The Adventures of Lazarus Gray

by Barry Reese

  "You sound like you admire him," Mobius said.

  Miya said nothing but there was no denying the spark of emotion in her eyes.

  Walther cleared his throat, drawing all eyes back to him and his ruined face. "I wouldn’t have couched it in those terms but I think Miya is correct. He is more dangerous than before. I hope you took that into account when it came to hiring an outsider to deal with him."

  One of the faceless men around the table leaned forward, his voice carrying an edge to it. "The Illuminati has existed for centuries, Walther. We are capable of dealing with one lone enemy, even if you yourself have failed repeatedly to handle the situation."

  Walther felt stung by the rebuke but he managed to keep it from showing on his features. "Of course. I meant no disrespect."

  Mobius spoke loudly, obviously tired of the back-and-forth regarding the issue. "Enter please!"

  A door opened and closed behind Walther’s back and he turned to see who had entered the room. The sight that greeted him was enough to freeze the ice in his veins. Though at first glance the figure that moved toward him appeared human, it didn’t take long to disprove that notion. The figure had yellow-green skin and pointed ears. His head was completely hairless but covered by a black skullcap while his mouth was a leering parody of a man’s. The animal-like maw was filled with razor-sharp teeth. The creature’s hands were held at its sides and the fingertips ended in long blades that looked like they could disembowel a man with ease. Walther had heard stories of such a creature, a monster that ruled over a tiny island in the Pacific named Ricca. It was said that he was known by many names but the ones that were most common were "The God of Hate" and "The Claw."

  "You must be joking," Walther muttered, turning to look at Mobius. "You’re going to pay good money to… that thing?"

  "I’m surprised at you," Mobius replied. "You’ve seen demons that slithered up from the shadows and you’re that disturbed by The Claw? I think you owe him an apology. I won’t abide rudeness."

  Walther started at Mobius with barely disguised loathing. Mobius had personally choked the life from children and now he was protesting a bit of rudeness? It was enough to drive Walther to near madness. Even so, he knew his place and didn’t want to risk himself any further than he already had. With forced kindness, he addressed The Claw, trying to ignore the look of smug satisfaction on the hideous creature’s face. "I hope that I didn’t offend you. It wasn’t my intent. I merely meant that we have so many resources of our own that it troubles me to go to an outsider."

  When The Claw spoke, his voice was strangely high-pitched and disconcerting. "I know exactly what you meant, Mr. Lunt. You think me nothing more than a monster, capable of scaring children with the way I look. But I’m far more than that. Catch me when the moon is right and I’m capable of things that would boggle your mind."

  Walther could no longer hide his disdain. It bubbled forth in the words, "I highly doubt that. Perhaps you have no idea who you’re dealing with."

  The Claw took several steps toward Walther and with each step he grew in height. By the time he reached the German, he was well over twelve feet tall, his head scraping against the ceiling. He looked down at a shaken Walther and grinned, baring all his fangs. "Have you ever seen anything like me?" he asked.

  Walther swallowed and managed to find his voice. "No. I have to admit… I haven’t."

  The Claw’s form seemed to shimmer as he once more assumed his normal size. He turned to Mobius, dismissing Walther as no longer a concern. "I will kill this Lazarus Gray but I want assurances that my payment will be delivered on time."

  Mobius nodded. "Thirteen virgin girls, all aged 12 to 17, just as you requested. We’ll make sure their ethnicities are mixed, as per your requirements. We’ll deliver them to Ricca within six hours of Gray’s confirmed death."

  The Claw’s tongue flicked out like a snake’s, brushing across the tips of his teeth. "Then I will make arrangements to travel to Sovereign City. Do you have any problem with me causing massive destruction in the pursuit of my goal?"

  Mobius laughed. "Burn the city to the ground if it suits you."

  While Mobius and The Claw bargained, Walther caught Miya’s eye. Though the two of them had no real love lost between them, both were thoroughly disgusted by The Claw. Still, while Miya had feelings for their enemy, Walther did not. If The Claw were able to rid them of Gray, then Walther would deem all this as worthwhile.

