Shame and old terrors made him hard again, and he hammered into her again, still smothering her, and she convulsed against him as he brought her to the edge of unconsciousness, released her just long enough to let her take one desperate breath, and covered her mouth and nose once again. He wondered idly about the things he would do to her after she passed out, how he would toy with her limp body. He’d pretend she was dead, perhaps.
She bit his hand, hard enough to make blood run down his wrist, and he went off again, their orgasms nearly simultaneous. Her hands escaped from his grasp, and she slapped him with enough force to loosen teeth, knocking him off her. She wasn’t done punishing him. Her nails were short, but she covered them with a special lacquer that made them hard as steel, and she used them to draw two cuts on his chest. There goes our security deposit, he thought idly, seeing the blood spatter on the apartment’s carpet.
“Not in the mood to be unconscious, lover,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow. How about some edge play instead?”
He smiled at her as she paid him back.
* * *
It had been a fun night. Kyle wondered how Face and Christine had spent their last night in the States. Something sweet and vanilla, he supposed.
Something normal. Something you’ll never have.
He was used to the self-recriminations by now. He wasn’t going to change, and neither were the accusing voices in his head. He was a man used to holding conflicting thoughts and emotions and to ignoring the contradictions. To thine own self be true. For decades, he had tried to pretend that hungry part of himself didn’t exist. For the most part, he’d succeeded, although there had been a few close calls – prostitutes, mostly, times when he’d almost gone beyond the pale and done something that couldn’t be undone. Those episodes had been followed by guilt and shame, years of celibacy, years of concentrating on punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent while the urges slowly grew back until they could no longer be denied.
Melanie had rescued him from all that.
He checked the time. It would soon be dark out. He looked at Melanie’s sleeping form. It was time for her to wake up, and for them to go forth and fight the good fight.
How to wake her up? He grabbed a towel and tore out a long strip. It would make for a nice noose.
Jersey City, New Jersey, March 20th, 2013
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the man formerly known as Cosmo-Nought said. He took a swig from a bottle of Jack Daniels before continuing; his place of business, a workshop under a strip joint in a bad part of Jersey City, stank of cigarettes, booze and low-grade cocaine. “Freedom Fucking Island? Do you have a motherfucking death wish? ‘Cause I sure as fuck don’t. Don’t you fucking get me started on Freedom Fucking Island!”
Once upon a time, Hubert Meadows had been a minister’s son who’d never raised his voice, cursed, drank or smoked. When his powers had manifested he’d become an Artificer and designed a suit of armor nearly as powerful as the Brass Man. Hubert had donned the armor and become Cosmo-Naught, squeaky-clean hero and role model. He’d served in the Legion with distinction, had not one but two comic books devoted to his adventures, and ended up with several lucrative movie deals.
One fateful night, at a party with some Hollywood producers, someone had offered him some coke. He’d politely refused similar offers before (although he’d eventually stopped arresting the people making said offers), but this time he’d said yes. As it turned out, he had a nose for nose-candy. Millions of dollars later, Hubert had discovered that if your inner demons were hungry enough, there just wasn’t enough money in the world to keep them fed. His behavior became erratic. The Legion censured him, sent him to rehab three times, and quietly reassigned him to a remote backwater in Asia, hoping he’d work things out.
Instead, the next time Hubert fell off the wagon he got embroiled in a drug smuggling scheme. By then, the comic books had been cancelled, the movie money had dried out, and the inner demons were getting mighty hungry. It all had come to a head in Macau. The final tally had been ten dead: three Chinese policemen, six Triad gangsters, and one customs official who’d been just a bit too officious. None of the deaths had really been Hubert’s fault; when things went bad he had actually kept several more policemen from getting killed in the ensuing firefight. The damage was done, however. Felony murder. Drug smuggling. Conspiracy. The list of charges was long and utterly damning.
Cosmo-Nought had been on the run ever since.
