Authors: Mark Everett Stone
“Thank you, Master Olivier,” rumbled the behemoth in impeccable German, his voice so deep I could feel it vibrating the bones of my inner ear.
“Hello, son,” came a cultured voice from across the room.
There, silhouetted before a large window looking out on the lake, behind a heavy, ornate desk, sat Julian. The light from the window erased the details and outlined his form in stark relief; he was darkness personified.
“Hello Julian,” I responded, drawing near and standing at attention in front of the desk.
The shadow’s head cocked slightly to the right. “The Professor has told me you only know one Word. Is this true?”
“No sir, I know them all.” Lying to Julian was just another way to commit suicide … or worse.
If that confession caught him by surprise, his body language didn’t show it, but I could hear the pleasure in his voice as he asked, “And why didn’t you tell the Professor?”
“I didn’t want the others to know.”
A deep chuckle. “I always knew you were the smart one, Olivier.”
The silhouette turned and the light from the window dimmed. Julian came into view, a starkly handsome man, skin a little lighter than mine, gray at the temples, taller by four inches and broader across the chest. Where my smile was wide and even, his had a sardonic twist.
I looked past him. “The window is new.” A window might allow an ambitious son to remove his father from the Sicarii using a sniper rifle.
This time his smile held no scorn. “Not a window, but the latest in high-definition technology. Miniature cameras on the outside of the building record the actual view,” he said. “Then they send it here, a near-perfect simulation.”
I nodded. “Very nice.”
“Not one for chitchat, are you, son?”
One of my eyebrows crept upward. “I am understandably curious as to the reason for your summons, sir.”
His laughter held a note of genuine amusement. A surprise, considering that the last time I heard genuine humor from him was when the American shuttle
Challenger
exploded shortly after takeoff in 1981.
“The twins have no backbone, and Henri has no brains. The only ones with any hope of matching my standards are you and Burke.” Boris appeared with a small snifter of brandy between his massive fingers. Julian nodded to the Russian and waved him off, inhaling deeply from the glass. “Want one, son?”
“No thank you, sir.”
“Yes, you
are
the smart one,” he mused quietly. “Just the perfect degree of paranoia. Like I said, it’s down to you and Burke, and I prefer you because he favors the Harcourt side of the Family. However, when I heard from the Professor that you had only one Word, well …” his voice trailed off and he took a small sip. “I almost despaired.
“Imagine how I felt when I heard that the most promising fruit of my loins had turned out to be a magical dunce. Then, just this morning in fact, I said to myself, ‘Julian, why is your most gifted son such a beggar with Words when he showed such promising, even amazing, talent at Elemental and Botanical Magics?’ ”
Julian drained half the snifter and swirled the brandy in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. “The answer, son, is that you are
not
a beggar with Words, that you were hiding your light under a bushel to keep a low profile from your bloodthirsty relatives, encouraging them to underestimate you.”
“Got it in one, sir,” I murmured.
“I twigged onto the truth in less than a week, son; it will take Burke less than two. So, if you think you can take the plunge, he should be your first order of business.”
“Not too worried about Burke right now, sir.”
Julian’s pitch-black eyebrows shot up. “Why not?”
“He’ll save me for last.”
He pursed his lips. “Yes, I do believe you—as the Americans would say it—have his number, son. Very well.” With that he reached for the phone (at this time, as you know, almost all phones were landline) and hit SPEAKER, then dialed a three-digit number.
“When I told the Patron about your marvelous duplicity, he asked to speak to you.”
The Patron? My blood chilled to the point where the cells
must
have crystallized. No one but Julian talked to our mysterious Patron, the person who had guided the Family to the dizzying heights it had attained. Powerful beyond imagining, a being of myth and legend, the Patron would continue to guide us until the arrival of our Family’s prophesied messiah, the Redeemer. At that time, the prophecies said, the Redeemer would cast down the Liar, the great enemy of the Family, of the Patron, and restore balance to the world.
“He wishes to speak to me?” I squeaked. I cursed my traitorous voice. A drop of sweat rolled into my eye.
The voice that emerged from the speakerphone took me totally by surprise and made me jump. A little bit, anyway. “Yes, I wanted to speak to you, Olivier. It is time I did so.”
“Sir,” I acknowledged, throat dry.
“You father speaks highly of your intelligence and cunning.” Like a warm blanket the voice wrapped me and held on tight, a comfortable, protected feeling. Despite its rich, deep notes, it had an edge … an almost metallic undertone that grated against your nerves. It was at that moment I dubbed the speaker The Voice.
“Thank you, sir,” I responded quietly.
“He’s polite, Julian. I like them when they’re polite.”
Compared to the voice flowing from the phone, Julian’s sounded tinny and grating. “Yes sir. I tried to raise them correctly.”
“Young man,” the voice continued as if Julian had not spoken. “There will come a time, if you survive, that we might work together. The fact that we are speaking tells me that you do know more than one Word, as was reported. I’ve been monitoring your progress closely through the years, so you can imagine my surprise when I heard ‘one Word.’ ”
“Yes, sir.” I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I felt the sweat drenching my shirt.
“Julian,” the Voice said, his delivery clipped and formal. “How many Words indeed?”
The head of the Sicarii’s lips barely twitched in what might have been called a nervous smile. “All twelve, sir.”
“Ahhh.” A purr, the sound of a contented feline predator. “All twelve … very nice, Olivier. Too bad Professor von Andor did not catch you out in your little lie.”
“I can hold my own in a lie, sir.”
A long pause. “No, boy, you can’t. I know liars and you aren’t one, not yet, which makes the Professor’s oversight more egregious.”
Julian spoke up, “I’ll have a talk with him, sir. It won’t happen again.”
