by CW Lynch
"I don't believe that," said Marissa. "The Able Quirk I knew had a heart ten times bigger than this circus."
"Just because I got my memories back," said Able. "It doesn't mean I'm the same person."
"How could you be, after what you've been through?"
"But if I'm not Able, and I'm not Magpye then… who am I?"
Dipping her head to avoid his gaze, Marissa reached out again, this time letting her ethereal hand rest on his. Slowly, her hand began to sink through his. Able felt an electric tingle. He remembered holding hands with Marissa like this once before, the first time they had held hands, moments before their first kiss. The electricity had been the same.
It was magic, but not the kind that made Able a monster and Marissa a ghost. It was the other kind of magic, one that Able believed was probably a lot rarer nowadays.
"I think you can be whoever you want to be, Able."
"Then I want to be the man who brings down the Kings. I want to bring this whole stinking legacy to an end. It can die with me."
"You may not think of death as the end any more Able," replied Marissa softly, "But don't be so quick to give your life away."
"I'm not giving it away," said Able. His voice was sad and as distant as Marissa had ever heard it. It sounded more like one of the ghost's voices, speaking through Able. "They already took it. What I've got now… it's something else entirely."
"Then, at least try to think of it as a gift. Don't waste the chance you've been given. We can still get away, all of us. Leave this all behind, let Cane King have his damned city and we'll find a new life somewhere else. Together."
Able looked at Marissa. His flesh was dead, his head was full of ghosts, but the mirage of a girl in front of him was the most real thing he could see. Maybe Marv's magic was strong enough to pull some of Able's memories through as well, now that he had them back, and maybe that remembered love, that incandescent adolescent love that they had shared, maybe that was the light that lit her up now.
The ghosts stirred restlessly in his mind, argued amongst themselves. It was hard to tell who was more thirsty for revenge; those who had had the taste of it already or those who were as yet unbloodied in death. How much of his hatred and desire for revenge came from them, he wondered? He felt the guilt, the crushing responsibility, for so many of their deaths. Perhaps that was why he was so willing to die to avenge them. Perhaps that was why they were so willing to let him.
All except one, of course.
"Don't listen to her," said Adam King. "Your place is at the head of the family. Destroy Cane, take his empire, and you will understand. Dismantle it then, if you must, but hold it first in the palm of your hand and ask yourself what you could do with that power."
"At least talk it through with Marv," said Marissa, interrupting Able's conflicting internal monologues. "You should at least ask the advice of someone living if you want to know how to live."
She smiled. Able knew the smile well. It was his best memory, and it lit up his heart as it seemed to hers. It could have lit the whole world, if she'd been given the chance.
"I will, I promise," said Able. "But I'm going into the city first, there's someone I need to see. I need to set something right, no matter what happens after that."
"I understand," said Marissa. "And for the record, that sounded a lot like Able Quirk talking."
She closed her eyes and leant into him. Instinctively he closed his own eyes and leant towards her. Could a dead man kiss a ghost? Able brushed his lips against the space in the air where Marissa's lips should have been. He felt the same electric tingle across his lips. He felt a skip in his un-beating heart. For a moment all the thoughts in his head, no matter who they belong to, vanished. There was only the kiss. Only Marissa. Able wondered if this is what it felt like when souls touched.
His eyes still closed, he imagined her leaning back into him. Electricity as her ghostly hand stroked his cheek. Electricity as his arm curled around into the small of her back to pull he closer.
He reached forward for her, but she was already gone.
"Marissa?"
The ghosts were silent as Able Quirk wept.
PRICE ON YOUR HEAD
Cane stood on the gantry and looked down onto the killing floor of the abattoir.
Taylor had done as he was told, bringing together what was left of the city's gangs. It had taken weeks; some of them had gone to ground, others had skipped town. Those who had stayed were either loyal or opportunistic. Cane could work with both. He had killed their bosses, now he would consolidate them into a single functioning unit under his command. The blood, the murder, that didn't make a difference. This was good old fashioned business of the type he understood.
