The Peregrine Omnibus, Volume Two

by Barry Reese

  Sally turned her attentions back to Breen, who lay in a puddle of his own blood. “Can you cure him? Can you turn him back into the man he used to be?”

  “There is no cure!” Breen hissed. “There is nothing to be cured of! He is stronger and more durable than he was before! Disease and age will no longer ravage him as it does other humans! He is like a god compared to you!”

  Revenant pulled back on the trigger, trying to decide if it would be better to end Breen’s cursed existence. Would any prison be able to hold him? What if his awful secrets were released to the Axis? Could they turn the tide of the war?

  “How about you let me handle this?”

  Sally looked up to see Esper standing there, looking down at her. “What are you planning to do?”

  “Make sure that no one else is going to make any kind of deal with him… and keep you from having a death on your conscience.”

  Sally stood up, keeping her gun drawn but at her side. Rachel quickly moved to stand over Breen, placing the heel of her boot against his back. Her eyes flashed with emerald energy and she reached out to probe the ancient’s mind. It was strange, and for a moment she feared that she wouldn’t have the strength to do what she’d planned. But after some prodding around, she felt confident that despite his alien origin, Breen’s mind was similar enough to a human’s that she could work her powers on him. “Before I do this,” she said, “are we sure that we don’t want him for anything?”

  Vincent was climbing up on to the dock, dripping wet. “If he knew of a cure for Mr. Cummings’s condition, I believe he would have used it as a bargaining tool. From my perspective, he’s too dangerous to leave alive.”

  Esper kept her eyes on the back of Breen’s head. “There’s no need to kill him… not when I can do this.”

  Breen cried out suddenly, his face contorting in pain. His body jerked for a moment and then he was still, a line of drool dripping from the corner of his mouth. After a few seconds, he looked around in confusion. “Where… am I?”

  Rachel let the man stagger to his feet, reaching out to hold his arm for support. “You’re in Louisiana. We’re friends and we’re going to help you get settled in someplace.”

  “You wiped his mind?” Revenant asked, stunned that Esper was powerful to do such a thing.

  “Sort of. I just put up a barrier around his memories. I think it will hold up for years to come… hopefully forever. But it’s the first time I’ve tried anything like that.”

  “So what are going to do with him?” Vincent looked at Breen, who was gazing around himself in obvious wonder.

  “Whatever it is, we need to decide fast.” Catalyst put an around his wife’s shoulders and pulled her close while he spoke to the assembled team. “I couldn’t reach Max on the radio so I called his house. His yard man, Josh, told me that Max and Evelyn were both kidnapped by men in Nazi uniforms.”

  “Breen was right,” Sally said with rising confidence. “Despite everything, I don’t believe this man we killed today was really Mr. Dee. He’s still out there. I can feel it.”

  “I can try finding Max with a spell,” Nathaniel offered.

  “And I can try to reach him mentally,” Rachel said.

  Sally nodded. “Fine. You two start on that. I’ll give a call to Leonid Kaslov and see if he would be willing to collect Breen here.” Sally had never met the famous Russian but she knew he was close friends with the Peregrine and that his number was pre-programmed into the team’s radios.

  “We might have another problem,” Vincent said. The tall man gestured towards the swamp. “Makeeda and Cummings are gone.”

  Revenant let loose a curse in the native Bordian tongue. “Now what?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t worry about them.” Rachel shrugged her shoulders. “He still loves her. I saw that in his mind, and it was pretty obvious she wants to still be with him. After we’ve found Max, we can always come back and try to help them.”

  “I just hate to leave them alone out here.”

  “Cummings can take care of almost anything,” Vincent said, remembering how he’d fared against the muck monster in combat. “I think Rachel is right. The longer we wait, the more trouble Max could be in.”

  Sally put away her gun, having decided that the others were right. “Let’s get on this, people. I don’t want to lose Max on our first mission.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  In the World of Shadows

  Less than an hour after his meeting with Mr. Dee, the Peregrine was led in chains onto the deck of the freighter. As the air hit his exposed skin, Max immediately knew that something was wrong. It felt like the ship had somehow crossed over into the Arctic Ocean. Eva and Dee were waiting for him on the deck, along with a small army of Nazi soldiers. The soldiers stood at stiff attention in a semi-circle around a small flaming pile of debris.

