by CW Lynch
"I think they'd understand."
"Do you?" spat White. "Well, you didn't know them. They were good cops, good people. All of them. They lived the job and what did it do? It chewed them up and spat them out. Now they can't even go to their graves clean. I've made dirty cops of each and every one of them."
Able's head filled with voices again, the cops forcing their way through. They'd spent a lot of time learning to break down suspects and break down doors, Able's newly learned defences just didn't cut it. He tried to pick one voice out from the crowd. Of course, it was Rosa Blind.
"Are they buying the story?" she asked.
"I think they know it's bullshit,” replied White. “Some of them are on the take and those that aren't know a good story when they hear one. It's turned into politics. What plays better - a hero cop crippled in the line of duty or the whole clean squad including me going off the rails? Right now the lie is more useful to them than the truth."
"Because it gives them a hero," said Rosa, speaking through Able. "Someone to put a medal on whilst the rest of us are swept under the carpet?"
Able snapped his mouth shut, realising his mistake, Rosa's mistake immediately.
White just took another slug from the bottle and stared off into the middle distance with his one good eye.
"What about King?" asked Able quickly.
"Wiped from the history books. He was never there."
"It's his building."
"They're all his buildings," said White, waving the vodka bottle at the open window. "It's his city. So are most others. You don't know what I've learnt, since I've been on the inside of this thing. The sheer scale of it, it's beyond anything that anyone would believe possible. That's the genius of it. That's what makes them fearless. We can't ever take them down because they are so much bigger than us."
White took another slug, then another, chugging down the vodka like water at the end of a marathon run.
"They engulf us, do you understand that? We exist inside their world. There's no fighting it."
"I'm fighting it."
In his mind, Able heard Adam King's voice whispering. "We're fighting it, son." Able pushed him down too.
"I'm going to take him down," continued Able. "Once and for all."
"You said that last time."
White stood up on unsteady legs and limped awkwardly towards the balcony, taking the bottle with him. From somewhere in the city beyond the window, a police siren wailed like a dying animal. There was smoke on the breeze and the smell of burning. It reminded Able of the circus, a place that was dead but refused to die.
"I go back to work tomorrow," White said. "I was expecting a desk job, but Garrity's got me a slot on a new task force. We're going to hunt down this vigilante that everyone was talking about before my squad became front page news."
"That's perfect," said Able enthusiastically. "We can work together again and…"
"No," interrupted White. "We can't. We won't. Haven't you listened to anything I've said? I was an idiot to think we could go up against King. I was an idiot to trust you. I've got a busted leg and a missing eye to remind me of that, plus that rat bastard Garrity crawling all over me. So right now I've got to be as dirty as they are, as dirty as they come, to survive. It's a shit way to finish out, but it does come with one advantage. As of tomorrow I'll be hunting you down and the next time I see you I'll put a bullet in you, no questions and no due process. Cane King wants you found, I want you dead. It's win-win."
"I'll get you out," said Able. "When I take down King, you'll be free."
White snorted, gulped down the last of the vodka, and tossed the empty bottle out of the window. It smashed somewhere distant, setting off a car alarm. "Guess we'll see," he said, "Guess we'll see."
Somewhere inside Able Quirk's head, the dead cops looked at their friend and one by turned their backs on him. Only Rosa Blind continued to watch and Able was glad of his mask as he felt her tears on his cheeks.
KEEP QUIET OLD MAN
Jack Taylor walked slowly down the steps into the crypt. He smiled. He liked the place. The homely décor, the old posters, the photos, the heirlooms and the bric-a-brac. It reminded Taylor of a house he had lived in, for a little while at least, back when he was a foster kid. He'd burnt it down. It wasn't that he disliked the place, but the strange habit the people had there of cluttering their house with things from their past felt like it was dragging him, and them, down; as if time were some sort of sucking parasite that, if you let it, would trap you in one single moment forever. You would live on, of course, move forward at the same rate and pace as everyone else, but your heart and soul would be left behind. You would slowly become divorced from them as the distance grew greater until you were dead in the now and only alive then, in the past. As a child, back when he'd still enjoyed the childish notions of things like hearts and souls, the thought had terrified him. Burning the house down was the only logical choice.
