by Barry Reese
“And then we’ll go with you to Berlin?”
Dee resisted the urge to laugh. Trevor was like a little puppy dog at times… a sadistic and dangerous one, but still a bit silly. “Yes. Then we’ll go to Berlin.” Trevor turned to do his bidding but Dee stopped him with a word. “Before you go, dispose of these bodies.”
Dee stepped past Trevor, meaning to go and have a drink, but he sensed some hesitation on his underling’s part and turned to face him. “Something troubling you, Trevor?”
“These men… who were they?”
“Scum and deviants. They wanted to watch that poor girl be tortured for their amusement. They didn’t deserve to live, so I did the world a favor and killed them.”
Trevor’s face had gone pale. “And the girl? What should I do with her?”
Dee looked back at the girl and shrugged. “She’s a Jew, I think. Kill her quickly and gently. We’re not animals, you know.”
CHAPTER VI
Makeeda
The Peregrine had been to Richard Nova’s house on many occasions but it had never been like this. Nova had an easy way about him that made Max always feel perfectly at home, but the usually-cozy surroundings now felt cold and dead, like a tomb. At Max’s request, McKenzie had ordered all investigating officers out of the building, giving the Claws room to move.
Will McKenzie stood in the background, his handsome face drawn tight with worry. He was a heartbreaker of the highest order, though his own eyes rarely wandered these days. He was committed to his wife and they were talking openly about trying for a child. He considered Max to be his best friend but he didn’t always agree with the man’s decisions, and he had plenty of doubts about the group that the Peregrine was forming. It was one thing to have a vigilante like Max around, someone that McKenzie trusted implicitly. But this Esper, or Revenant, or even the hulking monstrosity called Vincent… would they be as worthy of faith? In the end, he had to trust Max’s judgment until he knew enough about them to make his own call on the matter.
Revenant had asked for the group to be shown the scene of the murder, and what they found in Nova’s study was an absolute mess, with a bullet hole in one wall, a carefully-drawn chalk outline of a body, and numerous overturned artifacts and furniture.
Sally stared at the scene for a long moment before finally throwing herself into the task of checking for clues. Vincent stayed close to her, lifting heavy things out of her way as she examined the carpeting.
“What are you looking for?” the big man asked, trying not to let it show that he was relishing her scent. She smelled of soap and leather, an intoxicating mixture.
“Well, the police have already dusted for prints, but you never know what they might have missed… a matchbook cover, a chewed up toothpick, almost anything.”
Vincent nodded, keeping his voice low. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Rachel and Max were on the other side of the room. “You’re going to be good at this.”
“What do you mean?” Revenant reached out and picked something up off the floor, bringing it closer to her eyes.
“Being leader. You’re smart, capable, experienced…”
“Not very,” Sally laughed. “I’ve only been doing the Revenant thing for about a year. My father never thought I could follow in his footsteps. I was a girl and the Revenant had always been a man. But I think he’d be proud of me.”
“I’m sure he would be.” Vincent cleared his throat. “Perhaps sometime you and I could… go for coffee.”
Revenant blinked in surprise, momentarily forgetting about the tiny object she held in her gloved fingertips. She looked up at Vincent and smiled. “You’re asking me on a date?”
Vincent colored slightly and he stiffened, letting his hair fall over his face like a curtain. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean… I know that you would never…”
Revenant reached out and touched his arm, her fingers lightly brushing one of the numerous scars that lined his body. “Vincent. It’s okay. Coffee sounds nice.”
“I don’t want to scare you,” he muttered. “I usually do that with girls… well, everyone, really.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not scared of you. You’re a really sweet guy.”
Vincent said nothing, though his heart was hammering within his chest. It was a peculiar form of un-life he possessed, but at this moment he felt more alive than ever before. He wondered if she knew of the men and women he had lashed out against, killing them. He wasn’t evil by nature, but the world was so cruel that sometimes he had been cruel in return…
“What do you have there?” the Peregrine asked, stepping up. Vincent pulled away and Revenant held up a small slip of paper. It looked like it had been the corner of a larger sheet but had been ripped away. A small bit of handwriting could still be seen: 1342 Trinity Avenue.
