by Stuart Jaffe
Back and forth they attempted to shoot each other. Back and forth they blocked. Once, Octavia tried to throw in a short kick to the shins, but Nathan simply took the pain and aimed his weapon. She blocked the shot and kept her focus on his main threat from that point forward.
Nathan couldn’t see a way out of this dance until she managed to move in close, wrapped her arm around his elbow, and locked his arm against her side. His handgun was useless behind her. She snapped her weapon against his head.
“I’ve trained you well.”
Nathan peeked at the muzzle. “Not well enough.”
“We only had a year.” She pulled the trigger. Click.
They both hesitated, each requiring a moment to register the full implications of the sound of her empty chamber. Nathan moved first. He brought his knee straight into her gut. As she doubled over, he aimed at her head and shot. The force of the bullet somersaulted her forward.
His MP locked open signaling that he was out of ammunition. He had a few seconds before she would rise again. In that time, all he had to do —
But she jumped back to her feet. As she faced Nathan, her mouth twitched. She winced, biting back against the pain, as the bullet popped from the side of her head. It sang out a single chime when it hit the rooftop.
“I’m guessing I would have learned speedy recovery in Year Two,” Nathan said, edging backwards as he spoke.
“Put down your weapon. I can see you’re empty.”
Nathan holstered the weapon. “True,” he said. “But right now, I have something you don’t — an extra soul.”
He whirled around and sprinted to the end of the roof. He heard her cuss as he jumped. A wide alley with metal dumpsters and heaps of bagged trash waited below. In the short time he plummeted sixteen stories, he focused on controlling his panic. He knew he would live, but his body still reacted as if permanent death awaited him. He closed his eyes.
When his body slammed into the pavement, his bones shattered against the hard surface. The air whooshed from his lungs. All went black in an instant.
Before he could open his eyes again, the pain hit. A dislocated shoulder, cracked and splintered bones, an eyeball hanging out of the socket — all of these injuries and more slowly pulled back together as his body mended. He screamed.
He tried to sit up, but the fierce agony running along his spine kept him still. He counted three slow breaths. Octavia, Mr. Larkin, and Clockwork had to be charging toward him. Perhaps they had other members of their group ready to leap into action. He had little time left.
His left femur snapped back into place with an audible crunch. Tears blurred his vision as he bellowed. His right ankle sounded like a string of firecrackers going off and felt as explosive. But then the pain eased from a fiery assault into a constant ache.
Though his head pounded while his brains reformed beneath his sealing skull, he attempted to sit up once more. This time, he succeeded. A little dizzy, but he could manage.
He rolled onto all fours, then used a dumpster to struggle to his feet. He had to get away fast, but he also needed a soul. All that training had driven it into his bones — lose a soul, become mortal, gain a second soul as fast as possible.
As he stumbled toward the street, he grinned. That’s why Octavia and the others hadn’t reached him yet. They had to find a soul for Octavia. Every second they wasted was a second older for her.
But the same held true for him. He had to find a second soul. He took the sidewalk up a few blocks, blending in with the rest of the crowd. Mostly blending. He garnered a few stares at the blood on his clothing and his disheveled appearance. Other than a slight limp, however, his body had returned to normal, and soon enough, the limp would disappear, too.
The seconds continued to slip by. He hungered for that missing soul. It ached in his chest worse than any wound he had endured from his jump. He thought about grabbing the nearest and weakest person, but that would be too conspicuous. And wrong. He couldn’t simply murder people. He needed to be better than Jake and Octavia and all of them.
He would have to age a half-hour or so, but he had an idea of the right way to handle his problem. He turned onto a wide, busy avenue and flagged the nearest cab. Two more tries and he finally succeeded.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
As Nathan eased into the back seat, he said, “The nearest hospital.”
Chapter Fifteen
Nathan emerged from the Brooklyn Hospital Center with clean clothes, a laptop, seventy-five dollars in cash, and a new soul. When he had first arrived, he slipped into the hospital without notice, grabbed some blue scrubs, and spent a half-hour reading charts on the cancer ward. Finally, he found Mr. Paul Sullivan — eighty-seven years old with aggressive lung cancer. Sullivan appeared to have no family which meant there would be few, if any, inquiries into his death.
When it appeared the nurses were too busy to notice, Nathan entered Sullivan’s room and took off the scrubs. He dressed in Sullivan’s clothes — a bit tight but clean. Sullivan watched through barely-opened eyes. After dressing, Nathan spied the laptop. No password protection. At eighty-seven, Sullivan probably wouldn’t remember a password. Perfect.
“Who are you?” Sullivan asked in a weak voice.
Nathan paused. He straightened and in a cold, honest tone, he said, “I’m the Angel of Death.”
Sullivan leaned his head back. “Finally.”
Nathan stepped to the old man’s side. “You have to look me in the eyes.”
“Will there be pain?” Sullivan opened his eyes wide and stared at Death with pleasure.
Nathan put his hands around the man’s head and with one, clean motion, snapped the neck. The misty soul shot from the aged eyes as if it had been a bronco in the chute desperate to gain its freedom. Nathan had no trouble taking the soul in and feeling the satisfied fullness within his body.