  ***

  Mr. Dinkins studied the entrails spread out on the table before him, a pensive expression on his face. He ignored the steady back-and-forth pacing of Muggsy behind him, focusing all of his attention on understanding the future laid out in front of him. He saw signs that indicated that he’d finally find Monique… but there were other figures present as well, and Dinkins couldn’t be sure who they were. He hoped that it wasn’t Lazarus Gray and his aides. It had been a terrible mistake to approach Morgan Watts but, as he’d said, he’d heard much about the man’s employer and thought he might be a kindred spirit. Everyone else in Sovereign was corrupt so why not Gray? Unfortunately, that hadn’t proven to be the case.

  Dinkins straightened up and rubbed his eyes. His chest ached where she’d stolen his heart and he’d found that his magical means for staying alive were beginning to take their toll. He looked around the shabby hotel room in which they were staying and felt a sudden yearning for New Orleans. "I’m going to die here," he said aloud and the words surprised him, for he hadn’t realized he was going to say them.

  The Axeman shifted, studying him from behind his mask.

  Dinkins waved a hand at him. "Ignore me. I’m just thinking out loud."

  The room’s telephone rang and Dinkins crossed the floor to pluck it up with slender fingers. "Yes?"

  The hotel clerk came on briefly, letting him know that he was connecting an outside call. After a brief pause, the voice of Monique came through the line, surprising Dinkins. "I want to see you," she said breathlessly.

  "You’ve led us on a merry little chase," Dinkins answered. "I thought Muggsy was going to have to carve up most of the city’s young girls before we found you."

  "I know. I saw the papers. Listen, I’m sorry about what happened. I thought I could get by without you, but I don’t know enough to really use your heart. I’m willing to submit to you in any way you want if you’ll just take me back."

  Dinkins was glad she couldn’t see his face because he knew his expression was an ugly one. "Why would I take you back and train you any more? You’d just turn on me again later on."

  "I wouldn’t! I swear! I’ve learned my lesson."

  "This wouldn’t be a trap, would it?"

  Monique paused. When she continued, her voice had taken on a chastened tone. "I deserve that. I tried to kill you after you’d done so much for me. I was a bitch for that and you’d be right to hate me forever. But I think we were good together before that… and I know what you like. I can do those things for you again."

  Dinkins felt some of his anger subside. He didn’t want to admit it but his desire for her body made him a very weak man. It had led him to lower his defenses, allowing her to strike at him in the first place. Even now, when he’d sought her punishment for so long, he couldn’t stop thinking of the things he could now demand of her… all the depravities he could imagine could be his. She could refuse him nothing!

  Monique seemed to sense that his silence meant that he was considering her offer. "Could we get together tonight? I could show you how obedient I can be."

  Dinkins exhaled, feeling tightness in his chest. "Where?"

  Monique gave him the address to a hotel located on the outskirts of the harbor region. Dinkins scribbled it down on a piece of paper, his hand shaking with lust. "Don’t disappoint me," he warned.

  "I won’t, my love. Never again." Monique hung up the phone, leaving Dinkins with a hungry smile on his face.

  ***

  Eun tried to keep from pacing but it was difficult. He was a young man of
boundless energy and it was sometimes hard to channel all of that into being stealthy. It simply wasn’t his nature. He was crouched on the rooftop of the Reich Hotel, a German-owned establishment that catered to sailors and sea captains.

  Christopher Reich was the man behind the hotel and he was an ardent admirer of Lazarus Gray. Reich had run afoul of a blackmail scheme a few months back and Assistance Unlimited had managed to capture the villains behind it all, earning Reich’s eternal trust. The blackmail had been linked to Reich’s sexual tastes, which ran toward athletically built young men. The entire incident had been somewhat embarrassing for Eun, since it skirted very close to his own-closeted secret.

