Death Blows Read online

  Neil’s reply is to glance behind me. A hippopotamus stares back, then smiles. It’s wearing braces.

  “Fair enough,” I say. “I’ve got some questions to ask you.”

  “Let’s go somewhere a little less distracting,” Neil says. He opens a plain white door and beckons me to follow him through it.

  On the other side is a small, comfortable room. Two large leather armchairs face a fire burning merrily in a stone hearth. The walls are lined with filing cabinets made of polished oak with brass handles, reaching all the way up to the ceiling.

  Neil sits down, now wearing a maroon velvet smoking jacket. I sit down in the other chair, and notice I’m dressed in a suit of armor. It’s oddly comfortable.

  “How can I help you?” Neil asks pleasantly.

  “There’s been another murder.” I fill him in on the details.

  “Mmm,” he says when I’ve finished. “Yes, I understand what he’s referencing. The Doom Patrol.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “They’re not as mainstream as some, though they have a long and rich history. The wheelchair is a reference to their leader, the Chief, who was disabled. The bandages signify Negative Man, who could release a mysterious being made of black energy from his body, and the metal body itself—bronzecolored, you say?—is no doubt meant to represent Robotman, a race-car driver who had his brain transplanted into a mechanical body following a crash.”

  “Yeah? Was it chopped up into a neat little grid first?”

  “No. But that’s where this gets interesting.” Neil clasps his hands together under his chin. “The Doom Patrol has been around since 1963, but they had a major relaunch in the 1980s. A writer named Grant Morrison came on board and took the book in a much darker, surreal direction. One of the characters he added was named Crazy Jane, after a character in one of Byron’s poems. She had multiple personalities as a result of child abuse—sixty-four of them, in fact.”

  I nod, staring into the fire. There are faces there, shifting in and out of focus as the flames dance. “Byron. So this Morrison was more literate than most comic book writers.”

  Neil frowns at me disapprovingly. “Many writers of the form are literate—it was the form itself that was juvenile, or at least it was perceived that way in America in the mid-twentieth century. Morrison and other writers like him were part of what was called the Modern Age—their concepts and writing took comics to new heights of maturity and complexity.”

  The first murder was with a silver weapon, the body dressed as the character who ushered in the Silver Age. “Was this Doom Patrol the first superpowered team of the Modern Age?”

  “No. They were significant, but not the first—some would say that would be the X-Men. Of course, some people also claim that the X-Men were in fact merely a copy of the Doom Patrol in the first place.” He shakes his head. “But the most influential team book of the time was undoubtedly Watchmen. It’s widely cited as the most influential comic book ever printed.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Many reasons: depth, structure, metaphysical concepts, layered characterization… but more than anything, it captured the zeitgeist of the time. I’m surprised your killer didn’t reference it, instead—but it dealt largely with the fear of nuclear Armageddon, a problem we don’t face here.”

  No, you just have rogue Elder Gods to worry about… “So why would the killer pick this group over the others?”

  “The common theme I see is transformation. The Doom Patrol were regarded as freaks, victims that decided to turn their handicaps into advantages. Just as the Silver Age Flash was frequently transformed by his enemies, the Doom Patrol were transformed by fate. Initially, anyway.”

  The flames were beginning to take on a more definite shape. Something humanoid… “Initially?”

  “Yes. Are you familiar with the term retroactive continuity?”

  “Can’t say that I am.”

  “It’s a term that gained popularity during the Modern Age. It refers to changing a character’s history—altering a hero’s origin, for instance then stating that it’s always been that way.”

  “Fictional revisionism.”

  “In essence. Comic books never used to worry about things like historical accuracy, but as the medium aged, the idea of a shared, consistent universe took hold. Characters that met each other were supposed to remember it when they met again. A worldwide disaster was expected to affect everyone, not just the stars of one book. This worked well at first, but many of these heroes were depicted as living in the ‘real’ world, and being affected by events in it. And unlike pires, human beings age. In order to remain consistent, the writers had to come up with an explanation for why someone who fought Nazis in World War Two was beating up muggers in 1983. Their solution was to create staggered universes, with the older versions of the characters in one world, and the newer versions in another. This, of course, led to a proliferation of alternate worlds and timelines, compounded by the number of different writers who each contributed his or her own vision; mix well for dozens of issues every month times several decades, and you wind up with a convoluted, contradictory history no one can make sense of. What began as an attempt to build a linear structure grew into a tangle of multiple Earths, multiple versions of characters, and multiple timelines. In an attempt to impose order, DC Comics published a series called Crisis on Infinite Earths, where they essentially rewrote that history. The multiple Earths were merged into one, characters’ backgrounds were revised to make coherent sense, and some characters were rewritten altogether.”

