by R. A. Jones
With a speed that may have been even faster than light, the beam ripped through the ether, shooting straight through the opening in the temple roof and swallowing the mortal form lying upon the ancient altar.
Carter stiffened as fresh pain crackled through him. It was as if a fire had erupted in his belly and was rapidly spreading outward to his extremities.
Teeth grating on teeth, his mouth twisted in a grimace, he turned pleading eyes toward the spectral image looming above him.
“Consider this a gift,” Mars said.
Carter let out a sound that was part groan and part sardonic laughter. Did this mad creature that called itself a god consider it to be a gift, a reward, for him to die in even greater agony?
“Accept the light,” the spectre told him.
Mars raised his arms, extending his hands skyward. As he did so, his fingers appeared to elongate. His entire body began to stretch and glow.
His form appeared to become pure light. Like a leaf in a whirlpool, he was sucked into the column of light rising from Carter’s body. He whirled about the swirling light pole, then was absorbed and welcomed into it.
Carter jerked as fresh pain began to gnaw at his innards. The only sound was that issuing painfully from his own throat.
Quickly, though, that sound was replaced by another. A feathery touch tickled his ear and he again heard the voice of Mars, now no more than a whisper.
“Great things will be expected of you, boy,” the voice told him. “And because of your bravery in the face of death, because of the ultimate sacrifice you were so ready to make for others, you will be endowed with great powers.”
The beam of light intensified, and Carter convulsed. Another force, as if coming from the earth itself, gripped him and pulled him back flat upon the altar.
“These powers will be derived from the nine planets themselves,” the whispery voice continued.
“Mercury will give you speed. Venus will grant you empathy and humor. The Earth will give you stability and keep you connected to reality and to your fellow man.
“From Mars,” the voice seemed to swell with pride, “you will be given strength beyond most other mortals, and skill at the tactics of war.”
Carter’s fists clenched, and he prayed for the release of unconsciousness.
“Saturn’s gift will be foresight and the ability to see all aspects of a problem. From Jupiter will come wisdom, perhaps the greatest of all these gifts.”
Carter jerked from side to side, struggling vainly to break the invisible bonds that held him to the ancient altar.
“From Neptune you will receive stamina. Uranus will instill in you all the qualities of leadership. And dark and brooding Pluto will grant you a stoic demeanor and the ability to ignore pain that would cripple lesser men.”
Tears rolled down the American’s cheeks and he silently begged for that final bequest to come true quickly.
“Very soon now, my son, my man of war, both you and the world will need each and every one of these gifts.”
The ghostly voice was fading away now.
“Use them wisely … and well.”
The column of light flared to the brightness of a small sun. The mortal man’s body began to jerk and convulse uncontrollably. It felt as if he was being filled to overflowing with molten magma and that he was about to explode. His back arched, his body bowed upward in agony.
Clay Carter threw his head back and screamed.
And the column of light vanished.
CHAPTER XI
April 5, 1939
There was chaos in the streets of Baghdad.
The day before, the nation’s king, Ghazi, had died in an automobile accident.
His empty throne would soon be occupied by his son. Only three years old, he would bear the title of King Faisal II.
For today, however, it was rumor that ruled this ancient capital. Almost as soon as the news of Ghazi’s death hit, stories began to circulate that the country’s king had met his doom not at the hands of fate but rather by the machinations of the hated British occupiers.
Angry mobs had begun to gather in the early morning hours, their dark mood quickly growing to violent levels.
As a young American named Cal Denton made his way by bridge out of the older, squalid quarter of the city and over the sluggish waters of the Tigris River, he was as yet unaware of just how ugly things had gotten.
Not that it would have mattered if he had known; he was caught squarely in the middle of it. It was a situation with which he was not unfamiliar.
Driven by wanderlust, the American had pulled up his roots and drifted out of west Texas nearly five years earlier. Working his way across country, he had briefly tasted the high life of New York City, paying for it with the wages he earned as a nightclub bouncer. A very good bouncer.
Soon tiring of even its cosmopolitan delights, though, Denton had impulsively signed on with the Merchant Marines and set sail for parts unknown.
(Some said there was nothing at all impulsive about his hasty departure; but that rather it was a calculated plan designed to quickly remove himself from the sights of a certain mobster who felt his wayward wife had grown inordinately fond of the blond Texan. If asked about this, Denton would merely smile and say he had decided the sea air would be better for his health.)
With the Marines, Denton had seen many of the wanders of the Pacific and Far East. Even after he declined to re-enlist, he continued to bounce from port to port from the Indian sub-continent to his present locale.
Wherever the place, his stay was always brief and seldom peaceful. He left behind him a string of broken hearts and broken jaws, and sometimes worse.
In Baghdad, he had fallen into the company of some of the soldiers assigned to protect the British embassy. He quickly impressed them with his ability to procure certain hard-to-find items.
They were especially taken with him on the occasion of their captain’s thirtieth birthday when, in this most repressed of places, Denton had actually managed to arrange for an evening of entertainment provided by a hoochie-coochie girl of passing attractiveness and no small talents as a “dancer”. More often, he served as the soldiers’ conduit to various forms and qualities of illicit booze.
