AEGIS Tales

by Todd Downing

  “That’s fine.” I turned to Heidi “It’s probably safe to presume that thing came from some passage to the house cellar. It would be consistent with the myths. Sticking to the shadows.”

  Heidi nodded. “That makes sense.”

  “Can you grab my copy of Swenson’s and a map of Paris? Maybe we can figure out where it came from.”

  Heidi strode to the eastern door which contained our research library and her workbenches. While her part of the library focused on Physics, Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering, mine was filled with folklore and language texts. During the few minutes she was gone, I spent the time reassuring James that the worst of it was over for him. Finally, she came back with a rolled map of the city and the large, leather bound book I had asked for.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s my copy of Gustav Swenson’s tome from the eighteenth century on subterranean creatures. I remember an entry on the bogeyman.”

  I opened the book to the index and ran my finger down the parchment until I found the entry I was looking for. I turned the pages quickly and found the passage. I scanned it quickly, and then looked up. Both Heidi and James were staring at me expectantly.

  “Well, the descriptions are vague in just about all cultures but they could match.”

  “Then what was it doing down there?” demanded James.

  “That’s the part you’re not going to like. While most of the legends are about a creature that steals children away once a month, usually to eat them, there’s not a lot about other motivations. Except for the Ottomans, where the name they use, Ocu, is essentially a corruption of the Arabic word for genie. Swenson advanced a theory that people would sacrifice their neighbors, adults and children alike, to the Ocu for wealth and power and that’s where the wish granting powers of the djinn came about.”

  James turned pale. “You mean?”

  I nodded. “It’s possible you were meant to be an offering in exchange for wealth. There was clear evidence of multiple people having been tied to that altar. So, it’s possible the source of the Schmitts’ money has nothing to do with Germany.”

  “But, how can they get away with something like that?”

  “Like what? You finished your job and mentioned to them about exploring Paris. That’s the last they saw of you.”

  James stammered out objections for a few more minutes, growing more pensive as I countered each one with an explanation I’d heard before. Finally, he slumped back on the couch, closed his eyes and let out a soft moan.

  I turned to Heidi who had unrolled the map on the low table in front of the sofa.

  “You know the city better than I.”

  I nodded and sat down next to James who was now muttering a diatribe about the circumstances that had led him here. I studied the map, considering the layout of the Schmitts’ domicile and rotated it ninety degrees so I was now looking at it from the direction where I was standing in the altar room. I traced an imaginary route with my finger, first north, then south along the boulevard.

  “Merde,” I shouted. “It’s too obvious. The street runs south directly into the old limestone mines.”

  “Mines” asked Heidi.

  “Better known as the Catacombs. And what better way to hide the bones of your victims than in a maze of skeletons?”

  “So, if they are down there, does the book say anything about how many we might be looking at?”

  I shook my head. “No. But the legends are always about a solitary creature for each village or region.”

  “Paris is not a village. There are almost 3 million people living here. There could be hundreds of those things.”

  “I don’t think so. I saw less than ten blood patterns on the wall back in that room. If you figure the Schmitts have been here about two years and, say they somehow made contact with the bogeyman almost immediately, that’s still, maybe, a victim every three months. Given the average adult is, for argument’s sake maybe five times the weight of an average child, you’re looking at meat for two.”

  James went pale. “I can’t believe we are having this conversation.”

  Heidi nodded. “It makes sense. At least for this nest. We know that bullets can kill them. I should get more guns.”

  “And lights. They appear to blend very well into the shadows. I figure we should start by looking for a passage into the altar room.” I turned to James as Heidi left the room. “You are staying here.”

  “You will get no argument from me, though, promise me this; if you arrest the Schmitts, I want to be there.”

  “Deal.”

  # # #

  Back at the house, we entered quickly, then stopped in the entryway. Heidi handed me a white overcoat from her carpet bag. I looked it over and carefully ran my hands along the armored cloth. There were translucent ropes running the length of the garment every six inches, as well as coils of the same running down the sleeves.

  “Put it on and hold mine up.”

  I shrugged the jacket on over my knife sheath and did as she said. She pulled a bottle from the bag. After unscrewing the cap, I saw it had a dropper built into the lid. She carefully squeezed a single drop into holes in each of the strands on my garments as well as her own. As the liquid entered the rope, a bright light began to emit from each strand, growing as the chemical spread throughout.

  “Very nice.”

  “It’s a simple reaction, really. But it’s also very stable, so it won’t explode like the earlier prototypes.”

  I chuckled nervously, “That’s good to know.”

  Heidi put the dropper away and handed me a Colt .45 pistol and a Thompson submachine gun with a fifty-round drum.

  “You’re not messing around, are you?”

  She put on her own glowing coat and then armed herself with another pistol as well as two shotguns from the carpet bag. She slung one of the long guns over her left shoulder, the carpet bag over her right, then then stood up.

  “Your math about the feeding needs is sound. But we still know very little about these creatures. I would rather be over-prepared than under.”

  “Fair enough.”

