Against the Baron’s rush, reacting to the Baron’s wish, the police captain twitched with his gun raised. He pulled the trigger—a click, then nothing. Panic flashed on his face, a life or death terror. “Fixed!” he bellowed, cocking the hammer.
His finger was still on the trigger as the gap closed between them. The Baron reacted on intuition alone: “Through!”
One shot, a death bark to make d’Holbach’s ears ring, an inevitable flinching. A punch of gas drummed the cloth over his heart. The sting of powder residue kissed his skin. Somewhere behind him, a ricochet sang off brick and soared into the afternoon air.
The crowd evaporated into screams.
Schuler had inspired that one. A single second of intangibility to bullets, accepted by the world as a shot gone wide with panic. More than enough.
The Baron grabbed the revolver with his bare hands and shoved up. The second, third, and fourth rounds exploded with deafening power right by his ear, blasted over his shoulder into the wild blue sky.
The Zombie blindsided them both, a wild collision of bodies to break everything apart. There was a screech cut short. The Baron stumbled back with the revolver’s hot barrel clutched in his left hand. The Zombie and the police captain were already lying at his feet. The invincible man had tackled his opponent while burying two fingers up to the knuckle in the captain’s skull. He’d nailed digits straight through the hat, straight through the bone.
“Zombie!” the Baron shouted over the ringing in his ears.
Fingers were yanked out, blood slung away. The Zombie scrambled to his feet, pausing only to toe-kick the downed officer. The hit went badly; a rib shattered into pieces with an unmistakable crunch, and the captain crumpled—still awake, still alive—but in greater, almost overwhelming agony. Trepanations and internal lacerations were slow killers, but only a wish could reliably save the captain now.
The Baron dropped the revolver. Phyllis swept around him, shouting not at the downed cop but at the weapon itself. She picked it up, saying something, but the Baron couldn’t make it out clearly. The ambulance engine roared into life.
The Zombie turned and sprinted for the vehicle.
Phyllis knelt in front of the downed captain. The Baron concentrated. He could hear her shouting, “Are you Communist? Are you Communist?”
The captain quailed, unwilling or unable to respond through the pain.
“Get Marco!” the Baron yelled at Phyllis, at the Zombie, at the world.
Phyllis put her shoe on the captain’s shoulder and shoved him over onto his back. “Keep your hands out, stay flat!” She held the revolver in his general direction, mere threat.
The Baron’s ears were recovering quickly. The ringing faded fast.
The Zombie hit the back of the ambulance with wild abandon. He didn’t merely strike it. He threw his body into it, limbs flailing without restraint or control. One fist stopped, the random results of invincibility; the other collapsed the door like foil. The ambulance peeled out, but the Zombie had his arm shoved into the vehicle up to the shoulder. He jammed in deeper, slamming the crown of his head against metal, irregularly pounding open a hole. The ambulance swerved to shake him before it had any momentum. He wriggled into the shredding steel like a puppy into newspaper, the sharp edges destroying his shirt but crumbling against his skin.
When he was halfway to his waist through a half-missing door, the driver must’ve realized they weren’t going to lose him. The ambulance screeched to a halt.
The Zombie shoved himself back out of the hole, laughing uproariously as he landed on the pavement. The slim medic kicked open the passenger side door of the cab and tried to run. The Zombie came around the edge of the vehicle, drawn by the movement.
“Driver is still there!” the Baron shouted.
The Zombie reacted immediately and dove for the right rear tire. He managed to get his arm jammed up into the wheel well when the ambulance peeled out again. Physics dragged him no more than a half foot into the rotating mess before everything tore itself apart in a spray of rubber and smashed chassis. The engine fought against the immovable object. Metal screamed while the wheel twisted off its axle. Suspension collapsed with a groan of failing springs, audible even amidst a din like a factory line tearing itself apart.
The Zombie’s laughter rose above it all as the corner of the ambulance settled slowly onto his shoulder and pinned him in place. He jerked at his limb violently, and after a few tries, all materials gave way, freeing him from the vehicle and leaving behind most of his shirt.
He got to his feet and looked at his bare chest. Healthy, young, unchanged after millenia—he thumped it with both fists and shouted a war cry at the police. Their rounded black-and-white squad cars were pulling to a halt at the head of the ambulance.
“We need Marco!” the Baron yelled to Phyllis.
He could’ve asked the Zombie to recover the teenager, but an invincible man could be put to better use. This fight was moving outside the bounds of secrecy, and they needed a spectacle to cover their escape. For one brief moment, they’d show the world what it was like to face a monster out of legend.
The Baron ran to the back of the ambulance with Phyllis close on his heels. They crouched behind the coach’s double doors; Phyllis stopped at the corner with the ruined door, while the Baron checked the handle on its mostly-whole twin.
She leaned around the corner with the revolver, then ducked back. “We’re clear for the moment.” She glanced at the Baron. The powder mark was burned into his suit. “You could’ve died,” she said. “They’re prestigious as hell.”
The Baron yanked fiercely on the door handle. The mechanism was crushed. “I came with more prestige than a person should need. Turns out it was enough.” He pounded once on the door with the side of his fist. There was a smash of glass somewhere up ahead and a shout of pain. He glanced through the back window. The Zombie was halfway through the front windshield, dragging the large medic out over the steering wheel.
“Are you spent?” Phyllis asked.
“I nearly zeroed my prestige.”
“I didn’t know you could make a bullet pass through you.” She glanced around the corner. “Cops around the Zombie.”
“I can kick this open from the inside. Wait here, I’ll go in through the passenger door.”
“No, stop.” Phyllis passed him the revolver. “I’m smaller. Take this and cover me for a second. Don’t drop it again.”
The Baron gripped it tight. “You want to go around?”
“I’m going in.” She nudged him aside and started squirming through the hole that the Zombie had punched through the right door. The burred edges caught her once on the shoulder, but she didn’t hesitate, cutting a line down the sleeve of her blouse. Once her arms were through, the rest was easy, and her wool-clad legs disappeared into the gap.
“Can they see you?” the Baron called after her.
She crouched just inside the hole. “No, it’s the Zombie. Here, get out of the way.” She stood up as far as she could in the back of the coach, braced herself with an overhead bar and kicked the door. The latch made a metal ping but didn’t give on the first hit.
The Baron looked around the left corner, up over the road. The Zombie had put on the medic’s oversized white jacket and was busy buttoning it up. The jacket’s recent owner was face down on the pavement in an undershirt, his arm twisted back until his shoulder was dislocated and purple. The injury must’ve come after the Zombie made the man strip.
Two officers in uniform were circling warily, ready to tackle. One came in. The Zombie struck out lamely, fist and arm out of position to take the hit. The officer struck gut-first and folded over the invincible man’s arm like he’d run into a lamp post.
“Ha!” The Zombie grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt, pulled him down and swung him around until he slammed head first into the side of the ambulance. The cop blacked out instantly and collapsed. It’d be five or six seconds before he was up.
His partner smashed the Zombie over the skull with his nightstick, but the truncheon rebounded away with excessive force, flying out of the assailant’s hand and flipping end over end through a high arc in the air. The Zombie grinned. The cop gawked.
A moment later, the stick shattered a second-story window.
“Home run!” the Zombie yelled.
Quivering, hands raised, the cop stepped backwards.
“Trash cars!” the Baron shouted. “Not people!”
The Zombie turned, still grinning, and gave the Baron a thumbs up. Then he swept around and started punching the driver’s side door of the ambulance, aiming to break the hinges.
There was a snap; the rear doors rattled open. The Baron came around the back. Phyllis hopped down onto pavement, pulling the stretcher behind her. The Baron unfolded the wheels once they were free. Marco was still failing to breathe.
Fuck it. The Baron slugged Marco on the shoulder. The young man shuddered and looked at the Baron, then gestured slowly at his throat. “Move!” the Baron yelled at the teen. “Do you feel the heat in your belly?”
“You’ve got more muscle,” Phyllis said. “You carry him.”
“That’s the Cat o’ Nine lives, giving you oxygen!” The Baron yanked the release on both buckles strapping Marco to the stretcher. The teen rolled over uneasily, then dropped his feet to the pavement. The Baron put a hand under his arm to keep him steady. Marco’s eyes rolled back, and he shuddered terribly as he began to take a raspy breath.
“Dying hurts,” Marco whispered, a ravaged voice.
“They injected you with something fatal.”
“I can’t move well.”
“You’ll have to carry him,” Phyllis said. “Come on!”
There was a clang. The Zombie had ripped the door off the ambulance.
The Baron handed the revolver back to Phyllis. “Don’t make yourself a target.” He knelt down in front of Marco. “Lay on my shoulders. We’re running.”
Marco collapsed gratefully onto the Baron, who pulled him over both shoulders, grabbed one arm and one leg from behind, and with the weight distributed evenly over his spine, he began walking as fast as possible. Phyllis jogged behind him, revolver pointed at the street but clearly in hand, a dare against approach. They passed the supine captain, pale and shocked.
“I hope they save your life,” the Baron said to him.
The captain followed the Baron with his eyes, but his only response was a desolate moan from a faraway place, a borderland between life and death.
