by CW Lynch
Grace frowned. She never backed down from a fight, Marv remembered that only too well. Fighting was in her nature, no witch could have lived as long as she had otherwise. But she wasn't sure if she believed him.
"If you know who he is, then give him to me now."
"No," said Marv flatly. "I've given you fair warning, and I consider my debt to you paid. Get out while you can, Grace. Write this generation off, come back for the next lot of Kings, and call it evens."
"And if I don't?"
"Then my debt is still paid," said Marv. "And you're one more dead witch." He left the table before Grace could say another word.
FALL DOWN DEAD
Where: an old print mill, a relic from the days when the Kings made their money in the print media and a front page headline was as powerful as any bullet. When: midnight, which was pure theatricality on Cane King's part. He wanted to make a statement, wanted the world to wake up to a new order of his making.
How, for the most part, had been left to Grace. She'd spent hours in the mill, fortifying it as if they were under siege. She commanded King's thugs and hired guns as well as anyone he had ever seen, a natural general, and even Jack Taylor fell into line. The plan was perfect. An iron clad defence, except for one crucial mistake. A mistake that Grace was relying on her prey finding. Well hidden enough so as not to be obvious, but there. Exploitable by the right opponent. Perfect.
Except for one thing.
Perfect except for Wally Wu.
Wally was a contortionist. He had died hidden in a crate in the big top, folded up as tight he could, praying that nobody would find him. Wally was a coward, everybody knew. He said he'd learnt how to hide himself when he was a kid. Anyone who asked how, or why, didn't get an answer, but there was something in Wally Wu's eyes that told you that he'd had something to hide from. And so Wally Wu died the way he'd lived, hiding, heart racing, and a prayer on this lips. "Please don't let them find me". And nobody did. Just a stray bullet, its lethal trajectory through Wally's right lung nothing more than a bouncing, clattering, dice roll.
In death, Wally wasn't a coward anymore. He'd found a place to hide where no-one could touch him, and like all the others all he thought about now was bloody revenge.
That was why Wally Wu had shown Magpye how to fold his body, how to contort and squash and squeeze, how to dislocate and relocate and rotate. It was Wally Wu who had put Magpye into an old packing crate down in the basement of the place hours before Cane, Grace, or any of the others had even arrived. They had built their trap around them, never knowing that they were there, and all the while Wally had kept on praying.
"Let the bastards find us, let the bastards find us."
But they hadn't. Not until Magpye had pushed the lid off the crate with his feet and slowly unfurled his body, which was not the shape of a normal body any more. The sound of bones cracking back into place had brought an inquisitive guard their way, and he had been the first to die, gasping for air as the Magpye's blade slipped between his ribs and burst him inside like a water balloon. The Magpye picked up the guard's radio and listened to the chatter. Able's trick, learnt from a movie.
"The cops are here."
"Jesus, they've rolled right up to the front door."
"They just got themselves screwed then. Shut the gates behind them. This is going to be easy."
"They're not getting out."
"Fuck it, kill 'em in their car."
"No, wait. Send someone down. There's something not right."
The explosion that came next sounded small through the radio, but the shock wave that reached all the way to the basement told a different story. Magpye smiled. Turned out Owen White had some tricks of his own.
***
Owen smiled. Through his night vision goggles the explosion had been a ball of pure white, like an instant snowfall burying the old mill and every scum bag Kingsman in it. All too soon, the bright ball of brilliant white faded away, leaving the mill with its heavy iron doors hanging open. White flames moved across the green background of the night vision, silhouetting dark blurry figures.
To Owen's right, Nutt looked down the scope of his rifle. "Three, four, five..." he counted slowly.
"Expendables," said White, "They're not sending any of their big guns down to check the car. Take them anyway, let them know we're here."
Nutt grunted his approval before opening fire. "Five, four, three, two ... one..."
***
King paced back and forth. Taylor was at the window, smiling.
"Is this supposed to happen?" King barked. "Because it looks like our people are getting shot."
"Nobody important," replied Taylor, his voice showing a rare trace of excitement. "Their shooter is quite impressive though."
"Great, that's just... great," hissed Cane. "Where the hell is Grace?"
"Baiting the trap," replied Taylor.
***
Magpye crept through the basement of the mill, a shadow among shadows. The place reeked of oil and ink and even though the great machines here were rusted and tired, their immense power still resonated from within them. Lives were made and lives were broken here, in the incantations of ink on paper. That was the true power of the Kings - they controlled all the stories. They could burn a circus to the ground, kill everyone in it, then tell whatever lies they wanted and everyone believed them. It said it in the paper, honey, so it must be true. The real lives, the real stories that they crushed were lost forever. All there was was their story, their history.
He was going to change that. After tonight, people were going to know who he was.
"And who, pray tell, are you?"
The voice startled him. Nobody could creep up on him, could they? He cursed the ghosts and all their eyes and ears as he spun around, looking for a gap amongst the steel and iron leviathans to disappear into. Wally Wu, still a little bit of a coward after all, was looking for a place to hide.