  Max glanced over the ship’s railing, seeing massive icebergs slowly drifting by. He looked at the armed guards who had led him to the deck and saw that they, too, were unnerved by what they saw.

  “Max!”

  The Peregine turned his head quickly, spotting Evelyn as she was being hauled out of another set of doors. She looked unharmed, though she shivered in the chilly air.

  Dee signaled that the married couple was to be kept about ten feet away from one another. He moved between them, his armored face turned towards Max. “You see? We have kept our word to you. Mrs. Davies is unharmed.”

  Max stared daggers at Dee. “Where are we?”

  “Ah. You have noticed that it appears that we are taking most circuitous route to Germany, eh? We actually are no longer on our home planet… we passed through a rift I opened about fifteen minutes ago. This,”—Dee gestured around him expansively—“is our sister planet: The World of Shadows. Are you familiar with it?”

  Max most certainly was.

  Before his untimely death, Leopold Grace had been one of Max’s dearest friends. Leopold had shared his familiar’s secrets with Max, revealing that his father, Eobard, had traveled to another world shortly after the end of the American Civil War. Eobard Grace had fathered two sons in this other world, a half-human demigod named Korben and the fully mortal Leopold. This other world was The World of Shadows, a place where the majority of Earth’s magic had been shunted off to as science became the dominant force over mankind. Elves, fairies, dragons, and more existed alongside man in this world, and there were always dark forces who sought to free the residents of this Shadow place, allowing them to stride the world of man once more. During Max’s final battle with Nyarlathotep, the demonic entity had “cursed” Max with a vision of the future, one in which all of Max’s family and friends were dead… and Max knew that, for a brief time at least, the Earth and the World of Shadows would merge again in the early twenty-first century.

  Max didn’t see any point in sharing any of that at the moment. “I’ve heard of the place. I’ve heard it’s pretty damned dangerous, too.”

  “It is, indeed.” Dee pointed upwards, where a pterodactyl suddenly soared past the sun. “This world is in the midst of a magically induced freeze… nothing that I have done, I assure you. All people and all places have their own stories going on… we are just intersecting with another.”

  “Very poetic,” Evelyn said with thinly veiled disgust. “It almost makes me forget you’re a disgusting Nazi who pals around with whores.”

  That remark brought Eva to life. The dark-haired temptress surged forward and raised her hand, bringing it down in a stinging slap along Evelyn’s cheek.

  Neither Max nor Evelyn said anything in the seconds after the vicious assault. Their eyes met only briefly before looking away, but there had been a clear message transmitted between them: These people will pay for this. Be patient.

  Mr. Dee motioned for Eva to step back and the brunette did so, her chest heaving with fury. Dee then shrugged at Max. “Women. They are so sensitive.”

  “I still can’t believe you’re dumb enough to try this,” Max said. “Even if
you manage to revive him, and even if he is willing to give you his personal thanks in the form of power or money or whatever the hell it is you want, there will come a day when you’re going to regret making a deal with the devil.”

  Dee seemed to consider that for a moment, and Max caught the nervous glances of several of the man’s Nazi guard. It was quite obvious that some of them were very uncomfortable with the amount of occult activity they were witnessing, and Max wondered if the Nazi regime hadn’t already lost most of their best foot soldiers. As with the Occult Forces Project, many of the German army’s elite officers had been killed or captured since the war began, forcing younger and younger men to be recruited.

  “You may have a point there,” Dee confessed. He opened his arms wide and shrugged. “But we must take risks if we are to succeed in life, eh? The war, as you have stated again and again, is going against the Reich and our allies. The OFP was supposed to help turn the tide but it has been a failure to this point… and now it falls to me to salvage the entire affair.”

  Max shifted his weight, noticing that a thin, almost invisible layer of ice was forming on the metal deck of the ship. His cheeks were beginning to sting from the cold and he wondered how long he could stay out in the exposed area of the ship before frostbite set in. “I don’t understand why we’re here. Why take us into the World of Shadows?”

