Box Set: The Fearless 1-3

by Terry Maggert

  “The Prince of Lies may be the Princess of Lies, right?” I was open to it. After seeing what Sandrine could do, I was ready to believe anything.

  Risa disagreed, I could tell before she spoke. “Let’s stop thinking about an immortal as having gender. Think about their disguise as camouflage adapted to their situation. Ring, you’re our muscle. The killer, the final step. What appeals to you?”

  “You mean other than Delphine’s tits?” I ducked Wally’s punch, but Risa clipped me on the shoulder. I had it coming. “Okay, seriously. Anyone could look at us and see what I crave. I’m living a life anyone would be jealous of. I have the physical, the mental, emotional satisfaction, too. Leisure time, income. I have it easy, except for the whole immortals trying to kill me thing. But aren’t you making the same assumption that we made about Satan, just applying it to me? That because I’m an incredibly desirable, virile male, all I would want is physical pleasure, in the form of beautiful women? Who is being predictable now?” I raised a brow at Risa.

  Sighing, she got up from the table. “I’m not suggesting that immortals are always that subtle. Not at all. Let me ask you, what did you find intriguing about your flirtation with Suma? Or better still; tell us what made you so enthusiastic about engaging in play with Delphine? Other than her tits, of course.” Wally snickered at my discomfiture, but I considered the question.

  “The…thrill? With Suma, the forbidden nature of it, maybe, because of Boon and Pan? Maybe the same reasons for Delphine. Like a sexual chess match where I knew I was badly outplayed before I sat down at the table, but I thought that there was more to it than just, I don’t know, withstanding her onslaught, her experience? So that we would win?” There was more to this than I could articulate. I could feel it.

  “What about us?” Wally asked. “Did thinking about us make it dangerous?”

  Saying yes meant that I had considered far more than just their ire at my connection with Delphine, or how I would react to Elizabeth, or any other women connected with Cazimir. The truth was, I had. And my face told of it.

  Honesty first, I decided. “Of course I had. I couldn’t deny that line of thinking. I mean, what if I didn’t come home as the same man? Would we still have a home? I didn’t want to admit my own weakness. Not fear, just uncertainty. I didn’t know if I could be changed beyond recognition, and if that happened and neither of you were there, would you be left behind? How could we turn back the clock?”

  Wally was standing next to me now. I could feel her possessiveness like a firm grasp on my arm. “I do not think you understand how much we already have changed, Ring. We are closer, yes? So how could you be pulled away from us if we are holding on that much tighter? I do not think that we need to worry about this Elizabeth, or Delphine, or even the Baron in his lonely outpost. I think that they need to start worrying about us.”

  Risa nodded, forcefully. “We’ve already taken the fight to them, and now we will meet Elizabeth. If she is not the end, then we find Karolina, or Stacia. Maybe we visit the forest one day. But don’t worry about losing us, because we aren’t worried about losing you, okay?”

  It was just the right tonic for me. I knew we were on solid ground, and that my risks were physical, not emotional. At heart, I am a soldier, and we always fight better knowing we can go home. It was time to go to the Corral. It was time to close the circle. We would leave with Elizabeth, or she would be leaving in a torrent of blue motes. The choice would be hers.

  71

  This time, my knife stays close. I was going into friendly ground, and I meant to be armed, in position, and ready. All on my own terms. Delphine taught me a valuable lesson about beautiful distractions. I would not repeat the mistake, no matter what manner of flesh drifted across my line of sight. We were collectively ensconced in the Corral before the postwork throng began to fill every spare seat. And occupy every girl. Petra emerged from the back, attired in a tuxedo vest that barely covered her small, high breasts. A thong hugged her bottom and displayed her legs for maximum effect. If she was trying to make money, she would need a dump truck to carry it away, but her purpose lay elsewhere. For an acting job, it wasn’t bad, as I watched her navigate the sexual minefield of handsy mechanics, attorneys and other nameless men who reached for her with each pass. Her attention was split between her surroundings and the door, which meant that we were in the right place at the right time.

