“Why can’t you?” I massaged my right knee; a half-ruse to keep it from shaking. “At least tell me about Knox. What was he like?”
Faustus whispered: “There are a thousand-and-one camera’s in this city, and just as many snitches. The Knights are like robocops. They may accept us as Mythicons and Wards, but there are limits to what they’ll tolerate. And blabbing on about the War and about Mythcorp and the people associated with them to some teen is not something they’ll just overlook.”
He snatched his blade back from where he’d secreted it in his pocket, fiddled with it. “Dex will help you . . . probably.”
My peepers opened wide as I raised my noggin. “Dex . . . you mean the guy on Twenty-First Street?”
“You know him?”
I struggled to rip the strip of paper out of my pocket—the one Galahad claimed my kooky savior had stuffed in there after the Hunter attacked me. I handed it to Faustus.
He whistled and then laughed. “This is Malthus’ script.”
“Malthus?”
Faustus smiled. “He’s a demon, and the best chance we have of getting inside Mythcorp.”
Chapter 15
“It can’t be just coincidence,” I said, “me running into a pair of Mythicons who knew my father.” I winced, having moved just right so that one of the healing slices on my back tore open. “And this Malthus demon, helping me outside the school? No way it’s all a bunch of coincidences.”
“What then?” Faustus asked. “Divine intervention?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. By the way, have you ever heard of an Anne Thrope?”
Faustus was looking through that porthole window again, but turned around to observe me. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Anyway, I suspect that God or the gods find us generally boring, occasionally amusing at best. It’s more likely we’ve run into some good luck.” That knowing smirk returned to his face. “And trust me, I’d know: I’m the crown prince of good luck.”
“What do you mean?” My vision was blurring; I could see an aura around the gingersnap.
“You’re not the only one with gifts. Mine is miraculous good fortune,” yanking on his non-existent lapels and pointing his freckled nose at the ceiling. “Nothing bad ever happens to me.” He pulled on his sleeves, revealing flawless white skin. “Not a single scar. I never get sick and if someone tries to shoot me, I slip and avoid the bullet or their gun will simply jam up. Oh,” lowering his voice to a whisper, “and I own the lottery. Won a dozen fortunes. I’ve more money than Luxembourg.” His expression turned sour. “There’s just one little shrimp who can mess things up for me. But I think I’ve finally got a way to neutralize old Georgie Porgie.”
Struggling through the DT’s, I managed to recall what Ash had told us about Mythicons, back at the Home. According to him (or rather, according to Mr. Bors, whom Ash had Mesmerized into revealing this) Mythicons were forged in Mythcorp, each one possessing the exact personality and physical traits of a fictional character—its mythical icon. So, back then, if you had enough money, you could have had Mythcorp forge you Frodo Baggins or Sherlock Holmes and so on.
For the life of me I couldn’t remember any story about a lucky kook named Faustus.
The brimstorm let up and Faustus unlocked the back door. The steamy gloom of a post-brimstone sky hung heavy. You could feel it on your flesh and this was not a good thing, not for someone going through withdrawal. I wished I‘d had time to shop for some smack in Vera City.
Two steps out of that phantasmagoric slide show and my spooks popped into existence in front of us—all five of them, bamf-bamf-bamf-bamf-bamf. They wore expressions of concern, all except for Castor, who seemed disappointed that I was still alive. I limped on the cripple-stick, trying to put some distance between me and Faustus. While he was busy hailing a cab, I turned to Marie.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked her. She too had an aura, a sort of tracing of her profile in the shade of a bruise, just like all the living people shuffling along the street.
‘I couldn’t get to you,’ Marie said. It was unholy seeing her standing still. ‘Something about that place you were in. Please don’t go back there.’
“I won’t, believe me.” Then I added, “Did you find out any more on Sanson, Marie?”
Faustus jerked his head around, blazed his golden peepers at me. “Did you say Marie?” he asked. I nodded slowly while preparing to expound some lame excuse about talking to myself, when he interrupted. “You speak to a ghost named Marie? Is she wearing a white dress, dancing idiotically?”
All my aches and pains subsided for a tick when he asked this. “How can you possibly know all that?”
