Carlotta and the Krius Scepter (Carlotta Series Book 1) (10 page)

16.
              
Free

I woke up lying spreadeagled on a waterbed. For a few seconds I luxuriated in the way slight shifts of my body created ripples under the sheets. Waterbeds are a great invention and I’ve always loved them. There was a trace of turpentine in the air that seemed to be coming from me. I was on top of the sheets and naked, but then to wake clothed would have been unusual for me.

“Ah, the sleeper awakes…”

I knew that voice, a voice from the past I thought I’d never hear again. Memories of the den flooded back to me. I flipped up on the bed into a fighting stance, one of the Japanese martial arts ones, as I was unarmed. The man I stared at looked nothing like the Peleus I’d left dying all those centuries ago. He had long shoulder length black hair that looked as though it had been permed and was far stockier than a Fey had any right to be.

“Peleus?” It couldn’t be him, it just couldn’t.

“I prefer Arthur Regis, Arthur to my friends.” He smirked at me in an irritating way that was at the same time annoyingly familiar, and that was when I knew it really was him.

“I killed you once, but mistakes can be rectified and there’s no time like the present.”

He put up a hand as if that was likely to dissuade me.

“I shouldn’t try that if I was you.”

I somersaulted off the bed and sprang at him. He put up his hands and caught me. Normally I would have used the position to kick him in the guts, but waves of unendurable pain ran through me. He held me for five or six seconds that felt like forever before tossing me casually onto the bed. It was a miracle the bed didn’t spring a leak as I bounced up and down trying to get my breath back and my limbs to work.

He showed me his hands and I saw impossible silver rings on his fingers. From the residual shudders running through my body I knew he had silver all about him. There was probably silver thread in his suit. It was impossible.

“I am immune to silver, a side effect of the treatment that kept me alive. I have found it most useful in my dealings with the Fey.” He shrugged and smiled. “Shall we talk, Cear Lotha? It has been a long time since we last spoke together.”

“As I remember, you tried to kill me.”

Peleus shrugged. “As I remember, I came off the worst in that encounter. You still have Excalibur, I take it?”

“That’s not its name. Where’s Brian?”

Peleus looked confused for a second and then his face brightened. “Oh, the Fey boy you were with. We stripped the paint off him and dumped him in an alley. He should be home by now unless he sleeps like you.”

That just didn’t seem likely. He was a bargaining chip and real players don’t throw chips away.

“Am I supposed to believe that?”

“You can call him later, if you want. He has no value to me now and I don’t want to waste my time fending off his father, whoever that should turn out to be.”

“Torin Dar.”

Peleus smiled as if delighted by the news. “Even more reason to let the boy go unharmed. Torin is high in the Council these days and might cause more trouble than most. I have bigger matters on my mind.”

“Like keeping me prisoner?” Peleus kept knocking me off guard and I was confused. How had he survived the fatal blow I’d dealt him and become immune to silver? He was still after the Krius Scepter after all these years, and I had to stop him from getting his hands on it whatever the cost.

Peleus waved at the window and pressed a button. The window slid open to allow access to the balcony.

“You can fly away if you want. I won’t be here by the time you get back.”

I jumped off the bed and went to stand on the balcony. Peleus made no move to stop me. I realized we were back in
The Don’s
Penthouse, presumably in one of the rooms I hadn’t been able to get to. I looked down at the sheer drop of hundreds of feet and felt a familiar exhilaration. I hadn’t been a hawk for days and the prospect of getting away from Peleus filled me with delight. I was tired of this adventure and fancied a few weeks lazing in a five star hotel in
Rio
.

“Of course, if you go I will gain access to the Scepter before you can find me again.”

I turned to face him. “There is only a Scepter in your imagination. That box has sentimental value to me because Thampthis once gave it to me. It’s fourth dynasty Egyptian and has nothing to do with these delusions you have about Atlantis.”

He smiled, but I could see it was a barely concealed snarl. I’d got to him with that one. I grinned back at him in the hope that would make it worse.

“While I carried Excalibur it brought me dreams of you and Atlantis. I saw the scepter in your hands.”

Damn and double damn
. I planned to have words with that sword when I next saw it.

