by J M Hemmings
Mira trailed off here, and a frightening glow entered her eyes. Her hands started to quiver, so she pulled them away from the table and tucked them under it, digging her fingertips into her slim thighs.
‘Where do I come in?’ Abou asked.
Mira looked up, her eyes still aflame with the heat of a vicious lust for power.
‘For now, I do still need the Alliance project to function. And the reason I brought you here, is that you do too.’
Abou swallowed slowly, clasping his hands together and nodding as he began to grasp the gravity of everything she was telling him.
‘I think I get that now. If the Alliance dies … I die. Whether I want it or not, the War has come to me.’
Mira’s eyes narrowed, and something that looked like a parody of a smile appeared on her thin lips.
‘There is a plan in place should the Alliance fall,’ she said. ‘It goes like this: once the Alliance is annulled, all beastwalkers will become immediate targets, whether Rebel, neutral or Alliance members. Elimination will be centrally coordinated and will be executed with absolute precision; a Night of the Long Knives for your kind, if you will. Already Huntsmen intelligence is documenting and updating the status and whereabouts of all known beastwalkers in preparation for a synchronised strike. The current beastwalker members of the Alliance will be the first to die; we will take them completely unawares.’
‘Cold. Mechanical. Efficient. Merciless,’ Abou muttered. ‘Knowing what I know about your organisation, this does not surprise me in the least. Now that I know that my life is at stake, you may as well tell me what I need to do to, to survive a little longer.’
Mira brushed a loose lock of hair behind her left ear and glanced off to the side before answering.
‘I want William Gisborne, of course. Preferably alive, but dead if there’s no other option. You are his friend, are you not?’
‘Was … I suppose you could say I am, although he and I were never close, as such. He sailed with me on a few voyages in my days of captaining a trade ship in the Indian ocean in the late 19th century. However, I haven’t had much contact with him for the last hundred years or so … obviously, he’s been keeping a very low profile after your Alliance and Huntsmen destroyed everything he lived for. What makes you think I could help you to get to him?’
‘You are one of the last non-Rebel beastwalker friends of his who still draws breath. Believe me on this; I’ve done my homework.’
‘Still, I don’t understand what you expect me to do. I’m no fighter, no master of espionage. I’m a businessman, plain and simple.’
‘You’ve forgotten about one other very unique skill you possess: you have the ability to turn into a two-ton black rhinoceros. If we can get him alone with you, you can either use your past ties of friendship to convince him to join the Alliance … or you can use your animal form to crush him. In a fight pitting a black rhinoceros against a tiger, I certainly know which one I’d put my money on.’
‘You know that he’ll never accept any terms you offer him!’ Abou protested. ‘Never! And if I fight him, he will not surrender. He’ll die before he does that.’
‘If that’s the only way, then we’ll have to let him die. But I have some faith in you, Aboubakar; you didn’t get as rich as you are without at least a little guile, a little tact, and a good dollop of cunning, no? Use your business acumen; figure out what carrot you can dangle in front of Gisborne. Can you at least do that?’
‘I can try … as you tried to help me,’ Abou muttered sourly. He stared at the floor between his feet, once more massaging his temples with heavy fingers as he masticated on everything that he had just learned, and the offer that had just been presented to him. ‘There is no other way?’ he eventually asked.
‘Not for you, Aboubakar. I’ve explained everything, exactly how it is. Your life, as you know it, is over. The only way you can save what’s left of it is to join the Alliance and bring us William Gisborne … alive or dead.’
He shifted his feet and rubbed the back of his head with sweaty palms for a few moments before he answered.
‘Fine … I’ll…’
Aboubakar looked up but saw only the rustling black curtain that separated the backstage area from the rest of the club. Mira was gone, and the hunt was now on.
