by Adam Carter
Baronaire fought back, slamming a fist upon the wolf’s head. The beast yowled, but did not relinquish its hold, and without thinking did Baronaire fade into mist, re-forming a metre away and slamming down with his fist. There was a sickening crunch as his hand collided with the wolf’s head, and instantly did it explode into mist, spreading swiftly like blood in water. Baronaire could feel the mist moving about him, seeking the best place to land its attack.
Jeremiah re-formed to his side, in a crouch, striking out with his right fist before instantly reverting to mist. Baronaire span to land his own blow, but his arm passed only through mist, and Jeremiah was behind him, punching him in the side of the head and gone in the next instant.
Baronaire danced in futility for the next few seconds as Jeremiah landed blow after blow, and a deep rage was building within him. Thunder rumbled overhead and the ferocity of the driving rain attacked the rooftop in Baronaire’s anger, the raindrops bouncing a foot from the ground in an attempt to themselves slow down his attacker.
Again and again blows were rained upon him and Baronaire fell to his knees, the storm howling its outrage at his treatment. He stared into the pooling water, his body aching, his mind reeling. He sensed Jeremiah was standing nearby, and had no strength left to fight.
Jeremiah waited calmly, respectfully, and sensed his old friend had had enough at last.
“I’ve looked after you a long time, Charles,” Jeremiah said, his voice showing no sign of strain at all. “Do you remember when we first met? You were a child, and I took you in. I raised you, taught you all there was to know about who you were. I revealed your powers, showed you wonders. Do you remember the first time you killed a girl? Do you remember what that was like? Oh, how happy you were.”
There were memories, but Baronaire was fighting to recall specifics. He saw a girl with red hair. Long beautiful tresses. He was young, he could not recall how young, and she was his own age. He fought for her name, but it eluded him.
“And the motorway?” Jeremiah continued. “We intercepted a lorry; we planned that job for weeks. Waited until just the right moment before hijacking it, taking it from the road and unloading its contents. Do you remember what was in the lorry, Charles?”
Baronaire’s mind fought him, but the memories were there. “Girls.”
“That’s right. Shipped in from the middle-east. They’d been promised jobs but were on their way to brothels. We rescued them from that terrible fate.” He grinned. “Our first good deed, yes?”
“We killed them.”
“Of course we killed them. Ah, the drinking we did that night. It never made it to the public because they were illegals and the people bringing them in covered it up. We used to go after people like that. Those who wouldn’t be missed.”
“I remember a girl. A nightclub. I danced with her and followed her after the club. I can smell her perfume, can see the flashing lights. I caught up to her in an alley. She screamed, but I hit her. She went down. She cried, I remember she cried.” Baronaire looked into Jeremiah’s eyes. “She was eighteen, brunette dyed blonde, the only thing that smelled foul about her. Her dress was blue, barely concealed her hips. Her lips were cherry red, her scent pure honey.”
“Yes,” Jeremiah smiled. “Do you remember her name?”
“Laura. Laura White. We laughed in the club, we talked about shoes. I had to bluff, I had no idea what she was even going on about.”
“Tell me about the alley. What happened in the alley?”
“I struck her, she fell. I can see her face. Tears streaking her mascara, her perfect cherry lips smudged. She’s scrambling backwards, her dress catches some broken glass and tears. She tries to rise, but I’m there, forcing her down. She fights me, she bites my hand and I’m surprised. I step back and she finds her feet and runs, stumbling. I leap and I’m ahead of her. She strikes me with her handbag, the contents spilling everywhere. Make-up, perfume, a hand mirror. Loose change clatters like fresh snowfall.
“It’s Christmas. I can see that now. There’s a song playing in the background, maybe from the club. A Christmas song. I can hear the tune, but can’t quite make out the words.
“She’s running past me now and I grab her arm, twisting, surprising her with my strength. She falls again, her arm catching a loose nail, the skin tearing. I sense the blood, the aroma mingling with the urine and vomit of beer within the alley. It’s enticing, alluring. Erotic. There’s fear in her eyes, a pleading which somehow arouses me. She’s ... muttering something. Like the Christmas song, I can’t make out the words. She’s praying I think: as though God would enter as filthy a place as that alley behind the club.
“I grab her by the shoulders, pinning her arms, and my eyes meet hers. I will her to calm, silently command her to still herself. And she relaxes. All except the eyes. The eyes are always filled with fear, there’s no fooling the eyes. I can feel my gums itching. I want her, I want her so bad it hurts.” He shook his head. “What am I?”
“Better than human.” Jeremiah had approached him now, placed his hand upon his friend’s shoulder. “You were an adult when you killed Laura White. Your first adult kill. She was a nothing, a nobody, but you made her a somebody. You’ll remember her after her descendants would have long forgotten her.”
“I took away her chance for descendants.”
“Human life is transitory, Charles. No one cares.”
“Someone should.”
“Not us. We’re above that; we’re above them. Stop thinking of yourself as human. We’re not human. Not any more. Laura White was human, but there are so many billions of them who’s going to miss a few?”
“I killed her.”
“Yes you did.”
“I didn’t have to.”
