CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

The cab ride south was brief, passing along the walk where they’d been sprinting only minutes before. Rolling by the CPUSA wreck, the Baron spotted a gaggle of NYPD beat cops standing around an empty vehicle. Marco was nearly lying down at this point, and Phyllis had her eyes shut. The cabbie spotted the same threats and drew his own conclusions, pulling his arms inwards and leaning low over the steering wheel.

He was guessing half-correctly that they’d been in the wreck, and he wanted no part—not even eye contact—with the police. It was the right attitude. The cabbie needed to believe that he couldn’t say a word to anyone about this.

For the Baron, this was a moment of immense strategic importance. No CPUSA merc remained with the wreck, and New York’s sedan and cultists were all absent from the scene. It was incredibly likely that the Oracle and his crew had successfully captured the CPUSA mercenaries and fled the scene. New York didn’t have to chase the Baron and his allies any further if they could simply interrogate the Baron’s enemies.

Sometime this evening, there was a strong chance that a CPUSA merc would crack, and New York would discover that the Cat o’ Nine Lives was loose in their city. They’d grasp that the Soviets were operating under their nose, and they’d mobilize their forces—a literal army of vassals, and their trump card himself, Meister Schuler.

But CPUSA mercs were stubborn, even suicidal. The Baron could expect some leeway, and if fortune favored them, they might escape the full wrath of the world’s largest cult for another day. The whole mess might vanish into a series of dodges.

He doubted they’d be so lucky. The cab rolled on.

The intersection of Broadway and Canal Street somehow managed to combine the worst of both roads. It was far from the glamorous stretch of theaters and shops that drew the nouveau riche to dine in the afternoons and enjoy plays and musicals in the evenings. It was also distant from the bustling neighborhoods of Chinatown and Little Italy. Sitting just south of Soho and north of Tribeca, it was a lifeless non-neighborhood of white stone office buildings, pale grey asphalt, and undecorated sidewalks slanting down to gaping storm drains. Beneath their feet, the actual canal of Canal Street still ran westward, draining off marshy groundwater and sluicing it away from the recovering slum of Five Points to the Hudson River.

They stopped at the nearest corner and got out. The cabbie sped off without a further word, abandoning them in this mass of concrete boxes over a century-old sewer.

“That was a lot of money for a short ride,” the Baron said.

“He won’t say shit,” Phyllis muttered.

“You sure? CPUSA and New York will be questioning the cabbies tonight.”

“I said, he’ll keep his mouth shut,” Phyllis replied, glancing around quickly. “We should get off the street. Come on. There’s a maintenance path off the station platform.”

They crossed the street and took the Canal Street station entrance, stepping down into the Earth along a single slope of rubber-coated stairs. A central railing divided them into upstream and downstream traffic, but nobody was coming up at this hour, if only because nobody lived here. For that matter, nobody was going down, because nobody worked here on a Sunday. Right now, fewer stations in the city were more desolate than this.

The station was minimal, hosting only a couple of small platforms with white tile walls and cheap bands of colorful, abstract mosaics layered across the surface. The ticket offices were at the far ends of the platforms, each having a poor view of the stairway. Phyllis turned right, led them down to a couple of steps at the station’s end, and pulled open an unlocked maintenance gate without any hesitation. They walked out onto a narrow, shallow extension of the rail platform. It had maybe two feet of spare room for people to walk single file, and twenty or thirty feet ahead, they could see a signal light glowing softly green at the head of a lamp post. The walkway ended at its foot, and there was a maintenance door to their right.

“This heads into the Canal Street access tunnels. There’s an old storage room that’s been cleared out and wired up.” The door had a new combination lock on it. Phyllis seemed to know the numbers by heart. She pulled it open and guided them in. Without the signal light or the diffuse illumination of the platform, they were swallowed up in the dark.

“Lonely,” Marco whispered.

“This is why it’s safe,” Phyllis said, her voice low but loud in the enclosed stone. “Put your hand on the left wall and walk slowly. It’s about fifty feet from here.”

In pitch darkness, they walked forward. The Baron followed Phyllis’s presence, that strange sense of full space that his other senses fixed into the dark. It was a poor substitute for vision, erratic and warped by the imagination, but it was real. Sensing body heat, maybe?

He could hear Marco shuffling along behind him. Having open eyes in absolute darkness was a strange experience. Random neurons fired, stimulating others to fire, creating dim hallucinations—not dissimilar to the moment of entering the temple sanctuary. Rolling rings of snowy, grey lines shrank towards the center of vision, as if he were falling backwards through a tunnel.

“Here it is,” Phyllis said. She pulled open a quiet door, a soft gush of air marking its passage. She stepped inside. The Baron followed. Marco shuffled in last.

“We’re all in,” the Baron whispered.

“Close the door,” Phyllis commanded.

Marco closed the door. It shut with a click.

Phyllis snapped a knife-blade switch closed. Two lamps came on in a large room at the end of a short hall. The lights were dim and yellow, but they were as bright as the rising sun for unready eyes. There was a stack of cots, shelves of food, a table and chairs, but their eyes could barely register any of it before they were inexorably drawn towards a single spot.

A man in a sharply pressed suit was seated behind the table, a tin of peaches neatly opened in front of him with a fork handle rising from the syrup and sliced fruit. He wasn’t eating, only waiting, and his eerie, empty smile silently told a story of victory. He was tall, broad-jawed, and built for combat. His shifting eyes measured them each in turn.

The Baron’s heart began to hammer in his chest. Phyllis was frozen up. All security was gone. In the best case scenario, they’d have to crawl all over the room from floor to ceiling, and they’d probably never find what they were looking for. Marco choked back a small sob of disappointment. He must’ve thought this man was a Communist—CPUSA or Soviet—but he was much, much worse. He was a member of the Order of the Cincinnati.

“Would you like to introduce yourselves?” asked the man cheerily.

“Everyone, keep calm,” the Baron said. “This is Robert Heckhaus, Special Operations Group. He’s from Langley, Virginia.” The Baron stepped around Phyllis and glanced into the near corners of the room. “Where are the rest of your men?” he asked.

Heckhaus laughed pleasantly. “One moment, Baron.” He picked up his fork and ate a slice of peach neatly, then set it down back in the syrup and talked only after swallowing. “They’re out in the dark, listening. They could be here very quickly, but for now, I’m at your mercy.” He pointed at Phyllis’s pants like his finger was a pistol. Bang, his thumb dropped like a hammer. “Heard you shot a revolver, cultist of Artemis. Got any rounds in the cylinder?”

“How did you find this place?” she asked. After dodging, she couldn’t have a gun; his commentary was either a test for information or a bit of mocking cruelty, which she ignored.

“Does a magician reveal his secrets?” Heckhaus asked.

“Are you a magician?”

The Langley cultist laughed even louder. “I’m more like a ghost, aren’t I?”

“You do haunt me,” the Baron said. He tried to imagine how Heckhaus had beaten them to the safehouse. There was a lot of evidence of their presence in Brooklyn. There was even reason to believe that the ruckus down here in Manhattan would’ve been widely known, at least among CPUSA and anybody who was watching them. For that matter, Heckhaus’s people might’ve spotted them after their dodge when they escaped the 8th Street Temple. There were lots of opportunities to pick up the trail and follow it, if he knew what he was looking for.

But why here? How did he know about this safe house? How did he get here first?

The Baron guessed at an answer. “You’ve got the Cult of Artemis mapped out in New York. They’re a radical faction, and you want to keep tabs on them. You heard we dodged into Greenwich Village and took a chance that we’d come to the closest safe house.”

Heckhaus’s smile expanded until it was genuine. “Very good, Baron. We’ve got the underground mapped to hell and back, and rooms like these are on our maps.”

“What men can do with a lot of time and money,” the Baron said softly.

“Only if they’ve got the zeal to root out communist threats.” Heckhaus forked another slice of peach and finished it off in short, sharp bites, slicing it to chunks with his incisors. “Luckily for the Cult of Artemis, they’re not communist, so we don’t care. Let them live.”

“Very progressive,” Phyllis said darkly.

“Ha, hardly! There’s not a woman in the Order for the same reason there isn’t one anywhere else. They’re impractical, hated!”

“By you?”

“By everyone else. The persecution of occult women is an endless assault on the Apostate in effigy. It’s foolish, of course. They should be lauding her genius. She rejected the values of the system and stole immortality from the gods!” He snatched at the air, as if trying to grasp the dim light in his hand. “She’s a role model, not a villain. Gods help any man of the Order who doesn’t learn a lesson from her example. We are here to win, and she was a winner!”

The admiration of a Langley cultist was surely aggravating to Phyllis, but she knew enough about Langley to know she shouldn’t argue the Apostate’s values with a fanatic. The Baron patted her carefully on the shoulder, but she didn’t respond. If the Baron’s support was appreciated, she still wouldn’t dare show it to Heckhaus. Weakness here could be fatal. He could only tell she was unhappy by her stance, her slumped shoulders. It was a reasonable reaction. A SOG operative was making himself at home in the center of her secrets.

The Baron decided to direct the conversation away from the Apostate. “So why are you here?”

Heckhaus snapped and pointed at him. “There’s been a lot of violence today. The stories I’ve heard are incredible. Shootouts, murders, big public wishes—all in New York’s playground. If I didn’t know better, I’d say we were looking at the opening volleys of an occult war.”

“But you know better,” Phyllis said.

“I do,” Heckhaus agreed. “If this were a war, why, there’d have to be something worth fighting for. Something big. The kind of thing I could only trust the Baron would tell us about, since he’s such a good American citizen. Aren’t you, Baron?”

The Baron said nothing.

Heckhaus said nothing in turn.

They were both ready to wait in silence, and neither would break.

Phyllis cleared her throat and stood by the Baron in solidarity.

Thirty seconds passed in agonizing silence. It was such a pointless game, but the wrong move had very real consequences, and the Baron needed to ignore that question. Any admission about the Cat—on the record—could spell doom for them all.

It was Marco that broke first, likely drowning in his own adrenaline. “He’s been helping me,” he explained in a shaky voice.

“The son of the dead man speaks!” Heckhaus said. “How are you feeling?”

“Leave him be,” the Baron ordered. He glanced back at the teenager. “Marco, don’t answer any of his questions. He’s not your friend. He’s nobody’s friend. It’s all business.”

Heckhaus sniffed disdainfully. “Speaking of business, if you were called here to start a war, it’d have to be over something huge, something the Soviets want back. It’s not an Apple—I would’ve seen the damage. It’s not the Whistle—the body count is too low. Nobody would go to war for the Lazy Woman. What other artifacts are there in the Soviet arsenal?”

“I’m not here to start a war,” the Baron said.

“Of course not, but if you were, it would be the Cat o’ Nine Lives, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Phyllis answered quickly, “but this is about Cosa Nostra politics.” She looked at Marco. “His enemies are punishing the son for the sins of the father. I’d know. I’m the new dock boss for the crews around Red Hook.”

“There was a gunfight in Red Hook,” Heckhaus said, “so the story checks out, and that makes me glad, honest Injun. It’d be a disaster if this were a fight for the Cat.”

“Why?” Marco asked.

“Well, young man, imagine what would happen if it were the Cat. If I could confirm it, let’s say because the Baron failed to keep it a secret from New York, or he threatened to lose it to the Bolshevik faction of the Soviet cult… Why, Langley would have to step in.”

“Is it that important?” Marco asked.

“Yes. If it were official right now, I’d be compelled to slaughter everyone in this room and root through their guts for the prize. But it isn’t, is it? The Baron is handling an internal conflict between vassal cults. I don’t have to kill anybody, do I?”

“No, sir,” Marco said.

The Baron thought Heckhaus’s message was a little heavy-handed, but the point was well taken. It’d been far too easy to deduce what artifact was in play. Once anyone realized that the Soviets were opposing the Baron, they could connect the dots. Marco had been mortally wounded, shot in plain daylight, but within hours he was dodging into temples, and it wasn’t likely that the Baron had healed him. It had to be the Cat in his belly, and the Soviets wanted it back.

Since Langley was intimately familiar with the internal politics of the Soviet cult, it would’ve been obvious to Heckhaus that the Bolsheviks were making a play to recover what the Orthodox faction had lost. This all assumed that their intelligence networks didn’t pick up on the entire scenario from other sources. A potential shift in power made a lot of noise, and the Langley cult was tied into one of the world’s most extensive secular intelligence networks. The Baron never forgot that they were CIA agents with authority, even if their cult didn’t run the agency.

Heckhaus was giving the Baron a second warning. Permission was being given to finish the job. As long as plausible deniability was maintained, Heckhaus would stand aside and watch. The Baron almost admired him for his unwavering pragmatism, much like one might admire a predator for having bloody claws and long fangs. Heckhaus embodied CIA politics exactly. On the record, he followed every rule and law to the letter, promoting American ideals and loyalty above all else. Off the record, anything was fair game, and he would make unethical decisions or betray his ideals if he knew that he would win.

Nevertheless, this wasn’t an open agreement yet, and there was a challenge buried in Heckhaus’s story. He’d suggested that it’d be worth killing the Baron himself for the Cat, and that half-threat demanded a response. “Your hypotheticals are bizarre. If we had the Cat, there’d be no point in killing me and risking the Zombie’s retribution. It’s only powerful in conjunction with other pieces of the Soviet arsenal. It’s nothing more than a novelty, at least on a global scale.”

“We couldn’t win the Cold War with it,” Heckhaus agreed, “but that wouldn’t be the point. It’d be about denying the Bolshevik faction, about weakening the Soviet arsenal of artifacts. Funny that you mention the Zombie though. He certainly isn’t around. This would be the best time to kill you, down here in the dark. How long would it take for him to find you, do you think?”

Phyllis blindly touched the Baron with a hand. “I wish you had a half day of my prestige.”

He felt the value settle on him, the pleasure of prestige vastly overwhelmed by the crushing responsibility it represented. He had to save himself for the Zombie, even if it meant her death, Marco’s death, and the loss of the Cat to Langley.

If things went wrong, he had to live. But things hadn’t gone wrong yet.

Heckhaus pursed his lips. “That wasn’t necessary. This is a friendly conversation. I just happened to be in town, and I have a nose for sniffing out trouble, so here I am.”

“You happened to be in town?” Phyllis asked skeptically.

