by Barry Reese
The two officers came to a sudden stop when they got a good look at the figure in front of them. The Goblin was shielding his eyes from the bright glare but was still clearly visible.
“What the hell is that?” one of the officers whispered. “Jake, get back in the car and call Chief McKenzie…”
As his partner followed orders, the cop took a few steps towards the Goblin, who was watching him with teeth bared. “Back away from the girl,” the officer warned, pointing his gun at the monster. “Or I swear to God I’ll blow your head off.”
The Golden Goblin lowered his arm, panting. He smiled cruelly and leaned his neck forward, opening his mouth wide. A plume of yellow-black flame jetted forth, enveloping the brave officer. The man began howling in agony, staggering back and waving his arms wildly. His gun discharged, firing straight up.
The Goblin turned and ran, throwing himself up the side of a building in a jump that no human could have made. He slammed his fingertips into the brick, creating handholds for himself, and ascended until he was out of view.
Sally scrambled to her knees, pulling together the rest of her papers. It looked like the Goblin might have gotten away with perhaps two-thirds of her accumulated information, but that still left enough evidence for her to convince her employer of the danger they all faced.
She looked over at the police officer, who was being patted down with a heavy blanket by his partner. It looked like the poor man was dead… and Sally knew that, unfortunately, this was only the beginning.
She slipped away, not waiting to share her knowledge with the police. She had to find Max Davies before it was too late…
CHAPTER III
Prophecies Revealed
The Next Morning. 7:35 A.M.
William Davies was four years old and looked like the perfect combination of his parents. From his father he’d inherited the slightly olive complexion that marked their Mediterranean heritage, but his mother gave him auburn curls and sparkling green eyes. He was a handsome child with an easy smile and large amounts of energy. He stared down at his baby sister’s face with an awestruck expression on his face, his intelligent eyes gleaming. “She’s so little,” he whispered, afraid that he’d wake her from her nap.
Max stood beside his son, one hand resting on the boy’s shoulder. “You were that little once, too.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I remember it like it was yesterday.” Max heard movement behind them and he glanced over his shoulder to see Evelyn standing in the doorway to the nursery. She looked beautiful but tired. Her robe was tied loosely in the front and she had a wistful expression on her face. Max had turned forty-three earlier this year, and Evelyn was now almost thirty-six, but when he looked at her, he felt like a high school boy gawking at the prettiest girl in school. “Hi, honey,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“What are you two doing?” Evelyn asked, moving up close to Max.
“We’re watching Emma sleep,” William replied. He looked up at his mother. “When she wakes up, can I hold her?”
“Maybe if your daddy helps you.” Evelyn kissed Max on the cheek. She’d had a rough time with Emma’s birth, much harder than with William. In the week since their family had grown by one, she’d been informed by the doctors that it would be in her best interests to avoid pregnancy in the future.
“How are you feeling?” Max wanted to know.
“Better. Still a little tired.”
“Nettie says you didn’t eat much at breakfast.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Nettie gossips way too much for a maid. I wasn’t very hungry. That’s all.”
William laughed as Emma turned in her sleep. The noise made the baby’s eyelids flutter but she didn’t wake up.
“C’mon,” Max said, tugging at his little boy’s arm. “We don’t want to wake her.”
The three of them had just stepped out and closed the door when Nettie appeared at the stairwell, having come up from downstairs. Nettie was an old, old woman who refused to divulge her true age, but her wrinkled skin clung to the bones of her body, outlining each and every one of them. Despite the fragility of her appearance, she had a core of steel that allowed her to survive in the often volatile Davies household. “Mr. Davies, there’s a woman here to see you. I ain’t never seen her before but she says she works for you.”
“Did she give a name?”
“Yessir. She says her name is Miss Pence.”
“Do you know her?” Evelyn asked, eyebrows raised. She knew that from time to time Max dealt with some stunning young woman, but most of them were in his nocturnal exploits as the Peregrine. Women like Whisper and the Domino Lady knew better than to call upon her husband when she was around.
