The Alleyway (Skid – GTT character sketch)

Skid stood in the mouth of the alley that ran behind the Westminster church.  His languid gaze casually strolled both ways, trying to pierce the damp fog that shrouded the London nightlife around him. He couldn’t see any flatfoots patrolling the area, and if he couldn’t see them then they couldn’t see him.

A hooker quickly walked past him, wrapped in a thick fur coat with her shoulders slumped, giving the impression that she was ragged and beaten, and not caring enough to show her wares on this cold night.

Her jaded and tired eyes quickly looked him up and down – sizing him up as she passed.  But she saw only a fourteen-year-old street kid wearing torn jeans, a ripped shirt, and a frayed gray trench.  He was definitely not John material, at least not for a few more years.  Then she looked back to the pavement before her feet, not wanting to stare too long – afraid of baiting him into attacking her.

He thought about rolling her for a moment, but shrugged the idea off.  Juicing whores always pissed off the pimps and they were real trouble.  Those guys where colder than ice and they would as soon slit your throat as look at you.  Besides, she had obviously been at her job for far too long and was loosing what looks she may have once had. The hag probably wouldn’t have much dough on her anyway.

Ugly whores were always fairly broke – but they stayed alive because there was always some schmuck who couldn’t afford to buy anything better.  Once she was a bit further down the block he reached into the depths of his faded and beaten trench pulling out two cans of stolen spray paint.  One was black and the other red.  Now: to do the job that he was really here to do.  He grinned and turned into the alley.

The Alleyway was dank and smelly.  The fog was dampening everything there, and as a result the fine layer of dew was covering the trash.  The added moistness only made the trash rot – which added to the putrid stench.  Skid grimaced and tried to only breathe through his mouth.

As thoughts ran through his head he began to get a bit giddy from the adrenaline rush – which made it easier to ignore the fetid smell.  Tagging the house of God.  There was no act deemed greater in Skid’s skewed reality.

Skid hated God, and his hatred coursed and flowed in his veins with a dark passion love could never know.  He had grown up mostly in orphanages and catholic charity boarding schools.  His parents hadn’t wanted him, so had given him up – and he hated them too for not loving him.

But the lord of mankind held a special place in Skid’s blackened heart… But the way he figured it his heart was no worse than anyone else’s.  After all: look at all the messed up thing people do to each other every day.  But God he definitely hated most of all.  It was hatred so deep even Lucifer Morningstar would envy it and place it on display for all in Hell to see.  God had hurt him more than every other.  God had given him every piece of pain in his life.  Every shard of Skid’s shattered soul, every wasted tear, shed only to mingle with his own blood, was God’s responsibility.

Throughout his entire childhood the nuns had all beaten him for reasons he couldn’t understand.  Three of the priests had raped him and then, feeling guilty over the act, had him beaten for being the temptation that led them to sin.  He remembered the faces of all the nuns and priests.  In fact, he remembered with a perfect clarity every single face that had ever caused him pain over the course of his brief life.

Someday he would… he would get even.  Someday he would do much worse to them than they had to him.  After all, was he not taught that what you cast unto waters you receive tenfold?  He would have his revenge.  And right now he was starting it.  He was going to tag this church with his name.  He was going to make this house his spiritual property and take it away from a useless God… and he would do it to every church in London.

He quickly scanned the alley.  It was filled by cardboard fantasies of homes never had and visions of a soulless future.  It was obvious that homeless often tried to camp here but were booted out by the coppers.  Right now the only life sharing this space with Skid was a homeless old man, dirty and pale, asleep under a pile of newspapers.  Skid walked up to him and planted his steel tipped toe right into the old geezer’s ribs.

“Oi, grandfather.  Shove off!”  Just to make sure his point was gotten he planted another kick into the man’s midsection.  Much to Skid’s surprise the old man didn’t budge.  He didn’t even groan at the force of the kick.

Skid was young – he knew that he didn’t have much muscle –but his life had made him tough.  He knew how to throw his entire weight into a kick so he would break bones – a trick he learned quickly so that whomever he was fighting with would not be getting back up.  Skid looked again at the man, this time much more closely, and realized that his chest wasn’t moving.  Well, the skagger was stone cold dead.  What d-ya’ know, it was turning out to be Skid’s lucky night.  He could roll the body and at least come away with a decent pair of boots.  If he were really lucky the old-timer would have a half-consumed bottle of booze.

Skid knelt next to the man and started pulling the newspapers off.  One of the headlines, briefly glimpsed, amused him.  It read “London’s Abused Homeless Population: Death Rate Up By Twenty Percent.”

Sure enough the man was clutching something to his chest.  He began to pry at the man’s cold stiff fingers, eager to see what prize tonight’s treasure hunt would reveal.  But the corpse’s fingers – locked as tightly as they were – wouldn’t budge despite Skid’s best efforts.  Skid braced himself and yanked with all of his fourteen-year-olds strength, not caring if he ripped the guy’s hand off.  He wanted whatever it was the old man had valued so dearly.  He wanted it very badly.  And finally the death embrace of the old man’s hands broke – without tearing off any body parts.

Skid looked in awe at what he saw revealed.  The old fart had been hiding a fragging sword under his trench.  The blade was some type of blue gray metal and it looked sharp and really old.  The hilt was leather wrapped, and there was some writing etched into it in a language Skid didn’t even recognize.  It looked vaguely like Sumerian, or at least what Skid vaguely remember Sumerian looking like from the ancient history course he had been in right before he ran away last time.  He couldn’t even begin to read the fragging letters.  Talk about luck! This was an awesome find – hell, this was probably his best find ever.

Skid’s greedy little eyes lighted up – he should be able to pull at least fifty or sixty pounds out of this find at the right place – and that was a whole lot of money to someone like him.  He reverentially reached down and let his fingers wrap around the hilt.  It was cold to the touch and seemed to slightly vibrate almost like a heartbeat.  The old man’s eyes fluttered open and his hand shot out faster than lightning and seized Skid’s lapel.  Skid jerked back in surprise, and the fingers of his free hand tore at the old man’s fist.  Again Skid found that he couldn’t break the bum’s grip.

“Let go of me you old asshole!  I’ll cut your hand off and fucking kill you if you don’t let go of me!”  Skid was panicking – this guy should be a corpse, not alive and stronger than Skid – but he remembered enough to not shout.  Never do anything to attract the attention of the coppers.

The old man’s voice sounded like the creaking of an ancient door, rusty and feeble but with faint hints of golden times that were so much greater.  “Listen to me…  please…  please… Oh gods…  the caves… I remember them so very well.  You were so young… so innocent… so naïve and trusting… So simple – and yet you were so beautiful.”

Cloudy, dull eyes, which should have been blind, drifted to Skid’s hand and locked their feeble gaze onto the sword.  “Please… You can have the sword; just listen to my story.  I have to tell my story before it passes from this world.  Please.”

Greed instantly overcame Skid’s panic, calming him.  His hands stopped shaking and he stopped fighting the iron grip holding him down.  “All right.  You got three minutes.  Then I got work ta do.”  Fifty pounds to listen to some dying old man rant for a few minutes…  hell; Skid could be generous and do him a favor.  This was easily earned money for him, so why not.  Besides, he was pretty sure he couldn’t break away from the hand gripping his lapel, and he didn’t want to loose his jacket.

The old man imperceptibly nodded his acknowledgement.  Skid had accepted the terms so a bargain was struck.

“Thank you.  You do honor to the needs of a dying old man.”  Came his feeble voice.  “How well I remember it all – looking at you humans in your youth.  You were so weak and helpless…  But you had such strong minds, willing to believe with a force even we did not posses.  We decided to help you to rise above the caves – to nourish your type and give the gift of enlightenment.  We saw a way to gain for ourselves a much longer life span by insuring the continuance of your race.  By giving you something to focus that powerful belief on.  Ah…” The man’s voice sounded pained.  “How brightly the Morningstar shone for your sake.  How brightly…  for it was his idea to help you – and his idea how as well.”

Skid didn’t really understand what the hells this guy was talking about and finally realized that the guy was seriously deranged – a total fucking loony.  He must think he was some alien or something.  But then again a lot of the old farts eeking out a pitiful existence on the foggy streets of London were mostly delusional anyway.  Skid shifted his weight to make himself little more comfortable and waited for the story to continue.

The old man drew a ragged breath then continued.  “First came the paintings…  such bright and vivid pictures… and how wondrously you sang our praises for us.  But how very quickly you became clever too…”

Skid saw a tear forming in the old man’s eye.  “Why?  Why?  You could have given us forever…  and we would have given you everything you wanted…  We would have gifted you everything you could ever hope for.  Life immortal and every other desire your hearts had ever dreamed of…”

Skid was beginning to feel the overwhelming pressures of panic again.  What if this crazy wouldn’t let go?  What if he died and rigor mortis set in?  He’d have to cut his fragging jacket and man it was too cold out to rip up his jacket.  But again greed showed its ugly head and he managed to settle back down – after all the money made would more than pay for Skid’s troubles.  He’d go ahead honor the rest of the three minutes.  After all, there is a shifty type of honor amongst thieves and criminals… and by Skid’s reasoning anyone the cops hassled was a criminal – and the cops hassled the homeless more than anyone else.

The old man seemed to realize that whatever internal struggle Skid had been facing was finished.  Sighing, he continued.  “But you are all fickle.  Even more so than us…  And you had no idea what it was that you actually wanted.  You’ve never known your own hearts.  Oh, Morningstar I loved you so.  You were brighter than any of us…  brighter than all of us combined.  Why did you have to die out?  Oh why did you have to leave us?  We needed you…  Why did I have to witness you fall to a mere human?”

The man bit back a sob.  He seemed to be talking to someone out of the past, someone only he could see.  “You taught them to write, to read, to think.  And they killed you.  We guided you through your lives, your so short but so bright lives…  And in the end you betrayed even us…  We gave you the gift of immortality, a way to live after even death…  to be a part of the universe.  And you threw it away.”

Sorrow deeper than any Skid had known passed across the old man’s face  “All we ever asked was your praise and love – in such a way that we could find strength and will in it.  We guided your kings and princes.  We led those whose love flowed most freely to the greatest victories.  We allowed them to lead other men and conquer nations.  They were allowed to inspire the hearts of thousands.  What a small price to pay…  only a year or two from each life.”

Skid felt Goosebumps crawling up the back of his spine.  The last thing this guy had said…  hadn’t life spans been going up over the last few centuries?  This guy was really starting to creep him out.  He didn’t – and couldn’t – really understand what the old man was saying.  But deep down, in the tarnished soul that Skid held in nothing but contempt, the words resonated with truth – and that scared Skid even more than when the old priests had told him about the little ‘games’ they would be playing.  These words scared Skid more than anything ever had.

Numbness spread throughout his brain but he heard his own voice quietly echoing in the space between them.  “But what changed it all?”  Some deep part of Skid’s brain seemed to be comprehending the story being told to him.

A deep chuckle came from the old man’s throat.  He was seeing some grander joke in Skid’s words, but still retaining his iron grip on Skid’s collar.  “One of yours did it.  He shone brightly, that one did.  He had the fire and passion to rival any of us – with a mind to match.  He almost burned as brightly as the Morningstar himself…  But young Jeshua did not understand the depths of our love or the tenderness of our compassion.  He told me once that he felt like a slave – destined to live by the decree of another.  He could not understand the gift we gave both him and you…  We tried to teach him the ways of the universe – but the dedication we showed was invisible to him.”

The old man stopped talking and began to cough.  The fit seized him and racked his entire body, rattling deeply in his lungs, but he never released his vice-like grip.  The old man obviously only had a few moments left to live.  Skid was so lost in the man’s words he didn’t even think to try breaking free and didn’t realize that the three minutes had elapsed.

Once the coughing fit subsided the old man hungrily sucked air into his lungs and then continued with his confusing story.  “So he turned against us.  He betrayed the ones who had loved him so – and we had shown him a love greater than any of you ever has or ever will know.  He left us… and once he had left he used the fire and beauty of his vision to attempt to lead our children against us.  The monks called him the great teacher and gifted him the title of Christos.  So he led them and he taught them his warped version of the truth inherent in us…  He used the very concept that we had created to benefit you – the greatest of beings who watched over all – against us.  He tried to turn and warp that worship to himself, or at least away from us, to reap the rewards of ages of our workings and take it away from those that loved you all so much.  He tried to destroy us to free humanity and never realized that so doing would eventually destroy humanity as well.”

The man’s voice wavered with sorrow and regret.  “Oh that our most beloved son would turn against us so…  The pain it caused within us all – that such beauty and tranquility in one of you could turn to such hatred and loathing upon us.  It was a heartbreaking time for us…  We were all so unsure of what our course of action should have been…  You see, we wanted so badly to save him, but in the end we simply couldn’t.”