  Elizabeth walked in like a wall of ice, beautiful, impenetrable, and frigid. I had sorely undersold her magnetism and beauty, because even in the dim light of the club she glittered with the light of an approaching star. She was magnificent in the same way I can admire a sword, or a falcon, or a stalking cat. Her purpose, to anyone who would look closely, was clear, and her design, flawless. She flowed onto a stool and motioned once to the bartender, who was instantly at her service. The seat next to her was conveniently empty, and Petra had gone to the front, called by Blue upon seeing my movement towards the bar.

  Risa and Wally watched from the office, silent save their breathing in my earpiece. There was no need for talking now, only me, and the decision before me. Kill her here, or elsewhere under a pretense I would create. I had little faith in my ability to charm the devil, so I took two steps across the carpet, negotiating an oblique path to her side.

  Elizabeth then quelled any notion I had of being her equal in that moment. Turning to me, across the crowd, she patted the stool next to her and waved me over, playfully, without fear. Totally aware of my intent before I had formed my plan in my own mind. Her prescience was disturbing, her mockery complete, but I went to her and took a seat next to the mistress who seemed to know entirely too much about my own thoughts.

  I sat without greeting as she poured champagne for me, and herself, tapping our glasses together in solidarity. I was too stunned to drink, but she smiled and implored me.

  “Taste the wine, Ring. It’s excellent. Not the usual fare for such a colorful purveyor as your friend Blue.” The layers of her knowledge seemed limitless after that simple invitation. I proceeded carefully.

  “I won’t insult you by reaching for my knife, but it is most certainly close enough for me to use if I feel…pressured. You’re visiting my friend’s establishment, and more importantly, my home. What can I do for you, Elizabeth?” I sipped. She was right, the wine was crisp.

  She focused on me, turning in her seat. Her charisma was nearly oppressive despite her cool reserve. “You have to imagine my confusion over your predicament. On the one hand, you have a seemingly caring father who seeks to return his heir to her place at his side. And along the way, you’ve been asked to bring his collection of baubles, which is scattered to the winds, but still manages to end up in your hands by some twist of fate. Then, there is the jealous sister, a jumped up streetwalker whose accent and concept of taste are both, let’s say -recently acquired, shall we? Her framing of me as the penultimate evil is petty, but not unforeseen. She has quite a taste for men, doesn’t she? And a truly dreadful collection of occupations over the centuries, but always returning to her roots as a camp whore, on her knees in smoky tents for bread and protection. You’ve been asked to kill me based on what evidence, may I ask?” Elizabeth was composed and in good humor, both of which made me nervous.

  “I don’t care about Delphine. She isn’t new to me, just a different name, a different accent, but always the same greed. And pride. No, I find myself having a difficult time not killing you because of three little acorns. The ones that you seeded me with, that nearly killed me? Those make me so much less forgiving. In fact, my good manners are nearly extinguished, just like you will be soon, because of something as simple as a good old fashioned murder attempt on your part. Unfortunately for you, my resistance is quite high, even to such unusual methods as you used. So you see, Elizabeth, despite the fact that you’ve given me this truly lovely wine” and I saluted her with my glass “I find that I’m not in the forgiving mood tonight.”

  Pouting was not her style. Her eyes took on
a steelier shade and she held out her phone to me, the image causing me to stop short of reaching for my knife.

  Suma. She was spread eagle on a table, nude, with livid red marks on her stomach and thighs. I could guess what from, and my stomach flipped, curdling with impotent rage. Bile hit my tongue and I sat very still, waiting for the moment to stabilize until the floating motes in my sight drifted away and I could once again focus on Elizabeth’s perfectly beautiful, evil face. I examined the picture again. On a chair next to Suma crowded two knives, their blades dull and smeared. An ashtray, with cigarette butts strewn about it, and a lighter. In the picture was a new player in our ugly drama, female, tall, thin, with long dark hair and intelligent eyes. She was waving shyly at the camera. You caught me! Her casual embarrassment was jarring, given the background of Suma.

