Authors: Mark Everett Stone
Julian flipped through the folder. “Intensive interrogation reveals so much about a person,” he began, eyes scanning pages and pages of computer print out. “Your interrogation was witnessed by Dr. Silvestri.” He flicked a finger at the door chubby had exited. “The report he compiled tells me all I need to know. Hmmm …” Flip, flip, flip. “ ‘Loyal to a fault and has an over-inflated sense of right and wrong.’ No surprise there. ‘Aggressive tendencies buried beneath the teaching of his deity.’ Once again, no surprise. Look at this: ‘A suitable candidate for martyrdom.’ Well, well, you are a true follower of the Liar and his brat.” All this uttered in an unheated, avuncular tone.
“Let’s look at your military file,” he continued. “Hmmm … Two tours in Iraq during Desert Storm, very bold. Wounded twice, Purple Heart with clusters … very nice. Bronze Star for meritorious service while engaged in an action against the enemy. That means you are a genuine war hero.” He set the folder aside. “Which begs the question: how does a war hero become part of a pacifist brotherhood of celibate weenies?”
I couldn’t help myself; he tickled me to no end. He just didn’t get it … the faith, the rigorous discipline required to become a priest in the modern age and hold true to vows willingly taken. He didn’t get that there is more than one path to the Lord, more than one way to serve Him. Soldier, seamstress, surgeon, senator … all could find God in their own way. People like Julian refused to believe that the Lord’s heart is big enough to encompass the world in all its glorious diversity.
Like I said, I couldn’t help myself … I laughed in his face.
The next word out of his mouth was so predictable. “Boris.”
What that big Russian did next took a long time and hurt like hell.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Morgan
“What a tale you have spun whole cloth out of the fabric of fantasy, Mr. Sicarius!” Cain declared as I finished my story. He took a sip of whisky and flashed a gamine’s grin. “I fancy that you have had quite some time to concoct such an elaborate fabrication.”
My throat was dry and I had a headache. The whole story took over two hours to relate and my shoulders had long since cramped up under the iron hands of the golem. “Listen, it’s the truth, man,” I snapped. “I didn’t come here for my health.”
“The truth is a slippery thing, too subjective to be boilerplate for all mankind.”
Who talks like that? I asked him again.
“Today’s language offers no music or grace,” he laughed. “When LOL and OMG are considered the soul of wit, I must needs revert to a more intelligent method of conveying meaning.”
“You have got to be shitting me.” The golem’s hands flexed slightly, enough for me to feel it.
Cain lost his smile. What came out of his mouth next was a Word. Truth. It carried a cloying hit of garlic. “Is the story you related a factual one?” he asked, becoming very still.
A familiar vise-like pressure filled my head and it felt like my brain was about to squirt out through my ears. “Yes,” I gritted my teeth. “It’s a true story.” With that said, the pressure eased.
“Hmmm.”
I had to smile. That was the shortest, least convoluted sentence he’d uttered since we met.
“It is at this point, Mr. Heart, that I am presented with a quandary. There is no love lost between me and the Sicarii, but I confess to an overweening fondness for my skin and its placement upon my frame. That said, you should provide me with a suitable argument to sway me.”
This guy was going to give me schpilkas. “How about saving millions of people from Earth?”
“That reason does hold merit, but as I see very little chance of success against the Dagger Men, it is not good enough.”
I’d been holding back one last card, one that could get me dead at the hands of a golem right quick. “Cain,” I said, licking my lips. “My real name is Olivier Deschamps.” During my story, I’d left that little bit out, fearing that it might lead to sudden iron poisoning. With my eyes shut, I waited for ferric hands to crush my torso.
There was an expectant hush, as if the universe was waiting for the other shoe to drop, then, “Deschamps?” Soft, deadly.
Eyes still closed. “Yes.”
“You are the son of the current head of the Sicarii?”
“Yes I am.”
“Excellent!”