“You haven’t read about it? The papers are running paranoid, though I can’t imagine why. The New York Army National Guard is on a standard training exercise out of LaGuardia Airport.”

“You’re kidding,” the Baron said, “you’ve ordered in the National Guard?”

“Baron, please! I’m overseeing a training exercise. I didn’t order in anyone. This came down from the Department of Defense. They’ve had these plans on the books for years.”

“What plans?”

“We’re simulating a response to a Soviet invasion of the five boroughs.”

The Baron blurted out, “That’s ridiculous!” He couldn’t help it, the ruse was so incredibly thin. “We’re on the east coast, and the naval yards sail out of the Hudson.”

“You wouldn’t laugh if the Soviets started their invasion in Queens,” Heckhaus said. “The citizens of the United States are glad to know their finest are prepared for anything and everything. This exercise is only one of many possible emergency deployment scenarios, and thanks to our tireless planning, the National Guard could be mobilized anywhere in the continental forty-eight within twenty-four hours. Vigilance, my friend, is never ridiculous.”

Only a CIA agent could deliver a joke like that without a trace of irony. Langley was preparing to fight with the New York cult and the CPUSA using a secular army, and they hardly bothered to conceal their might, stretching what little plausibility they could muster over the elephant in the room while pretending it was well-hidden. If the Baron failed or lost the Cat, Heckhaus could strike the first blow of an occult war right here on American soil.

New York was surely aware of this secular threat, and they’d been receiving reports of the Baron and Zombie fighting in the streets. No wonder they were afraid. From their perspective, the situation was already escalating out of control, and they couldn’t divine a reason why.

Heckhaus ate another slice of peaches while his speech settled among his audience. Once he was finished, he pointed the fork at Marco. “Do you know why it’s important?”

“What is important, sir?” Marco asked.

“The Cat o’ Nine Lives. Do you know why artifacts are important?”

“Sort of. There isn’t anything else like it.”

“Not in the whole world,” Heckhaus said, “and there never will be again. Young man, how long have you been a cultist? Not long?”

“I made my first wish today,” he said.

Heckhaus stuck the fork deep in the tinned fruit. “Do you know the Fall of Curses?”

“Yes sir.” Marco did his best to recall what little he’d gleaned from the Zombie’s summary. “The gods changed the rules. No more artifacts.”

Heckhaus leaned back and told his version of the story.

Young man, it’s one of the great disasters of human history! Before the Fall of Curses, a wish could change an object. It could be magically blessed or cursed—permanently. The only risk was that the artifact, that investment of prestige, could be destroyed.

Imagine the logic of the ancients. Shatter a magic staff, and the power was lost. Smash a clay seal, and the demons were released from servitude. It only made sense. Artifacts could do terrible things, but only because someone could destroy them. It was insurance against abuse. Evil things weren’t cherished. Like men and all of their works, they were broken.

People protected their investments, of course. The Cat is nigh invincible with blessings, though it doesn’t compare to something like the Ark of the Covenant. And even artifacts like these were carefully guarded. Once one was out of your hands, it was difficult to defend. Opposing cults could wish for its location and crush it. Snap! Just like that! No more power!

Kings and generals found that frailty unacceptable, young man. They always demanded something better—a sharper sword, a stronger shield, a faster horse. We still think this way even now. Atomic bombs prove our nature; presidents and premiers want the power to turn cities into rubble and corpses without lifting a finger. Their coffers spill open, and we invent planes, mechanisms, and machinery—all to make mass murder simpler, more reliable.

Now imagine you’re an ancient king or a medieval general. You can curse an amulet to wither all the crops within ten miles, but someone will always find it and destroy it. You’ll waste your investment, so you ask your wizards to invent a magic bomb, a foolproof vehicle for a cursed property. You ask this again, and again, and your wise men all fail without exception. Do you give up? Do you believe there’s no hope in killing your enemies?

By the 14th century, the Vatican held that creating such an artifact was logically impossible. They argued that an artifact was a fusion of substance and form, inseparable and unchanging. If either piece was modified, the artifact was destroyed. They believed that an artifact could only be made from stable things, having permanence of both form and substance.

You couldn’t curse a fire. Nobody could bless water in a cup. The air you breathed could never be enchanted. Skin couldn’t be imbued with the strength of stone, and flesh could only be molded and shaped within the boundaries of nature. Wishes could target these things, but wishes could never permanently change them.

But there was a flaw in this thinking, which some very clever men noticed. This system of blessings and curses wasn’t perfectly rigorous. If you blessed a ship, you could replace every inch of its wood, plank by plank, and it’d remain an artifact the entire time. The presence of one particular plank or another was irrelevant.

Now you might think, why does this matter? Why is a spy telling me about the legal definition of an artifact? The answer is the critical insight. If there wasn’t a large degree of flexibility, no artifact could’ve survived for more than a fraction of a second. A single rub of a finger would’ve removed a few atoms, and the artifact would’ve failed. The rules must be flawed. With only a slight shift in philosophy, the cracks could be laid bare.

That shift came in 1310 or so. An alchemist, Paul of Tartan, argued that all metals were composed of two fundamental substances, mercury and sulphur. He was dead wrong, but his theory provided a framework. He thought mercury was fundamental, indestructible, and that every metal in the universe contained a fixed portion of it.

His theory implied that form and substance weren’t actually unified. Form was just the pattern—or the mix—while the fundamental substance was unchanging. Under this paradigm, alchemy was the reorganization of basic substances, rather than their transmutation or whatever other nonsense. Paul created a science of materials—however crude—which allowed him to identify objects by substance alone, not by shape!

Since Paul was a cultist, he took this to mean that one didn’t need a solid object to bless or curse. One only needed to have a clear idea of the substance to change. At the behest of a French noble, he prepared a flask full of mercury, and he explained this consequence to a Vatican audience of more than four hundred powerful cultists. The Vatican needed a weapon—just as strongly as we need the atomic bomb now—and he could provide it.

His argument is written in Apostasy, word for word. “The mercury in the flask would remain the same mercury no matter what transpired. It could participate in other forms, but it would remain itself even without form.” Do you know what that means? No?

Paul argued that he could curse the mercury itself, changing its properties. With the Vatican’s prestige, he did. The gods followed his logic and were forced to allow him to proceed.

By every measure of power, Paul was a winner. He cursed the mercury to dessicate plants that partook of it, then dumped the flask in the fields of a European kingdom. It was exactly the weapon every king and general had wanted for thousands of years. As a liquid, a fundamental substance, it couldn’t be shattered. As a liquid, it couldn’t be found. Paul supposed it would spread a few hundred yards, mix with local materials and remain there forever. He drew pictures of perfect little dead zones, telling the Vatican how they could target only the fields of the enemy while sparing their allies and friends.

He was terribly wrong—beautifully wrong! The weapon worked better than anyone imagined. It spread, drying up most of Europe’s crops in the middle of one of the four rainiest years of that century. When wheat harvests began to fail in locations as remote as Ireland, it became clear that Paul’s weapon was the opening horn of Armageddon.

History calls it the Great Famine of 1315. It killed a tenth of Europe’s population, and started the Fall of Curses. The gods offered a prize for killing Paul, and changed the rules to never allow the blessings or curses of anything ever again.

When the ‘good guys’ found Paul of Tartan, they diced him alive into dozens of tiny pieces. Bone chips and hamburger, boy, just out of spite. To punish him for power! Then they used the huge prestige reward to delete the mercury, destroying the artifact that was killing the crops. Do you see the lesson? Do you understand the true implications of this event?

Fine. I’ll tell you.

Artifacts are meaningless in a world with guns and bombs, young man. But prestige matters. With enough of it, a wish can delete anything, even an atomic bomb.

Heckhaus giggled like a schoolboy. This singular thought was his true joy. Enough prestige trumped nuclear weapons. Enough of it could win the Cold War.

“Jesus,” Marco said.

Heckhaus gave him the finger guns. “You said it! In any case, we come back around to the Cat. Old wishes are grandfathered in, so after the Fall, any and all artifacts became incredibly valuable. If the Cat were here, I’d offer to take it simply because no one man, even if protected by the Zombie, could conceivably carry it in safety. It’s that important.”

“Fortunately, the Cat isn’t here,” Phyllis said, speaking before Marco could respond. “I assume it’s still in Stalingrad.”

Heckhaus ignored her objection and spoke to Marco. “If you were in possession of it, no organization would allow you to hand it to their enemies. The escalation of force would be extreme, the resistance beyond deadly. The only way out would be to entrust the artifact to a cult that could defend it and protect you.”

“I don’t have it,” Marco replied.

“Imagine if you did, and I offered to help. What do you say?”

Marco hesitated, considering his response. “I’d do the right thing.”

Heckhaus clapped three times, slowly. “A politician’s answer. What is the right thing?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to figure it out.”

“If you had the Cat, you’d figure it out?” Heckhaus asked.

“If I had the Cat.”

“But you don’t.”

“No, sir.”

“Interesting. One last hypothetical, young man. Would you trust Baron d’Holbach to take care of the Cat, even if you died?”

No hesitation here. “If I had it, yes.”

“Why?”

Marco blinked, looked down at his shoes, and then looked up. “Trust is trust,” he said, pausing to swallow with a dry mouth. “And he has the Zombie.”

Heckhaus smirked and cast a gaze towards the Baron. It was a silent request for commentary, and this one was worth answering.

The Baron took one step forward. “I don’t expect you to have faith in me, Heckhaus. I can’t kill everyone here with my bare hands. You can. Unlike the rest of the morons at the CIA, you’ve trained for it. You work all day, every day, to become more dangerous. Yet I do have the Zombie, and that single advantage outweighs all your skills.”

Heckhaus tilted his head very slightly, a generous acknowledgement to a genuine compliment. “I don’t have any faith, Baron, it’s true. You’ve locked yourself into bizarre labyrinths of philosophy, and you use your secular, atheistic worldview to justify your bad behavior—your chronic opposition to the way of the world. You and the Zombie go around inserting yourselves like wrenches in the gears of civilization. Someday, you might break the machine.”

“I always aim to save it, even if you think otherwise.”

“Mm. Your aim is poor.”

“I’m usually the only one in position to take the shot. Not because I’m better, but because I’m independent. That’s scarce in the occult world.”

“Independence is overrated,” Heckhaus tutted. “What matters is actions.”

The Baron stared Heckhaus down. “If we had the Cat, I’d do what’s best for everyone, and I’d face the consequences without the threat of starting a secular war. It’s all hypothetical, but you know the advantage that only I would have—the Zombie is my failsafe.”

“The young man isn’t you.” Heckhaus barely even maintained the pretense.

“That doesn’t mean I’m a useless guardian.”

Heckhaus took a long breath, grabbed his fork, and speared two slices of peach, which he shoved into his mouth whole, messily, leaving syrup on his lips. He chewed and swallowed, and cleaned his face with only his tongue, almost reptilian in its spontaneity, like a lizard licking its eye. The little tin of peaches wasn’t quite empty, so he went back and picked out the last few scraps, shoveling them into his mouth like he was a child with dessert.

He chewed, swallowed, and sighed.

“Are you going to do something,” Phyllis asked, “or can we have our safehouse back?”

Heckhaus tapped the tines of his fork against the table. “I’m glad we had this talk. If anything interesting happens, Baron, just remember. We’ll be watching. We can help.” He set the fork down neatly by the tin, rose from his chair, and walked towards the hall. They split to either side to let him leave. He paused in the open door, light streaming out into the empty maintenance tunnel. “It’s a lucky thing. The Cat really wouldn’t be worth the incident.”

“If it was here,” the Baron said.

“Stay safe,” Heckhaus said. “I’ll tell the Zombie where you are. If we can find him.” He swept around and shouted into the dark. “Turn it out! Nothing to see here!”

More than ten flashlights switched on in the tunnel, held by figures in black suits huddling against walls. Various submachine guns were draped over chests, hanging from well-worn straps. Then Heckhaus slammed the door, and the vision of his personal army was gone.

“What the fuck was that?” Phyllis asked quietly.

“Don’t talk,” the Baron commanded. “He planted a bug in here, probably several. Just eat, relax, and put the day aside for now. There’s nothing else to do.”

“Thank God,” Marco said.

“Thank the gods,” Phyllis corrected.

“They had nothing to do with this. You saved yourselves.” d’Holbach looked at the others, who seemed too tired to respond further. Then he noticed for the first time that Phyllis’s fists were clenched. She’d been on the edge of fighting. He looked at the young man, bloodied and scarred. Marco’s knees were shaking. He’d been on the edge too—and the Baron couldn’t imagine what would’ve happened if he’d cracked.

Bad things, he supposed. Heckhaus hadn’t brought two full SOG teams underground just for personal protection. There were other ways this could’ve gone, because Langley was only tolerant. They were not their friends. They were nobody’s friends.

Marco started shaking so badly that he had to sit down.

It didn’t matter that the hour had barely tipped towards the evening. The day had been one long series of traumatic events, revelations, ill-omens, and threats by powerful men. They were each exhausted, Marco more so than any. After a few minutes of arranging furniture and quietly eating tinned foods, they each flopped onto a cot with varying degrees of grace, and released their steely claims to consciousness. They slept like the dead.

Author’s Note:

A close call with the CIA, but they are given a little more time to struggle onwards.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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August 1, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

“You want me to help her,” Osman had said, and so much implication had followed from those words, so many hidden hopes and dreams of being important and noble, of helping those who were powerful underdogs. A foundational understanding of the world had shifted in the neophyte’s heart. Women were as weak as David in the face of the occult world’s Goliath, but they had the will of the former and the potential of the latter. It was an injustice, and as the heir to an occult kingdom, he could aid them with his authority.

The Baron rushed to reinforce this vision. It wasn’t manipulative; it was authentic. The very same feeling animated the Baron’s own heart when helping Artemisians. “That’s right. I’m trusting you because you’re a good person. Someday, you’ll be more powerful than you ever imagined, just because of who you are. What you do with that power will change lives.”

“Yes, Baron.” Osman smiled despite himself.

“Today, you can prove that you’re an ally to an Artemisian. You can become a real Hound, just like the heroes in Apostasy. You only have to do two things.”

“Yes.”

d’Holbach ticked off one finger. “Tell Maurice and your father that we were searching for the corpse of a Soviet cultist carrying dossiers on New York noblemen. Tell them I could only entrust this information to a member of the New York nobility, like you. In the end, we didn’t find the files or the corpse. Simple enough?”