“Take his radio,” the Baron ordered. “We’ll need to listen to police channels.”
Phyllis paused to unhook it from the captain’s belt, then stood without giving the downed man a second look. Once they were out of earshot, she asked, “Where are we going?”
“Underground,” the Baron said. “We can lose them in the tunnels.”
“Which tunnels?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You don’t know the area?”
“We’ll move between stations.”
Marco groaned as he bumped across the Baron’s shoulders.
d’Holbach huffed. “Keep trying to move your legs. I need you on your feet.”
“They’re on fire,” Marco whined.
“I can’t carry you forever. We’ll need to run soon.”
They continued down the hill. A squad car pulled up ahead, but Phyllis aimed the revolver in a firing stance, and the officers in the Cadillac raised their hands and stayed in their seats.
There was a sound of gunshots up the hill. The Baron paused and swung around slowly under Marco’s weight. The Zombie was standing on the hood of a police car, smashing the ambulance door against the windshield. Two officers were laid out on the sidewalk in front of the car, victims of some kind, while others stood behind their vehicles like soldiers in a trench, plugging away at the Zombie. Shattering bullets blasted out bits of white jacket like squibs. The invincible man hopped down off the hood and ran at the assembled officers. The volume of fire intensified immediately.
The Baron ran to the shadow of a recessed storefront, where he set Marco down and supported the teen between him and Phyllis. They could hear stray fire spattering into the roads and buildings. A large window down the street shattered into sword-sized shards. The Baron glanced out of the recess at the spectacle. The Zombie was slamming officers on their sides and backs with the ambulance door like it was a paddle.
Someone must’ve realized the Zombie wasn’t going down. After a brief moment, an officer turned and sprinted up the street, and once one broke rank, the rest routed. The Zombie lobbed the door like a discus after a slow man, then turned and vaulted a vehicle and started sprinting downhill at a break-neck pace, using gravity and invincible footfalls to reach an uncontrollable top speed.
“Back off!” Malik’s voice came from the radio in Phyllis’s hand. The parked police car roared into life, peeled out and hopped the median, making its escape.
“CPUSA?” Phyllis asked.
“They’re reactivated members, probably legitimate police.” The Baron stepped out of the recess and waved at the Zombie. “Over here!”
The Zombie kept going down the street, dodging around parked vehicles that civilians had abandoned once the fighting started. It occurred to the Baron that there must be many witnesses around—but where? He turned and glanced through a small window in the door at their back. There was a cluster of people huddled among racks of used clothes, staring up at the window and wondering when this bitter taste of war would be washed away.
To say the least, New York would be extremely unhappy. This wasn’t the kind of damage that the Baron could cover with a checkbook and a smile. This was terror on a Sunday afternoon, and the worst part was that the Baron couldn’t let them punish him. Justice would be abandoned, because the Zombie would never let him languish in jail.
Hiding the Baron’s identity, sweeping the entire affair under the rug or even pinning it on a scapegoat—these were the things that New York would do to keep the peace.
The Zombie angled his run towards the sidewalk, hit the curb with a foot, kicked up a chunk of concrete the size of a fist, tumbled over, hit the walk hard—and stopped dead without a sound.
“Hahaha, great!” The Zombie pushed himself to his feet. “Look at that result!”
“Can you run?” the Baron asked Marco.
“I think so,” the teen said. He was touching his back with his fingers, testing the wounds. He inspected his prints, finding them slathered in coagulated blood. “I think I’m bleeding?”
“The wound will take an hour or two to close up. The Cat saves you before it heals you.”
“You’ll have a huge scar,” Phyllis added. “Rasputin had one on his gut.”
The Zombie jogged over. “Where are we going?”
“Tunnels,” the Baron said.
The Zombie looked uphill; his jacket was riddled with holes. “They’re already coming. I should’ve wrecked more.” The vehicles he hadn’t damaged were ripping down the hill, engines gunning. Some of them didn’t even have windshields. No time to waste.
The Baron shoved Marco out of the recess, “Go!”
They ran. The concrete clapped beneath their shoes. The police cars wouldn’t catch up to them before they reached the station, but it’d be close. They were only about a hundred yards from the entrance, just about a block, but a football field was a hell of a sprint.
Marco slowed, grabbing at his chest. He felt his wounds.
“We can’t stop!” the Baron shouted.
Phyllis didn’t even turn around to look. She kept running down the walk, taking huge gulps of air. The Zombie turned, caught Marco running with one arm, and slung him up over his high shoulder. “Don’t move or you’ll shatter your ribs.”
Then the Zombie began to sprint. Unlike the Baron, he didn’t have to worry about injuring his spine or feet. He didn’t have to worry about a bouncing body wearing him down or injuring his shoulders. With a terrifying fleetness, he outpaced all of them at twice the speed. Marco yelped while the Zombie’s invincible shoulder mashed his chest like a stone curb.
They only slowed when they reached the station stairs. Phyllis was breathing raggedly, the Baron was in better shape but still whipped, and Marco was coughing violently. Blood and mucus spattered down the back of the Zombie’s already ruined coat. The invincible man set the teen onto his feet, then nudged him down the stairs with a tap of his fist.
“Jesus, it’s like being hit with a sock full of pennies!” Marco whined.
“You’ll live,” the Zombie judged.
The Baron pointed down into the underground station while they descended, the steps quaking beneath heavy footfalls. “When we reach the platform, jump down to the tracks.”
They spiralled deeper, passing out of view, now hidden from the sky, but they could still hear cop cars screeching to a stop. Hoarse voices crowed about following the runners into the station.
“I’m down here!” the Zombie bellowed up at them.
The voices quieted, and the Baron imagined that the police would delay, reassert the chain of command and decide who would go down first. It was a smart move, a responsible move. They’d be lauded for taking it.
Unfortunately, in the confusion, they’d lose track of the man who tanked more than a hundred rounds without dropping and punched holes in steel—the man that would show up in reports and later in urban legends, even as the unreality of what had happened set in. Even the people who’d fired at the “devil” would begin to believe that they’d missed.
It only made sense that way. To the secular world, the Zombie wasn’t real, and their minds would rebel at their own memories until they vanished, leaving only myths.
Author’s Note:
Urban legends begin in moments like these, unreasonable and fleeting.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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Phyllis interrupted the Baron’s story at this point to add her own interpretation. “The Apostate thinks Jakob dodged, died in his sanctuary, and was buried in an unmarked grave.”
“So was he really this Böhme guy?” Marco asked.
The Baron answered promptly: “Indeed. He’d been extending his life, completing tasks on borrowed time, then extending his life again. He had access to oceans of prestige, and at the time, wishes for truth were common. The gods told him that I was the preeminent man of reason, the first to complete a materialist metaphysics. If I could be convinced of the occult, then nobody was beyond the system of prestige. Everyone could be convinced.”
“Except you couldn’t be?” Marco asked.
“That’s right. Their evidence isn’t enough. It never will be.”
“It was a disaster,” Phyllis noted.
“What happened?” Marco asked the Baron.
d’Holbach took a deep breath, brushing aside any lurking stress or memories of that long dead conflict. “They called it the Fall of Trust. One day, the gods decided that I would never believe in them, and the condition on my head would last forever. I’d stolen immortality out of Böhme’s well-meant wish, and the cults of Europe tried to kill me for it.”
“Can they kill you?” Marco asked.
“I can die,” the Baron said. “I’ll recover from most injuries, but I’m only a man.”
“Did Böhme know what was going to happen to you?”
“No. Diviners don’t know the future. They’re listening closely to the gods, and the gods are always watching the world, so the theory goes that a Diviner is vaguely aware of what the gods are watching. In a sense, they know the present better than anyone else, but not the future.”
“So he made you live forever by accident?”
“He thought agelessness would be proof enough to convince me. Even the gods must’ve thought I’d change my mind, or they wouldn’t have agreed to the wish.”
“You live because you’re an atheist then.”
“Because they aren’t gods. They’re powerful, unknown beings, but they aren’t divine.”
Marco paused mid-step. “Does anyone else live the way you do?”
The Baron stopped and faced him. “Are you asking if anyone has the same kind of immortality?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No. I’m unique, the first and last of my kind. The gods are fallible and people find holes in the system, but if the exploit is severe enough, the gods change the rules to close up the loophole.” The Baron patted Marco on the shoulder to get him moving again. “Take my example. I proved that conditional wishes could accidentally lead to immortality, so you can no longer make wishes of that kind. That’s the Fall of Trust.”
“It’s a fall from grace,” Phyllis clarified. “It’s like the Fall of Man in the Bible. The Baron sinned against the system by exploiting its gracious implementation.”
“It was an accident,” the Baron insisted.
“You were accidentally stubborn enough to throw away letters from hundreds of Oracles across Europe?” the Zombie asked. “Accidentally thick-headed, maybe.”
The Baron grinned. “Böhme’s accident, my friend. Not mine.”
Phyllis continued talking to Marco. “Before the Fall of Trust, you could wish that if something happened, then your wish came true. After the Fall, conditional wishes were banned. We couldn’t trust that someone would fulfill every condition. Old wishes were grandfathered in however, so as long as the Baron keeps his own philosophy, he’ll remain young. Tough.”
