The Peregrine Omnibus, Volume Two (83 page)

The Peregrine reached into the pockets of his pants and pulled out a pair of leather gloves. He slipped these onto his hands and then took off at a sprint. He felt the rain striking his hair and shoulders and knew that there was a very good chance that he would come out of all this permanently scarred. But he couldn’t allow a child to suffer, not when there was something he could do to save it. That was the difference between Max Davies and most men—no matter what the danger to himself, Max was incapable of standing by when innocents were threatened. There was something in his makeup that had been present at birth and then strengthened by the death of his father.

By the time the Peregrine reached the crying baby, there were numerous areas on his neck that had been hit by the Crimson Rain. It was soaking down through his hair, as well, burning his scalp.

Max pushed the pram back under the post office’s awning, just in time for the distraught mother to run out of the building. She immediately knelt beside the pram, checking on her child.

“Oh, God! Thank you so much!” she said, lifting up the baby and cradling it against her shoulder. She turned to look at Max, her eyes widening as she recognized him. As one of the most influential and wealthy men in the city, Max was often featured in the newspapers.

For his part, Max was already looking for others to help. The rain was beginning to slacken, for which he was grateful. But there were going to be dozens of men and women left in tremendous pain, if not dead.

And then a flash of emerald came from the sky, leaving behind a semi-transparent dome over the entire city block. The Crimson Rain fell against this shield and dripped off its side but no one within its protective shell remained in danger.

For a moment, Max was unsure of what had happened, but a smile quickly spread across his face as the Claws of the Peregrine—complete with several newcomers—suddenly materialized about ten feet from him. Catalyst looked pained, beads of sweat on his forehead. Max realized that the sorcerer was responsible for the dome and its great size was putting a tremendous strain on him.

Max moved towards them quickly, ignoring the pain from his own burns. His eyes quickly moved from one friend to another: Revenant, Esper, Catalyst… and Vincent! The hulking form of Vincent was a most wonderful sight. The Peregrine embraced the big man, who hugged him back warmly. “You’re alive again! How the hell did you do it?”

Vincent shrugged his massive shoulders. “There was nothing to it,” the big man said. He winked at Revenant, letting her in on the joke. It had been Sally and the rest of the team who’d trekked across the globe to revive him.

“Max, what’s going on here?” Revenant asked, staring at the Peregrine’s face.

Max saw the rain was coming to a halt and heard Catalyst exhale slowly as he lowered the magical barrier he’d erected. “A killer called Rainman has created this stuff. Burns flesh on contact.”

“No,” Revenant said, her eyes narrowing behind her mask. “I’m talking about your teeth. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were a vampire.”

“No worries there. I had an accident and died, but now I’m much better. I’ll explain everything back at the Aerie. Who are your friends?”

Revenant looked like she wanted to hear more about Max’s situation but she pushed aside her concerns for now. She gestured to the two black-clad men in their midst. “This is the Black Terror and his partner, Tim. The guy in red and yellow is the Flame. And the girl in the miniskirt is Miss Masque. Believe it or not, they’re members of the team.”

“Adding to the ranks?” Max asked, noticing that the streets were filling up now, with people streaming forth from various buildings to help those in need. Many of them stared in wonder at the colorfully-garbed group. Max was about to suggest that Catalyst begin healing some of the wounded when the magician and his wife immediately broke off and began tending to the fallen.

“It’s a bit more than that,” the Flame said, moving forward. “We’ve been to a lost city. We were there when a device was stolen from its rightful owners. It’s called the Ivory Machine… and we have every reason to believe that it’s being used for the very crimes you’re trying to stop.”

* * *

“Turn it off,” Garibaldi said. He had a pleased expression on his face but something down below had caught his attention, ruining his mood.

Hochmuller powered down the Ivory Machine, concern lacing his words. “Is something wrong?”

Garibaldi leaned over the edge of the roof, gesturing towards a parked police vehicle. “You’re sure there’s no way they could trace that beam here, right?”

“It’s virtually invisible. And if no one spotted the machine during the break-in, there should be no reason to think we’re involved with it. Even if they did see it, it would take an engineer weeks to figure out what it did.”