“She’s the exchange student who started working for me back in ’41. The girl from Africa, remember?”
Awareness suddenly dawned on Evelyn and she felt guilty for her momentary jealousy. Sally was lovely, but she was also a vulnerable young woman. Her father had been much like Max, a man so driven by his desire to see justice done that he’d fought crime behind a mask. They were alike in other ways, too: both had been sculpted into who they were by fathers who had desired to see their sons become warriors.
Sally had surprised Max by arriving on his doorstep shortly after the Peregrine’s first encounter with Dr. Satan. She’d gotten his address from Leonid Kaslov, the Russian superman who had aided Max on numerous occasions. Kaslov and her father had worked together from time to time, and the Russian encouraged Sally to seek out Max. The girl’s father had been brutally murdered several years before and she’d moved to America to attend college almost immediately after. Upon graduation, she’d wanted to find work for herself doing something that would help people, following in her father’s footsteps in some fashion. Max had hired her as an investigator, someone who scoured the papers for him and alerted him to odd news that might be of importance. She’d also become his gofer of sorts, traveling across the country to acquire objects for him.
Max hurried downstairs with Nettie while Evelyn took William to his room to change him out of his pajamas and into his daywear.
Sally was waiting for him in the study. She was clutching a folder against her chest and Max immediately noticed that she looked exhausted. Her skirt was sullied with mud and her blouse was torn in several places. Despite this, there was a fresh beauty to her that took his breath away.
“Sally? What’s wrong?”
The young girl fairly ran into his arms and Max awkwardly patted her back. They had never had any physical contact before and Max had always been impressed with how Sally carried herself in a professional manner.
As if sensing his unease, she pulled away and handed him the folder. “I was going to bring this to you last night, but I was followed and then attacked by a monster… I barely got away and I ended up sleeping in the woods. You have to see the papers. I saved some of them—enough, I think, and—”
“Sally. Calm down.” Max steered the girl to a chair and helped her into it. He took a seat near her and opened the folder. There were clippings within, with headlines talking about bizarre sightings of a humanoid creature, a series of murders where the victims were burned to death, and a photo of a German officer identified as Hermann Krupp. “Start from the beginning, please.”
Sally took a deep breath and seemed to settle herself. She looked at Max somewhat apologetically, as if realizing that she had been acting in an embarrassing fashion. “There’s something I never told you about, Mr. Davies. The real reason I came to America.”
“Call me Max. We’ve known each other for a few years now.”
“All right… Max. You know that my father was the last in the long line of Revenants. He died while investigating a Nazi scheme. The man in that photo—Hermann Krupp—led an expedition into Bordia in search of the Golden Goblin. They found it… and took it away. My father knew of a prophecy surrounding the creature: The end of days shall be marked by the arrival of evil men. They shall awaken the sleeping
beast and the world will soon die by fire. My father was going to try and stop Krupp from getting out of the country with the monster, but he was betrayed by a local shaman.”
“What is the Golden Goblin?” Max asked.
“According to the legends, a god fell from the sky in a fiery cloud. When he landed, he went on a rampage and finally kidnapped a beautiful princess. He raped her and then sent her back to her village. The god died, then, wounded from his fall from the heavens. The woman grew large with the monster’s child and, at the moment she was about to give birth, she burst into flames. The monster crawled from the burned wreckage of her corpse, a tiny little infant. The natives killed it, since it was still young enough to be wounded by their weapons. The woman’s corpse was put up in a shrine, an object of both reverence and terror. Every twenty years, the corpse flames again and another infant crawls forth. The last time this happened was in 1938, when the Nazis came and stole the infant away. It’s grown up, Max, far faster than any human child ever could!”
Max flipped through the papers, looking thoughtful. “Okay… you said that a monster attacked you last night. This Golden Goblin thing?”
