The Peregrine began moving through the city, heading towards the address Dieter had been given. The trek took a little over an hour, as the Peregrine kept to the shadows as much as possible. He could always ditch the mask and walk about in his suit, but there was the chance he could be stopped and asked for papers, of which he had none. Better, he thought, to use stealth.
The Peregrine finally arrived at the location, which was a small boarding house in one of the older parts of the city. Next door was a small shop of some kind and across the street was a butcher’s. Max crept around the back of the building, carefully peering inside. He saw several members of the Ten Fingers, all armed with a variety of weaponry: sai, shuriken and even pistols. The men were taking positions around the various entrances, obviously planning to strike as soon as the Peregrine entered the building.
Max continued around the boarding house until he was positive that the Warlike Manchu was nowhere to be found. He’d hoped that the master criminal would have wanted to take part in the ambush but obviously the Manchu was too clever for that. This was nothing more than a gamble on the villain’s side—if his men actually managed to kill the Peregrine, all the better. If they failed, they might still delay Max long enough for the Manchu to either successfully create the Philosopher’s Stone or else flee the country first.
The Peregrine took a deep breath, trying to consider his next move. He could try and locate Dieter again and beat him into giving more information… or he could enter this ambush and try to get information from the Ten Fingers.
In the end, it wasn’t much of a decision: he was angry and he wanted to hit something.
With a cold smile slowly spreading across his face, the Peregrine burst into the house through the window, landing in a rolling ball. He sprang up, guns blazing.
The Ten Fingers whirled about but it was obvious that they had been taken flatfooted. One of them managed to hurl a shuriken in Max’s direction but he was able to duck under the weapon, which embedded itself in the wall behind the Peregrine’s head.
Another rushed forward, his edged weapon—an Oriental sword known as a Sai—whipping through the air. The Peregrine dodged to his left, narrowly avoiding losing an ear to the man’s attack. Max was close enough to catch the fellow in the stomach with a knee, following that with the butt of his pistol against the man’s skull.
The Peregrine then resumed his firing at the others, using pinpoint aim to take them down.
Within seconds it was over. Two of the Ten Fingers lay on their backs, blood streaming from their shoulders and legs. Three more had been wounded in their stomachs and would die without medical treatment.
Max holstered his smoking weapons, feeling a cold rage growing within him. These idiots were willing to die for a man who saw them as nothing more than cattle… and nothing Max could say to them would ever make them realize their mistake.
The Peregrine looked around at them and asked in Chinese, “Where can I find your master? And answer me quickly… before I decide that all of you can handle a few more bullets.”
“We would die before betraying our lord,” one of them muttered through clenched teeth.
The Peregrine laughed then, a mirthless sound that was chilling to hear. “Then don’t bother betraying him. He’s like a living god to you, isn’t he? Then what does he have to fear from me? Tell me where to find him… so he can kill me once and for all.”
CHAPTER VII
The Philosopher’s Stone
The Warlike Manchu watched Jian at work, stroking his moustache as he observed the scene. Jian had sculpted a rectangular shape out of the various ingredients, including the odd powdery substance that had been hidden in the bust of Nefertiti.
“Are you finished?” the Manchu asked when his advisor backed away from his creation, which rested atop an otherwise bare table in the villain’s true hideout, which was located several miles from the scene of the anticipated ambush.
“I think so. I have gathered several small pieces of lead… if the mixture is correct, we should now be able to transform them into gold.” Jian looked into his master’s eyes, which burned with a hunger both literal and symbolic. “Obviously, the true power of the Philosopher’s Stone is not just that it creates items of material wealth… the gold produced is blessed with a healing power. Being in the presence of such can imbue the user with eternal life and health.”
The Manchu’s tongue darted out, licking his upper lip. He reached for the Stone and lifted it in both hands. It had the consistency of a recently dried mud brick, still soft enough to be crushed in his fingers if he squeezed but firm enough that it held together otherwise. “I’m hungry,” he informed Jian. “I have this overwhelming desire to sink my teeth into human flesh, to drink warm red blood and to watch as someone dies to satisfy my hunger. I thought it a curse at first… but it’s such a powerful display, to watch as another person dies to feed your belly.”