“Yes, Baron. I can do that.”

“Keep the story simple. Give less details than even that explanation. If you forget part of it, that’s fine, even good. If someone presses for more, tell them you didn’t have a chance to ask me anything. I was very taciturn.”

Osman smiled. “Easily done, Baron.”

d’Holbach ticked off another finger. “Second, you need to help me find this woman and a young man with large scars on his back and head. For either of them, name me, then Federico Barilla, then Andrey Malik. Repeat those names.”

“You, the Baron, Federico Barilla, and Andrey Malik.”

“After they recognize you as my messenger, tell them to wait in place. Then signal me, and I’ll come to you. With both of us searching, this shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Keep on the watch out for subtle signals like doors cracked open. These are smart people. They’ll be looking to attract my attention.”

“What’ll happen after you reach them?” Osman asked.

“I’ll decide when I get to that point. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Baron. And uh… thank you for trusting me. Few, uh, few people do.”

The Baron grinned and slapped Osman on the shoulder. “You’re a real Hound already. Someday soon, you’ll know how important this was. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Baron.” He started towards the front door, then hesitated. “If Maurice stops me, do I tell him the story immediately?”

“No, tell him you’re working for your father’s interests and can’t talk with him yet. You’ll debrief after you’re done.”

“I can do that.”

Osman opened the door first. He looked up and down the balconies visible at this height. Nothing obvious was in view. The Baron walked out past him and started running down the open-air stairwell. Osman followed close behind.

Once they reached the bottom floor, the Baron sent Osman along the near row, and the Baron ran across the great chamber to the far side and started climbing again.

Halfway up to the third story, he spotted a door opening about halfway down the row. A teenager in ruined clothes stepped out tentatively. He was rubbing his forehead and had the beginnings of a beard and a much thicker mustache, visible even at this distance. It was Marco, at least several weeks older.

The Baron wolf-whistled. Marco leaned out and waved to him. The Baron pointed back at the wall he was beside. Get inside, he mouthed. Marco nodded and went back into the apartment he’d stepped out of.

The Baron doubled back, hit the bottom floor and simply kept running. Some of the New Yorkers lazing about the chamber took notice, but he said, “Nobleman business,” as a preventative measure, and no one stopped him.

It’s not like he could leave the temple in bloody clothes.

The Baron spiraled up to the apartment where Marco waited. He plodded across the catwalk, opened the door, and stepped inside. The young man was lying on the hardwood floor, limbs splayed out, eyes bleary but open. His clothes were long-dried. Sheets of clotted blood were cracked and peeling off the old jacket like a thin layer of lakebed mud. There were little flakes all around him. On his forehead, there was a dimple of fibrous scar tissue, resting neatly on a fully restored skull. “I’m so tired,” he said. “I barely want to move.”

The Baron shut the door and knelt beside the young man. “Nobody could expect more of you. It takes a lot of willpower to use the Cat.”

Marco closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “The skin on my back feels like leather. None of it stretches right anymore.”

“A wish could cure you, I think.”

He touched his mustache and muttered into his fingers. “It really happened. I made a wish, and I could feel the time I owed them. They took it from me.”

“Did you hibernate? They normally don’t grant a wish until your debt is paid.”

He opened his eyes. “I wanted the pain of death to go away.” He pinched his own cheek, twisted the strands of his uneven beard between two fingers. “I can’t even remember what it felt like to die.”

“Is that what you wanted?” the Baron asked. “To forget?”

“It was.”

“The gods don’t cheat you. They wouldn’t have granted a useless wish.”

“I know. They’re real.” Marco pushed up into a sitting position, shedding another little snowstorm of dried blood. “I knew I was dead, and I knew I could move. It was magic. Real magic.” He focused on the Baron. “That’s when I knew I could make a wish.”

“You saved yourself. Congratulations are in order, once we’re out of here.” d’Holbach offered a hand. “For now, let’s get up. We need to find Phyllis and go.”

The young man took it. “Just this morning, I never would’ve imagined.”

The Baron helped him to his feet. “You had the Cat in you. You survived death. I can’t think of a faster way to learn the occult instinct down to your bones.” He took Marco’s shoulder and turned him around. “Let me see.” There were several gigantic holes in his shirt and the Baron’s jacket, each opened onto broad shining sheets of horrible scar tissue. He reminded the Baron of an old burn victim.

“How does it look?”

“Like a giant scar. Take off my jacket and tie it around your torso. We need to cover them before anyone guesses where you got them.”

Marco did as he was told, using the sleeves to tie it across his sternum. It wasn’t a stable arrangement, but they didn’t need much time. The Baron adjusted the hanging cloth until Marco’s scars were hidden, and then they left the apartment and went down the stairs. When they reached the bottom floor, the Baron spotted Osman waving from the foot of another stairwell a couple of buildings down the chamber.

The Baron told Marco: “Over there. That’s the son of a New York noble. His name is Osman. Treat him with respect. He’s risking his life, and we need him.”

“Yes, Baron,” Marco muttered.

They walked over quickly. Osman, growing impatient, came to meet them halfway. A few beatniks and day laborers watched them from afar, but nobody seemed willing to rush the son of a noble and question him out of turn.

Once they were close, Osman whispered, “I found your lady friend.”

“Good.” Baron gestured at Marco. “Osman, this is Marco. Marco, Osman.”

“Glad to meet you.” Osman shook Marco’s hand quickly. “We should hurry. The Oracle already stopped me once. I told him you were trying to leave. He’s gone downstairs to catch you at the door, and Porter is waiting there with a few others.”

“Very clever.” The Baron slapped Osman on the shoulder again. “Let’s go.”

Watchful eyes followed them as they rose up the far wall. Osman opened a middle-story door, leading them into another lightly cleaned, hardwood floor apartment. It was almost identical to the last two, but the lights were on.

Phyllis was standing inside at the kitchenette, dipping her hands in a sink full of water and unmaking her tattered beehive hairdo. Her fairly short, slightly graying locks fell about her head in wavy pleats. The wrinkles on her face were deeper and more frustrated than normal, but there was still the echo of the young, serious woman that she must’ve been a decade or two before. She’d probably worked in Barilla’s factory back when it was first founded, and she’d leveraged that into a career of crime and prestige. Today, that career was threatening to fall apart.

“Baron,” she said gruffly. “I nearly had a heart attack when Osman came in here.”

“I can imagine,” the Baron said.

Osman smiled with pride. “I convinced her. I’m here to help.”

She nodded to Osman, then focused her attention on the Baron. “I don’t think dodging was the right decision. That cost me at least twenty percent of my stock.”

“Apostasy says you shouldn’t dodge,” the Baron agreed.

“That’s right.” She finished smoothing down her hair. “I don’t know this place, but I can’t see a way out from the balcony. Are we trapped here?”

“There’s only one exit in the temple chamber. We can’t take it.”

She wiped her hands on her cornflower blue blouse. “I’ll die here once they find me.”

“I won’t allow that.”

She nodded at Marco. “Welcome to the system of prestige.”

The young man seemed unsure if she was serious. “Thank you?”

“I’m glad the Baron found you before New York did. You might make it out alive.”

“You won’t die here,” the Baron agreed.

“You’re new?” Osman asked Marco.

“Yeah, it’s crazy,” Marco replied. “I got shot. Repeatedly.”

“I know! Look at that blood.” The young men easily slipped into amicably chattering, finally in the presence of someone even close to their own age.

Phyllis and the Baron ignored them, stepping closer to converse. “What’s your plan then?” she asked him.

“First, let’s get this prestige back to you.” He held out his hand. After a moment, she took it, and he wished, “All my prestige is yours.”

A feeling of emptiness hollowed the Baron, but the sensation passed quickly. There was no punishment in the act, only proof that the prestige was transferred.

Phyllis grunted, ignoring any warm feelings. She released his hand. “Listen, I don’t blame you for what happened, but I’m cornered in this temple. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I know—”

“If I can’t leave, I’ll just wish for the afterlife, then let them shoot the old woman that comes out of the sanctuary.” She seemed angrier by the second. “Promise me that you get the Cat back to its rightful owner. If I’m going to die for the world, it damn well better be saved.”

The Baron held up a hand. “One second, please. I think there’s a way out.”

“What?”

“Look at the window behind you. There’s a fire escape.”

“In full view of the street?” She turned to look. “We’ll get a lot of attention going down the face of the building.”

“Less than in here,” the Baron said.

She shrugged. “Fine. Do you know where we are?”

“This is the 8th Street Temple. It’s Greenwich Village.”

“That’s not so bad. Okay, I can work with that. There’s a safehouse in the underground about ten blocks from here. It’s in an abandoned utility tunnel. Stolen power, stolen water, a pile of tins knee-high.” She stepped to the window, squinting into the afternoon light. “Me and a few of the other girls in town have been paying into it. We usually hide there after sniping a task in Manhattan. If nobody is using it, we can stay there tonight and make plans for the morning.”

The Baron leaned in close behind her. “Can we tell Osman where it is?”

“Not really,” Phyllis said. “I shouldn’t even show you two.”

“The Zombie will have to find us somehow. Osman could pass along the message, and he is eager to help. I think we can trust him.”

“Fine.” She turned away from the window. “Osman?”

Osman snapped to attention, wiping away any smile. “Yes, miss?”

Phyllis nodded curtly like a pleased commander. “If you see the Zombie, tell him to go to Canal Street. Canal and Broadway.”

“Will do, miss. I’ll stay here this evening, if it’ll help.”

“It will,” Phyllis agreed. “Thank you, Osman. The Baron was right. You’re a good man.”

Osman smiled, visibly proud of himself. “You’re welcome, miss.”

“One more contingency,” the Baron added. “Tell the Zombie that if I can’t pick him up at Canal and Broadway by midnight, then he should go to the Biltmore and get changed. I’ll pick him up in the Kissing Room tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Baron,” Osman said.

“You need to get out of here and talk with Maurice. Feed him the story. While you’re doing that, we’ll be escaping without your knowledge.” The Baron went to the window and played with the slide latch. It was half-stuck with paint, but it opened.

“Good luck, man,” Osman said to Marco, offering him a handshake.

Marco accepted it. “Luck to you too, man.”

“Thanks again, neophyte,” the Baron added from the window.

Osman went to leave but paused at the door. “You’re welcome, Baron.” Then he departed, shutting it quietly behind him.

“Is that really the son of General Osman?” Phyllis asked.

“Yes,” the Baron said, “Surprising, isn’t it?”

“Very. I’m surprised he doesn’t want you killed.”

“His apple rolled far from the tree.” The Baron pushed open the window. The afternoon breeze blew in, bringing the surprisingly fresh smells of auto exhaust and raw dust into the stale atmosphere of the apartment. It felt as if the natural world was intruding on an unnatural, even hallowed place. He’d close the window once they were out.

“Are you good to run, Marco?” The Baron didn’t even have to ask Phyllis.

“Yeah. I’m alive.”

Phyllis chuckled. “That’s not what he asked.”

“I can move. The scars are just a little thick.”

“Can you tell if you still have a kidney?”

“What’s that?”

Phyllis patted her side. “A kidney. The shell blasted it to pulp. Think the Cat grew it back?”

“I don’t know.”

The Baron knew a bit more about the Cat’s function from prior contact with Janos Nagy. “Stuff grows back. Like your brain, your spine, your skull. It’s often scarred, but never gone.” Then he turned and stuck his head out of the window. The street below was clear. The New York posse would be waiting for him in the bookstore, since it technically wasn’t temple territory on the first floor. He pulled back in and said, “We’re covered in dry blood and people will be looking for me. This means no cabs, no buses, and no trains until we’ve cleaned up. Any ideas?”

“Steal clothes?” Marco asked.

“That’s stupid,” Phyllis said. “Baron, do you have any loose twenties? I’m clean enough. I can bribe a cabbie to drop us off at Broadway and Canal Street.”

The Baron sorted through his wallet. He only had one twenty left, and it was his largest bill. He held it out between two fingers. “This will pay for a little silence?”

“I can chat up a cabbie. We’re in Lucchese territory, and I’ve done business in the Garment District. I’ll name drop the last boss. He’ll know he’s helping an Anastasia mafiosa.”

“The cabbie will know the boss’s name?” Marco asked.

Her eyebrows raised. “Lucchese is the king of Manhattan, Marco.”

In his heart, the Baron agreed. There wasn’t a unionized worker or trade organization that didn’t know their Cosa Nostra contacts by name. Ever since High Oracle Gagliano had stepped out of the limelight and made Lucchese the official head of the local family, they’d been turning the entire borough into a unified criminal enterprise.

“I don’t know this area.” Marco was trying to excuse himself, but it was clear that he was hopelessly out of touch with Cosa Nostra politics in New York. It was no wonder that Barilla had assigned the dock to Phyllis. His son’s ignorance would’ve been sniffed out as weakness.

“Everyone in a union knows who is who,” the Baron said. “I’m going first, then Phyllis. Marco, close the window behind you?”

“Yeah, Baron.”

d’Holbach grabbed the sill and vaulted through onto the black metal fire escape. It was narrow, cheap, and old. The entire thing rattled but held fast onto the brick facade. He started down the steep steps. Phyllis hopped out behind him. Marco climbed over the sill, then yanked the window shut by its trimming. They spiralled down rapidly, reaching the end of the escape in less than fifteen seconds. The Baron grabbed the release on the ladder, but he didn’t drop it immediately. Once Phyllis and Marco were bunched up behind him, he gave instructions.

“When you hit asphalt, run north. The station is just past the Y-junction where the street merges with Greenwich Avenue. It’ll be a cabbie ant farm at this hour.” He tapped the release. “Once this drops, someone will recognize what we’re doing. I guarantee it. Ready?”

Marco gave him a thumbs up. Phyllis nodded.

The Baron yanked, and the ladder slid down with a metal squeal and a heavy bang when its feet hit the sidewalk. He swung over the top and climbed down fast, skipping every other rung. Phyllis joined him, nearly on top of his hands, and Marco followed just after her.

A tall, thin man was shouting outside the 8th Street Bookstore, just a few buildings south of their position. He raised his arm and waved at the people indoors. Already scouted.

The Baron waited until Phyllis and Marco were down, then took off at a full run. It wasn’t a sprint, but they didn’t have the luxury of jogging. Phyllis had good form and kept up easily. The Baron glanced back once to see Marcos keeping pace but slapping his shoes on the sidewalk—bad form from an inexperienced runner. His shins would ache.

