The Adventures of Lazarus Gray (19 page)

"What sort of shop did your
father run?"

"He collected and sold
occult books and artwork."

Gray wasn’t surprised. From
his own spotty memories, he knew that his past was filled with
mysticism. A prior encounter with the disfigured Lunt had made him
wonder if he and the German had once been allies or enemies.
Apparently, he now knew the answer. They had worked together in
some capacity.

Miya paused while she
savored the exquisite cuisine. "The Obelisk was supposedly capable
of controlling the minds of any female within 100 feet of it. My
father kept it under lock and key so it wouldn’t affect myself or
my mother." Miya smiled shyly, avoiding Gray’s gaze. "I was
enamored of you from the first moment I laid eyes upon you. When
Lunt and my father could not agree on a price, I stole the Obelisk
and took it to your hotel room, hoping to impress you."

"And did you?"

"Yes. You took me to your
bed that very night."

Lazarus shifted
uncomfortably. More and more, he was becoming convinced that he
wasn’t going to like the man he used to be but he couldn’t find the
strength to stop the hunt. He had to know the truth. "And after
that?"

"I went back to Europe with
the two of you. I was indoctrinated into The Cabal. That’s just
what I called it, of course. It has no real name, though people
have attributed many to it over time: The Damnation Society, The
Hellfire Club, The Illuminati, The Seekers. It’s a group of
occultists who seek forbidden knowledge and who aren’t afraid to
use it for their own ends."

"And I was a part of
this?"

Miya hesitated and though
Lazarus didn’t know her very well, he was sure she was keeping
something from him with her answer. "Oh, yes. You were a willing
participant. In everything."

"Including burning children
alive in Mexico?"

Miya blinked before
suddenly leaning forward and taking Gray’s hand. She squeezed it
hard but he didn’t reciprocate. "Oh, you poor dear! It must be so
hard to remember only bits and pieces, without context! Those
weren’t innocents, my love. Those were vampires. A coven of them.
They’d even turned children into the undead. It was horrible. You
did them a favor by releasing their spirits."

"You still haven’t told me
my name."

Miya withdrew her touch and
took a deep breath. "All right. We’ll handle things your way. Your
name is Rich--"

"Mr. Gray?"

Lazarus glanced up at the
maitre d’, who looked slightly chagrined. "Yes?"

"Please forgive me. I know
that you said you didn’t wish to be disturbed but… well, there’s
been an incident up front that might require your
attention."

It was then that Gray
noticed a murmuring amongst the other restaurant guests and even a
few stifled cries. Normally, he was so sensitive to his environment
that he would never have missed something amiss but Miya’s
recounting of his past had obviously obscured his
awareness.

Gray stood up and spotted
the source of the disturbance. A man had entered the restaurant and
then collapsed, landing facedown in front of the maitre d’ station.
"Have you contacted the authorities?" Gray asked, hurrying toward
the fallen man, the maitre d’ in tow. Miya remained at the table,
momentarily forgotten.

"Not yet. Should
we?"

Lazarus understood the
hesitance. The police force in Sovereign was little more than an
extension of various criminal enterprises. There were good men who
wore the badge but not enough of them to instill confidence in the
city’s populace.

"Go ahead and place the
call," Gray ordered. The maitre d’ nodded at another employee, who
bolted toward the phone.

Kneeling at the man’s side,
Gray quickly rolled the fellow onto his back. Just by touch, Gray
had surmised that it was too late to save the man’s life. He was
quite dead already. Several people who were standing about gasped
at the sight that was presented to them and one of the waitresses
let out a bloodcurdling scream. She fainted into the arms of a
busboy.

The skin on the dead man’s
face had been burned away, as if by acid. As a result, all that was
left was red muscle and white bone. The corpse now bore the
horrific visage of a bloodied skull. Gray refrained from touching
the ruined mess, for fear that some danger lingered on the raw
flesh. There was a peculiar odor emanating from the dead man –
something that smelled a bit like almonds. Gray checked to make
sure his gloves were securely in place and began rifling through
the man’s pockets. He found his wallet easy enough, along with a
small card identifying him as Wallace J. Newton, Private
Eye.

A uniformed police officer
burst in at that moment and Gray recognized the type immediately: a
burly, blustery fellow who enjoyed showing off his power. It only
took the briefest examination to spot the signs.

"Get away from him, fella,"
the police officer barked, directing his comments to Lazarus, who
slowly complied. To the rest of the people standing around, the
officer said, "Everybody take your seats or get out! We gotta leave
room for the medics when they get here!"

Gray took note of the man’s
badge number. He had committed to memory every officer in the city,
matching them up with their badge number. "Officer Mulvaney,
there’s precious little that a medic could do here. This man is
dead. His demise is peculiar enough that I would like to take his
body back to Assistance Unlimited for further analysis."

Mulvaney glowered at Gray
and it was immediately apparent that he didn’t think much of
Assistance Unlimited and its mysterious founder. "How about you
stay out of police business? You may have some special privileges
but that doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do."

Gray reached out and placed
a hand on Mulvaney’s shoulder. He gave it just a slight squeeze,
though with the incredible strength he possessed, it was enough to
bring a grimace to the officer’s face. "I appreciate the difficulty
you must face in doing your job, Officer Mulvaney. People don’t
show adequate respect for your uniform and badge. But in this case,
I need you to be sensible. If you take this body to the morgue,
they’ll call me in eventually and we’ll have wasted valuable time
that could have been used to find Mr. Newton’s killer. So let’s
work together on this."

Mulvaney withered under the
intense gaze he received from Gray. With a shrug and a small shred
of remaining defiance, he said, "Fine. Take it away. But you better
share all your findings with the department. You’re not a law unto
yourself, you know."

