by Jaxon Reed
“Thief! Seize her!”
The men grabbed her, roughly.
Lendor said, “The penalty for stealing from the king is death! Bring her to the guillotine!”
-+-
The car pulled to a stop at a pier off Chicago’s docks. Two henchmen opened the trunk and grabbed Booker, pulling him out.
They dragged him toward the side of the pier where a third man stirred wet cement in a large round metal tub.
Capone and Sleaghan followed behind.
“I liked y’, Book,” Capone said. “I really did.”
“Mr. Capone! Please! I didn’t do anything! I’ve always been faithful to this organization!”
“Don’t beg, Book. It’s unbecoming.”
Capone nodded at the men, and they picked up Booker under his arms then lowered him feet first into the tub. The cement made squishing sounds around his shoes as his feet and legs sank in.
“It’ll harden in a few minutes, Book, then you’ll sleep with the fishes. Bodies have a way of bloating and resurfacing, but these ‘cement galoshes’ will keep you down there for a while.”
“Mr. Capone! I—”
One of the men slugged him in the jaw, knocking him backwards and ending the conversation. They grabbed Booker by the armpits again as Capone and Sleaghan turned back toward the car. His feet were firmly stuck in the cement, and they dragged him and the tub toward the edge of the pier.
Booker looked about wildly, searching for Ms. Tiffany Valor. Surely she’s still here, he thought. There’s still a chance!
Then he saw her materializing several yards away, visible but hidden among piles of boxes and barrels. He could see her face, the moonlight reflecting off her golden hair. She looked at him with an expression of profound sorrow, and sadness in her eyes.
He took a breath to yell her name just as the mobsters shoved him over the side. The tub hit the surface with a loud splash, then sank fast. His lungs filled with liquid as the world grew dark and cold around him, the weight of the water rushing in. Everything turned black.
-+-
In Tiff’s dream, she recalled basic facts about the guillotine as the executioner led her to the giant chopping block. Ironically, a committee called by the king had designed it. They were tasked with developing a more efficient means of execution. France continued using it on O-Earth up until the late 20th century.
At the top of the platform they stopped so the guards could tie her hands behind her back. A sea of people crowded below the platform. She thought she recognized Dr. Guillotine himself in the crowd.
She wondered how many watching were destined to share her fate, once the Revolution inevitably spun out of control. No aristocrat or person of means, or even anybody suspected of favoring the royalty, would be safe from the killing machine.
She caught the eye of Lendor. He stood with others in a separate royal retinue, a smug expression on his face. He would watch her die with deep satisfaction.
The executioner made her kneel, and placed her throat down firmly in the groove. The wood felt cold, and smooth. She craned her neck, trying to look up and find someone else in the crowd, perhaps somebody with a sympathetic glance for the condemned. But all she could see was a blur of angry faces.
The blade came sliding down with a hiss.
CHUNK!
Her head rolled forward as blood rushed out of her open neck. The crowd roared in approval.
11
The Pierce-Arrow limousine glided to a stop in a deserted street late at night. Shutters were closed, and lights were out in all the buildings. Only two lamplights fizzed and sputtered on the street, casting a fitful glow on the pavement.
Capone leaned forward in his seat and said, “What’s goin’ on?”
The driver said, “I’m sorry Mr. Capone. There’s a woman standing in the middle of the road.”
Capone and Sleaghan glanced out the front windshield in the direction the driver pointed.
Tiff stood poised for battle, feet apart and legs crouched. She held an iron staff in both hands. An iron chain looped off her belt on her right side, an iron net on her left.
Sleaghan sighed and said, “I’ll handle this, Al. Driver, backup and go around the block. Take Mr. Capone home that way.”
The driver nodded as Sleaghan stepped out of the car. He threw the limo into reverse and turned around in the middle of the street, then sped away leaving Sleaghan to face Tiff alone.
Sleaghan brushed some lint off his jacket’s lapel and glanced up. Tiff remained in battle pose.
