Oh, the mayor thinks he’s in charge, but the Corpses play him like an old song.”
Helene asked, “But what do you think she’s doing?”
“Ain’t sure,” Tom told her. “Like I said, most of this is feelin’. But it needs checkin’ out … quietly. I can’t do it myself. So, Jill and Helene, you’re both Angels. I’m gonna ask you to hit the streets. Go to the places they talk about in these papers, the training sites for Philly cops. See what you can find out. So far, there ain’t no published pics o’ these new co-police chiefs, Cole and Parker. Try to snatch a peek at ‘em. Tell me if they’re deaders.”
“On it,” Helene said brightly. This, at least, was familiar territory for her.
“No prob,” Jillian added.
“And me?” Susan asked.
“Go back to the Infirmary and, soon as you’re able, empty it out. I don’t even want Amy in there. Then I’ll come down and have you give my eyes a good looking at. Maybe we can find … I dunno … something that’ll tell us more about how the Sight works. Or doesn’t work, in my case.”
Haven’s medic looked skeptical. But she nodded.
“Okay,” Tom said, standing up. “That’s it for now. There’ll be more once Sharyn and Will get back. Thanks.”
They all watched as he stood up and turned away. He pretended to study a report on his desk, something about monies spent last month by the Moms on foodstuffs, while he listened to them rise uneasily and, just as uneasily, leave the room. His news had shaken them up, and he felt bad about that.
But, of course, shaking them up had also been the whole point.
Single file, the three of them slipped through the tattered curtain that hung across his office entrance. As they did, Tom counted the rustles.
One.
Two.
Silence.
One of them’s still in the room. One of them needs to talk to me some more. I only hope it’s not who I think it is. I’ve already “lost my Eyes.” Ain’t that enough for one day?