“I have no reason to lose my way,” the Baron added.
Phyllis smiled. “For what it’s worth, Marco, the Apostate wrote that the Baron was a friendly zealot. A sane man would’ve believed by now.”
“I’m attached to skepticism!” the Baron declared.
“You’ve told me what you believe,” the Zombie said. “You’re attached to science-fiction.”
“Ha! Not as much as you.”
“I still believe they’re gods.”
“But you hope they aren’t!”
“Hope? Don’t you mean pray?” the Zombie joked. “They’re gods after all.”
The Baron and Phyllis laughed, while Marco gave them both a confused stare. “There’s really nobody else like you on Earth?” he asked.
“Nobody,” the Baron answered. “I’m not just any baron. In the system of prestige, I’m the Baron.”
“And I’m the Zombie,” the Zombie said.
“I’m just Phyllis,” the Artemisian added wryly.
That last joke was lame enough to make Marco crack a smile.
They crossed over the peak of the hill and hit an intersection crossing a one-way road, with all four lanes of traffic heading south. This place formed both a main artery of the neighborhood and a natural commercial district. An afternoon shopping crowd was streaming along the sidewalks, visibly doubled by the vertical ponds of the storefront windows. The colors of cars and passersby reflected in them fluidly, streaming along like oil on water.
Maybe a century ago, this wide road must’ve been a dirt track following the shallow spine of a ridge. It stretched from the nearby lowlands up a shallow slope to the broad summit, where old admin buildings stood only a little higher than the surrounding landscape.
Down the hill, about a mile from the summit, taxis clustered around an underground train station. Like an ant trail, people were following implicit and signalled directions, carrying packages in and out of the hole in the Earth.
The Baron halted at the intersection. “I need everyone to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior. This is one of the stations close to the apartments, and if Malik is half as good as I think he is, he’ll have placed people to pick up our trail around here.”
“Why?” Phyllis asked. “We could’ve taken a car for all he knew.”
“Don’t underestimate the level of surveillance he could muster. The Soviets are well-organized and state-funded—Stalin is both Soviet Premier and Chairman of the Soviet Cult. If he’s putting resources behind their Bolshevik agents, then we’re talking prop planes with spies in them, long-distance observation—whatever it takes.”
“Spy planes?” Phyllis reflected on that. “Ok, for the Cat o’ Nine Lives, yes.”
“Exactly. Denisov thought they’d have no manpower on the ground, but look at what happened—Malik called up a fifth column of sleeper agents, apparently cultists to the man. I wouldn’t be surprised if the CPUSA members we saw were all New York vassals. I doubt it’d cost them much to put a man or two on every station to watch for us.”
“So what’s the call?” Phyllis asked.
“Avoid them if we can.”
She hummed thoughtfully, glowering. “If they’re well-prepared, wouldn’t they just inform the next tail somewhere down the line? If we see anyone, I think we should take them out, then backtrack, and find a different route.”
The Zombie was delighted. “Take them out?”
“No killing,” Phyllis and the Baron said at the same time.
“There are many ways to stop a man without murdering him,” the Zombie said with an air of condescension. “Some of them are even fun.”
“I’d just like to get this thing out of me and go home,” Marco said. “Mom needs to know what happened, and pop needs a burial. Who do you even call to make that happen?”
“We’ll worry about arrangements for your father,” the Baron said, “but first I need to make sure you get out alive before CPUSA manages to kill you.”
“Wait, what?” Marco asked. “They don’t know that I have it, do they?”
“No, but killing everyone around us is the easiest way to test for the Cat,” the Zombie said.
“Oh…” That revelation visibly weighed on Marco.
They started downhill on the left side of the road, moving against uptown foot traffic. They weren’t causing a disturbance—many people were pushing against the flow—but the natural snaking of movement around angry pedestrians, the pauses and meaningless apologies and excuses all added up to slower progress.
Even so, the Baron didn’t want to cross the main street and give anyone in a vehicle an excuse to try running them down. By forcing the crowd to thicken up around them, they were making it harder for possible CPUSA members to hit and run.
“We look paranoid,” Phyllis whispered.
“Thats because we are,” the Baron said, “and justifiably so.”
“Spread out a little, look casual.”
They all took one step apart, spacing to let people slip between them. The crowd was thickening with every step towards the subway station. Its presence would give CPUSA a lot of camouflage, but it’d force them to act discreetly. In a short range struggle, the Zombie was an absolutely superior force. Phyllis would also add a bit of uncertainty to the affair. Malik’s decision makers wouldn’t be able to cleanly pick out the “innocent” to test.
“If someone comes for you, step towards the Zombie,” the Baron muttered to Marco.
“What’re you expecting?” the Zombie asked conversationally. “Knife?”
“Talk quietly,” Phyllis ordered softly.
The Baron answered the Zombie’s question, talking at a level just barely audible above traffic and footfalls. “Watch for a close range stabbing. They won’t shy away from murder. Remember, they don’t want witnesses, but desperation is the father of necessity.”
“Don’t you mean ‘mother of invention?’” Phyllis asked.
“Sure, but I don’t think they’ll be inventing anything. Odds are good the attack will be as cliche as it gets.”
They were about halfway down the block now. Beat cops were idly watching the road and chatting with white shoppers. The sparse immigrants and blacks averted their eyes, a behavior beaten into them by a lifetime of betrayed trust, by the blind eyes of authority overlooking them whenever they were victims of organized crime.
The Baron met the policemen’s bored expressions with a gentlemanly smile, though the rest of his companions looked away. Marco was Italian. The Zombie was busy looking for things to fight. Phyllis was clearly on guard.
Down at the end of the block, a man in a captain’s uniform was idly chatting with the drivers of an emergency ambulance, a white-and-red box coach. There wasn’t anyone hurt in the area. They were simply idling by the curb, discussing something from earlier in the day.
The captain looked up the street twice, directly at the Baron. They didn’t make eye contact, and it was more than a hundred feet away, but the Baron could sense the recognition. There was something unusual about the man’s gait. He paused his conversation with the ambulance drivers and lifted up a radio to exchange a few quiet words.
“That man,” the Baron said, “police captain. He sighted us for someone.”
“You sure?” Phyllis asked.
“I’m sure. He’s the only one looking for someone.”
“Okay,” she muttered. “Do we want to cross the street?”
“That’d just confirm who is with us.” The Baron felt a chill sweep across his scalp. He held out a hand to stop Marco. “Do you feel that? It wasn’t just my imagination?”
A passing lady with exposed calves asked aloud: “A cold front?”
“Feels like it,” Marco answered, mostly speaking to himself.
The temperature continued to drop. The Baron could feel the moist air of spring disappearing into the sharp bite of winter. He touched his bare head. Chilled water was beading on his skin. On windows up and down the street, a thin film of frost spontaneously sublimated.
“You can’t make that much air cold,” Phyllis said quietly.
“Zombie?” the Baron asked.
The invincible man grunted. “Never seen anything like it.”
“That’s so much prestige.” The Baron’s last word was muffled, as if all sound were being dampened by a pillow. The whole street was quiet, heard from across some gulf of open, silent air. They might as well be on the far side of a canyon from the world, but it wasn’t true silence either. The atmosphere was positively frigid for an instant, cold like a still winter morning, dead of life and activity. The Baron had never felt anything exactly like it.
There was a sound like the gentle crack of a gas bottle being opened. Again, and again, three times total. Marco’s back splashed like flesh was made of jelly. Three tidy spurts of tissue, not red but pink, disintegrating muscle. His shirt fluttered neatly. They weren’t grand hits. There wasn’t much noise. If the Baron hadn’t been watching, he wouldn’t have seen anything.
Marco croaked, the air knocked out of him.
Phyllis hadn’t even noticed yet. Her eyes were on the sky.
One second passed. Two seconds. The Baron was shoving Marco to the ground too late. The spring warmth suddenly blustered into being, the static grip on the atmosphere was finally relieved. Water ran in tiny droplets down glass and dried away.
“Get down!” the Baron roared.
The thundercrack of three shots, fired almost five seconds ago, finally reached them. The pedestrians around them shouted and screamed, scattering, an uproar that hurt the ears.
“Up the hill!” the Zombie shouted over the din.
The Baron swept about. Over a mile away—tiny at this distance—a rifleman was standing at the peak of the hill in the middle of an expanding shockwave of panicked civilians. They’d been running for some seconds already, having seen the man uncover, aim, and fire a rifle three times. This sniper threw down his weapon and jumped into an idling vehicle. Beat cops were running for their squad cars.
Bullets, likely .30-06 rounds, were hypersonic. They easily outraced the sounds of gunfire over such tremendous distances. The Baron would think of all this later, processing the moment over and over, but at that instant, he recognized only one thing. The air had chilled because the sniper had wished for perfectly still conditions. No crossbreeze had disturbed those shots. The sheer scale of it all, and in public! Years of prestige had been spent to kill a boy.
Marco gurgled wetly, face down against the walk, and all other concerns fled the Baron. He squatted over the fallen teen, grabbed one of the holes in the back of his shirt, and tore the cloth wide open. The edges of his entry wounds were pulled in like puckered lips. Red rings of hemorrhaging skin were swelling visibly. Blood didn’t gush or run from the wounds. There was a slow, gentle upwell of fluid, filling a cavity beneath Marco’s shoulderblade. The dearth of blood wasn’t a good sign. The teenager was bleeding into a chest full of ruined organs.
