Epilogue One
Admiring Wally is a hobby of mine, one I was engaged in as she lazed in a chaise lounge in the backyard. I’d seen at least two boats veer wildly as their respective drivers stared at her magnificence, and upon closer examination, I found their erratic steering to be completely understandable. Wally had opted for near-total nudity, a state in which she moved effortlessly about the mundane tasks of her life, and as her partner, it was a trait for which I was eternally grateful. She covered her eyes with one hand, squinting upwards into the sun, and awarded me a brilliant smile. I leaned down to kiss her, and she pulled me to her, while patting my cheek with one sweaty hand.
“It is very hot, dear,” she pouted, and then laughed as I winked and went inside to grab a cold beer for the sun worshipper. It was hot, and the early afternoon sun was turning a lazy day even lazier. Gyro, who hadn’t moved from next to Wally’s chair, clearly agreed that the day should best be eased into, and our expectations should be light. Risa stood at the door and spread her hands in a question. I mimed a drinking motion and Risa nodded her head in understanding, disappearing into the living room. When I stepped into the cool of the house, Risa was busy at the kitchen counter, slicing a sour orange into thin wedges.
“I’m making the blonde an orange juice first, then she can have beer at dinner,” Risa explained, shaking ice and fresh citrus juice into an insulated cup.
“Delaying her buzz? Cruel, but necessary, I forgot that we’re having family dinner tonight. What’s the occasion?” I asked, helping myself to a plump section of fruit. Risa slapped at my hand, but missed, and in mid-chew, she bade me open my mouth again, where she deposited a second juicy piece of the rough-looking fruit that was both bitter and sweet. She leaned against me for the briefest instant, and in that second of contact, her touch told me of her relief, her love, and the existence of our bonds. It was the kind of intentional bump that takes a lifetime to create, and is only intended for those who we hold closest to us, a secret word through touch that translates, we made it, I love you, we’re still here, and then, it’s gone.
Risa stirred the drinks with her pinky and then began shedding her clothes. “Might as well, although . . .” She let a gusty sigh loose, and I could feel the frustration in her motions.
“What, babe? We’re okay. We made it, again. We made it.” I didn’t know how to elaborate. Sometimes my failure with language was maddening.
“I know.” She put a hand flat against my chest, and looked over my shoulder where Wally sunned. “It’s her, not me, not us. I just realized that this last encounter made us all a little more, well, special. Our augmentations are accelerating, I think, which means that Wally is a little less human, right?” She grinned ruefully.
“And? I don’t follow.” I didn’t. Things were great, what could be wrong.
Risa waved expansively at Wally, who turned to the side and invited us both out with her smile and a crooked finger. “It pains me to say this, but she’s never going to have to wear a bra, is she? I mean, look at those things. First I had to deal with Delphine and now—”
I roared with laughter and pulled her to me. “I guess we’ll just have to live with her supernatural tits. We can struggle along.” She kissed me, and I tasted the orange on her lips, a dose of the purest sunshine.
Gyro cut loose with insane barking. He had burst up from his sleeping position and rushed to the corner of the dock, where he unleashed a torrent of deep, worried barks that verged on hysteria. He never sounded that way, and all three of us surged into action, ringing him and calling soothing sounds to try to make sense of what had him worked into frenzy. Wally had a glass candle holder in one hand, she’d snatched it up from the patio table, and Risa and I had nothing, save our drink glasses, now empty and held outward like weapons.
“Come on, big boy, come back, ‘sokay, ‘sokay,” Wally cooed, eventually causing Gyro to turn his head to her with a questioning whine. He slinked back toward us, an impressive feat for a two hundred pound animal, and took up a position exactly between Wally and Risa. I touched him gently on the withers, and he whined again, ending it in a piteous upward note that described his fear and consternation.
“Oh, my God,” Risa said, in a hushed tone. We all stood utterly still, not certain we were seeing something real, or an apparition. Small spatters of water darkened the wood of the dock. They had arrived from a near right angle at the very edge of our property, yet still only twenty feet from where Wally had been laying.
It sat innocently on the concrete of the seawall. Don’t mind me, I’m just here for the view, I imagined it saying, but I reached out and picked up the canopic jar with a hesitant hand. It was cool and damp, and on the side was a single hieroglyph that was completely different from what had been painted onto the containers that Satet had used during her vivisection of Nectanebo. Something rattled inside, a dry, rustling sound, nothing like what I expected.
“Open it?” Risa whispered.
We all nodded, realizing that if anyone had intended us harm, they could have simply slit our throats, especially a goddess who commanded waters such as the Nile. I resolved to make myself vigilant in ways I hadn’t thought possible after such a violation of our personal space, but for now, curiosity won out. I twisted the lid and it opened smoothly, but with the grittiness of fine, unglazed ceramic. Two full turns and the lid came loose, but I kept it securely over the base and placed it softly onto the dock.
“Should I?” I asked, and Wally shook her head. Risa shrugged.