  Elizabeth tucked the phone in her purse, watching me for motion. It was the first reasonable thing she had done since arriving, because I was on a knife edge and leaning towards killing her right there. “Ring, I’m afraid we’ve started our discussion on a sour note. I apologize for…inconveniencing your friend, but I had to guarantee that you would listen to reason.”

  “Reason?” I was apoplectic. I shook in my seat, my hands on the bar and the skin of my knuckles ghost white. She was so close to the end.

  “Let me say something once, and I want you to remember this when I leave here tonight- and I will leave, no matter your plans for my demise. I am not who, or what, you think I am. I am a woman who is surrounded with a family that diverged from this world long ago. I am made from their thread, but I am not of their cloth. Remember that when you try to kill me, won’t you? Now, on to other matters. I can see by your reaction that I’ve misjudged your opinion about asserting my safety. When I am in my car, safe, I will make one call. One. Suma will be freed. She will call you immediately, and Karolina will help her to her vehicle, to come home to you and her family.” She rose, brushed her lips over my stony face and patted my hand. “A good friend knows when to let pride lose a battle. Let’s hope you are a true friend to Suma. Goodbye, Ring. Leave my family alone, or don’t. The choice is yours, but know that eventually, you are going to lose to an undying soul who will not kill you, and then you will begin to understand what real sacrifice can be.” Even in the clatter of the bar, her heels sounded like the nails in my coffin, pounding with mockery at my weakness as Suma, Suma, I am sorry, forgive me looped in my head, unending and without care for my shame.

  We sat in my truck, mute. Risa and Wally waited for some sign from me that I was going to take action, but I was paralyzed with my failure. Watching Elizabeth leave the Corral unmolested was close to castration for me, but watch her I did, hating every step she took with a ferocity borne of fear. A moment later, my phone rang. Elizabeth.

  “Ring, I’m sending you a picture. Pay attention to detail this time, and I’ll see you soon, I’m sure. A storm is coming to your home, which means trouble for my family.” She delivered this news as fact.

  “Does this picture have anything to do with Suma’s freedom? Because if it doesn’t….” I let the threat hang, no matter how empty.

  Elizabeth laughed, patronizing and cold. “You fear someone who you have already dispatched. A slip on your part, to be sure, but understandable given your excitability. I may choose to travel soon since it will shortly become very unpleasant here. Or don’t you pay attention to the weather? I would think a mariner such as you would at least be aware of an oncoming hurricane, which causes such problems with my family’s dinner plans. So many tourists taking wing, it makes other venues seem more attractive. Batten your hatches, Ring. Perhaps we’ll talk before I leave.”

  With a click, she was gone. I looked at the image she sent to my phone, closely. It was the same scene as she had shown me in the Corral. Suma, a victim. Karolina, the torturer. There were two small differences. My stomach fell a thousand yards, crushed by the deception of the picture.

  “What is it?” Risa asked, as Wally leaned in from the back seat.

  “Suma. Her hand. I’m such a fucking idiot, look at her hand. Elizabeth won, and I didn’t even fight her.” I handed my phone to Risa, burying my head in my hands with relief and anger. Suma was fine. Safe. And had been all along. The picture showed a woman with a hand that was slightly deformed, cast in shadow, a single extra knuckle pushing outward due to a momentary loss of control. It was not Suma in the image. Finn, who was now ashes in the water, dead by my hand. The scene was staged by Elizabeth, no doubt days before I discovered Finn’s true nature. She used the picture as a trump card, knowing that we would tighten our noose around her neck, but fear for Suma’s life would cut the rope clean.

  And I let Elizabeth walk past me to safety, freed by a lie.

  72

  A storm was, in fact, coming. Beaches emptied of tourists, just as Elizabeth predicted in her damnably reasonable voice. Our previous concerns let a monstrous weather event sneak upon us, so in a harried afternoon, Wally and I attached plywood to every window on our house while Risa lowered the metal shutters at the Hardigan center. This routine was old hat to us, and we performed like a somewhat oiled machine, with only minor scrapes to show for our efforts at circumventing the fury of nature. I sensed that Elizabeth would not have mentioned the storm had she thought it would turn elsewhere.

