Zephyr Box Set 2

by Warren Hately

  “The technology could be dangerous,” I say tersely as the others finally follow our lead one at a time and step out into the forecourt. “You need to find out where it came from and how it fell into its previous owner’s hands.”

  “It’s no more dangerous than any weapon,” Seeker chides me.

  “How much more of it is out there? You remember Afghanistan?”

  “I wasn’t actually there,” she says.

  “Right. You know what I’m saying though. We just saved the world from a madman with a weapon a bazillion times worse than a tac-nuke.”

  “A bazillion times,” Maxtor says mockingly as he and Lionheart wander within earshot.

  I shoot the guy an eat me look and resume focus on my companion.

  “Ideational tech is dangerous,” I say to her.

  “Joe, I don’t even know what it can do yet.”

  “Exactly,” I say, knowing I sound like I think just saying that means I’ve won a point. “It’s more complex than that.”

  “It’s not the time for gossip, you two,” Sentinel says and fixes me with his hardest gaze. “Are we going somewhere or not?”

  And I nod, disturbed with myself and the company I’m keeping these days as we arrange ourselves into the air and set course for Twilight’s island.

  *

  I NO LONGER command Zephyr’s speeds, and more importantly, neither do any of my companions, or so I realize as we travel through the hours of the night to Twilight’s base. We clear the last fringes of Atlantic City’s coast just before ten and by midnight approach the expected shelf of chalky rock and its unlikely manor and gardens.

  As per custom, I land near the helipad and wait as a full squadron of tailor-suited guards erupt from the nearby greenhouse with their Uzis and Tec-9s, dark eyes uniformly swiveling in panic as my companions and Seeker touch down behind and around me – and I’m me, Cusp, presumably not so well known here as Zephyr.

  Or am I?

  “Relax fellas, the chick with the green hair’s just the boss, remember?”

  A skinny little lizard-looking motherfucker in a silver-flecked suit steps clear of the other mooks and nods to me all licentious-like, licking his lips and fully thinking himself in on the joke as he weighs a silenced Ingram in the crook of his arm and my heart sinks yet further in remembering the depths of my friend’s depravity with this woman whom I now inhabit like some kind of perverse living memorial or perhaps indeed it is my own purgatory of atonement for some of the lousy shit I’ve done to undeserving ladies over the years. I’m hardly one to be able to throw glass houses or whatever the shit fuck shit crap it is, me bad-mouthing ass-hats like Sentinel when my own conduct . . . well, some might testify it’s not all it could’ve been.

  “That you, boss?”

  “I’m not your boss,” I tell him. “Go find him though and tell him we’re here.”

  The skinny guy now looks genuinely frightened. I guess none of them know their recent US history because Sentinel is a name known around the world and Mistress Snow’s certainly at least eye-catching in her fur-lined get up and all that aging titty. She puts on a good show, I have to give the old bird that. And now she saunters before the idiot with the sub-machinegun has fully parsed my order.

  “You remember me, right sweetheart?”

  “Get the boss,” I tell him.

  The goon licks his lips nervously now and nods and backs off and he and a couple of the more senior stooges go into a huddle while the half-dozen others light cigarettes and watch us and them equally nervously.

  “Twilight won’t greet us himself?” Sentinel asks.

  As his audible dissatisfaction fades, the skinny guard walks back. The guy barely seems to take in Lionheart and the Enigma standing nearby talking quietly about the suitability of the nearby turf for golf.

  “If the boss is here, he’s not taking visitors.”

  “We need to see Twilight.”

  “I didn’t explain myself,” the goon says. “I’m not playing tough guy with you. I mean if the boss is here, he’s not answering the phone or letting us into his sanctum. That’s why I thought maybe he was, you know . . . up to his old tricks again.”

  “How long has it been since you saw him?” Seeker asks.

  “He landed here three days ago from the city. Looked like he’d been through hell,” the guard says and points to the manor house. “He went in. Didn’t even speak to anyone. Ordered food to his rooms and went in and that’s all she wrote.”

  “So you’ve got no reason to think he’s not in his chambers?” I ask.

  The goon looks at me like I’m stupid, which maybe I am.

  “No reason other than what? Having a boss who can astral travel and go back in time and wear people like you an’ I wear suits?”

  I pause a moment at the guard’s time travel reference, but that’s another note I’m going to have to file away in the increasingly cluttered office of my mind.

  “OK, but you haven’t seen him come out?”

  “Nope.”

  I look to the others now milling behind me and back to the slick guard.

  “Mind if we have a try?”

  Zephyr 22.2 “Off Its Proper Angles”

  THE DOOR TO Twilight’s inner sanctum is six-inch oak ensorcelled to a degree of toughness to withstand even my irritated banging as I stand at the lead of an equally frustrated and increasingly meddlesome group of has-beens stalled on the Persian hall runner outside our unwitting host’s retreat. Long seconds pass in which I try to discern even the slightest suggestions of noises coming, muffled as they might be, from beyond the immovable object, though Maxtor’s troubled mouth-breathing and Mistress Snow’s frequent, petulant little sighs are like static to any fine-tuning I might hope to achieve. I finish up with a bug-eyed look I share equally among the members of my newfound posse.