  “Because magic is strongest here.” Dee strode towards the flames, holding Max’s signet ring above the fire. “Bring him closer, please,” he said to the men standing behind Max. They pushed him towards their commander, who had begun squeezing the crimson stone with his gloved hands. “Resurrectus ovum infinitium! Bylo’sah enchantum corporus!”

  Evelyn felt a shiver go down her spine that had nothing to do with the frigid air around her. In her nearly decade-long romance with Max, she’d seen and heard things that few mortals could bear, and she recognized the sounds of dead, evil languages when she heard them. Her eyes were fixed on the flames, which were now dancing higher. A reddish liquid, not unlike blood, was dripping from the signet ring’s stone, sizzling as each drop hit the fire.

  Eva wrapped her arms tighter about herself. Her mind was racing through a thousand different scenarios, with most of them involving her betraying Dee and seizing the opportunities presented by a grateful Nyarlathotep all for herself. She was not a rash woman, however, and knew that many of those scenarios ended in painful ways for her. Not only was Dee a potent enemy in his own right, but she wasn’t sure that these soldiers would follow her if she killed their commanding officer in front of them. If Dee hadn’t been sexually frigid, she would have seduced him and controlled him that way, but all her attempts at enticement had been easily rebuffed.

  For his part, Max merely tensed for the inevitable. He could see a human shape taking form in the center of the flames, slowly coming together to reveal a man of swarthy features, with a small goatee. The man wore a black suit and tie, his eyes so dark that they appeared to be dark pits in his skull.

  The human form of Nyarlathotep, the barest extension of his amazing power, strode from the flames and smiled at the man who had killed him. “Max Davies. What a genuine pleasure.” Nyarlathotep spoke with a clipped British accent, surprising Max. When last they’d met, Nyarlathotep had possessed an Egyptian’s phrasing of English. In the end, it didn’t truly matter: such things were just affections and could be changed by Nyarlathotep at a moment’s notice.

  “I wish I could say I didn’t expect to ever see you again,” Max said. “But evil has a way of coming back, even when the good men and women who fight against it stay dead.”

  Nyarlathotep turned away from Max, his eyes first landing upon Eva, who watched him with wide eyes. He smiled at her and she suddenly shrank away, for the first time in her life ashamed of her body. He didn’t look like he was just undressing her with his eyes, he was peering inside her… and she suddenly felt naked and vulnerable.

  In a second, however, the contact was gone and Nyarlathotep was instead staring at Mr. Dee. “You are the one who has revived me?”

  “I am. I believe this is yours.” Dee held out the signet ring but Nyarlathotep made no move to take it.

  “That belongs to the Peregrine. It was forged of my heart, but the heart in this form has been born anew. I have no need for reminders of past failures.”

  Dee nodded briskly and dropped the ring into the hand of a nearby guard. “Return this to our captive.” When the guard hurried off to slip the ring back onto Max’s finger, Dee gave a deep bow and introduced himself. “I am Mr. Dee, faithful servant to the Elder Gods.”

  “You are a Nazi.”

  Dee looked up in surprise, having caught the negative tone Nyarlathotep’s voice. “Yes… there are many firm believers within the ranks of the Reich.”

  Nyarlathotep looked upwards, examining the thick snow clouds that hung above. “Too many in your so-called Reich have near worship for their Fuehrer… and even before my own demise, I saw him as someone who would never bow down before his true betters. He would rather court death than seek out the aid of entities like myself.”

  “That is not true!” Dee protested. “The Fuehrer would love to work with you, and…”

  “There is no working ‘with’ me,” Nyarlathotep said, his eyes blazing as he moved towards Dee. “My mortal servants are exactly that—servants! Just as I answer to more powerful gods than I, you must answer to me!”

  Dee glanced around, realizing that the men on the deck were all watching him closely. They were not his handpicked men, but were rather a standard detail that had been assigned to him. If they thought he was about to renounce the Fuehrer in favor of Nyarlathotep, would they continue to follow him?

