The Relic Box Set

by Ben Zackheim

  Tabitha dropped me gently next to my partner and flew off, disappearing around the corner of 41st Street, her team following close behind.

  I watched them go. I could feel the bond with Tabitha grow desperate the further away she got. My chest heaved so hard that I had to close my eyes to get my shit together.

  Rebel smacked me on the back of the head.

  Without a word, she stormed off.

  I found enough sense to say, “Don’t you want to know what happened to the shield?”

  “I hope you stuffed it up your ass!” she yelled back, not breaking her stride even a little bit.

  The emperor swooped down on her before I could do anything. He laid his forearm into the small of her back and threw her down the street.

  Chapter 15

  Rebel skipped across the tops of several cars like a stone being thrown across the water.

  There was a distant crash and the sound of rolling bottles.

  “Motherfucker!” I heard her scream from a block away.

  Then the emperor turned to me.

  “The shield,” he said.

  “It’s gone.”

  I aimed my empty pistol at his heart.

  Then he did something unexpected.

  His frown softened.

  “Gone?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said.

  “The portal took it.” It sounded more like a statement than a question, but I answered anyway.

  “Yeah, looks like it.”

  The horror started with a small movement of his cheek. His eyes narrowed, but not from rage. His teeth glowed under the street lamps and his laughter echoed through the canyons of New York like a yodel from Hell.

  He calmed for a second, looked at me and laughed even harder.

  He floated straight up. There was a definite spring to his spring. His soldiers followed him up the avenue. They looked hungry. They would feast on innocents that night.

  And I had no bullets left to save them.

  And no portal to restock.

  “That was weird,” Dino said from behind me. “He knows something you don’t.”

  I glared up at him. He didn’t notice me for a second and then felt the presence of my strong, seething hatred for his very being. He glanced down at me.

  “What?” he said with a shrug.

  “Why don’t you try doing something useful? Clean something up.”

  The streets were a mess. Between the gore and the Vampire battle and the piles of Blues everywhere, we’d be hearing from Spirit soon.

  I spotted Rebel walking toward us. She was being helped by someone. She had an arm around his waist. He had an arm around hers.

  She was in bad shape but she was where she needed to be.

  She was with Fox.

  “He’s here,” Fox said.

  The Vampire led Rebel to me and I picked up where he’d left off. I held her up with one arm and walked her to a bench.

  I didn’t know who Fox was talking about, but I did what any good partner would do.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “Feel like a pinball, but yeah.”

  She was okay.

  “You stay here,” I said. “We’ll get the twins to pick us up in the ‘copter.”

  “Sounds like a party,” she grumbled as she leaned back on the bench. “What the hell is he doing?” She pointed at Fox with her nose.

  He sniffed the air as he walked around. Then he stopped, turned and broke into a run.

  I followed him down 42nd street in the middle of the street. Cars zipped past and around us, honking. Drivers flipped us off.

  “Who are we looking for?” I asked.

  And then I saw the eyes.

  They peeked through the sewer grate under the sidewalk.

  Dim, dead, they floated in the darkness, unblinking.

  “What the fuck?” I mumbled to myself.

  But Fox followed my wide-eyed gaze to the sewer grate. He knelt down and stuck his fingers in a sewer cap. He lifted it off like it was made of paper and tossed it away.

  It went rolling down the center of 42nd street, perfectly centered.

  Fox dropped into the stinky sewer hole.

  “We need to follow him,” Rebel said. She was behind me. Dino was with her, making sure she didn’t tip over.

  I must have looked annoyed but I knew it was a waste of time to argue with her.

  I dropped down into the sewer with a splat.

  I heard Fox’s calm pace as he walked down the tunnel. But I also heard running footsteps. The wet pitter-patter was easy to follow. Someone sounded tired. And injured. They weren’t being quiet at all.

  We turned a bend and I saw Fox catch up with someone and wrap his arms around him. Like a friend seeing an old friend after a long time.

