by Barry Reese
“Sally and the rest. Should give you and me more time to be a family.”
“Really?” Evelyn asked doubtfully. She arched an eyebrow as she leaned in to kiss her husband. “You sure you won’t be accompanying them on every mission, like you did this time?”
“I’m going to let them sink or swim on their own merits. I promise.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” she laughed.
* * *
Rachel pulled on one of her husband’s button up shirts and did just enough of the snaps in front to protect her modesty if someone entered unexpectedly. Wearing nothing else, she padded down the hallway and peered into the team’s meeting room. The Aerie was empty save for her and Nathaniel, and a good thing, too, as their lovemaking had been more frenzied than usual.
Nathaniel sat at the meeting room table, dressed in his Catalyst uniform. He looked pensive and more than a little sad.
“I woke up and you were gone,” Rachel said, inviting her husband to explain what he was up to.
“I had a dream.”
“A nightmare?” Rachel moved over and sat down beside him.
“I had a vision of the future. I saw a huge explosion, a cloud of death that looked like a mushroom, spreading up into the sky. I saw men, women, and children eradicated in the blink of an eye.”
“Did you see how we could stop it?”
Nathaniel looked at her and there was something odd in his eyes. “Stop it? No. I don’t think so. I think we were the ones who did it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was the good guys who did it. The Allies.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Nathaniel shrugged. “For now? Nothing. It’s best that most people don’t know. I didn’t see the circumstances under which the bomb was used. I can’t make assumptions… not until I know more.”
Rachel reached out and took her husband’s hand. “Did you see anything else?”
Nathaniel smiled playfully. “I saw you bent over this table, your backside facing me.”
“Well now… that’s one vision that I think we’d both enjoy coming true.” Rachel slid over into her husband’s lap, a wicked laugh escaping her lips.
* * *
Vincent shifted uncomfortably. He reached up for the umpteenth time to adjust his tie. “Everyone is staring.”
Sally sipped her wine and smiled. She wore a long black dress that left her shoulders bare and a pearl necklace that she’d borrowed from Evelyn. Vincent thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “So what if they are? They’re just amazed by how broad your shoulders are.”
Vincent grunted. His suit had been personally tailored for him by a friend of Max’s and his hair was combed back from his face, but no suit or tie could hide the sallow complexion of his skin or the girth of his body.
Together, they were having dinner in Atlanta’s finest restaurant. Their conversation had been stilted at first but had gradually loosened up, with several shared laughs.
“I wonder what Nathaniel and Rachel are up to,” Vincent said, cutting off another bite of steak and shoveling it into his mouth. He glared over at a white-haired woman who was watching him. She shuddered and looked away.
“I wouldn’t want to guess,” Sally answered, though she was pretty sure what was going on back at the Aerie. The two of them could barely keep their hands off each other when they were surrounded by other people… left to their own devices, they were probably rutting like animals.
“Do you think this is going to work?” Vincent asked.
For a moment, Sally wasn’t sure if he was referring to the Claws team… or to their relationship as friends and possibly more. She thought it over and then decided that the answer was the same on both counts. “Yes, Vincent, I think it’s going to work. I really do.”
THE END
A PLAGUE OF WICKED MEN
Written by Barry Reese
(with plot assistance from Wayne Skiver, Ron Hanna, and Don Lee)
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
—H.P. Lovecraft
CHAPTER I
Die, Hazzard, Die!
October 1944
Captain Hazzard pressed his back flat against the damp, decaying brick of the shadow shrouded alleyway. Even for a man who had faced death countless times, the backstreets of Atlanta’s Chinatown district were no place for a “Gwai Lo,” or “Round Eye,” to be at night.
