The Peregrine Omnibus, Volume Two (58 page)

The acquisition of the goddess was a thrilling affair, but it also disturbed Stickman greatly. He’d tried to avoid drawing attention from the Peregrine and, despite the fact that they lived in the same city, he’d succeeded all this time. How ironic that it was in another country that they should finally come face to face.

There was also the small matter of the Crimson Gem, a fist-sized jewel that Klee had found in Saudi Arabia. The Crimson Gem was reputed to possess the power to bequeath immortality on those who activated it, and Klee had done just that. At first, he’d felt nothing different, and had assumed that the Gem was, like so many other objects he’d collected, a disappointment. He’d gone to bed early that night, suffering from an unusual drowsiness. When he’d woken up, his skin had begun to harden into bark-like strips, and his limbs had grown into thin branches. When he bled, it was an oily sap that oozed from the wounds—but at least he’d found his immortality.

“I want more,” he said aloud, stalking back and forth across his study like a caged tiger. “This can’t be all of it.”

Sitting on the carpeted floor, surrounded by books, was a young brunette woman dressed in a blue-and-black blouse and skirt. Like Stickman, she’d adopted a false identity—in her case, she fancied the name Belladonna. It was certainly more evocative than her birth name—Harriet.

Bella was a pixyish sort of girl and was obviously not the least bit intimidated by Stickman. She rolled her eyes in response to his words and kept her attention fixed on a small cylindrical device that hung suspended in the air before her.

“I’m doing the best I can, Abe. You need to be patient.”

“Don’t call me that,” Stickman hissed, coming to a stop. He pointed a gnarled finger in her direction. “Abraham’s dead.”

Bella resisted the urge to laugh. “Riiiight.” She reached out and ran a hand over the cylinder, hissing as she felt the heat rush up her arm. “I think I’m onto something here. I’ve got the thing turned on—it’s just a matter of figuring out how to open the canister.”

Stickman watched her closely. His hands continually opened and closed, a sure sign that he was anxious. “You really think this thing is from another planet?”

“I’m positive. I stole it from a scientist up in Richmond. He was convinced it was some sort of military biological weapon. He hadn’t been able to figure out how to get into it, but he said he thought there was a creature in there. Expose it to oxygen and it grows to its full size. Until then, it’s miniaturized and dormant.”

Stickman moved towards her. “And where did he acquire this device?”

“It fell to earth about six years ago, in Australia.”

“He certainly told you an awful lot about this thing,” Stickman murmured, making sure that she caught his meaning. He didn’t completely trust her and he wanted her to be aware of that.

“Men can be pretty talkative when they’re in a bed with a girl half their age.”

Stickman failed to hide his surprise at that. He examined her in a new light. “I had no idea you were a whore,” he hissed.

Bella looked up at him and grinned. “My, my… a mystically empowered killer who has such high morals. Will the wonders never cease?”

“Very funny. I just don’t believe in using one’s sexuality to get what they want out of the world.”

“No, you just believe in tossing aside your humanity in order to do the same.” Bella shrugged her shoulders. “I had fun. He had fun. It was a hell of a lot nicer way to get into his house than if I’d beaten him up and did a smash and grab. He fell asleep with a smile on his face and I took this weapon, which you probably intend to use to bring about the deaths of a lot of people. So we’re both evil. No need to throw stones.”

Stickman grunted but said nothing. He hadn’t been such a prude when he’d been a normal man. In fact, he’d have tried to bed Bella without a doubt. But in his current form, he had no genitalia, and the best way to keep from missing pleasures of the flesh was to develop an aversion to the whole affair.

Belladonna had turned her attention back to the bio-weapon, and with a gasp of pleasure, she realized that she’d finally accomplished her task. She stood up and pointed at the cylinder, which was beginning to release a gray-colored gas into the air. “I did it.”

“Is this dangerous?” Stickman wondered, glancing back towards the door. Perhaps he should leave Bella with the weapon and see what happened first before exposing himself to this…

Bella ignored him. The cylinder was cracking in a dozen places now, pieces of the white metal falling to the floor. The gas that was emerging was beginning to coalesce into some sort of form now, vaguely humanoid in that it possessed a long torso with arms and five-fingered hands. Its head was mostly hidden beneath some form of hood, but two red eyes glowed from within. The hood was not the only garment it wore. On its torso was a cloth tunic, a dark brown in color. The creature remained gaseous and semi-transparent, but it was now openly inspecting its surroundings and appeared to be quite tangible.