“Will they catch up?” Phyllis asked breathily.

“Not without a car,” the Baron said between controlled huffs.

Marco said nothing, but his struggle for air was clearly audible.

The Baron glanced back at him after a minute or so. Their destination was only half a mile away, but Marco would be wiped long before they reached it. The Baron had the advantage of everlasting youth and the training of decades of fitness. While he couldn’t run a marathon, he could easily run three or four miles. Phyllis seemed naturally fit and would probably make a half mile in three minutes. Contrasted with them, Marco was sweating profusely.

“Just two minutes, Marco,” the Baron urged.

Marco nodded and kept running, even as his ragged breath suggested pain, like a growing stitch in his side or weak feet. Maybe the place where he’d had a kidney burst was inflamed, even after a few weeks of healing and physical rest.

A black pre-war sedan with clear windows came roaring up the far lane, passing them on the other side of the road. Even with a muffler, its engine rumbled and roared like a lion.

“New York has a car!” Phyllis called out.

“I’m not blind!”

The Baron watched it pull ahead of them, then swing about in a U-turn. It stopped in the street ahead, and four New Yorkers spilled out—Greenwich Oracle Maurice, the tall Gatekeeper Porter, a beatnik, and a thick old man who looked like a retired club bouncer. The Baron slowed. Phyllis came up behind him. The bouncer had a Tommy in his hands, more WWII surplus stock.

Marco stumbled to a stop a few feet behind them. The Baron glanced back. The teen had his hands on his knees and was panting. “You alright?” the Baron asked.

“I’m gonna be sick.”

The Baron turned away. “Just let it out.”

Marco responded by vomiting onto the sidewalk, dry-heaving with loud hacking coughs between retches. He sniffled and said, “Oh Jesus,” then vomited again. Whatever else it did, the Cat probably left Marco in a state of extreme exhaustion, and he wasn’t taking to running well.

A newer post-war black sedan with green glass windows pulled up behind the New York vehicle. The approaching driver leaned into his horn. After a few seconds, the New York posse broke gaze with the Baron and turned around to see what the fuss was about.

The Baron had a suspicion that CPUSA had just arrived on the scene.

A green-glass window rolled down, and a man shoved a revolver out of the window, immediately firing it into the air. The three unarmed New Yorkers hit the deck.

The thick man tried to fire his Tommy, but nothing happened. Someone must’ve wished to break it, and he hadn’t brought the prestige to fix his weapon.

Time to make another decision. The Baron sighted an access alley between them and the vehicles, leading into a back alley where the dumpsters for the neighboring row would be kept. “Off the main streets,” he commanded, pointing to the destination. “There, go!” He took off running. Phyllis joined him, and gasping for air, Marco followed.

The sedan with the green glass peeled out, swerved around the New York vehicle and its cultists, and rushed up the lane, heading towards them. Fifty yards out.

The Baron sprinted, going up onto the balls of his feet, feeling that one moment of free energy that would come before sharp exhaustion. His limbs pumped beneath him. He reached the alley corner first, stopped with a bounce, and turned to check on Marco.

Phyllis was focused, head down towards her feet. She flew past the Baron into the alley.

Marco was struggling to keep up.

“Move!” the Baron roared at him.

The enemy vehicle was thirty yards out. There wasn’t enough time.

Marco knew it too. Life or death—he closed his eyes and sprinted like only a young man could. Beyond the end of any rope, he nearly fell forward into an explosive, desperate run.

CPUSA gunned their engine, accelerating. A man in a black suit leaned out the rear window and fired a wild shot at the Baron. A magnum, something big. It didn’t hit anywhere close, but d’Holbach ducked instinctively and ran into the alley.

Phyllis went down against the brick. He slammed into it beside her.

Marco was still running towards them, reaching the alley corner. The car and the teen were on an interception course, somewhere close to the corner of the building.

Out of view, they heard a crunch as the CPUSA car jumped the curb.

“Leap!” the Baron yelled, an intuition more than a reasoned reaction.

Marco blindly followed instructions. He leapt up and towards the Baron.

Later, d’Holbach would reconstruct what happened in a conversation with Phyllis, but the moment of calamity was experienced as a splash of shattered masonry and the literal crash of a car. It must’ve been a maneuver stolen out of films; maybe the CPUSA mercs had reinforced the vehicle with a wish but failed to consider their own safety.

The sedan swerved toward Marco and rammed into the corner of the brick building, wrapping a length of its collapsing hood around the masonry; that slice of folding metal then caught the leaping young man like a catapult’s scoop and launched him just ahead of a shockwave of safety glass and shattered stone.

Marco sailed five yards, flipping once—feet over head—before slapping flat into the alley pavement and rolling to a stop.

“Fuck!” Phyllis roared, diving to the boy’s aid.

The Baron jittered to his feet, glimpsed towards the crashed vehicle itself. Its engine was dead, the windshield destroyed. Most of the force of impact had gone into the bricks. The CPUSA driver was visible but disoriented, breathing slowly. He’d probably cracked a rib over the steering wheel. Nobody else in the vehicle seemed to move. Blacked out, but not likely forever.

They needed to assess Marco’s condition and decide on their next step.

“Why are they all fucking crazy?” Phyllis raged.

Colored safety glass crunched underneath the Baron’s shoes as he turned his attention to the young man. “Are you okay?”

Marco was unfolding slowly, turning over onto his back. He looked up at the Baron and Phyllis with a poorly focused glare. “Did I die? It feels like I died.”

The Baron frowned. “I don’t know. The building took most of the hit. You jumped the bumper, and the hood tossed you. Stuntmen do that. You might be okay.”

“He could be bleeding inside!” Phyllis yelled.

“The Cat can cover that. It’s powerful.” The Baron took a couple steps towards the corner again, skirting around the CPUSA vehicle to check on the New York cultists. They were currently standing around their own sedan, yelling at each other about something. If there was ever an opportunity to escape, it was now. “It’s time to go.”

“Can you stand?” Phyllis asked Marco.

The teen moved very slowly and pushed himself up onto his knees. “The Cat is cold.” He very gingerly touched the back of his neck. “I’m sore all over.”

The Baron jogged over to him. “I’m sure you are,” he said, offering a hand. “Tell me if anything gives you a sharp pain, or if the Cat starts burning again.”

Marco rose to his feet, shaking, then winced and fell forward. The Baron caught him with his left arm. Phyllis rushed forward to support his right. Between them, Marco heaved onto the asphalt again, and again, and a third time. When his stomach stopped seizing, he was out of breath. “Shit,” he cussed.

“You can’t run anymore,” the Baron judged.

“We’ll move him,” Phyllis declared.

“Will they follow?” Marco asked.

“Hard to say. Let’s hope the wreck distracts them.”

“Put your arm over my shoulders,” the Baron ordered.

Marco slung most of his weight onto the Baron. Phyllis supported him from the other side. “Thanks, ya’ll.”

“Good to go?” Phyllis asked him.

“Legs aren’t broken,” Marco muttered. “I don’t think?”

The Baron took one step, and Marco and Phyllis followed his lead. “Just keep moving for now. Once you’ve caught your breath, you’ll be good to walk.”

They hobbled through the side alley into the brick-paved back alley between the rows. It was lined with open dumpsters from one end of the block to the other. Tomorrow was trash pickup, and bags full of plastic refuse, flattened cardboard, and rotten food were piled high in the bins, nearly overflowing in some places. Just nearby, a bag had fallen onto the ground and burst, spilling out trimmed fat, half-melted in the sun and swarming with spring flies.

Marco groaned in audible discomfort.

“Try to keep it in,” the Baron said.

Marco swallowed noisily and coughed, but he didn’t vomit again.

Phyllis was glancing around, understandably alert. “They’re incredibly desperate now.”

“Who? CPUSA?” the Baron asked.

“Yeah. They’re starved dogs fighting over the scraps.”

“The Soviets are putting a lot of pressure on them,” the Baron.

“Enough to make a man risk a car crash to clip Marco?”

“Maybe they thought they’d be able to plow through the corner and survive. Like the movies.”

“It’s still a damn stupid risk to run the boy down.”

“I hate ‘em,” Marco muttered.

Phyllis gave the young man a quick, gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry. We’ll be careful. Especially the Baron. He’ll be double careful, won’t you?”

“I’m always careful,” the Baron replied.

She chuckled. “Are you?”

“I sure am.”

“No, no, you aren’t. You’re too used to standing near the Zombie.” She reached past Marco and nudged the Baron’s ribs with a knuckle. “They’ve been that desperate all along, but now we don’t have the invincible man. They’ll put a few holes in you, even if it’s a bad idea.”

The Baron ignored the physical prodding. “That’s a fair warning,” he admitted, “but a lot of them ought to know the danger. The Zombie could do a lot of damage. He’s overthrown kingdoms before. He’d bring down all of civilization if it meant getting his revenge.”

“How do you know that?” Marco asked.

“Some old books,” the Baron replied.

“That one the woman wrote?”

“No. Foreign stuff. Different traditions. In a Chinese record, someone claimed the Zombie killed important members of the Xia Dynasty and led the razing of the city of Nanchao.”

“He killed a dynasty?”

“The remainder of a family, in retribution for the death of a man in the Battle of Mingtao. The rival Shang were already ascendant, but they solidified their power after that.”

Phyllis frowned. “This is why the Apostate is scared of the Zombie.”

“What do you mean?” the Baron asked.

“How could this end well? You’ll die someday, Baron. It’s just a matter of attrition.”

The Baron planned on living until everything changed, but arguing his weird eschatology wouldn’t put Phyllis at ease. It’d probably make her feel worse. “Maybe,” he said.

“If you’d never lived, the Zombie would’ve been a menace and a devil, but he wouldn’t have threatened countless lives with a Pact tied to your life.”

“Yeah.” The Baron licked his lips, wondering if this was a good idea to share, then deciding that Phyllis could be trusted. “Don’t repeat this, but sometimes, when we talk about this, the Zombie promises he’ll keep the body count low.”

“You’ve asked him?” Marco asked.

“I made him promise. Only the minimum to erase the memory of the criminal and no more. Still, I’d rather not test him. If I’m going to die, let it be an accident.”

“The Zombie should see it that way,” Phyllis muttered.

They walked for several more minutes, encouraging Marco to flex his legs and put weight over his joints. If he didn’t keep moving, he’d cramp up and inflammation would grip his tissues. Even with a dose of painkillers, he’d be stiff as a plank by morning. Whether or not he’d walk under his own power would depend on his condition this evening.

 They hit the end of the row, came out another narrow gap, and stopped on the Y-junction connecting 8th and Greenwich Avenue. Phyllis scouted ahead a few steps, having far less blood on her clothes. The Baron stopped supporting Marco, testing if he could stand.

“No heat,” Phyllis declared as she looked back. “Let’s walk.”

And they did walk. The teen’s unsteady gait resembled a drunk man’s stagger, but it was fast enough to cover the last half mile in relative safety. The sun was low on the left, hanging just over the buildings. Shading their eyes, they wandered across the street and up the sidewalk.

A few onlookers saw them, stained in old blood and injured, but Phyllis walked ahead of them with purpose, looking grim, while the Baron smiled and seemed at ease. The physical fiction he told was clear and believable. They’d been hurt, but Phyllis was in charge of them, legally and otherwise. They were being taken with authority.

“Them boys alright?” asked a storekeeper seated out front of his shop.

“They’ll be fine,” Phyllis said tersely.

The Baron spread his palms to the man, an open gesture. “It looks a lot worse than it is, but we’re heading home to get cleaned up. Thank you for asking.”

“Nothing terrible happened?”

“We pulled a pie-eyed man out of his own disaster.”

“When was this?”

“About lunchtime,” the Baron said.

“We’re in a hurry,” Phyllis said tersely. “Keep up, boys!”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the storekeeper, “it’s just a rare sight.”

“We’re sorry to worry you,” the Baron added as they moved past their interlocutor. “We’re in a sad state, but it’s been a long day, and we haven’t had a chance to get right.”

“No worries,” said the man, “get yourselves home soon.”

“Of course, sir.”

They kept going up the block to the subway station at the next major intersection. The Baron suggested to Phyllis that they’d have to hurry. The next time a beat cop came around, the shopkeeper they’d seen would be relating the story and asking questions.

“I have the twenty,” Phyllis muttered. “We’ll be out of here in minutes.”

There was a Jamaican cabbie smoking the last stub of a cigar outside his cab at the corner of the block. Phyllis came up ahead of the Baron, but the cabbie seemed discouraged by the mere sight of them. He launched the cigar stub into a spiral of sparks and raised his chin, but before he could say anything, she called ahead, “Corallo will know you treated us well.”

“What are you dropping Corallo’s name for?” the cabbie asked.

“He was running trucks and cabs from here to the Garment District until last year. He said if I needed a ride after a bad job, pay well, tip better, and don’t ask for a long drive.” She pulled the folded twenty out of her pocket. “Now I know Corallo’s home number by heart. I could interrupt his Sunday dinner and have him call your boss’s boss, who’ll then call you, or you can make a clean twenty for taking us to Canal and Broadway.”

“That’s all?” he said. “Smells bad.”

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Yeah. You’re not asking much for a twenty.”

“We can’t be seen on the open street.”

He looked at the money warily. It was a tremendous amount of cash for an incredibly brief fare, but equal to his greed, the size of the bill also measured their desperation. A twenty said, this isn’t just a small time run. Something big and bad happened.

“Nobody will know to ask you,” the Baron said. “Are you on break?”

“I was,” the man said.

The Baron pulled out his cigar case. He’d like to keep the smoke for himself, but the gesture was more important than his nicotine addiction. “Would you like a double claro?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Can I have the case?”

The Baron flipped it open and smiled. “Hell no.”

The cabbie laughed. With the left hand he took the bill and with his right the cigar. “Canal and Broadway, on my break. I went there to pick someone up. They tipped me a full twenty.”

“That’s a good story about a lucky man,” Phyllis replied. “A reliable, discreet cabbie will drive a popular cab. Listen, I work Red Hook for Anastasia.” She looked at the cab number. “I’ll remember you.”

“I won’t remember you,” replied the cabbie, opening the driver’s door.