“We all mourned so much for him, but he left us no choice – If we were to survive we had to take his essence.  It had to be done, and publicly, to stop him and his followers.  It was necessary to stop him before it went too far… before he could succeed.  We mourned so at doing this terrible deed, but should he have triumphed in usurping us it would have meant all of our deaths.”

The old man’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile.  “But In the actions we took we only managed to sow the seeds of our own downfall.  The Morningstar tried to save us all – he foresaw what none of us could have…  He assumed our beloved son’s form three days after his death – thinking to spread a new gospel through our dead son’s disciples.”

A chill ran through Skid’s body.  He was finally beginning to understand…  and with his dawning comprehension a wave of nausea slid over him.  His hushed voice came out barely audible and filled with a dread chill.  He feared what the answer to his next question would be.  “And what did the Morningstar tell the disciples… what did he tell them when he came back as Jeshua?”

The old man coughed for a moment more then refocused on Skid.  “He sacrificed himself in the attempt to save the rest of us.  That was what his words brought.  How noble he was…  but how naïve – although I suppose we all were back then.  He named himself as the true evil, as the counterpart to the one we had created, hoping that fear of evil would get humanity to love the rest of us that much more…  he fed himself only hatred and disgust.  It was such a foolish sacrifice.  How twisted and dimmed he became before he… before he finally died.  He was only the dimmest of shadows compared to the intensity with which he used to shine.  Even so, with corruption and hatred eating at the very essence of his being, only I amongst my kind actually outlived him.”

Tears were now running unfettered down the ancient’s face.  “His last attempt at survival spawned such evil…  He used the visage he assumed to twist the minds of millions and plunge the world into one of its darkest ages… to kill millions upon millions more… and he turned against the ones who were our first children.  Plunging the entire world into war was not enough for him.  He created camps of slaughter, trying to reap as much hatred, fear, and death as he could.  In death and corruption he hoped to find the power he lost when he gave up the love of your kind to try to save the rest of us.  And that much death is what ended up killing him.  It almost finished me too – and I was half the world away, hiding from it all.  Despite my hiding it would have killed me too, had it not been for my particular aspect…  Throughout the ages I have become used to the mass death of your kind.  It is why I have found the strength to continue as long as I have.”

Yet another coughing fit racked the man’s body and Skid gazed down upon him.  The ancient one was standing one the threshold of death’s door.  The puzzle pieces of what he was saying were finally clicking together and reaching the greatest depths of Skid’s mind and soul – and something that was not a part of him was burning deeply inside of him.  Skid felt the beginnings of a sickening vertigo – a sense of loss that was coming from him – and was slowly seeping into the depths of his soul.

Hatred and rage boiled inside his twisted heart and they were slowly worming their way through his being and into his every level of consciousness.  His mind was swimming and his thoughts were becoming numb – forlorn with knowledge unbearable by even the strongest man.  He was slowly understanding that his greatest enemy did not exist in a way which he could wreak his vengeance.

The old man looked up through fading eyes – greed and recognition shone from behind those eyes.  He began the final stretch of his tale.

“The Morningstar’s great plan failed.  None of us could see past the need for love… the need for essence.  It burned in us and consumed us.  In a way it twisted us all.  We created an image that humanity could love, and stole the love for ourselves by placing us as His seconds.  But the only one of you to ever shine like one of us undid everything.  For he had found such a burning hatred for our kind that it easily bested all of our love.  But a few of us learned to live on the hatred instead, forsaking love, even though it only twisted and blackened us.  We did it – though it drove most of those who learned how insane.  The need for survival was far too great.  And then the need for vengeance became to strong to forsake by dying off…”

The old man burned with an inner rage of his own and his words came out like fire, forever searing themselves into Skid’s head.

“I curse you and your kind.  We loved you.  For aeons we loved you.  And you killed the God we made for you… you killed Him.  And then you fed us nothing but hate and in the end you took even that away leaving us to die… we shall have our revenge…”

And Skid snapped.

Years of hatred and fear – years of being the underdog, forced into action by the whims of others – welled up in his spiteful little mind and took over.  Ripping his jacket free he stood up, towering above the dying old man, sword raised high above his head.

The old man looked up with mutual hatred shining in his eyes and a smile crossed his face.  “You’ve spent the last two thousand years killing us off and now I am the last.  But I will survive… In one of you if I must!”

Spittle flew from his mouth as he rushed to get his last words out.  “You alone still hate.  Why?  What do you live on?  I must know.”

His eyes locked with Skids but found only emptiness.

And Skid brought the sword down as hard as he could.  Every muscle in his young body focused into that single stroke of the sword.  There was a sickening crunch as the sword sliced through skin and crushed the ribs in its way.  Blood splattered over Skid and the wall he was going to tag.  The blood was gold and icy to the touch.  As it hit the wall frost formed around it.

Unseeing and unthinking Skid began to kick the body.  Over and over again he smashed his boot into the corpse while tears streamed down his cheeks.  Years of hatred, fear, and self-loathing had snapped his mind – and his innermost psychological defenses could not find a way to heal the fracturing.

Skid had walked into that alley to make the house of God his own.  But now all that stood in the alleyway was an empty husk slowly filling up with something else, kicking over and over again, the tears streaming down its face the last vestiges of its humanity.

And finally the body broke down.  There was no energy left to continue.  It slumped to its knees and started rocking back and forth.  He curled into a ball, sobbing and letting his frail human psyche try to rebirth itself.

But finally there was not even energy for that.  His body shut down and he slept.

Much later he woke.  It was still dark.  A faint smile played across his lips.  He stood up, tall and proud, lacking his usual slouch.  He hefted the sword and gazed thoughtfully at it.  A dim golden glow was barely visible in his pupils.  Suddenly the blade burst into a bright and warm flame.

His eyes wandered to the sky as he savored his newfound essence.  The sun was just peeking over the horizon, adding a rich red glow to the encompassing fog.

“I finally understand.  Your fear is so great you have only apathy to survive on.  Your race hides from its own passion…” He said in a voice that was not Skid’s.  The figure seemed to ponder this for a moment.  “Even Morningstar never foresaw this.  But I can survive with this.”

And the Archangel Uriel, flame of God, the angel of transformation, stretched his new body and strode into the foggy London morning to avenge the death of his kind.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree, Pt 3, Conclusion

They were uncharacteristically silent as Josh drove them back to the storm drain that Amber had found.  Each was dealing with their own thoughts, getting ready for a terrifying experience.  Drew alone didn’t sit still, instead taking the time to stretch and limber up his muscles.  Stripped down to just his shorts, crisscrossing lines of scars could be seen across his torso, arms, and back.  It took Josh a moment to find a spot to park the Bus at, but finally they were ready.  The group piled out, walking carefully and quietly over to the drain cover.

Tabitha looked around at everyone one last time.  “The second you’re in the dark, I want you shifted. You’ll need your extra senses.  Got it?”

Everyone nodded.

“Good.  I’m going down first.  Drew, pop it for me.  You take rear guard.”

Drew nodded. He reached down with his right hand and grabbed the cover of the drain.  His  muscles seemed to ripple, his arm elongating and getting thicker as he flexed it, then the storm drain cover popped off and he was fully human again.

Amber gasped.  “How the hell did you do that?”

Drew grinned wolfishly.  “Later, little girl.  Now’s not the time.” He grunted a little and got his shoulder under the drain cover, holding it up with his entire body.

Tabitha grinned, then got serious.   “All right.”  She took a deep breath.  “Lets do this.”   With a light splash her backpack landed in the sewer below.  She tucked her knees up, and hopped in, spinning around and kicking down onto the ladder rungs, catching herself right at the lip of the entrance.  “Discipline and calm kids.  Keep your heads, and stay focused, okay?”

Everyone was nodding yes as something flashed in the darkness below her and she just… vanished.  No scream, no noise.  One second she was there, the next she wasn’t.

“Shit!”  Drew threw back the cover with so much force that it dented the dumpster it crashed into. “Follow me in.”  He hopped forward and was in wolf form before he landed in the sewers. The pack could hear him growling as they followed him down.  As each of them reached the bottom of the ladder they shifted obediently to wolf form, except Eliot.  He dropped down, slung off his backpack, and started rifling through gear.

Jenna put her nose down to try to catch Tabitha’s scent, and almost fell over whimpering when she inhaled.  No scent. she growled.  Can’t smell anything down here.  Use your ears and eyes.  Nose is a bad idea.

Drew spun around snarling as blood splattered across the rest of the pack.  His left flank was torn open, but he had a vampire’s wrist in his jaws, and was jerking his head back and forth.  A wolf has a jaw capable of tearing out a man’s throat in a single bite, and werewolves are even stronger than normal wolves.  But Drew was fighting against supernatural strength and losing.

As the rest of the pack leapt forward to join the fight, they saw Drew’s hind leg buckle under him.  The Vampire started to lunge forward, but he reversed his momentum and pulled back instead as he saw Amber’s black form come sailing over Drew.  She snarled and snapped at his neck, forcing him to bring his arm up to try to deflect her, but she had purposefully overshot her jump and sailed past him.

Seizing the distraction, Jenna and Josh darted in low on his flanks, ripping gouges of muscles out of his calves.  Jenna spun and darted back to protect Drew, who was pulling himself back, still snarling.   Josh kept his momentum, ripping at the Vampires leg, and spinning the creature around like a top as he loped up to Amber.

The Vampire hissed, exposing its fangs, and in a barely human voice spoke.  “Dogs.  Eat your blood dogs.  Come play dogs.”  Tradition should have made the Vampire’s voice sound like the opening of an ancient crypt, or possibly cobwebs should be heard in his voice while it made spiders creep down the listener’s spine.   In truth though, he sounded like a junkie in detox who got clubbed in the head; kind of a jittery loud whisper, slurred, without a lot of capability to think behind it.

His eyes kept darting back and forth as he twisted his torso to keep all four wolves in his line of sight.  Looking into his eyes, the pack saw nothing but a rabid animal inside.  And there was only one thing to do to a rabid animal.

Put it Down. Drew growled. Carefully though.  Harry it, and don’t give it a chance to close with any of you.

Aye, aye, captain obvious. Wuffed Amber.  It sounded like a sneeze, with her trying not to laugh, and was so out of place that the Vampire spun around to her, suspect an attack at his back.  Josh lunged forward, ready to strike and fade.  And that’s where it all went wrong.

Tactics like that only work when a creature is trying to preserve itself, but the Vampire was insane; its soul was stripped away and ripped to shreds when it had been turned and lost its mind.  All that was left was a beast that was driven by hate.  When Amber didn’t attack him, he charged her and Jenna instead.

Josh’s jaws closed over empty air as the Vampire took Jenna and Amber by surprise.   There was a sickening crunch as his claws sunk into Jenna’s chest, ripping through her fur and muscles.  He sunk his hands into her ribs and swung her around, smashing her into Josh and sending them both crashing into the sewer wall.  They landed in a heap and neither moved.

While his back was exposed Amber leapt forward with a snarl and landed heavily on his back, latching her jaws around the back of his neck.  He started whipping around, howling in pain, trying to dislodge her.

Drew hunkered down, getting ready to spring into the fight despite his bad leg, when a hand lightly touched his shoulder and a barely visible shadow moved forward.  He paused, and the shadow moved in front of him.

“Hey, asshole.”  Eliot’s voice floated calmly through the darkness. “Don’t ever touch my friends again.”  There were two clicks as the triple cell black-lights he was holding in each hand sprang to life.  The Vampire screamed and fell to its knees sobbing, his skin starting to smolder and the torn up clothes he was wearing bursting into flame, finally lighting the underground battlefield.  Amber sprang back off of him.  The Vampire slumped forward and fell face first into the water, his life-force drained, burnt out of him.

The wolves didn’t have time to relax though, before Tabitha’s limp form came hurling out of the darkness behind Amber and smashed into Eliot, shattering the black-lights.

A woman’s voice, rich and deep, obviously used to laughter, came rolling out of the darkness.  “Oh well done, my pretties.  I didn’t expect you to be able to take my pet so easily.  Yet you managed.  I must applaud the elder.”  The voice sighed.  “How she has aged.  Those delicate young features lining with age.  If only she had my secret.”  Laughter drifted down the dark sewer.

Amber backed up, hackles raised, till she was poised between Drew and Eliot.  Eliot wasn’t paying attention to the voice, focused instead on getting Tabitha settled and checking her vitals.  He found a heartbeat, which seemed to be enough for him, then he stood up, pulling a gun out of his pocket.  Dull oranges and reds highlighted the passageway, a flickering dance of macabre light from the smoking remains of the feral Vampire.  Without a word he pulled the massive chrome monstrosity to shoulder height and started squeezing the trigger.