Jian shifted uneasily, disturbed by the sudden shift into discussion of cannibalism. “Should I fetch one of your prisoners?”
“No,” the Manchu said, smiling broadly. “I think I’ll try and slake my thirsts in another way.” The Warlike Manchu stunned his follower by extending his neck and taking a strong bite from the Philosopher’s Stone. He chewed it with a grimace, not liking the taste, but he did not pause until the entire thing was gone.
Jian watched in mute shock, his mouth hanging open. “Master… I am not certain that was wise.”
The Manchu ignored him, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand. He looked towards a member of the Ten Fingers, who was standing nearby. “Come,” he said, gesturing for the man to approach. The servant did so without hesitation, though he obviously recognized that his lord’s hunger had not been satisfied. The Warlike Manchu gripped the man and pulled him close, ripping his throat out with one powerful bite.
Jian took a step back, looking away until the sounds of his master’s gorging faded into silence. When he knew that the deed was completed and the corpse lay tossed to the floor, the aged advisor turned back, keeping his eyes lowered.
“You were saying?” the Manchu asked, wiping his chin on one of his oversized sleeves.
“Excuse me, my lord?”
“You were telling me that I shouldn’t have eaten the Stone. Why would you say that?” The Manchu reached towards the table, gripping a piece of lead. He closed his eyes and a strange orange glow surrounded his hand. When he relaxed his grip, he opened his palm to reveal that the lead pieces were now entirely composed of gold.
Jian swallowed hard, having lost the ability to speak temporarily. “I just meant that there are stories of the Stone not working for those whose hearts are not pure… I was merely fearful for your safety.”
“Then you should have warned me earlier.” The Manchu’s eyes narrowed and his face became feline and menacing. “And why would you think I would not count as pure, my trusted advisor? Do I not seek to bring peace and order to this fractured world?”
“Of course… I was only…”
“Trying to sabotage me further.” The Manchu turned away, his robes rustling with every step. “I know that you left a clue back in Atlanta, in hopes of luring the Peregrine to Germany in time to stop me.”
Jian straightened, one hand delving into a pocket at his side. He fingered a sharpened blade and awaited what was surely to come. “I have served you faithfully for many decades.”
“Yes… but not with the same sort of devotion that my other adherents possess. In some ways, that is why I kept you around. You were not blind to my faults. You would not tell me whatever I wanted to hear. But now you have overstepped your bounds. You have taken active steps to try and foil me. I am not happy.” The Warlike Manchu stopped in the doorway and turned his gaze back upon the aged advisor, whose parents had died at his command so many years before. “You have exactly ten seconds to tell me why I should not kill you.”
Jian bared his teeth and hissed like a tiger, snatching out his blade and hurling it with amazing accuracy. The Warlike Manchu’s hand shot upwards in a blur, catching the blade mere inches from his throat.
“Such a fool. You could have stood by my side in the new world order… but once again, I am betrayed by those who are of lesser blood.” The Manchu tossed the knife aside and raised both hands above his hand. He called upon the powers that now raged within him, products of the all-powerful Philosopher’s Stone. The ability to turn lead into gold was a potent ability, to be sure… but the Stone was about far more than that. It was about transfiguration of the spirit and the body as much as of metal.
Jian screamed as his body began to burn with a strange form of heat. He staggered back, noting that his skin and clothing were beginning to be covered by a golden sheen, a rapidly spreading set of scales that extended up past his waist, pinning his arms to his sides and then on up to his neck. Jian screamed out obscenities but could do nothing as the gilded surface enclosed his entire face, leaving only the tiniest of holes for him to breathe through and slits for him to see out of his golden prison.
“Think on your mistake,” the Manchu whispered. “As you slowly starve to death, you will realize that you should have learned from your parents’ example.”