  When he’d first joined Assistance Unlimited, Eun had gone carousing with Morgan in an attempt at bonding. It had gone well enough and Eun had even forced himself to engage in some harmless flirting with Samantha… but he still suspected that the others knew that he was a homosexual. If they did, they weren’t ones to let it affect how they viewed him and he respected that. Eun hadn’t told his parents before they’d died, knowing how they would have reacted. It was the way most people in the world would have, with disgust and worry. But Eun couldn’t change who he was… and truth be told, he didn’t want to. He’d been quietly dating a dockworker named Edward Lee for about six weeks now and they were very happy together. Combine that with the pleasure he derived from working with Assistance Unlimited and Eun was relatively happy, despite the anger that often drove him to acts of impetuousness. Even so, it was hard sometimes, facing prejudice both because of his race and his sexual orientation.

  A yellow cab that pulled up in the front of the hotel drew Eun’s attention. He leaned over the rooftop’s edge, pulling out a small spyglass that allowed him to study the two men who emerged from the rear of the vehicle. One of them was a Negro dressed in ratty clothes and a top hat, matching the description given by both Monique and Morgan, who had finally awakened just before being taken to the hospital. The other fellow was a monstrous brute who wore a mask to cover his face. The big man held an axe in his left hand and even without the spyglass, Eun would have recognized the gore that caked the blade.

  Turning quickly away from the rooftop’s edge, Eun sprinted back inside the building. He entered the hotel room they’d set aside for their trap, only slightly out of breath thanks to his incredible physical conditioning. "They’re on the way up. The Axeman has his blade with him."

  Samantha and Lazarus were the only ones in the room. Monique and her Slasher were both being held in containment cells back at headquarters, though Eun wasn’t sure what would happen to them later. So far, neither of them had committed any kind of crime that would hold up in court: It was true that Monique had attacked the man who had become her Slasher but the sheer weirdness of the crime would confuse most judges.

  Samantha, dressed in jodhpurs and a cream-colored blouse, looked at Lazarus with surprise on her pretty face. "I can’t believe he’s just carrying his weapon like that."

  Gray nodded. "It’s a good thing we evacuated the hotel. Reich is manning the front desk and will be the only person who has to see them before they make it up here."

  "Should I go downstairs and make sure he’s okay?" Eun asked.

  "No. I installed a panic button behind the clerk’s counter. At the first sign of danger, Reich can summon us. He’s quick enough on his feet to be able to make it to the office behind him and lock the door if he needs to."

  Eun nodded and moved to take his spot behind the door. The plan was simple: lure Dinkins and Muggsy into the room and then take them down. The Assistance Unlimited crew had them outnumbered three to two and all three of them were well trained in personal combat. Gray and Samantha also had pistols on them but the hope was to avoid a firefight in these close quarters.

  Heavy footsteps in the hall made them all tense and Samantha moved to take up a position in the small doorway that led into the washroom. Gray remained where he was, in plain view of anyone who entered the room. The first to do so was The Axeman, who stopped in confusion at the sight of someone besides Monique. Eun reached out and gave the big man a hearty shove, pushing him further into the room. He then spun into the hallway, where he came face to face with Dinkins. A hard punch to the old man’s throat sent him to his knees and Eun finished him off with a hard driven knee to the forehead.

  Muggsy, however, was not going to be so easily beaten. He raised his axe and swung it at Gray’s head. The team’s leader ducked under the blade even as Samantha moved from her hiding place. She expertly swung one of her long legs between The Axeman’s and, by timing her motion with the big man’s lumbering, caused him to lose his balance. He crashed down atop a small table, shattering it.

  Gray drove the heel of his shoe against the back of The Axeman’s head but Muggsy managed to swing his axe out and the blade caught the back of Gray’s leg, drawing blood.

  "Chief!" Samantha cried out as a small river of red flowed out from her employer’s pants.