“He’s shot?” Phyllis yelled to the Baron. She huddled down around the wounded teenager across from d’Holbach. “How bad?”
“At least one death!” The Baron leaned closer to Marco’s ear. “Start breathing, or it’ll count as two lives!”
Marco made a noise like someone squeezing air through an old bellows, then shuddered violently, forcing a dark gush of blood out of the clustered entry wounds.
“Is that near his heart?” Phyllis asked him.
“Above it. Major arteries.”
“Didn’t he swallow the Cat?”
“He’ll be on his feet in a second.” He slapped Marco on the good side of his back. “Breathe! Don’t asphyxiate!”
Marco tried again, and there was a sound like air being forced into a football bladder, a long wet, sour whine making its way through flapping bits of rubbery flesh.
A sudden sonorous noise interrupted them like the long howl of a steel wolf.
The Zombie was close behind the Baron. “Police captain, on the move!” he called. “Ambulance pulling around!”
“After the sniper?” the Baron asked, hoping that there wasn’t a secular problem running uphill to meet them. He pressed his hand on Marco’s flank, feeling the next wet pull of air. Breathing was already easier. They only needed a few seconds.
“You know they’re coming here,” the Zombie declared gravely.
The Baron glanced down the hill. The new threat was about thirty feet out—the captain that had noticed them just before the shooting started. He was wearing the colors of authority and secular state violence—a five-point peaked cap with a gold crest, a white shirt, a black jacket, and a black tie. For all they knew, he was also a spotter for the occult.
Dread drenched d’Holbach like a soak in the North Atlantic; if he was arrested, the Zombie might harm a lot of people before the New York Cult could arrange for his release. They needed to run. Marco needed to be on his feet seconds ago.
“Is this man shot?” the captain yelled, trotting to a halt just a few yards away.
The Baron didn’t answer him, concentrating on the boy. “Fight the pain, Marco! You’re alive! Will it, and move! Like the ancient warriors, move!”
The boy tried to speak and choked on every broken thing inside his body. No words followed, only a violent, hacking cough. Vibrant, living crimson spattered across the concrete.
The captain approached slowly, chest out, holding out a gloved palm at all of them. “Sir, ma’am, I’m going to need you to step back.” He had a holstered revolver on one side of his belt and a bulky field radio on the other.
“We know him!” Phyllis shouted at the captain.
The Zombie stepped past the Baron, providing a physical barrier to the officer’s approach. The captain stopped moving. The Zombie’s tattered clothes were more intimidating than words. Maybe the captain knew who the Zombie was.
“Marco,” the Baron pleaded with the downed teenager, “you’re not dying. Get up!”
The captain took two steps left, circling around the Zombie. “Sir, I’m with the New York Police Department. Step back!”
The terrible machine howl of the ambulance filled their world. The bulky coach pulled up against the curb beside them, its thunderous tone shifting low and deep. Time was up. The crisis had arrived. If anyone took Marco, there was no saving the boy from the Soviets. Their spies would find him in a hospital, murder him, and harvest the Cat.
So the Baron stood up and bellowed at the captain: “Stay away, officer!”
The Zombie stepped forward, backing up those words with every foot of his towering visage. The captain instantly took a step back.
The siren shut off, and two fit young men hopped out of the cab with white coats and white caps, donning pairs of blue latex gloves powdered in corn starch. They looked like off-service firefighters, just the kind of men who’d be on standby for medical services. One was large; the other, small, carrying a doctor’s bag in one hand.
“Recognize the Zombie?” the Baron shouted at the captain.
The police officer flinched, shrinking away from those words. It seemed increasingly certain that the man was at least trained in occult lore.
“Out of the way!” yelled the large medic. He deliberately barged into Phyllis, who was still kneeling, and shoved her off balance with his leg. “Move!”
“Fuck you!” Phyllis caught herself with one hand, barely keeping her balance.
The large medic planted his boot against her chestbone, and shoved again before she could stand. She half-stumbled, controlling her collapse until she landed on her bottom.
The Baron turned on the large medic. “You too! Step back, or else!” he threatened.
“Don’t you dare!” Phyllis roared, looking past the Baron.
d’Holbach turned around. The smaller medic jabbed the needle of a full syringe into the nape of Marco’s neck. Into the spine.
“Zombie!” the Baron roared, a rough, desperate cry that demanded violence.
Before anyone else could fully react, the smaller medic slammed the plunger, injecting the syringe’s contents with force. Then he jumped to his feet and sprinted exactly like a man should when the Zombie was already charging after him. An instant later, they were both running past the ambulance and into the road.
“What was that injection?” Phyllis shouted.
Marco clenched up violently, going into some kind of sudden spasm on the concrete. He smashed his nose against the walk, smearing another line of blood where his face dragged. What little air he’d brought into his lungs escaped with a single wet hack; then he seized up entirely, eyes opening wide in deathly panic.
“Poison!” the Baron shouted.
The captain swept in quickly and drew his revolver with his right hand, pointing the weapon at the Baron’s head. The Zombie was away; for an instant, such threats mattered.
“The Pact!” the Baron shouted.
“I told you to get back!” the police captain roared. “That’s an order!”
Marco began to relax, unfolding face first against the ground. The large medic kneeled over Marco and started to lift him under the shoulders, prepping him for a proper fireman’s carry—ill-named, since it was more often practiced as a soldier’s technique.
“Zombie!” the Baron cried, a completely different tone that begged for help.
“Last chance!” the police officer yelled. “Move!”
The Baron stepped back slowly, buying time. One step. Two. Three.
The smaller medic sprinted into view a few yards downhill, finishing a full arc around the ambulance before returning to the sidewalk. Already flagging, he tried to stop, lifting his hands and turning to “surrender,” but the Zombie caught up and playfully crossbarred him, flinging the man off his feet and onto his back. A meaty thud, a wheeze.
Laughing, the Zombie swiveled to help the Baron—and spotted the revolver. All smiles died, leaving behind a polar calm. “You’ll put that away,” the Zombie called. “Or else.”
“Everyone, stay where you are!” the captain shouted.
Around them, civilians were beginning to collect at ten paces, watching from the sidelines. They couldn’t know what was happening, but they could sense a conflict unfolding. Their glares could be felt on the Baron’s back. A policeman was their champion. A captain’s enemy was the people’s enemy. The growing crowd was catcalling.
“Get him out of here!”
“Help the boy!”
“Watch the coolie!”
“This’ll be peaceful!” the captain roared at the Baron, implicitly demanding a secular resolution that didn’t involve any further violence.
The large medic finished shifting Marco’s dead weight up over his shoulders. After a fatal poisoning, it might take the teen a minute or two to learn to move again. Enough time to lose him forever.
“They aren’t medics!” Phyllis yelled at the crowd, “He’s not a cop!”
The Baron couldn’t wait any longer. He took one step back towards the captain, gambling on aggression. “You can’t shoot me,” he declared.
The captain lifted his revolver, glancing at the Zombie.
The Baron pressed on. “If I die, you’ll die, everyone you know will die—”
“Shut up!” the captain bellowed at the top of his lungs.
“Everyone they know will die. The city will burn—”
The captain aimed the revolver again. “I said shut up!”
“I’m begging you to consider what’s at stake.”
The Baron’s attention was split, even as he pleaded for sanity. While arguing with the officer, the smaller medic had risen to his feet, dazed. Then he’d jogged well around the conflict and arrived at the ambulance in time to pull the stretcher out for the large medic.
In seconds, they’d lay Marco down, buckle him up, and shove him into the back for transport. This was the worst case, but the Zombie wouldn’t move to stop them, not so long as there was a gun trained on his vulnerable friend.
“We can’t let you take him,” the Baron said.
“You don’t have a choice!” the captain snapped back.
“I could keep coming. You can’t stop me.”
The captain was sweating. “If I have to shoot you, it’ll be on your head! All those lives on your head, Baron!” So there it was—the masquerade was dropped because Marco was laid down on the stretcher. “We’re taking him. We have the authority here.”
The Baron waited. Phyllis was yelling at the crowd, telling them that the medics were kidnappers. The story was too fantastic to believe, but they couldn’t ignore her either. The Zombie was frozen in place. The Baron suspected he’d have to make the opening move. Once events were in motion, the Zombie would do the rest.
“Zombie, if anything happens, you have my permission to go wild,” the Baron said.
“Nothing will happen,” the captain insisted.
On cue, new sirens began to scream.
“Others on the way!” Phyllis shouted.
Some of the other cops uphill had noticed the confrontation and were making their way down, squad cars droning like air raid sirens.
The Baron had reached the limits of peaceful confrontation. If he attacked, he was gambling with his life and thus the lives of everyone around him, but he couldn’t wait. There wasn’t any more time. Tied to a stretcher, Marco’s limp body was shoved into the ambulance.
The Baron had to make a move. If his intent was clear and the wish was obvious to all, then his words could be brief. The secrecy of the public would hold. Anticipation was key.