“You’re obsessed with Atlantis and the sword isn’t magic, it was made
using
Atlantean magic, that’s all. You can blame your obsession for your dreams, not my sword.”

He moved closer and I backed away until my back pressed hard up against the rail. I could feel the silver in his clothing reaching out across the gap between us, trying to sap my energy.

“Don’t lie to me, Cear. You’re the oldest of us and the last alive that saw Atlantis with your own eyes. I grew up to stories of the Egyptian pharaohs. What happened between you and Thampthis was a topic of endless debate when I was a child. He was only a few years’ dead when I was born and you had vanished again. All the Fey were talking about it. You were a legend even then.”

“There are older.” Truth was I had no idea if that was true, but it wasn’t like I went to reunion parties. I only turned up for council meetings if there was trouble brewing.

Peleus laughed and stepped back from me. “And you accuse me of being delusional? Fey die, accident or murder gets us all in the end. I slept for nearly a thousand years and awoke to find that I’m one of the oldest Fey alive. I know this to be a fact because I’ve searched my whole life for any of us that remember Atlantis. When we first met there were three who did, now there’s only you.”

“I must be born lucky.”

Peleus turned and slammed his fist against the window. I was surprised it stayed in one piece.

“You were special to the Atlanteans and they gave you a magic sword. Are you so stupid you don’t know what it did for you?”

Boy, was Peleus crazed by his obsession or what? I hadn’t worn the sword for nearly two hundred years and I don’t remember playing my life safe since. The thing to do was to go and steal the box from the museum. Put it somewhere it couldn’t be found. He could waste the rest of his life following his crazy ideas. So long as the Scepter was safe, what did I care?

I stepped away from the railing to give myself room to fly.

“I have the box.”

I stared at him. That changed everything.

“My team were waiting to step in if Carlo’s people made a mess of it. When you returned the box to the museum my men killed the guards and took it.”

He returned to the room and turned on the television, switching it to a news channel.
“…are grieving for the men who lost their lives. Police Chief Collins has vowed that the people who stole the Thampthis
Box will be caught and that the city will stay in lock down mode until they are found.”

Peleus turned off the television.

“It’s already out of the city. If you want to see it again, you have to come with me.” Peleus looked almost excited as he chided me. “Come on, Cear, you’ve been at the centre of things all your life. Don’t you want to see my scientists free the Scepter from its hiding place?”

I moved so I had my back to the rail and leaned out looking up as I thought about his proposition. On the evidence I had it looked as though I had no choice.

“You hold no grudges against me?” I asked.

He lifted the hair on the right hand side of his head revealing a lack of ear and an ugly scar.

“Sometimes you go a bit far, but I have adjusted to the loss.”

“Then I accept your gracious offer.”

“Good, you’ll find new clothes in the dresser. Your old ones were beyond recovery.”

He stepped out of the room and left me on my own.

I pressed the button that closed the window and opened the drawers looking for clothes. It was true I liked to be at the centre of things, and I knew if I escaped he might manage to open the box before I could find him again.

These were plausible reasons, but my main reason for staying was that when I stood on the balcony and leaned out on the rail, I had seen the barrels of two sniper rifles poking out over the roof. Peleus had no intention of letting me leave here alive.

I wondered if Brian still lived. There was logic in what Peleus had told me. No one would create an unnecessary feud with Torin if they could prevent it. Torin had waited millennia for his first Fey child. On the other hand, Peleus was an evil psychopathic madman who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals and regarded human and Fey lives as worthless. So it was a toss-up. If Brian was dead, I would avenge him. Until I found out one way or the other I could only hope he was still alive.

17.
              
HQ

I took a shower, partly to rid myself of the turpentine smell and partly to get rid of the residual stickiness from my encounter with Brian. That brought back good memories tinged with strong feelings of guilt. I stamped on the floor in annoyance. I was supposed to keep him safe. Instead he saved my life and for his pains might be buried six feet deep in a block of concrete. Stamping the floor simply increased the itchiness between my legs. Men don’t understand how a woman’s plumbing works and often expect a girl to leap up after sex to make them a bacon sandwich. All men are bastards.