Taylor had spent his life that way, bouncing around in the system, never in any one place for very long. A problem child, a face that didn't fit, a kid that didn't play well with others. There were no end of bleeding hearts who thought they could fix him, make him better, but all of them failed. What they didn't understand was that Jack Taylor didn't want to be fixed. He didn't need to be fixed. He knew what he was and it hadn't bothered him a day in his life.
He remembered with a strange detached fondness the burning of that house. He remembered the warmth on his skin and the distinct aroma of all those old papers and books and posters and photos burning. Paper was such a weak material, but people spent their lives coveting and collecting it. He remembered when the police came too, and how they hadn't appreciated the beauty of the moment as Taylor did. But even that didn't really matter. By then he already understood the way the world worked, he'd already achieved the perfect clarity that would guide him through his life with almost unerring certainty. Each house, each place, each cell, each psychiatric ward, was only temporary.
Everything was only temporary.
You don't like your house? You burn it down. It's temporary.
The current state of affairs with Cane King was nothing different. A temporary setback, and nothing more. The King had feigned fury at the news that his nephew, or brother, or whatever the hell that freak was, was alive and still running around in his city. Taylor could see the truth though. The boy being alive had served King's agenda. Putting Taylor on the back foot served his agenda as well. King wasn't as afraid of Taylor as he once had been. Taylor could sense the change in the balance of power like a sharp tang in the wind. Like blood in the water, and the blood was his.
The woman, Grace, was dead and King, somehow, had her tattoos. Anyone else would be looking for a way out, but not Taylor. The unknown was temporary. Clarity would turn it all into opportunity and Taylor would find himself on top again. He had a plan.
Taylor focussed himself back in the moment as he reached the bottom of the stairs. The magician was ahead of him, his back turned, working at a makeshift stove. There was a putrid, acrid smell in the air. King had told Taylor that this guy was dangerous. Perhaps he'd meant his cooking.
There were other rooms off this one, the mausoleum being far more grand than the small stone entrance gave credit for. In the middle of the room was a small bench table, laid for dinner.
"You can come in," said Marv. "But I don't think this pot is going to stretch to all of us."
Taylor stopped in his tracks. There wasn't anyone he couldn't creep up on, at least until today. He pulled his gun from inside his jacket and aimed at the old man's back.
"We're going to be skipping dinner."
"Pity," replied Marv. Spinning and ducking at the same time, he flung one of the cooking pots at Taylor. It spun flat, like a discus, through the air, the metal handle wobbling up and down in a fight with gravity. The outcome of the fight was never reached, as the pot hit Taylor across the bridge of the nose, splashing hot liquid into his face.
&nbs
p; Taylor stumbled backwards, keeping his body across the entrance to the stairs. Wiping his eyes with the back of his jacket sleeve, he got his vision back just in time to see Marv running at him along the top of the small table that sat in the centre of the room. He kicked a plate, sending it on the same trajectory as the pot. Taylor deflected it, and got a shot off before Marv collided with him feet first. The shot pinged off the stone ceiling and embedded itself in the table as the two men tumbled back into the stairs.
Panting, Marv tried to run up Taylor's body and onto the stairs proper. Taylor stabbed upwards with his gun hand, slamming the metal barrel of his pistol in Marv's groin. The magician groaned and crumpled, falling so that his lower legs were still on top of Taylor. Marv crawled up the stairs, trying to drive himself back into an upright position as Taylor rolled over on the hard stone steps and pulled himself to his feet.
"You nearly broke my nose," he spat, his voice hollow and nasal. "I'll hurt you for that."
Struggling to his feet, Marv turned. He had the higher ground now and, contrary to appearances, Taylor had just seen that the guy could fight, sort of.
