Death Blows Read online

  We park in front and get out. The sun’s sunk low enough and the trees are dense enough that Cassius doesn’t bother putting on a mask or gloves.

  “He doesn’t have cell coverage out here, or a landline,” Cassius says. “So he isn’t expecting us.”

  “We hope,” I say.

  The steps are carved out of the bare rock—actually, the more I look at it, the more I realize the whole structure is carved out of the lava flow. “This isn’t a building—it’s a sculpture.”

  “No,” Charlie says. “It’s a tombstone.”

  Yeah. I guess you could call it a mausoleum, but most mausoleums aren’t cut from a single piece of rock—and try as I might, I can’t find signs of a join anywhere. The entrance opens into a foyer, with benches against the wall and a frieze etched around an archway that leads into the building proper. I have to stop and study it before going any farther.

  The only light is natural light, but there’s enough coming through the doorway behind me to see just fine. Above the arch, the frieze depicts the volcano erupting, the lava and ash pouring down on either side. The faces of the victims can be seen through the swirling ash, mouths open in screams of horror.

  “This must have taken a long time to do,” I say.

  “Decades,” says Cassius. “And he’s not finished yet.”

  We go through the archway. The room on the other side is much larger, the ceiling twelve or so feet high. It’s laid out like a church, rows of pews divided by a central aisle, a pulpit on a raised dais at the end. There’s no stained glass, though, just empty squares cut into the walls to let in light. The room is cold, and a breeze blows a few stray leaves in through one of the windows.

  There are people sitting in the pews as well, but none of them turns to look as we enter. A few couples sit together and there’s one cluster of four that’s clearly a family, but most of the people are solitary and scattered, as if they can’t bear to be close to another human being.

  As we walk down the aisle, I realize the truth. They aren’t human themselves; they’re all statues.

  There’s a cross-shaped hole cut into the ceiling above the pulpit. This late in the day it’s not letting in that much light, but it must be impressive at high noon—or during a full moon, for that matter. “Brother Stone?” Cassius calls out. His voice echoes off the chilly rock. “We need to speak with you.”

  “Then speak,” a soft voice says. It comes from a seated figure in the first row, a statue of a man in monk’s robes—but of course, this one’s not really a statue at all. Brother Stone gets to his feet. He’s just as Cassius described him, a lem made of gray granite. There’s something eerie about the way he moves, like those old stopmotion monsters in Ray Harryhausen films. His head is smooth, his features finer than I expected; he stands a little under six feet, the loose folds of his clothing concealing his build. He keeps his hands tucked inside the opposite sleeves of his robe. “Do you know who I am?” Cassius asks. “I do. Why are you here, Centurion?”

  “Someone’s killing the Bravos, Brother.” Stone nods. “Are we finally being punished for our sins, then?”

  “We weren’t the sinners, Brother. We put an end to those who were. Murderers who were preying on the innocent.”

  “And yet, we took innocent lives ourselves.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “It was a choice. And we must live with the consequences of our choices.”

  “I can’t argue with that. But I can’t condone someone picking us off, one by one, either. Doctor Transe and the Sword of Midnight are already dead.” Brother Stone looks troubled, but it’s hard to tell if he’s feeling sorrow or fear. “I am truly sorry. Despite what he did, Transe meant well. I invited him here many times to pray with me, to ask God for forgiveness, but he never came. Even so, I know the deaths that resulted from the eruption weighed heavily on his conscience.”

  “But not as heavily as yours,” I say. “This is Special Agent Jace Valchek,” Cassius says. “And Charlie Aleph, her enforcer.” Stone glances from me to Charlie. “I see. Are you investigating these crimes, Agent Valchek?”

  “I am. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?” Stone looks back at Cassius, who nods. “I suppose not.”

  “Good. Cassius, go wait in the car.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This is my investigation, and I don’t want you vetting every single question I have. You either leave the Brother and I alone or drive me back to Seattle now. Your choice.”

