The Forest Bull (The Fearless) Page 8

  “Your agent?” Risa seized on that thread first, Wally nodding in accord. We had all picked up on the fact that he had a contact here that was skilled enough to observe us, unseen.

  “Yes. My apology for the intrusion, but, as you will see, quite necessary. I have revealed nothing of your existence whatsoever, and my observer has reported to my complete satisfaction.” Cazimir remained unperturbed that we asked about this, of all details, first.

  “Well . . .” and Wally drew the word out, voicing so many of our concerns. “May I ask that, if your family has no need of money, why do you need the collection returned? Is there a value that we are unaware of, perhaps?”

  Cazimir’s face was shadowed, his smile waning. The lamp at his desk flickered, and he glanced over with a sigh of resignation. “We will lose our connection in a moment. I shall be brief. I do not, as you say, need the items for monetary reasons. In fact, I care not at all for them other than in a superficial manner. I want Elizabeth back, or at least something of her. My family is nearly gone. There is Elizabeth, and there is me. She is immortal. My time is limited. I have staff here, a modest number, but my promise to this land has, with her departure, rendered me a prisoner here. While I am bound to this place, Elizabeth is not. She is gone, and I remain. I know that you are more than human now, and that is requisite for this task. Were you not augmented by your lifestyle, you would be dead. Find the baubles, and you will find Elizabeth. That which you recover is yours to keep. Remember, she does not wish to be known, so you must pursue her with great care. My instincts reveal that you will both choose to assist me and succeed. I will speak to you two days hence. Good night.”

  The screen blinked once, and the connection was cut. The Baron, a man trapped in a castle of wood, had asked us not to retrieve jewelry, but something, someone, more important to him than a king’s fortune—his daughter.

  And I wanted her dead.

  Petra

  Viktor leaned back in anticipation, the buffed leather of the custom chaise squeaking under his muscular frame. Unlike many billionaires, his vanity demanded that he keep his body in enviable condition. To be slovenly was, in his opinion, a sin of the commoner, and one that he would not allow himself to commit. Defiling young women was another issue entirely. His 200-foot yacht was ripe with the most beautiful women culled from the shoreline during an orgiastic day of purchasing cars in Miami. The men and women who worked for him knew to bring only the best to the deck of Inquisitor. From that pool of beauty, he had selected the flawless girl before him. Viktor glibly commented on the beauty of her unusual blood-colored earrings, the dark jewels held in antique silver. It was a typical opening foray intended to begin his brutish seduction of the girl.

  Her earrings swayed as she laughed, shining with stately worth. He had seen her comically-elongated pinky nail as she sipped white wine on the deck and made his determination. Coke whore. Although he never touched drugs, he kept a small quantity in his suite as an enticement for certain women. If a line of high grade cocaine did not remove their doubts about the immediacy of his lust, then other, more physical means could be used. He had a reputation to protect, and momentary prudish behavior could not interfere with his image. Simply stepping onto the deck of Inquisitor was, in Viktor’s mind, tacit approval for him to take what he wished. A woman’s refusal was unacceptable, no matter what reason she gave.

  They retired to his suite after he made his wishes known with a possessive hand in the small of Petra’s graceful back. The other social climbers saw their chances for notoriety or money die in a gesture.

  Petra paused and sinuously dropped her silk dress to the floor in a rippling circle. She stood before him in nude blonde magnificence, clad only in heels that accentuated her legs. Her Czech lineage gifted her with beauty of a rare nature. She picked up her dress and bound her hands with a languorous motion, kneeling before him in complete supplication. It was exactly as he wished. Busy fingers unzipped his trousers and freed him in one motion. Even constricted by the silk, her movement was serpentine and free of awkwardness. His anticipation grew acute.

  She hesitated. Viktor hated teasing. He reached out to guide her but his hand was rebuffed as exquisite heat washed over him, a paralytic of unmatched pleasure. She drew him out of her mouth and encircled his entire manhood in her hands, her touch maddeningly light. Viktor looked out from heavily lidded eyes at the golden angel kneeling before him.