What? No painful death? I opened my eyes to see that, once again, Cain grinned from ear to ear.
Seeing my confusion, he explained, “Nothing would provide me with more joy and satisfaction than tweaking Julian Deschamps’s nose by aiding his
son
to foil his nefarious plans.”
Nefarious? “Okay, great. Now can you tell the Incredible Hulk to let me go?”
The golem’s hands did just that and I nearly passed out as the blood rushed back to my shoulders. Muscles began to spasm and that awful pins-and-needles sensation traveled up and down my arms. The lumbering monster clank-clanked to the door and gently turned the knob with an intricately jointed hand. Freezing wind rushed in as it disappeared into the darkness, closing the door behind it.
“Th-thank you.”
Cain nodded and retrieved a bottle of vodka from the refrigerator freezer. Pulling a tumbler from a cabinet, he poured two fingers worth and held it out to me.
Liquor splashed my wrist as my hands shook, but I managed to put the glass to my lips and take a long pull. The burn slithered all the way down and warmed my belly.
“Oh my,” I breathed, “I needed that.”
Tap, tap, tap,
went Cain’s fingernail against the kitchen table as I finished my drink.
Tap, tap, tap.
“One question, young Deschamps, if you would be so kind. For two millennia the Sicarii have endeavored to shorten me by a head, to end my ceaseless wanderings upon this troubled earth. Why would they undertake such a trying and perilous task? Everyone has met a swift end at my hands, or the hands of my protectors.” He gestured to the golem. “Such as the formidable Walter.”
“They want to spit in the eye of God and prove that they’re the best.”
He raised a bushy eyebrow.
I sighed. “You were cursed by God and marked, so no man would kill you lest they suffer His vengeance. The Sicarii don’t fear God, so killing you, the world’s oldest man and strongest magus, would be quite the feather in a Dagger Man’s cap. It would make him or her a legend.”
“Then they are foolish indeed.”
“Indeed, but you already know all this.”
“It has evolved into a force of habit to inquire about the motives of the Sicarii, imprudent as they may be. You are such a stubborn lot.”
“Stubborn or not, I’m a tired man who needs a good night’s sleep.”
“Of course, young man, I shall provide you with that very thing.” He pointed to the opposite end of the cabin, to a sofa next to a fireplace where a few persistent embers glowed. “My domain is small but comfortable, as you will discover. Liquid good cheer I have supplied and the couch offers generous comfort to ease you to slumber. My room is beyond yon piney door. Should the occasion arise for my assistance, you need only call.” That said, Cain walked through the “piney door” (made of rough-hewn timbers and glowing with beeswax) and returned a few moments later with an armload of blankets and a pillow. I stoked the fire, coaxing it back to life with more wood.
“Between that comforting fire and warm quilt, you will find that night passes most satisfactorily.”
I nodded, noting that he stood a good head taller than me. “Didn’t think early man would grow so big.”
Once again those teeth blinded me with reflected firelight. “In the beginning, God crafted the first men well. My own father topped my own height by a handspan.”
I translated that into at least five or six inches. Added to Cain’s own six-five, possibly six-six, Adam would have been close to seven feet tall. “Holy shit!” I blurted.
“Indeed, we were all giants in those fabled early days,” he said. “And long lived. Most men had the capacity to live well past twenty-five score years, although I am the current record holder in the category of longevity.”
Five hundred years? Maybe God crafted men
too
well back then. Cain appeared to be not a day over forty. What must his life have been like, all those years of wandering, knowing that everyone he cared about would die long before he met his own fate? The loneliness must have been overwhelming, the strain of such longevity eating at his sanity for millennia. Or maybe that was the real curse God inflicted, forced sanity in an insane situation. Suddenly his archaic, perambulating speech patterns didn’t seem so odd; perhaps it was a defense mechanism that helped him cope with the sheer weight of time.
“Cain, I have to ask …”
“Why do I encumber my visage with sunglasses?”
