by R. E. Vance
My head hurt. “Are you sure it’s not illegal?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know anything about the kidnappings?”
“No.”
I looked at Penemue. “Do we believe her?” I asked.
“Oh, absolutely.” Penemue stuck out a finger and the pixie shook it. “We most certainly do.”
“OK …” I looked down at the Barbie-size creature and narrowed my eyes. “I guess we believe you.”
Mable put her good hand on her chest earnestly. “I would never hurt the children. Never. If there is anything I can do to help, anything at all, please … I miss my Michael and Susie.”
“One last thing,” I said, touching Sinbad’s shoulder. She was still pouting. “Do you feel anything?” I asked Sinbad.
The little warrior girl huffed, not saying anything.
“I’m sorry I yelled, Sinbad, but this is serious. Do you feel Sarah on her? Maybe they’ve met before? Come on—this is important. For Sarah.”
“For Sarah,” Sinbad echoed, nodding. Narrowing her eyes, she outstretched her fingers. “Nooo …” she said. “But I feel the bad thing. It hurt Mable, too.”
So the bad thing—or rather the Occultist—did have something to do with Michael and Susie. All connected. Crap. “Anything else?” I asked Sinbad.
Sinbad nodded. “Yes. I feel … love. She’s so full of it, just like my Sarah.”
The pixie reached out and touched Sinbad’s forefinger. “You’re a very special little girl, aren’t you? You’re some little girl’s guardian?”
“I’m her hero,” Sinbad said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, you are,” Mable said. “But can I ask something of you, Sinbad? Can you be Michael and Susie’s hero, too? They need help, just like Sarah.”
Sinbad considered this. “They’re missing. Just like Sarah?”
Mable nodded.
“They need someone to rescue them and take them home. Just like Sarah?”
“Yes,” Mable said, still holding onto Sinbad’s finger. The pixie spent less than five minutes with the pirate warrior little girl, and she understood right away what Sinbad was. The intuition on this creature was incredible. “Bring them home,” Mable said. “Please.”
Sinbad nodded. “OK. I will be their hero, too.”
“Thank you,” Mable said.
It was a touching moment. I felt the genuine love and fear that Mable harbored for the children in her care. She loved them, that much was clear.
“OK,” I said, standing. I looked down at Mable, one last burning question plaguing me. “You were a nanny?”
“The best,” she said with pride.
“I got to ask. How the hell did you change diapers?”
“Pullies and picture books,” she said as if that was all I needed to know.
In a way, it was.
Chapter 4
Monster vs. Pirate (Hint: Pity the Monster)
We escorted Mable back to her birdhouse and made our way out of the park. Only, it was full dark now and finding our way out was as clear-cut as coming in—which is to say, confusing as hell. So I suggested we walk down to the stream and follow it out. It was the long way out, but there was something I wanted to check, and the long way out was the best way to do it.
Sinbad skipped in front of us and Penemue sighed. “Well, that was a dead end.”
“Not entirely,” I said. “We know that the kidnappings are connected. It’s no longer a theory. That’s something.”
I took a look around. We were in an essentially empty park, at night and alone. Pulling out my phone, I sent a text message to Astarte telling her what we encountered and asking if Brian was around to do a little spy work for us.
“Not a whole lot of something,” Penemue said. “What are you doing?”
“Searching for more leads. And to your earlier point—true, it’s not a whole lot of something. But we also know that someone wanted us to find out about the black market tears. That wasn’t a coincidence, either.”
“How do you mean?”
“Remember at the airport, when I said I thought someone was suppressing the news, holding it back to get maximum airplay from the fact that Others were kidnapping children?”
Penemue nodded.
“I’m starting to think it’s more complicated than that. What do Sarah, Elliot, Michael and Susie’s kidnappings all have in common?”
Penemue considered this. “If you exclude Elliott, then it is that they were all kidnapped from homes with Memnock Securities systems.”