Burps of flame flashed in the tunnel as he shot bullets at the source of the voice, slowly walking forward.  The gun clicked empty and he dropped the clip, slapping another into its place in under a second and continuing to fire.

Amber sprang forward to his side, man and wolf calmly walking forward, towards the voice.  Tabitha’s voice sounded weak, but she struggled up and said “Stop.  She’ll kill you.”

The Vampire woman’s voice cut through the darkness like a katana through silk. “Oh, pet, you are ruining my fun.”  There was a blur in the edge of the ember glow, and two wet thuds.  Eliot and Amber went flying backwards, bouncing off the tunnel walls and landing in broken heaps behind Tabitha.  Drew growled and limped forward.

The elder vampire woman was finally standing in the light, languidly relaxing in by the crisped remains of her feral companion.  She was about five foot five, but carried such a presence that she seemed to fill the murky corridor from floor to ceiling.  Dark hair cascaded in lavish curls down her pale, heart shaped face, and the rich velvet red an black gown Victorian gown she wore seemed to glow with the power that surrounded her.

With an elegant gesture of her hand, the corpse at her feet simply slid to the side, clearing a path between her and the two elder werewolves.  She crooked a finger and beckoned to Drew.  “Come child, lets dance, shall we?”

Drew was only too happy to oblige her, spring from his crouch with a snarl.  She reached out, lightning fast, to catch him by the throat, but his form rippled in midair.  He snaked his head out of the way, reached forward with an arm and landed a vicious slice with half formed claws across her chest.  But then her hand was clamped around his wrist, pushing him to the ground until he was kneeling before her.

Glancing down at her shredded gown, fangs poked her bottom lip as she frowned.  Twenty feet away Tabitha was struggling to get to her feet.  The vampire’s elegant gown was ruined, hanging in strips from her waist.  She sighed.  “And this was a brand new gown too.  Do you know how expensive it is to get my wardrobe crafted these days?  Insolent pup?  Still…”

Drew looked up through the pain and noticed her nipples were erect.  This was obviously exciting her.  “Who the hell are you?” he gasped.

“I, sir,”  She smiled languidly. “am her Excellency, niece to the King of Poland, Countess Elizabeth Bathory.  And you… well, as I like to say, Vini, Vidi, Vita Vaci.”  The countess swept her left hand up across Drew’s torso and chest.  Blood sprayed against the walls on either side of them.  A gurgle escaped Drew’s throat as he slumped to the ground.

Tabitha had managed to pull herself up.  “Do you really see yourself as Caesar?  I came, I saw, I took life?”

“Oh dear no.  Caesar was a small minded, cruel little man who tried to make up for great insecurity with great feats of conquering.  I am a force of nature.   An immortal.  Its just a little affectation of mine.  But you.  You get to live again.”

Holding on to pipe bolted high on the wall, Tabitha narrowed her eyes.  “Why me, bitch?”

“Oh, you are just so cute I could eat you up.  Of course, that wouldn’t help in keeping you alive to feel your pain, now would it?”

Tabitha was thankful that Bathory was evil.  A good hearted person wouldn’t have talked, wouldn’t have gloated, and wouldn’t have given her a chance to gather her willpower together.

“Tabitha, your blood is the answer.  Your line.  If you go back in the family tree, you will discover that you are of the same blood as Istvan Magyari.”  She practically spat the name.  “That fool minister was the sole reason I lost my estate and was imprisoned in that damned tower.  If it hadn’t been for my dear friend Vladimyr, I most likely would have died in there.”

She delicately wiped Drew’s blood off her face.  “It is for his sins that you pay.  As will your descendants.  You will die alone, as I extinguish any life that comes too close to your own.”

Bathory stopped walking forward and the two women were face to face, with maybe five feet separating them.  Tabitha focused as she saw the Countess’s eyes start to swirl, red and lavender.  Tension ripped at her shoulders forcing her hands apart.  She recognized the feeling, and knew that they were sharing mindspace, battling with will alone.

But old dogs can learn new tricks…  This time, as Tabitha felt the wood of the crucifix scrape roughly against her back, she fed the fire.  All of her hate, all of her sorrow, everything that had built a lifetime of pain she fed to the fire.  And it burned.  It burned like nothing in the real world could, consuming the pain, consuming the hatred, consuming the weariness… until all that was left was steel, forged in a mind of power, by an opposing will.

Tabitha snapped open her eyes and smiled.  Bathory reeled back, shocked by having her will resisted.  Human arms, augmented by lycanthrope strength, snapped forward, and claw tipped finger closed like a vice around Countess Bathory’s throat.

The Countess, in turn, realized that she wouldn’t get back into Tabitha’s mind, so returned the favor and started choking her.  The two were locked in a struggle to see who would go unconscious first.  Both were doing their best to crush the other’s throat.

“I’m impressed, child.” Gasped the Countess.  “But you can’t win this.  Vampires can retain consciousness in much more dire circumstances.”

Not..  Fucking… Fair… Thought Tabitha, as her vision started to swim and go black around the edges.  Can’t end… like…  this…

A boy’s voice, dripping with a heavy British accent, one she didn’t recognize, came from behind Countess Bathory.  “And so it shan’t, noble werewolf.”  Three feet of steel ripped through her chest and burst into flame.  The Vampire shrieked, blood flying from her mouth.  She leapt forward, bowling over Tabitha and away from the threat behind her.

Tabitha looked up.  Surrounded by the faintest golden nimbus was… a boy.  He was dressed street punk, had a shaved head, and couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old.

The Countess hissed at him. “You!”  She spat.  “How dare you interrupt?  I will seek you, ambusher, and I will kill you!”  As suddenly as he had appeared, she was gone, without a trace.

The boy sniffed the air.  “The stench is gone.  She has departed. Your pack will need medical attention.  Lucky for you, she wanted to save their killings until you were enthralled, to leave the mark of their deaths on you, eh?”  He reached down and offered a hand to help her up.

She blinked.  “Who..  what..  wha..   the…”

He smiled impishly and sheathed his sword in a dusty looking old scabbard hanging under his London Fog trench coat.  “I’m Skid.  Shall we skip the formalities until we have your friends under the lord’s sky?”

Around them, groaning, the pack started to get to their collective feet, nursing injuries as they pulled themselves up.  She took his hand.  “Yes.  And… Thank you, Skid.”

Barking Up The Wrong Tree, pt 2

Eliot walked over to the fridge, grabbing a beer, while everyone settled in to listen.  Drew stalked over to the closet, pulling it open, and angrily started packing survival kits while Eliot lounged against the kitchen’s separator ledge.

“It was back in nineteen seventy three.  I was nineteen years old.  My pack… they were fierce warriors.  Fiercer than you can imagine.  We numbered eleven strong, all trained warriors, when we came across the Vampire.  It was… a continuation of an older fight.  In retrospect, I suppose I should start with that first fight; at the beginning of the story as I know it.

You see, three of my elders had spent time over in Germany during World War Two, and that was when the feud began.  Seven of my elders were in the war, all in the same regiment, and near the end of the war; when allied troops were pushing hard into Germany; they came across this little town up in the mountains.  Can you imagine an entire town that looks like the leftover sets from a B slasher flick?  It was a bloodbath.

This vampire, supposedly turned by Vlad Tepes himself, was openly feeding on the citizens, and those all left alive were… broken, inside the head.  They were people, but they acted like Renfield from the novel Dracula.  Eating bugs, laughing at petty cruelties, and being driven by their basest instincts; what was left was the shell of humanity.  Frothing at the brain – that’s how they talked about them.  So they challenged the vampire, tried to save what they could from that evil influence.”

Tabitha frowned. “Of seven packmates, only three walked out alive and came back from that town.”

She shook her head.  “When I was a pup that story always frightened me.  When I got a bit older…  it motivated me to train harder, though it was hard to believe.  And it’s lucky for me that it did, even though it didn’t really matter.  She caught back up with us.”

Drew motioned towards the kitchen and caught Eliot’s eye.  The younger man nodded, then tossed the lanky older fighter a can of Fosters.

Tabitha wiped a tear from her eye and continued.  “Fighting a Vampire like that is… well, its nothing you guys are ready for.  When you battle a non Feral you have to fight their willpower.  They push into you head, they rape your thoughts, and they try to turn your own minds against you.  The longer they’ve been around, the better they are at it, and the stronger their willpower is.  Ferals are weak in comparison.  You just have to fight the beast.  Well, when she caught up to us, we had no idea she was coming, and before I had even shifted, both of my brothers were dead.  We had been sitting around a beach fire, enjoying the Ocean.  There was a light mist, and then she was just there and blood was flying everywhere.”

Jenna, always empathic, was openly crying.  Josh was pale and just said.  “Jesus.”

Amber chewed her lip and raised her eyebrows questioningly towards Tabitha.

Tabitha smiled sadly.  “No Amber, I’ll finish the story.   I don’t want to relive these memories just to tell you all the story another time so you can hear the ending.  We fought her.   We fought with everything we had, every trick we knew.  And one by one we all died.  I think she left me alive because I was the youngest.  Here are the final moments I remember.  My Father, Raymond, was in front of me, attacking her.  She caught him by the muzzle, then sank her fangs into his neck while staring me in he eye.    Her eyes went this weird swirly red and violet color, and I couldn’t move a muscle while I watched her drain my dad.  Then… The world just melted away, like a Salvador Dali painting.  I felt something rip through my hands and feet, pulling me apart.  Like I was being crucified.  And then I was burning, on fire, stretched out on a cross in my mind.  I woke up from that nightmare almost a month later, in a state hospital.”

Tabitha’s voice, dripping sorrow, suddenly drew back, and like he tide revealing the beach, all at once there was steel there.  “You will DIE if you seek vengeance against the Vampires.  We are half the strength and nowhere near the skill of my elders.  What we do is clean up their messes, and keep the average people of our land safe.  This is the Lore, and the Law can be damned.  Do you understand?”

Shocked by the sudden swing in words, the pack all just nodded.  Drew grinned to himself as he polished off his beer.  Jenna twined her fingers through Josh’s and whispered to him “She’s scary.  Just when you think you’ve found the softest part of her, she turns into a rock.”

Josh rubbed her back, but watched Tabitha.   “You never even said her name, Tabs.”

“That is because you don’t need to know it.  Even if you did, it would only give you false ideas that you could research her and find a way to beat her.  Which you cannot.”

Eliot chuckled, and everyone turned to look at him.  “Don’t worry.   We’re not stupid.  Just protective of you.”

Tabitha nodded.  As usual, on the rare occasion you caught him talking, Eliot had something useful to say.  “The duty of protection is mine not yours young ones.  I am the elder, and the reader of the Lore.”  She glanced at Amber. “For now anyway.  And i will protect you.  I love you all the more, my pups, for being the way you are though.  If that suffices for everyone, I suggest we stop burning daylight and get ready to kill an undead.”

A chorus of ‘yes, mam’ reverberated around the room, and the wolf pack finished getting ready.  Each member ended up with a loose backpack on. The backpacks themselves had an odd design to accommodate for emergencies that only a werewolf would have to deal with.  The shoulder straps were segmented with several strips of elastic on each side, making them immediately flexible.  Once they were done, the whole crew piled out of the condo and headed back to the VW Bus.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree; GTT Character Sketch Pt. 1

Barking up the wrong tree

The storm drain overflow valve was well hidden by cattails, long summer grass, and the shadow of the overpass.  Despite being a six foot wide pipe, few people realized it was there, concealed as it was.  A glint of movement, the barest whisper of a shadow in the darkness stirred, watching the pedestrian area in the reservoir.  Six figures were gathered there.  Four were in a circle, playing hackey sack; two younger men, a middle aged man, and a young woman.  Sitting in the grass by them were two women, one young and the other looked young, but had hair starting to go silver.

The watcher in the drain smile, and barely visible in the black was the glint of fangs.  Half a block away a group of policemen were investigating a murder.  The watcher knew that the six people were there for the same reason.  It had taken them too long to catch up, but their time was finally at hand.  A teenaged boy, rocking out to his iPod, strolled by the drain cover.  He paused, watching the hackey circle, smiled, and kept walking down the reservoir.  Once he had passed by, the shadow in the drain had vanished.

Pop.   Pop.  Pop. Josh flicked the hackey sack easily from foot to foot, not really paying attention to it. Between hundreds of hours spent playing hackey sack, and the far superior reflexes a werewolf had, keeping the little bead filled sack in the air was a thoughtless activity.  With a deft flick of his ankle he sent it sailing over to Jenna, who was munching on a bagel while playing.