The skinny blonde kid facing Kyle in the cluttered workshop looked nothing like the black-haired, athletic Hubert Meadows from the movies and comics. Hair dye, facial implants and his current lifestyle had seen to that. “You’re fucking crazy if you’re thinking of breaking into the Island. And you’re even crazier if you think I’m gonna get involved.” Hubert’s eyes looked unnaturally bright; he wasn’t overindulging as much these days, but he was still feeding his demons. Over the years, Cosmo-Nought had worked out a compromise with his addiction, a maintenance regime that he could keep up with on his income as a tinkerer-for-hire. Kyle had figured out his identity a few years back, but left him alone for the most part. The fallen Legionnaire was a useful source of information and tech toys.
Things had changed. Nobody was being left alone.
He leaned forward, crowding the ex-hero. “Listen, Hubert…”
“Don’t fucking use that name, man. I’m Klockmaker Klaus now, remember? And…”
Kyle grabbed Hubert by the throat in one swift move, silencing him. “Listen, Hubert,” he growled. “First of all, don’t fucking interrupt me, you pathetic piece of shit. Secondly, I’ll call you my bitch if that’s what I feel like calling you. Finally, you’re going to spill everything you know about Freedom Island, and if I hear the word ‘fuck’ from you one more time, I’m going to knock all your teeth out. Nod if you understand me.”
Hubert nodded frantically. Kyle realized he’d been squeezing the skinny kid’s windpipe a little too hard. He eased up. No sense in choking the guy unconscious; that would just delay things.
“Okay, okay! I’ll fu… I’ll tell you everything I know. Ain’t gonna be much; you know I’ve been off the Legion for five years. Do you know how many new security gizmos those Legion fu… funny guys can come up with in five years?”
“I know you like to keep up with the tech, ‘Klockwork Klaus.’ Just give me everything you’ve got before my lady friend starts getting bored.”
“Trust me, Klockie,” Melanie said, the smile beneath the helmet bright and shiny. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m bored.”
Hubert spilled the beans. Most of what he said confirmed things Kyle already knew about the Legion’s defenses. The automatic systems were downright nasty, and packed enough firepower to take out an armored division, should an armored division somehow manage to make it to shore; there plenty of defense systems designed to prevent that, too. He also gave up his Legion ID card. Hubert had kept them as reminders of the good old days. The ID was no good, of course, but analyzing it might yield some useful data on how to counterfeit a new set. It wasn’t much, but every bit helped.
The prizes of the night were some blueprints and a couple mint-condition weapon attachments from the original Cosmo-Nought suit. Kyle thought he might be able to do something with those. He paid Hubert handsomely for the info and the gadgets, enough to keep him in hookers and coke for a few weeks.
Kyle had the feeling nothing he could scrounge or build would be enough for the job, but if he failed, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t try every last thing he could come up with.
Christine Dark
Moscow, Russia, March 20, 2013
Christine nursed her drink and mostly listened quietly.
Mark, on the other hand, was knocking back shots of vodka like, well, a Russian, although he was barely keeping up with Father Alex and the Akula guy, who were drinking like unabashed alkies. She didn’t feel like getting buzzed, so she just put more OJ on her already watered-down drink and sipped
on it. The Akula dude had also started chain-smoking, and although she knew that she was as immune to second-hand smoke as she was to most forms of disease and infirmity, the harsh tobacco smell made her nose wrinkle. On top of that, her empathy was making her feel a bit queasy.
When she’d first met Father Aleksander, her super-empathy was already working, although she didn’t know that’s what it was. She’d known with absolute certainty she was in front of a good person she could trust, which had shocked her, because normally she had trouble reading people she didn’t know, or even casual acquaintances. Since her arrival to Earth Alpha, though, she automatically got a pretty darn accurate first impression of anybody she met. Until now, that is. In Akula’s case, she wasn’t getting much. For the first time in a while, she couldn’t get a good read out of someone.
