“What, did I buy the wrong thing?”
“No, but these fried delicacies won't last long on the road, and you have overestimated my stomach.”
I guiltily looked down at my half-eaten second mincemeat pie and was grateful that he hadn't seen me wolf down my first. Instead of focusing on my huge appetite, I remarked, “No worries, I have bought some jerky for the road.” I hadn't planned on sharing, but wouldn't mind so much since my stomach had finally caught up with my eyes.
It was just then that a very bland sort of bearded man, wearing a bulky trench coat, bumped into Dorian. I didn't see him take anything, but my hand was on my pistol before he even left our line of sight. Surprisingly, he stared over his shoulder at us as he walked away. Once he was confident that he had our attention, he tipped his head for us to follow him into a side alley. This most likely was the S.O.A.R. contact that we were supposed to meet up with here in Abraham.
I didn't like dead end alleys, as that was where I lost my last partner in a backstreet in Birmingham, so hopefully our S.O.A.R. contact knew that about me. My hand was feeling a little too trigger happy, so I hoped for his sake that he was indeed the S.O.A.R. agent and not some common thief.
We turned the corner and the agent held out his hand, twisted the ring on his pointer finger to reveal the insignia of a black crow on a silver background.
Dorian said, as we approached him, “Finally, what news do you bring from S.O.A.R.?”
I slipped past Dorian and ordered, “Ring. Hand it over.”
The man smiled a closed lip smile but said nothing as he removed the ring. He handed it over to me and I spat on it. The Crow turned white, resembling a dove now. That was a little inside joke with the agency toffs, I'm sure. I removed a stiletto, and nicked my finger allowing a bead of blood to fall upon the ring. I rubbed it and the silver background turned black. I then wiped the thing off on my pants and handed the ring back to the agent.
The agent inquired, “Newbie, huh?” indicating Dorian.
Dorian looked offended, but I had to be sure of who we were dealing with. I had lost my last partner to a case of mistaken identities involving dubious double agents. I just had to be sure. Dorian may be new to S.O.A.R., but this wasn't my first dance. I wondered for the first time about his employers overseas.
I asked the bland man, “Who sent you?”
“S.O.A.R.” I noticed his grin was missing a few teeth and this his sand colored beard was most likely brown, but the sand and dirt had lightened it considerably. He tipped his cowboy hat at us in false cordiality. It seemed atypical of S.O.A.R. to select someone of such a lowly class. Maybe standards were changing within the organization.
“Who from S.O.A.R. sent you?” I spewed. My trigger finger started twitching.
He backed up to a wall and before I could interrogate him further, Dorian placed a hand on my shoulder. “Please, Ms. Michaels, let the man have the opportunity to speak.”
I backed down and stood akimbo waiting for the man to respond. I knew I was displacing some of the anger that I still had over my last partner's death, but Dorian was not that girl. He was a man and an immortal, who has been alive for about as long as I have lived.
Dorian took over, “Before I begin to question the intelligence of the man who sent you, who did send you?”
The weasel of a man looked confounded for a moment and then he whispered, “Why, Master Van Moot and Master Remington sent me, of course.”
“What is the first principle of S.O.A.R.?” I asked. I could tell from the corner of my eye that Dorian thought my question was overkill, but I just had to be certain.
“Wendy, are you never satisfied? He gave up their names, even though he was most likely forbidden from doing so.”
“Say it.”
The man gave a raspy breath and said, “A single light answers as well for a hundred men, as it does for one.” S.O.A.R. held several mottoes in high esteem, but this Talmud quote was one of their favorites, spoken only to other initiates. The man's shoulders drooped and he wiped away some of the black tar from his teeth, revealing a full set that graduated him up the animal ladder from weasel to horse.
Somewhat satisfied, I asked, “What are our orders?”
He spat some black sludge onto the ground. “Nasty stuff that. I think I'll have to think twice a'fore taking S.O.A.R.'s easy money again.”
I snorted at that, little did he know that once you are in S.O.A.R., you are in it for life, the exception being if you were loaned out by them to a contemporary agency, like Dorian. Judging by all the wet work I had done over the last one hundred years, my motto should have been one life, for all fights.
Dorian looked certifiably bored. He knew when he wasn't needed. I asked again, “Orders?”
He gave a sweeping bow and said, “As my lady wishes.”
“What is your name agent?”
“Why?”
“In case I need to use it in the report, foolish man,” I spat. I felt like addressing him as simpleton, but bit my tongue.
“Oh, I don't like how you talk to me, maybe I won't tell you.”
I reached into my bag and handed the gnat a bottle of water. He eyed it speculatively one second, but then greedily took it and rinsed his mouth clean the next. Then he poured the rest over his beard and balding head under his cap. He next set it gently on the ground to prevent it from shattering.
I asked as patiently as I could, “Name?”
“Harold Meadows, at your service.”
Once the sideshow had ended, Dorian swooped in between Harold and me, and asked, “What are our next orders, Harold of the Meadows?”