Phyllis smiled and gave him a wink. “Good attitude.” She opened a rear door, ushering Marco and the Baron into the back of the cab. Then she opened the front passenger door and slid into the seat across from the cabbie. She gave him the silent nod, and the cabbie started the car. Once they were underway, the Baron allowed his shoulders to relax, Phyllis slouched and closed her eyes, and Marco breathed a deep sigh of relief.

Upon arrival, new conditions would reveal themselves, and the Baron would certainly have to make new decisions, but for the duration of the ride, they were mercifully safe.

Author’s Note:

Osman’s heart grew three sizes that day. :3

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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July 29, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

Despite the thunder and the storm of lead, Baron d’Holbach didn’t lower his gaze. Eyes focused on his friend, his weapon, and possibly his fate in this armed confrontation.

“Fine!” The Zombie charged and crashed headlong into the half-shattered windows, whipping his head through the remaining glass like a wet dog playing in the rain. Shaking it from his hair, he shouted into the darkness, both fists held high for all to see. “It’s murder!”

“Zed, engaging!” came several cries at once.

The Zombie vaulted out the window and landed in a crunch of gravel. “For every wound on the Baron, ten of you will die. You’re in luck, he’s not wounded yet!”

Several voices talked over each other, piling up to retreat somewhere out of view.

“Get back!” came the order from someone further up the train tunnel, a man with a bullhorn and strong lungs.

“Got one!” the Zombie roared.

There was a shout of fear, a useless gunshot, and the Zombie started laughing.

A man screeched, “Don’t, don’t, don’t—” The wooden crack of a gunstock against bone made the Baron flinch. Someone had been clubbed into silence with their own gun.

With their attackers momentarily distracted, the Baron squirmed across the rubbery red floor to Phyllis. “I’m getting Marco up,” he whispered.

“Collapse!” barked the man with the bullhorn. Instantly, the Earth itself obeyed with a thunderous clap of shattering bricks and ruptured bedrock, coming down from above. In pure reaction, the Baron covered his head, thinking that the train itself was about to be crushed, but when the ceiling and wall came down, they only swallowed up the space beside the subway cars, wedging bricks and stones between the train and the tunnel walls. The precision of the occult demolition was beyond impressive, especially considering the sheer mass that’d fallen. The Baron could feel its seismic settling as an infrasonic rumble in his chest and bones.

Through the doors to the next car, the Baron could see that one set of side-windows had shattered. A few loose stones were tumbling through them and over a row of seats; screaming passengers were fleeing away from the sudden collapse, towards the front of the train; but most of it was holding steady. With a single wish, they’d been isolated at the very back of the 2.

Was the Zombie still at hand?

d’Holbach had to risk a glance. He went up on his knees and peeked over the sill. The dim light of the railway car captured nothing but settling dust. Muffled voices shouted, “Two down, two down!” Replies followed, too quiet for comprehension.

The Zombie wasn’t on this side of the collapse, and there wasn’t enough panic in the distance. “They trapped him,” the Baron concluded.

“The Zombie is under that pile?” Phyllis asked.

“Not for long. He wriggles. The earth moves.” He raised his head further. “They half-blocked the tunnel they were coming from. Why?”

There was a shudder like moving mountains. A half-ton of stone was already making way for an invincible man.

“Zed, Zed!” shouted the CPUSA members on the far side of the debris.

“This doesn’t make sense.” The Baron looked back at Phyllis, who was on her knees patting the checker’s pockets. Her victim wasn’t dead after all—he was groaning with severe pain—but he didn’t resist her search and seizure of two spare shotgun rounds.

She grabbed the sawed-off, broke it open to eject two cardboard shells, and loaded what looked like plastic shells full of birdshot. “Can we just run back down the tunnel?” she asked.

“We can try…” The Baron trailed off. CPUSA’s plan finally clicked into place. He’d been off-kilter. He’d expected a siege on a train platform but received an ambush, and the Zombie had been drawn away, leaving them alone after all the civilians cleared the space.

Only two approaches remained. The tunnel behind them, and…

“The train,” the Baron muttered.

“They’re already on the train!” Phyllis echoed, coming to the same conclusion.

The Baron shouted out the windows. “Zombie, they have people on the train!”

Low cracks of smashing stone echoed off the tunnel walls. The Zombie had changed direction and was coming back over the top of the debris pile.

Phyllis cocked both hammers on the double barrel shotgun and slid down against the wall between two rows of seats, bracing the shotgun against the puke-green plastic of an end seat. She pointed it towards the front of the train. “Check behind us?” she suggested.

“Yeah,” the Baron agreed, sparing one last look at the fare checker—groaning but unmoving, bones shattered in both legs. “Keep me covered.”

Phyllis grunted, focusing on the connector doors.

Turning to the back, the Baron spotted Marco. The teen was squirming now but only from the waist up. The first shell into his back must’ve shattered vertebrae; little fragments of bone glistened wetly in the wound, and his legs were paralyzed.

Despite the severe injury, the Baron knelt and quickly rolled Marco up into a sitting position, leaning him back against the seats like a bloodsoaked sack of wheat. The second shot had punched straight through the young man, leaving an exit wound on his belly. Arteries were draining even now—rivulets pouring out of a hole—and the Baron’s fifty-dollar jacket had soaked up most of a quart of blood in less than a minute. This was bad—another two clear deaths—but nothing beyond the powers of the Cat o’ Nine Lives. 

d’Holbach squeezed Marco’s shoulders, staring into his bleary, blinking eyes. “You’ll be able to move soon, all right? The Cat will help.”

Marco gurgled a reply, and a mixture of mucus and blood poured from his mouth.

Good enough.

The Baron darted for the back of the train, peeking out the inset window in the rear door. Dimly, two figures emerged from the darkness, passing through a narrow band of light.

Instant panic—he pulled away, calling out, “More behind us!”

“Shit!” Phyllis shouted, still facing the front. “Incoming, next car!”

The Baron twisted around, feeling trapped in a metal cylinder. Men behind; men ahead. He could see the new threat through the windows in the connector doors, running towards them and pointing at him. They couldn’t see Phyllis through those small windows, could they?

The Artemisian was still crouched at the edge of a row of seats, sighting down the barrels. Making a strategic decision, the Baron rushed for the same gap, dropping into the space behind her at the last second.

A man in a black business suit threw open the last connector door, and Phyllis fired a shot like a bark of doom. With a screech, the intruder dropped a Tommy and stumbled back into the previous car, physically cringing; his left hand and arm were peppered, full of bloody holes.

Chaos broke, many voices at once, too difficult to identify.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

At least two more armed gunmen were rushing through the next car, diving for cover, squeezing into narrow spaces just out of view of the open connector doors.

“Remember the Pact!” the Baron shouted, trying to dissuade another assault. He glanced back. Nobody was visible at the rear door. Not yet.

“Stay back!” Phyllis roared. “I have another shot!”

“Throw it down!” barked one of the gunmen in the car ahead.

There was an audible rustling of stone, and the Zombie slid down into the tunnel outside the car, stumbling into the light outside the windows. “I’ll scoop out your eyes if he’s hurt!” he roared, pointing past the train itself. He must’ve seen the soldiers approaching from behind the car; at this angle, the Baron couldn’t spot them directly.

“Zombie!” the Baron called, “I’m right here!”

“I wish it was unlocked!” shouted a man at the back of the train.

The Zombie took off like a shot.

The padlock on the back door snapped open.

The Baron twisted and dove for it bodily, managing to grab the lock and clap it closed again. There was one shake of the latch. The Baron flattened himself, face to the rubber floor. Three blind gunshots were taken through the door panel, searching for the lock.

Someone fired another revolver behind the train, likely at the Zombie himself.

An instant later, a scream of bloody murder cut through the air, echoing throughout the tunnel. A man was suffering intense, life-ending agony, and he didn’t stop screaming. Moment after moment, the Zombie somehow renewed his pain.

“You’ll live!” the Zombie roared sadistically.

Several shots barked out, and the screaming stopped.

A body hit the gravel with the distinct crunch of flaccid weight, striking in parts.

The Baron yelled towards the shattered windows, out into the dark. “Clear them off the back of the train! We’ll watch the front!”

“Fires the shell!” yelled someone in the front car.

The shotgun in Phyllis’s hands fired, scattering birdshot uselessly through an open door. “Fuck!” she cussed. There was no cheap counterwish for a wasted shot.

An older man with a Tommy rushed through the open connector, aiming his weapon.

Phyllis lobbed the useless shotgun at him.

He ducked to one side, then steadied his aim again—but with his finger off the trigger. “Surrender!” he roared. “Everyone, raise your hands! Surrender!”

Phyllis raised her hands.

The Baron joined her a moment later.

Marco burbled an answer, spitting up another stream of blood.

The older man with the Thompson twitched towards the teen.

“Stay calm!” the Baron shouted at their new captor. “The Zombie is right outside!”

The man with the bloodied arm leaned into the open doors between the subway cars. “Kill the woman!” he shouted, clutching his belly. His white shirt was soaked with fresh arterial red, still oozing out of a dozen holes in his hand, forearm, and stomach.

“Stop fighting!” the Baron yelled. “You can survive! All of you!”

A brief squint of hesitation. The older man with the Tommy—their captor—was experienced and leathery. He must’ve been a killer on the docks for a long time, probably a stevedore for even longer. He’d lifted crates under the sun. The idea of living longer appealed to him. “We only need the boy,” he said to the Baron. “You keep calm, and we’ll leave you be.”

“She shot me,” the injured man whined.

“I ain’t fuckin’ with the Zombie!” their captor shouted, never turning away from his new prisoners. “Fuckin’ Salem,” he muttered, eyeing the Baron. “I remember it.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” the Baron replied, angling to buy time, even if he didn’t know what he’d spend it on.

“Roscoe, get in here!” their captor commanded. “Take the teenager!”

Another uninjured CPUSA member ran through the door with a revolver. He was a pudgy fellow, all strength running to fat, and he was wearing suspenders, no jacket, and a white dress shirt. He took two looks through the car, saw the Baron and Phyllis frozen in surrender, and holstered his pistol at his waist. “Shit,” he muttered.

Marco turned his head up, looking at Roscoe with a glazed expression in his eyes.

“Jesus, he moved!” said Roscoe.

“Pick him up,” the older man ordered.

“Him? He’s meat, Bill. Dying.”

“He’s the target!”

Marco gasped, pulling in air, then let out two raspy words: “It hurts.”

Their captor—Bill—squinted with frustration, a fold of leathery intent. “Roscoe, he’ll start squirming soon. Pick him up and let’s go!”

Roscoe darted over to Marco, briefly balking at the young man’s wounds. The teen was awash in blood, oversaturating the Baron’s jacket like a dripping sponge. There was a pool of it spreading across the rubber beneath him, making the floor sticky. It was unavoidable. Roscoe knelt in front of the young man, grabbed him by the armpits, and lifted him up, trying to hold him away from his clean shirt. A useless act. Thick rivulets of blood streamed out of the gripped cloth, dribbled down Roscoe’s wrists and into the sleeves of his dress shirt, staining them a royal red.

Marco squealed wetly, bubbling blood between his lips. Agonies heaped upon agonies.

“Shit,” Roscoe muttered. “Fuckin’ heavy too.” He turned the teen around, getting behind Marco so he could drag him by the arms like dead weight.

The back door thumped like someone had shot it with a twenty-gram shotgun slug, solid and painfully loud. Everyone twitched.

“It’s the Zombie,” the Baron said, recalling similar sounds. “Stay calm.”

On the second try, the Zombie’s arm punched straight through the door panel. He found the padlock with his hand, shoved his index finger into the loop, and twisted until either his digit would break or the lock popped open. It snapped with a ping.

Roscoe was struggling to drag Marco off. The boy’s waistline sporadically twitched; even with a severed spine, he was starting to move his legs.

The older CPUSA man, Bill, lowered his gun a couple centimeters and watched the rear door, waiting for the Zombie to rip it open. It took several pulls before the hinges gave way, and the whole thing folded over and out, flung away into the darkness of the train tunnel.

The Zombie’s hands reached into the light, gripping the steel jamb hard enough to bend the metal around his grip. Then he launched himself up into the subway car, trailing a cloud of grey dust. His hands were caked in dark mud, mixed from shattered earth and the bloodspray of dying men. “They shot my hostage!” he shouted cheerily, bringing all the glee of a child playing games to a tense standoff of deadly significance. When nobody reacted, he clapped his blooded hands together, mimicking the Baron’s gestures. “Is the fighting over then?”

“We’re calm now,” the Baron said. “We’ve lost.”

“Fucking hell,” Phyllis muttered.

The old gunman, Bill, seemed satisfied with the tenuous peace. He unclipped a belt radio. “Traffic administration, this is the bus driver. We’ve recovered the passenger. Over.”

“Roger,” came Malik’s voice. “How’s the VIP? Over.”

“Treated without flaws. Zed present, under control. Over.”

“I can’t feel my legs,” Marco muttered. “I’m cold.”

“Fully immobilize the passenger and remove. Over and out.” Malik was gone, but for the moment he was heard, there was pure pleasure in his voice.

“I can’t feel them, but I can move them,” Marco said.

“You heard the admin. Shut him up,” Bill ordered.

“How?” Roscoe asked.

“Use your pistol.”

“I’m still alive,” Marco said, opening his eyes with sudden awareness. “I’m alive!” He started squirming in Roscoe’s grasp, legs kicking weakly. “Help!”

“Fuck it. Hold him still.” Bill positioned himself to one side of Marco, lifting his Tommy.

“Please, don’t,” Phyllis muttered.

The Baron wanted to close his eyes.

“Oh, fuck me,” Roscoe said, realizing exactly what Bill was about to do.

Bill set the stock against his shoulder and aimed the sights of his Thompson at Marco’s lolling head. “Lift his arms. Keep him still. I got it.” He focused, putting a finger over the trigger.

Roscoe grunted, yanking Marco’s arms up until his body weight was dangling. “Sit still!”

“Boy!” Bill snapped. “To me!”

Marco twisted his head to the left, focusing on the command. Without another word, Bill pulled the trigger, and the Chicago Typewriter wrote one bloody period on Marco’s skull, punching a bullet hole wide enough for a pinky into his forehead.

Marco’s eyes rolled back, and he shuddered and relaxed.

“For Christ’s sake,” Roscoe said, adjusting his grip. With a limp body, it was easier to hike up the weight and get his hands under Marco’s armpits again.