  The shape in the flames is getting clearer. It’s nude, male, and—

  Cassius.

  I look away quickly. “What’s this got to do with the Doom Patrol?”

  “Morrison revised their origin. He revealed that their leader, the Chief, was in fact responsible for the horrific accidents that created them in the first place.”

  Betrayal. A common enough motive for murder—but who was betrayed, and who were the betrayers? Was the entire Brigade being blamed, or just Transe and the Sword?

  I risk a quick glance at the fire. Cassius grins at me and gives me a little finger-wave. I look away again.

  “There’s something else you should know about Morrison,” Neil continues. “His work frequently references meta-reality—the idea that fictional worlds are as real as our own, and that what we perceive as real is fiction to someone else. He’s quite famous for a sequence where one of his characters slowly turns around, stares out at the reader and states, ‘I can see you!’ ”

  The nude flame-figure of Cassius is getting bigger. “And I see you,” I mutter. “Okay, so this writer likes to play around with metaphysics. Does he have any connections to the character from the first crime scene?”

  “The Flash, you mean? Well, Morrison has written him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything; he’s a popular writer and has handled most of DC’s major characters at one time or another. But there’s something else about Morrison that’s much more pertinent to your investigation.”

  “Which is?”

  “He’s a practicing magician.”

  The flame-figure of Cassius abruptly dissolves, to my relief. “You’re not talking about sleight of hand, right?”

  “No. And he’s not the only one. Alan Moore, the writer of Watchmen, is also a practitioner.”

  I frown. “Wait a minute. I thought magic didn’t exist on my world.”

  Neil smiles. “Magic is universal, Jace. It simply manifests in different ways on different planes.”

  Two comic book writers. Two universes. Two sorcerers, and two dead heroes. “Is either of them powerful enough to travel from there to here?”

  “I couldn’t say. I would think it unlikely, but if they had access to some item of power, or an ally in this world, it’s certainly possible.”

  An item like a gem that could shift mystic energy around? An ally like a member of a disgraced, once powerful cult?

  “Ahem.”
It’s not Neil talking; the voice comes from behind me. I turn in my chair to look. Dr. Pete is standing there. He’s also completely naked, and dripping wet. “A towel would be nice,” he says.

  “Uh—sorry. I don’t have one.” Neil produces a large white bath towel from nowhere and hands it to him. “Thanks.” He starts drying his hair. I give Neil an accusing look, but he just shrugs. “It’s your dream, Jace. I’m just visiting.” I glare at Dr. Pete and will him to go away. He dissolves into a puddle of water on the floor. “Okay, then. I think we’re done, unless you have anything else you think I should know.”

  “Oh, there are all sorts of things you should know, Jace. But that doesn’t mean I know what they are.”

  He gets up from his chair, walks over to the wall of drawers, and pulls one at chest level open. He rummages inside and pulls out—what else—a comic book. He hands it to me. “Take a look at this. You may find it useful.” I study the cover. It’s the Sword of Midnight, in a heroic pose at the prow of a ship. She’s in half-were form, a snarling she-beast dressed in a pirate’s brocaded coat and tricorn hat, with her distinctive blade held above her head. She’s backlit by a horizon-level, blood-red sun. “Moore’s Watchmen also featured a pirate story line,” Neil’s voice says. “But that was mainly there as thematic counterpoint. The main plot concerns a group of heroes that are being targeted, one by one…”

  When I look up, he’s gone. I open the cover and begin to read. Neil was right: Reading in a dream is unreliable. In fact, I only get through the first panel—a full-page spread of a sea battle between a pirate ship and a freighter, with buccaneer lems chucking cannonballs between vessels—when it all turns into a live-action movie happening around me. I’m just a disembodied point of view, able to hear and see but not touch anything, and I seem to currently be perched in the crow’s nest looking down.

