The Baron had shouted his throat raw. Enzu had magically jammed an SMG. The wish that sustained the Baron was almost certainly resolving minor issues in his ankles and knees, dismissing gradual inflammation after dropping a whole story onto thin carpeting.
These were signals, mundane and occult, and Meister Schuler was the most sensitive radio on the planet. There was no doubt that the Diviner would catch up to the Baron, probably before he could leave the building. So while d’Holbach sprinted west along a narrow hall, he made a strategic decision, which he hoped would save him from rapid recapture.
“Zombie!” he roared at the top of his lungs. “I need help!”
In response, somewhere behind him in the east, his own voice rang out in desperation, “Zombie! I think Schuler is copying my voice with prestige! I’m here!”
“Are you kidding me?” the Baron yelled. Voice mimicry was a very high-cost wish. The difference between the sound of your own voice and someone else’s was significant, and it usually wasn’t worth the prestige to cross that gap. A false voice often bought you only a few moments of confusion. In general, simple silence was preferred over illusory sounds.
Yet Schuler had just mimicked the Baron for a brief tactical advantage. He was already coming, and a series of wooden cracks were emanating from the center of the building. The invincible man was likely punching his way through a light, hollow panel door, while Schuler was surely catching up from somewhere. Every direction was a potential threat, so no direction was preferable except forward and out. He followed Enzu’s directions to the end.
“If you don’t find me, come here!” the Baron yelled, turning left at the end of the hall. Past the corner, there were offices marked with the names of various secular administrators and tax officials. Most were shut. One door was propped open by the corpse of a CPUSA man with a claw hammer buried in his neck and a wooden wall recently painted with arterial jets of blood.
Enzu must’ve killed this man without getting a drop on his clothes. What class of killer had the Baron saved at the East River Docks?
“Murder Incorporated,” d’Holbach muttered, stepping carefully over the legs of the corpse and into the office. In the secular world, that band of hitmen had succumbed to law enforcement in ‘41, but there’d been rumors about their continuation. Even Phyllis—in the role of a secular gangster—had worried about them back in Crown Heights.
Now Enzu was not only claiming to be ex-Murder Inc, but he was showing the talents of a long career in finding men and turning them into bodies. Had he retired back before the war? Or had he been a member in some new group until much more recently?
It was too late to ask, and ultimately, it didn’t matter. Old killers threw around the names of death squads, and young killers quailed like every word had the weight and strength of fine steel. Maybe it was all a story. Maybe it was real. It hardly mattered to the dead, and the Baron needed to find that window before he joined their number.
There was a large office window shaded with wooden slat blinds, facing the street towards Union Square Park. The Baron squeezed into cover, putting his back against the gap between the window and a tall bookshelf full of legal tomes and printed journals. He tugged a pull string to raise the blinds.
Bleak spring sunlight struck the room at a near-vertical angle, illuminating the otherwise darkened office. The Baron peeked around the edge of the windowsill. There was a dead man in a suit lying on the curb next to an abandoned car with a shattered windshield. The driver’s side door was open, and both front wheels were missing. There were no tires, no rims, just bare axle mounts and a hood planted against the asphalt. Broken with a wish? Probably.
Further afield, cracks of gunfire echoed across the empty spaces and vacant streets, bouncing off flat facades and multiplying the sounds. For fear of bullets, nobody crossed the park’s main walkways or the open stone plazas on the north end. Instead, the fighting was concentrated in the southern half of Union Square, amidst several groves of vivid green trees, hemmed up between low dark walls of stone and waxy-leafed hedges.
There weren’t piles of bodies in any one spot, nor any obvious firing positions, but the cracks of gunfire suggested that somewhere in that tangle of greenery, around the old statue of Washington and the towering copper-clad pole of the Independence Flagstaff, desperate men were still shooting to prevent other men from shooting back.
Of course, there were some corpses. At least five lay in view in the main north-south boulevard that separated the east and west sides of the park’s greenery. If the Baron risked a closer look, he could probably find more.
This was a terrible spot to depart Tammany Hall, but he doubted the entrances would be any safer, and there was at least a wrecked car here for some cover.
The window had a lock on the top of the frame, but it opened on a swing hinge and wouldn’t leave enough room for him to squeeze through. He glanced around, looking for something to quickly knock out the glass and clear the frame of shards.
