The Peregrine Omnibus, Volume Two (27 page)

The Peregrine moved his fingers and realized that he was still clutching the Knife of Elohim. With his last bit of energy, he hurled the dagger, which struck Hitler’s right hand, the one in which he had been holding the Rod. Hitler dropped the staff in fright and backed away, howling in pain as his hand began to bleed.

Max felt the room begin to spin, and his battle to remain awake came to an unfortunate end.

CHAPTER XIII

Endings

When the Peregrine woke up after a long and fitful slumber, he was onboard his airplane, strapped into the passenger seat of the cockpit. Evelyn was at his side, obviously trying to remember everything he had taught her about piloting.

“What… happened?” he asked, reaching up to touch his head, which was throbbing.

“The Warlike Manchu went back to get you. He said he found you passed out, Hitler bleeding, and a horde of Nazi soldiers about to burst in. He barely got out of there with you.”

“Where is he now?”

“Gone. He brought you to me and said that we should go our separate ways. He says he’s now free of the vampire’s control and that both of you had repaid any kind of debts you owed one another.”

Max uttered a curse. “Wait a minute. Did he take off with the Rod of Aaron?” He couldn’t quite keep the accusation out of his voice.

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised, but I was more concerned with getting out of there with you than I was about trying to stop him. He’d just saved your life! Not to mention that I’d never have gotten past those vampire SS without him.”

“I’m not criticizing.”

“Yes, you are.”

Max sighed. “I’m sorry. I just hate to think about him being out there. But maybe it’s better he has the Rod than Hitler. At least with the Manchu, he’s not waging a war with America. Not a public one, at least…”

“Is Gustav…?”

“Dead.” Max glanced at her and saw that she was nodding. “He… I…”

“It’s okay, Max.” Evelyn smiled at him. “I do remember things… things that happened to me in another life. But that’s all they are now. Memories. The part of me that was Justine has been very quiet, and I don’t think she’s going to reemerge. She only came to the fore because of the shock of being reunited with him.”

“He said the two of you made love.”

Evelyn’s expression took on a sharper quality. “No, we did not. That’s wasn’t me, Max. I was inside my own head, trapped, caught up in her emotion. But it wasn’t me. If it had been, I wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

Max said nothing at first, staring out of the repaired front window. Evelyn was keeping to his usual flight path when coming into Germany, keeping his full stealth mode on the plane in full activation. It wasn’t foolproof, but so far he hadn’t been forced into any aerial dogfights, either.

Evelyn reached out and took her husband’s hand. “I’m glad you’re okay. Looks like you took quite a beating.”

Max squeezed her fingers with his own. “Let’s take a vacation. Me, you, the kids. Go someplace nice and quiet for awhile.”

“That sounds nice,” she responded. She could see that something was gnawing away at Max, making him pensive. “Are you really that concerned about what happened between me and Gustav?”

“No,” he said, looking into her eyes. “It’s not that. Hitler overheard my name. My full name. That means we’re not safe. We’ll never be safe.”

Evelyn pursed her lips, realizing what he was saying. The Germans held Max personally responsible for a lot of their losses. “Max… Hitler’s not the only dangerous person who knows who you are. There’s the Warlike Manchu, for one—and just because they know who you are, doesn’t mean we should run and hide or change our names. If they come after us, it’ll end the same way it always ends.”

Max leaned close to his wife, who smiled. “And how is that?”

“With you beating up the bad guys, and with you and me flying off into the sunset.”

The Peregrine took a glance out the window, where the sun could be seen dropping behind the clouds. “Is this where we kiss and the words ‘the end’ flash up on the screen, Mrs. Davies?”

“Indeed it is,” she answered, kissing him gently on the lips.