  “I am a loyal servant,” he said under his breath, realizing that he had little choice in what he had to do. Anger these soldiers and he might yet live… anger Nyarlathotep and he would die a painful death. “Tell me what you need me to do to prove that.”

  “You are leader of the Occult Forces Project,” Nyarlathotep said, having plucked that information from Dee’s mind. “So you must have some powers of your own?”

  “I do,” Dee confirmed. “I am able of generate a field of energy that causes my enemies to dissolve.”

  “You disintegrate people?”

  “Yes…”

  “Then make me an offering.” Nyarlathotep gestured towards the assembled soldiers. “Kill these agents of the Reich… and let me know that you are mine, body and soul.”

  “But… the Fuehrer….”

  “I will meet your Fuehrer, if you ask me to do so. But first I must know that there is no one whom you place above me. Prove yourself!”

  Some of the men were now glancing towards their ranking officers, who seemed uncertain if they should now turn on Dee. The armored man prevented them from making any sort of act against him by raising both hands and letting loose an animalistic roar. Max turned his head away from Dee, who was now glowing like a small sun. The Nazis all around them began to scream, their bodies breaking apart from the inside out. They each exploded into tiny poofs of sparkling energy. The Peregrine, now no longer restrained by his guards, slid across the deck towards Evelyn.

  “Max! What’s going to happen to us?”

  “I don’t know, honey, but unless we can get our hands free, it’s not going to be anything good.”

  The screams all around them grew silent and Evelyn turned around and around, seeing nothing left of the Nazi soldiers save for small piles of ash.

  A hand suddenly yanked at her shoulder, nearly knocking Evelyn to the deck. Max, too, was pulled around the side of the captain’s station, and both of the Davies’ were startled to see that Eva had pulled them out of harm’s way. The busty brunette looked determined and not a little bit afraid.

  “We’ve got to get out of here,” Eva said.

  “I’m surprised you’re not tickled pink to see that devil out there,” Evelyn hissed.

  “Give me some credit. The only reason I’m aliv
e right now is that Nyarlathotep didn’t include me in the list of people to kill.” Eva hurriedly opened the locks on the Peregrine’s chains using a skeleton key and then did the same to Evelyn. As soon as Evelyn was free, she punched Eva hard across the face.

  “That’s for earlier, you bitch.”

  Eva spat out a wad of blood and phlegm, eying Evelyn with an expression that she suggested she’d like nothing better than to resolve their differences here and now. Max, however, stepped between the two women.

  “My weapons. Where are they?”

  Eva reached inside her jacket and pulled forth one of the Peregrine’s guns and his dagger, which glowed in the presence of evil. The Knife of Elohim was almost too bright to look at right now, with Nyarlathotep so close by.

  “We need to get off this ship,” Eva said.

  “Can’t,” Max answered. “Not only would we be stuck here in the World of Shadows, but we’d be letting Nyarlathotep go free. We can’t do that.” The Peregrine checked to make sure his gun was loaded and then quickly stuck it into his belt. He wanted the Knife in his hand right now, remembering how he’d used it to kill Nyarlathotep once before.

  “They’re gone.”

  Max glanced at Evelyn, uncertain that he’d heard her correctly. His wife was kneeling, peering around the corner of the ship’s command station.

  Stepping out of hiding, the Peregrine confirmed that she was right. There was no trace of either Mr. Dee or Nyarlathotep.

  Evelyn moved up beside him, shivering in the cold. Max removed his coat and put it around her shoulders. “Now what, Max?”

  The Peregrine said nothing, though he did look over at Eva, who was opening the door to the command station. She was looking at the controls and Max knew that between the two of them, they could figure out how to control the freighter… but where would they go?

  “Max… there’s another ship.”

  The Peregrine spun around, following Evelyn’s gaze. There was a ship coming into view, cutting through the blue waters with amazing speed. It was an old-fashioned ship, the kind Max would have expected to see in a tattered copy of Treasure Island. The ship’s flag was flying, depicting a raised sword, held tightly by a man’s hand. A flaming sun was depicted behind the sword’s blade.