Garibaldi tossed his cigar to the side and looked towards a service door. It opened to reveal the Century Tower’s manager. The man looked flustered again, as if the excitement of the past few days were taking a dire toll on his health. “The cops want to see me?” Garibaldi asked, and the manager’s head bobbed up and down like a doll’s.

“They say they want you to come down to the station for questioning.”

Garibaldi glanced over at Hochmuller, who was grim-faced. “If they found out something, I’m taking you down with me, Nazi. You understand that?”

“Quite clearly.”

“Good.” Garibaldi tugged at his collar, smoothing it out. His fingers unconsciously rubbed over the brand on his forehead. “I’ll handle this one, Gottlieb. You stay here and listen to the news.”

The German did as he was told, carrying the Ivory Machine back into their penthouse apartment and turning on the radio. As expected, it was filled with reports of the most recent attack. Rumors were circulating that the master criminal—dubbed Rainman—had warned City Hall prior to the attack. Questions were being asked about why the citizens hadn’t been warned.

Hochmuller ran a hand across the smooth surface of the Ivory Machine, marveling at its killing power. He had stolen it from Germany, but he had not been one of the men who had first claimed it in the Fuehrer’s name. He wandered into his room and retrieved a packet of reports, which he’d taken along with the Machine. They detailed the discovery by General Romney of a lost city in Egypt. Romney had led a raid on the place, looting several items of interest but not before encountering resistance from several American heroes: Romney identified them as Miss Masque, the Flame and the Black Terror’s teenaged partner. The presence of the Americans led many in Germany to fear that the Allies already had access to the wondrous technology that Romney had seen in the city. The Ivory Machine was the Reich’s favorite, though they had never quite gleaned its full secrets. That had taken Hochmuller’s genius.

The German wondered what the original purpose of the machine had been. The natives who still lived there had been a strange people and obviously had devolved greatly from their intellectual heyday. Romney said they had worn loincloths and elaborate headdresses, with their dark-skinned women wandering about with nothing covering their breasts. None of the natives seemed to have the slightest knowledge about what their machines were intended to do—in fact, most of them had lain under massive piles of dust and debris, discarded by those who could not operate them.

Hochmuller heard a whine and saw that Raptor was approaching. “Lonely, eh?” the scientist asked.

Raptor nodded slowly. He had been in a funk over the deaths of his companions.

“I will see what I can do about getting you new friends,” Hochmuller promised. “But we must be careful. We no longer have brave German soldiers willing to volunteer for the procedure. But I might have something that will improve your mood considerably. I’ve been working on something that not even Garibaldi knows about.”

Hochmuller entered his laboratory, Raptor following at his heels. The dog was obviously excited to see what new prize was being offered him. The scientist pulled up a black leather dog collar upon which a small speaker had been attached. A series of wires were exposed on the rear of the collar. “This device will transfer your brain patterns into human speech. It currently allows you to ‘speak’ in either English or German.” Hochmuller attached the collar around Raptor’s throat and then stepped back. “Go on, imagine yourself speaking to me.”

Raptor shifted his weight from front paw to front paw and then he opened his mouth, as if to growl or bark. Instead of canine sounds, however, a human voice spoke from the box around his neck. The voice was monotone and lacked all sense of emotion but its diction was perfect: “I don’t understand how this will work, Doctor.” Raptor’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. “This thing is a telepathy machine?” he asked.

“In essence, yes. The collar reads the human brainwave and its contents are delivered in everyday language. Your words are encoded in the brainwave.”

“I like this very much.” Raptor wagged his tail happily. “It was the Peregrine who broke in here. I think we may have killed him. He was losing so much blood.”

A knock at the apartment’s front door made both Hochuller and Raptor pause. The dog growled in the back of his throat and the scientist peered at him in alarm. “What is it? Do you sense something?”

“Stranger,” Raptor said. “I don’t recognize the scent. It’s a woman.”

Hochmuller moved towards the door and opened it slowly. “Yes?”