None of the Pack, as they thought of themselves, were here for the hackey sack.  It was just a convenient cover for them.  Something to do while they all listened to what was happening almost half a block away.  Werewolves tend to have very good hearing; and that was the real reason they were down here playing.  It was a hot and muggy summer day, especially down here by the Cherry Creek reservoir, and not a one of them wouldn’t have rather been in air conditioning or swimming in a lake somewhere… which is where most people with an iota of common sense were.  No one likes being a human dartboard for badly aimed mosquitoes.

But duty had called, and there isn’t an answering machine to catch the call when a bloodsucking fiend is randomly ripping out throats of innocent bystanders in , and there isn’t an answering machine to catch the call when a bloodsucking fiend is randomly ripping out throats of innocent bystanders in your city.  Josh slapped down, squishing a mosquito, then idly scratched at his knee, hiking up his long hemp shorts to expose it.  The little buggers got everywhere.

“It’s the third one this month.”  Came a man’s voice as the conversation down the road started back up again.

Another, slightly deeper, voice replied. “So, Haskins, it looks like we have a serial killer on our hands.  I was hoping to avoid this.”  The speaker sighed so audibly that the Pack could almost hear his shoulders slumping and his head shaking.  “I hate cases dealing with twisted pieces of work like this.  What you thinking, Rick?”

“I’m thinking we better catch this guy fast.  How long you think before the media catches wind of this Jack?”

Josh watched the Hack get passed from Jenna to Drew.  The leaner, slightly older werewolf was grimacing, with his head tilted to one side.  He had been in enough scraps and taken enough damage to his body that he had to focus a little harder to catch what was happening up the street.  The scar that ran down his right ear and halfway across his cheek had guaranteed that he would always have to focus a bit to hear as well as the others.

The deeper voiced detective up by the police cars sighed again.  “I hope they don’t.  Of course, that would be too good to be true.  They always find out too fast, and I’m sure someone somewhere is already getting a few bucks for tipping off someone else.  Way of the world.   They’re vultures.  I’ve been keeping the channels clear on this but haven’t actually red filed it yet.  Hopefully it’ll slip through the cracks between all the other high profile cases”

Haskins chuckled grimly.  “Smart move.  Lets see if it works, lemme know on that.  Here comes Angela.”

A third voice, female, contributed to the conversation.  “Sergeant, Detective.  Enjoying the sun, boys?  I have some of the preliminary results back.  Cause of death is suffocation, I think.  Ribcage was partially crushed and both lungs collapsed.  Victim was dead of asphyxiation before blood loss; pretty sure on that one.  Corpse was definitely moved; that one is based on the low volume of blood here at the scene.  Whatever took her throat out did it post flat-line, splatter patterns under the jaw indicate that it was a close second though…

“Lesse here… Its an odd one, for sure.  Looks like an animal wound, but no dentition marks to speak of found in the wound… Definitely the same weapon as the other two.  I’ll have to get her in the lab and on the slab though, if you want anything more than that.”

“All right, thanks Jones.  Haskins, I’ll call you when I hear something.  Thanks for coming out.  Jones, bag the DOA.  Coroner is on the way already.   And let me know the second you come up with anything.”

Drew scooped the hackey sack out of the air and tossed it Josh.  Everyone in the circle looked over to the two women sitting about five feet away.  One was older, with reddish hair going silver.  But her hair was the only indication that she was in her fifties.  Her muscles were strong and sleek, and her skin smooth.  She had a large book in her lap and was just looking up from it.  The woman, only in her early twenties, was sitting cross legged across from her, with the folds of her black skirt folded carefully into her lap.   Her hands, showcased by a pair of leather bracers that sat oddly on her forearms, were primly placed on top of the dress.   Long, naturally black hair, cascaded down her back, and her lips were parted in a slight grin.  She was the older woman’s disciple in a way, and had the greatest control of her lycanthropy of the Pack.

Josh softly cleared his throat as he looked to the older woman.  “Tabitha?   Are we done here?”

She stood up, closing the book.  “Yes.   Its definitely one of them.   It will have gone to ground during the daylight hours.  We need the cops out of here before we can pick up the trail.  Unless…”  Tabitha chewed her bottom lip.

Drew popped his knuckles.  “Tabs, these guys don’t know how to deal with this.   You sure you want a feral to be their first real hunt?”

“Drew, I don’t see that we have much choice.  There is a feral in town, its just going to keep killing till someone takes it down.   And you know as well as I do that if its the cops that catch up to it, a lot of people will die and it might still get away.”

Drew grunted.   “Goddamned Vampires, leaving messes like this for us to clean up.”

“You are both such…  well, I don’t know.  But grow some balls.”  Amber, who had been sitting with Tabitha, dropped her shirt to the ground and stood stark naked in front of everyone, with that same impish grin on her lips.  She quickly darted up the hill, black hair streaming out behind her, and by the time she was up at street level, she looked like a black furred wolf.

Tabitha growled under her breath, then spun back to the pack.  “Dammit, we DON’T take risks like that. Eliot, lost dog it.  GO!”

One of the other players from the hackey sack circle, a tall and darkly handsome man, nodded once.  Reaching over to the group’s ice chest he pulled out a collar and leash, then jogged up from the reservoir.

Josh pushed his sandy blond hair out of his eyes and started to pack up the water bottles and other ‘out hanging’ paraphernalia the group had distributed. “Jenna, could you grab Amber’s clothes?”

Jenna snapped back out of whatever she had been thinking, pulled her sarong up a bit, and knelt down to collect Amber’s hastily discarded outfit.  Tabitha and Drew were off to the side quietly arguing.   “Yeah, sorry Josh.  I was just thinking..  you know…  Its really messed up that vamps leave their cubs like that.”

Josh nodded as he picked up the ice chest.  “Yeah, it is.  But i was reading some of the stuff Tabitha left at our place, and its not all of them.  Its like, one can’t cope, you know, and goes crazy. So the older ones let it go get itself killed. But, like, the ones that don’t go schizoid get nurtured and stuff.”

“Its just so…  heartless.  So cruel.”

“Jenna. They’re vampires.  They suck blood and kill to stay alive.”

“But Josh, that doesn’t mean they don’t have hearts, it just means they have a harder life. There’s good in everything if you dig deep enough.”

“Yeah, but for vampires, they get the goodness sucked out of them at Birth, you know?”

Tabitha clapped, once.  “Alright kids.  Go time.  We can debate nature versus nurture some other time.  Right now, one of our own has done something stupid, so we have to seize the opportunity while trying to protect her.”

Josh was trying not to grin.  He was pretty sure no one else was stilll focused on listening to what was happening up the street… But what he heard was Eliot saying “No Amber! Bad Dog! Get off the officer’s leg.  I’m so sorry sir. She gets like this during the summers. DOWN AMBER!”

He snorted once, and choked down the laugh. “Alright.  I’m like, ready and stuff.”

The remaining four hiked up the small hill to the other side of the reservoir, where Josh’s VW Bus was parked and piled into it.

The blue van, along with its dozens of Grateful Dead, Phish, and Pot Leaf stickers pulled out into the street and headed around the reservoir.  Drifting on tones of liquid bliss from inside the van you could just hear ‘and I’ll see you on the dark side of..” cut off by Tabitha’s voice.  “Focus children.  You need your ears.”

A few blocks and about fifteen minutes later Eliot walked up to the van, leading Amber by collar and leash.  The two hoped into the side door, and Drew poked his head out for a second.  “All clear.” he said as he pulled his head back in and slid the door shut.  “Any luck?”  The Van pulled away from the curb, headed back to Josh’s apartment which was only about five minutes away.

Eliot just grunted and nodded towards Amber as she shifted back to her human form.  “Ask her.”

Amber grinned as she struggled back into her clothes, and paused for a second to tweak Drew’s cheek.  “Jinkies Fred!  I followed the scent all the way a storm drain cover, and then it vanished underground.  I think its a clue!”

Drew just frowned and Amber.  “Crap.  That’s not good.”

Jenna looked back from the passenger seat.  “Why?  Is it using the sewers to get around town?  Are we going to have to try to track it through..  oh, ewwwww….” The light dawned on her as she realized what they might have to track it through.

Tabitha grimaced also.  “No.   Its living down there, not traveling through it.  It’ll probably be within three hundred feet of the entrance.”

“What’s the problem then?” Josh glanced at the review mirror to see everyone else.  “We just, like, pop down now.  Nail it while its asleep. Easy fight.”

“Eager to die today Josh?”

“What do you mean, Drew?”

Tabitha mumped and spoke up.   “Hush boys.   What Drew is trying to say is that going in there right now is a very dangerous idea.  It probably wont be asleep.”

Eliot’s brows wrinkled in confusion, but it was Josh that spoke up.  “Wait.  I thought all vamps, you know, like, passed out during the day.”

Tabitha shook her head.  “No more than werewolves have to wait till a full moon to change.   I know most of you guys can’t control the change that well yet, but Amber is learning fast, as you all know.   Why should Vampires be stuck to folklore rules when we aren’t?”

Jenna shook her head.  “But wait.  We have to study and practice to get that type of control.  You mean Vampires don’t?”

Amber grinned “You mean you guys have to study, slowpokes.”  She stuck out her tongue and waggled her fingers in her ears, but no one seemed to notice.  They were all used to getting sassed by her.

This time it was Drew that answered.  “Not for a feral.   A normal Vamp, yeah.  But ferals are different.  The beast controls them, and there is barely anything left there that could be called human.  Ferals can do things that most vamps can’t do for the first couple years or decades of their lives.” he paused for a moment, thinking the situation through.  “We have to hit during the day though.  If we wait till tonight, it might move to a different hidey hole, then we have to wait for another killing or a lot of good luck.”

Tabitha nodded.  “Unfortunately, I agree.  At least its in the dark and the kids will be able to change.”

The pack was silent for the next couple moments, as they finished the drive to Josh’s apartment, where the fighting gear had been left.  Even Amber was quiet and introspective.  As they swung off of Hampden avenue and into Josh’s condo complex, the pack seemed to come to an unspoken agreement.   This needed to be done, and there was no one else to do it.

As they piled into Josh’s condo, Amber brushed her hair back out of her eyes, and chewed her lip, debating something internally.  Finally she opened her mouth and just spat it out.  “Tabitha.  I have to ask.”  She flopped down onto a bean bag and looked up at her mentor.  “We all know that your pack was killed by vampires…  but you’ve never told us the story.  And since we’re about to fight one of these things… I kind of want to know if this is a vengeance kick for you or what?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Broke in Drew.

Tabitha frowned slightly to herself.  “No, its a valid question.”  She sighed and motioned to the various bean bags and ergonomic chairs around the room.  “Go ahead and pull up seats.  Amber is right, my motivation is important.  Its part of what I’m trying to teach you guys.  At your center, you have to be calm.  Be the eye of the storm.   It’s like being at the center of a seesaw.  on either side things moving, while you sit at that pivot point.  If I am going into this bent on vengeance, it will endanger all of you.  So, I’m going to tell you a story, and let you decide.”

****Tune In Tomorrow for pt 2 of the werewolves Introduction; ‘Barking up the worng tree.’****

Writing and wishing… the instant manuscript

Sometimes, I wish life was a little more like Harry Potter..  You know?

So that I could just tap a wan against my temple, say something like ‘Creatus Manuscriptus!”

and..  poof…   there it would be!

sigh.  Back to typing :p

Rick Haskins, Pt 2 of 2, GTT character sketch

And now the thrilling conclusion!!

Haskins grinned impishly.  “Yeah..  well..  I heard.  I had to swap a shift and break a few traffic laws to get to be the on call for this.   You know how much I love reading mystery books.”

Hayes chuckled.  Yeah, I do.  I’m not surprised you pulled favors for this.  So, you’re the lead.  Sorry, D.A. asked for me on it, I’ll try not to step on your toes.”

The grizzled Sergeant nodded.  “Don’t worry about it.  Lets just start with you bringing me up to speed on this mess.  The labtechs get anything off the DOA yet?”

Hayes glanced back.   “Nope.  It’s a forensic nightmare.  Carpets are waterlogged, but no foot prints.  No prints.  Nothing under the fingernails.  No hair…  just…  a blank scene.”

Haskins tugged at his moustache and thought for a second.  “But the room was so tightly sealed that you had to blow one of the doors off.  Hrmph.”  He looked Jack in the eye.  “Alright.  I’m ready.  Start at the beginning.”

Hayes reached up and rubbed his neck as he thought about where to start.  It had obviously been a long day for him.  “Alright.  First off, security company called in the DOA.  Mountains had his company set to call a friend in the DA’s office if his house triggered the ‘dead man’ code.  Which is why you got called last.’