  As we headed down the halls toward the kitchen, I swung my arms, experimenting to see if my range of motion would be limited. I was pleased it was not. It was then that I realized that, despite the glow, I could still see well ahead of me. I asked Heidi about it.

  “The chemicals are balanced to provide enough light to illuminate your way, but not so much that the structures in your eyes adjust to the light radiating from you.”

  “That must have taken some time to get it right.”

  “I started working on the idea when I was still in Germany. It’s only in the last year that I’ve been able to get the reaction close to where I want it to be.”

  “It’s working just fine.”

  “Yes. But it’s not yet perfected.”

  We descended the stairs side by side, weapons at the ready. As we reached the base of the stairs, I could see the creature’s body was still in the same place.

  I pointed to it with my left hand. Heidi nodded.

  We entered the altar room. With the additional illumination, I could now see the area where the first attack came from. Where there should have been a corner to the room, a new entrance had been created from a two-cinder-block-wide section of the wall had been pushed into the room.

  Heidi handed me some of her special noise canceling earplugs. I would be able to hear normal sounds, but as soon as noise reached a certain level, such as a weapon firing, the plugs would dampen the sound. I gratefully put them in my ears.

  With the opening only wide enough for us to move single file, I went first, grateful for the lights on my coat to illuminate my way.

  I stepped into a rough stone passage, the walls reinforced with old timber. Clearly, this had been part of the old mine, but not so far as to yet be part of the burial storage. I looked around, taking in my surroundings before moving forward. The air was cool and dry and nothing was moving within
my sight. I glanced down and could see footprints, drag marks and blood trails heading west. I moved to one side to allow Heidi into the area and pointed at the mess on the floor.

  She nodded grimly and we followed the marks through nearly a half mile of tunnels before coming to an open cavern.

  What I noticed with my initial scan of the area was the cave ran about sixty feet deep and maybe twenty wide. There were several tunnels that intersected along all sides. Against the wall to my right was a series of stalactites with curved metal hooks dangling from several of the larger. On two of the hooks were bodies that had clearly been partially consumed. And then there were the bogeymen.

  I counted at least eleven, all initially shrinking back from the lights on our coats, then exploding into action, racing at us in complete silence.

  My mind registered the concussive explosion of Heidi’s shotgun and then I was swinging my Tommy gun into play. I targeted the closest to me, and pulled the trigger. The machine gun stock hammered against my shoulder and the creature went down. I shifted targets and fired again.

  It was over in less than five minutes, but as it always was with extended combat and my mind, time seemed to slow down into a series of jumpy movie scenes: Heidi exhausting the ammunition of her first shotgun and swinging the second into action in a perfect ballet of motion. The pair of bogeymen that tried to flank us. Heidi and I moving back to back to guard each other. The final attack coming from the ceiling as the creature grabbed stalactites like playground rungs to reach us. Heidi’s shot shattering the formation causing the bogeyman to drop to the floor and my final shots from the Tommy finishing it off.

  After the last rounds were fired, and nothing was moving in our vicinity, Heidi and I reloaded, still with our backs to each other, rotating slowly to confirm we were alone.

  “I stand corrected. My math was right, but clearly they had other patrons,” I said.

  “If this was the only den,” Heidi offered.

  “I know. But clearing the Catacombs will be a job for the Valkyries.”

  “Of course,” Heidi agreed. “Maybe they can also discern who else was providing them with victims.”

  “That’s a problem for a later day. Right now, I have a solution for the Schmitts.”

  # # #

  I heard the sound of the key scratching at the lock, then the tumblers dropping into place. The door opened without a sound and I could hear the voices of the Schmitts talking excitedly in German.

  They walked into the house, expectant smiles on their faces.

  “I wonder what they have left us in reward this time,” exclaimed Frau Schmitt. “I hope it’s…” Her voice trailed off as she saw James, myself and the AEGIS security agents standing in the front hallway.

  “Handcuffs, I should think,” I replied.

  The Veiled Lady

  by Trish Heinrich

  Spring had come to Los Angeles in a glory of heat that made the city limp along during the day, but revive at night when a cool breeze settled on the parched landscape.

  At this time of night, most children were being tucked into warm beds, ready to dream of fame, fortune or the next day’s baseball game. But one child, small for her age and impossibly brave, crept out of her window and down the fire escape. Her mission was desperate and secret, especially since no one would believe tiny Ada Mesmer when she insisted that her brother wouldn’t just run away. In her gut, Ada knew something terrible had happened to her beloved brother, as well as the dozens of other young men and boys who had gone missing in the last six months.

  She couldn’t take the way her mother tried to hide her tears, or the empty place at the dinner table, one more day. If the police wouldn’t do anything to find her brother, Ada decided, she’d just have to.

  The trouble was of course that being a sickly child of ten, she hadn’t much experience with the world outside her small apartment. Beside the school and the park at the end of the block where she lived, Ada had hardly been anywhere, the risk to her health generally too great.

  But sometimes, you have to risk much to gain much.

  So, with a coat over her thin body, a thick pair of socks and boots still a bit too large, Ada went to the one place most of the missing boys had seemed to frequent: the Abandoned District.