The adventurer listened acutely both to the footfalls of his prey padding quietly along the fog-gripped sidewalk and to the whispered voice that came to him in his mind, the voice of his associate, tabloid reporter William Crawley. Hazzard shared the uncanny ability to communicate with his select group of associates via telepathy, a mental skill he honed during a youth spent in blindness. In those dark years of his childhood, Hazzard had trained his remaining senses to near-superhuman sharpness in order to compensate for his lack of vision. Seeking to further improve himself, he had then devoted himself to expanding his mental faculties, eventually tapping into the hidden realm of telepathy.
After a miraculous operation restored his sight, Hazzard furthered his studies and incorporated the time-lost disciplines of the mysterious Orient as well. He had carefully screened and selected his crew based on tests which showed that they too could develop similar powers of the mind.
Now the hero and two members of his band of globetrotting adventurers, Montana sharpshooter Jake Cole, and the aforementioned Crawley, were on the trail of a mysterious figure through the twisting streets of Chinatown. The mental messages received were not always words, but often pictures: a street sign, a landmark, even abstract images, which allowed the trio to keep on the figure’s trail without following too close on foot.
Their target was an unassuming, elderly Chinese man. He was dressed in a very expensive, tailored black suit of the latest Western style and a fine silk hat. His movements belied his apparent age, as they were energetic and graceful, and in his hands he carried an ornate, red lacquer box of exquisite beauty. The trio had been following the man for nearly a half hour as he wound his way purposefully through the foggy labyrinth of back alleys and long forgotten streets in the deepest part of Chinatown. The man himself was not the true target, however; Captain Hazzard wanted to know who it was receiving the box.
The strange tip had come from an informant, a usually unreliable source who cared more for money than honesty. He had assisted Hazzard to various degrees of success in the past, and the captain was usually able to discern the man’s useful information from the garbage he frequently spewed. Unfortunately for the informant, his latest tip came in a message scrawled in his own blood. He was found brutally murdered at the back entrance to Hazzard’s headquarters. The final message, riddled with misspellings, named a place known to deal in the sale of illegal artifacts in the Atlanta area, and the words “Don’t let buyer get red box.”
As the stealthy trio advanced to new positions, a flash of red pierced the captain’s mind: Danger! The thought impulse had come from Jake Cole. All of the men stopped cold as their target halted suddenly in the mists ahead. He did not turn around, but snapped his head sharply to one side as if listening for a moment. Then with a silent laugh he continued on once more.
“Cap, I swear he spotted us,” came the ghostly, mental voice of the Montana cowboy into Hazzard’s mind.
With a hand to his left temple, the hero concentrated and sent a telepathic message to not just Jake, but both men.
Cat and mouse, brothers. Be ready for anything, but keep on him.
Deeper they followed, and thicker the fog grew, unnaturally thick. Losing physical sight of their quarry in the eerie white, it was not long before the trio became unsure of even their own location.
William Crawley was disoriented and growing very uneasy. To call out to the others was simply foolish and dangerous; there was no way to discern a location. No landmarks, no s
treet signs, nothing but the damnable fog… a fog that seemed to swirl suddenly and violently just ahead of him.
With an abruptness that belies description, the ace reporter was assaulted on an instinctual level. The hairs on the back of his neck stood out as an uncontrollable shiver ran the length of his spine. A stench like rotted meat and offal gagged him involuntarily, and before he could react it was on him.
FEAR-PAIN-RED-DEATH-AGONY-TERROR. Hazzard’s crew were close as brothers every one, and they shared a special mental link through their leader. Like a psychic hammer, both Jake Cole and Captain Hazzard were brought to their knees in the cloying, damp white. A mental image of pure chaos tore into the adventurer’s mind like nothing he had experienced before. So intense was the telepathic backlash that the hero gasped audibly as he hit the ground with labored breath. The mental assault was from Crawley’s last moment. Like a candle being snuffed out in a dark room, both Jake and Hazzard knew their friend was dead.
