by Michael Rigg
The vision mingled with the memory of Nigel Wolfe's last resting place, the large brown stain on the carpet, the bits of bone. The ghoul was going to do to Pandora what he'd done to the vice president of Thorne & Wolfe.
But his own memory was then pushed aside by a forced thought. Again, through Pandora's eyes—her younger eyes—he saw Alice, the stranger, naked in the back room of the haberdashery in Philadelphia. Light from the rain-spattered window cast a red halo around her long hair, and the violin curves of her back were accented by the golden glow of the lantern in the haberdashery's bathroom as she pulled on underclothes and trousers. He saw what Pandora had seen that night, felt what she felt. While Wilco was shocked by the sudden vision of the beautiful stranger's curves, he felt only the curiosity his daughter had experienced then... drawn to a scar on her back.
The vision zoomed in, concentrated, intensified in focus as Pandora's eye fell upon the mark.
Three raised ring-shaped lumps joined by a line of scar over Alice's left hip. Pandora had recognized it immediately as a Sign of the Trinity, a mark placed by the gods to designate individuals who would change the course of history if they were made aware of their importance. She knew them as cursed souls, tools of the shadowy dream figures called the Clockwork Carpenters. Wilco recognized it as a scarred version of the key marker on the map of Atlantis's location. In his mind, the image of the map superimposed over Pandora's memory of the scar. The match was perfect.
He immediately felt Alice to be exactly what she thought she was when they met her: a stranger from another time and place, an outcast, a lost soul.
And, in the moment Pandora relayed the thoughts to him, he began to put it all together. Bringing Alice to Atlantis—at least in Pandora's mind—would end the world as they knew it. Everything would simply be erased as the Clockwork Carpenters carried out their legendary whims of fate manipulation. Pandora knew them as evil. Wilco remembered them from tales of his own father who claimed them to be agents of heaven who designated earthborn angels to walk among the mortals and guide their fates toward a greater good.
Growing up, Wilco believed his father's stories, even bought his father's claim that the inventor of the Thinking Machines, Dr. Simcoe, was one of them. But, like Santa Claus and leprechauns, beliefs only go so far without proof, even with children. Yarns spun by parents to entertain children fade with maturity and experience. But now that his mind was filled with what Pandora had seen...
Now that he had seen with his own eyes—through his daughter's eyes—and had actually met Alice, he felt himself blush inside with a burning fire of truth. They existed. A curdling warmth in his belly spread through his body, a tingling gripped him at the back of the neck with the awe-filled shock of the news. It was proof that they—whoever they truly were—either chose people, or created people, to walk among the mortals to change history. Alice's mark, and the appearance of the mark on a topographical map of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean meant one thing: The discovery of the real Atlantis would change reality. It also explained young Alice's memory loss and the peculiar way in which she was thrust upon reality—right into the hands of the one mortal who could stop (or help) her, Captain Bryce Landry.
As the visions coalesced into a clear picture, Wilco felt Pandora's presence in his mind. She called out to him, "Pappa, run! Get to the Canary and get out of here! Don't let the ghoul find you!"
No, he called back to his vision. Pandy, no!
"Go! I need ya to tell Bryce what we know! Tell him 'bout Alice's mark! Warn him to keep 'er away from Atlantis! Away from New Yorke!"
Pandy!
"I can't speak to you, Daddy. He'll hear me! Just go! Find Bryce! Warn him about all this!"
Wilco only hesitated for a second in his mind as he nodded internally. His last thought to his daughter was, I love you!
He opened his eyes and pushed himself up off the grimy sidewalk just as a small triangle of glass exploded into crystalline dust a few feet in front of him. He rolled to his side and scrambled to his feet, huddling in a doorway as other street-level walkers ran to escape the falling shards of glass from the top of the tower. A man cried out as a large shard knocked off his top hat and exploded at his feet. Wilco saw blood stream down the man's hand and dribble onto the cobblestone pavement as the man staggered into the middle of the street and huddled under the awning of a cable car. Someone cried out, "A broken window!" A woman: "Call Emergency Services!" A disinterested cop said, "A bird must have flown into it. Happens all the time."