  Right into Lucy Barbarossa’s cleavage, which is impressive but furry. She’s directing the battle, her sword in one hand, dressed in those short pirate pants and a puffysleeved shirt. No eye patch or parrot, but she does have a jaunty tricorn hat perched on her hairy skull.

  Another handy thing about dreams is that they make the impossible possible; in this case, for a thrope to speak while in were form. She’s exhorting her crew to give no quarter, and it’s working; in a matter of moments, the other ship has run up a white flag of surrender.

  My POV zooms downward, making my nonexistent stomach surge into my noncorporeal throat, as Lucy Barbarossa abruptly leaves the deck, ducking inside a hatch and down a wooden ladder. I follow her as she heads into the bowels of the ship, to a heavy wooden door she unlocks with a brass key.

  Inside, there’s a man chained to the wall. He’s wearing only a pair of trousers, and has the kind of muscular, smooth body usually found on underwear models or Hollywood actors. I can’t see his face, though; some trick of the light keeps it in deep shadow.

  The pirate queen uses another key to unlock his manacles, transforming back to a human female at the same time. As soon as he’s free, the prisoner takes a step away from her, his face still hidden.

  “We’ve taken her,” she says. “The Countess Bathory is ours. Soon you’ll be free.”

  “Will I?” he says. “I fear your crew will not give up such a rich prize so easily.”

  “My crew does not question my orders. Any who do will hang from the end of a silver rope.”

  The man rubs one of his wrists; clearly he’s been doing some hanging of his own. “And you? I’ve been as good as your possession, these many months; it’s not in your nature to surrender ownership of anything—”

  And then she steps forward and throws herself into his arms, and the kiss that follows is… well, I’m just surprised the cabin doesn’t burst into flames.

  When they finally break apart, they stare at each other tenderly for a moment before speaking. “Ah, Lucy,” the man says. “Perhaps belonging to you isn’t quite as bad as I thought.”

  “Don’t joke,” she says. “I hate having you down here in chains. Stealing visits whenever I can, hiding this from everyone.”

  “You know we have no choice. We are bound by chains older and stronger than mere iron. Be thankful for the time that we’ve had.”

  “I am,” she whispers. “I am… and I damn to Hell all those who seek to keep us apart.”

  “Then you damn us both, for this is as much my doing as yours. Take your plunder from the Countess Bathory and leave me there in its stead; your crew, eyes filled with pearls and gold, will soon forget the ransom I would have brought.”

  “But I will not,” she says. “I will never forget what I have lost.”

  “Nor I, Lucy. Nor I…” Their voices echo in my ears as I slowly drift into consciousness. I lie in bed, not moving, thinking about what I just experienced. Not just the comic book part, but my fireside conversation with Neil. All in all, there seemed to be a pretty high ratio of naked men to clothed females… Cassius as fire, Dr. Pete as water? Wonder what that’s about—if anything, I’d compare Cassius to ice. And Dr. Pete to… hmm. I don’t know, actually. He’s a little too clean-cut to be earthy, a little too safe to be fire, a little too reliable to be air. Maybe water is the best metaphor for him—water, after all, is usually a symbol of life. And fluidity. And change. I don’t know what the pirate ship scene was all about, but it seems important. Lucy Barbarossa—her fictional version, anyway—seemed to be having some sort of illicit affair. But with whom, exactly?

  And was that the literal truth, or just some kind of metaphor? The candle I lit before going to bed has burned exactly one-third of the way down before extinguishing itself—guess that means I can contact Neil two more times. I’ve only slept for about an hour, but my stomach is telling me it’s time for dinner. I rummage in the fridge for some leftover pasta, then call Charlie. “Hey, sandman. Where are you?”

  “Shooting some stick. There’s a pool hall just around the corner from your place.”

  “Yeah? Good to know. Can you pick me up?”

  “Be there in ten.” I meet him downstairs. The car’s still parked in front of my building, and he comes strolling up the sidewalk, moving in that precise, elegant way he has. It’s very different from the way Silverado moved—that was like watching a finely tuned machine, whereas Charlie is more like a big cat. Relaxed power, restrained violence.

