by Jana Oliver
“Why’d you kill Nicci?”
“She thought I was Keats, and in repayment for rutting with her, she was willing to reveal where the explosives were stored. She’d scored that bit of knowledge from Effington, which meant both of them were liabilities.”
Would he know who Morrisey was? She sanitized the question. “A companion of mine is missing. He was helping diffuse the bombs. Do you know where he is?”
Satyr frowned. “No, but I suspect the Ascendant might. He was crowing about something when I was ordered to collect you.” He shifted position against the cushions. “You’ve annoyed a very powerful man, and I’d like to thank you for that.”
“Does your gratitude involve a knife in the chest or hands around my throat?”
“Neither. At least not yet.”
It was a bizarre truce of sorts. She got the sense he wanted to be here, not just because his master had sent him.
“What’s this angel thing about?”
Satyr let out an annoyed sigh. “From what I can tell, the Ascendant claims he’s been talking to a messenger from Heaven.”
“Did you ever see him, the angel I mean?”
A shake of the head. “I tried, but if he actually exists, he was very stealthy.” Satyr carefully adjusted a glove. “Was it really Defoe who tried to kill me?” he asked.
That was the clincher. The only people who knew of Rover One’s real name were her contemporaries, or those ahead in the time stream. “Yes, it was Defoe. He and Adelaide Winston were lovers. He blames you for her death.”
Satyr shook his head. “It was Tobin, not me. He used my likeness. He’s the Ascendant’s favored man at present. Until I cut his throat, that is.”
“No little silver tube for him?”
“He doesn’t deserve that honor,” her escort snapped.
“How much did you know about the Lord Mayor’s Day plot?”
“Very little. I still don’t know all the details.”
She gave him the shortened version of how things had fallen out without mentioning the Futures.
“Good heavens,” Satyr said, shaking his head. “I have been blind. I should have confronted the Ascendant sooner.”
Cynda had to ask. “You’re obviously from…” she gave a vague wave. “Who are you?”
As he weighed the question, Satyr pushed aside the curtain and stared out into the darkness. With a nod, he turned back to her. “We have enough time. You’ve certainly earned that, Twig.” He drew in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “My name is Michael Gordon.”
“Sorry, never heard of you.”
He gave a bemused smile. “I’m surprised given my history. When I was five, my parents were told that I had a monster buried in my mind, and if I didn’t receive psychiatric treatment, that creature would break loose and kill people.”
Cynda blinked. “It did.”
“It needn’t have been that way. I was not a wicked child. If anything, I was rather benign, fond of reading books and grav-boarding.” There were the makings of a grin, but it didn’t quite come to life.
“I had one of those,” she said, dredging up a memory. “I modified it so it would go higher and faster. When I busted my arm, Dad took it away from me.”
“I never tampered with mine. I never tortured animals, or daydreamed how someone’s blood would feel on my hands.”
“So how did you—”
He frowned her into silence. “I had none of the usual markers of a serial killer. Still, I was snared by some innocuous test I took when I was in first grade. I was diagnosed with Pre-Emergent Sociopathic Disorder. That brought me to the attention of the Interventionalists. Are you aware of them?”
She would have spat on the ground in disgust if they hadn’t been in a carriage. “Yeah, I remember those creeps.” Shrinks who thought they could prune a kid and take them in a more “socially acceptable direction.”
“I failed the same test. They tried to pull that crap with my parents. They ignored them.”
Satyr’s face saddened. “My parents did not. To save their beloved son, they gave the psychiatrists carte blanche. By the time I was fifteen, I’d undergone medication regimes, behavioral modification, long stints in rehabilitation camps, even Electrical Stimulus Avoidance Therapy.”
Cynda shuddered. She’d heard about that. Attach a series of electrodes to a child, and if they thought or acted wrong, zap! The voltage went up each time. It was legalized torture masquerading as legitimate therapy.
“So let me guess—you killed them all, didn’t you?”
“My parents? Oh, no. I don’t hate them. They did what they felt was best. Instead, I killed the one man who went out of his way to persecute me—the psychiatrist in charge of my case. I took a great deal of time with him, no quick death for that fiend. Of course, then I’d validated all his work.” His expression darkened. “At least he didn’t live to collect the applause.”
“So how’d you get here?”
He waggled a finger. “Patience, Twig. This is my story, after all. After I canceled my psychiatrist, I turned myself in. There was the trial, conviction, then more tests, more medication, all of it. When none of it worked, they gave me the advanced treatment,” he said, pointing to his temple.
“They Null Mem’d you? Why? You’d only killed one person, not a city.”
“To reverse my psychopathic idiom, was the official explanation. In truth, they were furious I’d terminated my doctor, as if he were somehow inviolate. After they flushed my brain, I became part of a government study. The goal was to rehabilitate predators into polite members of society. I was put with another psychiatrist who patiently reconstructed me to ensure I wouldn’t feel the need to kill ever again.”
“Didn’t work,” she observed.
He grinned. “No, it didn’t. I rebuilt myself one memory at a time, and I learned from my mistakes. If I was supposed to be a monster, I would become the best there was.”