The door suddenly swung inwards with incredible force, striking Hochmuller on the forehead and driving him to the floor. A trickle of blood sprang up almost immediately and he raised a hand to his wound, groaning in surprise and pain. Raptor surged forward, teeth bared, but he drew up short when he saw that the newcomer was armed with a very large handgun. The woman had dark hair that curled over one eye and she wore khaki slacks and a loose-fitting blouse that hung open to reveal ample cleavage. As Hochmuller stared up at her, his first thoughts were about what in the world was keeping her breasts from spilling out into view… but then his eyes drifted upwards and he recognized her face.

“Hjörþrimul” he hissed, using her codename from the days of Hitler’s Occult Forces Project. Genetically altered to use sixty percent of her brain capacity, as opposed to most people’s ten percent, Eva van der Vaart had been named after one of the Valkyries. She had superhuman eye-hand coordination and a photographic memory. She’d served well until vanishing from sight back in ’44. Rumor had it that she’d run afoul of the Peregrine.

“I’m pleased to see that you remember me,” Eva answered in German. She flicked her gaze in Raptor’s direction. “Tell the doggy to back off or I’m going to shoot you in the head.”

Raptor took a few steps back, his growling taking on a deeper tone. He bared his fangs and a long string of saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth.

“What do you want? What are you doing here?” Hochmuller demanded, trying to hide his fear. The smell of fresh urine emanating from his pants didn’t help, however.

“You have it, don’t you? The Ivory Machine?”

Hochmuller considered lying but thought better of it. Eva was not known as a woman who hesitated to kill. “Yes.”

“I want it.”

A nervous twitch developed on the left side of Hochmuller’s temple. “Are you working for someone? Perhaps we can come to an agreement of some kind.”

Eva straddled the scientist’s chest, pinning his arms down with her knees. The barrel of her gun came to rest between Hochmuller’s eyes. “I’m not here to negotiate.”

Hochmuller swallowed. “It’s in my laboratory down the hall. The door is open.”

Eva smiled, and had his interests lay in the direction of women, Hochmuller would have been quite distracted by the ample amount of cleavage that was on display. “Thank you, Doctor. Now I think it would be best for everyone if you took a little nap.”

Hochmuller started to open his mouth but he never managed to get a word out. Eva raised her arm and swung the butt of her gun savagely across his cheek, tearing his flesh and knocking him out. A fresh trickle of blood began to ooze down his face.

Raptor had seen enough by this point, but he knew that the girl was more than a match for him. He, too, recognized her and knew her reputation. The dog trotted off into the shadows, content to watch and observe. He wished he could call Garibaldi and let him know what was happening, but there was no way to reach the man.

Eva stood up and took a quick glance around the apartment. She saw the German Shepherd watching her but didn’t think much about him beyond noting his massive size. The dog seemed smart enough to avoid her and she was fine with that. She marched down the hallway and found the Ivory Machine straightaway.

She strode past the fallen Hochmuller with the Machine in her hands. She thought about killing him, but held off on this. Though she was loath to admit it, she missed the Reich and all those associated with the Occult Forces Project. It had been a period of her life when she’d been treated as special, as someone part of something that was going to change the world. Now that it was gone and its chief architects either on trial or dead—or deep in hiding—there was something about the past that seemed almost charming to her. So she left Hochmuller alive, out of recognition for his past associations.

Outside in the hallway, she pulled forth a small radio transceiver. Unaware that Raptor was eavesdropping, she began speaking in English. “I have the machine and am transporting it to you now.”

A man’s voice came through the radio, sounding glacial in its coolness. “Good. You’ll be richly rewarded for this.”

Eva turned off the radio and smiled. Money was all she craved now: Money to begin her life anew, with a new identity and new papers to back it up.

And if a few hundred thousand people had to die, she was more than fine with that.

CHAPTER VIII

Questions and Answers

The two-story building that had been dubbed the Aerie was registered in the name of Max Davies, but it was home to the Claws team. Located on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta, the Aerie was a sprawling residence with five bedrooms, a fully stocked kitchen, a museum/trophy room and a basement meeting room. It also contained direct lines to both the Peregrine’s portable radio and to the police station.