The back door slammed shut. The captain glanced at the vehicle.
The Baron charged, bellowing his wish at the revolver, “Misfire!”
Author’s Note:
Death is defied, but it hurts. Oh, how the body screams!
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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Baron d’Holbach was a noble from the Rhineland-Palatinate. By way of his mother, he was heir to the fortune of the late Prince-Bishop’s tax collector, and by way of his father, the owner of ten square-miles of vineyards. His uncle raised him, one Messire François-Adam, Baron d’Holbach, Seigneur de Heeze, Leende and other Places, who’d made his own fortune speculating on the Paris Stock Exchange.
It was his third year after opening the salon at his personal estate in rue Royale, butte Saint-Roche; the third year after both his father and his uncle died. A mixture of wealth, lavish accommodations, and academic connections from Leiden University had placed the Baron at the nexus of the Enlightenment in France and thus throughout Europe, and though he had never become its greatest philosopher or thinker, he had been the movement’s most gracious and enthusiastic host. Philosophers, scientists, and politicians from the continent and beyond were admitted on Sundays and Thursdays to discuss and debate their discoveries and theories. Many of them were allowed to stay in the guest rooms for weeks on end, drawing on the Baron’s vast library of over three thousand volumes in order to inform their papers, pamphlets, and books.
The salon of d’Holbach’s Coterie was arguably the radical vanguard of Western intellectualism, sowing the seeds of the academic revolutions to come.
In this fabulous place, a hemorrhaging of wealth and wine, they called themselves philosophes—distinct from philosophers because they believed that critical thought applied to all subjects. Reason was their sole tool of education, and letters were exchanged freely across all boundaries. Organized religion in particular was abhorred, and most men of the Enlightenment were deists, nodding towards a natural God but denying the authority of His alleged churches.
Only a few of these philosophes spent late nights drunk under the stars, whispering over dim lamps about the system of nature—about atheism, materialism, and determinism. Each element was considered by itself, with adherents arguing for one or two at a time but rarely for all three at once. The Baron found himself prime among these, believing that there must be some element which connected the disparate but parsimonious philosophies.
It would be almost two decades before he wrote and published a book on the subject. For the intervening twenty years, he would cooperate with figures of the Enlightenment to edit and organize The Encyclopaedia or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts. It was the first single reference book containing succinct, technically detailed articles about all the subjects adored by the philosophes. Working out of the Baron’s draft rooms and studies, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert edited, revised, and approved translations of the work. For the first time since Aristotle, the Baron imagined they were bringing together all the knowledge of mankind under a single title. They believed they would transform the world.
For a time, the Encyclopaedia would seem like the most important thing the Baron ever participated in. Even his own books, including The System of Nature, would pale in comparison to the social, political, and economic accomplishment of creating and publishing a combined body of knowledge in a time when less than a twentieth of the population could read, and the echoes of feudal politics distorted the tenuous lines of communication across borders and boundaries.
Yet the Baron lived long enough to see the impact of his efforts disappear. The world evolved. Paradigms were overthrown. The subtlety of every subject was greater than they could’ve imagined, and their confidence had been unfounded. Day by day and year by year, every single word in the Encyclopaedia became obsolete. Even history, the supposedly immutable record of the past, was discovered to be as sturdy as sand castles by the sea.
Their best ideas were crude from the perspective of two centuries gone by. The Baron supposed this was the course of progress. If it even arrived, it didn’t build upon the past. Progress reviewed it, rejected it, and sculpted something finer.
Only one event actually mattered in the long run. Only one passing moment still mattered, because it preserved the Baron, and only the living could truly change the world. He didn’t recognize its importance for thirty years.
In the winter of 1753, the Baron was enjoying a Saturday afternoon alone in the southwest hall of rue Royale, butte Saint-Roche. It was the side of the estate opposite of the high north wind, with the bulk of the building in front of the blizzard and a heavy fire roaring in an old cooking hearth. The heavy pots had been pulled aside to let the heat radiate freely from the masonry and into the open air. Servants came by every half hour to tend to the fire, but for most of the day, the Baron was alone, drinking and eating thin slices of dry cheese while reading a stack of letters sent from his chateau at Grandval.
His first wife was staying there until the end of the month or the foul weather broke, whichever came last, and the Baron easily tolerated her absence because she sent poems spiced with hints of eroticism—a mood which he would indulge on her return.
The sun was nearly down when a servant came to him with a message from a caller. “Baron, there is a cobbler asking after you at the north doors.”
The Baron folded up a letter and set it on the pile. “Those heaped with snow?”
“Yes, Baron.”
“I don’t need my shoes repaired. Send him on his way, and pay him a quarter écu for the trouble of climbing the butte roads to see me.”
“Baron, my apologies,” the servant said, “I have misspoken. The cobbler is not here to repair shoes, though he says it’s his trade. He’s very old and wears only leather in this storm. He calls upon you only to speak.”
“I see. Does he look hungry?” the Baron asked.
“Yes. Like a starving bird, he is frail.”
“Send him here to the hall and warm some water for a bath. Have the mistress prepare a bed for the evening, and make sure I have another plate at dinner. He’ll join us.”
“Yes, Baron,” the servant said.
“Did he give you his name?”
“Yes, he called himself Jakob Böhme.”
“The dead theologian?” the Baron asked, amused.
“I’m not familiar with the name, Baron. Is he an impostor?”
“No, there are many Jakobs and many Böhmes. Send him up.” Jakob Böhme was a German mystic who’d died nearly a century before the Baron was born. It was absurd that anyone would take his name and pretend to be a hundred and eighty years old.
The ancient man the servant led into the hall was surprisingly similar to the portrait of Jakob that the Baron had seen in Edesheim. Originally painted in Gorlitz, the picture in his memory was of a thin, long-faced man with bulging fish-eyes, a broad forehead shining between sheets of thin brown hair which reached to his shoulders, wrinkles as deep as carvings in wood, and a pinch of a mustache like barber sweepings pasted beneath his nose. The figure that entered the hall was spotted, mostly toothless, and even more deeply wrinkled—but he had the same sheets of hair, now shock white, and the same wisp of stache like tufts of cotton.
“Monsieur Jakob Böhme, let me introduce you to the master of the house, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach. Baron, this is Jakob Böhme, the cobbler.”
The Baron was in a leather chair beside a stand covered in opened letters. He gestured to a wooden chair closer to the fire. “Warm yourself. Would you like wine and cheese?”
“I’m not hungry anymore,” Jakob said, settling into a warm chair with a shudder, “but you are a good master for offering a man of my station such fine fare.” His rough leather coat was already running with melted snow, but he didn’t seem to mind the soaked hide.
“Are you cold?” the Baron asked.
“I have steeled myself against the freezing weather.” He looked out a distant window at the growing darkness outside the hall. “The condition ends. There’s so little time left.”
“Till sundown?” the Baron asked.
“I am very old,” the man explained, though the Baron didn’t exactly follow his meaning.
“Do you mind if I have more wine?”
“Please, enjoy yourself, master. I’d never deny a man pleasure in his own home.”
“You can call me Baron,” d’Holbach corrected, more out of preference than any rebuke for a forgotten station. He filled a glass goblet and sipped the bitter, astringent liquid. It was a strong red wine, drier than most vintages. It’d been laid down less than five years ago, still too young by most standards, but fine for drinking alone.
Jakob grinned, empty gums gaping between cracked, scabbed lips. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mouth, dark molars still held the shape of his jaw. “Baron d’Holbach, I have been told that your coterie is a place of great wisdom.”
“Thank you, but don’t give me too much credit. It’s my wealth and a master chef that draw them here. Not my wisdom.”
“I hear better things about you on the summer winds,” Jakob said. “The trees and the sunlight sing your praises, Baron.”
The Baron laughed. Insanity never frightened him. “The sunlight sings?”
“I’ve heard the sun ever since I saw the structure of God in the light of a pewter dish. You may not be the most brilliant or most charismatic, but you have the strongest conviction. Among your coterie, you lead because confidence is the only strength they respect.”
“Is that so? And who says I have conviction?”
“Even if the wind didn’t whisper it, I would know already. I am mad, mad, mad, but you aren’t shaken. Nothing I could say would disturb your heart.”
“I don’t know about that,” the Baron said, “but I hope it’s true.”
“It is!” Jakob grinned emptily. “I can hear it, the iron in your soul.”
“If you know me so well, then you know I don’t believe in souls.” The Baron sipped his wine and waited. The guest was already proving to be an admirable speaker, and he had at least passing knowledge of the original Jakob Böhme’s books.
“Yes, yes! Exactly, Baron. You are resolute. Down to the bones, you believe in reason.”
“I’m flattered, Monsieur Böhme. I pride myself on such matters.”
Jakob laughed. “I wish to test your reason against some facts I’ve learned.”
“I will do my best,” the Baron said, “but I make no promises. You’re a puzzling man. Well-educated, yes? Though a cobbler, you speak like a man of the court.”
“I’m the opposite of a court man,” Jakob said. “They would call me a sinner and a slob, though I have spent my fair share of time at the feet of kings.” He scooted forward in his chair. “I will tell you three things, each more fantastic than the last. I wish to hear your thoughts.”