Bella took one step closer and the creature whipped its head around, examining her. “Welcome to Earth,” she said, feeling amazingly stupid as she said it. “My name’s Bella. The walking bonsai over there is called Stickman.”

The alien said nothing for a moment and then began speaking. The words sounded odd coming from it, as if it were testing them out. “You are speaking… English. We have mastered this tongue. I am Osh, servant of the Seez.”

“Why were you kept in that canister?” Stickman asked. He was still keeping his distance from the alien. “Were you a prisoner? Or were you considered too dangerous to be allowed freedom to move?”

Osh lowered his head and his body seemed to shimmer. When he glanced back up, he was no longer composed of wisps of smoke—he had become fully corporeal. “My people are slaves to the Seez. I was trained from birth to be one of their drop soldiers. My people exist in two states of being, one of which is the gaseous form that is housed in the canister. When the Seez seek to invade a world, they sometimes seed it with canisters containing our people. When they transmit a signal to activate us, we are freed and then go on our killing sprees. Enemies of the Seez shot down the vessel I was being carried on. I alone survived the trip through your atmosphere.”

Bella crossed her arms over her chest and looked thoughtful. “And… so now you’re supposed to go on a killing spree?”

“That is what I am trained to do, yes.”

“And do you hate these aliens who imprisoned you?”

“Oh yes.”

“Enough to go off and do your own thing, maybe taking orders from Stickman instead of the Seez?”

Osh made a rasping sound that Bella took to be laughter. “If Osh betrayed the Seez, they would kill Osh’s entire clutch clan. No. Osh must do what Osh was trained to do. Osh must kill all non-Seez in the area.”

Bella sighed. “Too bad for you.” The petite girl suddenly lunged forward, punching out with her right hand. She moved too quickly for Osh to revert to his gaseous form, and her fingertips slammed hard into his chest. Almost immediately, the alien began to emit loud squeals of pain, and as Stickman moved forward, he saw tiny bits of frost began to appear on Osh’s body. Within seconds, he was a gigantic block of ice, frozen from the inside out.

“Why did you do that?” Stickman demanded.

“Because the last thing we need is some stupid alien blasting up your quiet little neighborhood and attracting the wrong kind of attention.” Belladonna wiped off her fingertips on her skirt, leaving behind a thin trail of melting ice.

“We might could have converted him to our cause.”

“No. We couldn’t have. Weren’t you listening?” Bella took a few steps back and then sprinted towards Osh, kicking him with all her might. The impact caused his body to shatter into hundred pieces. “You’d better get a bucket or something. When he starts to melt… this isn’t going to be pretty.”

Stickman whirled away, muttering under his breath. The bitch was too confident, but he knew that her ability to freeze the blood in one’s veins was very dangerous, even to an entity like him. Bullets and knives were things he could recover from, but fire and frost were deadly to trees, even living ones.

Bella watched as the tree man returned to the room a few minutes later with a mop and pail. She took the mop from him and tossed it aside—leave it to a man to bring a mop to a carpeted floor. Instead, she started picking up chunks of Osh and tossing them into the pail, where they shattered further.

“You should have called yourself Killer Frost or something,” Stickman said.

“I like Belladonna. Sounds more dangerous—and I don’t want to tip everyone off to what I can do. Call yourself Killer Frost and people might pick up on the fact I can freeze things.”

“And where did you get that ability?” Stickman wondered aloud.

Bella stopped what she was doing and looked up at Stickman. “You’re a business associate, not a friend. So leave me and my past alone.”

Stickman nodded, though he felt oddly pleased to have seen Bella so disturbed by something. Normally the girl’s glacial cool was matched only by her frigid touch. There was obviously a sore spot there—perhaps a painful past? You never knew when such information might come in handy…

* * *

Harriet could still remember the way the leather straps had bitten into her flesh. She had been a little girl when the fiend had captured her, stolen her right off the streets. She’d been drugged, awakening to find herself in a cell with nearly a half-dozen other young boys and girls. The man who’d held them was a German, with a thick accent and horn-rimmed glasses. He had never given his name, preferring instead to have everyone simply call him “Doctor.”