3
WILLIAM
17th September 2020. New York City
William awoke with a start, a headache pounding its tribal rhythm behind his eyeballs as his mind tried to claw its way back to the present through the sticky cobwebs of half-remembered dreams. Hearing movement in his immediate vicinity, his senses kicked into sudden overdrive, and he sprang nude from his bed and lunged for the revolver that lay under the pile of last night’s clothes. He lay flat on the floor, cocked the firearm’s hammer quietly, and peered cautiously around the room, his vision punctuated always by the gleaming barrel of the .357.
It was only when he heard his shower running that he realised that it was the young woman he had taken home from the club. Exhaling a long sigh of relief, he uncocked the firearm, lowered its barrel from his line of sight and relaxed his arms. He paused to stare at the gleaming chrome finish of the gun. It would have been useful to have had last night, when he had fought Hernández … but it had lain on the floor here, forgotten, while he’d been getting high.
‘I’ve got to stop forgetting this thing,’ William murmured to himself.
Despite the lack of immediate danger, he nonetheless took comfort in the weapon’s deadly weight in his right hand. Looking down, he saw that his hands were covered in blood; one of the deep cuts Hernández had inflicted on him had opened up. Despite how severe the wounds looked, though, with his beastwalker blood they would heal very quickly, and there would be no danger of infection due to the supercharged antibodies that prevented him from ever falling ill. The wound was nonetheless messy, so he grabbed a nearby towel to stem the flow of blood, and while doing so he thought of the showering woman’s body, in which he had lost himself after the fight … and after many shots of whiskey. The recollection of the curves, gentle humps and soft ridges of her slim form pulled his mind, like a sucking tide, away from the present and off into a sea of memories.
Through his mind’s eye raced images of thousands of bodies he had known intimately over the years; mortal, fragile bodies. Bodies like the one in his shower: blooming with the fleeting glow of youth and fresh but ephemeral vitality. Bodies covered with temporarily taut skin, alive for a briefly glorious spurt of time with the fiery blood of vivacity, only on the cusp of and not yet caught in the inwardly spiralling gyre that would take them to the ruin of decrepitude and eventual death.
Lost in a cine-reel of fading and time-bleached mental images, some recalled as clear as day, others as blurred smudges of colour and shadow, William glanced down at his own hands. Thanks to the near-immortal blood circulating through his veins, his own skin remained smooth and firm after countless decades of life, while all the bodies of those he had loved and lusted after had long since passed into dust. Sadness plunged a jagged lance through his throat, and despair rose with all the majesty of a dust storm billowing across the Sahara. William fought back tears and bit hard on his knuckles, trying to force himself back into the present.
The rusty prison cell present.
Loneliness.
Fear.
Regret.
Hopelessness.
Falling back into the comforting plushness of an easy chair, he gripped his head in his hands, trying to squeeze the negative thoughts out, as if his skull were a lemon ripe with these sour, bitter juices. He had still not managed to make sense of it all, had still not found the source of this wondrous and terrible magic that both allowed him to assume the form of a wild animal and simultaneously granted him exemption from the Reaper’s dual scythes of time and disease. He had come close to finding out once, during that brief golden age in which he had been a student under the greatest teachers his kind had known, and indeed all of humankind woul
d have known … until this, like all the good things he had ever had, had been ripped away from him.
While William was lost in his thoughts and musings, the young woman stepped out of the shower, dried herself off, and emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Her eyes widened with fright as she caught sight of the revolver resting on his lap, glinting its deathly promise in the golden blades of morning sunlight that stabbed through the gaps in the heavy curtains.
‘Jesus!’ she exclaimed. ‘Like, what the hell are you doing with that thing!?’
‘Calm down lass,’ William said as he placed the gun on a nearby desk. ‘I just had a bad dream, that’s all.’
‘And what’s with all those cuts all over you?’ she gasped. ‘Shit, I didn’t see those last night! Dude, like, what did you say your job was?’
William chuckled.
‘The cuts are from a recent motorcycle spill. And I’m just a travelling professor, a historian.’
‘A bike wreck? Holy shit, shouldn’t you like, be in hospital or something? And you’re like, a professor? So that’s why you’ve got all this really old stuff in here … You kinda, uh, look a bit young to, like, you know, be a professor though.’