“What the fuck was that?” came the call from the next car up.

Just as Roscoe lifted, Marco started shuddering.

Roscoe gasped. “What the fuck—”

Ghastly words were shredded between chattering teeth, but even with a hole in his head, Marco spoke. “I-I-I, mm, I’m, ah, mm, a-ah.” With an impossible, Cat-borne surge of energy, he started flailing in Roscoe’s grasp, all limbs kicking and swinging, trying to strike the man dragging him away.

“Stop it!” Roscoe barked, trying to keep a grip on the teen.

One fist struck true, clapping Roscoe’s mouth shut. He dropped Marco flat on the rubber flooring and stepped back, rubbing his jaw in abject confusion.

Bill sighed. “Pick him back up.”

“Fuck’s sake, Bill! You already shot him!”

“It’s goddamn Cat o’ Nine Lives. Pick. Him. Up.”

From his place on the floor, Marco turned very slowly and saw the Baron. His young face was etched with agony. He was feeling fresh death three times over. “Alive,” he said in a voice like grinding glass. His eyes squeezed shut and tears ran down his cheeks, “Why the pain?”

Bill was losing his temper. “Roscoe, pick him up!”

“Let him surrender,” the Baron begged, unwilling to watch this torture any longer. “Please. He’s practically a child.”

The man with the injured arm came into the car. “What the hell is—” He stopped when he saw Marco on the floor. “Holy shit, is that the target? You shot him?”

“They’re fatal wounds,” the Baron said, “but he’s living through them.”

“Admin said to immobilize him,” Bill argued.

“Listen!” the Baron yelled, raising his voice. “You don’t have to hurt him! Stop shooting—let him surrender!”

“Why does cueball keep talking?” asked Roscoe.

At that comment, the Zombie finally moved from his place at the back of the subway car.

Everyone reacted, guns pointing, but nobody took any shots. They all knew who this was and what it meant to cross him.

“I’m not attacking you,” the Zombie said calmly, and though his voice was soft, everyone listened. “I’m ensuring the Baron’s safety.” He stepped in between the attackers and d’Holbach. “Simple as that, isn’t it?”

“We ain’t touchin’ the Atheist,” Bill said, spitting the name like a curse.

Phyllis looked up quietly at the Zombie, an expression of desperation that was essentially a question. The Zombie stared down at her for several seconds.

Then the Zombie sighed. “Phyllis, please step behind the Baron.”

She darted up and behind d’Holbach immediately, putting her hands on his shoulders, as if to hold him in place like a shield.

“Fuck it, Roscoe,” said the injured man. “Just grab the kid and let’s go.”

Marco opened his eyes, taking a loud, raspy breath, as if he’d been splashed with searing hot water. “It holds me together! Fire, sewing me together!”

Roscoe scowled but knelt behind Marco, getting his hands beneath his armpits again. “Stop twitching, or we’ll have to shoot you.”

As Roscoe lifted him, Marco moved his head, staring at the Baron. “Is this real?”

“It’s real,” the Baron said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all real,” Marco muttered.

Bill gestured with the barrel of his Thompson. “Hold him still. I’ll put in a few more in him.”

“Really?” Phyllis asked, aghast.

Bill sighted Marco again. Roscoe held his armpits, leaning away from the coming shot.

The Baron knew he should shut up, but this cruelty was absurd. None of this was Marco’s fault. He didn’t deserve to suffer. “Must you?” the Baron asked.

Bill paused. “I got orders, Baron.”

“But why follow them? Why kill him?”

Bill shrugged. “Why did your Zombie kill some of us? Why do we kill each other?” Questions from an old hitman—they mocked the Baron, the virtuous atheist.

“I can’t argue that in a sentence,” the Baron replied.

The older merc frowned, a fold of leathery cheeks. “I can. We kill because it’s easy.”

In that argument, the Baron saw a simplicity that some men mistook for conviction. No argument could stop this travesty. This member of CPUSA was committed to following his orders, even if it tortured an innocent man. “I’m sorry, Marco,” the Baron said. “I really am.”

The young man wasn’t in any state of mind to forgive. His eyelids were fluttering, but hearing his name brought him around just long enough to say: “A half-day of warmth. It’s real.” His voice was a mere mumble, already washing away to unconsciousness. “I’m warm.”

Bill took aim. “Don’t worry, kid. I’ll plug you until you stop.”

In response, Marco jerked up in Roscoe’s arms, forcing his dead body to move. He shouted hoarsely, “I wish it didn’t hurt so much—” and was cut from the world in a thundercrack of imploding vacuum. Roscoe fell forward onto his knees, eyes closed, covering his ears by instinct. Teleportation was affordable in only one case. Go into debt, go to the temple.

Marco had made his first wish.

Split-second decisions followed. Life and death.

Assuming the worst, the Baron pushed the Zombie forward. “Go!”

It wasn’t clear if the Zombie was responding or already moving. His foot kicked down hard enough to rip the rubber flooring. Bill shifted, aiming at the new target, a well-trained twitch. The Zombie caught the barrel and collided; the Tommy ripped into the Zombie’s chest, unmoved from his iron grip as they tumbled forward through the open subway connector, into the next car.

Roscoe, on his knees, reached for his waist holster.

The Baron jumped up into a single step that ended in a hard kick to Roscoe’s chest, right where it met his throat. Roscoe let out a choked cluck, dropped his revolver and grabbed at his Adam’s apple, as if he could force himself to breathe.

The man with the injured hand was fumbling for the fallen Tommy by the doorjamb.

Phyllis threw her whole body forward, bringing the length of pipe up, over, and down in a long arc ending on the man’s head. The strike dazed the man and put him on his knees, slumping, falling. He’d be out cold for no more than a second, disabled for a handful more.

The Baron kicked the pistol away and shouted to Phyllis. “Pass it, then dodge! I’ll pay for whatever you lose, hard cash!”

“What about the Zombie?” She glanced through the door.

The Zombie was bending Bill’s arm back to break it.

“Leave him!” The Baron patted his left pocket. A dime in there. Close enough. Enemies were rousing. Fresh shouts echoed in the tunnel. “The dime is in my right pocket.”

Darkness fell over the Baron like all the lights shutting off in a warehouse with no windows. Afterimages of his vision faded into ghostly smears and fuzzed into color negatives behind shutting eyelids. The penny wish was made, and a half-day of debt was the Baron’s to live.

There wasn’t any sense of travel. His sanctuary was already around him, perfectly dark and almost perfectly silent. A soft shush filled his ears like distant surf. He was dimly aware of his body, splayed out on his back, still enduring the physical and mental pain of combat, but it was a dull and distant Baron that suffered from stress. In this dark, restful place, foremost on his mind was his debt. He could feel it like he felt prestige, a void of sensation so profound that it went beyond nothing and into the negative, becoming a presence again. Torpor was manifesting consciously, nevertheless timeless and thoughtless. Without a strong desire to rise, one passed through their debt unaware. Even if it was days of debt. Even if it was years. Even a lifetime.

“This too shall pass,” the Baron muttered, finally coming awake. His muscles were relaxed. Bruises and joints were sore, but they were recovering. It was unfortunate that the mind was maintained in a sanctuary with such perfection. Torpor was a blade that cut both ways, eliminating the mental passage of time and also the time of mental rest.

The door cracked open on its own. Sanctuaries connected themselves back to the world. The spaces where the gods kept you weren’t quite inside the temple until it was time to go. The room became visible. He was lying on a thick carpet. White walls surrounded him. Through the open door, he could see an empty apartment filled with afternoon sunlight.

He recognized the hardwood floors, sniffed a hint of old lemon cleaner. This was the 8th Street Temple in Greenwich Village. He nudged up onto his elbows, then felt a kick of prestige so profound that it knocked him flat on his back again. His head struck the carpet.

Phyllis had wished to pass her pool to him, and it was deep. Decades of prestige washed over him in a sea of accomplishment. Before transmitting prestige over a distance, she must’ve been close to wishing for the afterlife. At most, a few more years had separated her from forever, depending on the price that the gods had demanded for her salvation.

This was more prestige than any normal cultist would have. It was more than enough to spare a little for Marco’s sake, unless she had a principle or a reason for holding it back. Maybe the task that’d earned the bulk of it was especially foul, and using it on anything beyond the afterlife was like spending dirty money. Maybe she was just a good saver. If you didn’t spend your wealth on the little things, it added up to a fortune saved.

Maybe he was thinking about it all wrong. She’d already spared a full day across the two of them; she’d fought for them. Instead of quibbling over details, he decided then and there to help Phyllis. Once this was done, he’d buy the rest of the necessary prestige from New York, and he’d give it to her. She’d earned that much, fighting in an occult war that wasn’t her own.

The brilliant shine of satisfaction faded quickly. This prestige wasn’t a reward from any task, so the surge of emotions was brief. Nevertheless, he felt more awake now. More aware.

“Time to go,” he muttered, pushing to his feet and leaving the sanctuary. Wooden floors creaked in time with his leather shoes. Sunlight shone through stale but dustless air.

Once he was out in the apartment, the sanctuary door shut itself behind him.

Maybe a minute had passed since his wish had come true. He put his hand in his right pants pocket and pulled out the dime. He trusted that Phyllis had dodged without taking any serious wounds. If not, there was little he could do but find her body and carry it out.

Even if she was alive, she probably needed help. Marco too, assuming they all came to the same temple. They had to get out of here as quickly as possible. CPUSA would be sending people, if they didn’t already have a mole or two in the temple hierarchy, and if the New York cult found a woman cultist, it would only take one hardline zealot to literally hang her from the rafters. They’d reason it was never too late to prevent another Apostate, and thus another Fall.

He pinched a bit of crusty cloth on his shirt. It was dyed dark with Marco’s dried blood and layered with a few tough strands of membranous, shredded tissue. He looked at the caked blood on his hands and shoes. He probably had a smear or two across his scalp and face. He was otherwise only sore and tired, and he knew he was lucky to be in such fine shape. Unfortunately, even a little blood looked like an ocean to most people.

They’d take notice when he left the apartment. In turn, if he started searching other apartments on the third story, if he looked at other sanctuaries, New York cultists would know he was looking for someone, and they’d help him look. It wouldn’t be an offer, not exactly. For the safety of their temple, they’d want to know who else paid off their debt in a sanctuary. If possible, they’d record the responsible wishes in their record books, interview the dodgers and figure out why the Baron was bloodstained from head to toe.

He wandered into the apartment kitchenette and idly tried the sink. Cold water sprang forth. He washed his hands and face, bringing himself further into the world. He leaned down and drank a gulp, then shut it off. Nothing more to do here.

At this point, cleaning his shirt with a wish was far too expensive. Almost a year of prestige would have to be spent if he wanted to remove the egregious evidence. The only real option was to take control of the situation before anyone else could.

The Baron crossed to the front door, opened it onto the temple chamber, and stepped out onto a metal-mesh balcony. He was about three stories up, half-hidden behind hundreds of hanging tapestries. Far below but not far distant, a few young men could be seen playing cards at a table. Better to get their attention first; pretend to belong.

He leaned over the railing and bellowed down to them, “I need assistance!”

Someone glanced up at him. The ensconced lamps cast a soft underglow to the Baron, but there was more than enough light up here, even without a direct line of sight to the ridge lights. The brown-black stains on his shirt were recognized for what they were. A man threw down his cards and shouted back with cupped hands, “Who goes there?”

“The Philosopher!” the Baron yelled, “Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach! Before I can speak with anyone else, I need the assistance of neophyte Osman!”

“Osman? Why?”

“This concerns his father, General Osman, and I must respect the nobleman’s privacy!”

The man at the table signalled for someone to go. “Five minutes!” he shouted up.

The Baron checked his watch. Five minutes to the top of the hour. There were still a few hours until the shop closed, and Osman probably worked as a gatekeeper until five. Hopefully, he would be here. If not, the Baron would call for the Greenwich Oracle, Maurice, and try to work with him, though it’d be more difficult to persuade a senior cultist to help.

Soon after, Osman and the Oracle both appeared far below him, then started spiraling up the stairwell to reach him. Facing both was half a victory, half a failure. Such was life.

Once they were within earshot, the Baron hailed them, “Oracle Clare! Neophyte Osman! Thank you for coming on such sudden notice.”

The young Osman was better dressed today. His shirt was properly cut for his short stature, and his voluminous body hair was well hidden beneath a high collar. Maurice on the other hand seemed unchanged, wearing almost identical suspenders, pinching his face in the same sour manner and staring with broad eyes through coke-bottle glasses.

“Baron!” Osman called, actually shocked at his appearance. “What happened?”

“The reports from Brooklyn are true?” Maurice asked.

“Probably.” The Baron inspected his bloody sleeves. “What’ve you been told?”

“Murder, dead mafioso, three separate shootouts since this morning.”

“Practically a war,” Osman added.

“The Zombie killed a police officer?” the Oracle asked.

The Baron raised a hand to pause the onslaught of questions. “He injured him. Someone else killed him.”

“It doesn’t matter. Tammany Hall is throwing a fit. I heard Tweed call it a second Salem.”

The Baron lowered his hand and smiled wanly. “Nothing that extreme.”

“What the hell is happening then?” Maurice asked.

“I was in another gunfight—a fourth one. This isn’t my blood though.”

“You dodged? Where is the Zombie then?”

“He’ll catch up soon—and yes, I dodged because I was in danger. I can’t tell you anything else due to client confidentiality. Mercenary work.”

“You say that too lightly.” Maurice was scowling. “New York has trusted you as a rule. Now that’s in question. I’m being questioned for trusting you!”

The Baron shrugged as if this weren’t a dire report of dangerous political conditions. “This wasn’t my fault, but I can’t say more.”

“Do you know how much it’ll cost to cover for you? How many palms we’ll grease? How many souls we’ll fill with prestige?” Maurice squeezed his forehead between his palms. “Salem was a one-time event. You promised us, and we believed it.”

“This isn’t like Salem. Everything that happened is for a good cause.”

“Which is?”

“I can’t tell you until I’m done. I’m sorry.”

The Oracle breathed in through his nose, long and sharp, staring through his glasses with keen appraisal. “Do you know what I hear when you say that? I hear that you know something we should know. I’m hearing that Tammany Hall is right to call for your debriefing. Tweed has already asked for you to stand before the nobility and the High Oracle.”

