The Adventures of Lazarus Gray (23 page)

Garrison had stood there
panting for a long minute before grabbing hold of the text and
shoving it into his jacket. He had turned to flee, leaving the
priest to slowly bleed out. In the book lay power… power that would
be his and his alone.

***

Mr. Skull knew that the
reservoir was off-limits now but there had to be some way he could
bring death to the citizens of Sovereign. He had finally decided to
drop Bone Dust right over downtown. The wind would carry the dust
far and wide, spreading it so thin that it might not kill all it
touched.

But it would burn and it
would scar.

After bonding with the
demon that now resided inside him, Garrison had realized what a
curse he’d accepted. He was terrifying to behold, which both
pleased and repulsed him. He was also driven half-mad by the
creature’s voice in his head: it gave him great power and a long
leash but it craved death and destruction, both of which Garrison
found himself giving it in spades. That was the secret of it all:
though he masqueraded as a mobster, Mr. Skull was as much a true
killer as he was a criminal. Money was secondary in the end, a
distant concern compared to the opportunity to sow terror amongst
the innocent.

His plane banked to the
west and down below lay the gambling ship known as The Heart of
Fortune. It was a little over three miles off the Sovereign coast
and the ship’s lights showed that a large crowd of revelers were
enjoying themselves. Mr. Skull thought about dropping the Bone Dust
here, just a few handfuls, to see what effect it would have on the
gamblers. He held off, however, preferring to save it all for the
more heavily populated areas. He spurred his plane to greater
speeds and within moments land was once more beneath him. He saw
the courthouse and city hall up ahead, recognizing them by their
distinctive shapes.

To his great surprise,
however, something rose up from below, rocketing toward him with
tremendous speed. It took him a moment to realize that it was a
small rocket fired from a bazooka – Mr. Skull had read up on the
devices and knew that they’d first appeared on the scene back in
the Great War. Originally known as Rocket-Powered Recoilless
Weapons, they were quite deadly – sometimes as much so for the one
firing it as the one on the receiving end.

Mr. Skull tried to avoid
the missile but it came at him too quickly, shearing off the
plane’s left wing and sending him hurtling toward the ground with
smoke and fire trailing after him.

Skull unbuckled his seat
restraint and began to crawl from his seat even as his plane
hurtled to its destruction. He was going to come down on a large
hill overlooking downtown, part of a district that mixed various
small businesses with homes. Whether by divine providence or simple
luck, the plane was on a direct course with a large playground and
park that was currently empty.

Skull threw himself away
from the plane, landing in a roll that carried him in the opposite
direction from the crash. He felt the impact through the ground and
felt the rush of heat as the gas tank exploded, but he was
unharmed, aside from a few rips in his clothing. He patted his
pockets and found that the vials of Bone Dust had not been
shattered.

Standing up, he quickly
looked around for the source of the attack. He didn’t have to look
far. The members of Assistance Unlimited were less than a hundred
feet away and the man known as Lazarus Gray was dropping a bazooka
to the ground. Morgan and Samantha both had handguns drawn, while
Eun was standing relaxed but obviously ready for combat.

"Garrison Montreux,"
Lazarus said. "Surrender now or I cannot promise that your life
will be spared."

Mr. Skull gestured around
at the houses and businesses. "You’re really going to do this here?
What about all the people who might get hurt?"

"All evacuated." Gray’s
mismatched eyes glittered with cold humor. "Once Miss Grace had
surmised who you really were and informed us of your plans to
commit mass murder, I began to look into your business holdings. It
didn’t take much digging to find out that you owned two planes,
housed at a private airfield."

"And you just happened to
have a weapon like that?" Skull laughed hoarsely. "Gray, you’re a
real piece of work."

"Can’t I shoot him, Chief?"
Morgan grinned like a wolf. "He’s not going to surrender, you can
tell."

Mr. Skull’s head was now
fully ablaze and it was so bright that it nearly equaled that of
the burning plane. "Bullets won’t hurt me. The girl knows that." He
cracked his knuckles and began moving toward them. "I’m going to
enjoy this."

Eun rushed forward, moving
with the speed of a panther. He caught Mr. Skull in the midsection
with a flurry of punches, followed by a hard kick to the villain’s
knee. In an ordinary man, such an attack would have left him
writhing in agony. But Mr. Skull was not like other men. He struck
back quickly, backhanding Eun so hard that the young Korean was
lifted off his feet. Eun cried out as he landed right atop
Samantha, knocking them both on their backs.

Morgan knelt quickly at
their sides, checking to make sure they weren’t badly wounded. Eun
was groggy and suffering from a mild concussion but Samantha looked
merely stunned.

Gray had taken in all of
that with a mere glance. He turned away from them, focusing all of
his attention on Mr. Skull. The villain was laughing again, an
eerie sound that combined with the horrific nature of his
appearance, making the entire scene appear quite
surreal.

Skull threw a powerful
left-handed punch but Gray caught it, knocking it aside with the
back of his hand. Before Skull could attack again, Gray had pushed
both hands under the man’s armpits and pushed, momentarily knocking
the fiery killer off-balance. Gray danced around his foe, wrapping
his powerful arms around Mr. Skull’s midsection. He held on with
all his strength as Skull began trying to free himself.

Keeping his head just out
of the range of the villain’s flickering flames, Gray lowered his
voice and whispered, "You don’t strike me as an occultist, Mr.
Montreux. If I had the time, I’d love to know how you managed to
turn yourself into this monstrosity… but in the end, it doesn’t
matter. You’re a threat to everyone you come into contact
with."

"I’m going to pour the Bone
Dust right down your throat!" Mr. Skull bellowed.

"No. You’re not. Enigha
m’luktu omnarium. Varily’u fedda b’eginas!"