Wilco knew what really happened. With Pandora's final wishes to him, he felt her hanging there on the ledge of the promenade. He didn't look up. He only closed his eyes, wincing back the tears and terrors and wished for God to take care of her, then he pulled up the collar of his flight jacket around the back of his neck and dashed out of the doorway and down the street.
One block over he raised his hand and waved down an AeroCab. The car chittered up to him and the driver pulled a lever to open the door. "Where to, little man?"
Wilco climbed into the back of the cab, ignoring the slur. "Thirtieth Street Heliport, and step on it!"
The door to the cab barely closed behind him as the vehicle rolled forward and lifted into the air, a blast of hot steam trailing behind it as the driver gunned the engine.
~~~~~~~
Bryce and Adeline burst into the greenhouse. Bryce held his father's chrome revolver in his hand, his face a scowl of worried determination. Adeline, behind him, wrung her hands with worry.
"Lydia!" Bryce shouted as he dropped the pistol on a nearby workbench lined with gardening tools. He rushed over to where his fiancee huddled on the floor, her dress flared out in a wide ring like an inverted flower, his brother cradled in her lap. He could see a little blood on her dress from the back of Clayton's head.
"Clay!" Adeline called out as she snatched the pistol from where Bryce had dropped it. She pointed the heavy weapon toward the floor and glanced over her shoulder as she followed her older brother, watching the open greenhouse doorway. She remembered the shots, the screams, imagined a Yankee intruder on their property or some kind of thief. "Where's Alice?"
Ignoring Adeline, Lydia looked up at Bryce as he knelt down beside her. Bryce looked into his brother's bleary eyes as she spoke to him in a level tone laced with urgency. "Bryce, it was Alice. She attacked Clayton. Hit him with a spade."
"Alice?" Bryce only glanced at her as he cupped his brother's face in his hands. "Clay? Clayton, can you hear me?"
Clayton Landry groaned and blinked a couple of times, tried to focus.
Adeline said, "We heard shots."
Lydia nodded to the small silver Derringer on the floor of the greenhouse. "Mine, I'm afraid. After she attacked him, I fired a couple of warning shots to scare her away."
Bryce suddenly stood, his brown eyes burning as he quickly turned toward the door.
“She's long gone, Bryce!” Lydia called.
Adeline put a hand up to block Bryce's exit, but looked past him, narrowing her eyes at Lydia McFerran, her gaze fierce in the green dim of the glass house. "Why would Alice want to hurt Clayton?"
Bryce turned back to them, an eyebrow raised curiously to Adeline's question. He didn't say anything. He just looked between Clayton's groaning form and Lydia's knowing smirk. Again, he tried to push past Adeline, but she wasn't about to be left alone with those two. Clayton blinked again and began to focus, his groans almost forming words.
Lydia glared back at Adeline. "You're askin' why a stranger brought to this house uninvited would attack someone? Does there need to be a reason, girl? Don't be a fool!"
"Alice is a stranger, yes, but she's sweet, Lydia McFerran,” Adeline said, using the Lady's full name to press her own bitterness. She's the sweetest soul I ever did meet, a
nd you—"
"Shut up!" Bryce spat between the two of them. "Adel, put that damn gun down and git back to the house!"
"No!"
"Adel, damn it, go!"
Adeline shifted her weight from foot to foot, her long dress swaying slightly behind the gun pointed between her feet. She glanced again over her shoulder. "No. Bryce, where's Alice? Ain't that what you should be askin' her?" She waved the gun loosely in Lydia's direction. Bryce moved to grab for it but Adeline quickly pulled it back. “Ask her!”
Bryce, his face ruddy in the green light, snarled at his sister, "Adel, put the damn gun down and go make sure Daddy and Savannah don't come out here!"
Adeline started to say something, but thought better of it as she caught on to her brother's wisdom. This was no scene for either Jefferson Landry's angry impetuousness or Savannah's innocence. Huffing impatiently, she put the pistol back on the bench and turned. Outside the greenhouse, as she ran through the gardens back toward the house, she called out, "Alice? Alice, where are you?"