As alarms sounded, Nathan snatched the laptop. He noticed the wallet on the bedside table and pocketed that as he left. Walking down the hall, he stepped aside to allow the nurses and doctors to rush by in their race to Mr. Sullivan’s room.
Once outside the hospital, Nathan headed straight up Dekalb Avenue. He needed a place to figure out his next move. A coffee shop would be fine, and he knew if he walked straight, he would come across one soon enough. In a city like New York, there were almost as many coffee shops as people.
Four huge blocks later he found Carla’s Coffee Cove with free wi-fi. Perfect.
Though he didn’t particularly like coffee, Nathan thought he blended better with a cup by his side. Plus, he needed the caffeine. He settled in the back corner of the tiny shop and powered up the laptop. He hung a napkin across the top to cover the camera eye — no sense making it easy for Larkin to spy on him.
What next? He couldn’t hole up or go on the run. Those were stalling tactics, and the delay would only provide the Larkin Group with more time to find him.
But first, they would go after Crystal. They might spend a few more hours searching for him, but once they accepted that he had disappeared amongst the throngs of New York City, they would refocus on Crystal. They had surveillance footage of her which meant they knew where she was — or at least, where she had last been. It would be easier for them to find her. Once they had her, they would have one more person to help them find Nathan. Also, Nathan had just escaped. They would expect him to be hyper-aware of his situation and the choices that he made. Crystal, on the other hand, had been on the run for a year. She may have grown complacent thinking she had gotten away. The more Nathan thought it over, the more convinced he became — they wouldn’t chase him; they would go after Crystal.
He had to beat them to her.
Still, he had to be careful. While they may refocus their efforts on Crystal, he didn’t think for one moment that Mr. Larkin would forget him entirely. If his ID flashed up, the Larkin Group would find out. From Clockwork’s makeshift surveillance room, Nathan got the clear impression that they were monitoring a l
ot of the world. He imagined Clockwork had a much more sophisticated and intrusive setup back at the island.
Nathan sipped his bitter coffee and stared at the laptop screen. Paul Sullivan’s daughter and two grandchildren stared back from a Miami vacation. Judy, Dennis, and Derek.
Nathan’s skin prickled. Those names popped in his head and he knew they were correct. But Octavia had said the second soul could not communicate with the master soul. So, how did that happen? Perhaps she had to train him to shut that mysterious voice out of his head. Or perhaps she had lied. Considering the amount of control the Larkin Group liked to have over these bodies, Nathan found it easy to believe they had withheld significant information.
He would have to deal with that another time. For now, he simply wished the old man would shut up in his head so he could think about how to find Crystal. He grumbled as he forced down another sip of coffee.
His old life had some good to offer. Both his days working for a bail bondsman and those working as a paralegal had given him the tools to find people who did not want to be found.
Nathan clicked onto the Internet and went to the website for the law offices of Randleman and Catt — his old employer. He brought up the login for paralegals and attorneys. Though it had been a year since his “death,” Randleman and Catt were not a large firm that spent tons of money on security. He expected his old login and password would still work. The offices did not have a regular IT guy and had probably never performed a single day of security maintenance. With a few keystrokes, Nathan was in.
Usually, when serving a summons, he would have a full name and legal address. This made the job much easier unless the person knew he was coming. This time, however, he only had the name Crystal and the location New York City. Through the web portal, he did have access to several databases that might help. He plugged in the limited information he had and crossed his fingers.
No luck — thousands of Crystals came up. He did not have the time to sift through it all. Which meant he would have to go the only other route he could think of.
He needed a phone. He had ditched his cell at the hospital — too easy for Mr. Larkin to trace. After packing up his things, he crossed the street and walked up a block to an electronics store. He purchased a phone, and in short order, he connected to the New York City Police Department.
“Detective Culpepper here. How may I help you?”
“My name is …” Nathan forgot to come up with a name. He grasped the name of a musician, Jimmy Page, and chopped up the city he was in. “… James York. I was hoping you’d be able to help me. I’m a bail bondsman searching for a skip out.”
It was strange to hear Culpepper’s voice again, but the feeling disappeared fast. Octavia had been right — that was his old life. Just because he needed to draw upon it now, did not bring it any closer.
He went on, “An old friend of yours, Nathan Flynn, said that if I ever needed to find somebody in New York, you’d be the man to call.”
“Nathan, huh?” Culpepper paused. “Nathan was a good man. I was sorry to hear about his death.”
“Me, too. He and I have known each other a long time. Anyway, I’ve got a fugitive from out of state, and I was hoping you’d be able to help.
“Sure. Who is it?”
“Don’t have much for you to go on. She goes by the alias of Crystal. About a year ago she was involved in a pretty big shootout at an office building in the city. Tore the place apart. There were a few dead bodies, bodyguard types.”
“Oh, yeah. That was an odd one. I remember that. And you’re saying this Crystal was there?”
“That’s what they tell me. Can you help me out?”
“Yeah, give me some time though. I’ve got to go dig in her files and see if we got anything in there to help us get a bead on her. I’ll be back.”