“Dead Man’s code?”

Hayes nodded.  “Yeah.  You know those microchips in pets that have all their information on the?  Well, the DOA has one of those microchips too.   This entire house, all of his cars, and his offices are wired as receivers.  They detect motion, they start scanning.  They pick up on his microchip and they start biometrics scans, monitoring heartbeat, stuff like that.  So if he has an accident, or is under stress, or one of a thousand other little things, and the building he is in sends a specialized code to his security company.  They reported two heartbeats coming into this room, with the DOAs stopping at seven twenty two p.m., and the second one vanishing from this room about six minutes later.”

“Did the house track where the second one went?”

“No.  Rick, you don’t get it.  It vanished.  It didn’t leave.  Let me explain the security protocols, and Mountains’ particular brand of psychosis.  Maybe he watched his own movies too much, but he was paranoid as all hell.  Every room in everything he owns is set up with ‘dead man’s’ booby traps.  He was convinced that a demon from one of his early movies was hunting him.  I found out from the company that he paid them a lot of money make sure that only they, his butler, and he knew that juicy little tidbit.  Anyway, the fear of the demon made him design a very special setup.  Each room goes into instant lockdown if his heart stops.  Hydraulic driven bars through doors, etcetera, etcetera.”

Hayes briefly motioned to the door that had been removed with explosives.  “But the intention was to keep people out as well as in.  Can’t unseal it from either side.  He had a reason for this.  Sixty seconds after his heart stopped, if the biometrics didn’t come back on line, the room’s hermetically sealed air supply starts to pump vaporized Holy Water into the room until there is enough volume that every surface is covered and there’s a decent amount free floating.”

Haskins had to fight to choke down the laughter.  A picture was starting to form in his mind and he didn’t want to break it before it had time to finish coming together.  “So you mean to say that he wasn’t trying to trap a killer… he was trying to keep authorities out long enough for the house to kill a Demon?”

“Nailed it in one,” Jack sighed. “And you can forget the ‘throw the dagger from the door and run’ scenario because the room’s biometrics recorded the second heartbeat’s vanishing almost five minutes after the lockdown.  So, Rick… as you can see there’s no one here.  No dead Demon.  And a Dead man found in a perfectly locked room.”

Haskins nodded.  “This is gorgeous.  No footprints.  No fingerprints.  No hair.  Ha.  You’ll need a miracle to solve this.  Did you check the suits of armor?”

Hayes jerked a thumb at the closest suit of armor.  “Yeah.  No dice there for two reasons.  One, they’re all glued together and you can’t pull them apart.  Two, the security company says you’d need a heavy duty gel to make a heartbeat vanish.  And since none of the suits are dripping, it’s a safe bet they’re empty.  We did check for joint squeeze on them all also.”

Haskins leaned back against the wall and lost himself in thought.  Another Idea sparked.  “What about the secret passages in the house?”

Jack blinked.  “How the hell did you…  No, never mind.  Security and blueprints show five secret passages.  But none of them hook up to this room.”

“Didn’t think so, but I had to check.”

While Haskins kept reassembling the puzzle in his head, the rookie from downstairs walked into the room, brandishing a twenty dollar bill like it was a shield.  He held it out to Haskins.  “Sarge, you were right about the food in the kitchen.  At least its normalish down there though.  Up here its like walking through an x rated episode of Scooby Doo.”

Hayes raised a questioning eyebrow at Haskins as he snagged the twenty.  “Thanks, rooksticks.  It is, isn’t it.  Oh…”  Haskins realized his intuition had been right and started laughing.  The laugh picked up momentum until he was clutching at his sides and gasping for air.  He looked up through an ear to ear grin, while the other two men just stared at him, confused.

Sucking in his breath, he finally managed to clamp down on the laughter.  “Oh god, that’s rich.  Its right in front of you Jack, and you all missed it.  Let me make a guess at something here.  You’ve already checked in with his legal staff, and since he doesn’t have family, all his money is willed to various staff that work for him right?”

Hayes nodded.  “Yeah Rick…  But that doesn’t solve the murder; it just gives us a suspect list.”

“Actually, it does.  God, he got you guys good.  I may have to go back and watch his movies now, because this is just far too clever.”

Jack blinked in annoyance.  “Excuse me?”

“Think, Jack!  He was a master of suspense!  Stop look at the forensics.  Stop looking for the who done it.  Stop being a cop for a minute and think like a horror movie director.  You have to find the surprise twist if you want to figure this one out.  Get it yet?”

Hayes chewed his lip for a moment then shrugged.  “Sorry, no.  Explain please?”

“Ha.  Alright, here’s your first clue, Jack.  He concocted the whole demon story.  It was a trap – for you.  He wanted to box the police and the security company into a specific way of thinking just to get revenge on whoever killed him.  He knew this was coming, bet you anything you find death threats in a safe, or a desk, or something.  I think he even figured out who was coming for him.  So he made up this whole thing, and the killer is sitting in the room with us right now.  Don’t you get it?

“He set this up so that if the killer DID get to him, they’d have to go through their own personal hell, a horror movie of his devising, listening to us and praying to god that we wouldn’t figure it out.  And he set up the whole thing by making you think that he was having paranoid delusions; just to throw you off the scent of what’s really happening here.”

Again all Jack could do was blink and say “Excuse me?”

Haskins reached up and clamped a hand on Jack’s shoulder.  “Think it through.  Locked room.  No windows.  Sixty seconds till water is introduced to the room’s closed system.  Yet there are no footprints… which means that by the time the water settled onto the fabric – the killer was immobile.”

Hayes looked around.  “So someone is in this room with us, but dead?  How do you explain the heartbeat vanishing otherwise?”

Haskins glanced around.  “Easy.  The killer knew the security setup, otherwise he’d already be nabbed and in cuffs.  And the killer’s motive was money.  Otherwise why use the dagger off the plinth to kill him?  He made it look like a botched robbery.  You said a motive, but you missed one thing.  Only one person could have known about the will and the security setup.  There was one important fact missing from the killer’s knowledge.  Suits of armor are usually held together by a wireframe..  and all Mountains had to do to build the perfect prison was grind powdered glue onto the edges and joints of the suits of armor.”

Hayes’ eye lit up and he slowly nodded. “Oh lord that is devious.”

Sergeant Haskins nodded.  “It sure is.  The killer locked himself into his own prison.  As soon as the holy water was pumped into the room, all the suits of armor got glued together – and the glue doubled as the gel to hide the heartbeat!  The killer’s clever hiding spot becomes a prison, and he’s listening to us right now.  And since only one person could have known both those details about the will and security..  wha-la!  The damned Butler did it!  And you’ll find him as soon as you grab a blowtorch and start cutting up the suits of armor.”

Jack’s eyes went wide and the entire forensics team hurried over as the suit of armor next them coughed and said in an affected British accent.  “Um, burning me up won’t be necessary.  I give myself up.  But..  please..  hurry up?   He lined the inside of the suits of armor with the glue too and I’m having trouble breathing…

Rick Haskins, Pt 1, GTT Character Sketch

The Scooby Doo Who Done It

Featuring:  Sergeant Rick Haskins

Haskins carefully angled the cruiser between the other emergency and rescue vehicles.  He felt and heard, rather than saw, the shrubbery; just a moment too late to avoid flattening it.  With a grimace, he said “Screw it” and finished parking.

Carefully, so as not to scratch the ambulance parked next to him, he opened the door of the squad car and squeezed himself out.

Haskins had been a fairly heavily muscled youth, and age was beginning to make those muscles go just a little bit soft.  Combine that with a P.D. standard issue vest and he wasn’t left with much room to get out of the car, or through anywhere else that might be considered a narrow exit.

He paused for a moment and took stock of his surroundings.  The sun was setting low over the Rocky Mountains, with its lights bouncing off the cloud cover, creating wide, rich bands of yellows, oranges, and reds across the sky.  The mansion’s entry drive was crammed to the point of being overflowing with emergency vehicles.  Squad cars, SUVs, ambulances, and somehow even a fire truck were all packed like sardines in a tin into an area meant to hold two Rolls Royces and a butler.

He shook his head.  The whole scene reminded him of nothing so much as a big top circus.  Running his fingers through his closes cropped salt and pepper hair, he clutched his clipboard and strode forward into the mansion.  Inside the house the décor was trying so hard to be cultured and sophisticated that that it seemed more packed than the zoo of a parking lot outside.  Expensive paintings, tapestries, vases, ancient pottery pieces, and clashing modern art sculptures covered every wall and available surface in the entry room.

Haskins ignored the rookie cop standing by the door for a moment just to try to fully take in the room’s aggressively forced culture shock.

This just screams white trash with way too much money he mused while critically scanning the room good grief… I wonder how much he paid to have someone figure out how to make people this uncomfortable as they walked in.

Nodding to himself, he decided that the ambiance felt just right for a b rated horror movie director who’s movies had all become cult legend.  Just right.  Finally he glanced at the uniform by the door.  “So, anyone look in the kitchen yet by chance?”

The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty-one.  They seemed to be getting so much younger these days. “No, sergeant, sorry.”

Haskins grinned.  This was way too easy, but the kid would learn with age.  “Twenty bucks says that you find… lets see… three foods in abundance.  Doritos, frozen dinners, and Hamburger helper.  But before you go check, could you point towards the scene?”

“Sure Sarge.  You’re on for the twenty; no way a posh guy like this liked that crap.  Corpse is upstairs in a gallery room.   Up those stairs, down the spooky hallway, take a left where it does a T.  You can’t miss it, they had to take the door of the room off with explosives.”  The kid grinned weakly and pointed to an ornately banister stairwell that curved up to the next floor.

Stroking his mustache, a lifetime ‘I’m thinking’ habit, he glanced once more around the room, looking at all the little details and things that we’re wrong with it, then he walked over to the stairwell and headed up.

If anything, the second floor was even more aggressive in its theme than downstairs had been.  The theme here was ‘creepy and cobwebby’.  All of the paintings up here were portraits, and they seemed to be of unknown and unremarkable people, all of whom seemed to have large thick foreheads and ugly features.  It reminded him of…  Oh, good grief.  So perfect! He shook his head and strode through the ghostly gallery, took a left, and walked up to the scene of the crime.

The entryway before Haskins was a wreck.  Twin steel doors had once filled it, but now one of them was propped open and the second was blackened around the hinges and handle, and was leaning against the wall next to the doorway.  Striding through to the room on the other side, his initial impression was of vastness.

The room was gigantic.  At least fifty feet long, and almost as wide.  Haskins’ faded blue eyes glittered as he took it all in… and a grin slowly started to spread across his face.  Suits of medieval armor stood to attention around the walls of the room, each sporting a different livery.  Numerous glass cases were placed between the armors, showcasing beautiful pieces of ancient weaponry, all apparently authentic with papers displayed under them.  Scottish claymores, folded katanas,  African tribal spears…  this whole room was a shrine to the ancient art of warfare.

And the cherry on top was a series of tapestries, hung off of support frames in a grid pattern around the room.  And finally, in the very center… a bloody corpse at the foot of an empty plinth trimmed with glowing fiber optic cables.

The cause of death was readily apparent, since most people couldn’t survive having a main gauche shoved through their heart.  Jonathan Mountains, horror icon, had been dressed in a red velvet smoking jacket, khaki pants, and blue fuzzy bunny slippers when he met his violent end.

Several figures, hard at work documenting every detail of the scene, surround the body in a halo of black-lights, finger-printing dust, cameras, and lab coats.  Two of them wore suits with I.D. badges flipped open and hanging from the breast pockets of their blazers.  Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was softly playing in the background on the house’s speaker system, and could almost see the crimelab team moving to the music as then hunted for clues.

One of the two detectives stood up and carefully took a couple of steps away from the corpse before straightening his jacket and sighing.  He walked up to Haskins.  “Hey Rick.  Sorry that you got the call so late.  You Glendale’s on call tonight?”

The detective was mid thirties or so, maybe ten years younger than Haskins.  He was tall, thin, and so clean cut that he looked more like a banker than like a cop.  Haskins shook his hand.  Jack Hayes might look out of place, but he was a damn good cop, and often got bounced around jurisdictions because he had a reputation for delivering air tight cases to the D.A.’s office on unsolvable crimes.

“You lucked out.  This is an honest to god Locked Room Mystery.  First real one I’ve ever heard of.”

Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of “The Scooby Doo Who Done It!”

Spyke! – GTT Character Sketch

This is the puppy of the main character (Winnie’s) best friend- Jenny.   He is a black Chihuahua named Spyke – who wears a spiked leather collar.   In the scene that Winnie is dying in, Spyke is whimpering and licking Winnie’s face…  and ingests vamp blood.  Below is the scene which introduces the dog as a vampire Chihuahua instead of as a normal dog.