  “Keep going. Now. And do not stop.” His voice was thick with lust.

  “As you say.” Petra leaned forward to her work, her fingers teasing, probing and dancing around his base in a flutter. Her grip tightened. She bore down with her mouth, the conflicting pleasures stoking Viktor to near climax as her fingernail punctured his skin and neatly severed a gossamer strand, the only nerve that mattered to a cocksman like Viktor. He burst into her even as his organ began to detumesce, the last erection of his life fleeing him just as his pleasure ebbed.

  Now he felt the wound. “What . . . what have you . . . ” he sputtered, his eyes rolling in fear as the woman who had stolen his claim to manhood rose up, smirking. “What have you done to me?” he whimpered, but he knew. He knew even as Petra’s heel snapped forward, shattering his nose and pitching him, unconscious, over the chair, back into the deep woolen rug. He lay on his back, arms spread as if crucified, his limp member lolling as it would for the remainder of his life. Petra spat in his open mouth. Smiling, she pulled her dress over her head before smoothing it to go back to the party. With a final look mixed of triumph and pity, she pulled the door to the suite closed, thinking, Mother would be proud.

  Florida

  The mood in our house was frosty the next morning. I was simmering with what I imagined to be well-deserved anger. Wally was strangely dispassionate, and Risa avoided me altogether after a brief discussion over breakfast during which she called me a self-serving prick. Lest anyone think we are an unwaveringly united collective voice, we had occasional arguments that ranged from tame to paint-blistering brawls that raged just short of physical violence. Without even asking Risa, who was like a human lie detector, I could smell bullshit in the Baron’s story. My doubt did not mean that every statement was a lie. But there were too many red flags in his narrative to escape notice. If Elizabeth was immortal, why wasn’t he? How did she turn? Was she really his daughter or something else? These questions seemed natural to me, and I know Wally and Risa were thinking within the same framework. I was being forced into the unsavory position of playacting with the Baron until we could determine the truth or whatever nuanced history passed for fact when dealing with a family as unique as that of Cazimir.

  I have money. I have a home. These are tools for me, and, as long as I am physically able to strip wealth away from immortals, I can continue to rid my world of evil. That salient point is where Risa and Wally and I disagree. I want Elizabeth to answer for what I know is a long life of spreading death and sadness. I have been unflagging in my desire to eliminate immortals quickly and without hesitation. There is, in my mind, no nuance to evil. And yet, the respect I have for my partners demanded that I at least listen to their case for why the Baron’s needs should circumvent my desire for vengeance.

  I needed information about Elizabeth, about the Baron, and about why my wrath directed at my near executioner should be held in check.

  I was asked to lunch by Suma and seized the opportunity for a change of scenery. We met at an Italian deli on Sheridan Street and took to a booth, sliding across the plastic seats in the midst of utter chaos. It was incredibly busy, and the background was a nice distraction from the intense chill at home. Suma ordered a sandwich with so many varieties of garlicky meat that I was glad we had arrived separately. I kept true to my first love on the menu, a chipped ham sandwich with homemade dressing and fries. Suma wasted no time in expressing her reasoning for our newfound status as lunch pals.

  “You talked a great deal during your recuperation, and, until our group discussion, I thought you were deliriou
s. I am a person of science. I am a trained skeptic, but I know evidence must override my inhibitions to expand what I think can be possible. I am also,” she slowed her speech, clearly attempting to reconcile divergent ideas, “a Thai. I am the product of a culture that is steeped in spiritualism. It is a second skin for me, and no amount of university can make me deny what I feel at a cellular level. I also respect my family, not because I am an automaton who is expected to do so. No, I respect results. My parents were excellent people of great character. They worked, they saved, and they took duty to family so seriously it was like law. They lived in a world where the veil between reality and the supernatural was a curtain to be passed through each day.”