“No. But there would have been questions. They would have hunted you. They might even have realised what you were. That memory, Charles, hold onto it. Do you honestly want to sully that memory with Francois Gorlinger?”
Baronaire turned cold eyes upon the cowering man. He wanted revenge, craved sustenance, but could not take it through this means. He could have anyone, man or woman, but it just wasn’t the same with a man.
Baronaire looked back to Jeremiah. “What am I? All our years together ... what am I?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremiah admitted. “Humans have many names for us, always have. The names change, the legends die, but we persevere. I’m old, Charles, older than you. Older than most of the names humans give us. But they’re human, they don’t matter. All that matters is what we are and what we choose to call ourselves.”
“And what do you call us?”
A twinkle came to Jeremiah’s eyes. “Predators. And the humans prey. They are our playthings, Charles. But if we give in to our baser emotions we aren’t merely what they fear; we’re what they despise. We’re better than them, we’re older than them. And we’ll outlive them.”
“But what are we?”
“We are God’s children, Charles. We are what God intended for the human race.” He could see he was beginning to get through and said, “I met a man once, long ago. One of us. I travelled with him for a while, he was a good man. I have a mission, Charles, I have a mission from God. And so did he. There are so few of our kind in this world, what are the chances of two of us having received instructions from the same God?”
“We’re not God’s children, Jeremiah.”
“Then tell me why we have such extraordinary abilities. It’s either God or the Devil, and I don’t believe in the Devil.”
“And me? I haven’t received any instructions from God.”
Jeremiah smiled, and there was something genuine to the expression at last. “No, Charles. You receive your instructions from me.”
Baronaire did not reply for several moments. Jeremiah had never opened up to him before about anything, and certainly not his past. But if there was someone else out there, someone like the two of them, Baronaire needed to find him. “This other man of God,” Baronaire said, “what w
as his name?”
“Richard.”
“And where is he now?”
“Asleep. But one day he’ll reawaken, and when he does this world shall tremble.”
Baronaire digested this. “You think we’ll subjugate the humans?”
Jeremiah laughed soundly, threw his arm about Baronaire’s shoulder. “My dear boy, we already do subjugate them. Now come on, let’s get back to Sanders and play happy families. At least for the moment.”
Baronaire did not resist. His mind was churning with strange emotions, but he could sense Jeremiah only wanted what was best for him. He noticed Gorlinger then, still shivering in the slowing rain. Jeremiah stared at the human, and Gorlinger collapsed. Baronaire looked at Jeremiah questioningly.
“Alive,” Jeremiah said. “He’s too important for us to kill him. There’d be too many questions. But he’ll wake up wondering where he is, how he got up here. He won’t remember us, and you didn’t leave anyone alive at the museum so there aren’t any witnesses to tell him anything.”
“Museum?”
“I’ll tell you about it when we get back.”
They walked to the edge of the building. The chill night air was reviving Baronaire’s memories as well as his senses. Sanity was at last returning. They leaped off the side together, allowing the winds to carry them for several seconds before dissipating into white mist, travelling the updrafts clear across the city, to where they would at last be able to rest.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Leaning against the concrete pillar which marked the edge of the car’s parking space, Jeremiah waited patiently for the return of his team. Thompson saw him a few seconds before Foster and contemplated running him down. Yet it wasn’t like Jeremiah to stand in the open and she knew he was waiting for them. Foster started when she too realised he was there.
“Run him down, Jen.”
Thompson did not smile. Perhaps Foster wasn’t the simpering waste of space she’d always felt, but things were far too serious for humour right now.
The two women were out of the car and upon Jeremiah in moments. Thompson was shouting at him, she couldn’t even remember afterwards what she was yelling about exactly, but it felt good to just let loose. Jeremiah stood calmly and took all her verbal abuse, and finally Thompson’s throat became dry and scratchy and she coughed, cursing him again for making her shout so much.
Jeremiah handed her a bottle of water. “Thought you might be needing it.”
“You abandoned us,” Foster said, not masking her own annoyance either.
“Yes,” Jeremiah admitted. “But the mission was to locate and rescue Charles Baronaire.”
Thompson unscrewed the top. “You got him?”
“He’s being debriefed.”
“How is he?”
Jeremiah shrugged. “He’ll pull through. He’s a tough one, Baronaire.”
“And were you right?” Thompson asked. “Did he take off with Gorlinger?”
“I think I said a few things I shouldn’t have,” Jeremiah admitted. “I was worried about my friend, I tend to ramble in situations like that.”
“I want to see him.”
“Be my guest.”
Thompson shoved the empty bottle back at him and stormed past. She held his eyes for several moments and then broke away. Jeremiah was a strange one. He claimed to be Baronaire’s friend, and there was no denying the two of them shared some form of bond. But Thompson had no idea what it was. They weren’t lovers, they weren’t related. They weren’t even all that friendly to one another. They just ... seemed to need one another. And that was something with which Thompson could not sympathise.
Behind her she heard Foster muster up all her courage and Jeremiah yelped as she kicked him in the shin. “Jerk,” Foster muttered and raising her head high marched back into the office. Thompson watched her go with a suppressed chuckle. Good on you, Sharon.