There was a short step ladder for the bookshelves. The Baron picked it up by the top step, drew in a deep breath, and swung the legs at the window.
“Bounce!”
The step ladder bounced off the glass like the Baron had struck rubber, nearly whipping out of his hands. He staggered once, casting a wild glance back over his shoulder.
Meister Schuler was standing on the far side of the bloodied CPUSA corpse, smiling pleasantly. His hair was far messier and full of dust now, and the glove on his right hand was missing. “My dear devil!” he cried, meeting the Baron’s wide eyes.
That wish couldn’t last long. The Baron swung again, and the step ladder bounced again. He readied a third swing.
“I’m no threat,” Schuler added. “Give me a moment to explain—”
The Baron swung again, ready for a third bounce, but the step ladder passed through the window with a crisp crash, loosening arm-length shards of glass to rain upon the indoors and outdoors alike. Each falling piece flashed in the sunlight like clear ice, cutting the air like swords before striking and shattering into countless daggers. d’Holbach held onto the stepladder, watching the razor edges splash across the windowsill about a foot from his bare hands.
Schuler huffed as the sound dissipated. “Baron, please.”
d’Holbach swept the edge of the short ladder along the bottom of the windowsill, knocking out the last knives of glass. There was enough room to vault out. He turned and heaved the ladder at Schuler, who dismissed it with a silent wave of his right hand, destroying the wood like someone had struck it with a metal bat.
“Will you listen?” the Diviner asked seriously.
The Baron stared at the most powerful man on the continent. “What, no threats?” he asked, shifting his weight and scooting closer to the windowsill. He’d vault quickly, then try to land into cover behind the ruined vehicle.
“Not from me,” Schuler said.
The Baron scooted right up to the edge of the window frame, glancing towards it meaningfully. “Who from then?”
Schuler pointed at the broken window, at the sporadic gunfire in the park. “Them. You can’t go outside unprepared. You’re stuck in here, with me, a little longer.”
The Baron hesitated, pressing his back to the wall and looking carefully at Meister Schuler. Still in black clothes, all business except for those lustrous copper frames. He didn’t look crazy. He looked both focused and completely at ease after brawling with the Zombie. It was worth a few seconds to ask this version of Schuler, “What do you mean?”
Schuler smiled. “Thank you, Baron! You’re finally listening to me. Words fail to convey the danger of this situation, so allow me to demonstrate.” He marched across the office, scurried around the manager’s desk, and swept aside the shards of glass with a sweep of his boot.
Then, flourishing his bare hand like a talented composer drawing out the pause, he stepped out into the narrow slice of daylight, cast by the high midday sun.
There was a wet thwip sound. It reminded the Baron of the Zombie slinging a rock into thick mud. Schuler bodily jolted, and a second later, the crack of a high velocity hunting rifle sounded across the park. The Baron flinched at the noise, and then realized that there was a tidy pucker on Schuler’s chest, left side. Over his heart.
“Schuler?” the Baron asked.
The Diviner raised a finger and rasped with only his right lung, “Lub,” then pointed out of the window. “Dub!” As if called forth, arterial blood heartily gushed from the chest wound, spilling over his dark clothes. He clapped a hand over the fatal puncture, stumbling back into the darkness of the office and coating his bare right hand in bright crimson—and then stopped, standing perfectly still. A moment passed; no fresh gushes behind closed fingers.
“Fuck,” the Baron cussed, lacking any other way to express the sheer terrifying display of power that Meister Schuler had committed in front of him.
The Diviner turned his head towards the Baron, smiling. “You understand now. They’re looking for runners, even while we struggle to uproot them from the hedges.” His voice was clear, unbothered. He lifted his bloody hand, revealing neither wound nor even damage to his shirt.
“You could’ve told me,” the Baron uttered. “I would’ve believed.”
“You, Doubting Henry? Believed? Ha! The only temple you worship is the cave wall.” Schuler strode over to the bookshelf, looking over the titles quickly. With his gloved hand, he pulled one off of a high shelf, then promptly slid it into a different spot on a low shelf. “The situation is changing rapidly,” he explained, scanning more tomes. Another book went to another spot. Then he relaxed, spreading his hands before the simple rearrangement like he’d completed a work of art. “Hansel found his crumbs, you see?”
