Authors: Mark Everett Stone
“Julian … Father, I’m sure.” A blatant manipulation, but I’m sure he appreciated the gesture. “Computers are the future. Everything will be computerized in the next twenty years, so think about us having the best, the fastest computers around. What will that do for the Sicarii?”
“Who attacked us?”
I licked my lips nervously but kept my voice steady. “My guess is the tech baron we stole the drive from. Only he has the kind of money to trace the theft to us. Whoever the attackers were, most likely mercenaries, they are dead now.”
“I’ll be in New York in a couple of hours. Meet me at my suite.”
“Yes, sir.”
Click.
I sat there in the General Manager’s office for a good minute until the annoying drone of the dial tone shook me out of my reverie. Julian was coming and that could mean one of two things: a) My ass was about to be turned into a lace doily or b) He wanted to commend me on a job well done. a) would give me a quick disappearing act while option b) allowed me to live a few years longer.
I sure hoped it was option b), because this was one meeting I could not afford to miss.
Pages and pages of crisp white paper slipped through fingers numbed with shock. Jude had
murdered
a man! I looked at him sleeping peacefully on the bed, lips parted slightly. All these years I hadn’t seen him as a person who could actually kill someone. Granted Dr. Gillan had been a slimy little toad, but crushing his throat and leaving him to choke to death? And
enjoying
it?
Who was the man whose story was recorded on these pages? Arrogant, cocky, cold and manipulative … not the person I traveled with. Was that what he
used
to be, or what he now hid beneath a veneer of friendship?
I knelt and began to pray, not just for my soul, but for my friend’s as well. God had led me to Jude, I knew it like I knew the faces of the men I served with in the Iraqi desert, my brothers born of trial and blood. Therefore I would trust in God and my instincts to help me lead Jude/Olivier upon the path of righteousness.
But that didn’t preclude keeping a close eye on him.
Chapter Ten
Jude
Showering came only after I used Avoidance, which, to me, smelled like hospital disinfectant. For a while the spell would mask my presence from … well, everyone, but a lifetime of casting Avoidance every time I feared contact with water looked daunting. Something would have to be done about the Primal Water Julian possessed.
My Cabo Wabo t-shirt was a loss, so I made do with a dark gray, skintight, long-sleeved Henley. Mike still wore his dog collar and black duds, looking as if he hadn’t gone to sleep at all. Which made me realize he probably hadn’t; instead he had most likely read more of my memoirs. From the covert glances he shot my way, I thought I knew which part he’d just finished.
Damn.
How did you talk to your best friend about a man like Gillan and the contemptuous ease with which you ended his life? Could Mike understand? Would he? Hell, it’s been years and I still didn’t quite understand, and I was there!
“Mike,” I began.
He held up a hand. “Not now, Jude.” The look he gave me held buckets of disquiet. “I have to sort some things out for myself, okay?”
“Okay, man. Whatever you need.” If he needed time, time he would get.
Mike held up the silvery crucifix that had dispelled the demon, twisting it to and fro in the harsh light of the room. Sighing, he placed the chain around his neck and let the crucifix dangle to rest between his pecs.
“Where to now, Jude?”
I rubbed my chin. “We go to see Leslie Winchester.”
His icy blue eyes grew wide. “Leslie Winchester?
The
Leslie Winchester?”
“That would be her.”
“
Cinnamon Relic
Leslie Winchester, one of the greatest rock bands of all time Leslie Winchester?”
“Yes, that Leslie Winchester?”
He sat down abruptly on the corner of his rock-hard bed. I hoped he didn’t have hemorrhoids. “I used to listen to
Cinnamon Relic
all the time. I had their Greatest Hits record. Nearly wore the vinyl down to nothing listening to it.”
“Well, you’re sounding like a broken record, so there’s some synchronicity there.”
“Har-de-har-har… What’s she doing in Las Cruces?”
“She lives here, well actually in Mesilla, in a castle she had built special.”
“A castle?”
“She’s crazy about them, fancies herself a noblewoman of the middle ages and wants to live as one, or some such nonsense.”
Mike pondered the insanity of aging rock stars for a moment. “I’m keen to meet her, but why are we going?”
“I believe she has the Grail.” I licked my dry lips and repeated, “The Holy Grail.”
Mike shook his head ruefully. “Of course she does. How silly of me not to have known.” He blew a sigh through his nose. “Well, let’s go.”
“That’s it?”
“What?”
I scratched my head. “I thought you’d be more—”
“Flabbergasted?” he asked.
“As good a word as any, but yes.”
Mike fingered his crucifix and stared at the ceiling for a beat. “Listen Jude, I’ve seen you summon elemental beings, use Words that give you amazing abilities, and I’ve read about an amazing device called a molecular knife that you say exists.” Another sigh. “I am quickly running out of skepticism. It seems that my reservoir of disbelief is running dry.”
Good point. Time to reduce the skepticism ratio even more. “Thanks for the reminder.” I fished the knife in question out of my duffel and thumbed the button.
“Is that it?” Mike asked, drawing close, eyes wide.
“Yes.” Approaching the metal box I’d recovered from Earth, I leaned over and drew a line around the edge of the box on the side with the handle. When the minute line met itself, I pulled hard and the handle side came free.
“Wow …” Mike whispered in awe.
I flicked the knife off. “Yeah.”
“Double wow.”
My hands dipped into the box and pulled out fat wads of cash until I had three stacks of ten thousand dollars each. Next came audiotape, the old fashioned reel-to-reel kind favored in the ’70s.
“What the heck, Jude?”