  “How’d the snooze-fest go?” he asks. “Learned a lot. Not sure how much of it is useful.” We get in the car, Charlie in the driver’s seat, and I fill him in as we head for Dr. Pete’s. “Huh,” he says when I finish. “These writers—Morrison and Moore. They have counterparts on this world?”

  I stare at Charlie and suppress the urge to punch him in the shoulder—it would only hurt my hand. “Damn it! I can’t believe I didn’t ask him such an obvious question!”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You were asleep at the time.”

  “Didn’t seem to affect Neil much.”

  “Neil’s an oneiromage. It’s his turf.” There’s a hard edge to Charlie’s voice. “Sounds like you don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t. I don’t trust anyone who gives away convenient information, especially not when it sounds like they’re betraying their own organization.” He has a point. “You think Neil’s manipulating us?”

  “I don’t know. I just hate him being in your head.” I forgot how protective Charlie can be—the idea of me being on the astral plane solo no doubt bothers him more than he cares to admit.

  “He’s the best source of information we have at the moment,” I point out. “About all we can do is follow the path he points us down.”

  “Yeah. And hope it doesn’t go off the edge of a cliff.” I know I promised Cassius I’d talk to Gretchen, but I can’t put off a conversation with Dr. Pete any longer. I need to know what, if any, connection the Solar Centurion has to Tair, and if any of Tair’s accusations are true—because if they are, then Dr. Pete is or was connected to the blackmarket lem trade. I’m not sure where that particul
ar trail will lead, but it might just go all the way to Ahasuerus, creator of the golem race—as well as the animist who brought me to this world and the only one who can get me safely home.

  I call Dr. Pete’s cell. “Hi, this is Jace—”

  “Jace? Look, can I call you back? I’m a little busy.”

  “I really need to talk to you, Doc. Are you at your office?”

  “I am, but this isn’t really a good time—” I’m used to people not wanting to talk to me. It still stings a little, but I’ve learned to ignore it. “I’m on my way. See you in a few minutes.”

  “But—” I hang up. He doesn’t call back, which I interpret as meaning he doesn’t really mind if I show up.

  Interpretation is a wonderful skill. I wonder if he’ll use his receptionist as a buffer. I doubt it—that’s the kind of weaselly move you can only get away with pulling on strangers—but I’m perfectly happy with taking her on. Destroying underlings is one of the few perks you get with my job; I have fond memories of the time I made a clerk at the IRS break down and cry. But he really, really deserved it. Alas, I’m denied the satisfaction of a decent battle—she’s not behind the front counter. In fact, no one is.

  “Hello? Dr. Pete?”

  No answer. I hear something, though—a scratching, scrabbling noise. Claws on wood?

  I draw my gun. Charlie’s still down in the car—I wanted to talk to the Doc in private. I can get Charlie up here in a flash, but I don’t want to overreact. I move slowly and quietly out of the waiting room and down a short hall. Open doors on either side—examination rooms, both empty. The door at the end of the hall is closed, and that’s where the noise is coming from. “Dr. Pete?” I call out. “Is that you?” The scrabbling intensifies, and now I hear something else—a whine. I open the door. A brown-and-white shape lunges at me, knocking me over. A pair of slavering jaws hover over my face, and I jam the barrel of the Ruger underneath them. And then he starts licking my face. I shove the dog off my chest, and ease the safety back on the Ruger. “Bad dog,” I say. The St. Bernard looks at me and cocks his head, tail wagging furiously. He doesn’t look ashamed at all. “You look familiar,” I say. “Did we meet at the shelter?” More wagging, and not a small amount of drool. St. Bernards have practically cornered the market on canine saliva—a few bulldogs are still holding out, but the writing’s on the wall. I glance around Dr. Pete’s office. He’s not there, but there’s a large yellow legal pad with a note scrawled on it: JACE—SORRY, BUT I HAD TO RUN. WILL EXPLAIN LATER. CAN YOU LOOK AFTER GALAHAD FOR A NIGHT OR TWO? HE’S IN QUARANTINE FROM THE OTHER DOGS (NOT CONTAGIOUS TO HUMANS). LEASH, FOOD, AND PANTS UNDER FRONT COUNTER. DR. PETE I look over at Galahad. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding.” Galahad gives me a big, doggy grin. I try to remember what my lease says about pets.