“Please.” The Baron ate a slice of hard cheese off a plate and took a deep draught of the wine. He could feel it in his sinuses, in the fore of his head. Drinking was freedom and fault at once. He would be more willing to entertain Jakob’s nonsense.
“The first then. You’ve heard of me, but you believe I perished long before you were born. I am the famous Jakob Böhme, the Mystic, and I’m almost two hundred years old. When I was young and truly insane, my friends took the truths I wrote in my journals and published them without my permission. I thought them traitors at the time, though I could barely express myself through the madness I’d chosen. The Catholics would’ve skewered me with a pole, but the Lutherans were willing to exile me because I’d intended to keep my secrets to myself.”
Jakob waited for the Baron to respond. It was clearly a fantastic story, but what was the challenge in picking that element apart? To refute the logic of a thing by denying its foundations was easy. To destroy something by showing that it had no logic was the real challenge.
“Assume a man might live for two centuries,” the Baron said.
“For every three days of a prestige, one day of life,” Jakob muttered, “but that means nothing to you, Baron. Assume it. What do you say?”
“How do I know you’re that Jakob Böhme?”
“I know myself, and over the last century I’ve come to resist the madness of my wish. I remember myself again. I’ve heard the many voices of our divided God, and I’ve learned His story. He was once the Abyss, unified and formless but for one desire—to know Himself. He knows no other beginning, and nothing like himself, and also no end.”
“This is your God?” the Baron asked.
“This is the Divine, may He be one or many.”
The Baron drained the rest of his glass. “Go on.”
“For Him, time is measured against the original division. He rendered himself unto two halves, light and dark.” He split his hands apart, waving each one in turn. “Positive and negative. From this duality, He formed a pattern of interlacing being, ever dividing and multiplying in complexity, creating more and more information—collecting more and more knowledge about Himself. The world grew in this tension! It became a reflection of Him, both good and evil at once, though it was not Him—it only lived between his halves.”
“The world is between those halves,” the Baron mused.
“Yes! The good chose to stand apart in order to learn about Himself. The evil lusted to return to the unified state, but if it were allowed to cross the gulf—” Jakob clapped his hands together. “He would crush the stars and sun and moon and world. Eschaton.”
“This sounds vaguely like an explanation for change. Like Heraclitus of Ephesus, who believed that there was a logos—a universal understanding that formed the soul of reality.”
Jakob’s scabbed lips split into another wild grin, stretching their leather far enough to draw specks of blood. “Yes, he must’ve made the wish to hear all the voices of God! Change is the conflict between His wrath, God the Father, and His peace, Jesus Christ the Son. You can even see it in the Bible, Baron. The Old Testament is filled with hate and war, touched with reflection and peace. The New Testament is filled with love and salvation, touched by sin and betrayal. Through these two halves, the history of the world was made—the Holy Spirit, I call it. It’s the grand design crafted by the interaction of Father and Son across time.”
“You know Jakob Böhme’s theology,” the Baron admitted, “but I could’ve given you a similar review, and I don’t believe a word of it.”
“You’re an atheist, but you aren’t a fool. You’ll listen and remember the words of others, even if you refuse to believe. But look at me—am I not the image of myself? Would you believe—if it were possible men could live two hundred years—that this look and these words were mine?”
“If those things were true, then yes, that would be enough to convince a reasonable man.”
“So that is your standard of reason? With those assumptions, I might be Böhme?”
“If we make strange assumptions, yes,” the Baron agreed.
“This is the same standard I bring to my own theology,” Jakob said. “Revelation is only inspiration. To know truth, one must observe the world.”
“You’ve observed something to make you believe in God?”
“Yes, but I have an unfair advantage.” He blew his breath out of the gap between his gums. “I can hear them constantly, the aspects of the Divine. They talk to us, tell us how to increase the complexity of their tension. They instruct the weave of the Holy Spirit, though we cannot see the pattern. I’m afraid even they are blind to their ultimate purpose. They are still learning, God and his Son. There is so much to learn about oneself, that one could live forever and never finish.”
“That’s true enough. You couldn’t finish because you’d be forever changing,” the Baron said. “This is more Heraclitus. Even the dead continue to decay. Memories of them evolve when they’re recalled, and nothing about anything stays exactly the same.”
“You can only learn about the past,” Jakob said.
“Correct, Monsieur Böhme.”
“Baron, I cannot show you now because I have only enough prestige for one more wish, but will you trust me? I’m about to tell you something true, and someday you should go out into the world and witness it for yourself. Not tomorrow, not twenty years from now, but someday.”
“Please, continue. I find this fascinating.” The Baron poured the rest of the bottle in his glass and took another drink. “Do you mean a wish like a miracle?”
“Yes! The Divine chooses to reflect certain desires of man in exchange for man’s reflection of the Divine desires. Thus, God’s many aspects will grant the wishes of certain men. Like a science, it is reproducible, knowable, and beautifully simple. You don’t need faith—you only need will, and God acts on your behalf.”
“You can reliably wish for miracles?” The Baron swirled the remaining wine in his glass and sniffed the astringent and fruity fumes. “Is it a miracle then, if it’s reliable?”
Jakob laughed, a raspy sound. “Well said, Baron! Let us be done with miracles—throw aside faith! We only need reason now. Don’t you understand?”
“No,” the Baron replied with a grin. “Tell me though.”
“By witnessing wishes come true, God reveals Himself to us. He allows us to assume a place of importance in the process of His self-discovery. He grants us this power because we, like Him, are formed in the Divine image. We are infused by the essence of a soul.”
“Is this the second fact in your list of three?” the Baron asked, recalling that this Mystic had promised him two more truths to consider.
Jakob beamed with pride, a bundle of lively wrinkles. “Yes, Baron! Good, good! Consider that we can prove the existence of God by witnessing His interventions. By hearing His requests! That is a fact. God is real, and we can study His works.”
“Have you considered that the things you see might be natural, not divine? I see material nature everywhere, but I can’t explain even a tenth of it yet. My reason wouldn’t compel me to abandon this materialism simply because you’ve found more unexplained events.”
Jakob laughed. “Is this your standard of reason?”
“What do you mean?” the Baron asked.
“Would it be impossible to show you something that convinced you of a Divine foundation for reality? Is your system of nature so flawless that no crack or doubt can enter you?”
“Maybe so,” the Baron said. “I prefer to think that it’s not my duty to believe. Rather, it’s my duty to disbelieve that which is unnecessary and contradictory.”
“You suppose the Divine is like that?”
“I do. God is a philosophically useless concept.”
“My God isn’t,” Jakob said. “He is only a product of reason. Reason alone is all a man like you should ever need to see the truth.”
“What’s the third fact then?” the Baron asked. “Is it the truth that will convince me?”
Jakob brightened, the leather of his skin wrinkling up like a smashed date. “Of course, of course. I’ve placed a condition on myself to reach this day, Baron. I had to find a man of perfect conviction, a man married to reason. You’re that man! I will prove that God is real, and someday you’ll reason it out. You’ll believe what I believe because it is the inevitable conclusion.”
“That seems unlikely,” the Baron said, his voice not disdainful but filled with pleasure. This ancient cobbler was the most interesting guest he’d entertained all month.
“You will bring an end to the tension between reason and faith, Baron. You will play a key role in this endless search for God’s self-knowledge. Once your strict mind has come to terms with what I am about to do, we will find the truth. Do you understand?”
“No.” The Baron drained his wine. “Not yet, I suppose.”
“I am going to increase the complexity of the world through you.”
“What will you do?” the Baron asked warily.
“I’ll make a wish on your behalf. Would you accept it?”
“Is this like a prayer?”
“It’s better. Prayers are just words. Wishes are real.”
“Go ahead then,” the Baron said. “Wish upon my brow. I accept it.”
“Good! Good! I wish that you, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach, will neither age nor fall to illness and injury until the day you believe in the existence of the Divine.” Jakob suddenly twitched in his chair, then sagged. His breathing instantly became deep and ragged. “It’s all gone,” he muttered. “I’m done with it. Oceans, spent. Finally.”
The Baron shouted back through the hall. “Water for this man!”
“No, no, this is good,” Jakob said. “My borrowed vitality is finally coming to an end.”
“Vitality?” the Baron asked. He picked up the plate of cheese. “You must eat and drink. There’ll be a warm bath soon.”
Jakob waved the Baron back. “Please, no. This is what I expected. Respect my words, Baron. This is what I wanted.”
The Baron sat back slowly but didn’t set down the plate. A servant came running with a glass of cool clear water, which had been drawn from the well that morning. Despite his protests, Jakob drank greedily, letting water spill over his lips and run in beads and rivulets over his leather coat. The servant took the glass when he was done. Jakob collapsed back in his chair and started to laugh. “This is good,” he said.
“What is good?”
“I have worked hard for decades to preserve my life while collecting this prestige. I have learned to live with madness, to push it under until I am sane again. I’ve struggled for decades to find someone worthy of it, and then I found you. d’Holbach’s coterie—hah! Perfect, Baron.”
“You collected prestige?”
“It’s like silver,” Jakob said, “but I spent it on you.”
“What was that wish for?”
