by Rob Rogers
Geringer tapped a pocket with his cue, then tipped the eight ball toward it. The ball spun languidly, teetering at the edge, then dropped inside. “With the Robber Baron?”
Poteete smiled, swallowing more beer and then wiping froth from his beard with the back of his hand. “Opportunity knocks,” he said. He nodded at the table. “Another game?”
With a frown, Geringer reached for the rack and began placing the balls inside. The waitress walked back in their direction—one of the selling points of the place was that the waitresses would set up the balls for the players, generally bending over to do so with exaggerated slowness—but he waved her off. He was sliding the rack back and forth on the top of the table, packing the balls together tight, when he saw someone walking up to the table.
“Werewolf?” the man whispered.
Geringer turned quickly and gripped the man’s arm tight, his fingernails digging into the undersides of the man’s wrist. “Don’t say that name here, dumbass,” he said.
It was Nick Kalodimos, son of Costas Kalodimos, who was one of the Robber Baron’s top cronies. Geringer smelled fear on him. And curry. But despite the pain, despite the fear, Nick Kalodimos met his eyes. “I’m here on orders,” he said. “A message.” He was tall and thick-necked, with buzz-cut black hair and olive skin. He was wearing jeans and a tight black T-shirt that showed off his muscles. He was proud of those muscles. He looked over at Poteete. “You know who from.”
Poteete took a swig of his beer. He smiled a little. Geringer realized that he was quite satisfied about something. Politics, he figured. The Robber Baron sending Costas Kalodimos’s son to give them a message, that was a compliment to the Cirque d’Obscurité, a slap in the face to the Kalodimos family. Nick Kalodimos was feeling it, too. Despite his swagger, he was angry to be there on this errand. “Yeah,” said Poteete. “So tell us what you’ve got.”
Nick smiled then, a little of the fear dying off, replaced by satisfaction. “There are some people coming into town tonight looking for you—you and your buddies,” he said. He pulled his arm away from Geringer, glancing down at the streaks of blood on his arm from Geringer’s nails, trying to be nonchalant about it. “They’re gunning for you,” he said. “So the big man, he wants you to be prepared.” He made a point of sticking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans, ignoring the cuts. “The Storm Raiders are coming for you,” he said.
An hour after dusk, our sails furled and our oars quiet in the waters, we found ourselves looking upon the fortress of the masked devil St. Diable. Some of the men were afraid and prayed to Heaven. But we pressed on, for we sorely wanted to send Diable to gaol or to Hell. And then St. Diable and his men attacked from the darkness, running their ship into ours and climbing upon us. They were more like a kennel of hounds than men. They threw stinkpots and granado shells ahead of them, then ran in screaming with axes, cutlasses, knives, and pistols. I saw the masked madman himself run Captain Crabb through with his sword. I called out to God and dived into the water. . .
— Excerpted from The Sea Journal of Hamilton Grubbs, Written by Himself, 1731
Chapter Fourteen
Devil’s Cape, Louisiana
Now
The small cluster of buildings and the short runway that made up Fyke General Aviation Airport were poised at the far north end of Devil’s Cape, not far from Worldwide Papyrus’s Fyke paper mill. Built in 1955 by a club of flying enthusiasts, the airport had waxed and waned over the decades since, with the hard times nearly always shadowing the good. It still had a flurry of traffic during the daytime—mostly people taking flying lessons or the occasional Devil’s Cape businessman who chose not to use the Devil’s Cape Lakeside Airport or Sebastian Hebert International Airport. At night, though, it was almost always quiet.
Not this night. This night was chaos.
The Storm Raiders, the superheroes of Vanguard City, nicknamed “America’s Super Team,” had landed their specialized aircraft at the Fyke airport shortly after dusk amidst no fanfare. Within minutes, they’d been murdered.
Now the small airport was a cacophony of emergency workers, reporters, gawkers, and mourners. Firefighters had extinguished the tiny inferno that had been the Storm Raiders’ plane, and fire trucks stood with flashing lights on either side of the blackened wreckage like bodyguards with no one to protect. Dozens of police cars had swept into the area, as had television trucks, ambulances, and cars of “interested parties,” including the mayor and his entourage. None were parked in regular parking spaces. They were spread across the parking lot, scattered here and there up and down the runway, sprawled on the grass like late night picnickers. Three helicopters, two of them from national news outlets, swept back and forth overhead, jostling for position, their spotlights streaking across the disaster below, searching for new angles, new footage to transmit to a shocked and riveted public.