The shark-man (Man-shark? Whatever) was most definitely not a nice guy. She couldn’t tell whether the friendliness he expressed towards Father Alex was real or fake. His emotions were… the only word that came to mind was cold-blooded. His inhumanity was more than skin deep; his emotions felt more animal than human, simple and primitive, but it was more than that. This guy would do whatever he had to, up to and including setting fire to a busload of nuns and kitties. Oh, and the guy was also a total horn-dog, which she would have picked up even without her empathy; when he’d been introduced to Christine, his eyes had gone directly to her chest and up and down her body in an unabashed ‘Yeah, I’d tap that’ way that’d made Christine felt like she needed an extra two or three layers of clothing over the black leggings, purple shirt and black leather coat she was currently wearing. Her overall verdict was a bit muddled; she felt Akula would help Father Aleksander out of friendship and a shared past, but if helping him became too expensive or inconvenient, the gray-skinned man would do what he had to, his friendship notwithstanding. That wasn’t great, since they were about to ask him for a lot of help.
They’d deal with it, one way or another. Worst case, Mark would beat the stuffing out the shark dude and Christine could fly them all back to the US, for some values of flying that included zero comfort, massive air-sickness and no inflight movie. Still, she wasn’t feeling all warm and fuzzy right now. Intellectually she knew she didn’t have much reason to be scared of rough men with guns and prison tattoos, but emotionally they still made her want to curl up in a tiny ball and hope they didn’t notice she was there.
Grow some ovaries, Dark. Things to do, worlds to save, remember?
She took another sip of OJ with vodka trace elements in it and forced herself to stop daydreaming and start paying attention to the conversation.
“So you call yourself Aleksander once again, yes?” Akula was saying. They had switched back to English out of courtesy to the two clueless Americans in the party. Christine had taken Italian in high school but never had gone past simple phrases. Mark could do Spanish – Spanglish, mostly, he’d admitted ruefully – and that was about it. Father Aleksander had copped to speaking six languages fluently, which made Christine feel like a mental midget, er, a mental little person, er, not that either. When she had the time, she’d take a few language courses, she told herself firmly.
“That was the name I chose when entering the priesthood,” the priest explained. “I wanted to leave my old life behind. You understand why.”
“Tak, I do indeed, old chap. Those were bad times, bad deeds.” Akula didn’t sound like he felt bad, or felt much of anything. He looked over Mark and her with his disturbing yellow eyes. “But you don’t want me talking about that, do you?”
Father Aleksander shrugged. He turned to Mark. “I never told you about the things I did before coming to America, my friend.”
“I didn’t ask. Figured if you wanted to share, you would,” Mark said.
“I will not bore you with the details. Let me just say that some years ago, I was Father Aleksander, a common priest in the Dominion. The Iron Tsar did much to restore the Church in his lands after he drove out the Communists. Even now, despite his many crimes, most of my people prefer his rule to that of the Commissars who killed so many in the name of their godless religion. But one day I became Neo, and by law was forced to renounce my vows, go back to my birth name Mykhailo, and join the Iron Guard.”
“And there he met me,” Akula broke in. “We became best mates, the holy boy and the shark that walked like a man.”
Father Aleksander nodded. “We did things in the Tsar’s service, many of which I will regret to the day I die and face the Lord’s judgment.”
“Always so hard on yourself, Mykhailo. We did what we must. We survived. Surely your God understands that.”
“He may forgive me. I still find it hard to forgive myself.”
“You were always a sour bastard. You need to drink more, that’s what you need.” Akula poured another full glass of vodka for Father Aleksander and one for himself. Mark followed suit.
“Budmo!” Akula and Father Aleksander shouted, and everyone drank, although in Christine’s case her alcoholic intake was mostly theoretical.
“Enough about the past,” Akula said, getting yet another a refill and casually glancing at Christine’s crossed legs. Maybe he was into Goth chicks, or chicks in tights, or just chicks in general. She wasn’t enjoying the attention. Luckily Mark hadn’t noticed yet, because he might get irked. Father Aleksander had picked up on it, though. His eyes narrowed in disapproval but he said nothing. Which was sensible, she guessed. Looking wasn’t a problem, although the feelings that came with the looks were harder to ignore; they were avidly sexual, and pretty darn grating to her empathy.
And look at that skin. Can he even have sex with somebody without scraping them raw?
That thought conjured images she really could have done without. Here she was, traveling the world and meeting the most interesting, creepiest people.