The strange words that
Lazarus Gray said were delivered almost under his breath and yet
all of his aides, even battle wounded Eun, reacted to them. They
saw their employer’s emerald colored eye glow brightly as he said
those awful phrases. These were words that were part of a lost
tongue, ancient even when Atlantis sank beneath the waves. They
were a litany of power, spoken by men who had bartered their souls
for the dark gifts. It terrified them to know that Lazarus Gray
knew them.

The flames around
Garrison’s head began to die out and the light in his empty sockets
dimmed. He began to cry out in alarm and pain but his words were
gibberish, bundled up in shock and horror. When the final flame
died out, he slumped in Gray’s grasp, his soul having been driven
from its mortal shell. To the nether realms the demon had been
banished once more and to the dark, stygian depths of Hell went the
soul of Garrison Montreux.

It was Morgan who found the
courage to ask what they were all thinking. "Chief… What the heck
were those things you were saying?"

Gray set down Mr. Skull’s
body with far more dignity than Eun thought it deserved. "It was a
spell from a book entitled
Chaldean Magic
. There
are only a handful of copies in existence so I’m not quite sure
where he would have found one. When I saw his physical appearance,
I recognized what spell had been used." Gray noticed that his
friends were watching him with shocked expressions and his normally
emotionless face relaxed a bit, soothing their concerns. "I used to
be a specialist in spells relating to the binding and summoning of
demons. I’d forgotten that until earlier this evening. That phone
call I received back at HQ sparked something in me."

Samantha, leaning against
Morgan for support, asked, "So do you remember anything
else?"

"Several
things."

"Do you know your real
name?"

Gray paused, his gaze
shifting away from Samantha’s. He appeared to be considering
something quite important and when he spoke, his words carried
great conviction. "Yes. I do. It’s Lazarus Gray."

Epilogue

Miya was furious as she
hurried down the stairs to the waiting taxi. The driver had been
given instructions to take her directly to the airport, where she
had plans to fly back to Europe. She was going to inform the rest
of The Cabal that Walther had ruined her plans and betrayed
valuable information to the man once known as Richard
Winthrop.

She carried her heavy bags
out to the car and set them down, expecting the driver to get out
and help her. When he didn’t, she moved around to look at him. He
was lying unconscious behind the wheel, a nasty looking bruise on
his left temple.

"Miya. Don’t
move."

The cool barrel of a gun
pressed against the back of her head and Miya’s shoulders slumped.
"Lazarus. Or do you prefer Richard now?"

"Lazarus will do. Where’s
Walther?"

"Gone. Now that you know
who you are, he believes we won’t be able to recruit you. He’s
going to kill you. That’s what he wanted to do all
along."

"And you?"

Miya did turn now, staring
past the gun into the eyes of the man she used to regard as a
lover. "I’m loyal to The Illuminati but I do care for you. I want
you to be with me. I know that you’ve always been uncomfortable
with some of their methods but I think we can change them from
within. This organization has been around for centuries. It can’t
be destroyed – the best we can do is try to mold it."

Gray’s face betrayed no
emotion whatsoever. "I don’t remember everything, Miya, but I
remember enough. That group is evil. They want to control the minds
of men and women throughout the world. I can’t let that
happen."

"Are you willing to kill
me?"

"I’d like to see you
brought to justice."

"But there’s no crime you
can pin on me. If you turn me over to the authorities, I’ll be free
by the end of the night."

"I know that. And that’s
why I’m going to let you go."

Miya couldn’t hide her
surprise but she recovered quickly. "You do love me, don’t
you?"

Gray gave a curt shake of
his head. "That’s not why I’m allowing you to walk free. Like you
said, there’s only so much I can do to hold you legally. So this is
what I want to do: I know you’ve bought tickets on a plane headed
to London. I want you to go there and I want you to tell The
Illuminati that I’m watching them. I plan to destroy their
organization piece-by-piece and brick-by-brick. If they stay out of
Sovereign, they might last a bit longer… but if they force my hand,
I won’t rest until every last one of you is dead. Do you
understand?"

Miya saw nothing in his
eyes to suggest that he didn’t mean every word that he said. She
shivered and wasn’t sure if it was because a soft drizzle had begun
to fall or if it was because she was staring at a man who had just
sworn her eventual destruction. "I don’t want us to be enemies,
Lazarus."

"Then you need to turn
against the people you work with."

"I can’t do that. It’s
madness to fight them."

Lazarus took a step back,
lowering his weapon. "Then get out of my sight. And never come
back."

Miya looked like she wanted
to say more but in the end, she merely returned to loading her bags
into the car. When she was done, she turned to look at Lazarus one
last time…

But he had vanished, as
quietly and as quickly as a fading memory.

THE END

An Adventure of Lazarus
Gray

Written by Barry
Reese

Chapter I

Terror in the
City

It was nine o’clock in the
evening and a man sat in his office, reading a
newspaper.

There were several factors
that made this simple-sounding scene remarkable: the location of
his office, the headline on the newspaper’s front page, and the man
himself.

The man in question was
tall and well sculpted. His hair was mostly gray though there were
patches of brown interspersed. Despite the salt-and-pepper hair, he
was in his late twenties and obviously quite vital and strong. His
face was set in grim determination and his eyes were startling. One
of his eyes was a dusky, dull brown in color while the other was
emerald green.

He was Lazarus Gray, known
and far wide as the founder of Assistance Unlimited. A mysterious
stranger who had literally washed up on the shores of Sovereign
City, Gray’s memory was a series of patchwork images, providing him
with only the barest knowledge of who he had once been. Having
awakened with a bronze medallion in his possession, depicting the
image of a nude man with the head of a lion and the words "Lazarus
Gray" imprinted beneath it, he had chosen the name as his
own.