“Yes. Once I started recognizing some of the descriptions that were making it into the papers—survivors who’d claimed to see him—I started calling in contacts, asking them to find out more information for me. One of them must have gotten too close and Krupp found out that someone was on to them. There were two men outside my house last night, and after I left there to try and make it to you, the Golden Goblin came to me. He killed a policeman!”
As if on cue, the phone rang. Max heard Evelyn shout to him a moment later. “Max! McKenzie’s on the phone. Something about a monster loose in the city. Should I tell him you’ll call him back?”
“Please.” Max turned back to Sally and stroked his chin. “I’m confused about a few things. One: even if Krupp figured out that someone knew he had a monster, why would he care enough to send the Golden Goblin out to kill you? And two: Why would Krupp even be in the United States? I’ve personally wiped out almost all of Hitler’s super-agents… you’d think he’d keep this Goblin in the major war zones now that the tide of things is turning against the Axis.”
Sally ran a hand through her hair and yawned. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I do know that my dad believed in this prophecy, and he wasn’t someone who was normally given to hysterics. All the men who were killed were enemies of the Germans, though. Politicians, scientists, military men… all murdered by the Goblin.”
Max stood up, closing the folder. “I’m going to go and talk to McKenzie about this. Why don’t you stay here and get some rest?”
“I don’t want to be an inconvenience…”
“You won’t be,” Evelyn said, stepping into the room. She smiled at Sally. “You do look like you could use a few hours’ sleep in a bed.”
Sally relented and offered a wan grin. “Thanks.” She looked once more at Max. “I want to help stop this thing. My father died for this.”
“I understand.” Max watched as Evelyn led the girl from the room. Something about all of this still made little sense to him, and he was going to have to put the truth together quickly if that prophecy was to be believed…
CHAPTER IV
Krupp’s Scheme
“I do not think that I like this… Atlanta.” Hermann Krupp stood near the window of his rented hotel room, dabbing at his forehead with a washcloth. “It is too humid for me.”
His assistant, a slight young man named Johann, took that as his cue to make his master a fresh glass of iced tea. Despite Krupp’s self-professed hatred of the American South, the S.S. officer had become obsessed with the iced beverage that was so common here. “The Goblin is awake,” Johann said. “I can hear him moving about in his room.”
Krupp turned from his view of downtown Atlanta and moved towards the bedroom they’d set aside for the beast. The creature’s heavy tread caused the floor to creak and his scent—a mixture of brimstone and sweat—made the entire apartment smell like him. “Creature! Come out here!” the German officer demanded.
The Golden Goblin emerged, his hulking back rubbing against the top of the doorway as he ducked to enter the room. As he breathed, his nostrils flared and gold-tinged smoke flew from his nose. “What do you want?” he rumbled.
Krupp’s mechanical eye whirred as it looked at the Goblin. “I am disappointed in you. One helpless female manages to escape from you. Perhaps you’re not the powerhouse the Fuehrer believes you to be.”
“I don’t give a damn about your Fuehrer,” the Goblin stated with a gruff laugh. “And you know it. So why don’t you stop your hero worship of Hitler—he’s not here to see it and we all know that the only one you really love is yourself.”
Krupp stared at the monster for a long moment before finally laughing and shaking his head. “I would have anyone else flayed for such insolence.”
The Goblin shrugged. “My skin’s too tough.”
“I am still disappointed in you,” Krupp reminded him. “We need to kill her before she can interfere in our work.”
“What makes you think one skirt can stop us?”
Krupp accepted his glass of iced tea from Johann and sipped it slowly. “Ordinarily I would not be concerned about someone uncovering evidence of our activities… but from what my sources tell me, she is asking questions that make me think she knows about your origins. And given that we are in Atlanta—the home of the damned Peregrine—gives me pause. If she reaches him with whatever information she has, then we will no doubt cross paths with him.”
“He doesn’t frighten me,” the Golden Goblin muttered.