THE END

SATAN’S TRIAL

An Adventure Starring the Peregrine

Written by Barry Reese

CHAPTER I

Caging the Beast

December 1943—Manhattan

“His fingertips are completely smooth, not even a hint of a print. And his face is so ordinary that even I can’t remember what he looks like when I walk out of the room. We’ve had him for months, fast-tracking this trial, and we still don’t have a clue as to who he really is.” Martin Goode sat back in his chair, which creaked a bit under his not-insubstantial weight. As the city’s district attorney, he’d been tasked with what on the surface looked to be an open-and-shut case: the conviction of the notorious Doctor Satan, wanted for a string of felonies a mile long. Unfortunately, things weren’t going as planned. Goode fumbled for a cigar and lit it, puffing steadily as he continued. “Hell, we can’t even prove he’s the same guy who’s done all these crimes… could have been anybody under that hood of his.”

Ascott Keane, looking dapper and slim in his well-tailored suit, sat across the desk in Goode’s office, fingers steepled before him with chin resting on the tips of his fingers. When he looked up, his placid blue eyes shone with an unfamiliar passion. He had spent far too much of his life chasing after Doctor Satan, and the realization that he and the Peregrine had finally captured the villain back in September had filled him with joy… but now he felt that the situation was slipping rapidly out of control.

“The fact that he is so hard to visualize after meeting with him is because of a powerful spell he’s placed on himself. He makes him utterly nondescript, and none of my own attempts have been able to dislodge it. The same for his other physical characteristics—they all defy conventional means of identifying him.”

“Yes, but a jury won’t be willing to listen all of that rot,” Goode muttered testily. “I’m sorry, Ascott… you know I believe in you, but the common man will think we’re all insane if we start jabbering about magic in the courtroom.”

“Unfortunately, many of his worst crimes are tied very tightly to magic and magical events,” Keane pointed out.

“Which is why we’re not going after him for everything he’s ever done.” Goode retrieved a folder from one of his desk drawers and opened it to reveal several photographs of Doctor Satan being processed at the police station. His red cloak and bodysuit were made all the more bizarre by the horns on his mask and the madness in his eyes. “We’re going to focus on just a few things that we think the jury will buy into. One of them is the murder of Roderick Flynn. He’d just masterminded that when the Peregrine ended up catching him. I don’t really like basing any of our case on the testimony of a masked vigilante, but at least the Peregrine has something of a working relationship with the police in Atlanta, and we have other witnesses to the crime, as well.”

Keane frowned slightly. “You’re going to leave open the possibility that he’s not the same Doctor Satan who’s been committing crimes for years on end, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Goode admitted. “Because you and I both know he
is
, and the most important thing is getting his butt sent to the electric chair. Who the hell cares if we’re able to prove he’s the real Doctor Satan? All that matters is he was using the name when he killed Flynn. That’s enough to cook his goose.”

Keane stood up, smoothing down the front of his suit. He was always impeccable in his appearance, and normally he exuded a sense of calm quiet that was reassuring to others. But in cases involving Satan, his placid demeanor was often shattered. “I don’t like this, Martin. Satan hasn’t tried to escape even once since we’ve had him in custody. He just sits in his cell, refusing to talk to us. It’s not like him… he’s usually so boastful. He didn’t even complain when you took his cloak and mask from him.”

“Maybe he knows he’s up against the wall and there’s no point in fighting anymore.” Goode laughed softly. “Hell, that’s probably wishful thinking, eh?”

Keane stared out at the window, which gave him a fine view of the city. Snow was falling and Christmas shoppers were flooding the streets, flush in the good news that the “Great Depression” was officially over. President Roosevelt had closed the Works Progress Administration just a week or so before, citing the falling unemployment figures in the country. The war had been a boon to the American economy, but Keane knew it had certainly cost the lives of numerous enlisted men.

“I want to see him,” Keane stated, keeping his voice neutral.

“Absolutely not,” Goode said, shaking his head. “You’ve had your chance to interview him. The trial starts tomorrow, and I won’t run the risk of you doing or saying something that might come back to haunt us. I know you hate the man—all good-natured men and women should—but you need to step back and let the legal system handle it from here.”

Keane opened his mouth to respond, but closed it again after a moment. He nodded and left without speaking further, trying to tamp down the anger that was rising in him. He felt certain that Satan was up to something, and it seemed that no one else could see it.