The Baron’s heart hammered in his chest. The Diviner was casually spending enough prestige to dismiss fatal wounds, and why? To intimidate the Baron? To make him comply?
At least d’Holbach knew what the crumbs were. “You mean microtasks.”
Schuler patted a row of books with his bloody hand, leaving palm prints on the spines of several tax volumes. “Micro and otherwise. Any task is a guide to the gods’ will.” He glanced over at the Baron. “This is why I’m here first. You wouldn’t have listened if the Zombie were close. He would’ve swung at me, and I never could’ve made my point.”
“What point?” the Baron asked, vaguely irritated with the Diviner’s occult grandstanding. “I don’t understand the metaphor. Hansel was lost in the woods after a bird ate the breadcrumbs.”
As quick as a gunshot, Schuler exploded into laughter, turning towards the Baron and opening his arms as if to hug him, then thinking better of it, dropping his hands to his pants. “I’m the bird then! They call me cuckoo, after all! Ha-ha!”
The moment wasn’t remotely funny, which made the Baron wonder if Schuler was either mocking him or enjoying a moment of madman’s mirth. Another chuckle emerged from the Diviner, playfully arguing with a somber mood punctuated by gunfire.
At this rate, between Schuler and the snipers around the building, there was no way out of this room without help. “Zombie!” the Baron yelled. “I’m here!”
Schuler nodded at the Baron’s sudden shouting. “We do need him. However, we shouldn’t make too many cries. CPUSA is still in the building.”
“All the more reason to call for the Zombie.”
“Mm.” Schuler looked up, tipping his head around like someone looking for a radio signal. “Seven more mercenaries are in the main hall with the rest of the staff. Six, if…” The Diviner trailed off, eyes unfocused, and he raised the bloody hand for silence.
The Baron tipped an ear towards the building, checking if he could hear anything, or if this was a reaction from Schuler to an occult event.
There was a distant but substantial snap of shattering wood. The sound seemed to come from across the hall, but Baron couldn’t see any offices there, only old walls made of rough bricks. These bottom floor rooms had been built around the end of the last century. No cheap partition walls. “Is that—” the Baron wondered aloud.
“Shh!” Schuler interrupted, waving a bloody finger to negate the question, even as his expression remained slack. His eyes drifted down to the hardwood floor in front of the window. In the shadows, glass shards captured the diffuse glow of reflected sunlight.
A fresh CPUSA mercenary sidestepped into view in the hallway, framed by the open office door, holding a revolver in his hand. He aimed at the back of Schuler’s head over the exsanguinated corpse of his comrade. “Surrender,” he ordered.
Schuler gestured forward with his bloody hand.
There was a single, audible click of a pistol part snapping, instantly followed by a massive roar of shattering masonry. A long stretch of the bricks behind the merc jumped forward like a blanket tossed over someone’s back, overlapping and crashing down on a human body with the combined force of a half-ton of fired clay. Promptly crushed. Not even a scream.
The sweep of clattering bricks rolled outward from the point of impact, knocking over the old corpse in the doorway and scattering along the hall. The Baron stared in mute horror while a cloud of brick dust rose from the settling wreckage, flowing into the room. The smells of clay and lime filled his nostrils, dry and irritating.
Beyond the wreckage, through the hole in the wall, a large office was visible. Four desks were arranged for a team of clerks, flanked on either side by banks of tall filing cabinets. Along the far wall, an antique wooden door lurked in the dusty gloom.
Schuler lowered his hand and raised his head. “Thank you for your patience. I was elsewhere.” He glanced around, sniffing the dusty air. “Apologies for the mess. I needed to clear the way.”
“Clear the way?” the Baron asked. “You just killed a man.”
“Who, the corpse in the door?” Schuler glanced back over one shoulder at the fallen bricks. “Oh. There was another man.” He squinted, deeply confused by the accident he’d engineered moments before. “Hmm.” He pointed past the wreckage to the antique wooden door. “Didn’t mean to kill anyone. I was just opening the wall for him.”
The moment his sentence finished, there was a sledgehammer bang against the office door across the hall, and an antique handle burst out of its housing.
The Baron’s heart soared with relief. “Zombie, is that you?”