I do plan to get a black Chihuahua to attend signings with me and leave ink-paw prints as a sig in books.  He will wear a spiked collar and be named Spyke, of course.  I’m also going to try to franchise out stuffed animals based on the character, and possibly T-Shirts with a pic of him and the quote ‘Sometime the bite is worse than the bark.’

****************************************************************

Chrprrrdrk watched the apple core intently.  Moonlight glinted tantalizingly off of the juicy remains, promising a full belly and making his taste buds sweat in anticipation.  An average squirrel might see a feast this delicious six times in the course of their lives.  Chrprrrdrk waited patiently though; oh yes, he had learned that virtue well.  An encounter with Razorclaw, a leanly muscled, evil- as-Mussolini neighborhood tabby cat had left him his veteran’s stripe – a scar that ran diagonally across his face from the left ear to the right side of his nose.

So he hung onto the trunk of the old birch tree, tucked upside down in the shadow of a branch – well off the white bark that was so readily reflecting the moon’s calm glow.  Carefully, he watched…  waited…  Minutes crawled by like hours, and still he was patient.  Finally he was sure that Razorclaw was nowhere to be seen and with a quick scrabbling of claws he darted down to the apple core, ready to claim his prize.

‘PREDATOR!!!’  screamed his instincts as a flash of silver glinted off of something shiny to his right.   A muffled ‘Yip” was the last thing Chrprrrdrk heard as Spyke’s fangs sank into his neck and shuffled him off this mortal coil.  Spyke drained his victim dry, licked his chops, and contentedly
padded back to the doggie door to find Jenny and cuddle.

******************************************************************

North by South, a GTT character intro

North by South

From The Ian Stone Cases

The thug’s fist slammed into my jaw.  Even rolling with the punch, I felt one of my molars shatter and cut the inside of my left cheek.  The thug grinned and spit his toothpick into my face.

I looked up to him and smiled.  ‘So, why the hell are you here?’

‘Shaddup!’ he snarled and fed me another knuckle sandwich.  This time my shattered tooth cut me badly enough that I had to spit out the blood or choke on it.  I looked back up at him, working my jaw trying to stretch some of the soreness out of it.  The guy was wiry as hell, maybe six feet tall or so, and wearing a blue silk shirt with the top half of the buttons undone; the guy looked like he was right out of a 1980’s cop show.  Yeah, he thought he was a real Guido.

He was rubbing his knuckles, trying to massage some of the pain out of them.  It doesn’t matter how strong or experienced you are, shatter a guys tooth with a hit and you’re taking some damage to your fist.  His lips pulled up into a sneer. ‘Not so tough now, huh mr. private dick?’

Tilting my head up till I could look him in the eyes, I grinned and let the blood spill out of my mouth.  I love a good straight line.  ‘Thanks pal.  You just saved me the seven hundred bucks that getting a root canal was gonna cost me.  I’ve got a bad one on the other side too, think you could get that one next?’

With a snarl he smashed his heel down onto the arch of my left foot.  I felt something break, but didn’t let it show.  Time to pause for a second while I explain why a broken foot was worth it; just to get to deliver one tough guy line.  The thing about being a private eye is that you have to know how to take advantage of your timing.  No matter how much you work on cultivating that no nonsense, tougher than nails, dumb looking but smart on the inside, hard boiled gumshoe lifestyle, the simple truth is that ninety-nine percent of the work you land is boring as hell.

Skip traces, reading court records, checking websites, occasionally finding lost pets, and sneaking through bushes with a camera is most of what a P.I. does.  The majority of the work comes from one of three places – Lawyers, Courtrooms, and suburban wives with too much money and too little to do who fill their hours with unfounded suspicions.  A good P.I is fast with a computer, since their usual day is just sitting at a desk scanning files.

Which is why when you wake up to find yourself handcuffed to a chair in your own office, with a thug putting more shots into you than a sadistic E.R. doctor gives out during flu season, you have to thank your lucky stars and make the most of it.  Which I did.

So now we’re gonna play out the next few seconds nice and slowly, just so you can appreciate the finer details.  As mr. oh so clever repartee’s fist came rocketing towards my face, aimed at that same tooth, I braced both of my ankles against the chair legs and twisted my left wrist just right; which made my thumb collapse against my palm.  My first case ever was to find a lost pit-bull.  When I did find the dog, he satacked me and all but ripped my left thumb off.  It never healed quit right, and I’ve been able to do interesting and occasionally useful party tricks with it since then.  And for some reason I can’t fathom, the left side of my body tends to get a lot more torn up than the right side.

My hand slid out of the cuffs, only taking a little skin with it, right as my own personal thug straight from the set of Miami Vice dropped an a-bomb on my face – finally ripping my left cheek open.  I let the force of the blow carry me, pulling up with my ankles and whipping around, letting the inertia help me pivot the chair on one leg.  I grabbed the back of the chair with my right hand, releasing the pressure with my ankles and just slumping forward.  Ever seen a tetherball?  It goes low on one side, then rockets high on the other side.  That’s what me and the chair did.   I went low, the chair went high, with all that spinning force behind it.

I’m not even sure if I have the stomach to describe what it did to his face.  A lot of blood went flying over me.  Lets just say this – ever tried to break a piece of oak?  His face shattered the chair, and the chair took the lesser of the two beatings.  K.O.  Goons, zero, private detectives one.

I slowly pushed myself up, using the corner of my desk to help me, and carefully testing my weight on my broken foot.  Not comfy, but it’d get me around for the time being.  I’ll admit I wobbled a bit until the world stopped spinning, and then limped over to the downed thug.  I reached down, grabbed him by the shirt and hauled the dead weight over to the radiator.  I grabbed my cuffs and secured both of his wrists behind his head.

Slapping him a couple times I grinned and said ‘Hey, jerk off.  Miami Vice stopped casting twenty years ago.’  Nada.   Yeah, he was out cold.

So instead of pushing his primitive ape brain and trying to get info out of him, I limped back to the desk, picked up the phone, and dialed the local police station.

A tinny sounding female voice answered after just a couple rings. ‘District six dispatch.’

I sighed and did my best to enunciate around all the damage to my mouth.  ‘Hi.  Can you patch me through to Sergeant Haskins, please?  Tell him it’s Ian Stone with a pretty big emergency.’

There were a couple of clicks from the phone and the operator’s voice came back.  ‘He’s at his desk right now. I’ll put you right through Mr. Stone.’

‘Thanks.’ I replied.  Hey, hard boiled gumshoe or no it always pays to be polite to your local law enforcement.  You never know when you might want them to return the favor and be polite to you, after all.

‘You’re welcome, Mr. Stone.’ The line got quiet and I started hearing those background clicks again.

I only had to wait about twenty seconds or so before a gruff voice came across the line. ‘Haskins here.  What’s the matter, Stone?’

I smiled.  Haskins had spent so much time behind that desk since his promotion that even on his home line he had started answer the same way.  “Hey, Sarge.  Got a little problem here at my office.  I just had a goon who’s dressed straight from the 80’s bust into my office, taser me, cuff me to a chair, and then vent a lifetime of frustration at being born in the wrong decade all over my face.  And Haskins, the hell of it is, I’ve never met the guy before and he wouldn’t tell me why he was here.’

There was a sharp intake of breath over the line. ‘Jesus, Ian.  You okay?  Uniforms or paramedics there yet?’

Blood dripped onto the mouthpiece of the phone and sighing, I wiped it off on my shirt as I peeked out the window from behind my blinds and looked down at the street below my office.  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.  Look, I can’t waste time.  I have to figure out why this guy was on me.  So, I called you first.  I want to dodge the ambulances and the reports till I get a good grip on this.’

Haskins chuckled and I carefully watched the street.  ‘Alrighty.  I’ll grab a black and white and be there in five to ten, tops.  Can you wait that long?’

‘Not Sure.’ I replied. ‘I think I have his partner sitting in the street down here.  Looks like a two thousand and two silver Lincoln towncar.  You better come unmarked so we don’t spook him.’

‘Already on the way.  Hold tight, Ian.’  The line went dead.

Down to business.  Limping over to my medical kit, I cleaned up a bit, trying to go as quickly as possible without further injuring myself.  I glanced at the clock.  Two minutes down.

Again I pushed my broken foot.  I knew I had to move fast, no way Haskins would let me out of his sight when he saw the condition I was in.  I got down on my knees in front of the K.O.’d goon and emptied his pockets.  While there I looked a little more carefully at his hands and the way he was dressed.  On a hunch, I cleaned the blood off his hands and studied them more carefully.

Dumping the payload from his pockets onto my desk, I gratefully collapsed into my leather chair.   Here is another tip about being a private eye.  Invest in a damned good chair.  Besides the fact that you are gonna spend a lot of time in it doing the mundane jobs, you gotta be sure to have a god chair for just such situations as this.  I mean, beat to bloody hell with broken bones…  Would you want a chair that didn’t have all the goodies and about six inches of expensive padding?

Four minutes down.  I spread out the contents of his pockets and took stock.  One set of brass knuckles.  Which was odd, because this guy had calluses all over his knuckles, and brassies leaves the marks on your fingers instead.  So, fact one.  He enjoys his work.  Wallet.  Almost five hundred cash, one driver’s license, season pass to the football field, and an injury report on the local teams.

I glanced at the license and groaned.  I hate it when stereotypes are right.  His name was Antonio Guido Pazzuchi.  Well crap.

I grabbed the cash and looked at the last pieces of pocket junk.  Hey, don’t look at me like that.  I might have been cuffed to a chair, but he had engaged my services by my reckoning, and five hundred is one day plus expenses.  So, a paperclip, a pack of gum, three cents, and a folded piece of paper.  I unfolded the piece of paper and found a smudged name and address, barely readable.  It smelled like beer.  Hmm…  My name, and my address..  but not quite right.

I heard a commotion downstairs and outside.  That’d be Haskins, grabbing scumbag number two. Almost out of time.  C’mon stone, you have the edges of the puzzle, now put ‘em together.  On intuition I grabbed the phonebook out of the bottom drawer.

I swear to god, it clicked right as Haskins walked into my office, roughly pushing the other guy in front of him.  The guy couldn’t keep his balance with his hands cuffed behind his back, and fell forward onto his knees.  He looked pissed but was keeping his lips firmly sealed.  Same slicked back hair and mid eighties bad guy look as the guy I had laid out too.

Haskins took in the scene, ran a hand through his graying hair, and started to speak.  ‘Ian, holy…’

‘Wait.’ I interrupted and held up a finger.

I sighed and looked at the kneeling goon.  ‘How much does Stone owe?’

The guy looked from me to Haskins then at his partner, out cold and cuffed to a radiator; and decided communication was probably his best route.  I’m sure it didn’t hurt that as bloody and torn up as I was I must have looked like an axe murderer at that moment.  ‘Uh… You owe ten large, with fifteen points on your late fee…’

I threw the phone book at him and grabbed the piece of paper, holding in front of his face.  ‘No, I don’t, you asshole.  This is SOUTH Colorado boulevard.  Your stone is north.  NORTH.  Learn to read, moron!’

I saw Haskins get it, and he threw back his head laughing.

As it turns out, the two guys had warrants out.  I claimed a thousand dollar reward on each, walking away from the whole thing with twenty five hundred – and just over three grand in medical bills, as well as a cast for a month.  Sometimes being a P.I. is a dog’s life.

The Entire first ‘chapter’ of Second Paradigm

So, I’m not particularly skilled at coding blogs, and I offer my apologies in advance if I messed up the formatting so that it breaks any sentences or chops any words up. :X   Without further ado – here is the first section of ‘Second Paradigm.’

Epilogue

The crowd screamed in panic. Police, trained as they were, had guns drawn but pointed to the ground to gun down the shooter if they could spot him. The man stood back up from where he had fallen, looking slowly around himself in wonder. Silence encapsulated him, a pinpoint beacon of sanity amongst the contagious panic.

Something had hit him from behind. Pushed him to the ground. Right before it had happened. The weird thing to him was that he felt the other outcome, sitting painfully in the back of his mind, gnawing at his memory. Hidden like a viper was the knowledge of what might have been. He filed it away for later, fighting to push it to the back. Right now he was too confused to deal with that weight sitting there.

He looked around again, standing still amongst the whirlwind of motion surrounding him. “No man is an island.” He spoke it like a mantra, reminding himself that he was a part of all this. Someone was pointing up and behind him, so he looked back. There was a window, it seemed to leap out of the background for him the second his eyes lit on it. In the window was an empty tripod, some type of clamp attached to the top of it, lazily spinning in its joint. His gaze slowly wandered down to the ground below the window.