“Ah! You will live and thrive until you’ve reconciled the truth of the world with the strength of your reason. There’s no trick. You won’t trigger this condition on a technicality. You must, deep down, believe that you understand the Divine. You must believe as I believe.”
“And if I don’t?” the Baron asked.
“Then my wish will remain until you do.”
“I won’t believe in any divinity. I can tell you this now.”
“I’ve done this twice before, and neither time has it failed. You are simply the last, Baron, and the most challenging. It’ll only take a moment, but someday, that moment will come.” Jakob closed his eyes. “I don’t want to trouble you any longer. I’ve somewhere to go now.”
“In the dark?” the Baron asked. “At least let me find you a better coat and lantern.”
Jakob Böhme nodded slowly, as if he were about to sleep. “You are a good man, Baron, a virtuous atheist.”
The Baron set down his cheese and went to the back of the hall, towards the room where his servants would be loitering. He asked them to find a coat while he retrieved a lantern. They were generally pleased with d’Holbach’s charity and set about their search immediately for one of the older, unused garments in the mansion. The Baron took a lantern from the kitchen that he favored for trips to the well. It was sturdy and had a deep reserve of oil.
When he returned to the hall, Jakob Böhme had already disappeared.
Author’s Note:
A mystic arrived, then vanished. He wished to spread faith, even to the most rational philosopher in Europe.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
An implicit timer hung over the Imperial Apartments. Sooner or later, CPUSA mercenaries would reach the neighborhood and deploy, searching for the Baron, the Zombie, and their “innocent man,” Marco. Nevertheless, the Baron instructed the teen to use the restroom and drink several gulps of tap water. Experience had long taught him that hunger could be delayed, but excretion and dehydration were ruthless opponents. Best to eliminate them now, in safety and privacy, instead of risking witnesses while seeking facilities later.
After Marco exited the restroom, Phyllis took her turn, promising to be quick.
The Baron and Zombie waited with Marco in the parlor. Quiet fell onto the room for some seconds. An air conditioner rumbled into life, fans and compressors at once, low and steady like a mechanical lullaby. It was a sleepy Sunday hour, if not for the threats bearing down on them and the world alike.
“You’re both… really old,” Marco observed. It wasn’t a brilliant thought, but it was the kind of bland thing a man said when he needed to take his mind off his feelings.
The Baron recognized two needs here, and indulging Marcos’ curiosity could sate both. First, it’d be far easier to help the young man if he were fully inducted into the mysteries of the occult, and second, the truth in its enormity could temporarily eclipse grief.
The Baron leaned against the parlor’s unstocked bar. “It’s true, but before you ask, we don’t have perfect proof. We can only demonstrate a little about what we are. The rest is rightly called mythology, though it’s a good time to learn it. You’re part of the occult now.”
“I see,” Marco muttered.
“Do you have a pocket knife?” the Zombie asked Marco.
“Yeah?” Marco reached into a pocket and pulled out a little folding Swiss Army Knife, far nicer than any of the penny knives that the Zombie had destroyed over the last couple of days. He hesitated with this valuable tool cradled in a soft palm. “Why?” he asked carefully.
“I can show you a cool trick,” the Zombie said.
“He’ll try not to break it,” the Baron offered, setting expectations for both Marco and the Zombie simultaneously. This would be a great demonstration, assuming Marco believed.
“Sure,” Marco said, passing the knife over.
The Zombie unfolded the steel blade. “Watch.” He stuck out his tongue and ran the sharp edge over the meat of it, pressing down with visible force.
Marco flinched away, but the Zombie just laughed around the weapon, a hollow, carefree sound like the knife was a tongue depressor. He pulled it away. “Aaaaah!” He tried to show as much tongue as possible.
Marco relaxed, peering closely. “You aren’t cut?”
“Got you!” the Zombie yelled as he slashed the blade across his eyeball.
Marco winced, cringing. “Ok, ok, you’re invincible! Stop!”
“That’s the polite version of the trick,” the Baron said. “I’ve seen strong men upend their stomachs when he does his favorite version.”
“I jam it under my eyelids,” the Zombie elucidated. He glanced over at the bathroom door. “Still got time if you wanna see it and don’t care about losing the knife.”
“God, no!” Marco briefly raised his hands in surrender. “Please, just give it back.”
The Zombie wiped the blade on his damaged sleeve, closed it, and dropped it into Marco’s waiting hand. “Were you feeling skeptical?” he asked.
“A little, yeah. Before the demonstration.” Marco pocketed his knife. “It’s some weird shit.”
The Zombie grinned, chuckling. “Good! Don’t let the big lies fool you, because after we’re done here, you’ll hear a lot of them.”
Marco nodded to the Zombie, taking a deep breath. “So I get why you’re old. You’re invincible, like really invincible, yeah?”
“Oh yes! Time can grind even mountains to dust, but I’ll outlast the mountains.”
Marco eyed the Baron carefully. “Why are you so old though? You’re not invincible, right?”
“I’m not,” the Baron agreed.
“So what’s your story?”
Phyllis walked into the parlor, wiping her hands on her pants. “I’m ready.”
“Phyllis, Marco is asking me why I’m so old,” the Baron said. “I was thinking of inducting him, fully and thoroughly. What do you think?” The Baron’s plans weren’t changing, but asking for Phyllis’s approval altered the power dynamics between her and Marco. It’d be good to push the boy to trust in women, especially in his future dock boss.
Marco rubbed his thin mustache and gave them all his manliest glare. “Does it matter what she thinks?”
Phyllis eyed him. “It matters. He’s basically asking me if I trust you.”
“Well, what about it?” Marco asked her. “I’m my father’s son.”
Phyllis stared flatly. “Do you believe in my authority, even though I’m a woman?”
“Well—”
“Because they’re treating me like one, Marco. I’m an authority in the occult.”
Marco blinked as if he hadn’t considered the possibility before. “Really?”
“It’s true,” the Zombie said. “Women cultists are strong, but her talents don’t stop there. I saw her wrangle ten Anastasia men in your father’s place. She’s got steel.”
The Zombie’s buttering up seemed to lubricate the social dynamics better than any words from Phyllis ever could. “Yeah—I mean, of course,” Marco said, tacitly agreeing with the machoest man in the room. “She’s always been my dad’s right hand.”
Phyllis grunted, smirking. “Yeah, Baron, induct him. I’ll help him after this is all over. Just remember, Marco, follow your father’s example. Don’t tell people I’m a cultist, all right?”
“Sure?” Marco said noncommittally.
“Her advice is good,” the Zombie added. “Keep her secret. That’s trust. Loyalty.”
Marco nodded. “I can keep a secret.”
The Baron clapped his hands together for attention. “We’re all ready, so let’s go.” He opened the door to the parlor and marched out into the broad hall with the slanted ceiling, following the dim cast of sunlight towards the elevators.
Marco fell in behind him, and the Zombie and Phyllis brought up the rear.
The Baron talked as they walked: “You’re about to become a practicing member of a religion which has no name. I call it the system of prestige. You and everyone else will call it the occult.”
“The occult,” Marco echoed dutifully.
The Baron pressed the call button at the elevator and turned to his new student. “It’s a global religion, but scattered, messy. There are dozens of stories for every city; hundreds of heroes and villains; thousands of variations on core myths. Yet there’s basically no books, at least in the West. Almost everything is passed along by oral tradition.”
“No books?” Marco asked.
“Almost none. Writing anything down is considered blasphemous. Only record books are widely accepted, and only because they can’t be used to prove the existence of the system.”
Marco furrowed his brow in concentration. “But there are real books?”
The elevator started grinding its way up to the fourth floor.
The Baron answered, “There’s one ‘real’ book about the system of prestige, and it was written by the only other ageless person. Her name is Elizabeth.”
“The Apostate,” Phyllis added.
“What’s that mean?” Marco asked her.
The Artemisian folded her hands at her waist. “It means she renounced the occult. She put one foot outside the boundaries, and the cults of the world loathed her for it.”
“What did she do?” Marco asked.
The Baron waved off the question. “We’ll address that later. For now, know that she wrote a book, and there’s a chapter dedicated to each of us, our natures—” The Baron paused, seeking a word to capture the aim of Elizabeth’s writing “—our principles,” he concluded.
“So you’re famous,” Marco said.
“Infamous,” the Baron corrected. “According to most cults, there are three living villains. The Zombie came first, Elizabeth came last, and I’m the second one, the middle child.”
“The middle evil!” the Zombie said gaily.
“The middle evil?” Marco asked.
“Yeah,” the Zombie said. “The lesser evil is Elizabeth. The greatest evil is me.”
Marco looked at him cautiously. “Evil like what?”
The Zombie cackled. “I’m a murderer.”
“He’s not that dangerous,” the Baron said dismissively. “Just treat him with respect.” The elevator bell dinged, and the door automatically opened. He pulled on the cage and stepped inside. Everyone sidled past him.
“I get you,” Marco said to the Zombie. “You’re strong.”
“Damn right,” the Zombie murmured with pleasure.
Phyllis spoke up. “You’re approaching this the wrong way, Baron. You two are outliers, exceptions. Everyone else has to start from the same basic beliefs.”
“Like what?” Marco asked.