“I found this and it doesn’t look like Nova’s handwriting, not from what you’ve shown me.”
Max studied it. “It’s definitely not his, you’re right about that. I know this address, though… it’s a rather nice home that was for rent until very recently. The new owner was mentioned in the society columns but there was no picture, and he hasn’t been spotted out and about… at least not that I know of.”
“What is his name?” Vincent asked.
“Dee. The paper didn’t mention his first name, just said that he was a businessman from Germany.”
Esper wasn’t paying any attention to the other three. She was wandering around the room, lightly running her fingertips over every surface. Now and again, she caught a flash of something in her mind’s eye, a brief glimpse at the struggle that had taken place here: she saw four men, one of them a blond with the bearing of a leader; she saw Nova, pinning a bug to a piece of wood; and she heard a man’s name, whispered with fear by the gunmen: Dee.
“Mr. Dee,” she said aloud. She turned to face the others, who were now staring at her. “The man who masterminded this whole thing… his name is Dee.” Rachel felt very proud of herself until she saw the faintest hint of a smirk on Revenant’s lips. “What?” she demanded, feeling embarrassed.
The Peregrine held up the piece of paper that he’d taken from Sally. “We found this piece of paper with Dee’s address on it. But you just confirmed that we should seek him out. Good job.”
Esper crossed her arms over her chest and let out a harrumph. Her anger dissipated quickly as she saw the humor in the situation, and her telepathy caught a new arrival coming up the stairs. “They’re bringing somebody to see us,” she said.
McKenzie, who had watched all this in silence, got moving at once. He met one of his officers at the head of the stairs outside, his eyes taking in Negro beauty that was accompanying him. With chocolate-colored skin and long curly hair, the girl was breathtaking. She wore a slinky black dress and pearls about her throat.
“Sorry to bother you,” the officer said, “but she said it was an emergency that she sees Mr. Nova, and when I told her about his murder, she insisted on being taken to the officer in charge.”
McKenzie looked at her, seeing an intelligence in her eyes that startled him. It wasn’t that he was unused to encountering beautiful women who were also intelligent—his wife certainly qualified in both regards—but there was an air of the savage around this woman, making her keen intelligence stand out all the more. She looked ill at ease in her clothing, making Will think she’d be more at home running about in a loin cloth.
“Can I help you?” he asked. “I’m Will McKenzie, the police chief.”
“My name is Makeeda,” the woman said. She spoke fluently but there was definitely an African accent to her words, and Revenant moved forward quickly, having recognized it immediately.
In Makeeda’s native tongue she said, “Sister, welcome.”
Makeeda’s eyes widened considerably and she swiftly fell to her knees, answering in the same language. “The Revenant! The Undying Ghost! I am not worthy to lay eyes upon you!”
Sally resisted the urge to smile at the
looks of astonishment on the others’ faces. “I get this all the time back home,” she tried to explain. She knelt at Makeeda’s side and helped her up. “There’s no need for that, sister. I’m just here to help. You knew Mr. Nova?”
“No… I never met him. But Daniel told me about him. I was coming here to try and get Nova to help me, but then I heard about what had happened…”
Sally sensed that fatigue and emotion were about to overwhelm the girl and she pulled her into an embrace, holding her tightly. “It’s okay. The Daniel you’re talking about… he’s Daniel Cummings?”
Makeeda nodded. “Yes… Daniel brought me here to America with him and left a box with Mr. Nova. Then we moved to Louisiana.”
The Peregrine waited until Makeeda had pulled away, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “We’ve opened the box, Makeeda. We found a broken dagger and a map of the Louisiana swamps, but we don’t know why those things would be so important that someone would kill for them.”
Makeeda stared at Max fixedly. “Then I must make you understand. Because not only is Daniel’s life at stake, but so is the world’s very existence.”