Cynda glowered at him. “With all you’d been through, how could you do that to me? You know what kind of hell that is!”
The grin faded. “It seemed right at the time. It still does.”
She slumped back in the seat, arms crossed over her chest. The ants were waking up. “Then just get on with it, will you?”
His expression hardened. “Once they realized the treatment only made me worse, my ESR Chip was removed, I was dressed in rags and put in a time pod.”
“They orphaned you on purpose?” She shivered involuntarily. “I figured maybe you’d stolen an interface or something.”
“It was deliberate. When I finally came to my senses, I was in 1768, in Bedlam.”
Cynda winced. In that time period, asylum inmates were shackled, beaten, starved, and taunted by gentry who came to see the mad people like caged animals in a zoo.
Satyr’s voice dropped. “I nearly did go insane in that place. I finally escaped—without killing anyone, I might add. I lived on the streets, stealing to survive. Because I showed promise, I was taken under the wing of a professional assassin, who became my patron. He taught me a code of honor. He was my guide to a new world.”
“You imprinted on him.” Like I did Theo.
Satyr looked puzzled. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Never mind…go on.”
“I honed my skills during that time, but I longed to be anywhere but the eighteenth century. It was unbelievably filthy,” he said, shaking his head. “I’d about given up hope, when I stumbled across a Time Rover who wasn’t paying attention. I bade my patron farewell and hitched a ride to 1887.”
“You can’t hitch with a Rover,” she argued.
“You can if you’ve got a knife at his throat.” As she opened her mouth to ask the question, he shook his head. “He did as I asked, and so I set him free. I doubt he reported the incident.”
“Got that right,” she agreed. Allowing a crazy to get from one century to another was a career-ending move, especially when the crazy wasn’t supposed to be in t
he time stream in the first place. “So who was he?”
“I didn’t bother to ask. We weren’t going to exchange letters down the line.”
He had a point. “Were you a shifter, then?”
“Yes, purely by accident. A lucky one, as it turned out. That’s how I found my patron, who was also Transitive. He taught me what I needed to know.”
“You’re a Virtual. You did it twice. I’ve heard that’s suicidal.”
Satyr shook his head. “Only once. I’m not stupid. I was very stunned to realize I could vanish. I think it had something to do with the NMR.”
He took a deep breath and added, “Once here, I applied myself, rose through the ranks of the Seven until I became Lead Assassin. Quite an astounding resume, don’t you think?”
“Almost unbelievable,” she said, cautiously. “This whole spiel could be a lie.”
“It could, but it isn’t.”
For some reason she believed him. “Why did you revert after the NMR? Didn’t you imprint on your shrink?” She had with Theo.
“Walter wasn’t the warmest of people, though he did try to ensure I didn’t come in contact with anything violent in nature. In his self-absorption, he forgot his bookshelves.”
“Walter Samuelson?” she blurted.
“Yes. I would guess you know his brother, the author, intimately.”
“Oh yeah, I know him.” Dalton Mimes, the man who’d put a knife in her chest.
“Samuelson had a selection of his brother’s books. I took to reading them when he wasn’t around. Graphic and extremely violent, every one of them. Mimes is a very sick man, you know?”
She wasn’t going to argue that one. “How many people have you blanked?”
“No one but you.”
The carriage ground to a halt.
“Why only me?” she demanded. “Why was I so special?”
An eyebrow rose. She was baiting the bear.
“I used the device because we need someone on our side,” he said.
“We?”
When those dark eyes met hers, she saw unimaginable sadness.
“I was not the only one they orphaned. When the study was decommissioned, they jettisoned us like some foul cargo into the time stream. Psychopaths, serial killers, the lot. All that mattered was that their failures disappear.”
Cynda’s mind reeled. The questions poured out. “Who did this? How many?”
“The Time Protocol Board was involved. At least a dozen of us, if not more, were turned loose to ravage our way through time.”
Over a dozen Satyrs. No, not like him. He’d adopted a code of honor, of sorts. There was no guarantee the others had.
“Are any of them here in ’88?”
“You’re thinking of the Ripper, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Yes. He’d fit the bill.”
“I don’t think he’s one of ours.”
Cynda sorted through memories. A name surfaced. “You’re Drogo.”
“Yes. We all had our code names. I was named after the patron saint of coffeehouses. Rather ironic—I’ve always disliked the stuff.”
“I found the word on a sheet of paper in Chris Stone’s pocket after they pulled out him of the Thames. Do you know how it got there?”
“No, I’m sorry.” A second later, Satyr’s voice grew rough. “I’ve long had nightmares of what it was like for the others, and what terrors they’d visited on the innocent in whatever time periods they’ve been abandoned. You’re one of us now. You can help right this wrong. Someone must pay for this atrocity.”
Before she could reply, Satyr opened the door and stepped out, surveying their surroundings. As he helped her down the stairs, he leaned close and whispered, “Think like an assassin. It might keep you alive.”
Chapter 19
The warehouse was large and, for the most part, empty. The gas lamps hanging from the ceiling sent flickers of light in all directions. It smelled like dirty lanolin; stray bits of wool clinging to the floorboards hinted at its original purpose.