There was a body lying there. It was a woman that he knew too well, and she obviously had been defenestrated. The fall had also all too obviously broken her neck. On the ground next to her was a pistol. It was a Glock, lying there with a shattered scope affixed to it. The gun pushed at his memories of what might have been and understanding started for him in that moment. He reflexively squeezed his empty hand. It did not come to him as an epiphany, it was not a cataclysmic opening of his mind to the truth. Rather, it was like a thief in the dark of night sneaking into his mind then settling in as though it had always been there. And once it was there it had always been there.

He smiled and calmly walked away from the crowd. What had been done was now undone. And the Origin… was once again safe. And now he understood what that was, and that it existed. With a simple motion, just pushing another man down, he had determined exactly what that future was to be. Hard though the choice had been, understanding had come that there truly was no other choice.

He left and went back to living his life, walking through the reflections of the origin into the future that was his that was his alone.

.. .. Relativity Synch Phase 1…. .. ..

2003: The Pawn Sacrificed .. ..

“I…” Chris felt himself flush, the anger slowly rising in his blood. But looking to the Jury and seeing sympathetic eyes staring back at him helped to calm and stem that rising tide of anger. “…I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

The prosecuting attorney, James Garrett, flashed a small but humorless grin at Christopher Nost, and his eyes cold gray eyes bored into Chris’s, seeming to speak directly to his hind-brain. “I’ve got you. There’s no way out for you this time. This has to finish it.” Chris felt bile rise in his throat. He was afraid that he was going to throw up all over the witness box.

“What exactly do you mean, you don’t remember, Dr. Nost? Do you or do you not have an alibi for the night of August thirteenth, nineteen ninety-seven, or was it, in fact, you that murdered Lucille Frost at the office building you both worked at?” Garrett’s voice slowly gained volume as he turned towards the Jury. “How can you know you are not guilty? Your mental condition seems awfully convenient – something which you could easily take advantage of in a situation which played out exactly as this one has for you. I urge you to look deep inside yourself. Simply put, you ca-”

“Objection, your Honor.” Chris’ defense attorney, Alan Dunwich rose, both fists planted firmly on the long oak table in front of him. “Dr. Nost’s memory loss condition has already been established to the Jury. At this point the prosecution is just badgering the defendant and building straw men!” His face was flushed and he looked truly livid as he gazed at the prosecuting attorney.

“My client has a rare form of mental defect here documented by Dr. Eric Jorgensen, one of the world’s foremost neurologists. As was previously explained-” he drew out the words while staring at Garrett as if speaking to a young child, “—Dr. Nost can remember concepts and ideas, hence his ability to continue his work in the field of Aerospace Mechanics and Astrophysics, but new experiences and faces fade after a little more than a year, rendering his long term memory useless. The court has already heard Dr. Jorgensen’s testimony. I request that the prosecution’s question be struck from the record.” Dunwich waved a manila folder toward Judge Miller, but he was still glaring at James Garret.

Chris’s head swam and Garrett seemed to blur for a second as his vision went fuzzy. Hold it together, he fought the fear rising in his gut in a wave of nausea, here is not the time or place to break down.

“Objection sustained, defense. Recorder, please strike the last question from the record. Mr. Garret, you have been warned once already about bringing up Dr. Nost’s disability in this courtroom, as it has no bearing on this trial. And if you continue to treat this trail as a farce I will hold you in contempt of court. Now, do you have any other questions for the defendant?”

Dunwich looked at Garret in triumph, but the Prosecutor only shrugged lightly and said, “No, your honor. The prosecution rests.”  Garrett walked back to his seat at the prosecutor’s table and sat down, trying his best to hide the smug smile flitting across his face.

Bastard, Dunwich thought.  Inadmissible or not, he had planted suspicion in the minds of the jury.  The defense attorney could see it in their faces, the seed of doubt would grow.  Where five minutes ago he could see sympathy for Chris plainly etched in their eyes, some now looked at Chris in doubt, others in loathing – the ones that had already made their decision.  The damage had been done, and right when Dunwich thought he had this trial clinched.

The Jury’s verdict was already obvious in their expressions.  He ground his teeth together and clenched his jaw in frustration, then reclaimed his seat as Chris returned to the defense’s table, his gears already spinning on how to turn this around in the closing statement.  Damn him, Alan glanced at Garrett, an unknown who relies solely on playing dirty.  How did this asshole land this case?  Is the District Attorney stupid?  I can nail him in an appeal and it will be easy.

Judge Miller looked around the courtroom, his gaze lingering on Chris.  “Then this court will adjourn for a one hour recess.  We will reconvene at—” he glanced at the round, institutional clock hanging above the jury, “—three-thirty for closing statements.  Bailiff, please take Dr. Nost to his holding cell.  Dr. Nost, you will not be summoned to this courtroom again until the Jury’s announcement of the verdict. Do you understand that?”

Chris nodded slowly to the judge.  He did understand.  It meant that he would have to suffer alone in a cell until the jury was done debating his verdict.  As Chris was led from the courtroom he saw a man stand up from the audience benches and pushed his way through the milling crowd, waving to Judge Miller.  He wore a plain blue suit and the thick black rimmed glasses known in the military as birth control glasses.  The last thing that Chris noticed as he was gently pushed from the courtroom was that the man clutched a small stack of folders stamped with a red “CLASSIFIED” across them.

Do I know that man? Chris thought.  There was a spark of recognition there, and he wracked his brain, but couldn’t remember.

*                                      *                                      *

Chris waited in the holding cell for just over three hours, staring out to the world through a three inch thick Plexiglas window.  The glass, besides obscuring what he could see because of its thickness, also had some sort of thin metal woven through it in a diagonal pattern that formed diamonds in it.  ‘Just in case I can break through three inches of Plexiglas they had to reinforce it with metal’ Chris bitterly thought to himself. Every moment of those three hours seemed to drag by like an eternity unto itself as he watched the seconds creeping by on the wall-clock behind the guard, who was sitting at a desk reading a science fiction novel.

It looked like the same clock that was hanging in the courtroom.  How long will it take them? He thought over and over.  He fantasized about moving time forward, just to get it over with, but soon gave up on the idle daydreaming,  knowing that it was futile to try and distract himself.  It could be days, he thought …Or even weeks.  Anger welled within him again at this unfair situation, but was slowly eaten away by a corrupting fear.  Conflicting emotion ate at him until he was so lost within himself that he didn’t even notice as tears started to run down his cheek.

Abruptly Chris’s stomach lurched as the external door opened.  His hopes and fears were being answered as the bailiff walked in and with a quick glance at Chris began speaking to the holding cell guard.  He took a deep breath, trying to make the nausea settle.  It’s not going to be good. He tried to banish the cancerous thought, but it was firmly entrenched even before they opened his cell door. It was a certainty lying in his stomach like a lead weight.  It’s not going to be good.

As the holding cell door opened the guard noticed the despair in Chris’s eyes and handed him a small stack of napkins.  “Here.  Wipe your cheeks off.”  The guard looked away for a moment to give Chris a chance to compose himself.  “I know it’s scary for you right now, but don’t give up.  Me and the other guards have been watching your case on the tube and none of us think you did it.  We’re all hoping you’ll get off.”

Their eyes locked for a brief moment and Chris realized the man was being sincere.  There was truth gazing back at him from those eyes and with crystal clarity Chris realized that his life was over.  Hope… they know I’ve lost too.  It’s not just me. As he focused on centering himself; trying to retain some shred of his dignity he looked once more to the guard.

“Thank you.”  Was all he said.  There was no emotion in his voice, though, no hope.  As they walked down the hall to the courtroom the guard once again became all business, but as Chris entered the courtroom and started walking towards his attorney, he felt a slight, reassuring pat on his back from the bailiff.  He knew it should be consoling, but it only served to reinforce in his mind that this was hopeless.

It was almost as though he was just an actor who had been through this scene a dozen times prior – and nothing he could do would change the scripted outcome of this play.  As he took his seat Alan Dunwich, a man who was a surprising gift of humanity and friendship to him in these times, leaned towards him.  The man was older, possibly in his sixties with pure silver hair.  He was a large man, not necessarily fat, but definitely headed in that direction.  In many ways, Chris noted, he was truly larger than life.  “Something has happened,” Dunwich excitedly whispered to Chris.  “I don’t know what, but as soon as you left a guy came in to talk to Judge M…”

“All rise.  The honorable Judge Miller is presiding.”  The bailiff interrupted, and Chris and his lawyer stood.  Judge Miller emerged from the antechamber looking troubled, sat, and banged his gavel.  Solemnly he looked around the hushed courtroom then sighed and turned towards the Jury.

“Foreman of the Jury, have you reached a verdict?”

“We have, Your Honor,” a wormy man with a greased comb-over and a Freddy Mercury moustache stood and handed the bailiff a slip of paper.  The Bailiff in turn relayed it to the judge, who unfolded it and read it.  His eyes gave away nothing.  My life is on that paper, Chris thought.  My continued existence hangs balanced on a thread of twelve people’s interpretations of the words of two men…  A man who loves me, and a man who hates me.

Judge Miller frowned once as he looked again at the slip of paper, then handed it back to the bailiff who returned it to the foreman.  “Please announce your verdict to the court.”

The foreman of the Jury looked nervously at the watching crowd and cleared his throat “We, the Jury, find the Defendant, Dr. Christopher Nost, guilty of the charge of First Degree murder in the case of Lucille Frost.”

Chris’ mind went blank as a wave of numbness crashed into his soul.  He felt like he was still waiting for something.  He could almost see it, hurtling toward him in time, something that he could not quite grasp.  Looking deep inside himself he knew that this was not something he had done.  A susurrus swept through the watching crowd as people excitedly started to whisper their opinions to each other.  Christopher Nost looked up to the ceiling and realized that his life was now forfeit.  It took everything he had to stop himself from bawling like a child in the middle of the courtroom.  Even so, he felt a few solitary tears making their way down his cheek.

Judge Miller banged his gavel again, calming the stir of the courtroom.  Chris was not been aware of the noise until it once again fell silent.  “I am now in a position I have not before found myself in twenty years of serving as Justice of this state.  I recently was paid a visit from someone who has shown me evidence that the likelihood of Dr. Nost’s guilt is very small, indeed.  This evidence, however, remains inadmissible in court.  Therefore, this court will waive the lifetime sentence and reduce it to the minimum of ten years.  Furthermore, this term will be carried out in a minimum security prison in which Dr. Nost can continue to work with his employer, GeoTech, Inc., and will be provided with any and all equipment necessary to carry out his duties.  Also, Dr. Nost is to continue his sessions with Dr. Jorgensen in an effort to find a cure for his condition.  And one last point.  As a ward of the state all of Dr. Nost’s medical expenses will be paid by the state of Colorado.”

Judge Miller looked at Chris.  “I personally very much hope that someday you will find your memories returned to you, and I wish you the best of luck, Dr. Nost.  This court is now adjourned.”

So that’s it, then. Chris thought as he weakly nodded to the Judge in thanks.  His lawyer was saying something about an appeal but Chris wasn’t listening.  The feeling of waiting wasn’t gone.  If anything, it had intensified.  The sentencing is over, he told himself.  The waiting is done.  You got of with your life, which is a hell of a lot more than you expected.  Relax.

Got off how? Another voice within him asked.  I’m sure I didn’t do it.  I couldn’t do anything like that.  I’m going to prison for ten years for a crime I didn’t commit. The feeling of shell shock just wouldn’t go away.

Chris was marched into the high, marble hall that led to the front doors of the courthouse.  Despite the judge’s lenience, he noticed there were six guards escorting him to the waiting prison van.  Do they really think I’m that dangerous? He wondered.  Yes, he answered his own question, in their eyes I am a convicted killer.  I am a dangerous person to them.

Then he began to hear something over the empty echo of their footsteps on the checkered black and grey marble floor, and Chris saw in the light at the end of the hall (end of the tunnel he thought, grimly) more guards, facing outwards.

He heard someone shout “Here he comes!” and the footsteps were entirely drowned by the roar of the media circus outside.  Dozens of voices, all clamoring to be heard over each other.  Dunwich stepped in front of Chris to attempt to fill in as crowd control to the impending mob of media.

Funny, he thought, You’d think that in a city like Denver a simple murder wouldn’t draw the attention it has. But the world didn’t work like that.  Because of his memory condition this case had become somewhat of a sensation.  Chris grimaced as his memory flooded with the headlines he has read about himself.  No family, no memory… the mystery murderer…

One of the guards leaned in and tried to reassure him by squeezing his shoulder, “you might want to put this over your head… you know… they can attack like vultures when they smell blood.” The guard tried handing him his jacket, but Chris was lost like a deer in the headlights and didn’t hear.  He was waiting, watching this unstoppable, unnameable event hurtle towards him through time.