I held up the cash and the audiotape. “The audiotape is an original John Lennon Blues number he recorded in a little dive in New York, the only copy in existence. Combine that with the close to eighty grand I have, she’ll sell the Grail to us.”
“Why would she sell the Grail? It’s worth a heck of a lot more than
that
.”
“Leslie Winchester doesn’t know she has the Grail. Unless you are one of the few who can see the world as it really is—a magus, for instance—then you would not see the cup of Christ.”
“So how do people see it?”
From my duffel I produced a plastic Wal-Mart bag and stuffed the money inside. “I don’t know, Mike. You might see it as a crucifix, or a dinner plate, and it would feel and weigh like what you beheld, man.” Once I had the contents of the box squared away, I grabbed the keycard to the room. “Walk and talk, Mike. Walk and talk.”
He followed me down the hall to the elevators. “How did you know she had it, if it looks like something different?”
In the elevator I hit the button for the first floor. “A year ago I came into possession of a library belonging to a magus named Edgar Truesdale.” At his skeptical look, I raised my right hand. “I swear it was all legit, part of an estate sale. The old man died of a stroke. With the library came his personal papers.”
“A member of your Family, then?”
I shook my head. “Nope, he was one of the rare ones, a magus born outside of a magical lineage. Anyway, in his personal papers, he documented his sale of a job lot of ancient artifacts to one Leslie Winchester for a serious amount of money. He could have made even more money if he’d been able to establish the provenance of some of the more ancient pieces. It seems he was strapped for cash and sold most of his collectables.”
“I thought you said a magus could make his fortune with just three Words?”
“Good, you’ve been paying attention. Yes, it’s true, but Edgar had only one … Truth, and he wasn’t very good with it, or so I believe.”
“And?” Mike asked as our elevator doors opened.
“And included in his notes was a letter from Leslie Winchester stating that she did not receive the antique gold spoon as stated on the item list; however she said she did like the silver brooch he had sent. From that I put two and two together.”
He nodded. “From that and the pictures of the items no doubt accompanied his personal papers.”
I smiled as we strode briskly down the hall to the front doors. “Very cynical, Mike, but true. Yes, collectors take pictures of all the items in their collections and I had all his photos. One picture showed a small, worn bowl, like those used to drink from, say about two thousand years ago in Judea. Looking at the picture, and reading the letters, I knew straight away what he’d sold. He probably stroked out when he realized what he’d done, poor beggar.” The threadbare hallway carpet blurred by in a nauseating pattern of blue and red. How is it that hotels know how to pick the worst wall-to-wall possible? They must have blind interior decorators working for them.
“How was the camera able to catch the image of the real Grail?” Mike asked, stroking his moustache.
“The Grail fools the mind but cannot deceive film or electronics.”
Glass double doors opened and the semi-warm evening air filled our lungs. “You could be wrong, you know.” Mike sounded almost smug.
How unpriestly
, I thought. “How do you know so much about the Grail, that it appears as different things to different people?”
I stopped and turned to my friend, who nearly collided with me. “Mike, buddy, when are you going to get it into your head that I once had access to almost limitless data and funds? Think about it, dude, my whole Family knew the secret of the Grail. They’ve been looking for it for centuries.”
He blinked. “Got it. Powerful family, big connections, secret history.”
We resumed walking toward the black Grand Prix parked a short distance away. “Good, you’re getting it. Now, let’s just hope Leslie still has the Grail; then we can figure out if it can destroy the Silver.”
“What if the Silver is more powerful?”
“It isn’t. Trust me, the Grail is the big banana, next to the Ark.”
As we approached the Grand Prix, I held the fob up and pushed the trunk release button. The trunk lid obligingly popped open. When we got to the car, what we saw stopped us short.
“Holy—!” Mile blurted.
“That’s a little disturbing,” I agreed tonelessly.
Inside the trunk was the body of a woman. More of a girl, really, face sliced to ribbons along with her clothes. She had been small, petite, and probably pretty, with a fine bone structure and porcelain skin. Her small breasts as well as her sex had been cruelly slashed and I could tell that the killer had taken his damn sweet time at the job. Long strips of skin and muscle lay around her body like obscene, fleshy streamers. The sheer sadism of the act appalled even my jaded senses.
“This would explain why the demon chose that man,” I muttered as, behind me, Mike became violently sick. The smell of puke mixed revoltingly with the corpse and blood stench billowing from the trunk. “The damn fool was a serial killer.”
“How can you tell?” Mike burbled as he barfed again. His black loafers and the hem of his pants were spotted with his upchuck.
I pointed to the precise, almost surgical, cuts paralleling her face and breasts. “He took his time; he’s done this before. Also, he appeared to have been in his forties, perhaps early fifties, and I’m guessing that would be a late start in the serial killing business. Most serial killers start when they’re younger. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve read.”
Poor girl, she looked like any young thing fresh out of puberty and ready to face the world with a fresh supply of hormones along with a healthy dose of overconfident rebellion. From the blood that covered her head to foot, she’d been quite alive when that sick fuck had taken a savagely sharp knife to her, obliterating her sense of immortality and infallibility.
“We must tell the police, Jude,” Mike moaned, staring at his shoes. “Her people have to be informed, so she can have a decent burial.”
He was right, the cops had to be told, but the last thing I needed was to be taken into a police station and made to answer quite a few embarrassing questions, not the least of which was ‘What happened to your house?’ If Las Cruces PD was in the loop with decent facial recognition programs, then my Family would know where I was in an instant. We had pioneered the software, after all. That was the reason I avoided all airports. So … no cops.
“We find a burger joint and dump the car there, then make an anonymous call to the police.” I slammed the trunk lid down, hiding the horror within.