  She paused, appraising the mountainous sandwiches that had arrived. “Occam’s razor notwithstanding, I want to hear from you how you came to be . . . what you are. How did you and Wally and Risa become a unit? Are you an enhanced ménage a trois, or just what the hell is your connection? Is it convenience borne of an unusual gift? Hatred due to your respective losses? Is it love? Or is it something I cannot imagine because I am from a more ordinary place?” Her frustration bubbled forth now as she tried to understand how her family had come to danger from what might be sexual dilettantes with a penchant for killing. I understood. The curtain had been pulled back, and her own flesh and blood were now at risk from something that she did not fully grasp. Nursing me to health had given her evidence, though, that the threat was real. She feared that powerlessness, but her cool exterior demanded that she approach the situation with logic in order to understand what she could do. In truth, I was surprised at her relative calm. I suspected that she was intensely passionate but measured in her actions. As a physician, it was expected. As a woman of discipline, it was what she had chosen.

  After a deep breath and a gulp of tea, she asked, softly, “Can you really defend my family?” That, I knew, was the most important question she would ever pose to me, and she deserved a thoughtful, honest answer. Around contemplative bites of ham, I parsed the truth and expounded where necessary, clarifying terms unfamiliar to her.

  “I have very little family left,” I began, “so you can imagine how I feel about yours. I admire them, and I’m even a little bit jealous of them at times. They are at an intersection right now. I care for them but feel real hate for immortals, but I don’t imagine you can understand that type of incandescent fury. Risa and Wally, we keep each other from combusting with it. We see the effects, you know.”

  Suma sat, rapt. “We were party kids, amateur students who were drifting, careless; we met in college, but, after a drunken weekend of in vino veritas, we realized that we shared a collective ghost story, but this one was real. Can you imagine two other people who felt the same bizarre thing, how rare that would be? The same brush with evil? Who believed you? In one second, I found my purpose. I’m not saying we were a well-oiled machine at first; we didn’t even really know what the hell we were doing. But we sensed the rightness of it all, and we made peace with the violence, especially Wally. She was such a gentle soul then. One of my first kills was some sort of vampire who looked about ten years old. He bit through my watch band and broke my collarbone before I pounded my knife up into his chest. I pinned him to the door of my car, and, even as he was dying, he tried to rip my throat out with his thumbs. I almost died because I hesitated to murder what looked like a child. Risa found out he had been killing people, good people, since the dustbowl years in Oklahoma. I swore I wouldn’t make that mistake again, but I knew I needed help. I puked into the tub for hours and slept for a solid day. This was when we all lived separately. After that, we decided to move in here, where we could watch each other, and help, and hold each other when no amount of hot water could wash the sin from us after a kill. So when you ask me, do I love them, I can tell you that love isn’t a big enough word for what we feel for each other. The danger makes it something more. “

  I ducked my head into the last of my sandwich. After a quiet moment I asked Suma, “Do you want me to talk less or more?”

  “More. And you can start with some basics. How long have you been paired off, partners? How long have you known Risa and Wally?” She paused, pensive and looking at me anew. I could tell our conversation was shifting her view of me, but, in what manner, I was uncertain. In an existence as bizarre as mine, the truth always won out because it trumped any fantasy I could concoct.

  “Fourteen years. Each. I’m thirty-eight years old, and we’ve been ferreting out immortals full-time for almost thirteen years.”

  “Stop. You’re thirty-eight?” Suma was incredulous. “Is this another challenge to my scientific bedrock?” Her eyes narrowed as she leaned back in the booth. She was skeptical, even after seeing me vomit acorns, presumably put in my stomach by an evil being that defied the facts she held dear. The evidence was contrary, since I knew I looked to be in my mid-twenties.