“Yes, to business,” Father Aleksander said, perhaps a tad too forcefully, and Akula stopped looking at her.
“I looked into the travel arrangements you wanted,” the Ukrainian gangster said. His tone was guarded, and she sensed caution and tension emanating from him. “The Pripet Marshes are big, you know that. The Tsar has cleared off some of the swamps, but much remains.” He picked up an e-tablet from underneath the glass table and carefully tapped on it with his long clawed fingers. He set the tablet on the table when he was done so they all could see a map of the marshes. They were big, and covered a good chunk of the border between the Ukraine and Belarus, although the marshes themselves were completely inside the Ukrainian border.
Father Aleksander studied the maps closely. “Remember that summer we spent there in 1973?” he asked Akula.
“Who could forget? The stink, the mosquitoes, the infernal heat? The place is a waste of space. Only the Witch likes going there.”
At the mention of the Witch, Christine caught a burst of fear and rage from Father Alex. That answered the question as to whether she was a good witch or a bad witch.
“You’re talking about Baba Yaga,” Mark said.
Akula nodded; he wasn’t afraid of her, at least not so Christine could sense it, but he definitely respected her, the way a predator respects a much bigger specimen of its kind. “She originally came from the Marshes. The Witch of Pinsk, that’s what people called her at first, but the Russians called her Baba Yaga when she started killing them by the thousands. I don’t know what the Nazis called her.”
“She spends most of her time in Kiev nowadays,” Father Aleksander said. “At court, or on missions for the Tsar.” It sounded more like a hopeful wish than a statement of fact, and the fear was still here.
“Yes,” Akula said agreeably. “And the marshes are big. The chances of you encountering her are small. Unless you are trying to find her wandering hut,” he added with a laugh.
“No, we are not looking for her, or her mythical hut,” Father Aleksander said.
“What are you looking for, Mykhailo? There is nothing there but trees, swamps and a sorry lot of bastards.
Did you hide some secret treasure there?”
Christine felt something behind the amusement in Akula’s words; a predatory curiosity, and perhaps a touch of hostility.
Father Aleksander growled something in Ukrainian. The words elicited a spike of anger from Akula. Except it wasn’t exactly anger; it was more like an alpha wolf – or alpha alligator – reacting to a challenge and getting all bristly and ready to fight.
“No problem, my friend,” Akula said after an awkward pause. “You are right. It is your business, not mine. Help you, I said I would, and help you I will.”
“Thank you,” the priest said with a short bow.
“It’s not cheap, getting into the Dominion,” Akula warned. “I have people who can do it, but it’s expensive. Easier to bring things and people out. You will go to Belarus first, and meet with my people in Minsk.” He gave a considering look to the three of them. “You alone would pose little trouble, Mykhailo. Two foreigners, worse, two Americans, that’s much more trouble.”
“We’re Canadian,” Christine said.
Akula shrugged. “Canadian. American. Same thing. Twenty thousand American dollars. Each.” His tone made it clear haggling was not an option.
“Fine. Half now,” Mark said. “Half when your people get us back out.”
“And if you get killed, I lose money?” the gang leader growled; his grammar got worse along with his mood. “No. This is a good price, just enough for covering my expenses. Lots of bribes to pay. And the money gets you a guide, too, an old crazy hunter who knows the Marshes like the back of his hand. He’s a good man, I’ve used him before. I’m willing to risk him, but I do not know what you’ll be doing there. I do not know if you’ll be back.”
Mark looked at Father Aleksander, who nodded. “Okay, then. Sixty thousand up front.” Mark’s tone was none too pleased, and that was no act.
Mark and Akula worked out the details for the transfer of funds into a numbered Swiss bank account, and the Neo gangster got his sixty thousand bucks. It was all very civilized, done through Mark’s wrist-comp and Akula’s e-tablet, as simple and easy as buying books online. They must have good encryption around here. She wondered how they could do illegal transactions with all the biometric IDs required by the Hypernet, but she decided asking about that under the current circumstances was probably not a good idea. Criminals always figured out ways around that kind of stuff; she didn’t need to know the gory details.
New Olympus Saga (Book 2): Doomsday Duet Page 32