“Yeah! I’m here!” the Zombie shouted back.
“I’m with Schuler! Don’t worry, I’m safe!”
“With Schuler?” the Zombie yelled. Wood crunched twice as an invincible human fist barged through latch mechanisms and mounting screws, finally knocking the door inward on its hinges. The Zombie strode wide-eyed into the office across from them, still clasping the Cat o’ Nine Lives in his left hand. His shirt was no longer tucked in and was missing all of the buttons over his stomach, and one of his leather shoes was completely gone. “I heard the wall crash and came running.” His gaze darted around. “Are you a prisoner?”
“I don’t know,” the Baron admitted. “I think he wants to help.”
Meister Schuler chuckled kindly, like an odd uncle sharing a delightful surprise with his nephews. “My dear devils, I’m sparing no expense, not now. We’re in this together.”
The Zombie stumbled over the brick pile and its buried corpses, glancing both ways along the hall before crossing into the office with d’Holbach and Schuler. “You knocked me over until I fell through the floor,” the Zombie complained. “Were you faking his voice?”
“Yes,” Schuler answered.
“So you were fucking with me after you saved your people?”
Schuler grinned at the Zombie. “I needed a moment alone with the Baron. To show a threat, and to prove a point.” He patted the nigh-invisible stain over his black-clad chest, briefly rewetting the darkening layer of blood on his right hand. “Shot in the heart, then healed, you see. I won’t die so long as I have prestige.”
The Zombie furrowed his brow. “Schuler, I have no inner life. I don’t know what emotions feel like, and this body can’t suffer pain. But I swear to all the gods of this Earth, you’re more frustrating than being poked in the eye. Repeatedly.”
“A fine compliment, but time is brief.” The Diviner wrinkled his nose, adjusting his bifocals upwards. “Would you kindly feed the Cat o’ Nine Lives to the Baron?”
d’Holbach’s brain hitched for a moment. It wasn’t that he’d never considered swallowing the Cat, but it wasn’t a particularly good idea either. If he swallowed it, delivering it to Denisov would require pulling it out of his own stomach lining—on a city street or at an airport—without any prestige on hand to heal the injury. Of course, Denisov had every reason to quickly treat him, but there weren’t any guarantees.
And while he wasn’t going to openly defy the Diviner here, the Baron wasn’t above asking very necessary questions either. “Is that wise? If I swallow the Cat, that’s a fresh reason to kill me. Nine of them, to be specific.”
Schuler grunted. “Of course it’s wise. It’s a blessing from the gods.”
“They’re not gods,” the Baron replied curtly, “and the Cat is a tool.”
Schuler shook his head and shuffled towards d’Holbach, as if closing the distance to receive a confession. Even without the cassock, he appeared priestly, bearing the cocksure confidence of a man who had seen their own salvation in a cup of red wine. “Baron,” he murmured softly, “why don’t you believe in the gods?”
“I’ve answered this question a thousand times,” the Baron replied.
“Indulge me?”
“Anything can be powerful without being divine. No event could ever convince me otherwise. You call them miracles? I call them artificial—engineered somehow. The whole world is a system of physical parts. I believe it encompasses everything.”
Schuler tapped the bloody spot over his heart. “This power doesn’t count as divinity?”
“Let me answer your question with a question. Do you worship the state?”
The Diviner smirked. “America? No.”
“Of course you don’t,” the Baron said. “Power doesn’t deserve your faith. It demands accountability. The same applies here. When the so-called gods interfere, I think we should hold them to a higher standard. I say, ignore their evil tasks; adhere only to what’s good. I say, let’s correct their unjust system. That’s what I think when I see their miracles. That’s where my heart goes.”
The Zombie grinned. “My friend may be a madman, but he’s striving like mad for a better world. Who cares what he believes?”
Schuler smiled along with the Zombie, but his next words were addressed to the only mortal man in the room. “Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach. Even if you don’t believe in the gods, would you be surprised to learn that the gods believe in you?”
It was a ridiculous question for an absurd moment. In the silence that followed, two guns were fired in Union Square Park. With every passing second, people died, not just here but everywhere. The world turned onwards, and streams of little, meaningless actions poured together into broader historical flows. Decisions were made in government offices, atomic bombs were built in factory lines, and through the sum of all human efforts, civilization teetered ever closer to ruin. The Doomsday clock offered only seconds to midnight.