* * *

The conditions under which Satan was being kept would, under normal circumstances, been deemed by any reasonable man as both cruel and unusual. Powerful shackles bound his ankles and wrists at all times, and a gag was kept in his mouth, with the exception of at mealtimes and when Satan was speaking with his lawyer. Even then, guards were always present to make sure that the vile prisoner didn’t utter anything that sounded even remotely like a spell. Most of the guards thought the entire thing was balderdash, but they were loyal to their job and considered Satan very dangerous. If the warden wanted to take absurd precautions, who were they to argue?

That was the thinking that Carl Smith held, anyway. He stood in the corner of a small room, rifle in hand, trying to stay awake. He’d been out playing cards until far too late the night before, and the monotonous drone of conversation between Satan and his lawyer was lulling him into near unconsciousness.

Which was exactly what Satan intended.

Though the words he and his lawyer were speaking were, to all signs, the simple back-and-forth that one would expect to hear in such circumstances, the truth was that the pattern had been carefully laid out, using a series of careful intonations and word pairings to gradually induce a hypnotic state.

Doctor Satan, dressed in prison grays, finally stopped speaking, glancing over to see that Carl was staring straight ahead, eyes glassy and unfocused. “He’s under,” the villain stated. “Have you been doing as I instructed?”

The lawyer, a thin man with faintly Asian features, nodded. A longtime agent of Satan’s, he had been doing the mastermind’s dirty work for weeks, allowing Satan to maintain his various operations while being held in prison. “Yes, master. I confess that I’ve been confused about why you didn’t just free yourself immediately…”

“As long as I’m here, Keane and the Peregrine will both think that they are safe from me and my plans. This has allowed me the freedom to construct a scheme that they won’t be able to interfere with. But the time has come for me to leave this place. Are you ready to switch places with me?”

The lawyer nodded, having long ago traded his soul to the nefarious enemy of the law. His life was no longer his own, and he would have gladly died in service to Satan.

Doctor Satan reached out and clutched the sides of the lawyer’s face. He stared into the man’s eyes and whispered, “Then let us exchange faces. When the guard awakens, you will remain here, wearing that nondescript face that has been my own during my incarceration, and I will walk out the door, with no one the wiser. In fact”—Satan smiled coldly—“let’s erase any memory of who you really are, to prevent any slip-ups. From this day forth, you’ll believe that you
are
Doctor Satan! For however long that life of yours might last,” he added with a laugh.

Moments later, Doctor Satan—wearing the face and general appearance of his own lawyer—snapped his fingers in the guard’s face. Carl blinked and looked sheepishly embarrassed.

“My gosh… I can’t believe I did that! I must have dozed right off!”

Satan chuckled, maintaining his disguise. “It happens to the best of us. Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.”

Carl looked very thankful. “Man, I don’t envy you—having to work with that guy must be tough.” The guard cast a secretive glance at “Satan,” who was still sitting right where he should have been.

“It’s not so bad,” Satan said. “I’ll see you around, officer.”

CHAPTER II

Old Fiends, New Life

The Peregrine felt the staleness of his breath inside the gas mask, hating the way it restricted his peripheral vision. He crept through the steel girders of a new skyscraper being erected in downtown Atlanta, guns at the ready. A dead man was hidden here, given new life for some foul reason.
Why is it that good men stay dead and the evil ones always seem to get a second chance?
he wondered.

Professor Lycos stepped into view up ahead, wearing an old-fashioned World War I-era gas mask of his own. A scarred chemist driven insane by his injuries, Lycos had threatened a city before dying in battle with the Peregrine and another vigilante known as the Moon Man. That had been back in ’38, in what seemed like another lifetime to Max Davies. Lycos had originally used chemicals to poison innocents, but he had gained a superhuman ability to generate noxious gases from the air around him through a demonic pact, and evidently that pact had played a role in his current resurrection.

“Nearly six years I was tormented in hell,” Lycos said, his voice sounding oddly distorted by his mask. “And all because you and men like you tried to stop me from cashing in on my genius!”

“Why didn’t you stay dead, Lycos?” Max asked, speaking through his own breathing device. He pointed his pistol at the man’s chest, hoping that his silver-tipped bullets, each doused in holy water, could somehow bring him down. “Who brought you back?”