“No dramatic speeches?” he said. “No, ‘Prepare to meet your Maker’ comments?”
In reply, Tiff threw the iron rod at him. It lengthened as it flew through the air. He stepped out of its way and it barely missed him. He smiled, combining contempt and smugness in one expression.
His smile faltered when the rod, now the size and length of a battle lance, reversed course and came flying back. He cast a quick stasis spell at it, but while his attention was diverted Tiff tossed the iron chain at him.
He rose quickly in the air to avoid it, then cast another stasis spell when it tried to boomerang back up toward him. But when he turned back to her again, she was upon him, flying up to close the distance, this time with a knife.
He dodged in the air, but not before her blade took a nick out of his forearm.
Sleaghan screamed in rage and pain. He threw a force spell at her, sending her tumbling to the ground while he flew higher.
Tiff tossed her net up after him. It followed the injured fae high in the air. By the time he noticed the threat it was too late. The net quadrupled in size and rushed up to envelop him. His powers drained instantly and he fell back down to the ground like a rock, the net constricting around him.
Tiff felt a whoosh of air as another presence popped in with a flash of golden light. The second fae appeared in human form this time. He stood tall, with braided brown hair falling back to his waist, and dark purple eyes. He wore a gray tunic and pants, with tan leather boots up to his knees.
His head jerked up as Sleaghan came falling down, trapped in the iron net. He shot both his hands out, palms outward, and made a cushion of air. It broke Sleaghan’s fall, and the fae rolled to a stop near a lamppost, wrapped tight in the net.
Sleaghan cried out weakly, “My brother!”
The newcomer ignored Sleaghan’s cry, keeping his eyes locked on Tiff. He moved slightly, in Sleaghan’s direction. Tiff took a step that way as well, her rod and chain flying back to her hands.
Sleaghan whimpered from within the net, which had crumpled up all around him, holding him in the fetal position.
“What’s your name?” Tiff said, her eyes never wavering from the new fae.
He smiled, a proud and haughty look crossing his face that seemed familiar to her.
“I go by many names. Which would you prefer?”
He took another step toward Sleaghan. She matched him, keeping herself between the two fae.
“You can’t dodge the question. You have to answer when it is demanded of you. I ask again, what is your name?”
He smiled again, and said, “I think we’ve met before. Perhaps our paths have crossed on some distant world?”
He taunted her now, and his face changed appearance, still holding that smug, strangely familiar smile.
“I’ve killed many people wearing this face. No? I don’t see recognition in you. How about this one?”
His face changed again, and again. Sometimes he had light hair, sometimes dark. Once he had no hair at all. His beards changed in length, and sometimes he appeared clean-shaven. He rapidly cycled through several more faces.
“Come now. I know we’ve met before. These are my faces from the last several centuries. You don’t recognize any of them?”
He took another step. Tiff matched him.
“Tell me your name, fae!”
“I don’t have to, if you already know it. Who am I?”
His face changed once more.
“Surely i
t’s not this one. I haven’t used it in centuries.”
Finally she recognized him fully.
“Lendor.”
His eyes widened in amusement, and his smile turned into a toothy grin.
“Did we meet in France? We must have! Did you perish in the Revolution? Yes. Yes, I think I remember your head rolling off the chopping block. And now you fight for Jason, is that it?”
She swung her iron rod toward him and gave a mental command.
Clink! Clink! Clink! Clink!
Pieces of the rod broke off the end and rushed toward him like bullets. Lendor cartwheeled away, dodging the projectiles, then deftly cast a stasis spell behind him before they could circle back.
At the same time he cast one in front of him too, stopping the chain Tiff had already thrown at him. The spell only held part of the chain, but it was enough. Links hung awkwardly in the air, their motion arrested. A few pieces from one end swayed limply.
They paused, Tiff closer to Sleaghan, Lendor farther away with the chain hovering before him and the rod pieces floating behind him.