He laughed, drawing the attention of pedestrians. “Ha! You really are his boy. Oops, there’s the cab. Let’s get out from under these pissing clouds.”
I followed him in the cab and assaulted his ears with questions—questions he did not answer. By the time we reached Twenty-First Street I was two ticks away from socking him in his sniffer. It wasn’t like we had any cameras on us in the cab. Why couldn’t he speak to me about my father here?
“Why couldn’t we speak about Knox in the cab?” I asked as we slopped our way down the street to the cul-de-sac at the end.
“Man,” he snorted, “you’re as persistent as Roland Deschain.” He leapt over an especially deep puddle, landing without splashing a drop. I hobbled around the puddle but still ended up with soaked pants and water-clogged shoes. “We couldn’t talk in the cab,” he continued, “because that cabbie was listening to your stupid questions. You can’t just go around babbling on about Mythcorp and the War like some dang loose-lipped snitch.”
“Why not?”
He paused and pinched his nose as we reached the cul-de-sac. Before he could answer, Faustus’ head jerked up and his gaze shot out into the gloom of the trees between the houses. “Oh this is just awesome. We’re being followed. Don’t look. Just hurry up and get inside.”
He led me up the circular steps onto a concrete stoop. A small roof held up by fluted pillars blocked the rain, but I still felt exposed, especially after my guide’s unnerving revelation that we were being followed.
“Good luck,” he said. “I’m sorry ahead of time, and whatever happens, don’t blame me.” Faustus rapped on the door using the brass knocker, and then skipped down the steps.
“Hey!” I called out. “Aren’t you going in with me? I thought you knew this Dex guy.”
“Yeah,” he said, walking backwards down the street. “That’s exactly why I’m not going in. Dex has . . . issues with those of us who knew Knox. Not that I blame him—” his voice trailed off as I lost sight of him.
“Oh, this is just dynamite,” I whined.
So, I was drenched as a fish, my entire body was a tapestry of bruises, and now I didn’t have an introduction to this Dex fellow.
‘Well, are you gonna knock or shall I, you bony snot-eating sack of maggoty trash,’ Castor said. He was hovering to my right, dry as a bone. ‘Well? Let’s to it,’ he continued. ‘Or would you rather stand out here, pining after your long lost father? Maybe you want those firemen to put you out of your misery? Man, life is wasted on the living.’ He flickered and disappeared.
I turned around (tearing open a couple of the gashes on my back) and sure enough there was a pair of firefighters a few hundred feet down the block, dousing residual brimstone flames with foam produced by the tanks on their backs.
These two firemen paused in their work. I thought maybe they’d caught me being a voyeur, but then I noticed that the shadow behind them was moving. They swiveled and had just enough time to scream before their heads jerked back, one after the other. They clunked unconscious to the ground. That’s when the shadow behind them emerged from the tree line, taking the shape of a fatty-patty in a bear-skin cloak.
The Hunter leaned over the firemen. After retrieving something too dark and small for me to see in the gloom, he stood and slowly turned his head up to look at me from across the distance.
&
nbsp; “Holy crap!” I turned and pounded on the heavy oak door. “Let me in!”
Glances behind told me the Hunter was coming my way. He was certainly taking his time though, as if he had all the confidence in the world that Dex would not open.
“Come on, open up,” I screamed. “Someone’s coming!”
‘This door looks familiar,’ Marie declared. ‘You know, I think I’ve been here before. Yeah, he was standing right where you are,’ pointing at me. ‘He was pounding on the door, just like that. And then . . . and then, oh shoot, I can’t remember. My memories are all fuzzy. Maybe Dex can help. He always has the answers.’
I was beginning to think Marie had been in the thick of things back during the War, maybe even a part of Knox’s life. But more pressing matters—like my imminent demise and eternal buggery—were in the making, and so I continued pounding on the door, only now I was using my cripple stick.
“What do you want?” a voice from the other side, muffled and annoyed.
“To come in, what do you think?”
A pause. “Go away, dude. I don’t want any visitors tonight.”
“There’s someone out here and he’s going to kill me!”
A few seconds passed. “Are you still out there?”