Because of his knack for scrounging up such much-desired goodies, and because he had no compunction about using chicanery to do so, the Brits had taken to affectionately calling him “Ferret”.
Denton had already been up and about on one of his mercy runs this morning, his efforts being rewarded by the acquisition of a bottle of prime Russian vodka. His contact had even sweetened the deal by throwing in two cans of caviar. What Denton had done for the Russian in exchange was probably best left untold.
Denton anticipated a high time would be had in the soldiers’ barracks that evening. If it followed the usual course of such events, he would eventually be urged to provide entertainment by way of a song. The Texan had a surprisingly mellow singing voice and a seemingly endless repertoire of outrageously bawdy songs.
Now, the crowds grew bigger, louder and uglier the closer he came to the embassy. He pulled his cap down lower on his head, seeking to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.
As he drew near his final destination, an echoing roar erupted from the mob. That would have been the only sound discernible to most people in his place, but his supremely acute hearing picked up more.
Someone was screaming in pain.
A lot of pain.
Pushing forward more aggressively now, Denton moved ahead as quickly as he could. A new stimulus assailed his keen nostrils, an odor with which he was most familiar.
Human blood was being spilled somewhere in front of him.
Two members of the mob parted under the weight of his shoulder, and Denton found himself in an opening.
The crowd had spread out and back roughly in a circle. In the center of the circle, a man lay unmoving.
The pavement around him was littered with rocks of various shapes and sizes, m
any of them spattered with blood. The fallen man’s head was crushed like the grapes in a winepress. His face was so bloody and disfigured as to be nearly unrecognizable as being human.
But Denton’s sharp eyes did recognize the mob’s victim; it was the British consul!
From where he was standing, the tall American could see the front area of the consulate. It was clear to him that the mob, driven to a killing frenzy, had battered down the compound’s front gates and likewise broken through the doors of the embassy itself.
The sounds of continuing looting carried through the broken windows. He smelled the evidence of arson even before the first plumes of smoke were sucked out through the shattered apertures.
He felt the blooming of an aching ball in the pit of his stomach as his eyes lit on a native man laughing and dancing about while attired in the torn and bloodied remnants of a British soldier’s tunic. Denton wondered with horror how many of his other friends, men he had laughed and sung and drank with, had likewise fallen victim to a populace gone berserk.
So transfixed was he that at first he didn’t notice another man in the crowd who was pointing an accusing finger at him and shouting excitedly. Then, the words broke through and he involuntarily recoiled.
“He’s one of them!” the man was screaming. “He’s one of the British!”
Several sets of eyes turned to glare at him, and he held up his right hand defensively, open palm out toward them.
“Whoa, fellas,” he said loudly. “I’m just a poor palooka here to deliver a little giggle water to the soldiers, that’s all.”
All his protestations did was cause even more pairs of baleful eyes to turn in his direction at the sound of English words spoken without an Arabic accent.
“I’m an American, see? An American.”
Still seized with bloodlust, the distinction seemed to make no difference to the mob.
“Mahmoud is right,” one of them declared. “This man is with the British!”
“That’s bushwa, buster,” the Texan snarled.
He knew his nationality would not save him now, though, as the leading edge of the throng began to slowly move toward him. One of them, a man named Hatah, as he stepped over the body of the murdered British consul, bent to pick up one of the fallen rocks, oblivious to the dark slickness upon it that further stained his hands.
Hatah’s eyes widened then as he glared at his intended victim, disturbed by what he now saw.
The American was smiling.
“Take another step forward,” he warned, “and it’ll be your last.”
It wasn’t the threat that caused the Iraqi to pause, though.
It was the smile.
More specifically, it was what the smile revealed. He could clearly see the westerner’s teeth; the canines on either side of his mouth were noticeably longer than normal in a man. Sharper, too, coming to points that made them resemble the fangs of a wild carnivore.
The American’s hands were also clenching and unclenching. When he relaxed his fists, the momentary leader of the mob saw that the man’s fingernails likewise evoked images of a beast’s claws.
Hatah licked his own lips nervously. Perhaps, he thought irrationally, this was no man at all that stood before him, grinning as if the prospect of death was no more than a game. As a boy, Hatah had sat on his father’s knee and raptly listened to tales of djinns and demons. Images of those unworldly beings leapt unbidden into his brain, and he began to loosen his grip on the stone he held.
Then two men standing behind Cal Denton grabbed him by the arms, causing him to drop the sack holding the bottle of vodka. With the crash of breaking glass as it struck the pavement, Hatah’s moment of indecision passed.
He raised the rock above his head and, screaming for blood, rushed forward. The rest of the mob followed suit.
From his standing position, Denton executed a perfect back flip, causing his two captors’ arms to twist around at an awkward angle. While they were thus positioned, he seized their forearms and yanked them upward.