  I was unfortunately correct in my assessment of her value as a weathervane. Boon, Pan, Suma and the kids came to stay with us; the remainder of our center friends went inland with relatives, or in the case of Angel, to an Armory where his church group volunteered. We were collectively as safe as could be, watching the angry bulk of the cheerily named hurricane Jenny bearing down on the coast. Landfall, if it hit Hollywood, would be at dusk, nearing full tide, and when the city was most vulnerable. The situation did not look good, but with our family safe, riding it out together seemed to be the best possible plan. Vengeance was far from my mind, but that is an emotion with brawn, and before I would give control of my rage to the cause of Elizabeth’s demise, I had a call to make. To the forest, for one last warning, a mea culpa of sorts, for even if Cazimir was an immortal, he deserved to know that Elizabeth had well and truly slipped the leash, and even he could not consider himself safe in behind his barricade of trees.

  “Risa, time for one call to the Baron before the storm takes down the ‘net.” She opened her laptop, only to find the icon for the Baron’s call already pulsing in the corner. He had an open connection to us. She clicked, and the lodge flooded the screen. Along with a scene of death.

  Sandor and Ilsa’s feet twitched in unison, their bodies hanging from the beam that held the aurochs horns up for admiration. A wet stain colored Sandor’s pants, one last insult to his body as his bowels loosed in a heave. His tongue began to protrude from a mouth quickly mottling with anoxia. Next to him, Ilsa’s beautiful features were contorted in an ocean of agony. Her eyes locked on the camera for a fleeting second of recognition, then went dull as the weight of her muscular frame pulled vertebra apart with a dull snap. She died in seconds, tears and saliva streaking her face in a last baptism of pain.

  A hand slapped on the work table, the fingers turning white with effort. Cazimir. Rising, he dragged himself into camera height. His shirt was crimson and he held one arm across the breadth of his stomach, a soft pink coil peeked from the side of his bloodied hand.

  “She can be anywhere, Ring. Out of her mouth, only lies. Oh, that I ever fathered her, to visit such sin on the world.” His voice was reedy, failing. Looking past us at something unknowable, he slid from the table, and our view, and the connection went dark, just as the last breath of life left the haunted lodge in the forest of giants.

  73

  Rain began to hammer the plywood over the picture window in savage, slashing blows, while the wind rose and fell in a bass moan that crept upward in volume with each blast. After a meandering path pulling massive heat energy from the fertile Gulf Stream, Jenny had arrived. The canal was a crashing tub of violence, with whitecap
foam blowing off waves that were already topping the seawall and punching at the dock erratically. Aluminum caps of from each mooring post were ripped off and flung into the dark, speeding discs of wobbling metal. The entire dock swayed slightly and trees were bent, released, and bent again by the muscular gusts that ebbed but never relented. The water was gunmetal grey and it was hard to discern where the saltwater ended and the rain began.

  A palm frond banged against the kitchen window and was swept past instantly into the twilight. Awnings and street signs sang in metallic vibrato as the wind lashed them side to side. Risa and Wally sat silently, Gyro panting between them on the couch. They both looked at their phones watching weather radar.

  “It’s a direct hit.” Risa was calm but there was an undertone of worry. I understood. I checked on the kids again only to find Boon smoothing their hair and whispering to them as they lay curled under blankets alongside the bed, their fear keeping them from the window. Pan was leaning against the wall on his haunches, his hands clenched with frustration and worry. I stood looking out into the false twilight where shadows blew by in a torrent.

  My phone rang, startling me from watching the storm. I looked at the screen, surprised that a call could connect in the savagery outside. Elizabeth. I looked pointedly at the girls and answered.

  “Ring, I have a problem” she began. The clarity of her voice was shocking. I heard the snap of her lighter and the clink of glass. She sounded like she was in the next room. It was disconcerting, but so was her tone. She spoke in a friendly, conversational way.