William analysed the young woman’s expression as she ran her eyes over the massive collection of antiques that hung on the walls and adorned his shelves. Some part of her was vaguely awestruck, but for the most part it was obvious that she could not comprehend either the monetary value or the artistic merit of the vast assemblage of ornaments, relics and artworks.
‘I’m a little older than I look,’ he remarked wryly.
The woman grinned and swept her artificially straightened, coffee-brown hair from her face.
‘Well anyway, Mr Mystery Professor, I have to, like, get going. Last night was fun … maybe I’ll see you again sometime.’
‘Maybe,’ William murmured. He got up, pulled on his jeans and wandered off to the kitchen to brew some coffee, and to give her some privacy so that she could get dressed. When he returned to the large loft area with two steaming mugs of coffee, though, the girl had already left.
Just as he set the mugs down, an unfamiliar phone started to ring. It had to be Hernández’s phone, so he hurried over to the bookshelf where he had hidden it behind an antique, gold-tinted History of the Ancient World, and waited for the ringing to stop. He perused the device and found that all the call and message records, as well as all the contacts, had been erased the previous night; Hernández must have known that there had been a chance that he might not survive his assassination mission. The fact, though, that someone had tried to call him meant that his superiors were still unaware of the fate that had befallen him the night before … and now William had a lead.
For decades the Ice Bear and his associates had evaded him, moving around the globe and staying behind Huntsman cover as the war effort against the Rebels had been intensified. Their last encounter, decades past, had been an almost mutually fatal affair, but that had not deterred William in his quest for vengeance. This phone call was the closest he had come to picking up a solid lead in quite some time, and he had a strong suspicion that this very caller may well have been Sigurd, the Ice Bear himself. Little mattered to William anymore; not The War, not the plight of the rest of the world, not even his own fate, really … but before his heart finally gave in for good, he was determined to do one thing: take Sigurd to hell with him.
Pedro Hernández had occupied a high position in Sigurd’s global network of human traffickers, and the Spaniard and his henchmen had also conducted a number of other decidedly unsavoury activities in the United States and Mexico. Much of this had been done under the orders of the Alliance, of which Sigurd was one of the most high-ranking leaders.
With growing excitement William checked the number that had just called. When he discovered that the call had come from Bangkok, he smiled humourlessly to himself; his suspicions had been correct. He knew that Sigurd had a base in Thailand, and now he had a more precise location.
‘I’m on to you, Ice Bear,’ he muttered darkly. ‘The Tiger will have his vengeance.’
At that moment an entirely different piece of music cut through the silence; this time it was Iggy Pop’s Search and Destroy, one of William’s personalised ringtones.
‘Ricky,’ murmured William to himself with a smile, and the seriousness of the previous moment dissipated into the morning air as he answered the call.
‘Hey old friend. Yeah, I’m doing well, mate, doing just fine. Come on over, we can continue that chess game.’
After he hung up he smiled to himself, with the riotous anarchy of Search and Destroy still ringing in his head.
‘Christ Ricky, I remember when you and I jumped to that song like possessed madmen at one of Iggy’s shows in Los Angeles in ‘78,’ he mumbled to himself, lost in the effervescent bliss of reminiscence. A look of sadness clouded his eyes as the realisation of what he would soon need to do, what he had been putting off doing for years, came to the fore with the sudden shock of a car wreck. ‘I’m going to have to cut you off Ricky. As it always is, with this curse of mine, this … this…’
He pounded his scarred fist against the wall in frustration, and tears of both anger and sorrow filled his eyes as he thought of all of the mortal friends he had watched grow old and die over the years, as he recalled all of the people he had had to cut out of his life to protect them from his terrible secret, the curse that had been with him since that fateful encounter with the enchanted beast all those years ago.
‘Well,’ he muttered to himself, ‘if it’s going to be a final goodbye to an old friend, I may as well make it one worth remembering.’
He walked over to his liquor cabinet, an ornate Ming Dynasty antique, and rifled impatiently through its contents.