What’s happening to me? His head was starting to spin as he felt something beginning to awaken in him.  What is this…

Chris stepped out into the brilliant sunlight and was immediately assaulted by questions and cameras.  Why didn’t they give me something to cover my face? He wondered, and waived his hand in attempts to still the mob, the feeling of something about to happen churning his stomach as he did so.  Dunwich stepped up to the forest of microphones and the cacophony quieted.  “I would like to remind those gathered here, and the viewers at home, that Judge Miller personally offered his condolences to my client after sentencing – so convinced was he of Dr. Nost’s innocence.  Furthermore, I would like to point out…”

The waiting was over.  Potential had become real.  Chris saw a glint from behind one of the crowding news anchors—a woman wearing a red dress and matching lipstick, a permanent, plastic smile molded to her face even as she jostled those around her to catch Dunwich’s words.  This was the pending event that had been hitting a harmonic in his soul.

I can stop this. The realization hit him below his conscious mind and he felt a primal power begin to surge through his veins.  His heartbeat gained a crescendo and the rest of the world faded into silence.  His blood seemed to catch fire and pump through his body; surging and ebbing like the tide, orchestrated to the rhythm of his heart.

Duck! Chris felt his blood scream to him, and everything began to move in slow motion.  His knee buckled, and he was falling down the stairs.

At the same moment he heard a loud crack and he felt something hit him hard in the face.  And the perfect moment was lost.  Whatever had been fueling him fled, chased off by the gunshot.  The world sped back up and the cacophony of the city hit him full force, in a way harder than the bullet which had just lodged itself in his brain.  “Murderer!” someone was shouting.  “Murderer, murderer!”  a familiar voice… and all went black.

2873:  Discoveries

Garret sipped on his luke warm coffee and studied the results of the latest tests.   Garret was a handsome man in his late forties.  His body had not started to go to fat yet, but he was also not heavily built.  Close cropped grown hair, lightly streaked with silver framed his cold grey eyes – eyes which flickered back and forth across the data on the papers in his hand.  This made no sense at all.  Whatever methodology he used to produce the nano-machines it should yield the same results – a temporal circuit machine that piggybacked the body’s mitochondria.  The entire effect should produce an internal machine that linked all of the body’s cells together and give them the ability to manipulate temporal energy.  In short, time travel.  But this last batch which he had engineered with his new process was not passing the performance benchmarks.  More specifically, they weren’t jumping as they should be.  He sighed and put down the papers.  In all honesty, they wee pushing out no energy at all.

He popped in his steel grey, the same as his natural eye color, control contacts and injected a test batch into his arm.  The hypo hissed and there was a brief sting in his forearm as the injection pierced his skin.  The contact lenses tossed up a Heads Up Display and outlined the circuitry for him, creating a floating ghost image in the air which only he could see.  With a small effort he activated his primary system travelers, engineered in the traditional methods of the time, and hopped back one day into his safe window.  As he appeared in his isolation chamber, the HUD threw up a diagnostics on how the new nanos handled the jump’s energy spike.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the programming, except that they were not contributing to the jump.  The new system he had just injected should have fused seamlessly with his old system. Rerunning his isolation routines he separated out the new nanos and ran a brief energy spike through them to hop back forward to his “home” time.

And time froze.  His HUD showed time running at a ratio of four to one Terra to personal.  Garret gaped.  If this was right he was moving very, very fast.   He cautiously opened the chamber’s door and walked into his lab.  There he was, back turned to the chamber, moving at about a quarter of the speed he should be.  Garret grinned and pushed on the new system hard…  He sped up to an incredible speed.  Everything around him appeared to be frozen.  The light coming through the large bay windows of his house shifted from light blue to a more purplish color.  Garret decided to stress test the new system and leave the closed environment of the house.  His mind was moving even faster than his newfound speed as he did so.  The implications of what he had discovered were truly staggering.

Blue light shimmered around of him as he jogged down the highway, passing cars that should be going over a hundred miles an hour like they were standing still.  He turned off on a country exit, leaving the city behind for a more rustic area to perform some experiments in.  As he trotted off the road into a field a he stopped for a few moments to think things through.   That was when he made his next big discovery.  He was moving faster than the air around him.  Standing still too long depleted the supply of breathable air and forced him into motion again.  Once this discovery was dealt with, he got back to his main line of thought.

The big question running through his head was what would happen if he interacted with an inert object then reintroduced it to the environment.  Nothing for it but to try, he figured as he picked up a rock.  With a quick flick of his wrist he threw the rock then watched in amazement as about two inches from him it slowed to a stand still and very slowly started turning red.  On instinct, and with a few ideas about what might happen when he released accelerated time he stepped back about 20 feet then phased back into normal time flow.  The rock immediately exploded in midair, violently throwing shards in every direction.   Garret threw himself to the ground and escaped with only a few minor scrapes.

Thoughtfully he stood back up, reviewing the physics of what had just happened on his HUD.  Needless to say, the reaction was not fully what he had expected to happen.  But, it did make sense.  It was his own short sightedness that had nearly caused him to be badly injured.  He resolved not to make that mistake again.  Stretching his will again he phased back into “fast” time.  Picking up another rock he glanced over it with the HUD and imprinted its structure on his nano’s object orientation subsystems.  The HUD contact lenses had been one of his more inspired inventions, created one day when his wife was arguing with him abut how much paper he left lying around the house.  Time to redo the experiment with a few altered conditions.  This time around he transferred a small batch of his nano machines into the rock first, and then threw it as hard as he could.  Sure enough the nanos in the rock acted as a field extension and the rock moved like a bullet through the frozen landscape.  He pushed with his mind as hard as he could, increasing the rock’s ratio of time acceleration.  Turf rippled in slow motion as the rock sliced through the earth, burrowing a hole about thirty feet long.  Ripples in the ground continued to slowly spread like aftershocks after the rock stopped moving and Garret phased back into standard time to watch the results.

Dirt and grass exploded upwards as time snapped back to its normal passing, the after affects of the high speed stone leaving not only a burrow into the ground but somewhat of a crater.  Garret walked up to the point of impact and started digging until he was holding the rock in his hand again.  He stared thoughtfully down at it, then called the nanos back into his systems.  Filled with warring thoughts over his discovery, James Garret jogged back towards his laboratory, moving into the future about a hundred times faster than any one else on the planet.  But his eyes were on the past.

Time:  Classified

Location:  Classified

Operation:  Classified.

Wanda Garret was a damned good time traveler and she knew it.  Besides her husband being the best causality control theorist in the world and her personal trainer in causality theory – she herself was the best hopper ever tested.  She was only thirty-four, and she alone in the world was skilled enough to transfer her grid points on a three dimensional plane instead of having to utilize the fourth.  Effectively this gave her the ability to teleport herself on the world grid without hopping forward or backward through the time stream.  She also had the type of good looks, strong jaw and cheek bone yet still with a soft face, luscious amber hair that was almost brown and warm eyes, which helped her fit into any era as a good looking woman.  And good looking got you far.

So it made a certain amount of sense that she had been the one given the mission to assassinate the most important figure in history at the time he was meant to die.  If, for any reason, this mission was messed up then the paradox she had been sent back to fix could possibly shatter history.  Once again she reviewed the mission dossier.  The target somehow survived an assassination in the late nineteen hundreds, surviving through an indeterminate time afterwards and destabilizing the time stream.  For almost nine hundred years the world hand been hanging under the modern equivalent of Damocles’ Sword.  Truly, history was hanging on the brink of destroying itself in one nasty moment in time.  And finally the brass in the Time Corps had managed to isolate the incident which had created the instability in the time stream.  This was the alpha and the omega of all paradox.  It was the first, and possibly the last of the paradoxes.

But she still had doubts nagging at her concerning this assignment.  Undoing nine hundred years of history in order to undo a class six paradox seemed like it just might be more harmful to history.  Even though since the incident nothing greater than a class two paradox had occurred.  There had to be something missing from her files.  Once again she did the math on the situation, and again it returned results in the positive.  Just like the countless other times she had done the math on this since accepting the mission.  She sighed and rubbed her temples.  If only she could disclose this to her husband and have him review the results.  Deep in her gut she had a feeling that there was something about the equation that she, and everyone else, was missing.

But then again, according to the algorithms the computers were spitting out this guy was meant to die here and now.  And when it came to simplicity of form and action there was a certain beauty to it.  Mainly, it didn’t leave you a lot of choice. She settled down in her seat to watch the trail and try to piece together the reasons that the missed death of the man that created time travel was the greatest paradox in all of history.

2620:  The Fine Line Bar, Tucson Arizona.

Little chunks of wheat floated through the beer, catching rays of the evening sun shinning through the window and refracting the light through the dark amber beer.  Alexander Zarth watched the play of light with fascination.  Subtleties of the environments he was in, little details that so many people missed were always a source of amazement to him.  He sighed contentedly and took a sip of the thick beer, enjoying the chill and the thick weight of it on his tongue.  Putting the glass down he leaned back in his seat and looked at the man across the table from him.  He was a comfortable looking man.  Leaning slightly back in the booth Alex could see that underneath the blond hair and boyish features the man had piercing eyes and a lot of muscle mass.  Alex carefully lowered the beer.  Someone was watching them both from the kitchen.  He extended his senses and felt a time traveler’s signature there.  And he recognized the signature all too well.  He smiled lightly to himself and leaned back.

“So let me get this right.  Twelve commandos from two C’s up the line from me have all taken failed shots at me, and you” here he pauses to look into the eyes of the man across from him “manage to find me faster than any of them.  On top of this, you have an out of time “mission” you’d like to hire me for.  A mission which puts me back in the crossfire, by the paradox standard of those commandos out to get me, and makes me killable.  If I accept this I have to leave the safety of my own time, when they cannot kill me, and go somewhen else – which makes me a target.  Do you think I’m stupid friend?  Or is it greed that you think motivates me?”

Alex locks gazes with the man sitting across from him, a man who looks to be in his early thirties but whom Alex suspects as being much older than that.  Those boyish features that frame an innocent and friendly face are deceptive.   His eyes are what gives him away.  There is a surprising depth to them, their pure emerald seems to catch Alex in an almost hypnotic spell.  Alex is having trouble reading this man, and that in itself is a rare thing.  The man nods. “That is, looking at the smallest possible picture, correct Mr. Zarth.  It does make you ‘killable’ by their standards.  And no, I do not think you are stupid or greedy.  If I did then I would not have bothered coming here.  Frankly – you are the best there is in the time travel business.  I’ve been up and down the line from C forty-five back to C twenty and there is no one else who can do this.  Not even me. And please believe me when I tell you that I am the second best ‘dox spinner ever.  So please do not accept that compliment lightly, or think that it is flattery.  All it is for me is a statement of your resume, and why I am attempting to hire you for this task.”

Alex took another sip of his beer, finishing the glass off, then with a quick burst power switches the empty with the full glass he had been holding fifteen minutes ago.  He was thinking, and hard, about the term the man had used.  ‘dox spinner he had said.  It was a term Alex had never heard before, but which he was too familiar with regardless.  He made his decision, mainly guided by the presence of the traveler observing from the back room.  “Here is to paradox, Mr. Smith.  And the free beer it entails you.  All right, I believe you.  But why should I accept the job?  My odds of survival are low and frankly, money is not a problem for me.  And, you should know, there is another who is as good as me.  If this situation is as big as you say then this man will be someone opposed to me in all likelihood.”

Smith smiled at Alex, and there was something odd hidden in that smile.  “To be frank with you, you don’t survive the mission.  You change the objective and die in the process.  But somehow, it all ends up working.  Whatever it is you do – it works.  And I’m not good enough to figure out what exactly it is that you do.  But as to why you accept the mission, I can only suppose that it is because it is the greatest challenge you will ever face,” Alex raised his eyebrow on hearing that. “and because Mr. Zarth, as trite as it is, only you can save the world.  And your trick just now, circumventing the block I put on your ability to travel, only goes to reinforce the point to me that you are the best.  That you can do what I could not.”

With a grunt Alex raised his fresh glass of beer to his lips then set it back down without drinking it.  Thoughts were running through his head very quickly.  “Your honesty is refreshing.  So I’ll share this with you in return.  You might as well drop the block you have on me.  I’ve slipped by it three separate times already that escaped your notice fully as well as the trick you just saw.  You are just wasting your energy on blocking me.  Leave the dossier with me.”  He was gratified by the look of surprise in the other man’s eyes, and he made his final decision at that point.  “Trace my last jump and you’ll find a list of what supplies I need and when I need them dropped.  If you can’t trace the jump, find someone else for the job Mr. Smith.”