“You have to admit, it’s a little odd, unless you live in the
Matrix,
man.”
“That is not the first time I have heard that interrogative.” Cain pursed his lips, as if considering some internal landscape and then removed his shades.
Whoa.
Ever see a Siberian Husky? A beautiful creature with a nice thick furry coat, well suited as sled dogs. Many of these dogs have white-blue eyes that give them a ferocious, almost alien, appearance. Cain’s eyes were like that, the whites blending seamlessly into white-blue and centered with the fathomless black of the pupil.
A small gasp escaped my lips as I felt the remorseless heat of his gaze, the stress of his attention that was like a constant pressure wave from an eternally exploding bomb. I took an involuntary step backward and the sofa’s edge hit the back of my knees, dumping me unceremoniously on my butt.
That insidious pressure abruptly cut off as the glaciers slipped back over Cain’s eyes and air rushed back into my lungs because I’d finally remembered to breathe. “Damn.”
Once again he flashed a smile. “Quite correct, Mr. Deschamps, I am damned for as long as the Lord desires me to be so. Despite the excessively extended lifespan, not to mention the near ceaseless wandering, I am content that my punishment is a just one.”
“Ceaseless wandering?” I inquired. “Looks like you’ve put down roots here rather well.”
Cain handed me the bedding. “No matter how remote the locale or friendly the neighboring folk, circumstances always arise that force my evacuation from whatever plot of land I have called home. The Mark of Cain assures it. My tenure near Gunnison has endured for nearly two years—long by the standards of my curse—so it is with heavy heart that I recognize the imminent end of my stay.”
I didn’t bother to debate the merits of his punishment. There were murderers aplenty—the Family and myself were prime examples—but maybe it was because he was the first murderer that caused God to punish him so severely. That, and his attempt to lie to God about his crime. Whatever the reason, I could see in his half-hidden face that even after thousands of years, he still had not forgiven himself.
What stopped him from committing suicide? I marveled at his discipline.
Cain turned and walked to the door of his bedroom, stopping only for a moment to say, over his shoulder, “My circumstances presented me with the most difficulty those years preceding the twelfth century. It was then the Chinese invented sunglasses, mere smoky quartz lenses to assist in concealing their expressions in court. That simple device has brought me more peace than any other in the countless millennia of my travels.” His voice dropped to a near whisper, his sadness clutching at my throat. “That was the last time I prayed to God, to thank him for his infinite capacity for creativity.”
“Good night, Cain.”
“Good night, Mr. Deschamps.”
As I lay down, snuggling into the blankets and enjoying the warmth of the fire, Cain’s door opened a crack.
“Did you really destroy my Tablet, Mr. Deschamps?
“Call me Morgan. And yes, I’m afraid so, but it wasn’t on purpose.”
An infinite sadness colored his face for moment. “Pity. I should have liked to have held the old stone once more, if only for a moment.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mike
Wake, eat, pray, talk to Julian. Boris would beat me to a pulp, then send me back to the room so I could be Healed by a man I never saw because most to those times my eyes were swelled shut.
Not what you’d call a summer vacation.
Each day I managed to endure the bone-breaking sessions with Boris and each day I prayed to God to give me the strength to do so because each day I survived meant that Morgan remained free. If it hadn’t been for the Healings, I would’ve died the second day, but I guess Julian wanted this to last and last. His reputation for cruelty was well deserved.
I wondered if his entire family were sociopaths from birth, or if their criminal insanity had been carefully nurtured. Either way, it was a miracle that Morgan remained sane.
Julian had read Morgan’s memoirs and seemed unimpressed, calling them “the ineffectual ramblings of a weak-willed man.” If he really understood Morgan’s willpower, he would have been very afraid. I just hoped my friend wouldn’t do anything stupid, like try to affect a rescue. Unfortunately, I knew better. In any case, he had not bothered to take them away from me.