He said, “Yer' orders are to catch the train to Buffalo, bad things are afoot there, and they need agents in the field. Don't know what they are expecting, but something on a much grander scale, than that poor little 'ole Westington, if you know what I mean.” He waggled his extremely long eyebrows at me over that last bit and then patted his suspiciously lumpy chest under his coat.
I sighed, realizing that there could be really only one thing on under that lumpy coat. “How much you got on you?”
Dorian looked confused. Certainly, he didn't think I was going to ask for chewing tobacco?
I explained to Dorian, “Harold most likely has some explosives on him, either that or he needs the assistance of a doctor to remove a hardened liver, not quite sure which is which yet,” I explained.
Switching my focus entirely to Harold, I asked, “Harold, give whatever it is over, or I will be forced to take it. If S.O.A.R. gave you something to give to us, believe me, you don't want to get caught stealing from them.” I leaned in close enough that I had proof that my resplug did nothing to block out harmless, yet pungent odors. Then I added for good measure, “You don't want people like me haunting your every step of your very ordinary life. Consider that a personal bit of advice, for free.”
Before Harold ever had the chance of handing over whatever he had for me, from my duress alone, Dorian slipped around me and stuck a piece of paper with a strange mark in the middle of it onto Harold's forehead. Harold froze in place, with only the occasional movement of his chest to indicate that he was still breathing. With Dorian still to my back, he said in my ear, “That was getting us nowhere quickly.”
I jabbed my elbow into him and complained, “I protest! He was just about to hand over the goods and now we don't know if there is a safety trigger in order to remove the items from his body without detonating it.”
Dorian grabbed my shoulders and turned me about, “That, my dear Wendy, is precisely why you are here. Get whatever it is and let's be on our way.” He then busied himself with putting away his pad and pen, expecting me to deal with what was most likely to be magsticks gifted by S.O.A.R. for incidental work.
However, if what he had were sticks, then they would be much more effective than my orange darts in sticky situations. The magically imbued explosive sticks would also be worth a fortune on the black market. It was no surprise then that Mr. Me
adows might have liked to keep them, if he was thinking of running from S.O.A.R. Even more appealing to me was that they were an incredibly powerful tool for us against a powerful device and I wanted them. I frantically searched for my snippers in my carpet bag, while preying to the powers that be, that a trigger wire was all that I would find and not a sort of timed down device. Those were tricky buggers.
After stripping the man of his shirt, I startled at the quantity of the magsticks that this man had strapped around his torso. There was enough on the man to topple multiple six-story buildings or maybe even multiple blocks of Brownstones. Distressingly so, the tripping device for detonation was extremely simplistic, and after a couple of sequential snips from my tool, it released its bounty into my waiting arms. I counted them and there were a dozen in all. I returned the small set of pliers to my bag and then proceeded to place the entire load of sticks into my bag for safekeeping.
Dorian crossed his arms and gave me a highbrow, expectant look. I hotly defended my actions by stating, “I am the one that knows how to use them, Dorian, and hence, I should be the one to carry them. If and when the time comes, I want to be the one to detonate them.”
“For now, I will accept that mainly because you have more room in your bags than my own.”
We started to leave the alley behind us when he said, “What do think will happen to Tesla, if he does not want to join the Society?”
“Not my business.”
“I think you know the answer and are studiously ignoring it.”
After giving Harold a pointed look behind us, I motioned for us to continue our discussion at another location. I took a moment, looked back into the alley at Harold’s prone form, and shivered.
“Will Harold be all right?”
“Once a draft or a pickpocket removes that piece of paper off his head, he will be as good as new.” We continued out of the alley and into the dim morning light of the city.
···•Ͽ Ѡ Ͼ•···
He led me to the stables, which turned out to be only a street away, and we pretended to inspect our horses, which were kept in an expansive stall while we continued our discussion.
“Will you support the Society even if that means killing Tesla in the process?” he asked me while I reached for my saddle for my horse.
I snidely replied, “Anything in the name of the Republic.”
He sighed and said, “If, and that is a big if, he is raving mad, have no doubt, I will blow him up myself.” Did he think the magsticks were for blowing up Tesla? If Tesla was behind the explosion in Westington, then the quantity of sticks might just be warranted.
He continued, “But not until we both decide it would be for the best and most definitely not just because S.O.A.R. thinks it would be necessary. I refuse to kill a man merely because he is on S.O.A.R.'s short list, even if he refuses to join. Will you promise me right now to not kill him outright? Are we agreed on this one minute point?” He extended his hand, its glove hanging loose in his other.
I stared at it. It was not such a minute matter to S.O.A.R.
“Wendy, not every immortal needs to be completely hidden from the world.” He touched my chin gently, so I was looking at him, rather than my hands, and then he withdrew it with the same swiftness. “If the gift they have to give this world is something that could usher in a new age of better technology, magic, and political change, then he deserves to live no matter what. For the betterment of society, shouldn't we do whatever we can to help him?
“I see what is going on in the world, perhaps more clearly, because I have only recently left the Seat of Magic, in Europe. People are doing bad things everywhere, abusing the earth's resources until one day soon we will be living below ground in bubbles. Your world may not be what is best for Tesla, but this world may just now need a man of his stature, worth, and convictions. Shall we give Tesla the benefit of the doubt? Or should we be the hands of an agency that is operating on a code that is questionable?”