"You broke my good plate," said Marv. He was still backing up the stairs, his hand tracing along the brickwork wall. "And my stew is totally ruined. Who the hell are you?"
"I'm Jack Taylor. Cane King sent me and I'm the guy who is going to kill you if you take another step up those stairs."
Marv stopped. The pot and the plate had been luck, mostly, perhaps a little magic coupled with a lifetime of slight of hand and stage magic. Fighting simply wasn't his thing. If he hadn't poured all of his magic into Marissa, he probably wouldn't have even been here when this hired gun walked down the stairs. Just like the night the circus burned. Grace had been the one who warned him, but he'd always wondered what part his strange and uncontrolled reflex of magic had played in it. Why else would the warning tell him that Marissa was safe, that he was the only one who needed to run? Grace was many things, but Marv had always doubted if even she could be that cold. Had he, or his magic, somehow sensed the danger coming? Could Marv's magic have forced Grace to give him the warning that would save his life, even at the cost of his daughter's?
It made sense to Marv, at least a kind of sense that let him sleep a little better some nights. Maybe that was his magic too. It had saved him from facing his grief, what was a little excuse to salve his conscience on top? It was better than the alternative - better to believe in a wild and uncontrollable magic that cursed you to survive at all costs than to simply accept that you were a coward who would even run out on on your own kid to save your worthless skin. Yeah, there were a lot of lies that were better than that.
Marv did know one thing for certain though. He knew that was staring down the barrel of a gun and that was the kind of situation that he let magic handle on its own. Wherever Marissa was, he hoped it wasn't important. Marv blinked and, wherever his daughter was, she ceased to exist as Marv's magic rushed back to him.
"You know who I am, Jack?" asked Marv. If it hadn't been for the familiar crackle of magic in his fingertips, he would have wondered where the words, and the bravado, were suddenly coming from. Magic. Sometimes the right magic was just having a fast mouth and a decent line in bullshit.
"I don't ask questions," said Taylor. It was a lie, of course. After that night in the paper-mill, questions were all he'd had. He'd supervised a lot of the work on the old King place when Cane had had it gutted and modernised, and he'd made sure he knew where everything was stored. It was an insurance policy, because you never knew what dirt there was to be found in old family papers. Paper, that fragile thing that people hoarded and wrote their secrets on. Since things had taken a turn for the decidedly weird, Taylor had spent any spare moment he had working his way through the King family archives. He'd found more than he'd expected. The King family history was long, and strange, and oh, so bloody. He'd learnt that there were things in the world far more strange than he had once thought but, with perfect clarity, he had accepted them into his world-view. One by one his questions were being answered, which was why he hadn't been surprised when Cane had asked him to pick up a guy that King referred to as "the magician".
Anyone else would have run. Jack Taylor just pulled a gun and stared the new world in the face with bared teeth.
"Well, I'll tell you," continued Marv. "I'm The Magnificent Marvolo Chevalier. I'm the greatest escape artist the world has ever seen."
"A circus act?"
"Oh no, I'm the real kind of magician. The very real kind."
Taylor steadied his aim on the old man. Bang to rights, in his cross-hairs. There was no dodging that… was there?
"And that's why you're going to pay attention to me right now," said Marv. "You're going to…"
Taylor pulled the trigger and put a bullet into Marv's right leg.
He had been right. There was no magic-ing your way around a bullet.
Marv blinked with confusion and fear as Jack Taylor, the man with a smile like a shark, stood over him. Marv's magic hadn't saved him. It hadn't done anything at all. What the hell was happening?
Taylor ended Marv's confusion with the sole of his expensive shoes and a trip into swirling unconsciousness.
DIVORCING DAD
Able kept his body low and tight over the frame of the motorbike as he raced through the city.
He had seen a lot of death, seen people die bad and bloody, killed men with his own bare hands. He had shot, stabbed, cut, sliced, and maimed. He had burned, he had buried. But in all of his short and brutal career, his blood soaked afterlife as the thing called Magpye, he'd never seen a creature as wretched and broken as Owen White.
