The visions associated with the other paintings tonight had varied. One had been reproduced in a loft in Chelsea while two others had been crafted in what looked to be a forgery operation downtown in the Bowery. Another had even been done by a museum staffer who had simply wanted to try his hand at duplicating the piece.
None, however, had screamed with the raw historical power of this one. Its journey to our country form Oslo flashed backwards through my mind’s eye, but just seeing it back at the National Gallery wasn’t enough for me, I realized. Experiencing this history didn’t have to stop there… after all, how often was I going to get the chance to see the actual artistry and creation of a painting like this in action?
I pressed my power further, pushing back through the painting’s history until its very creation. The tall, thin man I suddenly found myself as in the vision looked much like the gaunt figure in the painting, only with dark hair combed to one side and a thick mustache. Edvard Munch himself. He worked on the painting that would become The Scream where it stood alongside several others in a Berlin studio, and I marveled at the artistry unfolding from his—no, my—hand as the piece worked its way from swirls of colors to the end result of the painting. My cheeks hurt from the smile that had crept across my own face back in the real world. I had witnessed something no other human ever had—save Munch himself—and the sensation was truly overwhelming which, I realized, did not work to my advantage right now. I needed to pull myself out of the vision if I was going to trick Mina into thinking this was just another imitation. Once convinced, I could come back for it later, but first I had to return to reality.
Pulling my mind’s eye out of the vision was harder than I imagined and took all my will, the effort driving a spike into the center of my brain to the point that when the connection broke, I stumbled back from the painting, shaking and on the verge of falling over.
Mina grabbed my shoulders to steady me, but I slumped to the floor anyway. I fished for the Life Savers in my pocket with still-shaking hands.
“What the hell was that?” she asked. “You look like you’re going to pass out!” She turned from me back to the painting. “That’s the real deal, isn’t it?”
“That painting…” I managed to mumble through a mouthful of candy as I shoveled it in. Shaken as I was in my current state, I could barely speak let alone muster the guile to try to pull the wool over her eyes. I shut my mouth, and gave a simple nod.
“Are you sure?” she asked, glancing back and forth between me and the painting.
The sensation of being Munch was still coursing through me as I pulled myself up off the floor. “Pretty damn sure.”
Like a tree on Christmas Eve, Mina’s eyes practically sparkled. “Finally!” she shouted with a squeal, wrapping her arms around me. Her body shook with glee, and in a rush of adrenaline she pulled away, grabbed my face and kissed me hard.
If I wasn’t already busy recovering from my psychometric hit, I might have been able to stop my connection from snapping to. Instead my mind flooded with unbidden images of Mina’s private life. Images of all her previous art recoveries flickered through my mind, but as they flashed by one thing became abundantly clear.
I pushed myself away from her body, my lips pulling away from hers.
Her face was awash in confusion, no doubt having sensed the psychometric connection.
“You don’t actually recover art for the museum,” I said through labored breath. “You find it, sell it, or keep it for yourself.”
She backed away, her face changing from elation to something wicked—wicked, but confused. “How… how could you possibly know that?” she asked, rubbing her temple. “What did you do to me?”
“You hired me because I was good at finding fakes,” I said. “What did you expect? I found the fake. It’s you. Let’s make something clear… I’m not going to help you steal this, Mina.”
I reached for the alarm panel next to the painting and just managed to rearm it as a meaty hand closed on my wrist and pulled me away from it. Myers.
“And you wondered why I needed the muscle,” she said. “Too bad. This could have become terribly lucrative for you, Mister Canderous… now it’s just going to be terrible.”
I stepped back from her. “I’m not getting paid, am I?”
“Paid in pain maybe—”
I turned to run, hoping to twist out of Myers grip, but he was stronger and quicker, twisting my arm behind me while Kreuger pulled back one of his fists and pistoned it into my stomach. The air went out of me, and all I could do was take it as Kreuger gut punched me over and over.
One thing became immediately clear: I needed to come up with something before they beat me into unconsciousness. There was no way I could take them both on. My only advantage here was my power, which frankly didn’t seem cut out to be remarkably helpful in this particular situation.
Unless…
I needed to find an advantage somehow, but for that I realized I would need skin-to-skin contact to activate my psychometry.
Kreuger’s next blow to my stomach had me barely able to breathe, but I managed to look up into his eyes and forced myself to speak.
“That …all you got?”
I kept my head up, daring him to strike me in the face, and he couldn’t resist the target. The bone of his knuckles slammed into that of my jaw, the sensation jarring, but it gave me what I needed. A flash of Kreuger’s life filled my mind’s eye, lingering for a second then disappearing. I needed more.
“You’re going to have to rough me up pretty bad with those meat hooks if you want me to be even half as ugly as you, Kreuger.”
Another blow, another flash.
“I’d say you hit like a grandmother only that would be an insult to old people.”
The blows rained down harder and harder, each one triggering my power. My mind’s eye fought to make sense of the flashes, and like going through a kid’s flip book, the images began to fit together into a cohesive flow as I sorted back through the thug’s day. He might be busy beating me with his fists now, but hopefully Kreuger had not started his day leaving home empty-handed.