“I’d have to refuse that request,” the Baron said.

“At this rate, when will it stop being a request and start being an order?”

The Baron could plainly see that this conversation was getting nowhere, and Maurice was no longer going to meet kindness with respect. It was time to be rude.

“Maurice, I didn’t call for you, and I’m not here to justify myself to New York. This temple is neutral ground, and I asked Osman to assist me.”

Maurice narrowed his eyes. He understood that this was a purely hostile relationship now. “Whatever message you have for Osman or his father, you can give to me.”

“No, I can’t. You’re interfering. If you don’t give us a little privacy, I’ll be forced to leave without doing very necessary, very important work that could affect the future of New York itself.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don’t trust me, so I’ll be blunt. I’m not going to talk to you.” He pointed to the stairwell. “Get the story out of Osman after I’m done, if he doesn’t want to keep it a secret.”

“This is my temple,” said the Oracle.

“It’s your neutral ground, and I’m asking for equal hospitality, no matter what.” He pinched his nose. “Screw the fancy language. Get out of here, Maurice. Osman, come inside the room. I’m talking to you now.”

“Baron?” Osman needed a little more than a demand.

“This is important enough that I’m covered in another man’s blood. If you talk to me, and you think Maurice should know, tell him after.”

Osman glanced at the Oracle, who waved him off before pinching his nose.

“Yes, Baron,” Osman said. “I’ll make that call myself.”

The Greenwich Oracle was frustrated, but he knew when he was beaten and when to retreat. “You keep me apprised,” he said to Osman, “and you, Philosopher. You’ve got a lot to answer for. We can’t let you out on the street under these conditions. This is a fair warning. Try to leave, we’ll hold you outside the temple grounds until Tammany comes.”

“I understand.”

“You dodged, so the Zombie isn’t here. Don’t think you can run free today.”

“He’ll be here as soon as he can.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Expect to spend the night here.”

“Or else?” the Baron asked.

Maurice grunted, growing angry. “I want to be your friend, Baron d’Holbach. You shouldn’t want me to be your enemy.”

“I don’t.” The Baron reached back to open the apartment door. “Osman?”

“Yes, Baron,” Osman said, sliding past the Baron’s arm.

The Baron stepped inside and shut the door behind him, holding onto the handle.

“Baron?” Osman prompted the moment they were alone. “I have a question.”

“One second.” d’Holbach waited until he could hear the Oracle running down the steps. “He’ll be making a phone call or two.”

“Yes, Baron,” Osman said. “I imagine so.”

The Baron smiled. “Ask your question.”

Osman seemed vaguely anxious. “Why are you covered in blood?”

“I was saving someone’s life. He was bleeding very badly.”

“Did you save him?”

“Probably, but he was lucky. That’s a large part of why I’m here. He’s dodged. One of my friends came with him. They should both be in the temple, but I need your help.”

Osman frowned with genuine worry now. “Why? What happened?”

“There really isn’t much time, but I need to know something about you, Osman. What do you know about women cultists? They’re evil, right?” 

“They’re all evil,” Osman agreed readily.

“Like I’m evil?”

“I didn’t say you were evil,” Osman corrected nervously.

“The stories you heard put me in the same categories as women. Correct?”

Osman nodded without saying a word.

“Or the stories you’ve read, maybe?”

Osman hesitated, and his eyelids twitched, revealing a wince that he wasn’t yet skilled enough to fully suppress. “No, Baron, I haven’t been reading anything.”

“Ha!” The Baron beamed his biggest smile at Osman, pushing past any impropriety with promises of fraternity. “So you’ve read Apostasy. Good, good! Where’d you find a copy? Tammany doesn’t keep one.”

Osman’s face fell with shame.

The Baron was quick to correct whatever fears were dancing through Osman’s head. “I’m not reporting you, neophyte. I’m praising you. That’s curiosity. Admirable.”

Osman raised his head. “Ah, uh…” After a moment, he seemed to reorganize his understanding, coming to peace with honesty. “Yes, Baron. My friend had a copy.”

The Baron’s continuing smile was no act. This was great news, and meant that Osman could be recruited to his causes. “Was it a fun read?”

Osman looked confused. “No—well, yes, but—I mean, it didn’t seem all that evil to me.”

“Good! This is a good sign! What’ve you been told though?”

“About women?”

“Yes! About women.”

“Women make bad cultists. They can’t be trusted.”

The Baron laughed. It wasn’t derisive. It was a friendly chuckle, shared between the master and the student, and Osman seemed relieved to hear it. “Have you ever wondered, if nobody will teach a woman about the occult, where women cultists come from?”

“Yes, Baron,” Osman said. “I don’t know how there’d be enough of them to induct each other.”

That was the first open, honest insight he’d heard from the neophyte Osman, and a sign of incredible trust in the Baron. “There aren’t enough for induction. They read Apostasy, and they induct themselves—all alone! Have you ever met someone who is self-inducted into the system of prestige?”

“No, Baron.”

“They’re incredible cultists, every last one of them. They’ve got a stronger will than the average man. They’re experienced, capable, and resourceful. They don’t survive long on the margins of this game unless they have the raw, genuine skill to take big risks and win big, understand?”

Osman’s eyes opened a little wider, a minor epiphany. “It’s harder for them.”

“Far harder. If a woman cultist is discovered, she has to give up her prestige or die. Sometimes both. Every time they talk shop with a man, it’s a massive risk. If one of them puts their trust in you, it says a lot about you, doesn’t it? It means that you’re stalwart and loyal, able to hold a secret. It means you’re better than all other men.”

“Yes, Baron,” Osman said dutifully. “My father calls them roaches, but I think I get it—why the book says you’re a Hound for them—the women I mean.”

“Yes. I’m a Hound of Artemis, and I work with women whenever I can. I’m sure you can guess where this is going?

Osman nodded slowly. “One of your friends is a woman cultist.”

The Baron nodded in cheerful agreement. “And?”

“And…” Osman paused for several seconds, eyes darting from side to side as he realized that the Baron was respecting him enough to let him think. He closed his eyes, considering the Baron’s true intentions, and with every passing second, he relaxed. In real time, the Baron could see the young man growing, choosing his own beliefs.

“And…” Osman finished, opening his eyes. “You want me to help her.” A statement, not a question. A recognition, not a repudiation.

Recontextualized by the system of prestige itself, women were raised up, worthy of the Baron’s respect, of a man’s respect. The neophyte wanted to help, to share in the pride of the skilled and strong.

Just like that, Osman was becoming a Hound of Artemis.

Author’s Note:

I sincerely love this part of the story. Belief isn’t enough, but the action of a new believer can change the course of lives. Osman believes in women now!

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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July 25, 2026

CONTENT WARNINGS

No specific warnings.

A cultist couldn’t accidentally make a wish, nor could they make the wrong wish. The system wasn’t cruel or ironic. It demanded strength of will and clarity of intent, saving many fools from regrettable impulses. Psychotropic drugs, heavy drinking, and strong sedatives disabled many inexperienced cultists entirely. If a wish was impossible or could only be granted partially, the gods ensured that the wisher knew their limitations, and they priced the wish accordingly.

The only uncertainty that crept into the system was designed. The gods never set a consistent price for anything. Except for a few very old, traditional wishes like the penny wish or speaking with the dead, a wish today under one circumstance might be vastly cheaper than a wish tomorrow under another. Subtlety and privacy led to discounts. If the wish could be explained by coincidence or freak occurrence, that was even better.

This inconsistent pricing allowed the gods to be flexible. Sometimes, they granted wishes that should’ve been slightly too expensive. Often, they demanded fatal debts for highly crafted, technically affordable wishes that would overtly change the course of history.

Nobody could ever wish for a series of coincidences and failures ending in a nuclear launch. The required changes would be small, but the intent would be too grand for any man to afford. Nevertheless, a fatal wish could be made, a suicide by prestige with no result.

Wishes were never granted for the dead—even if they died in the sanctuary, waiting through an impossible debt for the rest of their life.

Because wishes could change in value over time, they were only priced at the moment of the wish itself. One couldn’t plan ahead for a specific amount unless the goal was stable, like Piazzi’s wish to heal his leg. Then and only then, the cost was unlikely to change.

One of the most bizarre outcomes of this system was the close relationship between knowledge and prestige. When people were ignorant of the strength of a miracle, it was hardly a miracle at all. When people learned enough to recognize the impossible, even small changes could become truly astounding. This meant that belief affected the price of a wish through its relationship to coincidence and subtlety. Some tricks that used to be affordable were now impossibly expensive. Other outcomes, which had seemed impossible, were now slight modifications to an existing science. For this reason, the cults tended to value ambiguity over well-defined ideas and ignorance over knowledge. It was a deplorable attitude but understandable, for a dire discovery or two might behave like a Fall in its own right.

Despite the role that belief played in pricing wishes, the system of prestige didn’t operate on belief alone. The will to wish had to thrive below conscious thought. It had to be unshakeable like a zealot’s faith. A cultist had to know the gods were real and ready to intervene, just as they knew that the sun rose in the morning.

Only the Baron was an exception to this rule. He disbelieved in the gods, but he failed to believe so specifically and willfully, that the system itself was given a new rational framework in his mind. Once he’d lived long enough, this kind of connection had become inevitable. He could work the system without being a cultist.

#

The pressing question was, could Marco make a wish? The answer was almost certainly a resounding no, but the Baron hadn’t tested him for occult induction yet, and Phyllis would have to cooperate. She was the only one at hand with any available prestige.

The Baron was staring at his leather shoes, considering their resources and their limitations. There weren’t many options that didn’t forfeit the secrecy and security of their mission or leave Marco to the mercies of their enemies. There were hardly any options at all, now that CPUSA had boxed them in on the subway.

Phyllis was standing over the fare checker, arguing with him about the many things they could and couldn’t do. The Baron wasn’t paying much attention, but he thought the checker must be winning the argument.

The woman was red-faced with frustration. “We could kill you here, stop the train, and run back to Clark Street. What do you say to that?”

The checker replied promptly: “Clark Street will stay covered. We’ve got enough secular authority back there—”

“We could kill you under Manhattan, stop the train, and find a side tunnel.”

“What—you think it’s a maze all the way up to the banks of the East River? We’ve got enough men to blockade the tunnels. We’ll root you out.”

“We’ll break through them!”

The checker made a motorboat sound with his lips, breathy and bored. “Too many threats, lady. If you want to kill me, get it over with. When I don’t radio in, they’ll assume the worst, and you can add a city employee to your body count.” He sniffed and waited for her to respond. She just glared at him, an expression he actually shied away from by looking at the inset lights in the train’s ceiling.

“We have the invincible man,” Phyllis said, genuinely exasperated. “Don’t you understand that? You can’t win.”

The Baron didn’t like this direction, if only because it forced him to deploy the Zombie as an assassin. “We can’t just start murdering people,” he said quietly.

Phyllis swept around, all but shouting Benedict Arnold. “Why not?”

“I understand your frustration, but the Zombie is my nuclear weapon. People accept me because I’m with him and he’s with me, but if they think he’s no longer safe, or they think that I’m a threat to the peace, they’ll exile me. They might even kill me.” He looked over at the Zombie, who was swaying with the train, relaxed, trusting the Baron to come up with a plan. “It’s mutually assured destruction. If I ask him to tear the world to pieces, then I’ll be punished. Justifiably so.”

“So you’ll surrender?” the checker asked him.

The Baron scoffed. “Not to you. I’m talking about principles.”

“Tsch.” The checker took out a handkerchief and wiped his damp face. “I heard a bullet passed through you today. That true?”

“Maybe,” the Baron said.

“Jesus, everyone has so much goddamn prestige these days. You’ve got to be spent.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe, maybe,” the checker mocked. “You’re empty, or you’d have dodged already.”

That was mostly true, but easily solved with a quick word to Phyllis. The real reason they hadn’t dodged was simple—Marco probably wasn’t a full-blown cultist. He couldn’t wish and thus couldn’t dodge to a temple. Until he was fully inducted, Marco could only escape on foot.

Unfortunately for them, the average induction period was nearly a month. For someone with only a copy of Apostasy and a deep desire to make a wish, it might be upwards of a year. Marco had been listening to stories for a handful of hours, and even with the Cat in his belly, the Zombie at his side, and the sights and sounds of the occult fresh on his mind, it wasn’t enough. At absolute minimum, it’d take hours more to make him believe down to his bones.

Nevertheless, they were running out of options. “We have to try,” the Baron said to Phyllis.

“What’s that?” Phyllis asked him.

The Baron rose to his feet. “Would you mind staying where you are?” he asked the checker.

“I ain’t moving unless you try to leave.” The fare checker pointed towards the front of the subway car. “Lots of innocent civilians on the train. You can hide among them if you want a lot of bloodshed.”

“It’s nothing like that. If you’ll respect a little privacy?”

The checker snorted, then laughed briefly. “Whatever.”

The Baron rounded up everyone, and they huddled together at the rear end of the subway car, with Marco against the emergency door, still wrapped up in the Baron’s forest-green jacket. “Assume he can hear us,” the Baron whispered to the others.

“He’d wish for that?” the Zombie asked quietly.

“After enough time, yes. He’ll try to save his prestige, but we need to keep this brief or he might get nervous enough to listen in. Phyllis, I need you to give me a half-day of prestige. I’ve already got some coins in my pocket. Trust me, I’ll pay you back.”

Phyllis furrowed her brows. “What, are you planning to dodge without Marco?”

“Just trust me.”

Phyllis touched the Baron’s wrist. “I wish you had a half-day of my prestige. What now?”

The Baron felt the warm relief of new prestige settling at the back of his conscious mind. It wasn’t much, but the smallest dose felt rewarding when he’d held nothing beforehand. “Thank you. We’ll use this in an emergency.”

“What do you mean, an emergency?” She glanced over at Marco; she knew the same things the Baron did. “We can’t leave him here.”

“I know,” the Baron muttered. “The prestige might have other uses.”

“Like what? Buying into debt for something big?”

“Not that. We’ve tested it. I can’t ask for more than one week in debt.”

“Then what else?”

“If I’m made a hostage, dodging could let the Zombie off the hook. Honestly, I don’t know yet. This is precautionary.”

“Okay,” she said dismissively. “Fine.”