Yet the only way forward was through, not just this moment of insane questioning, but across that park and out into the broader conflicts of the age.
“What does that mean to you?” the Baron asked.
Schuler pointed out the shattered window, towards a street beyond the park trees, visible only as a line cut between rising buildings, heading west. “There, like a beacon of possibilities, a task has been set. Escort the Baron to that spot. Alive.” He let his hand drop, staring at the breadth of contested land between here and there. “It’ll be worth every ounce of force to bring you there, but the fighters outside won’t respect your Pact. They’ll kill every occult foe and retrieve the Cat o’ Nine Lives, or they’ll die trying. So let’s save two madmen with one stone, eh? Swallow the Cat. Guarantee your survival, and the gods and I will deliver you from this battlefield. Then you’ll have your last chance at saving the world or dying a martyr for its future.”
“Who is the second madman?” the Baron asked.
Schuler placed his hand on his chest. “What happened to that keen power of observation, my dear devil? It’s myself, of course. If you don’t survive today, the Zombie will kill me first. He hates me, and rightly so. I’ve threatened everything he loves.”
The Zombie took a long, deep breath. He normally didn’t breathe unless he was about to speak, and technically, he couldn’t feel physical pain, but there was a possibility that the Baron had often considered but never confirmed, for it’d embarrass the Zombie to ask. If the Zombie could feel fear? Loneliness? Agonies of the heart? Then he might need to take a deep breath now and then, imitating calm to ease the dull ache of stress.
“Friend,” the Zombie said, raising his left hand and the Cat o’ Nine Lives. “He’s right. They’re shooting at silhouettes out there, not at men. Hold out your hand.”
The Baron held out his hand, palm up. Delicately, as if there was nothing more precious in the world, the Zombie placed the sculpture in d’Holbach’s palm. The Cat was unusually cold and heavy, curled up and smooth. “Are you sure?” the Baron asked.
“I am,” the Zombie said. “Once the rest of the world realizes that CPUSA is out for blood, they’ll stop caring about the Pact.” He frowned, gently patting the back of the Baron’s wrist, lingering only a moment before withdrawing. “I won’t deny the gods today. Swallow it.”
“Atomic bomb logic?” the Baron asked. He brought the Cat close to himself. It was black and smooth, about as large as a walnut, and an obvious choking hazard.
“Yes. We’re on the verge of an apocalypse.”
“The stakes are indeed that high,” Schuler murmured.
The Baron closed his hand around the Cat. It never warmed, not even in a clenched fist. Like most prehistorical artifacts, its properties were wholly anomalous. Basic thermodynamics appeared to fail around it, if only because it’d been crafted in a time of profound ignorance. What seemed beyond possibility now was once obvious and simple in the metaphysics of primitive man. Something could “just be” cold if you didn’t know better. Something could “just be” always clean, incredibly tough, and capable of sustaining the dead.
The Cat was extremely old, far older than the proto-Slavic culture that had rediscovered it. Nobody had been able to afford the wish for the knowledge of its origins. Like many of the world’s most powerful artifacts, it was far older than recorded history, coming out of the same silent eon as the Zombie himself. Somewhen between the emergence of homo sapiens and the birth of civilization, there’d been a golden age of harmony between man and the gods.
This power had come to the modern world out of that Atlantis, that Lemuria, that Mu, that blessed Land of Fire that fell by the Zombie’s hand, that first age of ziggurats and sacrifices and pre-Biblical wars and the summoning of meteors on the eve of battle, and every other divine intervention encoded into myth and legend so that the world might remember a taste of ancient truth.
One of the primary rules of the system of prestige was that no wish could resurrect the dead, but here was the nearest thing to an exception. The Baron could only swallow it once. If it went in his mouth again after today, it would just be a chilly stone.
“If I swallow this,” the Baron said, “we’ll have to cut it out without prestige.”
“It won’t be a fatal wound for you,” the Zombie said. “You nearly lost your arm once.”
“I remember.”
“We sewed it tight and there’s not even a scar now. You can take a lot more punishment before a wound is fatal. The gods have made you tougher than the rest.”
The Baron smiled wanly. “Remember when I lost my pinky to the second knuckle?”