The Baron closed the cage and pressed the button to go down. “It’s a religion, Marco. There are common doctrines.” The elevator shuddered into life and began to sink. Meanwhile, the Baron enumerated his points with his fingers. “First, it’s believed that gods exist. Their evidence is the miracle of prestige itself, the magic of wishing. For them, the supernatural is real, and what are their occult masters but gods?”
“Makes sense,” Marco said.
The elevator passed into the brief darkness between floors, where the hollow mezzanine of steel and insulation lurked between sheets of oil-treated wood. “Second, it’s believed that man has free will. The past is locked, immutable and unchangeable by divine decree, but the future will be defined by our choices. Their proof is in the system. One of the primary rules is that no wish can alter or impede man’s free will, and they say the gods would never make a rule to protect a freedom that doesn’t exist.”
“I follow you,” Marco said.
“Third, the vehicle for free will, the locus of interest for the gods, is a man’s soul. Their proof is in the afterlife. Almost everyone in the system of prestige is aiming for one wish—to go to the gods when they die. If they do, then they will surely survive death, and the living can speak with them, even if their body is buried or burned.”
“Did my dad go to the afterlife?” Marco asked.
The Baron paused; he didn’t know what arrangements Barilla had already made.
“Nobody knows,” Phyllis answered, jumping on the question. “He didn’t have a chance to wish for the afterlife, but it’s widely believed that the gods will take the best among us to live with them.”
Marco had a tense expression, lips stretched thin like rubber bands about to snap. They passed down between the third and second floors. “What if they didn’t? What if dad isn’t saved?”
“Nobody knows,” Phyllis insisted. “The rules of the gods maintain the mysteries of death. If you’re worried though, have hope. Your father was brave. He argued with the enemy, right up until he was shot. If there’s a judge of the dead, they’ll treat him well.”
The Baron was impressed. Phyllis was plainly mischaracterizing Barilla’s final seconds, but there was no reason to tear down the reputation of a dead man in front of his son, and plenty of reasons to pull Marco away from a straight drop into grief and despair.
“Yeah,” Marco said shakily, “yeah, his soul is in a good place then.”
The elevator stopped and the door opened. “I’m a universalist of a kind,” the Baron added. “I think there’s no god of moral authority. Nobody judges the dead. They don’t even care to reward us for our labor. I think they preserve us—all of us—because of what they are, because there are many of them and few of us. But I have very strange beliefs, Marco. Very strange. That’s why I’m called a villain.”
Phyllis opened the cage.
Marco didn’t notice. “I don’t understand.”
The Baron stepped out into a hall beside the foyer, a space of waxed wood floors and off-white wallpaper, like the bottom of a wooden drawer lined with old folders. Everyone filed out, while the Baron explained himself. “They call me the Philosopher, the Atheist, and Doubting Henry. Despite all of the so-called evidence, despite knowing everything I’ve told you, I believe there are no gods, no freedom, and no soul. I am an atheist, a determinist, and a materialist, and nothing I’ve seen has given me reason to doubt my philosophy. We live in a system of nature, and these occult elements aren’t supernatural. They’re unknown science, reaching out of the dark abyss of our ignorance and directing our world with purpose.”
“What purpose?” Marco asked.
“We don’t know. They obfuscate their goals with tasks.”
“Phyllis said there are gods—”
“There are things that men call gods, nothing more.”
“But you said there’s choice—”
“We are agents of our own action, Marco, but we are chemical machines.”
“And the soul?”
“Something is preserved,” the Baron said, “but everything the so-called gods do has the flavor of manipulation, not violation. They adhere to the natural order as we know it, and nature is materialistic. We are nothing but matter, and I believe they have the science to save and manifest the patterns that we call minds.” He pointed beyond Marco. “Go on now.”
Phyllis started towards the foyer. The teenager followed quietly, and the Zombie, grinning from ear to ear, walked with eyes trained steadily on his back. The Baron brought up the rear, finishing his story. “I am the great doubt that haunts the cults. I am the eternal skeptic.”
“Why?” Marco asked a question so empty of direction that it could only come from a mind similarly lost. He’d been told so much, and then told none of it was true.
“The Baron doesn’t believe,” Phyllis said. “He never has.”
“He never will,” the Zombie added. “That’s why I saved him. He’s fascinating.”
“These two believe,” the Baron said, “but my disbelief keeps me alive.”
They walked through the foyer of the apartment complex, a two-story room padded with more thick, cream-colored wallpaper and flexible hardwood floors. It was hard to imagine many people lived here, but New York City wasn’t a homogenous place. Despite the density of the population, there was always room spent poorly, empty or unused most of the time. In one sense, this was to their advantage. Nobody but the doorman would see them leave.
Yet the silence of the place was oppressive. The Baron felt the urge to talk more, simply to lift the atmosphere. Instead, he waited for Marco to digest his words.
When they reached the entrance, the doorman opened the outer door and bid them goodbye. “Well wishes to your father,” he added, smiling at Marco.
“Thank you,” the teen replied flatly.
They went down the stairs as a group. The Zombie walked tallest among them, still wearing ruined clothes. He whispered over Marco’s shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell him?”
The teen shrugged. “He’s an asshole. He doesn’t need to know.”
“A secret kept out of malice,” the Zombie muttered. “Simply delightful.”
The streets carried their regular Sunday traffic, both vehicles and pedestrians. A passing couple in their late 50s gave the Zombie a brief glance, but the normal appearance of his companions convinced them that none of this was their business. Foreigners were eternally unacceptable to men and women born in the 19th century. It only confirmed their suspicions to see one dressed like a madman in the middle of the afternoon.
“Hello madam!” the Zombie shouted to the old lady. Her thin hair had been puffed up by her beautician like a headful of dandelion seeds. “Do you like my fashion?”
The rest waited and watched. The Baron knew what was happening; Phyllis seemed ready to accept whatever happened. Only Marco was visibly worried.
“Don’t speak to my wife, sir,” warned the old man.
“She dresses like a woman of good taste,” replied the Zombie. “She’s been eyeing my finery. If she wants it, I’d gladly hand her my other sleeve.”
The husband put an arm behind her wife, and they huddled closer, ignoring the Zombie and moving on without answering his madness.
“I’ve vindicated your fears about the Orient!” the Zombie shouted after them.
“What are you doing?” Marco asked quietly.
“The Zombie does this instead of killing people,” Phyllis explained. “It’s in Apostasy.”
“He’s intimidating them,” the Baron added. “Come on. Let’s get moving.” They started up the sidewalk, heading east along the block, past a long line of fine cars facing uphill towards the actual heights of Crown Heights. Quickly, they fell into a line, letting the rest of the foot traffic stream past them on the left. People glanced but never paused. It wasn’t their business.
“You don’t kill people anymore?” Marco asked the Zombie.
“I only kill for good reasons,” the Zombie answered. “Not like I used to.”
“What happened?”
“I met the Baron.”
“He’s lying for fun,” the Baron said. “The Zombie has been on the path to civilization since the turn of the 13th century, ever since Constantinople was ransacked during the Fourth Crusade.”
“Ah, right!” The Zombie laughed. “I was in the court of the king of the Byzantines!”
“The city was ruled by an emperor,” the Baron corrected him, “and last time you told me about the sack, you said you were pretending to be the slave of a merchant.”
“Of course, of course, I remember now.” The Zombie grinned, winking when Marco glanced back at him. “I was a slave in the emperor’s court.”
The Baron shook his head. “He’s still lying. I spoke with an Ottoman pirate about a century ago, just before the Fall of Truth. He told me that during the Crusade, the Zombie smashed through the breadth of the outer walls by slamming his body against them for four straight days, all while defenders threw oil and torches down onto his head. The Sack was the last time he killed for fun alone. At least, verifiably. For certain definitions of fun.”
The Zombie squealed with delight at his own legend. “I’m awesome.”
“You’re egotistical,” the Baron teased.
“I’m a story! I only wish I remembered the Crusades.”
“You don’t?” Marco asked.
The Baron answered for the Zombie: “We’ve carefully tested his memory. It’s hard for him to recall anything more than three centuries ago.”
“Damn,” Marco said. “That… actually sucks.”
The Zombie chuckled. “No, it’s great. It means I keep changing.”
“Where are we going?” Phyllis asked them, interrupting their banter. “Looking for another cab?”
“That or the subway,” the Baron answered. “We need to reach Manhattan as soon as possible.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “There’s a station a few blocks east of here. Checkers are usually waiting outside.”
“We’ll decide when we get there,” the Baron suggested.
“What about you, Baron?” Marco asked. “Have you forgotten stuff?”
“No. I’m not like the Zombie. I’m only two hundred, and I won’t know if we’re the same kind of ageless for at least another century.”
“You’re not invincible?” Marco asked.
“That’s right.”
“Huh. But you aren’t old?”
“You mean physically? No, I’m not.”
“Why is that?”
The Baron rubbed his scalp thoughtfully. “I guess this is a good time to tell you my legend. It started a hundred and ninety-nine years ago, in the winter, when a particularly powerful Diviner called upon me at my home…”
Author’s Note:
Learn the lore, induct yourself into the mysteries, and become occult yourself.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