Bryce turned his attention to Lydia and knelt before her. He rested a cautious hand on his brother's chest as he searched her face, his expression softening slightly though his eyes still blazed. She looked back at him, her own expression softening as it melted into sadness. She lifted a hand to Bryce's cheek but he moved his head away. "Why would Alice attack Clayton?" he asked.
Lydia glanced down at Clayton as he blinked blearily up into her eyes. She gently patted his shoulder before quickly answering Bryce. "I came in just as they were arguin'. She was goin' off somethin' fierce about Landry Holdings, Bryce. She confessed to be a plant for Thorne & Wolfe, demanded to know things."
Bryce's face displayed the shock and horror Lydia expected. She did not expect the underlying expression that followed that accused her of lying.
"It's true, Bryce. She's a spy," Lydia said, tilting her head and lowering her chin with a pout. "She attacked your brother when his back was turned, almost killed him in cold blood!" Then she quickly looked up and spoke to him with urgency as she brushed her fingers over his ear and through his hair. "Bryce, she's goin' to find a wireless! She's goin' to report back to Thorne & Wolfe! Your daddy was right about her! She was planted by the Yankees to keep you from Atlantis! And now the plans of your daddy to get back the contract you lost are goin' to be known by the enemy."
"That's a lie," Bryce muttered bitterly. But his mind reeled with uncertainty as he glared at her. "That's a bold-faced lie, Lydia."
Her expression turned hard, incredulous, but only for a second before melting back into her innocent Southern Belle facade. "Bryce Landry, I wouldn't lie to my future husband. The sake of your father's company is at hand here, and—if I'm understandin' this Atlantis thing—so is the sake of the entire Confed'racy."
Lady McFerran's motivations were hidden by her tender touch and words, most of which were also aimed at the eldest Landry brother as he regained consciousness. The future McFerran-Landry merger in mind, her goal was to wipe Alice clean of this picture and get the Landrys back on track with the biggest acquisition the world had ever known.
Clayton tried to speak. Lydia patted his arm and glanced down at him. She prattled quickly, "Clayton, it's all right. We can still fix this. We can make some calls, force a legal action against Thorne & Wolfe, freeze their assets. It's not your brother's fault, really. This all happened because he has a huge, caring heart. Thorne & Wolfe must know this and it makes the trap they set all the more understandable."
She met Bryce's eyes. “You have to see, Bryce,” she said softly with pleading eyes. “You have to consider everything and realize this Alice of yours was no innocent girl. Lord Landry was right. She was a spy. Why else would this have happened?”
The strength seemed to ebb out of him as his shoulders sank. "Good lord." Bryce slumped. He thought about Lucien Howard's warnings as they'd left New Yorke, thought about how easily he had been duped—if, indeed, what Lydia said was true. His mind raced. Alice was gone. She ran off. Why else would she attack Clayton and run off if not for the fact she really was a spy? Bryce's heart shattered. He couldn't believe how he'd been sucked in by such a complex but obvious ploy. He didn't want to believe it, but it made sense. No matter how he tried to package it, push it away, dissect it or ignore it, the truth in Lydia's words now shone through. He gritted his teeth so hard he could taste blood. The veins in his head bulged and throbbed. He could hear the rush of his heartbeat in his ears, a whining surge like a river heading for a waterfall. “I can't believe what a fool I'd been.”
Lydia reached out as she smiled. She touched his jaw and spoke in a near-whisper. “It was a mistake, Bryce, that's all. We can correct this mess and get Atlantis back. We can exercise the Right of Waiver on the neighboring tariffs, which I believe are held by your father. Norfolk Locks, for one.”
Bryce's gaze fell to the floor, caught by the bright silver of the Derringer. “I can't believe it.” He shook his head, thinking of Alice's face, her smile, the panic in her eyes as she looked at him upon awakening. It was all so real. How could it have been a trick? “Pandora said she wasn't a witch, but she certainly cast a spell on me.”
Lydia's hand moved to his chin and lifted his eyes to meet hers. “My Captain, it's all right. This situation is easily repaired... Well, not easily, but it is repairable,” she blinked and smiled, satisfied that her reasoning had swayed him.
