by Barry Reese
“The devil may be on your side,” Henry said, finding hidden reserves of bravery within himself, “but Kaslov will still put you in your place.”
The Mad Monk looked fit to kill but he held off on attacking the man, knowing his popularity with the townspeople. Letting him live would keep them from rising up and causing more trouble for him. Instead, he turned back to the living flame and glowered angrily. “My men say that all the pieces of your rock have been collected. Are you well enough to travel?”
I will not be harmed by the movement.
“Good.” Rasputin’s evil grin returned. “Then the time has come to make sure that the good people of Loggieville will not be able to name us. And who better to test this spell upon than the good mayor?”
As the Mad Monk began to advance upon him, Henry started to scream. His howls of terror were abruptly silenced a moment later, though many in the small town wondered what had just happened. They feared the worst… but were unaware that something worse than death had just taken place.
CHAPTER X
Nocturnal Liaisons
Kaslov’s stature amongst the law enforcement community allowed the resulting investigation to move much faster than it otherwise would have. All of the gunman save for the star-struck Marty refused to speak under interrogation and were taken away by the responding authorities. In light of the assistance he had given, Marty was promised a lighter sentence in the end.
The Russian superman had then retired to his private berth on the train as the passengers began to slowly recover from their scare. Flynn and Libby were both unharmed, though they were full of questions about what Kaslov had learned. Leonid had promised them answers in the morning as they reached Loggieville, preferring to keep his thoughts close to the vest for now. The fact that someone claiming to be Rasputin was involved had unnerved the usually unflappable Kaslov. According to Leonid’s father, Rasputin was undeniably dead. From the few snatches of conversation Leonid had overheard, the Mad Monk had been nearly impossible to push off the mortal coil, but in the end the deed had been done. So who was this person masquerading as Rasputin?
Leonid lay in bed for over an hour, his eyes settled into the gloom. He was somewhat lulled by the gentle rocking of the train but he knew he was not going to get any sleep tonight. He had just considered dressing and walking the corridors for a bit when a soft knocking came at his door. He sat upright, muscles tensed. “Who is it?”
Libby pushed open the door, her delicate features shown clearly thanks to the lighting outside. “It’s just me. Can I come in?”
“Of course. Is something the matter?”
As the pretty young secretary entered the room, shutting the door tightly behind her, Leonid wondered at her appearance. She wore a silky nightgown that clung to the contours of her firm body. It rustled gently as she approached his bed. “Leo… I know this seems very forward of me but… with all the danger we’re facing, it may be the only chance we’ll ever get. I’m madly, terribly in love with you.”
“Libby,” he began, but his words faded as she pushed the nightgown off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She stepped lightly out of it, his keen eyes drinking in her form. She was fit, with long legs and a flat stomach. Leo found himself entranced with the gentle undulation of her belly, a clear sign of her aroused breathing, and he followed the sweep of her body upwards from there, letting his gaze linger for a moment on her magnificent breasts.
“Can I stay with you?” she asked sweetly, letting the fingers of her left hand toy idly up and down her thigh.
Leonid rose from the bed, clad only in his briefs and moved towards her. She tilted her head to accept his kiss but it never came. Instead, he gently took her by the hands. “I am tempted. I truly am. But I can’t do this.”
“But… why? I thought…”
“I do find you attractive, Libby. But I swore an oath to my father that I would make this would a better place. I can’t have distractions from that.”
“But what kind of world will it be if there’s no room for love?” she protested, suddenly feeling ashamed of her nakedness. She pulled away from him and hurriedly dressed. “I’m sorry, Leo. I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”
“Libby! Please, let me finish!”
The girl was out the door before the Russian could finish. He let his shoulders sag, feeling the weight of his mission heavy upon him.
* * *
Libby stood with her back to the door, trying to hold in the sobs she felt threatening to overwhelm her.
“If you’re looking for any port in the storm…”
Libby looked over to see Flynn standing in the doorway to his own berth, which was next to Kaslov’s. He looked dashing with a day’s worth of stubble and a half buttoned shirt that had been hurriedly thrown over his slacks. “What” she stammered, trying to hide her emotions but failing miserably.
“I don’t need these thin walls to tell me what just went on in there,” Flynn began. “And I’m telling you that you’re far too beautiful to go back to your own room dressed like that.”
“I’m not that kind of girl,” she protested.
“Never said you were. But you do look like a lonely girl. And I’m damned lonely myself.”
Libby cast a hurt stare back at Leonid’s door. “If you want to throw me away,” she whispered under her breath, “Then so be it.”
Before she could change her mind, she pushed her way into Flynn’s room and pulled him to her, her hands wrapping about his neck.
CHAPTER XI
Deadly Alliances
November 15, 1939
“He said he wanted you to know he was coming for you,” Tony repeated, nervously smoothing back the shock of white hair that had appeared virtually overnight. He’d been too wired to sleep following his encounter with the Reaper but he’d held off on visiting Big Charlie until early the following morning, knowing that his boss wouldn’t react very well to losing any sleep himself. When he’d finally tried to set up a meeting, he’d found out that Charlie was out of town on a business trip, meaning that nearly two days had passed before they’d finally met up and the tale had been told. “The guy was a maniac, Charlie!”