Jian answered his murderer then, though his words were lost in the muffled confines of the prison. “I did,” he said. “I learned from their example, you monster…”
CHAPTER VIII
To Duel with Death
The Peregrine flew through the darkened streets, night having fallen quickly. Max could only imagine what the Fuehrer was doing tonight, with the last of his so-called ‘super agents’ dead and the tide of war slowly beginning to turn against him. Through his various contacts, Max knew that Enrico Fermi had recently led a team in initiating the world’s first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Though the news was at the highest levels of top-secret security, Leonid Kaslov was privy to such things and he’d shared the news with Max, even telling him that code-words used to inform President Roosevelt were “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.” It was only a matter of time before America had a powerful weapon to bring down the Axis powers… of course, the Nazis had their own weapons program but Max felt certain they wouldn’t reach their goal first. The Germans were spread too thin and in too many directions… were they going to bring down the Russians? Or the British? Or were they focused on America? And would they achieve victory through conventional means or through the supernatural? Hitler couldn’t seem to make up his mind.
From rooftop to rooftop, the Peregrine bounded, sprinting and leaping. From time to time, men and women on the streets below would look up and catch him in mid-air, partially silhouetted against the full moon.
The Peregrine reached the address given him by the Ten Fingers, panting from his exertions. It was an old tavern and boarding house, closed for quite some time from the looks of it. Max knew this area of Berlin had once been home to a number of Jewish owned businesses, most of which had been seized by the Aryans upon their ascensions to power.
To Max’s surprise, the front doors were standing open, two members of the Ten Fingers outside. The Peregrine moved forward, still standing on the rooftop of the building next door, and one of the men looked upwards, staring into the barrel of the Peregrine’s pistol. The Peregrine was prepared to fire but the man held up both hands in obvious surrender.
“The master is waiting for you inside. He wishes me to congratulate you on surviving such an obvious trap but he advises that if you value your life, you will now turn tail and return to the United States.”
The Peregrine fired his pistol, shooting the man in the left leg. He then jumped from the rooftop, blocking a blow from the other member of the Ten Fingers. Max followed with a powerful karate chop to the man’s ribs, finishing him off by grabbing hold of the villain’s hair and slammed his head into his raised knee.
After checking to make sure that the sound of gunfire didn’t attract too much attention, Max made for the door. He saw one or two people peer fearfully from their windows in his direction but none allowed their gaze to linger for too long. Such was life under Hitler’s reign.
The Peregrine found that his path was fairly well laid out before him. No other members of the Ten Fingers were present and only a peculiar golden statue of an old Chinaman caught Max’s attention until he reached what had once been the master bedroom upstairs. The Warlike Manchu sat in this room, sitting languidly on a throne that looked like it dated back to one of the Imperial Chinese Dynasty.
“Welcome, my former pupil.” The Warlike Manchu leaned forward, his eyes glittering. Something about him seemed different than before. He seemed feral and somehow inhuman. Max saw dried blood on the master villain’s robes. “I commend you on your victory when last we met. You alone were able to defeat me.”
“Your daughter helped.”
“I’m sure. I will save a special revenge for her when I am done with you.” The Manchu rose from his throne, watching as the Peregrine moved slowly towards him, gun in hand. “I was reborn with stranger hungers, Max. I crave human flesh… nothing less will satisfy me.”
“You were always a monster. Now it’s just more obvious.” The Peregrine raised his gun, pointing it level with the Manchu’s face. “You should have stayed dead. It’s where you belong.”
“I once thought you could rule at my side,” the Manchu said, ignoring the danger. “But now I see that you are far too weak to do so. You lack the killer instinct that tigers possess… you see the weak and the sick amongst humanity and you reach out a hand to aid them, rather than culling them from the strong. There are too many like you in the world, which had led to its current decadent state of affairs.”
“I’m not here to chat.” The Peregrine squeezed the trigger but gasped when he noticed that his gun was now a golden color, its entire surface having been transformed by the Manchu’s power. “What the hell…?”
“I am so much more than I once was,” the Warlike Manchu said, his eyes glowing with an inner light. “I have devoured the Philosopher’s Stone.”