‘Come on, come on, I know I’ve got just the right thing for the occasion, it’s in here somewhere…’
After a few moments he selected a bottle, and then picked up his phone and dialled a number.
‘Hello, is that Rosellini and Sons? Yes. This is Ben Young,’ he said, ‘and if you check your records, you’ll see that I’ve made fairly regular use of your moving and storage services. Ben Young, yes. Listen, can you get your boys over here tomorrow? I’ll need the whole apartment, all the antiques and furniture, packed up and stored. I’ll be gone by tonight, so it’s very urgent. Emergency business out of the country, y’see. I’ll pay cash, as usual. Great, thank you.’
The sadness at the thought of having to cut yet another friend out of his life would not be placated, however hard he tried to get his thoughts off of the matter. And in the darkest corridors of his mind, clawed, scaly feet scampered from shadow to shadow, whispering their mutinous blasphemies.
Yes, the creatures murmured to William, there was a way to escape the sadness. It would be temporary, but it was guaranteed to work.
‘No,’ he whispered to the empty apartment. ‘Not now. I have to stop this, I have to. I can’t keep relying on the … on the junk, the fucking junk.’
But as he stood up the pain came back with a bayonet charge, impaling his body with a thousand thrusts of sharpened steel. All these lives, all these years, all this lost and wasted love, all this terrible, soul-withering sorrow. It was overwhelming, indefatigable and utterly, completely crushing.
‘Take the medicine,’ the dark beings whispered, caressing William’s skin with the razor-tips of their talons. ‘Take it. Just a little, just enough to push out the pain.’
An image of Ricky’s innocent, trusting smile thrust its way to the forefront of William’s vision, and he dropped to his knees as tears began to stream down his cheeks. His hands started to shake, and a sob clawed its way up his throat.
‘All right,’ he whimpered. ‘All right, all right, all right … just one hit. Just a tiny one. Just the littlest of hits. That’s all, that’s all, just to kill the pain. Just a little, little one.’
Then he struggled onto his feet and trudged over to the drawer where he k
ept his heroin.
***
A few hours later a knock at the door awoke William from his semi-stupor with a violent start. He scrambled up in a panic from the floor where he had passed out and yanked the hypodermic syringe out of his forearm. Drugs had a much shorter effect on beastwalkers, with their special blood, so he was alert right away. With a pounding heart he grabbed his revolver and crept up to the CCTV monitor, pressing himself flat against the wall. He kept his firearm trained on the door and his finger on the trigger, breathing in in short, shallow gasps. However, when the monitor revealed the portly, hunched-over figure of Ricky standing outside the door he exhaled a sigh of relief, and hurriedly hid the gun and the drugs.
A few seconds later he opened the door, beaming with joy as Ricky let out a loud, chattering laugh; one of his friend’s many delightful idiosyncrasies. The two old friends embraced with warm, unchecked affection and then Ricky shuffled into the house.
‘It never ceases to blow my mind, Ben,’ Ricky exclaimed, using one of William’s aliases, which was indeed the only name Ricky knew him by, ‘just how well you’re ageing. I know I say this to you every single time I see you, but I swear to God you haven’t aged a day since we first met all those years ago in, when was it, the late seventies?’
‘As I’ve told you many times old boy, it’s simply a matter of a clean, healthy diet, lots of water, regular exercise and good sleep. It’s that simple, it really is.’
Ricky laughed uproariously.
‘Get the fuck outta here! It’s uncanny is what it is, Ben! I mean it when I say that you literally haven’t aged a day! I mean, I was nineteen when you and I first met. I had a sixpack that you could bounce a quarter off of, biceps like two firm apples, jet-black hair halfway down my back. Now look at me! What little hair is left up here is all grey, and the rest seems to have migrated all down onto this fat gut … but you, man, your stomach is still as flat as a teenager’s, and if there’s a single strand of grey in that healthy mop of yours I can’t for the life of me see it through these freakin’ glasses of mine. Jesus Christ, Ben, you’re freaking me the hell out!’