He didn't find a gap to squeeze into. He found Grace Faraway.
Lithe, naked, her tattoos swirling like smoke across her dark skin, she walked towards him a thing of living ink and shadows. He knew what she was instantly. A voice, somewhere deep down in the river of ghosts that ran through his head, bubbled up its wisdom. He'd heard the voice before, when the others were quiet enough. It was the only voice that frightened him, and it frightened him to hear it now.
"Faraway," said the Magpye. "The ghost that haunts Kings."
Faraway laughed, and it sounded like someone walking through broken glass, as if she hadn't laughed before and the apparatus had all but dried up. "I haven't heard that one in a long time. Someone's been... reading."
She trailed a hand across the leather and plastic of Magpye's mask, her fingertips like ice and electricity combined.
"Do you feel safe in there, little spirit?"
"Safer than you are, I..."
Suddenly, the witch shoved Magpye hard in the chest with both hands. His chest felt as if it were on fire and he staggered back. His feet kicked up old newspapers and he saw something on the floor, something the ghost who hid deep in the river recognised. Magpye remembered something Marv had told him, or at least had told Quirk.
Magicians could hide traps in patterns.
The Magpye collapsed to the ground, his lungs burning. In his head, the ghosts screamed. They screamed louder than the day they'd died, louder than the times he dragged them back from the afterlife through a droplet of blood or smear of burnt flesh. He felt them become fragments in his head, shreds of souls torn to strips by the witch's trap. The minds and memories of his friends became rags and tatters in his head, leaving him exposed and vulnerable.
"I wasn't sure what you were," said Grace, standing over him. Ethereal light shone from within her, casting a silhouette of the crone she really was up on the wall. "So I thought it best to trap you. That sigil can hold anything, at least for a time."
Behind the mask, it wasn't the Magpye who looked up, but Able. For the first time in a long tim
e he was alone in his own head. No Dorothy, no Malcolm, no Magda. No Wally Wu, no Zip Nolan. No Magpye. Just Able, the boy who ran, the boy who hid, trapped and alone and looking up a creature unlike anything he'd ever seen.
***
Owen dashed across the street, his gun drawn, a sub-machine slung across his back. Across the street, he knew Nutt was covering him, but he still felt exposed. The car had drawn them out, just as he had planned, but at best they'd taken out a fraction of King's forces. People were expendable to Cane King, it stood to reason he'd have come here mob handed. Further down the street, Owen could see Rogers and Hartley making slow but steady progress along the nearest wall of the mill.
Rogers was naturally cautious, but Hartley was just a desk jockey. A computer expert, his job was to sift through the criminal's laptops and phones to piece together incriminating evidence. Before Owen had met him he'd been tracking paedophiles and terrorists, hacking his way into their networks and hunting them down without ever leaving the comfort of his office. In another life he'd have been the FBI agent who caught out the mob on unpaid taxes. He didn't look right, out in the field, and Owen had to remind himself that it had been Hartley's call to be here. He said he owed it to Grice.
With a crackle, Cooper announced himself through Owen's earpiece. "Reg and I are almost at the rear gates. Got five, maybe six guys back here."
"It's open?"
"Wide open. The bastards want us in there."
"We should walk away Owen," said Rigby, interjecting. "We've made our point."
"The hell we have!" barked Cooper. "Don't you dare go soft on me now, don't you..."
"He's right."
Owen smiled. Rosa Blind, the girl with a mind like a machine. His right hand. "Rosa. I thought you weren't coming."
"I'm not. I'm already here. Already inside."
"How the hell did you manage that?"
"Trade secret. Cooper, get ready."
Owen heard shots then a muffled commotion and the sound of Cooper and Rigby running.
"Back door's clear!" Cooper shouted.
"Not for long, you've got incoming," reported Rosa.
For a moment, Owen thought that maybe they might actually pull this off without losing another cop. Just for a moment. He waved commands at Rogers and Hartley and sprinted towards the front gates, keeping his body low and his gun raised.
***
King craned out of the window. At the rear gate he could make out the bodies of more of his men, all of them dying bloody on the ground.
"There's a shooter inside the compound," he spat.
"I'd keep back, boss," said Taylor. "Lot of bullets flying around out there."
King had fury in his eyes when he turned back to face his henchman.
"If this thing goes south," he growled. "There won't be a prison in this country that will be safe for you, do you understand?"
Taylor didn't answer. Instead, he simply pulled his gun from inside his suit jacket and headed for the door. King breathed a sigh of relief. The most dangerous man he had ever met was still in his corner.
***
In the basement, Able Quirk groped around inside his memories for anything of worth. Grace was prowling around him, eyeing him as if he were a new creature that she had never seen before. Prey, she was certain of it, but just how to tackle this particular meal? Accustomed to the thoughts of others inside his head, he could feel her mind, drooling and hungry, probing the fringes of his. He'd barely mastered the skill of controlling the thoughts of the unruly dead, the thought of another living mind inside his skull was more than he could cope with. If she got in, would there even be space for him?