Big Charlie leaned back in his leather chair, which creaked beneath his weight. He chewed on a cigar, idly fingering a glass of bourbon that sat on his mahogany desk. They were in his home, located in the revitalized arts district of the city. It was a study in extravagance, with no discernible pattern to the furnishings other than the large price tag they’d come with. “And you’re telling me you don’t know who the hell he is?” Charlie asked in disbelief. “A guy as big as you’re describing, who has a beef with me and who’s the best marksman on the planet?”
“There was something familiar about him,” Tony admitted. “But his face… that wasn’t no mask, boss. His face was all dried up and skeletal. It was like he was dead. He even smelled dead!”
Charlie sighed, flicking some of the ashes off his cigar. He let the cheroot lie against an ashtray that cost several thousand dollars. “And you ran like a little schoolgirl instead of trying to take him out? What the hell am I paying you for, Tony? It sure as hell ain’t so you can be an errand boy for some guy who looks like he just crawled out of the grave.”
Tony’s eyes widened and he took a step towards the desk, lowering his voice. “Boss! That’s it! You don’t think this Reaper guy was Hank, do you?”
“Hank Winthrop’s dead and buried,” Charlie reminded him.
“Yeah, but… I told you what Mel said about that grave…”
Charlie rolled his eyes. Mel worked at the cemetery and had covered for a number of unofficial burials over the years as some of Charlie’s enemies dropped off the face of the earth. According to Mel, grave # 166 was disturbed on Halloween night. That particular grave was the one where Hank had been buried alive some three years back, which would have been strange enough. But Mel swore that it looked like something had crawled out. “Is that what this is about? You going paranoid on
me?”
“No, boss, nothing like that. Look, the papers said that the cops were all over the joint after I left. They said they had a witness—one of the girls who described him just like I did, right?”
“She sure did,” Charlie admitted.
“Then you know that something’s up. And it wouldn’t be the first weird thing to happen in this town, would it?”
Charlie had to agree with that. In the last few years, he’d heard things from men that he would have trusted with his life that sounded impossible. Vampires, werewolves and mad scientists, all loose in Atlanta. It was like something out of a bad pulp novel. “I tell you what, Tony… I want you and Mikey to take some goons out tonight to look for this Reaper. A guy who looks like that can’t be hard to miss, am I right? Somebody musta seen him.”
Tony shuffled his feet, not wanting to even consider going after the Reaper. But he knew what it meant to defy Charlie and so he merely nodded and headed for the door, already planning his call to Mikey.
As he left, he passed the boss’s wife, the shapely Sally. She smiled prettily at him as she entered her husband’s study, wearing a gown that would have once been beyond her wildest dreams. “No problems with work, is there?” she asked Charlie, kissing him on the top of his head.
“Nah, it’s nothing, doll. Just some old business that won’t stay buried, that’s all. You going shopping again today?”
Sally nodded. Shopping was one of the few things that silenced the pain in her heart. “If you don’t mind…”
“Course not, doll. You have yourself a good time.”
* * *
“When the good is swallowed by the dark, there the Peregrine shall plant his Mark,” Max said as he brought he glowing signet ring down on the man’s forehead. It sizzled against the crook’s flesh and produced a scream of pained terror that echoed throughout the abandoned warehouse.
When the deed was done, the Peregrine let the Latino man fall to the ground. “Count yourself lucky, Pedro. If I’d been the Reaper, you’d be dead right now, you know that?”
Pedro looked up at him with red-tinged eyes and nodded. The image of a Peregrine in flight had been branded onto his forehead, looking painfully bright. “Sí, señor. I know that.”
“Then show me you’re grateful.” The Peregrine knelt next to the door, gesturing towards an open crate full of magazines. “There’s enough illegal pornography there to put you away for a long, long time, my friend. But I’m willing to cut you a deal: you abandon all this garbage here and now, leaving town for good. Got it?”
“Sí!”
“And one more thing,” the Peregrine said with a cold smile. “Tell me what you’ve heard about the Reaper. All I know is what he looks like—and that he’s a busy little bee, hitting a different spot every night for the past few days.”
“I don’t know much, señor. Only that he appears and disappears without a trace. He’s killed almost everyone he’s met so far, but he always leaves at least one person alive.”
“You mean a witness?”
“No, señor—they are just lucky ones! I mean he leaves behind someone who can give a message to the man who owns all those things. The bordello, the drug syndicate, the gun runners. They are all owned by one man.”
That piqued the Peregrine’s interest. He’d been looking for a connection between the hits but so far had been only able to find one true link: that all the enterprises were illegal. “Who is it?”
“Big Charlie.”
Max paused for a moment, thinking back over the events of the past few months. Charlie had been top dog in the Atlanta underworld for years but he’d mostly dropped off the scene during the Warlike Manchu’s brief tenure in the city. In the aftermath of that whole affair, Max had been focused on the arrival of his son and had paid less attention to the underworld than he obviously should have. “Thanks, Pedro. Now get your tail out of my town.”