The air was hot and moist, and the scent of the fire lingered in the air. To Jason Kale, formerly Jason Kalodimos, it hadn’t been an unpleasant smell at first—at least until he stopped to think about what he was smelling. Then it became sickening. He was a television crime reporter and he’d covered fires before, but this was different. This was malevolent.
Jason had seen a lot since that night with David Dees nearly twenty years earlier. Jason had been the wild child then, playing at being a thug, playing at being the “bad son.” But the violence of that night, the violence that Julian, the golden child, had showed so quickly and with so little remorse, had changed them both. Jason had drawn back, distanced himself from every member of the Kalodimos family except his father, started paying more attention at school and spending most of his free time hanging around his father’s restaurant, silently trying to make amends for what he had done.
Julian, on the other hand, had found the violence exhilarating and unfettering. Suddenly, he was the one working for Uncle Costas, and seemingly going further with it than Jason ever had. He still hid their powers, but more than once, Jason spotted his brother with blood on his clothes, or found people turning away from him in fear. One spring day not long after their seventeenth birthday, Jason went into a Korean donut shop for some kolaches and the owner, a heavy, wrinkled man named Nah Jin, soiled himself at the sight of him. Tears of fear and shame ran down the man’s cheeks and he wordlessly waved his hands like fragile birds until Jason finally turned and left the store, a half-uttered apology on his lips, realizing that Nah Jin had mistaken him for his brother.
Their mother, Desma, had died of a heart attack when the boys were ten, and their father had always treated them equally until Jason’s flirtation with the “family business” had begun. The tension between Jason and his father had grown, until the air around them seemed filled with static electricity whenever they were in the same room. Even after the transformations brought on by the murder of David Dees, it had taken years for Jason’s relationship with his father to heal; Pericles seemed alternately to ignore Julian’s behavior and to blame Jason for it.
Jason and Julian, who once were inseparable, sometimes even sharing the same dreams or sensations—once, Jason had suddenly felt the overwhelming taste of oranges on his tongue, only to learn later that Julian had been eating one at that very moment—grew more and more uncomfortable in each other’s presence. Both attended college in Devil’s Cape, Jason majoring in broadcast journalism and Julian in business law, but their circles were separate, and they took to wearing their hair differently to avoid being confused for each other. Jason had started wearing glasses he didn’t need.
When Jason had begun his career as an investigative journalist for WTDC News, he’d changed his name to Kale to keep people from making the connection between him and his family. He’d even done stories on members of the Kalodimos family, although he avoided those when possible. He’d received no retribution, though most of his family avoided him now. He wondered if his father’s influence had protected him, or if perhaps Julian was responsible.
“You figure we’ll be here a
ll night?”
Jason had been staring at the wreckage, watching police crews taking pictures of the carnage. Two of them were chuckling over some joke and it made him want to throttle them. He turned around to see Dexter Koo, the WTDC cameraman working with him that evening. “Probably so,” he answered. He nodded at the laughing crime scene technicians. “Get a little footage of them, will you?”
Koo shrugged. “Y’okay,” he said, raising the camera to his shoulder. In his late forties, Koo was of medium height and weight, with long hair that stretched halfway down his back. He usually tied it off at neck level with a rubber band. He had a wispy moustache and was a perpetual gum chewer. “You’re always making me get shots like this that we’ll never use,” he said, smacking the gum. He didn’t sound angry, just bored. One of the worst assassinations in the history of the world and Koo was blasé about it. Jason wondered sometimes just what it would take to ignite a fire in Dexter Koo.
“We might use it for B-roll,” Jason said.
Koo shrugged the shoulder that didn’t have a camera on it. He was adept at performing a wide range of activities without making a sound or moving the camera as much as a quarter inch from where he wanted it to be. After a few seconds, he nodded to Jason. “Got it,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on them in case they high-five each other or something.” He smiled, purple gum showing between his teeth.