There was another set of black clothing waiting for me in the drawers. I was beginning to take a liking to the outfit and looked for labels so I could buy some for myself later. Typically,
The Don
’s men had cut them off, sometimes not doing it very well and leaving the fabric torn. That was just like a man, when they do manage to do something intelligent they mess it up in the implementation.

By the time I opened the door to the corridor, I had worked myself up over the uselessness of men to such an extent that a waiting thug stepped back as I aggressively thrust my chest and face into his. A twinge of pain told me that his clothes were impregnated with silver and this cooled me down. This wasn’t the time and place for anger. I would save that for when I could slit Peleus’s throat.

We walked down the now familiar corridor to the elevator and I tapped my fingers against the wall as the Mafioso clone watched me much as though I was an unexploded bomb. He was right, as that’s pretty much how I felt.

Surprise, surprise
, when he pointed me down the basement corridor towards the den. I felt like I was in a movie where the director couldn’t afford many sets. Nor a bigger cast, I thought as I entered the room and found
The Don
, Mike and Vinnie waiting for me.
The Don
looked uncomfortable and remained standing. Mike lounged across his chair without a care in the world while Vinnie sat upright as though awaiting a dentist’s appointment. The medical tape and bandaging over his right eye didn’t help his looks.

“Hey Vinnie, I expect the doorknob you fought with is looking pretty beat up right now.”

My attempt at humor went down like a lead balloon. Vinnie scowled for a few seconds while his brain tried to think of a suitable put-down.

“It was an effing trained hawk. The doctors say I’m lucky to keep the eye.”

As put-downs go, that was pathetic. I almost felt sorry for him as I noted that
The Don
and his men didn’t know the Fey were shape-shifters. Information is power as Goebbels used to tell me in the latter days of the Third Reich. It certainly proved true in his case as the information he provided saved many innocents. He was awful in bed as well; I used to sing that song in my head while he had me:

‘Hitler has only got one ball,

Göring has two but very small,

Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,

But poor Goebbels has no balls at all.’

World War II, happy days.

“The boy’s safe,”
The Don
said to my considerable relief. He had no reason to lie. He had no reason to tell me either, when I thought about it.

“I like you, Missy. You got chutzpah. The boy, too.” Another compliment. We’d soon be friends at this rate and making plans to meet for tea and cakes.

“You should have turned down this job,
Don
. It was a bigger mistake than you can imagine.”

The Don
lit a cigar and looked at me. “I think you might be right. But in my line of business there are some people you don’t cross. Mr. Regis is one of them.”

“If the Hawks hadn’t intercepted our boys in the first place, we could have done this without anybody getting hit,” Mike said from his chair. “Now there’s dead guards and the cops are running around like ants.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?”

Nobody answered so I figured they knew they didn’t know. I decided it was time to enlighten them a little.

“The Thampthis Box, it’s not just another theft like somebody’s diamond necklace. There’s power in that box.”

Vinnie snorted, “Sure, because it’s magic.”

“You watched Brian and me climb a brick wall by running up it. Can you do that?”

Vinnie laughed, “Circus tricks and smoke and mirrors.”

The Don
silenced his son with a look. “You people ain’t quite human, I know that. But that don’t make that box anything special.”

“That box was made as a gift for me four and a half thousand years ago. It cost the lives of over a hundred good men and women. They were slaughtered after it was finished to protect its secret. If Peleus figures out what to do with it he could rule the world. You want the
United States
enslaved to that man?”

“Who’s Pell-lee-us?” Mike asked.
The Don
waved a hand at him and he shut up too.

“Nobody gonna make us slaves,”
The Don
said with deep conviction.

“You’ve been in over your head from the start.”

“Ah, Cear, stirring up dissent in my men, much as always.”

I turned to see Peleus standing laconically at the door. His men took up positions either side of him, and it took me a few seconds to realize their hostility was aimed at the other men in the room. Perhaps there were cracks in Peleus’s empire. I’m good at exploiting cracks; I’ve broken the schemes of better men than Peleus, with less to work with.

“Just telling them how they’ll own this city when you finish. Own it
under you,
of course.”

Peleus laughed. He seemed to be enjoying my efforts far too much.