“Pity iron doesn’t affect us until it touches us. Did you know I was the one who came up with the stasis spell? It doesn’t actually touch the iron, just the immediate environment around the iron. It makes us much harder to catch, does it not?”
Tiff smirked at him and said, “Less talk, more action!”
She turned, ran the last few steps toward Sleaghan and jumped, aiming the tip of her rod down toward the creature’s skull, bringing all of her weight down with it.
The rod slipped through the net and slammed into Sleaghan’s head, crushing it. An explosion of white light ripped away the fae’s human shell, leaving his gray, translucent body on the sidewalk, pools of clear liquid flowing from his head.
Lendor roared in anger. He threw spell after spell at her, sending chunks of light streaking past her head. She batted them away with the rod, dissipating each one effortlessly.
She freed a hand and motioned for the iron chain to return. Five or six dangling links broke off from the longer chain still trapped in the stasis spell, and rushed to her. She snatched them out of the air and threw the shortened chain up in the sky high above Lendor’s head.
Her motion broke the fae’s concentration. He looked up, nervously trying to track the chain. She charged him, aiming the point of her rod at his open stomach.
He threw out both hands, creating a massive stasis spell, stopping her in her tracks. She anticipated the spell. Just before it hit, the end of her rod broke off as a final projectile.
Clink!
It flew toward him in a burst of renewed speed.
For a split second, Lendor stared in shock at the iron tip rocketing toward him. Then he quickly cast another stasis spell, stopping it mere inches from his belly.
He took a shaky breath and smiled in triumph at Tiff and her rod and the iron tip, all frozen in place.
Then the chain fell on him, knocking him to the ground and sapping him of power. Tiff bounced lightly back on her feet as his spell broke. Everything else fell, too, the tips of her rod clanging down to the street.
She approached the fae carefully, summoning all the pieces of her rod back and making it whole again.
Lendor grunted under the weight of the chain on his head and shoulders, its links holding him powerless. He barely maintained control of his human form. It kept winking in and out, showing the translucent skin of his true form in brief flashes.
Tiff drew within striking distance.
“Things are changing,” he said, weakly. “You don’t know what’s coming. Our survival is—”
She drove the tip of the rod into his temple, putting her weight behind it.
A small explosion of blinding white light and wind blew her skirt and hair back. She looked down at the tiny gray body without any remorse.
All the chain pieces flew back to her hand. They reconnected and shrunk in size. She clasped it like a necklace around her neck. The rod shrank to the size of a hairpin, and the net flew over to her as well, shrinking small enough along the way to stuff into her purse.
She pulled a handful of dust out, containing artificial microbes, and threw it over the bodies of the two fae. They went to work immediately, quickly disintegrating the remains. Within minutes, no sign of the conflict remained. Cait assured her nobody had seen anything. There were no witnesses, and the world was left as if fae had never been there.
Satisfied, Tiff asked Cait to open a doorway to Ness’s office.
-+-
The morning light peaked through the window as Eliot Ness entered his office, flicked on the lights, and hung his hat up on the rack in the corner. He turned for his desk. He stopped, focusing on a ledger that had not been there yesterday when he left.
On it, a quick note had been written in a woman’s cursive script: “Mr. Ness, Darius Booker wanted you to have this in case anything happened to him. I’m afraid something has happened to him. You will find his body along with several others underwater, weighted down in cement at the base of piers belonging to the Outfit at the Port of Chicago.
“Use this ledger wisely, Mr. Ness. It contains everything you’ll need to win a conviction against Al Capone. It contains the real figures for all the Outfit’s finances. Mr. Booker was unaware there were two sets of books until recently. I’m afraid his newfound knowledge cost him his life.”
Ness frowned, and set the note to one side. Then he opened the ledger and looked down the rows of numbers on the first page. Slowly, his frown eased and turned into a smile.