Jason was looking at the mass of lights and the wreckage, at the bodies of the Storm Raiders strewn around. The police hadn’t covered them up. He wondered if even the really good cops of Devil’s Cape resented the fact that the Storm Raiders had come to the city to clean up a mess that they’d failed to take care of themselves. “It was the Cirque d’Obscurité,” Jason said.
“Yeah?” Koo was only mildly curious.
“Yeah,” Jason said. He turned toward Koo and nodded for the cameraman to record him. Jason was tall and muscular, his skin darkly tanned, his brown hair wavy. He’d been told that the clear-lensed glasses he wore made him look distinguished and educated. The producers had tried to get him to wear contacts, but he’d put them off. The glasses made him look less like Julian, and that was what was important to him about them. This night, he’d taken off the navy blazer he’d been wearing and had thrown it in the WTDC truck. He’d rolled up the blue sleeves of his shirt, but hadn’t loosened the dark brown tie he wore. He stared into the camera, not sure what to say at first. Finally, he just began to talk. “Devil’s Cape is a very different city than Vanguard City,” he said. “Vanguard City was named for a hero, Devil’s Cape for a pirate. Vanguard City glistens with chrome and is said to be the cleanest city in the world. Devil’s Cape wallows in darkness and corruption, and its streets are perpetually choked with smog.” He saw Koo raise his eyebrows behind the camera, but barreled on. “Vanguard City has heroes, but Devil’s Cape has criminals. And when Vanguard City sent its Storm Raiders to Devil’s Cape, Devil’s Cape murdered them.”
Koo lowered the camera. “Well, shit,” he said. “Now there’s some more footage we won’t be using. You realize we work for a Devil’s Cape TV station, yeah?”
Jason waved it away. “It’s late and I’m mad,” he said. “Eighty-five percent of what I say tonight is likely to be crap.”
Koo shrugged and raised the camera again. He blew a bubble, then popped it. “Do me a favor and keep it to sixty-eight percent crap like usual, okay?”
Jason looked at the wreckage again, then back to the camera. He nodded for Koo to resume filming. “The last confirmed combat death for the Storm Raiders was twenty-two years ago in Vanguard City,” he said, “when the third Doctor Camelot fell in battle to the carnival troupe called the Cirque d’Obscurité, a group allegedly spotted in Devil’s Cape several times in recent weeks. The membership of the Storm Raiders has changed little since that time. A new person reportedly assumed the mantle of the Swashbuckler six years ago, and Velociraptor retired two years later, replaced by the Winged Tornado. But until tonight, the team remained essentially unchanged for more than two decades, a consistency practically unheard of in the superhero community, well-known for its shake-ups.”
Over Koo’s shoulder, Jason saw a heavyset man in a tan suit approaching. He sighed. “Take five, Dexter,” he said.
Koo flicked the camera off, glanced at the man walking up, and made the gum in his teeth snap. “Y’okay,” he said. He set the camera in their van, made a point of locking the door, and looked with distaste at the big man who had walked up to Jason. “I’ll go see if the cops left anything in the vending machines,” he said to Jason, then walked away, whistling the song “Officer Krupke” from West Side Story.
Jason nodded resignedly at the fat man. “Sergeant Bilbray,” he said.
Dustin Bilbray wiped his florid face with a thick handkerchief he pulled from a jacket pocket. “Mr. Kalodimos,” he said. “Always a pleasure to be approached by the media.”
Bilbray had been the one doing the approaching, but Jason let that part of the statement go. “It’s Kale now, sergeant,” he reminded the man.
Bilbray nodded, his jowls shaking. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “ ’Course. That’s for the cameras, I know.” He raised his eyes to Jason’s, his expression cunning. “But we both know who your family is.”
It wasn’t worth an argument, Jason thought. He stared at the disaster area. The police had set up a perimeter with a series of uniformed officers and orange cones. It was ostensibly to protect the crime scene, but with more than a dozen cops inside the cones, plus the mayor and an aide and the district attorney, it was clear it was more for show than anything else. Everyone knew what had happened. Everyone knew who’d ordered it. Everyone knew it would be a cold day in hell before anything much was done about it.