The doctor had performed awful experiments on them, injecting some of the children with strange chemicals that stopped their hearts. A set of twins were given painful treatments to see if the other would feel their sibling’s pain, and Harriet was given some awful fluid that ran through her veins and made her feel like she were turning into a human popsicle. In the end, after all the screaming and all the pain, she had survived—survived enough to withstand temperatures well below freezing without any damage to her skin. She was also able to freeze the blood of others, a feat she learned when she finally got the opportunity to strike out at her captor.

She’d fled into the night, leaving behind all the others. It wasn’t that she wanted them to starve—it was that she was so afraid and so desperate for escape that she couldn’t stop long enough to think about them. And later on, she was unable to find the house of horrors again.

She’d only been missing for two weeks, but her entire outlook on life had been changed. Harriet was dead and gone, frozen beneath a snowy blanket of pain.

Only Belladonna remained.

The girl who’d been birthed in that awful house was one who craved danger and excitement, for in those moments of near terror, she felt alive. The rest of her days, she was numb. It was only when the adrenaline rushed through her body that she was reminded that she was still alive.

* * *

Stickman was gazing at his collection, his mind wandering over the items contained there. The Onyx Goddess was a potent device, but it wasn’t enough… it was never enough. Stickman was cursed with a terrible hunger of the spirit. No matter what he had, it was never satisfying for him. Even before his transformation and his descent into the occult, it had been this way. When he’d date a pretty girl, he wanted someone more beautiful. When he’d achieve a success, he wanted something bigger and more impressive. And now that he traded in human lives, he still craved more power over the world around him.

He was so engrossed in his thoughts that he almost didn’t notice the arrival of Belladonna at his side. He caught a whiff of her perfume and glanced over at her, not hiding the fact that he was still angered by her actions with Osh.

“I’m surprised you’re still here,” he said. “You’ve gotten your money.”

Bella smiled softly, adopting a girl-next-door air that was at odds with everything Stickman knew about her. “I like to leave my customers happy. That way, they hire me again the next time they need someone like me. Since I destroyed your alien weapon, how about I help you get a new prize? Free of charge, of course.”

Stickman regarded her and tried to avoid looking pleased. “Tell me more.”

“Are you familiar with rongorongo?”

“Yes. They’re a system of glyphs found on objects on Easter Island. No one’s been able to translate them. But I don’t see their importance to my collection.”

Bella began pacing a bit, moving her hands as she talked. “Exactly. All the writing is in the form of carvings on wooden objects. It’s one of the three or four independent inventions of writing in human history. Two dozen wooden objects bearing rongorongo inscriptions, some heavily weathered, burned, or otherwise damaged, were collected in the late nineteenth century and are now scattered in museums and private collections. None remain on Easter Island. The objects are mostly tablets shaped from irregular pieces of wood, sometimes driftwood, but include a chieftain’s staff, a bird-man statuette, and two reimiro - a decorative crescent-shaped pectoral ornament once worn by the women of Easter Island. There are also a few petroglyphs which may include short rongorongo inscriptions. Oral history suggests that only a few elite were ever literate, and that the tablets were sacred. Authentic rongorongo texts are written in alternating directions, a system called reverse boustrophedon.”

Stickman sighed loudly. “Is there a point to this lecture?”

“I know where the rongorongo Rosetta stone can be found. And I know the basics of what’s contained on those samples. It’s not just a calendar—it’s not a list of kings and rulers… it’s the key to Heaven itself.”

CHAPTER IV

Friends and Enemies

“Do you ever miss it?” Evelyn stood in Kirsten McKenzie’s study, looking at a set of armor that hung in a glass display case. The suit had been designed by Hitler’s Occult Forces Project, which had focused on harnessing the power of various mystic artifacts and using them to empower enhanced soldiers of the Reich. Kirsten had been dubbed the Iron Maiden and had served loyally until her exploits caused her to cross the paths of Will McKenzie and the Peregrine. Along the way, she’d fallen in love with Will and turned her back on the Aryan supremacy beliefs that she’d grown up with.