-+-
Over the next several months Tiff traveled around the world, dropping off sensors for Cait. She planted them at major monuments, hid them inside important buildings, under the streets of cities, and deep under farmer’s fields. She even dropped a few overboard while on ocean voyages.
After a while all the continents had more than enough sensors, and the computer’s powers were greatly enhanced on the alternate. Cait assured Tiff that should she or anyone else need to visit 5821-A again, they would not be hampered by a lack of the AI’s capabilities.
Tiff leaned over the rails of an ocean liner, a gentle evening breeze fanning out her hair. The ship sailed from the Holy Land to England, with stops at various ports of call. She had arrived in Jerusalem overland, after planting sensors throughout Asia and the Middle East. Europe and Africa had plenty of sensors she had placed on prior treks, as did North and South America, Australia, Greenland, and the major islands. She’d even dropped some in the water close to Antarctica. Now off the coast of Italy, she tossed her last sensor into the Mediterranean.
An extraordinarily high-tech device the size of an egg, and resembling a common rock, the sensor would enhance Cait’s perceptional capabilities by thousands of square kilometers. Or miles, Tiff reminded herself. She preferred miles.
The people in this reality would never notice it, no matter how advanced their technology grew before their “end days” came. If anybody ever saw it, they would consider it a small rock, nothing more.
Tiff sighed, and reflected back on the mission. She regretted not finding the remaining fae artifact Capone used as a flamethrower. It had disappeared, and even with all the new sensors, Cait couldn’t locate it. The computer had come to the logical conclusion the tiny bracelet was no longer on this alternate. Maybe Lendor or Sleaghan had transported it elsewhere before the final conflict.
Tiff shrugged, mentally. If they couldn’t find the artifact it couldn’t hurt them, she reasoned.
A couple of ladies stepped out onto the deck, laughing, leaving the dance floor behind. They were dressed to the nines, in spangled flapper outfits, sporting bobbed hair and bright lipstick.
“There you are, Tiff! You know, Sir Rodney has been looking for you all evening. He’s dying to ask you to dance.”
Tiff smiled at the young women, but she felt a little sad for them at the same time. They were living it up now on this cruise, she thought, but the coming Great Dep
ression and World War II would change their world considerably. Bad times were ahead for everybody on this cruise. No one would survive with their wealth intact, and many were destined to die in a few years. Especially young men like Sir Rodney.
“I think I’m going to retire to my cabin early tonight. Sir Rodney can wait another day.”
“Well don’t keep him waiting too long. We’ll be docking in Nice soon, and he’s promised the gentlemen at his table he’ll have kissed you by then.”
The second lady said, “Won’t France be lovely, Tiff? It’s the perfect setting for romance! And Rodney is landed gentry.”
She practically beamed. In their world, Sir Rodney served as a promising target for affection.
Tiff’s return smile covered her grimace. She said, “I’m afraid I’m no big fan of France.”
“Oh, really? Why not?”
“I’ve had some bad experiences there.”
The ladies waited for her to continue, but Tiff brushed it off as if it were of little consequence.
“I really must return to my cabin. Perhaps I’ll see you both at breakfast?”
One of them said, “If we wake up in time!”
The other one giggled. They made their way back to the dance floor while Tiff headed the opposite direction.
Cait spoke in her ear. “We are done here, Tiff, if you want to come home.”
“Okay. Open a door.”
A shimmering blue-green vertical crack of light appeared and grew wider. Bluebonnets peeked out from the other side, swaying in a gentle breeze. When the opening grew large enough, Tiff stepped through, wondering what her fellow passengers would think tomorrow when they discovered she’d disappeared. Maybe they’d conclude she fell overboard. Poor Sir Rodney never would get that kiss . . .
-+-
Tiff paced the entire length and breadth of the Wildflower Room. At the edges, the wall shimmered, reflecting back the scenery. She paced along the room’s border, nervously. She stopped and rested her palm against the wall and felt it vibrating slightly, full of energy.