  If there’s one thing Cassius hates, it’s not being in charge. I watch his face as he considers the situation, comes to a conclusion, then spins and walks out the door without a word. Charlie gives me a look. “Better enjoy that one while you can,” he says. “ ’Cause you’ll be paying for it later.”

  “Hey, I’ve been running a tab for a while now.”

  “What about your… enforcer?” Brother Stone asks. His voice is curious, not condescending. “He’s not my enforcer, he’s my partner. He can hear whatever I can hear.”

  “Really. I hadn’t realized the NSA had become so enlightened. Things were very different in my day . .

  .”

  “Yeah, I guess they were. For one thing, you had cults using comic books as a way to accumulate power.”

  “Yes. Wertham’s group. They were evil men, evil women. They had to be stopped.” I glance around. “No offense, but this place seems to be saying otherwise.”

  “This place is my atonement, Agent Valchek. My attempt to right the wrong that we perpetrated.”

  “By commemorating the victims of the eruption. I understand that, but—”

  “No,” he interrupts gently. “I do not seek to memorialize. I seek to save.”

  “Are you talking about their souls?”

  “No. I am talking about their lives—or more precisely, the lives of their other selves. Are you familiar with the theory of alternate universes?” A chill goes through me, and I tell myself it’s just the cold breath of the wind. “I know a little something about it.”

  “I belong to the order of Saint Moorcock. He postulated that though many versions of us may exist in many worlds, we have but one soul. Through prayer and meditation, we can influence those other parts of our self, give them advice, lend them strength or solace when they need it most. Guide them to being better people, and therefore make a better world—even though that world may be very different from our own.”

  “Self-evangelization? Physicians, heal thyselves?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Interesting idea. How many members do you have?”

  “I am the only one—on this plane of existence, anyway. But though I have only one soul, I have many bodies, many hands to do my work, spread throughout the multiverse.”

  “Okay—but it’s a little late to save these people, isn’t it?” I motion to the carved statues on the stone pews. “That’s who these are, right? The victims of the eruption?”

  “I’ve done my best to re-create each one.” Stone takes a step forward and lets his hand fall lightly on the shoulder of one of them, a middle-aged woman wearing a hat and clutching her purse in her lap. “I worked from photos, mostly. And no, I don’t think it’s too late to save these people, Agent Valchek. I know there are multiple worlds, multiple realities, and I know that time does not always move the same in all of them. That is why I spend most of my time in meditation, trying to reach my Brothers on those worlds where it is still 1956, where the battle yet rages, where that fateful surge of energy has not been released. If Doctor Transe had only directed it skyward, these people might still be alive.”

  “What would have happened if he had? There must have been a reason he didn’t.”

  “I believe it would have turned into a storm—a ferocious one, one that might have even taken lives of its own. But I do not believe it would have killed as many as the eruption.”

  “Hard to say, I suppose. The Northwest doesn’t really get hurricanes, but a storm c
an still be deadly. With that much energy being tossed around, it’s a pretty good bet someone would probably have been struck by lightning.”

  He meets my eyes, doesn’t say anything for a second. “Yes,” he says at last. “Someone probably would have.”

  THIRTEEN

  The rest of the interview is less than illuminating. Stone has no alibi for either murder; he’s spent all his time working on his bizarre mausoleum or meditating. He gets few visitors, and had none in the last week.

  Charlie doesn’t say a word while I talk to Stone, which I find a little strange. He usually hangs back and lets me take the reins, but I thought when another lem was involved he’d at least open his mouth. I ask him about it on the way back to the car.

  “Busy keeping an eye on the monk,” he says. “Something off about him.”

  “You mean the fact that he belongs to a secret order with an unknown number of members? Or that every member is him?”

  “Neither. It’s something about the way he moves.”