“He should.” Krupp gestured to Johann to bring him a map that was carefully folded on a nearby table. When he’d been handed the map, Krupp began unfolding it, showing a series of red-drawn X’s in various places in the city. “These four places are areas where the fabric between realities is weak. By placing our Ectotheric Generators in these spots, we should able to pierce the barriers and summon more of your kind to this city. You’re positive that they’ll listen to you when they arrive?”
“Absolutely. They’ll be very thankful for their new freedom. If those tribesmen back in Africa hadn’t killed all my forebears, the Goblins would have been summoned long ago and this entire planet would be fodder for us.” The Goblin suddenly chuckled. “But now we’ll be willing to work with your people, of course.”
“Of course.” Krupp tossed the map aside. He knew the story now, of how the first Golden Goblin had escaped from some sort of celestial prison through a fluke. He’d been dying when he’d arrived and knew he lacked the power to free the rest of his people. He’d sired a child in hopes that the infant could finish the job, but it had taken a lot longer than expected. Without the aid of Nazi scientists, Krupp wasn’t even sure that it would have been possible—the Golden Goblin himself had no idea how to summon his brethren and was merely aiding the Germans in their own attempt. If they were all as powerful as this one, the other Goblins would make the Axis powers an unbeatable force.
Krupp brought out several boxes from a closet and began opening them, inspecting the Ectotheric Generators that were housed therein. Each was about knee-high and composed of a shiny silver metal covering, with numerous wires running along the sides. At the top of each Generator was a square unit containing several flakes of skin taken from the Goblin. They had come here to Atlanta because the various occultists employed by the Reich all confirmed that this area was a site of great mystic turmoil, the result of a number of attempts to summon various elder gods and monsters in recent years.
“We can begin placing them immediately. Let the girl run to the Peregrine if she wants—he won’t be able to stop us when the heavens are filled with the fiery arrival of the Goblins.”
The Golden Goblin said nothing but he felt a stirring in his heart. To finally the one of his people to succeed, where so many before him had failed…!
Krupp suddenly put a hand to th
e side of his head and clenched his teeth. A spurt of blood flew from his right nostril, dripping down his face and over his lips. He batted Johann away as the man tried to help him. “Get away from me,” he wheezed. Krupp saw the Golden Goblin staring at him and he wiped away the blood with the back of his hand, leaving a smear across his cheek. “The tumor is going to kill me soon.”
The Golden Goblin said nothing, but he did feel pity for the man. Though it was not in his nature to feel love, Krupp had raised him and trained him in the ways of the world. When he died, the Goblin would have no one he could trust, though perhaps the other Goblins would fill the void. “We should move quickly,” he said at last. “Before you are dead.”
“Yes,” Krupp agreed. “Johann, take two of these things and get to work setting them up. As soon as you have them in place, go ahead and activate them. The Goblin and I will take care of the other two. With any luck, we can be finished with this by the evening.”
“And if the Peregrine tries to stop us?” the Goblin asked, knowing what the answer would be.
“Then,” Krupp said, “you kill him.”
CHAPTER V
Revelations & Rebirths
“If you have the chance to kill Krupp, do it.” Kirsten Bauer McKenzie stood with arms folded in her husband’s office, the Peregrine facing them both. Will McKenzie, the city’s police chief, sat behind his desk, the rays of the sun shining in through the blinds at his back, casting him in silhouette.
“Obviously,” he said with a smile, “that’s unofficial advice.”
The Peregrine nodded. Kirsten was a former Nazi agent, who operated under the guise of the Iron Maiden. Her love for Will had led her to switch sides and her information on other German agents had proved invaluable to Max ever since. Though Max had at first found it hard to trust her, she’d proven herself again and again. Besides, Max couldn’t argue that she’d made Will a much happier man—and they were certainly a beautiful couple. Kirsten was the very epitome of Aryan loveliness, while Will’s dark hair and eyes routinely made women swoon.