“True. But if you don’t exclude Elliot, what does that leave us with?”
Penemue shook his head. “They’re all under eight …”
“And?”
The twice-fallen angel sighed. “I don’t know … they all are humans with human parents and—” He stopped.
“You’re starting to see it, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “They all have Other friends or caretakers.”
“Exactly. Sarah was friendly with the monster-under-your-bed. Michael and Susie had a pixie nanny. And Elliot was actually being protected by his jackal-guard neighbor. Each and every one of them had relationships with Others. How much do you want to bet that when Conner gets back from the other two households, there will be evidence of other Others?”
Penemue nodded. “Scapegoats?”
“Scapegoats.”
“Empty Hell,” Penemue said.
“Indeed,” I echoed, chuckling at Penemue’s slurred tone.
↔
We continued to walk along the stream toward the park’s border. Sinbad skipped ahead of us, singing an old nursery rhyme as she did:
“Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.”
“Funny thing about that poem,” Penemue started.
“It’s about the Black Death,” I said. “I know. Posies to hide the smell … ‘we all fall down,’ i.e., ‘we all die.’ ”
“Indeed,” Penemue said. “But what I was going to say was that the rhyme was written by Plague himself.”
“Plague?”
“Yes, one of the four horsemen. Quite a literate fellow. But I guess when you’re always bedridden, reading is your only escape.”
“Uh-huh,” I said skeptically. “And let me guess—War plays the drums, Pestilence is a painter and Death is an accomplished bagpiper?”
Penemue smirked. “Too far?”
I shook my head. “You almost had me. It was the bedridden part that got you, though.”
“I shall strike that from my next attempt,” he said with a chuckle and then pointed at Sinbad. “Look at her. She skips and plays so in the moment … so pure and innocent. She lives as a child should. Not like …”
“Don’t say it.”
“EightBall.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” I said, just like I’d told him a thousand times before. “You had no control over where you fell.”
Penemue sighed and pulled out his bottle of Drambuie. He went to take a swig, then stopped and did something I’d never seen him do in the eight years I’d known him: he walked over to a garbage can and threw it away. Pausing, I saw actual tears streaming down his face. The thing about angel tears—they’re made of light. In the darkness of the park, they lit up his face.
Little streams of fluorescence fell down his cheeks. Sinbad turned around and, seeing Penemue upset, ran up to him and hugged his legs. “What’s wrong, Mr. Penemue? Are you homesick?”
“No, my dear …” The angel flicked away some tears that looked like little comets flying from his fingers and into the stream. “Just lamenting past failings. Something I did and cannot undo.”
“What did you do?” Sinbad asked, looking up from where she hugged him.
“He didn’t do anything,” I said.
“I did,” Penemue cut in, looking at me. “I stole from him. You saw those kids, Jean-Luc. How happy they were when their pa
rents picked them up. I stole that from him.”
“Penemue,” I said, “you had no control over where or how you fell. When the gods left, they forced you out of Hell so quickly, you just fell.”
“Right on EightBall’s parents. I killed them both.”
“The gods killed them both. You were just their bullet.”
“Did you mean to hurt Mr. EightBall’s parents?” Sinbad asked.
“By the GoneGods, no. But it doesn’t change the fact that I did.” Penemue turned to me, his tear-lit eyes imploring. “I have to tell him.”
“Don’t. He won’t understand.”
“I have to, Jean-Luc. The guilt. It’s slowly killing me.”
“And if EightBall quickly kills you?”
“Then come what may,” Penemue said.
Sinbad’s gaze went from Penemue to me, then back to Penemue. “But it was an accident. Mr. EightBall will understand. He has to.”
Penemue smiled kindly. “You think so, kiddo?”
“Oh, he will!” Sinbad said with all the earnestness and honesty of a child who has yet to be marred by the ambiguity of forgiveness and arbitrary cruelty of life. “You’re the bestest angel I’ve ever known. He’ll understand. You’ll see. Just tell him what happened and how you’re sorry and—”
Sinbad stopped talking—and not in the way that people normally do, where they either trail off or they get cut off—before she jumped in the air and away from us.