* * *
“I first met Daniel when he came to my homeland in search of Tegdaghost, a lost city in the depths of the jungle.” Makeeda sat on one of Nova’s plush couches, the others sitting around her on the floor and in chairs. They had retired to another of Nova’s sitting rooms, preferring not to linger in the room where he had died. Makeeda looked lovely but fragile as she recounted her tale, a cup of warm tea held firmly in her hands. “He was nothing like the men I had known, not even like the missionaries who had taught me some English. Daniel was brilliant, with a love for nature that inspired me. But he was with a man named Theodor Frisch, and Frisch was his opposite in all ways. Where Daniel looked at me with love, Theodor only held lust in his eyes. Daniel was looking for a means to help save the world, while Theodor wanted only two things: money and power. Unfortunately, he found both in Tegdaghost.”
“Our people believed that the city had been founded by ancient ones from another place and time. They were wise but cruel, finally slaying one another in a civil war of some kind. The city was soon overgrown by the jungle and none dared venture into it, for it was said to be haunted by evil. But Daniel had heard the stories that the city held the key to immortality and he wished to find it, to rid the world of suffering. I tried to convince him that it was too dangerous but I failed to do so. We finally found the abandoned city and made our way into one of the ancients’ tombs. It was filled with the bodies of the dead, many of which looked like they could still rise up and greet us. Daniel was seeking some of the ancient scrolls that were supposedly buried with the dead and he finally found some of them, along with a mystic blade that could slice through almost anything, be it steel or stone.”
Makeeda took a long sip of her tea, not aware that Rachel was peering into her mind during the entire spiel. She was doing it at the behest of Sally, who wanted to make sure that not only was the girl being honest with them, but that she wasn’t missing any of the key details. Rachel found the request to be a perfectly acceptable one and she was actually pleased to have been asked. She usually had to rein in her natural impulse to “peek” into the minds of others and she liked that she had been given the approval to go ahead and indulge.
As Makeeda talked, Rachel “saw” it all, and it was enough to give her shivers down her spine. The dead bodies, garbed in strange clothing… the residents of the city hadn’t been quite human, she suspected. Their heads were slightly elongated with prominent foreheads and extended canines.
Makeeda continued, having recovered enough to do so. “We finally found a piece of parchment that claimed that a small group of the ancients had left via a sky-chariot, headed across the ocean to a new home. They had drawn a small map of it and Daniel said it was a place in America, called Louisiana. The parchment’s words also said that the ancients had successfully completed their experiments into immortality, finding a way to alter the physical body into a merging of earth and water, making those who had been transformed into nearly unstoppable entities. Daniel and I were talking about this when Theodor decided to strike. He shot Daniel in the back and then tried to rape me. As my lover lay bleeding, Theodor pushed himself on top of me and… he wanted to… violate me. But before he could finish, something came lumbering out of the darkness, a monster shaped of mud, flesh, and grass. It was a muck creature of some kind, its feet making little wet sounds on the ground as he came towards us. Theodor tried to shoot it, but the bullets sank into the wet body of the creature and did it no harm. The creature finally fell upon him and… it ate him… just absorbed him into its awful, bloated body!”
“Despite everything, my Daniel couldn’t stand aside and do nothing, not even when a beast like Theodor was being harmed. He rose up, bleeding profusely, and tried to use the strange dagger on the beast. The weapon’s blade became stuck in the creature’s body and the blade shattered. It was then that Daniel and I fled, barely making it back to civilization with just the shattered weapon and the map of Louisiana.”
Vincent studied the girl before speaking. He saw her flinch as he caught her attention. She found him terrifying, that much was obvious. “Why did he give the box to Nova? Why not keep it for himself?”
“As soon as we arrived back in America, Daniel became convinced that he was being followed. He told me that he had been competing with a rival named Dee to find the lost city first… this Dee was a Nazi, part of an occult program sponsored by Adolf Hitler. Daniel told me that Dee had a perverse view of himself as the perfect man, sent to Earth by God himself to weed out the wicked.”