Jason could see pretty well at night, as well as over long distances. Extraordinarily well, actually. It was one of the abilities he and Julian had. He saw a police officer nearly trip over the boot of Patriot, the leader of the Storm Raiders, the rest of her body hidden by tall grass. The officer looked down at her, contempt and anger on his face, and kicked her leg. He looked up suddenly to see if anyone had noticed him, and Jason forced his gaze away. “Sergeant,” he said, “do you suppose you could do me a favor and get me a look inside there?” He nodded at the area inside the cones.
Bilbray patted himself with the handkerchief again. He whistled softly. He was a notorious suck-up, always on the lookout for an advantage or, better yet, a bribe. Jason’s Uncle Costas had joked about him one night at Zorba’s. “That coonass Bilbray,” he’d said, “when he was born, the first thing that came out of his mother was his hand.” He’d pantomimed this, to the laughter of several of his men.
“I’d owe you a favor,” Jason said.
Bilbray looked after Koo. “No camera,” he said.
“No camera.”
“No messing with the crime scene.”
“Of course not.”
“Five hundred,” Bilbray said.
Jason looked at him. Devil’s Cape never ceased to amaze him. The brazenness of it. He’d have trouble getting it reimbursed. With the camera, it wouldn’t be a problem, but five hundred dollars just to walk through there? But he needed to go in. It pulled at him. He needed to see these people, what had been done to them. “Okay,” he said.
Bilbray ran the handkerchief under his chin, then wadded it up and stuck it back in his pocket. He leaned in close to Jason, crooked his head at the crime scene, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Come on.”
Bilbray walked nonchalantly between two cones, nodding at a uniformed police officer standing there, and Jason followed him. Jason kept his eyes down, not making a deal out of it, not forcing anyone to acknowledge his presence. The roar of the helicopters overhead was giving Jason a headache.
The first body they came to was Swashbuckler’s, some thirty feet from the plane. He wore the sort of blousy ruffled shirt that Errol Flynn might have worn in a pirate film, pale blue and open low in front with ties stretched across his musc
ular chest. He wore high, heavy red gloves and flexible knee-high pirate boots over black pants. A red mask covered his entire face except for his eyes, which stared glassily at the helicopters overhead. There was no blood, but each of his arms and legs had been broken multiple times. They were bent in jagged angles like a doll worked over with a hammer.
Jason spotted thick furrows in the grass between the plane and Swashbuckler’s body. There was dirt and grass in the heels of his boots. He’d been dragged from the plane and had dug his feet in more than once trying to stop it. Like his predecessor, the hero lacked any superhuman powers that anyone was aware of. They were trained acrobats and specialists in savate, a French martial art that combined aspects of boxing with kicking maneuvers. The force that had pulled him forward was strong and fast and implacable.
“Kraken,” Jason whispered.
“What’s that?” Bilbray cupped one ear. “Damn helicopters,” he said.
Jason shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.
Jason had seen photographs of Kraken of the Cirque d’Obscurité, and video footage of the group’s long-ago battle with the Storm Raiders in Vanguard City, when Doctor Camelot had died. Kraken was a revolting, hairless figure, his skin dry and smooth and scaly like a snake’s. His body was fluid, bending and curving like a dancing cobra, unhindered by the limitations of joints or the angularity of bone. And he could stretch. In the battle on Vanguard City’s Roscoe Clay Bridge, he had reached one arm across three lanes of traffic to snatch a hostage off of a motorcycle.
In his imagination, Jason could see the Swashbuckler’s death. The young man had jumped gracefully out of the plane onto the runway, and Kraken had reached out from the grass, not far from where Jason now stood, grabbing him without warning. Maybe by an arm, maybe by the waist. Kraken had dragged him forward. Swashbuckler had dug his heels into the ground, trying to gain leverage and stop the motion, but he’d been dragged along regardless. He’d struggled to free himself, but with no leverage, no joints to press against. The Kraken’s arms had coiled around him again and again, first around the legs, then the arms, and finally the neck, the crack of his bones breaking sounding like a row of dominoes going down.