“He’s summoned the Twenty,” Satyr remarked. “What’s he up to?”
She followed his gaze to a knot of men at the far side of the room. All of them were en mirage, huddling together like sheep threatened by a pack of wild dogs. There were solitary figures scattered around them, like sentinels.
Probably the other assassins.
Two men stood apart from the others. One was Tobin. The other looked like a clerk.
Cynda frowned. “That’s the Ascendant?” she asked under her breath. She’d been expecting someone grander, more flamboyant. Someone worthy of the destruction he’d sought to create.
“Unremarkable, isn’t he?” Satyr replied with an edge of sarcasm.
“About time!” the man snapped like a petulant schoolboy. “What took you so long?”
Satyr took her elbow, marching her forward. She couldn’t help but notice a large, rust-brown stain in the middle of the floor. It looked like dried blood.
Her heart executed a somersault.
“Miss Lassiter,” Satyr began, “this is the Ascendant. And Tobin, a junior assassin.”
When Tobin glared at her, Cynda dismissed him with a brief glance, directing her attention to his superior.
“I would not have you in my presence if he had not commanded me to do so,” the Ascendant grumbled. He gestured. “Give her the box.”
Rather than coming near her, Tobin tossed her a small parcel, a pasteboard box with twine around it.
“The archangel said that I should give it to you at the last,” the Ascendant said.
Archangel?
Stripping off the twine, she carefully opened the parcel, wondering if scorpions were native to England. A bloody handkerchief lay inside. She pulled it back to reveal a pocket watch. Opening it, she found the dial smeared with dried blood. A couple quick winds made it light up. Rovers always carried gold ones, in honor of Harter Defoe. She knew of only one man who carried a silver interface—Theo.
Her head swimming, Cynda clicked the watch shut, dropping it into her pocket. Maybe someone stole it from him. Maybe it’s someone else’s blood. As she shifted the piece of cloth, she saw the ring. His ring.
She slipped it on her finger. It was only then she noticed the message scrawled inside the box lid.
Give us Defoe. You get what’s left of the genius.
Cynda stuffed the box and the handkerchief into a pocket. Once her hands were free, she clenched them into fists so no one would see them shaking.
“Where is he?” she hissed.
“The archangel smote him,” the Ascendant replied, as if that explained everything.
“What archangel?”
Grant drew himself up. “And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince…”
“Daniel 12:1, if my memory is correct,” Satyr said dryly.
The Ascendant delivered a scathing look toward his Lead Assassin. “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.”
Something clicked. “Revelations,” Cynda said.
“12:7,” the Ascendant clarified.
R12:7. The lettering on the outside of the gunpowder barrels.
Murmuring broke out amongst the Twenty. Apparently they weren’t aware that their leader had been taking orders from heaven.
The Ascendant took a step closer. “The archangel warned me of you, woman. He warned me how the denizens of hell would try to stop our work. You and your master, he said, were particularly cunning.”
Theo was the Devil? That was ridiculous. It was hard not to laugh in the man’s face, but too much was at stake.
Cynda turned to the group of onlookers. She needed allies. “So what do the Twenty think of all this?” There was a shuffling of feet, but no one spoke up.
No balls in that bunch.
“I must admit that I did not think the Devil’s minion wielded that much power,” the Ascendant observed, hands clasped behind his back as he paced back and forth like a headmas
ter confronted with an unruly student.
Minion? She’d been called a lot of things, but that sucked. Well, if she was the Devil’s gofer, she’d be his advocate.
“The Archangel Michael told you this?” she asked, making sure she sounded incredulous. “How do you know he wasn’t lying to you?”
The Ascendant fumed. “He cannot lie. He is the sword of the Almighty!”
“Really? So how did you meet this Michael person?”
“How dare you mock God’s Highest Messenger?”
“When and how?” she pushed.
“The Archangel Michael appeared in pinwheels of glorious light, kneeling in front of me, seeking my aid. He anointed my forehead and I saw heaven in all its glory.”
She caught Satyr’s eyes. They’d gone flinty. He’d traveled through time. He knew what those pinwheels meant.
It was so clear now. Take one deeply religious man, add a bit of time travel, stir in a whiff of instability and… Drugs? He’d said he’d been anointed, seen heaven. Someone had dazzled him with an Outbound arrival, fed him a line and made sure his mind was dazed enough to take it, courtesy of some twenty-first century hallucinogens.
And it worked.
“When did this visitation arrive, sir?” Satyr asked, voice ripsaw sharp.
“It was two nights before the holy feast of St. Michael, in late September. I remember it clearly. I was in my study, praying. I summoned you the next day and put the plan in motion.”
“We ordered you to acquire a single load of explosives,” one of the Twenty protested. “You acted without our approval.”
Aha. The sheep are getting cranky.
“At St. Michael’s behest, I altered the plan. Neither you nor the Lead Assassin were to be made aware that you were doing God’s holy work.” The Ascendant chuckled dryly. “I found that quite entertaining.”
Clearly, Satyr did not. He tightened his grip on the head of his cane, the only outward sign of his increasing anger. “What did this messenger look like?” he queried.