  “He’s not like you, remember? Granite, not sand. I don’t know how he moves at all.” Cassius is waiting outside the car, leaning against the hood with his arms crossed. He doesn’t look angry, though—he’s too professional for that. “Find out anything worthwhile?”

  “Oh, definitely. I know where to get a great deal on chisels in Bellingham.” We all get in the car. There’s still a little light left in the sky, and I roll down my window; it makes it feel a bit less like I’m traveling in a coffin on wheels.

  “I did get this,” I say, holding out my hand. It’s a pebble I picked up outside the front door. “I’m pretty sure it’ll prove to be a match to the one Eisfanger found outside the storage unit.”

  “Which only proves someone was both here and there.”

  “Yeah. Pretty easy frame to hang, too—Stone’s isolation doesn’t give him much shot at an alibi. But at least he’s a suspect and not a corpse.”

  “For now,” Charlie says. “We gonna just leave him out here alone?”

  “His place has been under surveillance since the first murder,” Cassius says. “But that doesn’t tell us much. He rarely even goes outside, spends hours or days immobile while he’s meditating. All we know for sure is that no one’s been to visit him in the past few days.”

  I nod. “How about the Sword? Were you watching her, too?”

  “Nobody found Barbarossa unless she wanted to be found—I still don’t know how the killer did it. I wasn’t even aware she was on the continent.”

  “How about the Quicksilver Kid?”

  “He’s easier to locate, but he still spends most of his time off the grid. We don’t know where he was during the murders—you actually found him before we did.”

  “And lost him, too. Unless you know where he’s gone?”

  “Afraid not. He disappeared shortly after taking in Helmut Wiebe—we don’t know where he is now.”

  “Which leaves one more Bravo—the African Queen.” The fresh air coming in through the window is refreshing but cold; I roll it up reluctantly. “I really hope you’re not going to tell me she’s in—oh, say—Africa?”

  “Not at all. She works in a game park in Oregon—we should be there in a few hours.”

  Charlie takes off his fedora, places it in his lap. “Tell me when we get there—I’m going to grab some shuteye.”

  “Okay.” I turn back to Cassius. “That’ll give us plenty of time to talk about all the things you didn’t tell me before. You know, when you were lying to my face and pretending not to know anything.”

  “A few hours won’t be enough. Choose your questions wisely.”

  “What’s the deal with you and John Dark?”

  “We had a disagreement over policy, which I can’t go into. Next question.”

  “Tell me about the Sword of Midnight. I didn’t have the chance to ask you any follow-up questions at the crime scene.”

  “Actually, you stormed off.”

  “Well, I was angry. And you didn’t seem inclined to give me any useful information.”

  He hesitates. “All right. Barbarossa is—was—more than just a smuggler. She was actually the leader of a gang of international criminals, who dabble in everything from kidnapping to piracy. They have chapters in many countries, not always large but well respected—it’s a sign of prestige to be asked to join, a sort of criminal elite. They’re known as the Crooked Shadows.”

  “How about assassination?”

  He considers that before answering. “Doubtful. The Shadows reserve killing for self-defense or revenge—they believe in stealing as an art form, one that’s above murder. That being said, they’ve been known to go to extreme lengths to punish anyone who hurts one of their members—there’s a story about a Mafia captain that robbed and killed one of them. The robbery they didn’t mind, but they felt the killing was unjust. They imposed what they call the Beggar’s Curse.”

  I’ve run into a lot of variations on magic since I’ve been here, but not actual curses. “How does that work?”

  “It’s not a curse per se—it’s a condition. The victim has everything stolen from him, and I mean everything. His family and friends are driven away, everything he owns is stolen, he’s made to lose his home and his job—and then, when he’s broke and on the street, they take his sight, his mobility, his speech… you get the idea. They leave only his hearing.”

  “Why?”

  “So that he can still hear music.” He doesn’t elaborate, and he doesn’t have to; music is one of the most powerful touchstones we have for memories, and the victim of the Beggar’s Curse would have only his memories left—memories of everything he had lost. It’s one of the grimmest fates I can think of.