Cane King, the master of the hostile takeover.
He fiddled with his shirt collar. The Ink wanted to rise up, to show itself across his face. It didn't like hiding. It wanted to be seen, wanted to be talked about. It wanted to be feared, like Cane King was. He forced the thing down. For now, it would remain his secret. His, and Jack Taylor's.
Taylor was down on the floor, moving through the masses like a killer whale through a shoal of kelp. Cane had already decided what Taylor's punishment would be for allowing the magician to escape with his nephew, but it wasn't time for that yet. Besides, he was more interested in how the boy had survived. Despite all the power of The Ink, Cane had realised that he wouldn't be complete, wouldn't be a rightful inheritor of the King's family legacy, until he also had the power of The Magpye. What The Ink could give, brief moments as a voyeur in someone else's memories, was a pale imitation of the true mastery of the dead that could be, should be, Cane's.
Still, ruling over just the living was acceptable for now.
It pleased King that none of them dared lift their heads to meet his gaze. He felt like a true king, or like a god. Master of two worlds, the modern and the arcane, there was nothing he could not do. He had killed their bosses, men who they had seen as untouchable, and now he had them all standing on the cold steel floor of a slaughter house. He was the bogeyman, free from the confines of the wardrobe, out from under the bed. The bogeyman, very real and very deadly.
The only problem was, being a real and very deadly bogeyman meant his cover was blown. There too many loose ends after the fiasco at the paper-mill. Too many bodies, too many people asking questions. Garrity and Owen White were doing their part, concocting a the story about the clean squad going rogue had held for now, but the whole thing was getting too big even for Cane and his media empire to contain it.
Gangs at war with cops wasn't a story that made people look away and whilst Cane could make the media say what you wanted, it didn't work if everyone else was saying something different. Vic Chase had been right about the heat that this was bringing down.
Cane knew he already had the solution though.
The solution was The Ink. The solution was a story, a new story. He'd been thinking too small, thinking like the old Cane King, the one who lived in the world of normal, mortal men. The Ink didn't think like that. The Ink thought big and it had shown him what he needed to do. The solution was a lie so big the whole world would have no choice but to swallow it.
Cane rapped on the metal railing of the gantry, and the room below fell silent.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," he said, "Welcome to the new world."
They looked up as one, all except Taylor. He had found his way to the bottom of the stairs to the gantry and was slowly climbing back up. Cane's command over the room was obvious; the last place Jack Taylor wanted to be was in the centre of a room full of people who all wanted to prove their loyalty to their new boss.
"As of now, there are no more gangs," continued Cane, his voice strong and clear and commanding. "There are no more families. No more territories. The ground that you stand on, the ground that you walk on, and everything above and below belongs to me."
Cane paused. On the killing floor, nobody spoke, but if you listened very carefully you could hear a hundr
ed minds working. A hundred minds calculating angles, looking for escape routes and opportunities. A hundred men and women brought up street smart and street tough, a hundred men and women who had fought their way up or been groomed by their bosses, given and taking dominion of their little fiefdoms. Cane smiled. It was all just business. The guns and knives didn't make any difference, they never had.
"This is a kingdom and I will rule it. There will no new bosses, only Kingsmen under my direct command."
Another silence, and the whirring of more minds.
Cane waited. The law of the boardroom dictated that there was always one person who would ask a question.
"What do you want us to do?"
The voice came from near the middle of the room, a bulky street thug who Cane didn't recognise. The Ink prickled at Cane's neck and told him the story that went with the face of the thug. He might need to crack open someone's skull to read their deep and dark and innermost thoughts, but every face in this room had a story, and The Ink could read them all. The thug eye-balled Cane defiantly.
"Sean Cassidy," said Cane, "One of the late, great Paddy Keane's protégées if I'm not mistaken?"
"And what if I am?"