The bunker was pretty much as she had left it, just the same as it always was. She could see Sanders was alone in his office and realised Baronaire had already gone. He wasn’t at his desk, which meant Sanders had probably sent him home. The hospital would have been the best place for him, but Sanders didn’t like for his officers to go to hospital unless they absolutely had to. If Baronaire’s physical damage wasn’t too bad, there was no way Sanders would sanction it. Psychological damage was for spongers, so far as Sanders was concerned.
She felt a presence behind her then and found Jeremiah standing there waiting.
“You might have told me he’d gone home already,” she said icily.
“Looks like the debriefing didn’t take as long as I thought.”
Thompson ignored him and moved for the door, but Jeremiah stopped her by asking, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t have to answer to you.”
“It would be a very bad idea to go after Charles right now.”
“Maybe he needs a friend.”
“Maybe, but you’re not friends. Guy doesn’t even let you call him by his first name, what do you think you’d be able to offer him?”
“A shoulder to cry on maybe.”
“Charles Baronaire does not cry.”
“Maybe that’s why he needs a friend.”
*
She pulled in a lot of contacts, but finally Detective Thompson found herself staring at the back of a man she hardly recognised. Charles Baronaire sat with his shoulders slumped, his entire frame a sad dejection of life. It was not his dispirit that made Thompson look straight past him the first time, for everyone was down at some point in their lives. It was more that she was looking at his back and could see the stark white shirt he was wearing.
Charles Baronaire had voluntarily removed his trench coat.
Thompson knew things were bad but this was ridiculous.
She walked into the bar, finding it somewhat ironic that she had had to contact so many people in search of Baronaire, only to find him in her regular haunt. She had never seen Baronaire in this bar before, had never seen him in a pub at all actually unless he was chasing down a lead, and she felt a sudden wrenching in her stomach. It was almost as though she was annoyed he was infringing upon her private life, which was a ludicrous notion indeed.
She approached the bar slowly and took the seat beside him. She could never understand it, but Baronaire always knew where people were. He had good eyes, she had known that for a long while now, but his other senses seemed somehow better than everyone else’s. Her military upbringing made her jealous of that trick and she always meant to ask him to teach her how he did it. But then that would be admitting he was better at her in something, and Thompson never admitted that to anyone.
Strangely enough she had been sitting beside him for more than five seconds now and he had not looked up at her once. He just sat there staring into what appeared to be a glass of iced orange juice. She didn’t know what his choice of poison was, had never really socialised with anyone back at the bunker, let alone Baronaire, but she would never have put him down as an orange guy.
The bartender, Kayleigh Waters, came over and Thompson ordered a drink, leaning over to whisper in her ear, “What’s he drinking?”
“Not much. Just sits there.”
“How long’s he been here?”
“’Bout an hour I guess. You interested?”
“Get outta here.”
It felt strange talking to Kayleigh in front of someone else Thompson knew. Kayleigh was just her bartender, yet she was strangely enough the closest thing to a friend Thompson had outside of work. It was a sorry thing to have to admit, so Thompson did not dwell upon it overly, but perhaps Baronaire wasn’t the only one who needed a friend right now. Kayleigh brought her drink and departed, eyeing Baronaire strangely. Thompson did not bother to explain that yeah he had that effect on people. Throughout the entire whispered conversation, however, Baronaire had not stirred.
Thompson cleared her throat. He still didn’t respond.
Rubbing her chin in thought, Thompson s
idled her chair closer and nudged him in the ribs. “What’s a nice guy like you doing in a dive like this?”
He noticed her then. He did not snap out of a funk, he wasn’t a million miles away; he just turned his head and saw her. “I don’t want company right now,” he mumbled.
“Tough, ‘cause you got me. Buy ya a drink?”
“No. Just leave me alone.”
“No. How you doing? Jeremiah said you were OK.”
Baronaire snorted. “Look, I really could do without talking about it.”
“Then don’t come to my local.”
He was rising to leave but this made him stop. He sank back into the seat. “This your local?”
“Mmn, and I’m thinking that your coming here means you wanted to talk to me.” She tapped the side of her head. “Psychological genius, that’s me.”
“I don’t know what I want any more.”
“Try me. Even if I don’t understand it, it’s always good to get things out in the open.”
“Sanders ... wouldn’t like that.”
“Sanders isn’t here.”
He looked at her then. He really looked at her, for the first time since Thompson had sat down. She could see him considering things, and something within him simply shrugged a ‘what the hell?’ kind of shrug. “I don’t know who I am any more,” he said.
“Yeah, I get that.”
“I know I’m different. I ... The things I do, the things I yearn for. I’m a monster and I don’t think I want to be.”
“You’re not a monster,” Thompson said angrily. “Don’t even say that.”
“You really don’t know me.”
“You’re right, I don’t know you. But I trust what I see, and what I see is a decent, honest human being who’s willing to risk his life to save his colleagues.” She wanted to say ‘friends’ but knew that would have been pushing it. “Good men are rare these days, and you should be proud of that.”