“Yeah, and it grew back after a year or two. Neither age, illness, nor injury can take you. Trust me. You’ll be okay, so swallow it. For my sake, friend, swallow it.”
The Baron took a deep breath. He was in a nearly unique position to swallow the Cat and survive its loss. He’d endured the slow grind of time because the so-called gods always repaired him. They would save him from this as well, as long as the wound didn’t kill him quickly. Still, he hesitated. It’d be so much easier if it weren’t inside of him, in need of surgery.
“Elizabeth would do it if she were here,” the Zombie added.
The Baron laughed at the emotional incision of that comment. If there was anyone the Baron admired for strength and cunning, it was her. “She’s the only other person who could do it. Also, thank you for calling her Elizabeth for once.”
“Swallow it,” Schuler insisted. “We must leave soon.”
The Baron rubbed his fingers on the Cat. It felt sticky against human skin, as if it wanted to help him hold it. He lifted it towards the Zombie briefly. “Cheers!”
The Zombie smiled. “A toast to our coming victory. Drink from the cup of life.”
The Baron put the Cat o’ Nine Lives in his mouth.
Schuler jerked like a mule had kicked him in the jaw. He covered his ears, writhed and shouted, “Orchestra!” as if he were trapped in a pit full of deafening instruments.
The Baron tried to move his tongue, to reorient the little statue in his mouth for easier swallowing, but he couldn’t. It was made with purpose. It had energy. He tried to spit it out so he could start over, but that too was impossible. The Cat’s stickiness was one-way. When the Baron’s gag reflex pushed back, when his palate pressed against the cold sculpture, it stuck fast to his tongue. When the reflex automatically pulled back, readying for another thrust, the Cat slid down with it. A horrible gagging sound erupted from his throat, then was plugged.
It wasn’t merely like choking. The Baron was choking.
His eyes watered, and his diaphragm convulsed uselessly. Like a barbed quill, movement only forced the Cat deeper. His throat stretched painfully around its icy exterior. His stomach tried to squeeze, but the Cat refused to depart. Down, down, down it went.
Finally, the sculpture passed his trachea, and a breath jerked its way into his lungs, and he began coughing and retching.
Schuler was on his knees now, ears uncovered, head tilted up in awe. “The music! Beautiful music!” He blinked, squeezing tears from his eyes, wetting the lustrous copper frames where they touched his nose. “Ancient spells, singing in the air! My gods!”
The Cat was well down the Baron’s esophagus now. He tried to vomit, and it felt as if his throat swelled with acid, but the pressure of expulsion couldn’t move the Cat. Irrationally, the Baron feared he would burst. The Cat held steady, a cold lump.
“Does it hurt?” the Zombie asked.
The Baron nodded rapidly. Not only did his stomach ache, but the Cat was beginning to warm up. Body temperature could hardly compare with its searing surface. It sank smoothly towards the depths of his belly, burning away all other sensations. It slipped into his stomach, and for a second, the Baron knew it was boiling hot. He let out his breath in a squeal of pain, then burped literal steam. The Cat was cooking a hole in his stomach lining, destroying tissue and nerves and attaching itself like his flesh was melted wax.
Then, just as suddenly, pain ended. In the nest of the Baron’s intestines, the Cat o’ Nine Lives finally found a place to nap. “Burned,” the Baron groaned. “My stomach.”
There was no doubt that the temperature had been real. Its warmth was still cooking out of the Baron’s belly, as if he’d chugged a whole bowl of scalding soup. However, Schuler was correct. The burned tissues were recovering supernaturally fast. Whatever had been done to install the Cat o’ Nine Lives was over. It began to feel right, natural, even comfortable. It felt like a part of the Baron, and it scared him that the artifact could so clearly modify his chemistry to relieve his anxiety. Then he stopped feeling scared.
“Quiet again,” Schuler said, closing his eyes. “I can hear the planet now. Whisper. Whisper Earth.” A rifle shot outside didn’t disturb his newfound peace.
“Protected for now,” the Zombie judged.
The Baron placed a hand over his belly, fully aware of the Cat’s presence. It was a cool stone, napping inside him, waiting for a lethal hour.
Ten lives and nine safe deaths remained.
Author’s Note:
And so, the Baron has acquired the right to die and live again.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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