The Ink spilled the details in Cane's mind an instant. You didn't rise above the rank and file of criminal life if you didn't have a speciality, and Cassidy certainly did. He liked to burn things. Cane smirked. An arsonist, just the type of person to throw a match in a powder-keg like this room.
"Well, Mr. Cassidy, a week from now, my casino opens uptown. We're having a little celebration, and you're all invited. You and your box of matches included."
A murmur ran through the crowd.
"A celebration," continued Cane, feeling the crowd warm up beneath him. "Of my dominion over this city. A celebration of crime and perversion in all their forms. A celebration of you, my Kingsmen."
A cheer went up in one part of the crowd, quickly echoed in others. Sean Cassidy and his immediate entourage remained silent.
"Sounds like a bloodbath to me!" shouted Cassidy, silencing the last of the cheers. "We all know what happened at your last party, Mr. King. I think perhaps me and me boys will sit this one out."
Without warning, Cane pulled a handgun from inside his suit jacket and fired, putting the shot right between Sean Cassidy's eyes. Cassidy toppled backwards into the man behind him as Cane shot the men to Cassidy's left and right as well. Three head-shots, three dead thugs, three bodies on the floor before anyone else had even reached for their gun.
"Does anyone else…" roared King, "Want to sit this one out?"
The assembled thugs, hoodlums, pimps, drug dealers, and numbers-men offered no answer. Cane watched the ones who had their hands on their own guns, counted those who might draw on him and those who might draw with him. Just like any boardroom, he thought to himself. The first shots had been fired, first blood taken, but no one here wanted a war. Everyone knew that after the blood, came the money.
"Know this," Cane growled. "If you run, there is no city that you can run to that I do not own. There is no border than you can cross that I am not already on the other side of. There is no cop, no federal agent, that you can run to that I don't own or can't buy. You are in this, right now, whether you want to be or not. This is the new world, so learn to live in it."
Cane turned his back and left the gantry, leaving the crowd with this words still hanging above them in the air like storm clouds. Like all the best threats, it was all utterly true. He let the metal door clang shut behind him, then heard it clang again as Taylor followed him into a small office.
"You've got them all in line," said Taylor.
"They're sheep," replied Cane. "They don't know how to be anything else but in line."
"You think he'll come?" asked Taylor.
"Our missing vigilante?" replied Cane. "Maybe, maybe not, but that's where you come in."
"You want me to snatch him?" asked Taylor. "Could be difficult."
"No," replied Cane, "I want him to come to me. Go and find the magician, take out a little insurance on my nephew's arrival."
Taylor didn't answer, which Cane knew meant that Taylor understood, and Marv was in a whole mess of trouble.
THE CORPSE OF OWEN WHITE
Owen White limped across the open expanse of his hotel room. He called it "his" hotel room even though he hadn't paid a bill since he got here and he knew it wasn't his name on the register. It didn't matter. Food arrived when he called for it. Drink arrived when he called for it. Girls arrived whether he called for them or not. To most other men it would have been a paradise. For Owen White, it was a prison.
He was healing well, at least physically. He'd begun to adapt to the loss in vision and the damage to his ankle hadn't been as bad as first supposed. He felt like he might always have the limp, even if the pain eventually faded, and he was OK with that. You shouldn't go through something like he had, shouldn't lose so many people, and just walk away. The eye patch, the scars, the limp, the heap of painkillers he washed down with vodka every day, they were all reminders of his mistakes.
And then, of course, there was the tattoo. It itched and it made his shoulder twitch, but more than that it was a reminder too. A reminder that he wasn't a cop anymore, not a real one anyway. He had the badge, the gun, the rank. He had the power, more power than ever really. He looked cop and sounded cop and probably even smelled cop. But he wasn't a cop. Owen White was a Kingsman, just like Mick Garrity, a man bought and paid for and branded by his master.