But to call what Sinbad did a “jump” would be a disservice to what she actually did. It was more like she bounded or leapt—or any other word used when a creature takes to the air without actually flying. At first I thought it was one of her cute little games, but then I looked in the direction where she vaulted and saw someone whom I simultaneously wanted to see and hoped to never see again.
Evil-and-Cute.
↔
My job in the Army was to track down Others and stop them from doing bad things before they had the chance. If I did my job well, you’d never hear about it. It was only when I failed that the newspapers printed headlines like Fundamentalist Harpy Suicide-Bombs Café or Homicidal Fae Gang Kills Seven in Sleepy Western Town.
I am proud to say that while I was active, those kinds of headlines were few and far between. I am less proud of what I did to keep those kinds of things out of the papers. Whether I was a good or bad man in those days, I don’t know. All I do know is that some of the things I did in the name of saving lives were unambiguously evil.
But that was then and this was now. And now I needed to use some of my special skills to flush out a baddie. In this case … a very cute, take-home-to-meet-mom kind of baddie, but a baddie nonetheless.
Only trouble is baddies don’t like to come out and play. Not unless they’re sure they can win. And so there was one technique I used time and time again to get them to come for me: I went on vacation.
If you were a high target such as myself, holidays were the ideal place for the baddies to track you down and kill you. You were away from your fellow soldiers, alone in some desolate location, presumably unarmed, unlikely to be on guard and more likely to be tipsy from all the piña coladas you were undoubtedly guzzling down.
I can’t tell you how many Others I killed while wearing a Hawaiian T-shirt and sandals. Let’s just say that tropical retreats no longer hold any appeal for me.
But how do you tell a baddie that you are on holiday? That’s easier than you’d believe. Simply let the right people know.
In this case, we knew that Memnock Securities was being breached—presumably hacked. Evil-and-Cute called me by name in the desert, which meant that she knew me, knew what I was capable of, and was quite tech-savvy. The Occultists were watching me. Or, at the very least, watching out for me. I couldn’t go on holiday at the present—not exactly ideal when you’re the sole runner of a hotel buried in debt and currently being blackmailed by a mad-scientist General—but I could take an unarmed excursion on the mainland, away from all my Other allies and home turf advantage. Away from my weapons.
But why would I be a target?
Not to sound arrogant, but a colorful career in the Army such as mine, coupled with stopping two world-ending events, gets you a reputation. So if a baddie were up to no good and knew I was on the trail, eliminating me would be high on their priority list. And since this particular baddie was a very powerful and arrogant opponent, it was only a matter of time until she tracked me down.
At least that was my theory, and the only way to test it was to be relatively alone. Oh, and ask my technologically adept IT support, Brian, to post a message that I was walking in the park. We had discussed where to post the message and in the end decided on the most effective place possible: Facebook (or as I like to call it: VoluntarySurveillance Book). That’s why I insisted on the walk by the stream. It was dark, which meant most human residents wouldn’t be out in a park. The meandering nature of our walk gave the illusion of being unprepared and the appearance of being lost made us all the more enticing.
I knew my lure would work. So it would be here on the mainland, by a stream in a park that I chose to make my stand.
Or so I thought.
↔
Sinbad vaulted at Evil-and-Cute, daggers in hand, and given the speed and ferocity with which the pirate flew, I worried she would cut down the Occultist before we could ask her where the children were being held. My fears, however, were short-lived: Evil-and-Cute drew back her fist and punched Sinbad square in the chest.
Sinbad tumbled back, taking the blow in stride and finding her feet with a grace that would make any superhero green with envy. “ShouldNotBes,” she growled. “I feel Sarah on you. Where is she? Where?” Sinbad held her daggers to her side, readying to attack again.