I kept searching his memories until at last an image of him strapping a thick, metallic cylinder to his belt hit me. It came to me in the vision just before I watched him leave his dingy Inwood apartment, concealing the tube with his heavy leather coat.
I pulled out of the vision and back to the present. Although I couldn’t see the object on him now, it was the only hope I had.
As his next blow came towards me, I let my entire body go slack, my arms slipping out of Myer’s hold as my full weight dropped to the floor. My knees screamed with pain as they took the impact, but I was already rolling myself forward, reaching into Kreuger’s coat. Thankfully the cool metal of the cylinder was under there in its special holster, secured by an elaborate safety tie, but thanks to my vision I knew exactly how to undo it. I pulled the object free, rolled onto my back and pushed myself across the floor as I examined it.
A safety mechanism sat housed over the single button on the object. I flicked the cover of it off and pressed down. The thick cylinder telescoped out with a metallic shkkt, becoming a regulation sized steel baseball bat.
Myers stopped mid-lunge. Kreuger, however, looked more than pissed that I had taken his little toy and came on at a full on charge. I swung, catching him in the midsection with a meaty thud that doubled him over as I wound back and hit him again and again. After my third or fourth strike, Myers finally lunged into action to help, but I twirled the bat in his direction and poked him in the chest with the end of it, driving him back.
“Enough!” Mina called out.
Her voice held enough authority to make me pause and glance at her, while Myers helped Krueger stand. The men’s eyes burned through me.
Their boss stepped forward. “Put down the weapon, Simon,” she said, her voice calm but commanding.
I shook my head and raised the bat. “So you and your goons can kick my ass some more? N
o thanks.”
From some hidden fold on her cat suit, Mina slid free a long, thin blade. “Suit yourself,” she said. “One of us is leaving here with the painting, and here’s a hint: it’s not going to be you.”
Thievery was the furthest thing from my mind. Survival was more my concern, and with three to one odds and a knife in the mix now, my chances were looking slimmer and slimmer.
“Fine,” I said, backing myself further across the room from the painting towards the second floor windows. If only I had rolled myself across the floor toward the stairs. Stupid 20/20 hindsight. “I don’t care if that painting leaves with me, but I’m damned sure you’re not taking it either.”
Mina sighed. “Your funeral,” she said. She flipped the knife around in her hand like a seasoned street fighter until she held it in an aggressive stance with the blade protruding underhand.
Mina and her two thugs started across the room, closing with me and approaching from three different directions using caution.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Mina laughed. “No?” she asked. “And why not?”
I pointed to the painting. “I rearmed the alarm system, Mina,” I said. “Now you might not be familiar with the finer points of them, but I am.” She didn’t need to know much of what I had gleaned about this set up had come from being psychometrically in the mind of the townhouse’s owner. “In a sweet pad like this, you think the guy who lives here is going to skimp? No, he’s going to go top of the line. You try to take that painting… you’ll trip the alarm, the front door deadbolts, the windows shutter with steel plating. That sort of thing.”
“So?” Kreuger asked with a growl. “We’ll still beat you to death before anyone can get in here.”
Despite the menace in his face I had to laugh. “I’m not planning on sticking around, guys,” I said, raising the bat high. “Sorry to disappoint.”
The three of them paused as I swung into motion, but they needn’t have worried. None of them were my intended target. With my windup, I turned to the window and swung with all I had.
Glass exploded and fell to the street below as I worked the bat around the window frame, knocking away what I could of its jagged remains. I spun around to find my assailants closing with me again.
Mina raised an eyebrow. “You can’t be serious.”
I pulled another roll of Life Savers out of my pocket. Taking careful aim, I threw it across the room, toward The Scream. It wasn’t a heavy enough object to do any damage to the painting itself, but it was enough to trigger its alarm. There was no siren or bells or whistles, but the slamming locks on the downstairs door and windows were enough to tell me it had gone off.
“You won’t survive the fall,” Mina said, a nervous desperation in her voice.
“I’d rather take my chances out there than in here with you lot,” I said, and without waiting jumped into the open air just as the steel window shutters started sliding into place. I was in freefall.
I loved the townhouses of Manhattan, and this street lined with them shared a common trait I had noticed earlier—almost all townhouse streets were lined with trees. I had simply taken in their quiet rustling in the wind as a thing of beauty earlier, but now they were proving my salvation.
Not that the drop was an easy one. My body sailed from the window out over the sidewalk and into the trees next to the street. Branches and leaves poked at my face and eyes as I descended head first. I fell blind as my body exploded with pain, branches breaking some of my fall while others battered and bruised me the entire way down. The final freefall to the sidewalk left me stunned and aching, but I appeared unbroken, alive, and most importantly, not trapped inside with Mina and her thugs.
Already the sound of sirens echoed in the distance, getting me back on my feet faster than anything. I picked up the retractable steel bat from where it had fallen out of my hands.
Tonight had proved a bust, but at least I wasn’t going to be busted. Plus I had this nifty new weapon, which I collapsed to its original size and slid inside my jacket before taking my first shaky steps.