“Don’t waste your games on them, Cear. They haven’t the imagination to understand.” Peleus faced
The Don
and assumed his King Arthur persona, the one that rallied troops in battle and brooked no dissent. “You will have no further dealings with the Hawks. If they come to your door you will turn them away. If they smash down your door and pin you to a wall you will tell them nothing. Nothing they can do to you will be as what I’ll do to you if you talk.”

“We don’t know nuttin’,” Vinnie muttered.

“If you tell them even that much I shall stand you in oil and heat it up until your feet are cooked and ready to feed to the crows. Is that understood?”

Vinnie nodded his head, which turned out to be a mistake judging from the way his hands sped to cover his injured eye. These guys were The Three Stooges up against Adolph Hitler, or Nero. Yeah, come to think of it, Nero was closer, burning people as candles to light his chariot races. I can still remember the smell. It was easier before I got my memory back, then I could be frightened of guys like these. Now they looked pathetic.

“Yeah, okay,”
The Don
said waving his cigar. The men behind Peleus relaxed a fraction. Nobody but someone as experienced as me would have seen it. Up until that moment
The Don
had been very close to becoming deceased.

Peleus left without a backward glance and I followed him. The professional killers he employed covered our rear without looking as though that’s what they were doing. There was the longest stretch limo I’ve ever seen waiting outside. Peleus got in at one end and I took the other. If there weren’t phones in the vehicle, we weren’t going to be talking to each other. The pro’s came behind us. There was plenty of room for all.

We travelled in silence. It suited me. There was nothing I wanted to say to Peleus that didn’t include the words
‘die you bastard’
and it seemed there was nothing he wanted to ask me.

We got out of the limo inside the city’s famous railway station alongside a waiting train. An area of road inside the building was cordoned off for us. It seemed Peleus had pull with the people who ran the railroad, if not the city. I was escorted into the carriage alongside the car and moments later the train pulled out. Peleus had got into the next carriage up. No one checked us to see if we were carrying the box. No wonder Peleus had found it easy to smuggle it out of the city, the police would probably have carried it onto the train for him, if he’d asked.

The journey lasted three hours and twenty-two minutes. We appeared to be going fast, but then this was a
United States
train, not a train in
Japan
or continental
Europe
that would have regarded 140mph as slow. I doubt we travelled 200 miles.

The region was hilly and it was no surprise when we entered a long tunnel. It was a bit of a surprise when we slowed down and came to halt inside it.

The lights were on in the carriage, though I hadn’t noticed before. All that showed through the windows was darkness. My escorts got up and one of them came close enough for me to detect the silver woven into his clothes. I stood up and moved in front to stay clear of him. We moved up through three other carriages. The one Peleus had got into was laid out as an office, though there wasn’t a piece of paper in sight.

The carriage beyond that was a sumptuous dining car, laid out in the style of the late nineteenth century, while actually being modern. I had been in the genuine carriages it resembled and could easily tell the difference.

The last carriage seemed to be set out to carry cargo of some kind, though it was empty. As soon as we entered the carriage I saw lights appear outside. A platform the length of a single carriage was lit with spot lights. It looked like an unfinished Underground station in
London
. We stepped onto it and walked through tunnels recently carved and blasted out of the hillside. Lights were strung in a daisy chain and hung from bolts shot into the roof.

After a few hundred yards we arrived at a properly finished corridor. The place had the feel of a CIA bunker built during the cold war. I’ve been in a couple of those so I know what I’m talking about.

Peleus was waiting at an electronically controlled door. I’d moved from film noire to spy thriller via a train journey.

“Don’t you know you’re supposed to use a dead volcano?” I asked as he held his thumb to a reader and the door opened.

He looked genuinely puzzled, but said nothing.

Thampthis’ box sat on a plinth in the centre of the room. Nobody was going anywhere near it. Half a dozen people in white coats wandered around with clipboards looking efficient. One of them, a woman in her fifties stepped towards Peleus and delivered a report as soon as she got within range.

“It’s impervious to X-rays and our scanners. None of our experts have been able to find any secret panels or even any welds. The next step is to use a laser to take a sample.”

“Clear the room, but keep all the sensors operational,” he told her. The woman nodded and rushed off to tell her colleagues.

“Are you going to try and smash the box using your manly arms?” I asked innocently.

“No, you’re going to open the box for me. Unless you prefer to die.”