Bryce nodded slightly. His head buzzed as his veins throbbed with an inner struggle as he tried to piece it all together, tried to imagine some way out of it, imagined that Alice—the woman with whom he shared Seven Orchards—really wasn't a spy. But Lydia's wisdom, and the facts of the attack against Clayton, were too much for him to ignore.
He knew what he'd have to do. It was time to declare corporate war on Thorne & Wolfe. Lydia was right. He met her eyes with determination and nodded.
She smiled back and blew him a kiss.
Clayton's voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "It's a lie, Bryce."
Lydia and Bryce both turned to Clayton, their eyes widening. Bryce leaned closer. "What?"
"It's a lie," Clayton whispered. "Lydia... Was Lydia who hit me."
Bryce glanced up at his fiancee and saw her jaw drop as she flushed as pale as a sheet in the green gloom. She shook her head quickly, an eyebrow quirking as her mouth started to make words of denial.
Clayton struggled to sit up. Lydia held him down. He groaned, "Bryce... I... I attacked Alice. Lydia hit me to save her—"
"What?" Bryce reared back and jumped to his feet.
Lydia glanced between the two brothers in shock. She broke in with a nervous laugh. "No, Bryce. He was struck on the head. He's delirious. He—"
Bryce surged inside. The doubts immediately cracked. "Shut up and let him speak!"
Again, Lydia's jaw dropped, but she said nothing as her pallor grayed.
Clayton spoke up, straining as if against looming fatigue that threatened to put him out cold again. "Bryce—Your Alice. She has the mark of the Trinity."
Lydia's eyes grew wide as her jaw dropped open, stuck this time in an expression of utter shock. She looked down at Clayton, pulling her hands away from him as if discovering he was crawling with disease. Bryce took an unsteady step back.
"I attacked her," Clay continued. "I tore her dress... her back... Bryce, she bares the mark..."
Lydia gasped and pulled away from Clayton as he rolled to the side and struggled to get up.
Bryce reached for the chrome pistol. He held it at his side. "Clay... What are you saying?"
Lydia scrambled to her feet as Clayton righted himself and tugged at his rumpled vest. Bryce noticed his suspenders hanging loose at the sides of his unbuttoned trousers. His mind replayed what Clayton just said about Alice's dress being tor
n. Lydia stepped back, her eyes searching Bryce's as she glanced between him and his brother. She glanced down at the Derringer. She pressed her fingers to her lips.
Clayton said, "I-I'm sorry, Bryce. It's true."
Bryce cocked the pistol but kept it pointed at the ground.
Clayton glanced at the pistol and knew his brother had a right to exercise justice for the woman he had assaulted. His hands at his sides, Clayton drew a deep breath and presented his chest as a target. "It's true. I believed her to be a spy, a Property who was using you to get to Landry Holdings. I... I fought with her... tried to... kill her...." His lower lip quivered with the confession. "In the throes of my violent lust, I... I tried to... take her. I-I thought she really was only Property, but... It's when I saw the mark of the Trinity, that I—"
Bryce raised the pistol and pointed it at Clayton's heart. His eyes burning red, Bryce spat through gritted teeth, "Do you have any idea what you've done?"
"No!" Lydia pulled Clayton's arm and stepped in front of him. "Bryce, don't!"
"Step aside, Lady McFerran."
"Bryce, listen to me," Lydia said, her palms out, her eyes pleading.
Bryce continued to hold the pistol aimed levelly at Clayton's heart. The bullet would have to pass through Lydia to its target, but that didn't matter. He knew about the mark of The Trinity. He knew the tales of lore about the forefathers of this country, of nearly every country of the world. His own father had dreamed of the Clockwork Carpenters—claimed they had led him to every artifact recovered by Landry Holdings, including Atlantis. And he knew of the legends that those marked by Carpenters were angels or demons sent to change the world.
And Alice, an agent of the Clockwork Carpenters, had certainly fulfilled that role. Her very appearance took him away from the contract signing that would peacefully place the secrets of Atlantis in Confederate control. Now they were in the hands of a powerful Yankee corporation. Was it all by design? Was it also by design that she distract him from his family obligations with her mystery, her beauty? Her tears, her expression of loss and fear, they were so real.