“And this is why we only steal for ourselves, idiot,” I muttered as I hobbled off.
By the time the rolling reds and blues turned onto the street, I was already rounding the corner onto Fifth Avenue. Shaken, I wondered if perhaps this was a wake-up call, a near miss that the universe had sent down upon me in the hopes I’d shape the hell up. At the very least it was clearly telling me I wasn’t built for the life of a career criminal, which I guess I already knew. After all, I didn’t look good in stripes or an orange jumpsuit, not to mention that my dating life would probably only get worse if I went to prison over something like this. The idea crept into my head that maybe this power could somehow be turned to something more constructive, to DOING GOOD…not that I had a clue as to the ‘how’ of all that.
Still, this was The Scream we were talking about, the Holy Grail of art thievery. Perhaps it wasn’t the best painting to go cold turkey on, despite the close call tonight.
Never return to the scene of a crime, the old criminal axiom said, but it was hard to let go of such an opportunity, even after a failed first attempt…
My brain couldn’t help but already start planning my return trip to the townhouse. How could I not? Most people would worry about dealing with the changes to a security system or new countermeasures being installed, but when you had psychometry on your side, all those changes are instantly knowable and literally at my fingertips.
Only next time there would be no bullshit stories, no false pretenses, and no partners in crime to get in my way. It wouldn’t be about someone else or even the money a painting like that could earn me. In this case, the only way crime would pay was because something as special as The Scream didn’t deserve to be bought or sold. No, it deserved to be appreciated, and as the sole person alive to have just experienced the painting’s creation—save Edvard Munch himself, that is—I planned to appreciate the hell out of it on the space right above the mantle in my apartment.
Let the Norwegians be as pissed as they like. They had, after all, lost four versions of The Scream over the years. What was one more?
MAINON
Jean Rabe
THE ROASTED PIKE with green sorrel verjuice was amazing; Mainon held a piece on her tongue and relished the flavor. The scents from the other dishes arrayed on the table—artistically prepared marine and freshwater fish—competed for her attention. It had been quite some time since she’d dined in so lavish a place.
The chairs were thickly padded and covered with expensive red brocade, the floor was gleaming marble, and the table made of a polished wood so dark it looked like a patch of a starless night sky come to ground. Soft music drifted from behind a silk curtain, a reed instrument and a harp, and a third instrument she couldn’t identify. Everything seemed carefully designed to delight all the senses.
She thought to compliment her host, but remained silent, not wanting him to know she was pleased and impressed. If she’d been in her home city she would have made arrangements to talk to the chef and urge him to share a recipe or two, for the pike in particular. But she was a full day’s ride from home, visiting the port city of Nyrill. So she simply continued to savor the meal, take in the surroundings, and scrutinize her host.
Illustration by OKSANA DMITRIENKO
Ilarion was a noble of the merchant house of D’multek, a handsome man with oiled, dark hair, even olive skin, and wide, dark eyes that caught her stare and held it. Despite his voluminous robe, she could tell he had a muscular build. She’d researched him, a man born to wealth who in his relatively short life had managed to considerably increase his family’s holdings. Even his upcoming wedding would further expand his business and influence. He had chosen a bride from the nearby country of Crullfeld, from a family nearly equal to his own in riches. Mainon learned of the bride, too—Erleene Hawe—who, at twenty-two, was a dozen years younger than Ilarion. She was said to be the oldest daughter of a cloth m
erchant. Erleene was not present at this feast.
Mainon was far from her own beautiful self this day. Her long black hair was coiled around her head in a tight braid and tinted by a simple magical glamor that rendered it a flat earthen brown. The same spell made her brilliant green eyes a dull gray and gave her a scar that ran from the base of her right ear down her neck. She wore ash-colored silk robes with a faint green trim, making her appear almost drab.
“I nearly did not come to this meeting, Ilarion,” Mainon said. She took a sip from a crystal goblet filled with a pale gold wine. The wine was a little too dry; the only spot of imperfection in the elaborate meal. “I prefer to meet clients on my own terms and in places of my choosing. It is rare I make an exception. And I did not appreciate dealing with messengers upon messengers to set this up.” She took another sip and found it a little better. Perhaps it was an acquired taste.
Ilarion quietly regarded her before speaking, creases forming in his brow as if he measured what to say. “There was no choice regarding the situation, the messengers upon messengers, milady.”
His voice was rich and deep and Mainon wondered if he sang.
“Given my position in this city, this meeting had to be on my terms, and with my requirements.” He leaned forward, elbows resting on either side of his plate. “But obviously my messengers intrigued you just enough. You are here, after all.”
Mainon allowed herself a slight smile. “I am here until I finish this meal. Speak quickly.”
Before he could continue, the waiter brought dessert, and Mainon did not hesitate to sample it. A mashed pear tart, baked in butter, rose water, and sugar, it was dusted with cinnamon and ginger and served in a small pie shell.
Ilarion watched the server depart. “I’ve a need to hire you, milady.”
Brigands (Blackguards) Page 14