I lifted the lid. The corner of a piece of papyrus jutted up, and I lifted it upwards with the delicacy of someone working in a bomb squad. The paper came free, a cleverly wrapped enveloped that tucked into its own sides, and there was a small object within. On the outside, I saw words, scrawled with black ink in a bold hand. Risa gasped, and I had to read it twice to make sure I understood. Wally said nothing, but looked at the water of the canal, now silent, and then back at me.
Even a Goddess sometimes wishes to taste waters other than her own. I rather like this place. I shall see you again, friends.
Risa laughed and unfolded the papyrus, letting the tube of lipstick fall into her palm.
Epilogue Two
Bern, Switzerland
Wally snapped several commands in German at the secretary, a woman whose frosty expression and tidy desk made her even less friendly than the austerity of the bank lobby. We’d flown first class, dozed easily, and after a reasonable meal, arrived at the bank in remarkably good form. Raiding an ill-gotten bank account seems to buoy my spirit, and I had every intention of allowing Herr Krieger to speak until one of us beat him into submission. He was easily as guilty as any of the Undying we’ve put down, and none of us felt particularly charitable at that moment.
We were escorted into his office, only to find it empty, save a safe deposit box in his desk. Before any of us could move, a side entrance opened and there stood the man who had funded so much pain that I became lightheaded just seeing him in person. Wally and Risa must have experienced the same feeling, because his eyes darted among us with the appearance of a hunted animal. He straightened his tie, an absurdly urbane gesture for someone of his deplorable character, and cut his eyes at the open doorway.
“Before you kill me, or whatever it is you have planned, I would show you something.” His manners were impeccable, but a note of desperation crept into his voice.
Wally muttered something and took half a step towards him, but Risa grabbed her arm and said simply, “Together.”
I was unarmed, but so was he, and I sauntered to the opening with carefully guarded caution. Seeing that the danger of being instantly dispatched was past, he picked up the metal box and tucked it under his arm.
“I will go down first. Please feel free to push me down the stairs if you feel threatened; you have my word I will not resist.” His expression of inquiry was greeted with suspicion, but we allowed him to descend the stairs, which began as polished wood, but transitioned into ro
ugh stone, and then moved outward instead of down. The faint smell of mold and dust hung in chilly air, and the walls were layered stone that was so old, I couldn’t tell if it was mortar or merely mud in between the erratic slabs of rock. Risa looked back at me in confusion, but I only shrugged. This was as odd a turn of events as I could have imagined, even for our colorful expectations. At the end of a long, dank passage, we were deposited into an even less appealing room, lit with a single glaring bulb that hung from a nail driven into a hand scraped beam. The ceiling was low, perhaps only three inches above my head, and the walls were a whitewashed version of the same stone we had seen in the stairs on the way down. In the middle of the room rose a squat stone table. A raised lip ran around the entire structure, and the middle was a smooth surface, apparently worn flat with use, or time. A circular drain hole at end opened to the floor, and there were tool marks scoring the tabletop at random intervals. With one look, I knew that the room was soundproof. A chill crept up my spine and I began to detect the lightest scent of blood and corruption.
“What is this place?” Risa whispered.
Wally’s eyes darted nervously about. I understood why, it seemed as if the walls were going to come alive. Everything about the space offended my senses.
Dieter leaned casually against the table. “This is a dying room. It was carved long ago to house victims of disease, a place where they could sweat and shake out their last miserable hours away from those who had managed to avoid the sickness. The walls here are haunted, I think.” He looked around thoughtfully.
I suspected he was right. “Why are you showing us this?” I asked.
He paused and then tapped a finger against the stone table, hard. “This is the place, right here.” Moving around the side, he trailed a finger against the smooth stone. “My father died here, and his father before him. I have found what records I could, discreetly, of course, but past a certain point, it becomes challenging to find clear evidence of my family.”
Wally stopped him. “How far back?”
He nodded in appreciation of the question. “To the Middle Ages, at least, but I have found . . . echoes, you would call them, of our family name, and much further back in time. My method for seeking such evidence is rather simple.”
“You look for Elizabeth, and then in the periphery, you find your family,” Risa stated.
He grinned wryly. “Correct. Always at fringe, never in the light. She took control of us so long ago; I do not think there has been a free generation of my family since the fall of Rome.”
Wally made a noise of astonishment. “But this will not free you now. You know this, yes?”
He nodded ruefully. “I do, Waleska. I did not think to bring you here as a ploy to appeal to your better nature. There is no other choice but death when one becomes the property of creatures such as Elizabeth. One simple mistake, more than a millennia ago, and every firstborn male has died on this very table, some due to their incompetence, others for love, and then there is me. One who would give himself to the knife if only to close the circle of this horrible practice. I will present you my neck willingly Ring, if only to rid the world of the last echoes of that beast. And, before you ask, here is what you will need.” He produced a small envelope and handed it to Risa. “Ten and twelve digit account numbers. I think you’ll find that Elizabeth’s holdings will cause more problems than they will solve, but that is a matter for you to decide. My time here is complete.” He began to loosen his tie, and slipped his jacket off, spreading it carefully across the table. He glanced at the deposit box sitting on the corner of the table where he had placed it with great care. “This box contains all of the Baron’s jewelry, and something else that you will find most useful when I am gone. He was a real man, you know, a good man, one who was killed in a most gruesome manner by his young bride, but not before she seized control of his family lands and fortune. I think I would have enjoyed knowing him.” He continued disrobing in a matter-of-fact manner, a trim, middle-aged man underneath all of the trappings of a banker.