“Sarah?” Evil-and-Cute cocked her head to one side and looked at Sinbad curiously. Then a flash of recognition painted her face. “You … I recognize you. You are the little girl in Cell Block Seven. The one with the defiant eyes. They told us this could happen. An unfortunate side effect of little children’s belief. They manifest what they know and … Sarah, was it?”
Sinbad let out a low guttural growl at her charge’s name.
Evil-and-Cute smirked. “Sarah must have manifested you. She is one of our better believers. We shall have to break her of her belief in you.” Her words came out in a buzz, like a bee trapped between two panes of glass. Evil-and-Cute adjusted her tiara as she spoke. Evidently this villain was more concerned that her crown was perfectly straight than actually battling the manifested hero of a kidnapped little girl.
The Occultist touched forefinger and thumb together, forming a diamond shape around her chest.
“You don’t touch her!” Sinbad screamed and shot forward faster than any sprint runner could hope to achieve. The little warrior pirate was fierce. Except this time her attack was met by a giant pincer that materialized from the darkness, clamping on her head and suspending her in midair.
Penemue drew out two chained meat hooks of his own from his wrists—his weapons of choice, more a part of him than actual weapons. But before he could move, another pincer snared him by his wings.
The creature that grabbed Penemue and Sinbad held them both up in the air. Evil-and-Cute stood by its side, smirking that enticing, evil smirk of hers.
The anatomy of this anomaly took first prize in the contest of weird. It looked more like a distorted, twisted version of a Tonka crane than an actual monster, with two crane-like pincers jutting straight up from its shoulders.
“So, you found me,” I said, trying to sound as bored as I could. “How convenient.”
“Not on your knees anymore, Jean-Luc? How brave, given that there is no one around to save you.” She twirled around twice, arms spread out, to emphasize that we were, in fact, alone. We were in the middle of a park, and although houses lined the park’s perimeter, they were far enough in the distance that we could not be seen through the veil of night.
“No matter. I will still keep
my promise. Your death will be quick and painless.” Evil-and-Cute lifted my sword from under her cloak and tossed it to me. “Unless, of course, you want to fight.”
“Jeez … thanks,” I said. I left the sword where it lay, surreptitiously pulling out a little something extra I’d brought along just in case we ran into these guys again from my coat pocket—a plain-looking jar. I twisted open its top and poured its contents into my hand. To the uninitiated eye, it looked like Play-Doh with a wick jutting out of it.
“What is that?” Evil-and-Cute asked.
“Oh, this? Just a little something I kept from my Army days. See, we always had to travel about from city to city, country to country, and we couldn’t always get military flights. Which meant that we often flew commercial. Coach, never business class. The Army was cheap that way.” I tossed the glob of clay from hand to hand. “But that posed another problem: how do we get our weapons in and out of airport security? We couldn’t exactly check them in, and since I was the guy that usually traveled incognito, the Army came up with all sorts of weapons that would pass unnoticed through airport security.” I caught the glob and held it in one hand. “Where are the kids?”
Evil-and-Cute laughed.
“OK, let’s start with something easier. Why are you here? Just to pick a fight with me in the park?” I lit the wick and it started sizzling as a small flicker crawled down the string.
“Oh, Jean-Luc—arrogance does not become you. You are but a bonus in our plans. But make no mistake: me being here has very little to do with you.” She spread her fingers together again, forming a diamond in the empty space between her fingers. “We are about to enter the next phase of our conquest.”
“And what’s that?”
“Terror.”
As if on cue, we heard screaming from the houses just beyond the park. A whole lot of it.
Evil-and-Cute smirked. I threw the glob right at her. She dodged it, using her preternatural speed—but speed can only transport you in one direction. And besides, I was aiming behind her—I didn’t want to get Penemue and Sinbad with that stuff. As soon as the glob was about two feet past her, it burst out into a million little pieces that flew at her from all directions.