"Tell me your name," she purred.
Able shook his head. "No. I won't tell you who I am." The mask was supposed to stop him getting blood on him, prevent any unwanted souls from taking residence in his head. Right now it was also protecting the only two living people he cared about, Marv and Magda. If he was going to die here, he would at least protect them for as long as he could.
"Not your real name, silly. The name you call yourself. Marv said he didn't know what you were, but I'm sure the old fool was lying to me."
"Marv..." whispered Able, inside the mask.
INTERVIEWING A SHARK
Cane King liked television, and television liked him back. After all, what was there not to like? Tall, handsome, charming, rich, unattached, and with the omnipresent whiff of danger and scandal … he was everything that television wanted its millionaire playboys to be. Sitting on the couch of a TV talkshow, sandwiched between a B-list actress and a comedian that the network considered “edgy” enough to be interesting but not so edgy that they couldn’t trust him, Cane King was as dangerous here as he was in a boardroom or a knife fight. He had to be. This was where he did the most important part of his job - convincing the watching public that he wasn’t quietly screwing them all.
“So, Cane, can I call you Cane?”
“Of course you can, Johnny… If I can call you Johnny, that is?”
Drum roll. Cymbal. Cue card. Laughter. A pat on his arm from the host, a fake tear of laughter wiped away, familiarity and bonhomie packaged and delivered, coated in sugar just how they all liked it.
“Seriously though… Cane. Let’s talk about the charity work you’re doing right now.”
Another cue card. A ripple of approving applause from the audience. Hands held up in mock embarrassment.
“Come on now, Cane. Don’t be shy. A little birdie told me that you raised twenty million dollars for your charity last year…”
Whoops and hollers from the crowd. The host was worth every penny Cane was paying, he barely had to do any work at all.
“… and that you matched every single dollar of that yourself?”
Standing ovation. Cheers, whistles. Embarrassed grins, nods of acknowledgement.
“Really, Johnny, it’s about the people on the ground doing the hard work every day. I just bring a little money to the party, that’s all. The real work, the stuff that makes a difference, that’s being done out there on the streets.”
The applause dies down, people return to their seats. Don’t over do it, that’s the key.
“That’s great, that’s great… but, here’s the thing Cane.”
“What’s that, Johnny?”
“When are you going to squeeze in time to find yourself a Mrs King?”
Oohs and aahs. A few wolf whistles. Somewhere in the back a women shouts “pick me!”. Laughter. No cue cards this time, but all right on schedule.
“Well Johnny, that’s a tough one. My evenings are pretty full as it is.”
“I’ll bet they are! A little birdie told me that you’d been personally overseeing every single aspect of your new casino hotel, from the wash-rooms all the way to the penthouse!”
More cheers. More applause. Cane King, a billionaire before he was even born, but working hard on the American Dream. A raised hand, more false modesty.
“Well, Johnny, my grandfather always said that if you wanted something done right, you had to be prepared to do it yourself.”
More applause, because America loves some homespun wisdom and loves grandfathers.
***
Cane locked his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. Robert had been his double for so long that most of America would think that Cane was the imposter if the two of them stood next to each other. Robert was Cane’s walking, talking alibi in any situation, a stooge who lived a life in the public gaze so that Cane could live his life in the shadows.
And if Cane ever needed to vanish?
Well, Robert could always turn up in some hotel room, dead as a doornail and with all the evidence of an night of epic adventure strewn around him.
That was how Cane would like to go.
THE HIGH COST OF LIVING
Marv shoved clothes in a bag. He'd run away before, lots of times, and he'd made shoving clothes into a bag something of an art-form - a tiny piece of theatre amongst all the others in
his life. He travelled light, always had.
"Are you running away again, Dad?"
Marv hadn't heard Marissa come in.
"Not alone this time," he said, forcing a crooked smile onto his craggy face. "You're coming with me."
"Are there bad men coming?"
"Yes, honey, I think there are."
"You left me with the bad men before."
Marv zipped up the bag and threw it across the room where it landed with two others.
"I knew you'd be safe," he said. Magicians, the born liars. "I... I made sure of it."
"The lady who came said you'd abandoned me."
Marv reached out to embrace his daughter, but she pulled away. Looking at her, looking at the strange and broken thing that she had become, he cursed himself for what he'd done. She was a like a china doll, smashed and reassembled. The same basic shape, but forever crazed and cracked and so very, very fragile.
"It wasn't like that," Marv said desperately. "You can't believe anything that woman says."
"Able doesn't know, does he? That you knew the bad men were coming and you ran away?"
"No," Marv replied, hanging his head. "No, he doesn't know. I didn't think you did either."
"I know," replied the magician's daughter. "And that's why I'm not coming with you."
Marv grabbed his daughter's forearm. "The hell you aren't!" he said angrily. "This time, I'm getting it right, I'm getting you out of here myself. Able can take care of himself."