  He embraced him.

  But the body didn’t embrace him back. His long, thin arms dangled at his sides.

  Fox held a dead man. The rotted skull could barely hold the jaw in place. The eyes were somehow still embedded in his skull, silver and gray from looking death in the eye. One arm was hanging from a thread.

  The other arm lifted slowly and rested on Fox’s shoulder.

  “Fox?” I asked.

  But all Fox said was, “I’ve got you, friend.”

  I shined my beam on the zombie’s face.

  I recognized him. It. Whatever.

  It was Thor’s friend. The last owner of the shield.

  It was Baldr.

  Chapter 16

  When I saw this walking corpse at the museum during the Mjölnir mission, it reached for the shield with a longing that I still feel today. The museum didn’t know it, but it had been exhibiting Baldr’s shield in their display case for a few decades.

  “Okay, fill us in, Fox,” I said.

  “First, we get him somewhere safe, then I’ll tell you everything.”

  I didn’t like that deal, but I also wanted to get the hell out of the sewer. I didn’t know if the Vamps would be back and we were too exhausted to put up much of a fight if they did.

  “Dino!” I yelled up.

  “Yeah! Here!” He peeked through the circular hole above us.

  “We’re following Fox…”

  He didn’t give me a chance to finish my sentence, which would have been a request that he keep an eye open for more Vamps and call me with any info.

  Instead he clasped his hands around the rim of the sewer hole and yanked until there was a hole big enough for him to drop into.

  We dodged a few hundred pieces of debris and fell on our asses from the impact of the fucking troll, who landed with all the elegance of a belly flopping elephant.

  “Follow me,” Fox said, lifting his friend over his shoulder.

  I got a good look at the thing and couldn’t help but feel sorry for it. It was a shell of a man, more bone than flesh. It had been in bad shape the last time I saw it but it was even worse now. In fact, it was disintegrating in front of my eyes. Shreds of rotted cloth clung to its dry skin, stuck in place by age. Small pieces of him dripped into the whatever-I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it below our feet.

  “Where we headed, sweetie?” Dino asked.

  “Don’t call me that,” Rebel said.

  “Fox! You better be waiting for us, you son of a bitch!” My voice bent around the web of sewer walls. I listened. Silence. Then…

  “Here,” came a small sound, barely audible.

  We ran to catch up.

  About two minutes into our trip, the corpse turned its head until those dim eyes met mine. Its jaw opened and shut once.

  Was it trying to say something?

  Fox carted him off before I could find out.

  “How do you plan on getting out of here, genius?” I asked the troll.

  “Same way I got in,” he said, as if I was being an idiot.

  “You know Spirit arrests trolls for property damage,” I said.

  “They try to arrest trolls for property damage.”

  “Is that a t
hreat?”

  “I’ll pay the city back,” he said. “The mayor owes me a solid.”

  Rebel and I moved quickly down the ledge that perched over the running sewage. Dino had no other choice but to walk in the shit. He didn’t seem to mind.

  I spotted Fox floating in the air ahead of us.

  “What’s up with that Vampire and the zombie?” Dino asked. “They buds?”

  “Looks like it,” Rebel said. “But if that’s really Baldr, how would Fox know him?”

  “Lancelot and Baldr,” I said. “BFF’s.”

  “That’s the Lancelot guy?” Dino asked. “I’d heard he was around. Didn’t know he was a Vamp, though. Why’s he named Fox?”

  “Good question,” Rebel said. “I’ll ask him.”

  “You better ask him before I tear his head off,” the troll said, casually.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, definitely,” he said. “That fucker is dead. He and his Camelot buds offed trolls like we were mosquitoes.”

  “Did they deserve it?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “And that doesn’t factor into your sense of revenge?”

  He thought about it as he tried to not stomp on us. We were moving pretty fast, but his casual stroll easily kept up.