Nathan trudged along the street straight for ten long blocks until he found another coffee shop — Malcolm’s Mocha. He settled in, coffee in hand, and waited. When Culpepper finally called, Nathan had downed three cups. His fingers jittered as he answered the phone.
“Mr. York, I wish I could give you something more solid, but you ain’t giving me much to go on.”
“I know. I’ll take whatever the best you can give me is.”
“I pulled up the old case file of the Colson office building shootout. Two women were associated with that — one Caucasian, one African-American. Surveillance images are too low quality to pick out much detail but those are the two we have. A few people here are assigned to follow up on the old cases like this, so I looked over their notes and called them up. From what I can tell, the African-American woman is a ghost. We got nothing on her whereabouts. But the Caucasian gets some hits. You got three possibilities of where this woman might be, if she hasn’t left the country — Florida, Texas, or Pennsylvania. And that’s it. I can’t narrow it down any more than that, and frankly, the last sightings we have that gets me to those states are from six months, eight months, and nine months ago.”
“Thank you very much. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but that was a big help.”
“You got it. Any friend of Nathan’s, you know.”
“I know. He was a good guy.”
Nathan had no trouble picking which state to go with. The image he had seen on Clockwork’s computer screen showed deciduous forest in the background. Of the three states, only Pennsylvania would have trees like that. But that still left the entire state of Pennsylvania to search.
Nathan, however, could meet that challenge. He called up the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles and bluffed his way through saying he was a New York City detective in pursuit of a fugitive. The young clerk who had answered was more than helpful. As they talked, Nathan set up a Gmail account and had the clerk send images of all the driver’s licenses applied for in the last year under the name Crystal that depicted a blond-haired woman. Twenty three came through. Two minutes later, he looked at the photo of the woman he could never forget. With the license, he had an address.
“Guess I’m going to Pennsylvania.”
Chapter Sixteen
The drive to Edenton took several hours. All during the ride, Nathan continuously wondered why it had taken the Larkin Group so long to locate Crystal when he had done it in only a few hours. The answer, he decided, had to do with risk and exposure.
Mr. Larkin wanted Crystal’s body back for a new soul, one he could control, but he had to find her from the shadows. He had to limit any exposure of his group and the existence of all immortals from the public eye, which meant he could not simply call up a detective and ask for help. To do so would risk discovery or worse, would connect one of Mr. Larkin’s group with a crime — they had to have committed quite a lot of them. Probably listed on Interpol, as well.
Such a case might become a big news story. No government would intervene. No government would risk being connected to the group. And if convicted, a member of the Larkin Group might face multiple life sentences. Being immortal, they would be capable of carrying out the full sentence. Or worse, the government might then use the incarceration as a bargaining chip or a test case to dissect them. No matter the outcome, none of those possibilities could be acceptable to the Larkin Group or any immortal.
So, they approached slowly and with great caution. They exhibited the patience of an immortal. Building up their surveillance. Watching. Waiting. Letting their target become comfortable. In the end, rather than make a big scene that might get noticed, they would quietly swoop in and take Crystal away. At least, Nathan thought that was what their plan had been. But now he had jumped into the situation and mucked everything up. Now, they would have to move fast and possibly risk a visible display of their existence — things Mr. Larkin did not like.
If Nathan’s diagnosis of the situation proved true, then he still had a chance. The Larkin Group wouldn’t fly in privately, wouldn’t launch a full-scale attack, wouldn’t do anything that would bring notice upon itself — not unless they had no alterna
tive. For Nathan, that meant he could maneuver where they could not. And he could do so much faster.
He reminded himself not to get cocky. These people had spent centuries stopping wars and starting others, crafting huge lies to dupe billions of people. They may not like to move fast or risk exposure, but that did not mean they lacked skills and knowledge far beyond what Nathan had acquired in only a year. Plus, he only had his Smith and Wesson MP and the micro-binoculars.
Edenton was a small town east of Scranton in the Pocono Mountains. A beautiful countryside spread out, filled with hills and mountains layered in evergreens. The air smelled fresh with pine. It was the kind of place people liked to go hunt and escape the grind of city life. By the time he hit the town limits, the sun had long since set and only his headlights illuminated the way.
He pulled into the Palace Motel — a single-story dive that did not bother asking questions when he paid in cash. Attached to the motel, he found Smokey’s Diner — open all night.
Midnight had come and gone, so he settled into a booth and ordered a breakfast of two eggs, toast and bacon. And more coffee. He still didn’t care for the taste, but opportunities to sleep would be many hours away. He needed the caffeine.
As the waitress filled his mug, she gave him a little smile. He liked that. She had a soft face with small eyes and thin lips that together formed a unique and alluring image. Her name tag read MAGGIE. Based on her smile, he decided she would be willing to chat, and he needed information. It certainly helped that the rest of the diner was empty.
Nathan said, “So who did you tick off to get stuck on the graveyard shift?”
“I chose it. I prefer the quiet nights.”
“Quiet can be good. I suppose anybody who comes up here is looking for quiet.”
“Most. Sometimes we get a gaggle of young hunters. Boys, really, trying to prove they’re men by shooting things. Other than that, it’s not bad. What brings you up here? You don’t look like a hunter.”