The Peregrine stood up again and thought about his next move. Paying a visit to Big Charlie seemed like the obvious thing to do. It wasn’t much of a stretch to assume that the man would know who was out to ruin his business, after all.
He started to head outside to his roadster when the sound of heavy footfalls made him pause. It wasn’t Pedro, who had scurried away as quickly as possible. This was someone new, someone carrying a good bit of weight on them.
“You were looking for me?” rumbled the deep voice of a man. The stranger stepped into view, emerging from the shadows near a back entrance to the warehouse. He was tall and broad shouldered, wearing dark, dirt-stained clothing. His face was skull-like and painful to behold.
“The Reaper?” Max asked, taking several steps towards the other man. “Didn’t expect you to find me first,” he admitted.
The Reaper stared at him for a long moment before speaking. “I keep a good ear to the ground. It lets me know when people are asking around about me.”
“You’ve killed a lot of people, my friend… and I’m guessing it has to do with some sort of vendetta against Big Charlie.”
“Retribution,” the Reaper replied. “He took several things from me, things that can never be repaid with anything other than blood.”
“Vengeance won’t get back whatever you lost,” the Peregrine said, hoping that his words could find hold with the Reaper. Max was reaching out with his telepathy, straining to call upon the powers he’d possessed since his youth. When his mind brushed that of the Reaper’s, he flinched at the sensation. It was nauseating, like stepping into the middle of a morgue, with the smells and sights of death assaulting him.
“Not a pretty place is it?” the Reaper asked. “My mind, that is.”
“What are you?” Max hissed, pointing both his guns at the Reaper. He gave thought to holstering one of them so he could draw his mystic dagger but held off on it for now—best to keep the dagger in reserve, he decided.
“I used to be like you. An average Joe trying to get by. I wanted to get myself a girl, settle down, and raise a few pups. The usual.” The Reaper shook his head sadly. “But Big Charlie wouldn’t let me. When I tried to get out, he killed me. Buried me alive.”
The Peregrine lowered his pistols, staring at the man before him. “You came back from the grave… for revenge?”
“For righteous fury.”
Max thought of his father again, remembering what he had said when he’d told Max that he wouldn’t be returning in the future. “Someone told me that the walls between the worlds of the living and dead were closing again. That travel from one side to the other was going to be more difficult. Mind telling me how you made it through to the world of the living again?”
The Reaper’s bony visage seemed to harden under the questioning. “The Black Flame. I called it and it came to me.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “The Black Flame…?”
“It’s an ancient entity that lives beyond the stars. When a man has enough strength of will he can summon the Flame. He can ask of it a boon. But there’s a price to be paid. I asked to be returned so that I could take my revenge on Big Charlie.”
“And what did the Black Flame get in return?”
“I’m here, spreading chaos and fear. That’s what feeds the Flame, fans it so it never goes out.”
“Once Big Charlie’s been taken down, what happens then?”
“My soul floats down into the abyss,” the Reaper stated without emotion. “I’m more than willing to pay for my sins, Mr. Peregrine… but Charlie needs to die.”
“You’re killing innocent people, as well.”
“No one’s innocent!” the Reaper bellowed. “No one but Sally.”
The Peregrine filed that name down in his mental notebook and pointed his pistols at the Reaper once more. “I’ll help you take down Charlie. But we’ll do it my way. Understand?”
The Reaper looked at the man’s pistols, eyes blazing. “Or what?”
“Or you’ll find out that I’m a little bit familiar with dispatching undead creatures like yourself.”
The being that had once been Hank Wilbon stewed it over for a moment before finally nodding. “In the end, Charlie has to die. By my hands. Understand?”
The Peregrine thought of Whisper’s words and knew that this was part of what she meant. Would he stand aside and let an evil man die for his crimes? He’d been inside the Reaper’s mind, had seen the horrible act take place. He knew the rage that Wilbon felt and knew beyond a doubt that Big Charlie was worthy of nothing less than execution. But he’s made a promise to both Benson and to himself that he’d no longer willingly take human lives.
Which path would he choose in the end?
CHAPTER XII
Land of Confusion
The trio departed the train just outside Loggieville and Kaslov noted that there was a distinct difference in the air the next morning. Flynn seemed to be more chipper than normal while Libby was not only giving Leonid the cold shoulder but she was being overly fussy about doting over Flynn.
With a wistful shake of his head, Kaslov tried to ignore the situation. This was exactly the sort of thing he tried to avoid, after all. Before Libby had stormed out last night, he had considered trying to explain that it wasn’t just that she would be a distraction to his work but that she would also be in constant danger—any number of Kaslov’s enemies could make her a target of their wrath and Leonid didn’t want her blood to be on his hands.
The three of them made the slow trek to the edge of the city, trudging through ankle deep snow. Libby was the most disturbed by the extreme cold but Flynn gallantly gave her his overcoat to warm herself with. Kaslov said nothing about this though he knew it was partly his fault that the poor girl was shivering so. She was dressed perfectly for the role he had asked her to play: that of the sexually available nymph. Her emerald dress was tight in all the right places with a high slit on her right leg and a plunging neckline in the front. It was a breathtaking arrangement but not one suited for the weather.