The chaos was replaced by anger. Hazzard drew a .45 auto loader from his side holster and boldly moved towards the direction the mental energy had come from. He would avenge his friend, his brother. Though his mind was reeling and he was trembling from the glimpses of the thing he saw in his mind, Jake Cole could feel the burning need for vengeance projected by Captain Hazzard. He summoned his resolve, but his psychic abilities were not nearly as strong as his leader’s. His mind did not have the mental shields that Hazzard’s did. As he tried to move forward, he fell to his knees again, a trembling wreck. His uncontrollable and irrational fear tickled at the back of Hazzard’s mind. The adventurer concentrated and drove the emotions out.
“Come on, Jake, get it together!”
Feeling along a crumbling brick wall, the hero shuddered as he came around a corner. Though the mists were too dense to actually see, he knew that his friend was in the street just ahead. After countless adventures, he was knowledgeable in the presence of death. He was also sensitive to danger, and that feeling surged over him as the fog swirled violently to his left.
Jake Cole’s mind was on fire once again. Whatever was attacking his leader was doing so not only physically, but mentally as well. To a man as psychically sensitive as Hazzard, such an assault was far more devastating than it would be on a normal man.
Jake heard the bark of a .45 in the distance and then the images of unspeakable things stabbed into his brain and raped it, peeling open his soul like the layers of an onion. His proximity to the attack made his mental link to Hazzard the strongest. The human mind, though amazingly resilient, is also amazingly fragile. Curling up into a trembling mass, Montana sharpshooter Jake Cole ceased to live.
Some miles away, another of Hazzard’s crew, scientific genius Washington MacGowen, was pouring over notes at his desk. His studies were violently interrupted by a piercing pain in his temples. He gasped and sat up straight, eyes widening in horror at the images which flitted through his mind. His right eye spasmed and twitched, his hands clenched into fists, crumpling his notes in their grasp. He knew.
In an operating theatre in St. John’s Hospital in lower Manhattan, Dr. Martin Tracey had been called in to perform a delicate heart surgery that only someone of his skill could handle. Dr. Tracey was the fourth member of Hazzard’s quintet. He expertly and calmly described each step to the assisting surgeons and nurses. His skill was uncanny. At once his teacher-like demeanor halted abruptly. His assistant noticed the healer’s hands trembling uncontrollably.
“Doctor? Dr. Tracey, what’s wrong?”
His only reply was an anguished and heart wrenching moan of despair. Never again would his mind be free of the terrible images that paraded through it. Martin Tracey knew.
The final member of the adventuring band to share a telepathic link was ace pilot, Tyler Randall. Tyler had been on a mission of mercy at the request of his friend and leader, Captain Hazzard. He had flown medical supplies to an orphanage in Mexico, a place near where the band had recently ventured. Randall slept soundly on a cot in a small room next to the bunkhouse where some fifty-plus orphaned children spent their nights. The nuns who looked after them would spend the next month praying with the children who would be too terrified to sleep well after the events of this night.
Tyler shot up from his cot in a cold sweat and screamed bloody murder. He was shaken, terrified—never had he so wished not to see what he now saw, even though the pictures were only in his mind. He staggered from his room on leaden feet, trembling uncontrollably. The children cried and cowered in their beds as the man staggered past, seeming not to notice them. About halfway through the bunkhouse Tyler Randall collapsed to the cold, stone floor, weeping. He knew. Just as all of his brothers knew… Crawley was dead, Cole was dead… Captain Hazzard… dead, and they all knew… the entire world would follow.
CHAPTER II
The Gathering
Revenant crouched low on the rooftop, rain dripping from the bridge of her nose. It was a torrential downpour, and almost everyone who was sane was safely bundled up in their homes, warm and dry. Sally Pence, however, was dressed in a skintight black costume, a utility belt strapped around her waist. Doesn’t say the best things about my mental state, does it? she thought to herself.
Of course, things had been pretty much nonstop strange for Sally over the last year. The heir to a heroic legacy dating back centuries, Sally had followed in her father’s footsteps as Africa’s costumed champion. She had spent much of her teen and adult years in America, but she’d returned home to her native land of Bordia with no hesitation. As the Revenant, she was an inspiration to many and a source of terror for some. She was also leader of the Claws of the Peregrine, a strike force organized by her friend and mentor, Max Davies.