  “I have no idea if he’s in there,” I say.

  “Try again,” Seeker says.

  “Maybe I should do it,” Mistress Snow says. “Twilight and I go way back.”

  “Goons seemed to know this one though,” Sentinel says, eyeing me like cattle and irking me yet further with his grammatical objectification.

  “Try again,” Seeker says.

  “Jesus, OK.”

  I bang on the door with the palm of a fist that even as Cusp could probably cave in someone’s head pretty easily. A dull thud is my only reward.

  “Twilight. Open up. It’s me . . . Cusp,” I say, admitting the requisite conviction is missing in action as I stare hopelessly at the whorls in the surface grain suppressed by a thick coating of black lacquer.

  Again no movement.

  “I don’t think he’s even in there,” the skinny goon from before says.

  I slam down my hand again, though only half-heartedly.

  “Twilight!” I yell. “I need to speak to you. I have a message from Zephyr.”

  There’s a collective muttering of surprise as a few of my companions repeat my untethered alter ego’s name, but whatever their reactions, they’re whitewashed by the doorframe erupting in bright red lines that sizzle into nothingness almost as soon as they appear.

  Then the door eases open.

  Twilight’s hulking and disheveled figure stands silhouetted in the doorway, a weird spectral light from behind projecting only the illusion of the man I once knew. Because we are close, I can see his eyes set in deep squinting bags on his normally handsome visage and the exhaustion and inexplicable sorrow framing them.

  “It’s you,” he says to me in a monotone.

  His cloudy blue eyes slowly pick over the others before returning to me.

  “You’d best come in.”

  He backs away leaving me and the others to follow.

  *

  THE SANCTUM IS a mess. There is nothing metaphoric about me describing the scene like Twilight has been sleeping, eating and shitting in here for the past three days solid. As is his wont, the big guy wears only a pair of itty bitty boxers and an outlandishly gay-l
ooking gold robe which hangs customarily open. I’m transfixed by the antihero’s unusual bearing, something off about him and not just his ignorance about my true identity.

  Bookcases line the octagonal chamber which also has a huge long work bench covered in books and the various items de rigueur to any alchemist’s lab. If you picture a bachelor pad designed by Aleister Crowley with a hint of three-day-old dick cheese, then you have half the picture – or at least a very good idea about the smell. Behind the long table, an archway sits in the wall of books that gives onto another candle-lit chamber containing what I can only describe as a curiously small-scale model of Stonehenge.

  Twilight catches me peering and presses a button concealed under the table and the book shelves seal together seamlessly.

  “You don’t need to go in there.”

  “I don’t remember you having that. Must be new.”

  “It is.”

  “What have you been doing? Redecorating?”

  Twilight stares at me for long seconds. Whether this is part of his new look or I’m only noticing it for the first time, but the outline of Twilight’s skull seems more evident beneath the flesh of his face. Despite his otherwise disinterested mien, his blue eyes rake over me with a feverish quality.

  “That room isn’t located in what you might call conventional space,” he says, as if reluctantly. “I’d recommend staying out.”

  “Someone might recommend the same to you.”

  “Where’s Zephyr?” Twilight snaps. “You said you had a message?”

  “We need to talk to you,” I say.

  Twilight’s gaze flicks to the others.

  “All of you? Where’s Zephyr? Or did you just say that to lure me out?”

  “We lost contact,” I tell him. “When did you see him last?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone for days.”

  “I thought you might have the others with you.”

  “What others?”

  “Well, Portal, for one,” I say. “We could really do with his help.”

  “Then I can’t help you with that,” Twilight says. “I’m out. Done. You have no idea what I’ve been through. Last I saw Portal and Legion and anyone else with only one name, I set them up in a safe house down near the waterfront. Zephyr would know it. We tussled with my cousin there not long ago.”

  Twilight looks askance to Seeker and nods, remembering she too would know the waterfront digs where we ran afoul of Danica Azzurro. The big lug’s eyes scan up and down Seeker’s slender metallic form, in her armor resembling a battle-ready Barbie doll as much as a mechanoid praying mantis.

  “Nice duds,” Twilight says.

  “Just something I picked up lately,” Loren calmly replies.

  Twilight grunts – the closest thing we’re going to get from him as far as appreciating jests goes – then resumes his attention on me.

  “Holland, right?”

  “You call me Cusp.”

  “Uh-huh. Still got hard feelings?”

  I only stare him down. I am far from the most fitting person to lecture Twilight for his abuses of power, though I am also the only one now left to speak for Holland.

  “What are you doing here, Twilight?” I ask instead.

  “I live here.”

  “You know what I’m saying.”

  Twilight’s glare returns like that of the truculent child I imagine he once was.

  “I live here.”

  “City’s in trouble.”

  “Fuck the city.”

  “People need you.”

  “Fuck people.”

  “Uh-huh, so you’re just . . . hiding out?”

  “Not hiding. I’ve quit.”

  “If you’re talking about being a hero, I’m not sure you can quit something you never properly started,” I say to him. “You’re the antihero, right?”