“But he works for Hitler? That is perverse,” Rachel muttered. She was hugging herself, still chilled by the images of the monster she had seen.
Makeeda nodded, looking sad. “We went to Louisiana after Daniel gave the box to Nova for safekeeping. We hoped to find some trace of the ancients, and Daniel told me that he had found them, but he would say no more than that. Daniel then tried to recreate the immortality process, based off what he remembered seeing in the lost city. He came up with a formula… he was going to test it on an animal when a group of Nazis working for Dee burst in, and my Daniel… my Daniel drank it and fled into the swamps, lest it be discovered by the enemy. I made it here because Daniel had said Nova was a man who could help us… but now he is dead. And I have no one…”
“That’s not true,” the Peregrine said with cool assurance. “You’re going to get all the help you need.”
“That’s right,” Revenant said. “The Peregrine’s Claws are ready to strike in your name.”
CHAPTER VII
Defending the Aerie
Nathaniel Caine sat in the living room, listening to the radio. “Amos ‘n’ Andy” was playing, with one of the main characters—Freeman Gosden—taking part in some wacky get-rich scheme. Nathaniel wasn’t a huge fan of the series, as his British sense of humor didn’t always grasp the nuances of what Americans deemed funny. Still, it was something to occupy his mind as he waited for his spell to take hold.
On the table before him lay the shattered dagger and the map. Catalyst had performed a ritual that would allow him to see into the pasts of the objects and he could tell that the magical energies were slowly coalescing, which would allow him to learn all that he could about these strange artifacts.
Catalyst saw tiny wisps of smoke rising up from the objects, taking the shapes of odd distorted-looking humans and shambling monsters of mud and earth. He saw everything that his teammates had heard, though from a slightly different perspective: he was seeing this through the eyes of the men and women who created the dagger and who fled to Louisiana to seek a new home.
Nathaniel was so intent on his task that he did not hear the noise from the first floor. He didn’t realize that someone had broken open the front door until there were footsteps in the hall. Catalyst jerked his head towards the door and caught a brief glimpse of four men slow
ly moving towards the room, guns in hand. He grabbed the map and the dagger, slipping them into a hidden pocket on his cloak. He then crouched down on the floor, keeping his body hidden by the couch.
“What is this place?” one of the men asked, looking at the strange furnishings. Max had made sure that some of the chairs and tables were modified to fit Vincent’s girth and the paintings on the wall tended to veer into the direction of “light in the darkness” symbolism.
“How should I know?” Trevor responded with a sneer. “I don’t really care, either. As soon as we find that box, we’re going to leave. The last thing we need to do is bring more attention to ourselves.”
Catalyst listened to this exchange and it confirmed his guess about what the men wanted. He wasn’t sure what had led them to the Aerie but in the end, it didn’t matter. They would be stopped and then he’d question them.
Nathaniel stood up as the men entered, already prepared with an attack spell. He let loose a powerful burst of energy that struck two of the closest men, knocking them back against the wall and pinning them there with shimmering bonds.
Trevor let loose a string of expletives and pointed his automatic pistol at Catalyst. He fired without bothering to warn Nathaniel, correctly guessing from Catalyst’s attire that he was far too dangerous to toy with. The other man with Trevor followed suit and Nathaniel found himself in mortal danger. Thankfully, he automatically tossed up a small shield around himself, letting the bullets bounce harmlessly away.
Nathaniel then unleashed a beam of force from his eyes, slamming into Trevor’s companion and knocking him straight into unconsciousness.
Trevor, meanwhile, rushed forward after realizing that his gun was now jammed. He was not a particularly brave man but he quickly saw that his dreams of Nazi glory were going by the wayside. Refusing to give up, he charged into Catalyst, the force of the impact knocking Nathaniel off-balance. The mystic shield that Nathaniel had erected faded as his concentration broke and the shattered dagger fell to the floor.