“No need to speak with him, Julian. I have received news that he suffered a terrible accident while speaking to his granddaughter on the telephone.”
Julian’s face gave the barest hint of shock before he quickly regained his composure. As for me, I was on edge. From the slight degree of smugness that had crept into the Voice, I
knew
that he had killed the Professor.
Mind you, no one much cared for the old Nazi. He was a cold, calculating, mean son-of-a-bitch who had a streak of bile a mile deep. I’d shed no tears for Professor Klaus von Andor, former employee of the Sicarri. Had I been given the job, I would have gladly killed him myself, but the Voice was more than capable of eliminating those in his employ.
“Anyway,” the Voice continued. “Don’t sweat the small stuff, Olivier, I will take care of that.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now … I have a very positive feeling about you, young man. If you keep your eyes open and survive the next few years, I think you and I shall become close. Yes, close indeed.”
That thought nearly stopped my heart. “Thank you, sir.” I don’t think I was capable of saying anything else at that point.
“Good. Good.”
Click!
The line went dead.
“That’s that,” Julian muttered, lips pursed.
Redeemer, Liar … prophesies of restoring balance to the world? I slipped the pages back into the manila envelope, more confused than ever. What the heck had I gotten myself into?
I looked over to the other bed and saw that Jude was fast asleep, snoring softly. A flick of a switch and the bedside light went out. For what seemed like hours, I lay in the dark wondering what terrible things might await us at journey’s end.
Chapter Eight
Jude
After scrubbing away my morning breath with a toothbrush, I dressed in black jeans and a black Cabo Wabo t-shirt, along with black Converse sneakers. What can I say? I like black.
Speaking of which, when I exited the bathroom, Mike had on his black uniform, if you can call a priest’s outfit a uniform. Still, he looked pretty snazzy for a big guy with a handlebar moustache.
I didn’t bother to ask how much he’d read; he’d tell me when the time was right. The knowledge that would unfold for him, if it didn’t drive him nuts, would allow me to see how far the Church’s forgiveness extended.
Despite the Rio Grande only a few hundred yards away, the air was dry enough to suck the moisture right out of my skin, such a contrast to the turgid humidity of Omaha.
Maybe it was the contented lull that had slid eel-like through my brain, or the mental fatigue of being on the run, or even the lack of constant training, but five steps into the parking lot, my eyes fixed on the Corolla, I stepped into a puddle of water.
Where that puddle had come from, I don’t know, but there it was in the middle of the otherwise bone-dry asphalt parking lot, soaking into my sneaker while dread clamped cold hands into my guts. Unlike with the shower I had taken earlier, I hadn’t used Avoidance to mask myself from the element.
Water talks.
I shouted, “Mike! We gotta go! Now, man!” Without waiting for an answer, I ran to the Corolla and made ready, trusting Mike would sense the urgency. A few seconds later my trust was rewarded as he opened the rear door and tossed our duffels in the back seat.
“What’s going on?” he panted, snapping the seatbelt around his waist.
“It’s Water,” I grunted as the Corolla fired up. Tire marks followed us out of the lot as we sped away. “I told you that Water was looking for me; what I didn’t tell you was how motivated Water would be in its search.”
“Mind explaining?”
“When God created the world, He gave life to the elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water, to help keep the world in harmony. Four original elements, the Four Old Ones, the Primals. Legend says they had no Language, only the feel for their kind. For millennia they were the caretakers of the natural world.”
“Four old elementals. I would hazard a guess that they are powerful.”
“Yeah, you could say that. Like the ocean is ‘pretty powerful.’ ”
“Then where did the other elementals come from?”
“All I have is conjecture, gleaned from various sources.” I turned onto the 10, racing north toward Sunland Park and Las Cruces. To our left, Juarez was revealed in all of its squalid and rotten glory, a gritty shame of a border town.
“Conjecture away,” Mike urged.
“Okay. It seems that when an elemental becomes large, or great in power, it … buds, or splits, shearing off a part of itself, a new elemental. Mitosis on a magical level.”
“So how did he find this Primal Water, if it so powerful?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
We passed quite a few miles of flat dry land in easy silence; then, just as we put a little town called Anthony in the rearview mirror, I felt a trembly sort of rumble from the front of the car.
“Damn,” I swore through gritted teeth.
Mike jolted out of his meditations. “What?”
“Left front tire is about to go,” I grumbled angrily as I braked and steered the car to the shoulder.
A quick inspection revealed a bubble in the sidewall of the tire, seconds away from blowing wide open. “Damn,” I swore again.
“Don’t worry, I have a spare,” Mike commented as he came around the car. “A rubber donut.”
A few minutes later saw us struggling with lug nuts rusted tight to the steel rim. Grunting and straining, we tugged on the lug wrench, shaking the little car back and forth.
Just as the third nut groaned loose, a voice hammered our ears, carried on the dry, dry breeze, “You gents look like you could use a little help.”
Mike and I stood staring at the stranger in the light of the morning sun. “Just changing a tire,” said Mike, extending a dirty hand.
The stranger was a big man with small piggy eyes, a red bulb of nose, an enormous belly that strained his green t-shirt and dirty jeans. A much-crumpled cowboy hat rested on his round head. “A priest, really?” He ignored the hand and began to laugh, round gut jiggling and jaggling.
“Yeah,” Mike replied, puzzled, and slowly lowered his hand.
Still laughing, the stranger raised a fist the size of a dinner plate and, faster than I thought a big guy like that could move, punched Mike in the stomach. The priest folded like a bad poker hand around that big fist. Still laughing, the stranger lifted Mike by the back of his shirt with one hand as if he weighed nothing and threw him clear over the car to disappear on the other side.