“Do you have a family?” Risa asked.
He shook his head sadly. “No, Elizabeth pressured me to marry, but I knew her motives were impure. She only wanted another generation of sheep to manage her fortunes while she continued to climb, but I refused to give in to her urgings. I cannot tell you how many truly exquisite women hurled themselves at me, all recruited by Elizabeth, all blissfully unaware of their role in a grotesque breeding program designed to make slaves out of their male children. I should have been a priest, since celibacy actually came quite easily to me.” He laughed again, a bitter, harsh cough.
“What happened to the female children?” Wally asked, her head cocked to one side in thought.
Dieter frowned from his perch on the side of the table. “Oh, they became daughters of someone other than their biological mothers.”
“Didn’t their mothers fight for them?” I asked.
Dieter spread a hand to encompass the room. “I never said that only men were killed down here. Elizabeth found many uses for this place.”
I liked the room even less, if that were possible. The ghosts of women fighting for the children screamed from the stone of the walls, and the temperature seemed to drift even lower. Dieter looked warily at a low, discolored section of the south wall. It was smeared with residue and the stones looked slightly recessed.
He sighed, a long, desperate loosening of breath and tension that could only come from a man carrying a fatal burden. With a lonely smile, he said, “There is nothing to be done about my soul, I fear, but in denying Elizabeth her birthright of more sycophants, I hope that I have spared the world some measure of evil, no matter how small. When you leave this room, take what I have given you and use it to erase the hatred and sorrow that they breed, and never forget your own humanity, though all the barriers of immortality may rise between you and the people you once were. Promise me this, if only that I may go to the end knowing that something may rise from the centuries of pain.” He produced a small knife from his pants, a tiny blade that was more needle that cutting instrument, and straightened himself on the table. With a single nod and one last breath, he carefully opened the artery in one wrist, and then the next, still regarding us with eyes that burned with shame and determination. The blood ran freely, pooling instantly on the stone and beginning its short fall to the implacable floor. Dieter turned his head to us and jerked a thumb at the door, breaking us from the shock of his slow, deliberate act of sacrifice. “They’ll be here soon,” he said, his eyes flitting across the recess in the south wall I now saw what was no mere indentation, and Risa pulled at my arm as she too recognized the despoiled doorway, low, covered in dried fluids, and far too short for a human to use. All those victims and no bodies. No bones, ever, and now, the question as to where they went were answered. The first shriek of the approaching beasts echoed against a hidden tunnel, carrying sounds of guttural growling that may have been language once, but not now.
“Go. I am at peace,” Dieter said, as his eyes drooped and then closed, and as one, the three of us began to ascend the stairs in complete silence. Behind us, the wet noises of feeding echoed from the ancient stones, and as I put my shoulder into the door to close the passage forever, I resolved to honor Dieter’s wishes. It was the least we could do.
* * *
Waiting in the airport, our collective shock was consumed by the enormity of what we had witnessed. It was the proverbial iceberg, but in this case, we had a clear vision of exactly what lurked beneath the surface. Velvet drawers held a collection of jewelry that spanned time and humanity, there were gems and metals of such exquisite composition, Risa immediately concluded that no human had created them. Secreted under the obvious treasures was an object that made the entirety of the box pale in comparative value. A book, dense and ancient, tooled with marks in a long forgotten tongue and filled with pages of names and diagrams in every language we had known, and many that we could not imagine.
“It’s a
genealogy. Kept by Dieter’s family,” Risa’s said with the reverence of someone who has just found the Holy Grail, which, in a way, it was, at least for our purposes. Centuries fell away in an instant as she delicately picked at the heavy pages where lurid colors leapt out at the eye, declaring a living record of evil that spanned no less than four millennia. She closed the book and slipped it into her coat, closing her eyes with thanks at the gift from an enemy who was even now feeding horrors that lurked in long lost tunnels.
Wally looked into the distance, and then put her hand on Risa’s arm. “With these names, they cannot hide.” Her voice seethed with barely contained anger and triumph. Risa smiled at her, shaking her head and clenching her fists.
“Remember when we said we would go on the offensive, if only we knew how to start?” I asked.
Wally and Risa both murmured our agreement. Risa smiled. “Oh, we can now. And they’ll never see us coming.”
It was only now becoming clear what the book meant to us. Wally looked meaningfully at the box. “We certainly have the treasure.”
“And,” I began, pulling them to me in an embrace. “We also have a map.”
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Box Set: The Fearless 1-3 Page 74