‘He’s got his hand on the knob,’ Marie whispered. ‘Keep talking, you almost got him where you want him. Tell him about the Hunter. That should get him to open up.’ She was weaving her head and torso from me to the other side of the steel.
“I’ve come about Mythcorp, and if you don’t open right now,” I paused for a tick to consider the best threat, “then the Hunter will kill me and then he’ll bust this door down.” Darn, that was lame. “Open up!” At least all this adrenaline was dulling my aches and pains.
‘He’s undoing the deadbolts,’ Marie squeaked. ‘Halle-frigging-lujah,’ Castor mocked. ‘Ring the bells, light the cannons, write the Pope and bring out your dead, the door is opening.’
The Hunter was ten yards away now. He must’ve heard the locks being undone too, somehow, because he picked up his pace, lumbering towards me at a trot. I pounded harder and shoved on the wood. At first it didn’t budge, but then, with sudden freedom and relief, it gave. I fell inside on top of Dex.
‘Hurry up,’ Marie screeched. ‘He’s right behind you.’ Castor added: ‘Yeah, better hurry up or your precious life might be snuffed out right here and now. And then what would the world do?’
I twisted around, opening another couple of the stripes on my back. With my cripple-stick I tried yanking the door shut, but the Hunter barreled inside and landed right on top of us.
Dex, a man with gray-haired temples but razor sharp blonde hair up top and sporting dark circles under his eyes, looked at the Hunter with blazing fury. Instead of offering to help me, Dex pointed at the Hunter and started rattling off some hokey Latin chant. The Hunter grunted to his knees while digging into a pocket in his vest beneath the cloak. With one swift backhanded gesture, he tossed a small globule at Dex. The thing burst on impact, unleashing a foul vaporous cloud that soon enveloped the aging blonde. I struggled to breathe, even though I was a few feet clear of it.
Without even having the decency to make it look like it required an effort, the Hunter snatched the cripple-stick right out of my grip and snapped it in two, no big deal. He then grabbed me by the scruff and hoisted me up, ripping my poor drenched flannel. Thunder boomed outside. The Hunter drew me to his face, nose-to-nose like a lovable puff.
“Where is he?” he growled. “I know you know where he is. You’re going to tell me.”
He started shaking me. I wanted to puke but thought it might be a smidge foolish to vomit all over the kook who already wanted to shake me to death. Besides, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. Probably only be the dry heaves.
Castor was goggling at me, a smirk on his dead face. Well I was not going to be some yellow-gut and make him giddy with satisfaction. No sir. So I gathered up my marbles and gazed right into the Hunter’s creepy peepers. “I’m not ‘going to tell me’ you nothing. So sit on it, you twisted ugly—”
BOOM. He slammed me up against the wall beside a coat tree. I slithered down to the floor, wheezing for air. And then came the kicker: the Hunter raised his right leg, the one with the augmetic knee, and slammed it down on my shin, right below the knee he’d buggered up earlier.
I could say I screamed, but ‘scream’ is such a wimpy word that it just wouldn’t do justice to the sound that exploded from my mouth.
Vision blurred as hell coursed through my body. Suddenly there were two Hunters and two Dex’s.
Wait. How could Dex even be standing after taking that concussion grenade full-on? However he’d managed to recover so quickly, Dex looked furious. A black-handled blade appeared in his right hand. With one swift move he sliced a gash in his left forearm. Blood dribbled to the floor, right into the middle of a chalk outline of a pentagram.
Rumbling thunder shook the mansion—and it seemed to be coming from behind Dex. One second the air was still; in the next instant a great hurricane of wind whooshed around Dex and slammed into the Hunter, blasting him straight out the door and over the stoop. He smashed right into the receiving arms of a dark-skinned behemoth, bowling the giant over.
The Hunter did a slap-dash 180 while drawing a machete. I didn’t even have time to think before the oversized demon grabbed the Hunter by his leg, twirled him around, and launched the beefcake twenty feet away into the trees. He then lumbered after him.
While I lay in shock, rubbing my throbbing leg and gawking at the spot where the two freaks had disappeared, Dex rushed out to the stoop, swiftly inscribed something on the heavy door, and then slammed it closed, throwing the numerous deadbolts after it.