Revenant watched as a solemn-looking figure entered the city morgue and the vigilante dropped down, gracefully landing in a crouch. From one of the pouches on her belt came a small listening device, that was quickly fastened to the outside of the window. A small cord led to Sally’s ear and she was thus able to hear every word of what was said inside.
Dr. Martin Tracey was the name of the new arrival, and he moved with the quiet tread of one who did not want to truly reach his destination. He had spoken to Tyler Randall a few moments ago, sharing a grief that knew no bounds. One of the truly great heroes of the world was dead… but even more importantly, that man had been a truly close friend to him. And to think that Crawley and Cole were gone, as well…! It was no wonder that Tracey’s hands normally calm demeanor was close to breaking.
Tracey was led into a well-lit room where several examining tables were waiting. Three bodies lay upon them, each covered by a sheet. Tracey could see the bodies’ feet extending beyond the sheet, each of them bearing a tag on the right big toe.
In addition to the coroner, a man named Jenkins who was well known to Tracey, there was one other figure standing besides these tables: a tall, thin man with a rather aristocratic air. This stranger wore a dark green cloak and had the most penetrating eyes that Tracey had ever seen. They were the kind of eyes that only the bravest and most intelligent of men could possess.
The stranger was the first to speak, stepping forward to extend a hand to the Tracey. His words carried a British accent to them. “My most sincere condolences, Dr. Tracey. I can only imagine the turmoil you must be feeling.”
“Thank you, Mr…?”
“Caine. Nathaniel Caine.”
Tracey’s eyes widened at the man’s name. He’d heard Hazzard discuss the fellow on occasion. According to Hazzard, there was one man born in each century who had the ability to become a High Mage, the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Nathaniel Caine had been a London police officer before his true nature had asserted itself. Now, as Catalyst, he fought crime alongside the Claws of the Peregrine.
Nathaniel seemed to sense the new arrival’s thoughts and lowered his voice, so that only Tracey might hear. “I never had the pleasure of meeting Captain Hazzard, but I know that his tireless dedication to justice would hav
e made him a friend of mine. I believe that your friends did not die through natural means. I firmly believe that the supernatural is involved, and that the entire world is now in peril. I have used my contacts to get permission to examine the bodies in private, but I feel the need to get yours, as well. The captain’s will was quite detailed in explaining that—under various scenarios involving the deaths of himself and others—you were to be the executor of his estate.”
“What is it you want to do with them?” Tracey asked, unable to bring himself to look at the shrouded bodies of his friends. “If it’s an autopsy, I can—”
“Please.” Nathaniel gestured to the still forms. “If you would but take a brief glance, you will understand why the doctors here, and even yourself, will not be fit for this sort of research. It requires the kind of knowledge that I have sacrificed a large portion of my soul to receive.”
Tracey swallowed hard, staring into Catalyst’s eyes. He moved towards the first of the examining tables and lifted up the sheet. It took him a moment to recognize the face of Captain Hazzard, so lost in blood and gore that his friend’s normally strong features were completely obscured. Bile rose up in his throat, and despite a lifetime of medicine, he felt close to losing control of his stomach. He dropped the sheet and turned away, his features gone ghastly pale. “What… could have done that?”
“An ancient evil,” Nathaniel whispered, looking sorry for having forced Tracey through the ordeal of viewing his friend’s body. It was necessary, though, and Nathaniel was nothing if not a pragmatist. “But I swear to you: your friends will be avenged.”
“I want to help. So will Tyler.”
Nathaniel placed a hand on the doctor’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “If there is any point in this affair when I think your skills will give us aid, I won’t hesitate to call. But for now, go home. Begin to sort through the affairs of Captain Hazzard. And think of how you can best honor his memory.”