Questionable? I knew with startling clarity what a decision against S.O.A.R. might mean for the likes of me.
He persisted, “How many wet jobs have you been on in the last century for them where you found yourself wondering if this person should die and that person should live?”
I simply stared down at my feet now. Was shame his motive in getting me to agree to something that I was not ready for?
“How about merely agreeing for keeping an open mind. No commitment. Commitments are dangerous things among us immortals, huh?” He was smiling when I next looked up into his eyes.
It was difficult to think back on all the jobs that I had performed for S.O.A.R. I didn't want to take any responsibility for any of their deaths, because if it wasn't me killing them, S.O.A.R. would have simply sent someone else to do it. Maybe I would have become their next hit, if I had stopped following their orders.
But in reality, it was I who pulled the trigger each time, sliced each throat, and eviscerated bowel after stinking bowel. What kind of lady would know what bodily fluids could come out in the wash and which did not? Maybe leaving this country and going outside of S.O.A.R.'s influence was what I needed. I could hide in Neverland for a month or so and then pick a new country again. Maybe make a new life for myself, once again.
Pipe dreams all of them, really, if I was being honest with myself. I was a killer and would always be a killer. But what if I had been killing for the wrong side? Was there another side to choose? An open mind was all that Dorian was asking of me. I could do that.
I extended my hand, that hadn't been in a glove since the mincemeat pies. I said, “Agreed.” We shook on it. His grip was warm and firm again and all too pleasant. He shook my hand a little too long, so I firmly extracted it from his and stepped back. Just what exactly had I agreed to?
Chapter 7
The Abraham Station
“There are a great many rules for following an ethical path.”
From the book: “Ladies of Light's Rules for Morality,” (Anonymous), 2145.
From Dorian’s Journal of Memorable Quotes to Live By
Dorian's side note: I have been acquainted with some of the greatest rule followers, who were also the most amoral people I had ever met.
We sold the horses for a song to the stable master. We couldn't take them all the way to Buffalo and make good time. Who knew when we would be back; so, it was nice to have a bit of money on hand, for emergencies. Many farmers were prejudiced against magic, so it was likely that our magical credit rings would be refused anyway. Only gold dollars would do for many of the wary in the Republic of America. We split the money equally between us and headed for the locomotive station.
Abraham's streets were not paved or even cobbled, but were instead a nasty dust trap. More than once, I wished there was a resplug for my mouth, because I despised the taste of dirt coating my tongue. At least my hoodwinks were adequate protection for my eyes, but they needed to be often cleaned.
The perpetual twilight was not quite as dense here, though, so the sunlight was somewhat stronger than moonlight would be. People brushed past us and paid us little head. Most were dragging their children in tow, riding their carts to the grocer, or looked even more suspicious than us. Buffalo would be an entirely different experience. Where Abraham was a relatively small town, Buffalo was a large enough city to have a city gate that encircled it, not unlike medieval keeps. Getting in and out unnoticed would be a bit trickier.
Finally, the eerie florescent candy cane lights of the station haloed in our vision. All government run stations used a red and white neon light system to easily identify their location in the constant, hazy conditions. They represented the stripes on the Republic's flag. Without the lights, it would have been easy for a newcomer to miss their train in the soupy atmosphere.
Once you entered the station, you left territory land behind and entered federal property. We entered the relative oasis inside, where we were greeted by a bronze statue that showed Thomas Edison as a Greek god astride an Am
erican eagle. Every locomotive station held some sort of public monument. This one was a little more preposterous than most. I seriously doubted Edison had pectorals quite that large and he definitely did not that much hair on his head.
They had to be placed indoors since putting them outside would inevitably have led to rust, due to the high quantities of smog and acid rain. If the rust didn’t get it, there was always a hooligan population that would deface it, as well.
Uniformed soldiers guarded the station. I hoped our features were not on some randomly generated profiled list to search. Normally, it was a live and let live philosophy in the territories, except when it came to the federally controlled depots; but, even I might have a hard time explaining the magsticks should I be searched.
I looked out the window and took note of the full train heading out. I hoped that the ticket seller did not sell out of the next one. Dorian had a different way of ensuring our passage, since he stooped and started to retrieve his Governor's Pass out of his satchel. I bumped my knee to his shoulder and discreetly twitched my head once. He dropped it back in.
I said, “Why don't you go and pay for our tickets, while I wait here with our bags.”
He took the hint and went to the ticket window line. It might draw attention to have the passes out on us, and right now, I didn't want any undue attention. I sat down on a bench, next to a young mother and her crying baby. Who would want to interrogate me and listen to that wailing at the same time?
To take the edge off my anxiety, I started to count backwards from one hundred. An officer donning a bright red uniform with the typical gold braiding slowly walked up and down the aisle. I could see him looking at me in his peripheral vision, but was he still too far away to overhear any conversation I might have with the young mother?
Tesla's Revenge Page 7