  "I’m fine," Gray answered, moving away from the axe-wielding brute. Gray knew that Muggsy was more resistant to pain in his current state and that there was no way to undo the mental and physical damages that had been done to him. Gray waited until The Axeman was facing him, the killer’s back toward the large window that overlooked the harbor. Gray lowered his shoulder and sprinted toward the big man, ignoring both Eun and Samantha, who uttered expressions of disbelief. Lazarus barreled into The Axeman and grunted in pain. It felt like slamming into a tree trunk. Still, his momentum was enough to force the big man backward and they slammed into the window, which shattered under their combined weight. The two men toppled out of the fifth story room, vanishing from the sight of Gray’s employees.

  Eun jumped over the shattered table and arrived at the windowsill a millisecond before Samantha. Their shoes crunched on broken glass and Eun leaned out of the window, heart thudding at the possibility of seeing Lazarus broken and dead on the ground below. To his tremendous relief, that wasn’t what he laid eyes on.

  The Axeman lay shattered and broken on the city street but Gray himself was hanging for dear life onto a large flag pole that jutted out from the hotel’s façade.

  "Hang on, Chief!" Eun bellowed. "We’re gonna get you down from there!"

  Lazarus said nothing, trusting that his aide would be as good as his word. He cast a downward glance at Muggsy’s dead body. He detested killing any living thing but The Axeman was barely human at this point. In the end, Muggsy lived for murder and could never be rehabilitated. Thus, Lazarus had done both Muggsy and society a tremendous favor by ending his existence.

  It was a hard thing, being a self-appointed judge and jury. But Gray was prepared to take on the responsibility – especially given that he lived in a city where the men and women appointed to do such things could no longer be trusted.

  A hard rain began to fall.

  Epilogue

  Morgan was back at his desk within three days’ time, much to the chagrin of Samantha, who fussed over him like she was a mama bird and he was her baby chick. Though it embarrassed him, he didn’t put up much of a complaint.

  Eun was mostly out of the office during this time, as he was helping Edward move into a new apartment.

  With his three aides thus engaged, Lazarus Gray busied himself by executing Monique’s Slasher and scouring the girl’s personal belongings until he found that she was in possession of several controlled substances. Thus armed, he was able to see that she was entered into the legal system appropriately. Dinkins was a far easier case – the man was wanted on a litany of crimes both great and small back in Louisiana. Gray personally transferred him over to the law enforcement agents who came from the Bayou to collect him.

  When the cleanup from the Axeman case had been settled, Lazarus returned to his third floor apartment in the Assistance Unlimited headquarters. It was there that he spread out a series of papers he’d been accumulating as of late. There were photographs of men and women from around the world, as well as a
detailed tracking of their movements. He was the only man alive who had been at the center of The Illuminati and had survived breaking ties with it. It was only a matter of time before they came for him again and he intended to be ready.

  In fact, Lazarus intended to strike first.

  THE END

  THE GOD OF HATE

  An Adventure of Lazarus Gray

  Written by Barry Reese

  Chapter I

  Cry Vengeance!

  The rain fell steadily over Sovereign City, drenching man and beast. It had stormed for six days in a row, prompting some to joke that it was well past time to start work on an ark. The figure that strode through the puddles, his body hidden beneath a wide-brimmed fedora and a thick jacket cinched at the waist, cared nothing for the bitter cold or the freezing rain. He was known as The God of Hate to those brave enough to follow him and he ruled over an island nation with an iron fist. He was The Claw and he had come to Sovereign City on dark business.

  His inhuman features were quickly turned away from any pedestrian who happened to wander too close. Though he was of the general shape and height of a man, his ears were pointed, his mouth was a gaping maw filled with razor-sharp teeth and his fingers ended in the claws from which he took his name.

  The Claw came to a stop before a large structure. His eyes ran across the lettering on the brick sign that rested on a grassy knoll in front of the building: Doc Daye’s Home for Forgotten Children. The orphanage was home to nearly six-dozen little tykes, as well as the women who cared for them. It was one of the city’s most beloved institutions and Daye himself was frequently sighted at the facility.

  At this hour of night, all the children were nestled tight in their warm beds, dreaming of potential new families. Unfortunately, those dreams were never going to come true.