  “I noticed something was different about me after our third kill. It was a small thing. I was swimming the canal when I heard Risa yelling. I had been just under the surface, kicking and watching the sun break through the water. She was panicked and getting ready to jump in, for some reason. I yelled at her and swam to the dock. She was pissed. She asked me, with a poke to the chest, if I thought I was funny. We all know I’m hilarious, but this was something else, which she made clear with more jabs. Finally, she told me that I’d been under water for six minutes. Now, I can hold my breath well because of diving, but that was new to me. Then, I realized that I felt some sort of tension in my muscles that I couldn’t explain. Wally joined us later, and I felt like a prize hog at a fair. They poked and prodded, but there was nothing wrong. It was a few days later that I sussed out what was happening. Turned out it was happening to them, as well, but they hadn’t realized it because they were dealing with something missing from their bodies rather than something being added to it, after a fashion.”

  “What was different?” Suma asked.

  “They had stopped menstruating. Completely, in unison, for three months.” I thought back to the hysteria of pregnancy tests in the bathroom at Walgreen’s and the dawning realization that our bodies were not entirely our own to control.

  “No immaculate twins, then, but what brought on the amenorrhea? Was it stress or shared illness?” The doctor in Suma was calculating possible causes, I could see.

  “I don’t think so. We think it is acquired. Like me swimming underwater or being a bit faster, or Risa reading faces and intuiting people’s thoughts, word for word. You see, this was the first proof we had that change was coming for us with each contact. I was thrilled. Risa was dour, and Wally cried in gales for an afternoon before she went out to the solace of the yard. They knew what it meant, what was happening. Fourteen years later, hindsight is cheap. We’ve never seen an immortal infant. Do you know why?” I asked, my eyes downcast. I knew Suma would understand the reason.

  “The immortals are sterile, right? Whatever it is that infects them must happen outside the womb. They cannot breed, so they must create. Yet, with each ‘birth,’ they expose themselves to the possibility of a new form that may lay them bare to us. To the world. Still, they bite and seduce, or whatever their vector is and they do it because their organs are barren. And you found this out in a moment of understanding and decided to stay the path.” Now her expression matched the kindness in her voice. She saw it all.

  Suma clasped my hand lightly. “I’m so sorry. What a cost.”

  “I think you see why we are so intractable. I’m not vicious. I put them down like rabid dogs, not born of hate for the animal, but because the dog is no longer in charge of its own body. The distinction is that these animals look like us, but they are very different. They kill wantonly. They’re good at it. But, even if there is a small core of their former humanity, it has to be sacrificed. That makes me the blade man almost every time. The girls have different skills from mine. You might not know it, but Wally is incredibly lethal, although her violence is wild and unfocused. She is l
ess clinical than Risa, but so angry; she’s been intermittently angry for years. It flares with her, almost uncontrollable. We are three sides of a coin, and we work well together, which is fortunate, because it seems like we’ll be doing it for a long time. You might think it’s a hellish way to live, but I suspect that hell is far beyond my imagination. “

  I knew this to be true because I saw the handiwork of these creatures much too often.

  “To answer something you haven’t asked, Suma, the answer is yes. Yes, I can protect your family because, if something gets close enough to hurt them, it won’t matter. Wally and Risa and I will be dead. And the knives we wield against these lost beasts will be gone, along with more innocents, falling to the darkness, and nothing to stop it.”

  From Risa’s Files

  July 19: Patient is outwardly healthy 28-year-old male complaining of insomnia, lethargy, and shortness of breath. Exam reveals mild anemia. Lungs clear. Dismissed with vitamin samples and prescription for sleep aid.

  July 26: Patient has moderate weight loss and persistent insomnia, despite sleep aid. Mild rash presents on chest and thighs, with some confusion and dementia, insisting that all night visitors be kept from room. Patient admitted under care of Dr. Pratbahd. Intravenous fluids given. Topical steroid for rash.

  July 30: Patient weight loss is noticeable, and lesions are present on thighs, ribcage, and chest. Aggressive treatment with steroids has not affected skin condition. Fever, delusion, night terrors. Extremely low urine output. Patient incapable of speech. Hypertrophy of skin near ribs, thorax, and neck. Tongue is swollen. Patient communicated through writing before losing consciousness. Patient requests euthanasia due to being “eaten at night.’ Dr. Pratbahd has restrained the patient for safety reasons.