  The phrase freezes Twilight in his tracks. He fixes me with his increasingly lucid gaze, then waves distractedly at the others like a statue coming to life.

  “My people will look after whatever you need,” he tells them.

  Then to me, turning away already, he adds, “Cusp and I have to talk.”

  Twilight presses the concealed button and the book cases fold open once more. Like a true alpha, he goes ahead without waiting to see if I follow.

  I glance back at the others caught between confusion and relief.

  “I thought your name was Jo?” Maxtor says.

  I shrug, nod to Seeker, and move after Twilight.

  *

  “WHAT GIVES, JOE?” the big lug asks the moment the sliding door slips back into place behind me.

  Suddenly I feel uncomfortable in the bigger, more powerful man’s presence, aware as I am of the violent possessive sexual history between him and Holland and the fact he can enspell doors shut so there’s nothing I could ever do to break free.

  He sweeps up a fairly epic brass goblet and swirls the contents in the bleak light. Twilight’s visible relaxation is only apparent as he loses it, growing tense and serious as he takes in my discomfort.

  “What’s the matter?” he asks. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “You’re safe, Zephyr. I’m not a rapist.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “Yes?”

  Twilight stares at me long moments and I am surprised when his hard stare breaks in on itself and he sniffles and looks away.

  “That hurts, man,” he says. “You don’t know anything about the history between her and me.”

  “I know you used some magic trick to possess her so you could have sex with me, you depraved piece of shit,” I say.

  “You never did get over that.”

  “No, I never did.”

  Twilight gives me his best Macaulay Culkin a few moments more. I know it’s not super-interesting to keep describing Twilight’s drawn-out huffing and puffing, but he really does stand there self-consciously striking a pose, except I’m as sensitive as a Richter scale to the tremors beneath his otherwise hand-carved exterior.

  *

  TWILIGHT RETURNS TO life, taking a big sullen swig from the ceremonial cup and moving past the first of the replica plinths which encircle the room at armpit height. Like Stonehenge, the center of the various cromlechs is a clear space of ground with another of Twilight’s customarily arcane and detailed magickal cyphers, identical to the one covering the floor of the main library in this manor and wherever else he normally conducts his sorcery.

  “What’s going on, big guy?”

  “I should ask you. What the fuck happened?”

  “Matrioshka.”

  “The chick with the big head from Afghanistan?”

  I’ve confided in a lot of my off-world adventures to Twilight, so he takes liberties with the shorthand version of the tale honed by long hours of our past discussions, and I nod even though Matrioshka’s even more evil twin in the parallel universe of The Twelve is the one with the skull swollen by her psionic powers, at least Twilight’s able to keep up – one of the reasons I guess I like his company, and all the more reason for me to feel conflicted as I stand there, him in the wrong headspace and me in the wrong body, so many kinds of fucked up it beggars description, belief and credibility.

  “I don’t know if I could explain even if I could,” I say, knowing that makes no sense. “I need to know about you. What the fuck is going on?”

  “I told you before. It’s not complicated. I quit.”

  “What?”

  “I have quit.”

  “Yes yes,” I snap. “Explain to me why.”

  “Jeez, you on your period already?”

  “Quitting. You’re telling me why.”

  “Bah,” Twilight says. “I can’t do it anymore, and I don’t want to.”

  He goes to drain the cup only to see he already has. He reluctantly sets it down on a nearby menhir.

  “You remember me in Afghanistan?” he says withou
t meeting my eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  “I picked a fight with you,” he says. “It’s not the first time.”

  “True.”

  “Did you listen to any of that shit Sting was preaching there?”

  “It wasn’t Sting, it was the Doomsday Man, but yeah.”

  “Your father.”

  “Actually possibly or probably not my father,” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t get distracted. Why quit? Man, I need you,” I say. “I don’t know what the deal was between you and Holland. I know that. I –”

  “She was one of your biggest fans,” Twilight says.

  “What?”

  “She was a fan. She was crazy hot for you. The first time, it was her idea. I was just along for the ride.”

  “Holy shit, you’re making me feel sick.”

  “Homophobia?”

  “I am thinking about this fucking woman’s life I helped erase.”

  “You didn’t do that and you know it.”

  “Oh,” I say and try to laugh and the noise just comes out like a rodent emitting gas. “Now you’re the one trying to keep me bright and fluffy?”

  “Hardly,” Twilight says. “I’m clean out of bright and fluffy. That shit in Afghanistan made me think. I have no ethos. I have no creed.”

  “That shit in Afghanistan was utter horse bollocks, Twilight.”

  “I know that, but the people gathering there to spoon it up like Ben & Jerry’s, they had something I didn’t have – and they didn’t have to bushwhack their best friends just to fucking feel something for once.”

  The admission weighs heavily in the room in which one of the most powerful men in Atlantic City is also its loneliest. Yes, I know this could be me we’re talking about, but I am too fucking gender confused right now to really qualify for such a particular award. And that such a walking disaster area as Twilight thinks of me as his best friend – the guy he rimmed while possessing an apparently willing mask-groupie’s body – just goes to show how far the universe is off its proper angles.