  No one knew why the small, square block had been abandoned, or why it was terrifying to so many people. It was something that most people just accepted after a while, not caring about prime real estate left to rot. But the boys of her neighborhood and a few others had made it a place to test their bravery and escape families that didn’t understand them for a few hours.

  The problem was, of course, that some boys had not come back from the Abandoned District.

  The shadows felt deeper the moment Ada stepped over the invisible line that demarcated the Abandoned District, a chill creeping down her spine that had nothing to do with the cool night air. The wind stirred her newly straightened hair, making Ada jump in fear of someone that wasn’t there. She reached a trembling brown hand up to smooth it back, dark eyes boring into the shadows in search of hidden threats.

  When she was fairly certain no one was around, Ada took a deep breath and felt in her left pocket for the small mechanical bird she’d made from the scraps of metal her brother brought home from shop class. It was cool and hard in her pocket, a reminder of the love her brother felt for a little sister who was stuck at home more often than not.

  “If you can’t exercise your body,” her brother had once told Ada, “then make sure your mind is strong.”

  So she had. Reading every book her mother could get from the library, discovering a talent for invention along the way. Fiction never interested her, not as much as cold, hard facts that she could count on and use to create things.

  “There’s nothing here,” she told herself, standing up straight. “Nothing but empty buildings and my brother.”

  The fear built until it was a herculean effort to lift one foot in front of the other. Still, little Ada kept going, sweat trickling down her body.

  Then, just as suddenly as it came upon her, the fear simply left.

  Ada looked around, expecting something to explain the sudden calm that had come upon her. But there was nothing aside from abandoned buildings and―

  “A light...”

  One of the buildings, far to the end and half-hidden behind another, had a faint light in one of the windows. If Ada could have run, she would have. Instead, she walked as swiftly as her legs could carry her to the building. As she drew closer, the sound of faint humming reached her ears, like electricity through a machine. The sound built and then dissipated, only to build again, like a wave of energy.

  The building spilled weak light through its windows; those on the bottom floor were grimy. It took Ada a few tries to climb on top of some crates under a window and looked inside, legs shaking.

  It was a large space, with lamps burning around the perimeter that sputtered with the hum of energy. A large, upright rectangular machine sat to Ada’s left, coils at each of the four top corners that had golden wires leading to a crown with a twining serpent. The machine had knobs and pressure valves that were being checked and adjusted by someone in all black, thick rubber gloves on their hands, goggles on their eyes. Across from the machine sat what looked like a metal wheelchair, clamps holding the ankles, wrists and forehead of a young man in place as the machine gave out a loud hum of power.

  The lamps inside sputtered out completely as the power built, and as they did, the serpent in the crown began to glow bright and brighter until―

  “You don’t want to look at that kid,” said someone behind her, clamping hands over her eyes.

  The hum was almost unbearable, the sound punctuated by a scream from inside.

  Those large hands left her eyes, the light from inside back to a normal, dull glow. Ada turned around to see a tall man with a pair of goggles over his eyes, clad in a white homburg hat, dark suit and duster. He grinned, showing white straight teeth as he
pulled her off the crates.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said with a grin. “Let me handle this and go home.”

  Ada stared, mouth gaping. She’d heard of the legendary Vigil Corps, everyone in California had. Her brother had been obsessed with Domino Lady and the Laughing Mask before sports had supplanted them. But Ada had never forgotten, indulging in stories about the heroes since, after all, it was fact not fiction.

  “You’re... You’re...”

  He swept a bow. “The Laughing Mask. Nice to meet you. Now, go home.”

  With those words, Ada shook off the hero worship that had temporarily rendered her mute.

  “No.”

  “This isn’t the place―”

  “My brother is in there, and I’m not leaving until I find him.”

  The Laughing Mask crossed his arms. “Brother, huh? And what would he say if he knew you were here?”

  “He’d tell me to use my mind and get him out.”

  “Mind, huh? You’re smart, are ya?”

  Ada nodded.

  “Then go home.”

  With that he jumped on top of the crates, shimmied up the drain pipe and swung up onto the flat roof of the building, disappearing into the night.

  Ada clenched her jaw. “Not likely.”

  She crept along the sides of the building until she found a small window, up high near the roof. There were many more crates, these looking fairly new with an address from Egypt on one. Something tickled the back of her mind between that and the crown she’d seen with the coiled serpent but she didn’t want to waste time trying to figure it out. Whatever they were doing in there to those boys wasn’t good.

  I just hope I’m in time to save Donny.

  She climbed on top of the crates with clumsy movements that nearly toppled the stack. When she reached the top, Ada was panting, her arms and legs shaking. After a few minutes, she was able to stand on her tiptoes and reach the window. It was small, too small for any full sized person to climb through and for that reason the people in the building had left it unlocked. Ada’s thin arms shook once again as she pulled herself up to the window. The crates under her teetered as the toes of her boots scraped along the top of one. She grunted with the effort of pulling herself up just a little more so she could get her torso through the window. It took three tries, and she ended up knocking over the crates in the process. Scrambling to get through the window, she fell into a dark room, hitting her elbow on the cold floor.