  “No.” He pulled out one of his cigars from his troll-sized fanny pack. It had a girth as wide as my forearm.

  “We’re here,” Fox’s faint voice rolled down the tube.

  When we caught up we found him pushing open a huge steel door at the top of an old cast-iron ladder.

  “Hurry,” Fox said. “I have something that will help him in my apartment.”

  “You have an apartment?” Rebel asked. I was surprised she didn’t know and it must have shown on my face. “Don’t look at me like that, Arkwright.”

  The zombie turned its head toward me again. It wanted something from me, but what?

  We emerged from the ladder into a basement. Dino had to duck down to fit. Fox swiftly walked to a door with a security lock. He punched in some numbers and led us through the door to a stairwell. Usually a New York building has exits on every floor. But this set of stairs zig-zagged the building for nine floors before we got to the first door.

  It opened into a bare room with old brick walls and a dark wood floor. Another door stood six feet before us.

  Fox laid the zombie down gently.

  “Hold on, my friend,” he said.

  “He wants something from me,” I said.

  “He does,” Fox said. “He wants the shield.”

  “Just like everyone else,” Rebel said.

  “I don’t have it,” I said. “It’s gone. Everything in my portal is gone.”

  Fox’s shoulders dropped. He ran a palm over his face like he was trying to keep his shit together.

  He looked defeated.

  “That’s unfortunate,” he said. “He needs it to survive.”

  Chapter 17

  “He’s a zombie,” I said. “Zombies are all about surviving.”

  “He’s not a zombie,” Fox said as he floated straight up and gently touched the ceiling. His fingertip slid a tiny door open in the tile. Something small dropped into his palm.

  “He looks like a zombie to me,” Dino said with a grunt.

  “He’s an immortal,” Fox said. He touched down and slipped what must have been a key into the door. It opened but there was another wall two feet behind it.

  I heard a click to my right.

  Another door, a hidden brick door, had opened on its own. A slab of steel stood behind it. Rivets ran the perimeter of the thing.

  I stood aside as Fox passed me, headed for the new opening.

  “Immortals don’t exist,” I said.

  Fox looked at me, looked at Baldr and then looked back at me again. “Okay,” he said, with no small amount of fucking sass.

  The Vampire ran his hand around the door jam and felt for something. He pulled and I heard another click.

  A small drawer popped out from the wall behind us.

  Fox pushed gently on a spot on the brick door and a brick fell to the floor. He reached into the hole it left behind and grabbed a small piece of wood, shaped like a puzzle piece.

  “Is this a Vampire thing?” I asked. Rebel nudged me with her elbow. She was enjoying the show.

  “I’ll wait to kill him until I see where this is headed,” Dino whispered.

  Fox passed the troll. The two of them locked stares. Dino growled.

  “I’d believe he was a god before I believed he was an immortal,” I said. “Baldr is the best friend of Thor in the myths. So it would make sense if he was at least a demigod.”

  “That’s what the myths would like you to believe,” Fox said, passing me. “But he’s a human. An immortal human. Deal with it.”

  Fox reached the opposite wall where he pushed on a brick in the corner. It disappeared into the wall but pushed out another brick on the perpendicular wall.

  He’d opened a Lazy Susan.

  The tray rotated out of the wall, revealing two small objects. Fox picked them up and handed them to Rebel. I could swear the Vamp smiled at her. I wouldn’t bet my Bugatti, but I’d bet my Honda CBR600F.

  My partner shook the two wooden pieces in her palm and looked at me coyly, as if she was showing off her boyfriend.

  Maybe that was what she was doing, actually.

  Fox reached back into the corner cubby hole and felt around for something.

  We heard a click and two small clacks.

  He pulled his hand out and handed Rebel two more wood puzzle pieces. He reached into the hole again and pushed on something.

  A shelf popped out from the wall behind the door jam that he’d first opened.