  “If the Crooked Shadows are professional thieves, wouldn’t they find the Brigade’s weaponry an irresistible target?” I drum my fingers on the dashboard, thinking. “And if they’re the artists you say they are, maybe this is all part of an elaborate scam. Maybe the Sword of Midnight isn’t as dead as we thought.”

  Cassius shakes his head. “I thought of that. DNA tests on the brain material confirm it’s her, and forensic animism shows that the only magic used was whatever changed her body into bronze.”

  “That’s another thing. Transe’s bones were turned into copper, presumably to better hold the electrical charge. What kind of magic is that?”

  “Alchemy—the transmutation of one substance into another.”

  “No one’s ever mentioned that one to me before.”

  “That’s because it doesn’t exist. You can’t really change one thing into another—its basic nature will resist. All you can do is introduce a new element and persuade it to become dominant for a while; that’s the basic principle behind lycanthropy.”

  “So the victims’ bodies were infected with metalthropy?”

  “Essentially. Like most transformations, it’s temporary; Eisfanger tells me that the remains will revert, probably in a few days’ time. He’s going to do another autopsy then, see if we learn anything new.”

  I think back to the dream meeting I’d had with Neil, and the Sword of Midnight comic I’d read. Something rises up in my brain, dancing around like a drunken butterfly I can’t quite catch; all I can pin down is a sense of doomed romance. “What do you know about Barbarossa’s love life?”

  “That depends.”

  It’s not the answer I expect; I thought he’d either make a joke or deny any knowledge, not hand me an immediate equivocation. “On what?”

  “On what you mean by love. Barbarossa was notorious for rarely having an empty bed, but she refused to get serious about any of them.”

  “I suppose the life of an international thief doesn’t leave a lot of room for a husband or kids.”

  “No.” There’s something he isn’t telling me. “Cassius, were you and Barbarossa involved?”

  He laughs and shakes his head. “No, absolutely not. She wasn’t interested in pires, and I wasn’t interested in her. I had the feeling she w
as involved with someone while she was with the Bravos, but I never found out who.”

  Lems were sexless, and the only other thrope on the team was female. “Any possibility her and the African Queen had something going?”

  “Unlikely. They didn’t particularly get along, and in any case both seemed to prefer men of their own species.”

  “How about betrayal? Could this be a plot on part of someone close to the Sword—another member of her gang, maybe?”

  “I just don’t know, Jace.” He sounds frustrated, an emotion I rarely see from Cassius. “Despite what you may think, I don’t have all the answers—and the ones I do have I’m not withholding out of spite. I’m telling you everything I can, all right? If I can’t tell you something, I’ll tell you that.”

  “You’ll be honest about your dishonesty?”

  He gives me a rueful smile. “I’ll avoid telling outright lies. Can you work with that?”

  “Guess I’ll have to.”

  “Good enough.” He pauses, then says, “The Shadows have a code of absolute loyalty to their members. Even if one of them did break it and kill Barbarossa, she would never have betrayed the Bravos—and the killer clearly knows our secrets. Considering the Shadows’ commitment to retribution, I find it hard to believe she was targeted at all, let alone by one of their own.”

  So now we have a gang of über-criminals out for blood to compete with, too. “Well, it does lend credence to the mentally unbalanced theory. The killer either thinks he’s invincible, or he’s working toward some goal so important to him that consequences have become irrelevant or secondary.”

  “Any idea what that might be?”

  “When you’re dealing with someone living in their own reality, the possibilities can be literally infinite—but I think I can narrow it down a little.”

  I lean back in my seat, close my eyes, and concentrate. “We’ll refer to him as he simply because most serial murderers are male. He’s not killing for sexual gratification, but to accumulate power. That’s not all that uncommon, even on my world; many killers believe that each murder makes them stronger in some mystical way. It’s just that here, it’s actually true…