Stripping to the waist, he looked at the tattoo in one of the mirrored fronts of the wardrobes that ran down one side of the hotel room. Black and stark, the tattoo was in the shape of an upside down crown. Cane King, King of the Underworld. There was a time when White would have laughed at the notion of that type of criminal; larger than life, hiding in plain sight. When Magpye had told him, he hadn't believed it. That was a mistake. Listening to Magpye when he said he'd be there to help take King down, that was another.
Owen White. Former White Knight, now dirty cop and the King of Mistakes.
"Nice ink."
White spun around, twisting his bum leg painfully.
Magpye was standing on the balcony, the big glass double doors letting the cold night air in. He looked different. His leather suit was a patchwork, made in a hurry. He'd painted it, a broad streak of white down his chest making him look more like his namesake than before, but to White it just looked like a big fat target. The coat was different too, another second-hand piece hastily customised White guessed. The strangest change was the mask. The thing before, the tight mix of leather and zips and bulging goggle eyes was gone, replaced by some kind of gas mask. He could see Magpye's eyes through it, and the reflection of his face in the glass. It was like talking to someone on the other side of a mirror.
"You're supposed to be dead," said White.
"I think I am."
"There is a gun," said White through gritted teeth, "Under that pillow. Four steps and I'm there. I'm there, and you're really dead. Four steps. That's exactly how long you've got to get the hell of that balcony and disappear."
Magpye didn't move.
"Four steps, Magpye."
"I'll be on you in two, and you know it."
The reply came from Able Quirk. Magpye, the real Magpye, the thing that had spoken to Owen White before, had vanished down into the murky depths of Able's crowded mind. Able could tell that it despised White now, despised him partly for his weak and crippled body but also for his stubborn refusal to die. In his prime, Owen White would have made a fine addition The Magpye's collection of minds and memories. Now he was damaged goods, a liability. It didn't matter to Able. He remembered White as someone who had accepted him, trusted him, when his mind was nothing but loose fragments rattling around inside his skull. He remembered him as a friend, a friend who he had failed like he had failed so many others. Able didn't want Magpye here right now. He wanted to speak to White himself, to deal with him on his own terms.<
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White slumped to one side, letting the wall take his weight for a moment.
"What the hell happened?" he asked.
"They trapped me," replied Able. He wanted to tell White the truth, the whole truth, including the real fate of the police that had died at his side that night, but the haunted look in the man's eyes told Able that the last thing Owen White needed to hear about was ghosts. He had plenty of ghosts of his own. "I got out, but it was too late. I found King, we fought, he won."
"He won?" asked White. "Against you?"
"He… had help." Able didn't know how to begin to explain about what had happened to King, the power he suddenly possessed thanks to The Ink. Even Adam King couldn't explain fully what the stuff was. All that mattered to Able was that it made King strong and very, very difficult to kill.
"Well, my guys bought it too. You know that, right?"
"I know," replied Able. He watched as White limped to the bed and sat down with a thud. He cop's head dropped to his chest. "I wish I'd gone with them. Dead would be better than this. They broke me," he said weakly. "They broke me…"
Able didn't answer. His head was full of dead cops, all of them desperate to get a message to White. He pushed them down and it felt like swallowing vomit.
"They broke me too, once."
White looked up from the carpet. "You still look pretty broken to me, kid."
Jerking his thumb at Able, White pulled a half drunk bottle of vodka from under the bed.
"You want a drink?" he asked "I've got more of these stashed than I have guns."
Able walked slowly into the room, his heavy boots staining the pale carpets.
"They've got me lying for them," said White, taking a swig from the bottle. "About what happened that night. I've lied to the cops, to the feds. Hell, I've even had the NSA breathing down my neck. We were put here by the president and… let's just say he's kind of pissed at me right now. The president is pissed at me."
"What exactly have you told them?"
"That the team went rogue, after what happened to Grice, and that I went there to try and stop them. It stinks. I've tarnished the names of good cops just to save my own skin."