  He stuck his arm into the shelf and yanked his hand out quickly. We could hear something fall behind one of the walls.

  “Stand back,” Fox said, looking up at the ceiling.

  I backed up a step.

  A circular tile fell right in front of me, leaving a round hole in the ceiling.

  He walked up to Rebel and their eyes met. He took her hands in his and they looked at each other just long enough to make everyone uncomfortable. Fox gently took the wood puzzle pieces from her palms and put them together, sliding them into their place as if he’d done this a thousand times before.

  When he was done he’d made a perfect square with the wood pieces.

  He floated straight up and we could see the small square hole that he placed the key into.

  Again, something fell into place behind a wall. I couldn’t tell you which one in that echo chamber.

  The riveted steel plate popped out and swung open.

  A dim light flicked on in the room beyond it, lighting a massive space.

  Fox’s lair.

  We followed the Vampire into the room, his buddy draped in his arms.

  It took me about half a second to realize that this was the most tricked-out, old-school bachelor pad a guy could have. Not a modern bachelor pad. There wasn’t a piece of technology anywhere in sight. But there were other creature comforts.

  Soft furniture. Dim firelight. A library fit for a king.

  And an organ.

  A fucking organ.

  I almost rolled my eyes.

  Or maybe I did roll my eyes. Rebel smirked at me like I had.

  I noticed the lack of windows and wondered where the hell we were.

  I also noticed that the apartment was just one big room.

  Fox shuffled through a set of drawers. He was as close to frantic as I’d ever seen.

  He found what he was looking for and ran to Baldr.

  “Hold this,” he said to the thing. “Can you? Good. Yes. Like that. It will make you feel better.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a piece of his shield. At least I think it is. I bought it off of a street vendor in Rome back in 1968.”

  He watched his friend as if he was looking for any signs of improvement. I didn’t know exactl
y what that would look like until I spotted the flesh around Baldr’s palm bubble a bit and then thicken.

  It was white as snow, but it was flesh.

  His body was responding to the artifact.

  “All right, Lancelot,” I said. “Tell me what the fuck is going on here.”

  Chapter 18

  “I was a Knight of the Round Table,” Fox said, a slight accent hitting his voice, as if the thought of his past flooded him body and soul. His voice was clear. Unimpeded by modern sensibilities but concerned with expectations long dead.

  “Yeah, so I’ve heard,” I said. Rebel gave me a warning with her eyes. And she held up a single dagger fingernail.

  “What you may not know is that I was on the quest for the Holy Grail, too. But I was alone. Other knights knew I was poison to be around. My secret love for the king’s wife was no longer a secret and part of my punishment was the long wait for the wrath of my king. My brother.” He paused. Then he looked up at us and found his voice again. “I hired a boat at Lewes. Not easy. No one was familiar with the northern sea at the time. But I had Merlin’s word that there was land not far off the coast of what’s now called Scotland.”

  “Not far by today’s standards maybe,” I said. “But back then that was a risky trip.”

  “Aye,” he said, slipping back into Lancelot mode. “Not just the sea either. There was danger all around me. The captain and crew heard the whispers of Queen Guinevere. They thought they could win the favor of King Arthur by killing me.”

  “How many were there?” Dino asked.

  “Seventeen men,” he said. “Sixteen.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Sixteen. One a boy. Maybe twelve. I knew enough to recognize betrayal. It has a smell to it. I knew they plotted against me. I kept to the bow where I had the high ground. Even when I slept. I covered the floor with empty walnuts to hear the footsteps in the night. They knew I knew. But they attacked anyway when the first line of Iceland broke the horizon. They sent their strongest men first. Armed well with swords and shields. But they saw their folly within a swing of my blades.”

  “Blades?” Rebel asked. “You had two?”

  “Aye,” he said. “Yes. It was not common but I learned many uncommon tactics. I was challenged to duels constantly. Not just by my countrymen. Many from Asia. A few from Egypt. I had to adapt.”