With a sickeningly loud snap, the men’s arms broke like kindling and they dropped to their knees, screaming in fear and pain.
The spin had sent Denton’s cap flying off his head, letting his dirty blond hair fall loose. It was as long as that of some women, spilling down over his ears and past the level of his shoulders. This wild mane, coupled with his strange teeth and nails, gave him the appearance of his animalistic namesake.
He sprang forward to meet the charging Hatah, grabbing the wrist of the hand holding the menacing stone. For a moment he stood eye-to-eye with his attacker – the difference being, his eyes sparkled with excitement while Hatah’s dilated with sudden fear.
“That was your last step,” the American hissed.
He pulled back far enough to allow himself to rake his claw-like fingers across the Iraqi’s midsection. Cloth and flesh alike ripped, and Hatah’s innards began to spill out.
The Ferret leaped straight up in the air, then kicked out with both feet. They struck the dying Iraqi in the chest, sending him flying backward into those who had been charging hard behind him.
A yell of terror rose from the mob as men began to fall over each other and spraying blood hotly splashed them.
Knowing he had at most seconds before the throng would recover its collective courage and attempt to overwhelm him with their numbers, Denton ran forward and made a diving leap over the heads of those foremost in the crowd.
Those standing behind them, not entirely sure what had transpired, cushioned his landing. Rolling to his feet, Denton tossed men aside until he saw a gap in their midst. He shot through it and raced down the first narrow street he found.
It gave him only a slight head start before the lust for murder and revenge sent the throng on his trail. The speed and strength in his legs were also as of a beast, and he quickly pulled away from them.
In the weeks he had been in this city he had spent many an hour, usually under cover of darkness, exploring its many twists and turns. This knowledge served him well now, allowing him to avoid those paths that led to dead ends where he might have found himself trapped.
Even a true animal can’t run forever, though. His breathing was becoming a bit ragged as he raced along at full speed; his pounding heart was filling his ears with the sound of rushing blood.
But those same keen ears told him the sound of his pursuers was growing fainter. His lead was such that he could afford to stop for a minute, catch his breath and map out the route that might best lead him to safety.
He spied a recessed doorway set in what appeared to be the stone wall surrounding a garden of some sort. He made no attempt to enter the door, but simply pressed against it so no one passing on a cross street could see him.
He leaned back, pressing his shoulders and the back of his head against the rough-hewn wood of the door. He drew in deep gulps of air, then slowly released them. He smiled confidently as both breath and heart rate quickly began to return to normal levels.
Then someone opened the door behind him.
A gloved hand grabbed the collar of his shirt and roughly yanked him through the doorway. A quick glance around told Denton he had been pulled into an enclosed courtyard. A second glance, over his shoulder, produced the sight of a man wearing a red mask that draped over the front of his face like a curtain.
Denton drove an elbow back into the masked man’s abdomen, causing the assailant to loosen his grip on the Texan. Spinning, Denton slapped the man’s arm to one side, following up by punching him in the rib cage.
Rather than going down, though, the mystery man responded with a fist to Denton’s midsection. It caused no real harm or injury, but Denton could tell the blow had been delivered with a great deal of force.
The Texan’s left fist shot straight forward, cracking against the masked man’s jaw. His head snapped back and, arms flailing, he staggered several paces away before falling heavily to the ground.
Denton sprang forward, easily covering
the distance in a single bound. He landed directly atop the masked man and wrapped both hands around the man’s throat, intending to choke him into submission.
Seconds later, however, he froze in place, his hands still firmly gripping the stranger’s neck.
His reaction came in response to the pressure of a metal barrel being pressed against his side, just below his heart.
“That’s my .45 you feel, friend,” the masked man warned.
“And these are my fingers around yer throat, pal,” Denton replied. “Even if you put a slug through my heart – I’ll have time ta snap yer neck.”
“And then we’ll both be dead.”
“I don’t mind dyin’.”
“Neither do I.”
Denton glared down at his opponent. The only feature of his face the Texan could see was his eyes, but the icy gaze in them told him the man indeed had no fear of death.
“So what do we do?”
“If you promise not to kill me until you’ve heard what I have to say, I’ll put away the gun.”
“How do you know you can trust me?”
“I don’t … yet.”
At that, Denton laughed shortly and relaxed his grip on the mystery man’s neck. Pulling away, he slowly rose to his feet.
In response, the masked man returned his pistol to its shoulder holster and extended an empty hand up. Denton gripped it and pulled him to his feet.
“You pack a mean wallop, Ferret,” the man said, gingerly touching one of the tender spots on his torso. “I’ll be black and blue for a week.”
“At least. So how is it you know my name, Mister…?”
“I’m called the Clock.”
“That’s kind of a stupid name, ain’t it?”
“Any dumber than ‘Ferret’?”
“I guess not. Now answer my question.”
“I know all about you, Mr. Denton. I know you were raised in Texas, though you were born in South Dakota. I know every job you’ve held, every woman you’ve known intimately, every man you’ve hospitalized. I know that you left the States just weeks after you first manifested your animal-like abilities.”