Gray turned away, hoping to
catch Miya’s eye and offer an apology. When he looked back at their
table, he saw that she had taken the opportunity to slip away. Gray
frowned slightly, knowing that she hadn’t left through the front
door or else he would have seen her. That meant she’d vanished
through the kitchen and out the back.

Forcing his thoughts away
from the darkness that was his past, Gray bent down and gently
lifted the corpse of Wallace J. Newton.

***

Miya hurried down the
alleyway, ignoring the rain that pelted her hair and soaked through
her dress. Walther Lunt waited for her at the end of the street and
he opened the car door so she could slip inside.

"You’re alone," the German
noted. "I suppose that means you failed to bring him over to our
side. What a surprise." One side of his face had been disfigured
years before and now it was nothing more than a twisted mass of
scar tissue. It ruined what otherwise would have been a cruel but
handsome face.

Miya resisted the urge to
roll her eyes. "He was distracted by a dead man."

"Again, nothing we
shouldn’t have accounted for. Men and women are always dying in
Sovereign and Lazarus Gray is always involved somehow."

"Are you just going to
complain or are you going to drive?" Miya opened her purse and took
out a handkerchief. She began to dab at her forehead and face,
ensuring that her makeup didn’t run.

"What did you tell him?"
Lunt asked, starting the car. He slowly pulled out onto the
rain-slicked streets.

"About how we met. And he
was concerned about that group of vampires he killed in Mexico. I
assured him that he wasn’t a murderer."

"Not in that case, at
least. Did you tell him about The Illuminati?"

"Some."

"Does he know that he
turned against us?"

"I didn’t mention that
part." Miya looked out the window, staring at the grimy city that
she’d called home these past few weeks. "I don’t want to play into
his notions of being a hero. He has just as much blood on his hands
as any of us."

"This is too dangerous.
I’ve asked the rest of our members to give us the option to simply
kill him. The last thing we need is for him to become a thorn in
our side again."

"We should wait. He’s like
clay right now… all it takes it is the right manipulations and I
can sculpt him into whatever we want."

Lunt glared at her. "Don’t
let your lingering feelings for him get in the way of your common
sense."

Miya laughed softly.
"There’s no chance of that happening, Walther. And I do agree with
you, somewhat. If it becomes clear that he won’t come back into the
fold, then we’ll have to take measures to prevent him from
interfering."

"Even if that means killing
him?" Lunt prodded.

"Yes," Miya sighed. "Even
if that means killing him."

Chapter II

The Diabolical Mr. Skull

Garrison Montreux was
French-Canadian by birth, though from his accent, people assumed he
was from the American Midwest. This was because he had long ago
divested himself of any native inflection his words might carry. He
had grown up hating his home province, always yearning for the
American dream. Originally a slight child, Garrison had begun
lifting weights in his teens and he was now a barrel-chested brute
with massive biceps and a mean streak. Preferring to dress in dark
suits and ties, Garrison’s body somehow suggested that he was a
massive gorilla forced to wear a man’s clothes.

But the most chilling
aspect of his appearance was his head. Garrison no longer bore the
visage of a normal man. There was no flesh on his skull, leaving it
terrifyingly bare. Tiny flickers of yellow-orange flame danced
around the exposed bone when he was angry and a pair of glowing
orbs shone out of his eye sockets. As a result, he no longer
answered to his birth name. He was Mr. Skull, a silly name that no
one laughed at.

Mr. Skull sat behind a
large desk, staring at the men who were his chief lieutenants.
Since arriving in Sovereign, he’d made quite a few inroads in the
underworld, building a small name for himself very quickly. It was
rough going, however, and he’d already made an enemy of The
Monster, who was Sovereign’s current criminal kingpin. What no one
knew was that Mr. Skull wasn’t your standard gangster. He loved
money and power as much as anyone but that wasn’t his ultimate aim.
He had darker desires than anyone realized.

"So the private dick is
dead?" Skull asked, using the tough-talking gangster voice he
preferred. It was nothing like the prim words used by his parents,
nor was it anything resembling the way he had talked for most of
his life.

Malone, a thin man with bad
teeth, grinned in response. "We hit him right in the face just you
like wanted. The Bone Dust worked like a charm. He ran off
screaming into a nearby restaurant."

"Good. I want it mentioned
on the streets that he was killed for poking his nose into our
business. We need to use the Bone Dust again soon – let everybody
know it’s a weapon we’ve got and we aren’t afraid to use
it."

"Sure, boss, sure." Malone
looked at the other men in the room and shifted his feet. They were
all waiting expectantly for him to bring something up. He’d been
tasked with the duty by drawing the short straw and he was none too
happy about it. "Listen, there’s something I have to bring
up…."

Mr. Skull turned his full
attention on Malone and a few flickers of flame appeared around his
skull, a sure sign that Malone was treading on thin ice. "Go
on."

"Some of the boys think
we’d actually be getting a little bit further without the whole
flaming skull bit. I mean, it’s an incredible mask and it scares
the living spit out of anybody who sees it but it works a little
too good, y’know? A lot of guys don’t wanna work for you because
they’re terrified."

Mr. Skull stood up and
Malone took a step back. He instantly regretted having spoken up at
all. "I’m sorry, boys. I’m too scary, is that it?"

"Well… that’s what some
folks say; people who aren’t as tough as the rest of us. We don’t
think that."

"So you don’t find me
frightening, Malone?" Mr. Skull adjusted his tie and moved closer,
towering over his employee.

"Uh," Malone stammered. He
wasn’t quite sure how to answer. If he said no, it might be
construed that he was taunting his boss. If he said yes, then that
might be seen as an insult as well. "I think you’re gonna be
running this town soon. And I’m glad to be on what’s gonna be the
winning side."