"You should have told him," said the ghost of Peter Rogers. "If he knew that we were still here…"
"He wouldn't believe it," argued Rosa.
"He doesn't believe anything any more, that's the problem," interjected Rigby. "He's lost his centre and…"
Rigby fell silent as Able swung the bike off the road, bumped over the kerb, and came to a skidding halt on a patch of wasteland.
"What are we doing here?" the ghosts asked in rare unison.
Able dismounted, the suit creaking. He had put it together in a hurry, repairing the damage to the original as best he could with limited supplies and in secret from Marissa and Marv. The paint had been Able's idea. He'd spent so long in black, he wanted some part of him to look… clean. The white streak down his chest and abdomen felt right, like a brand, like a tattoo. He didn't remember much about making the last suit. This suit was his. He was Able Quirk, and Able Quirk was the Magpye. Not the other way around. Not any more.
Now there was only one thing left to do. One left to do to make him truly clean.
"White nailed it," said Able out loud, addressing the ghosts. "The Kings consume everything. They're a poison, a cancer. If we're going to take down Cane King, we do it without Adam King along for the ride. We do it clean."
Adam King's ghost burst forth. "What do you mean without me?"
Able closed his mind. He had no idea if what he was going to try to do was even possible but, if it was, he was sure it would be easier if Adam King didn't know what was coming. He wanted the bastard on notice, but he wasn't going to tell him what was happening until it was too late. The only mind that Able didn't block out was Dorothy, but the circus medic was uncharacteristically stoic.
Reaching into one of the bike's panniers, Able pulled out a battered old flask. Marissa had filled it for him earlier. It weighed around four or five pounds in his hand. It would have to be enough.
"We're doing this, Dorothy."
"How do you know you even can?" asked the ghost grumpily.
"I just do."
"It's not you, Able, it's that thing," said Dorothy. "That creature, the Magpye."
"And if it is?" asked Able. He stalked across the wasteland to the nondescript warehouse, finding the door exactly where Marv had described it. There was a new lock, a pristine and modern combination fitting. More
conspicuous than the previous security, but undoubtedly more secure. Able pulled a gun from inside his jacket, a substandard replacement for Malcolm's pistols that he'd lost fighting Cane King, and blew the lock panel apart. Stealth wasn't a factor here. He wasn't here to steal, he was here to leave a message.
"If it is, then how can you trust it?" asked Dorothy.
"Because the Magpye isn't him, it isn't Adam. Of the two, he's far more dangerous."
"Then maybe we need him," said Dorothy.
Kicking the door open with the steel tipped end of his boot, Able strode purposefully into the warehouse that hid The Pit. "No, Dorothy. Everything that has happened, has happened because of him. Because of his family. Because of the Kings. He isn't a part of me. He isn't a part of us. I want him out."
Walking through the darkness of the abandoned warehouse, Able could feel Adam's ghost pressing hard against his defences. But the dead King had taught Able just how to keep him out, and he was staying out. Dorothy had sunk into a sullen silence. Beneath them all, beneath the waters of memory where the other ghosts lurked and lost themselves in their own mingled memories, the dark shape of the Magpye stirred. It flexed itself, pushed a little closer to the surface.
Able stood at the edge of The Pit, looking down into the gloom. The stench of the place was overpowering, even through the mask. Able knew what was down there, rotting and festering in the darkness. This was where Cane King had had him dumped, where his body had been left to decay down to nothingness. It wasn't a hiding place. It was a prison, a place to incarcerate the dead where they would never be found. He could feel them calling out to him, insubstantial ghosts without the strength even to escape the walls of the pit. Their minds and memories had decayed along with their bodies, leaving them crippled and broken. Some had lost their faces, leaving behind only screaming open spaces, others were nothing more than a limb, twitching and spasming with the last remnants of a mind trapped inside. Whether they knew it or not, the Kings had created something here far worse than death.