He collapsed against the door, assuming a seated position, back to the oak, arms on his knees.
When I could think again, I said, “What was that whole wind thing about?”
The man smiled. “Seriously, dude? That was magic. I called on the Wind elemental for aid, gave my blood as offering. I’m half-surprised It answered, considering.”
Magic? Man, my life just keeps getting stranger. I asked Dex what he did on the door. As he explained it, he’d carved the Hunter’s name—Nimrod—into the oak, adding it to others already carved there as part of a ward.
“If he survives Malthus and decides to try my door again,” Dex said, digging a small joint out of his jeans pocket, “that old relic will find his insides leaking out. I should’ve done it ages ago. I’m surprised he never came looking for me before, actually.”
I was about to ask for a hit off the joint, when he stood. “Who are you? Wait, don’t answer that because I don’t care.” He stomped out of the foyer down the hall, past a grand staircase. A few seconds later a loud banging noise echoed through the house.
Once my pumper stopped gushing like crazy, I hobbled over to the stairs and sat down, leaning against the turned spindles. For five minutes I sat there, mulling over these events.
Finally, compelled by Marie’s annoying prodding, I stood and hopped my way down the hall in the direction Dex had gone. The hallway led to a large white kitchen. Empty. The house was a dead zone; no sounds from the city could breach its walls. I couldn’t even hear the storm or the traffic swishing by on the street.
As I was making my way back to the hallway, calling out Dex’s name, Marie peeped her head out from the wall to my right. “Jeez!”
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He’s in here, in the library.’
I found the door, a dark stained wooden job hidden among the wainscoting. The handle turned easily enough, but when I went to push open the door, something resisted my effort. Castor laughed while Marie suggested I shove harder, insisting ‘Nothing’s blocking it.’
Skinny, with only one good leg does not offer much in the way of force, but I scrounged up some energy and barged into the library. The door slammed shut behind me, as if taken by the wind. From my hands and knees I looked up, scanning the
place. It was . . . impossible. A huge glass dome represented the ceiling, but it soared, at least five stories up. The house was only two stories, three if you counted the attic. The great circular room must’ve been sixty feet in diameter. Curved wooden bookshelves, the same dark stain as the wainscoting out in the hall, lined the walls, bisected only by balconies on every floor, each one about twelve feet tall.
Time itself seemed mutable in this place; I felt as though I’d been on the floor for hours—and for mere seconds—when I spotted Dex, scanning an old book on the second story balcony.
“Hey!” I called up to him, struggling to my feet. “I need your help.”
He jumped, nearly dropping his book. Dex leered down at me. “You again. What are you still doing here?”
“I was told you could help—”
“Go away,” he waved goodbye and returned to his reading. A few moments later he glanced back down at me. “You are a stubborn dude, aren’t you? Fine effort, truly. But it won’t work. I’m not taking on any more apprentices. If you knew what happened to the last one, you’d be thanking me for not taking you—”
“I’m Knox’s son!”
That got the pricks’ attention. Dex briskly descended the iron spiral stairs, crossed the paper strewn floor over to me. Setting the large ancient-looking book down on a trestle beside the door, he began an inspection of my body. It was mildly uncomfortable at first, and swiftly grew intrusive; he finished by clasping my ears and humming to himself.
I threw his hands off and hobbled back a step. “What are you doing?”
“Hmm. It seems you are indeed his son.” He turned and headed back towards the stairs, calling over his shoulder, “This is all the more reason for you to leave. Every venture I pursued with that man ended with someone dying or getting shot or stabbed or cursed.”
“Weren’t you friends?” A desperate tone was seeping into my voice.
Dex’s hand paused, frozen on the railing. He lowered his head for a few ticks before turning back to face me. “We were friends. A long time ago.” His eyes took in the vast library. “The last thing he did was fulfill his end of a bargain with me. It is because of his one good final act that we are here, in this . . . sanctum sanctorum.” A shift in his demeanor seemed to take him then, just when I was thinking he was about to help me. “But he was merely paying me back for helping him with that immortal fellow. We’re square. I don’t owe him or you anything. Go away.”
Orphan of Mythcorp Page 11