The Baron stole a glance at his watch. It was far past thirty-seconds since they began talking. “Okay, if he was listening in, he’s probably run out of time on his wish. Or I hope he has. Here’s the second step. Phyllis, I want you to pass a half-day to Marco.”

“Are you going to mule him?” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “He can’t use it.”

“It’s an experiment. I need to be sure he can’t make wishes.”

“How will I know?” Marco asked.

The Baron answered: “If you’re inducted, you can feel prestige. If you aren’t, you can’t. It’s like a drug, very addictive on your first try. You’ll know if this works. Phyllis, if you would?”

The Artemisian sighed but touched Marco on the shoulder. “I wish you had a half-day of my prestige.”

He looked at them questioningly. “Was that it?”

“I’ve lost the half-day,” Phyllis said grimly. “He’s muling it.”

“What does that mean?” Marco asked.

“Mule, like a pack animal. You’ve got prestige, but you can’t spend it or give it back until you’re a cultist. It’s an incredibly stupid way to hide prestige. Some very large pools were lost forever when they were handed over to someone who was too stubborn for induction.”

“Some people can’t be inducted?”

“More or less.” The Baron licked his lips. “Here’s the rub, Marco. We know you can’t dodge. We’ve got to come up with another plan to get you out of here.”

“Is anything coming to mind?” Phyllis asked.

“Not yet, no,” the Baron admitted.

“Not much time left!” the checker called. He was seated beside the doors that would open onto the train platform. He leaned over and rapped them with a knuckle. “Surrender, and you can just walk away. We’ll remove the Cat on the station floor, heal him up, and you can enjoy the rest of your lives.” He waited for them to respond.

They said nothing but cast dreary faces at him.

“Give it up, damn it,” the checker said. “I heard you talking. All of it!”

“Of course he did,” the Baron muttered.

“The boy can’t dodge!” the checker finished. “It’s over!”

“I’m a man!” Marco shouted.

“For Christ’s sake, this is your life!” The checker was sweating harder. He daubed his brow with the kerchief. “Do you think this is a gag? If you don’t surrender here, there’ll be hell to pay. There’s not a CPUSA member who won’t be ready to die—for their families, for their loved ones. If you give up, they all go home!”

The Baron turned towards the checker. “If we give up the Cat, the Soviet cult will change. You know that, don’t you?”

“I don’t care,” the checker replied.

“Stalin will have power, real occult power. There’ll be assassinations, inevitable secular bleedthrough, a war—maybe even the bomb someday, the end of the world.”

“Slippery slope bullshit! You don’t know any of that.”

The Baron marched up the car and met the checker face-to-face. “Do you know Denisov, the Orthodox representative in the States?”

“Of course I do.”

“Good. He believes that if I fail, this will end in nuclear war. Why should I doubt him? Why should I help Stalin?” A moment later, the Zombie took position in the Baron’s shadow, with Phyllis and Marco grabbing onto the standing pole just behind him.

The checker scowled. “Denisov would say anything for help.”

“Do you know what Langley’s primary goal is?” the Baron asked.

“You mean the CIA spooks? No.”

“They want to find a way to stop the bombs with prestige.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“You don’t understand. Only the Russian bombs, not the NATO warheads. That way, when they launch their arsenal, there’s no retaliation—no mutually assured destruction. They’re one step from going over the edge. Do you think the Bolsheviks are any different?”

“Screw off, man—”

“These aren’t cults looking for the afterlife. They’re looking to win the Cold War through any and all means.”

“It’s a good speech,” the checker said, “but I’ll take my chances that Stalin ain’t crazy enough to blow up the world. You don’t have a choice anyways. It’s surrender now, nice and neat, or surrender after killing men that just want to go home. Good men.”

The Baron stared carefully at the checker. “The Soviets must have a dossier on me that says I can be swayed by moral arguments. This is all too calculated.”

The checker shrugged. “So what? It’s true, ain’t it?”

“I try to do the right thing.”

“There you go. Doesn’t matter where I learned it. They have your number, chief.”

Phyllis shook the standing pole, which the Zombie had knocked loose with that earlier punch. “Zombie, can you break off a chunk of this?”

The invincible man chuckled. “Maybe.”

Phyllis stepped back from the steel pole. “Give it a try?”

“Ha! Sure.” The Zombie waved Marco and Phyllis aside. Then he turned his hand around backwards, grabbed the pole with an awkward grip, and said, “Hope I don’t fall.”

“Don’t you dare fall,” the Baron commanded.

Laughing, the Zombie threw his weight forward, a turn that would’ve torn tissues and sprained his wrist. Instead, a chunk of the metal pole twisted around until it snapped loose like a brittle straw, breaking far too easily. The Zombie threw one foot forward to catch his balance, and the entire car’s floor creaked uneasily beneath the stomp.

“Too close,” the Baron warned.

“Still got it,” the Zombie said, wiggling the broken pole like a baton in his hands.

Phyllis smiled pleasantly. “Thanks.”

The Zombie passed her the length of steel. “Break some faces. For me.”

“My pleasure.” Phyllis leveled it at an imaginary horizon, as if checking its length for the finer qualities of crooked metal piping. Once she seemed satisfied that it was heavy and blunt, she stepped in front of the checker and hefted the weapon’s weight in her right hand, up and down, up and down.

The checker’s eyes followed it. “What, going to hit me?”

With a sudden tight grip, she swung it underhand into the man’s shin. There was a hollow thunk, and the checker shouted, then covered his mouth to silence himself. His eyes bulged and watered over his hands before narrowing to a pained squint.

“Good. You’re quiet,” Phyllis said calmly. “Let’s get something straight. I’m the new dock boss in Red Hook. If he wasn’t the Baron d’Holbach, I’d be in charge here, and if you say another smug word, I’ll crack your kneecaps. Do you understand?”

The checker nodded, still holding his mouth shut.

“Don’t squeal on me either. I didn’t break anything—yet.”

The words leaked out between the checker’s fingers. “I wish it didn’t hurt so much.” Then he relaxed visibly, arms flopping against the seat, spine sagging. It was a narcotic reaction, far beyond any normal pain relief. He looked down at his pant leg lazily. “I think I’m bleeding,” he said, mostly to himself. “Jesus. That broke the skin.”

Phyllis ignored his commentary. “I’m not negotiating with a Commie,” she told the Baron. “Now, let’s come up with a way out of this mess. Any fresh ideas?”

The Baron shrugged. “We can’t face off against fifty people. It’s too much firepower and probably enough prestige to impede the Zombie. We’d need Meister Schuler, or an army.”

Phyllis frowned like she’d bitten into a lime coated in lye. “That man was terrifying.”

“Oh, I know. We’re on the same wavelength, but I can’t think of a better distraction, and I know CPUSA won’t be eager to tell New York about the Cat either.”

“Do you have some way to contact them?” she asked.

“No, but if we’re lucky, CPUSA’s setup will be sighted on the platform and reported to Tammany or Greenwich before we reach the station. They’re going to need serious hardware, and they can’t hide what they’re about to do.”

“Lucky. Your plan is to be lucky.”

“No, it’s just a possibility.”

Phyllis tapped her pipe against the backrest of the nearest seat. “This is a damn fine mess. When did it become reasonable to start a war over a rock?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“Yeah, it isn’t fucking reasonable. We can’t seriously rely on luck, Baron.”

“I know, I know.”

Marco sat down in a seat across from the fare checker, sagging listlessly in the oversized, forest-green suit jacket. “Are we going to be shot at?”

“Absolutely,” the Baron said. “We’ll need to stay low.” The train began to lean slightly, tilting over as it began going around a very long, very broad curve. “We’re turning north. Wall Street station should unload on the right hand side.”

“Can we break out to the left?” Phyllis speculated. “Maybe to another platform?”

“Just be a wall at your backs,” the checker slurred.

She pointed the pipe at the fare checker. “Shut up before I break your shins.”

“He’s right on that point,” the Baron noted. “The 2 is in a tight tunnel here. There’s not enough room on the left side to move around. Only on the right, same side as the station.”

“Then what, Baron?” Phyllis asked. “We need something.”

“Fine, you’re right,” the Baron said. In his heart, he finally made the undesirable choice—they’d have to use the Zombie to break out through enemy lines. But first… “Zombie, would you eat the man’s radio? This can’t go back to Malik.”

The Zombie waltzed over and grinned manically in front of the fare checker. When the wished-drugged man didn’t react, the Zombie leaned down and gingerly plucked the receiver off his lapel. A thin cable ran down to a belt-secured antenna and battery unit. The Zombie kneeled slowly and put the whole receiver in his mouth—nearly a fist-sized object—then closed his incisors over the cable. It snipped cleanly, like he’d run it through steel scissors.

“Fuck,” the checker muttered.

The Zombie closed his jaw, and the mic unit popped like a candy shell; then he opened his mouth again, chewing, and all the brown components wrapped in candy-colored bands disintegrated on his tongue and between his teeth. Some bright bits of electronics spilled out between the Zombie’s lips. He chewed messily, right in the checker’s face, grinding everything down to shards, slivers, and chunks. The checker didn’t say another word, but he started to shudder. The Zombie swallowed in one go and laughed.

“Thank you, friend,” the Baron said. “You’ll be breaking us out, but I want you to avoid killing anyone if possible. We need to minimize secular damage, or Phyllis and Marco won’t be able to remain in the country, let alone the city or state. Do you understand?”

“If anyone injures you,” the Zombie said, “they’ll die. No exceptions.”

“That’s your choice,” the Baron said. “Try to disable as many pieces of hardware as possible. Injure, break bones, make a ruckus. Remind them of the Pact, while I stick near Phyllis and Marco to keep them safe.”

The Zombie frowned. “Body shielding weakens the Pact.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll just be near them.”

The train began to straighten out. The curve was coming to an end.

“Next stop,” the checker murmured. “Wall Street.”

The Baron pointed to the Zombie. “Stick to the right-hand window. We’ll see an orange signal light on the approach and a red signal light to trigger the stop for the platform.” He waved Marco up and over to him. “Come.”

The teen moved slowly, but he didn’t refuse. “Yes, Baron?”

“Once we figure out the angle of their attack, I need you to put as much terrain between you and them as possible, then get down flat.”

“I’ll try,” Marco muttered, already exhausted.

The Baron patted his pants. Wallet, keys, coins—nothing else. “Cigar case and lighter?” he asked Marco.

The teen patted the inner pockets of the Baron’s jacket, found the cigar case and zippo, and passed them over. “Here. Are you smoking?”

“No. They’re just expensive.” The Baron pocketed them both, feeling more secure with a supply of nicotine at hand. It was a stupid addiction, but he wasn’t quitting today, and he’d need a smoke after this—assuming they escaped.

The Zombie watched this interaction thoughtfully. “It’s been a long day,” he observed. “Remind you of anything?”

The Baron grunted. “I don’t think the Napoleonic Wars were anything like this.” He gestured to Phyllis. “Do you have that revolver hidden away?”

“Still do.” She tapped a lump in her pants pocket.

The Baron nodded. “Hold onto it. Fire a shot only if we need a distraction. As far as they know, we’re unarmed and relying wholly on the Zombie’s invincibility.”

The Zombie grinned. “It always felt like this, just before the volley, or before the charge. Bursts of fighting after stretches of boredom. Blood and sweat, Baron. Stone, steel, brick, and dust. Oh, it’s good to be alive!”

The checker straightened in his seat and shuddered again. “That still smarts.” He pushed himself slowly to his feet. “You’re all assholes.”

“I will hit you again,” Phyllis reminded him.

He coughed and circled a finger in the air above, a signal to round up a crew. “Can I have your attention for a moment? There’s something you should know.”

“Make it brief,” the Baron said.

The checker nodded. “The braking system, the air brakes. Know how they work?”

“No,” the Baron admitted.

“Air brakes are failsafe. If you damage them, the brakes apply automatically.”

The Zombie was staring out the right-hand window. “Orange light!” he called.

“We’re out of time,” the Baron said.

“One thing!” the checker shouted. “If a single valve fractures, then the brake line vents, and the brakes lock. Instantly, the train stops!”

“I’m gonna hit you!” Phyllis shouted at the checker, raising the pipe.

The checker took one step back and wedged himself against the wall and a row of seats.  “I wish that happened now.”

The metal ping of a rupturing valve vanished beneath the screaming of the air brakes. The entire train lurched, yanking the floor out from under their collective feet. Everyone but the fare checker fell over at once; the Baron tumbled over his shoes with instinct, twisting over to catch himself with his arms. The Zombie flopped onto his chest, striking the floor with a metallic thud. Phyllis had caught herself by grabbing onto the remains of the standing pole.

The Baron raised his head, pushing up on his elbows to check on Marco.

The teen had fallen badly onto his right side, smacking the crown of his head across something solid. He was rolling onto his knees, wobbly, one hand touching a bloody tear across his scalp.

The fare checker was staggering towards Marco, reaching down into his baggy pants, down to the thigh of his hobbling, lame leg.

“Marco!” the Baron called, trying to rouse the boy to motion.

The checker jerked with a grunt of satisfaction—a sound like an adhesive bandage ripping out hair—and out of his baggy pants, he drew out a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun with two bands of sealing tape stuck to the stock. There wasn’t enough time to react.

“Zombie!” the Baron roared, even as the train lurched towards a complete stop.

The checker held the shotgun close to Marco’s back, cocked both hammers with his off hand, and pulled the right trigger. Everyone heard the first shot.

Marco’s lower back turned to a tight pit of hamburger surrounded by frayed tatters of the Baron’s jacket. He didn’t even scream, only collapsed.

Phyllis made an animal noise and struggled to pull the revolver out of her pocket.

The checker seemed unhappy with the results. He leaned in close, practically pushing the left barrel into an area over Marco’s left kidney, and fired a second shot. Thunder and lead churned a deep hole in Marco’s viscera, spraying bloodspatters up onto the shotgun, the checker’s hand, and his shirt sleeve.

There was a terrible moment of recognition as the train finally, mercifully rolled to a complete stop. Civvies were already screaming in nearby subway cars. Lights danced outside the windows, coming out of a parallel tunnel in the dark, a space far from the platform.

“The Cat is in here!” the checker roared, calling his allies to him.

Behind the Baron, a pistol barked twice; in front of him, the checker’s legs burst open, struck by two revolver rounds. Phyllis pulled the trigger a third time on an empty cylinder, while the checker fell over, howling in agony right until his face struck the floor.

Phyllis shot past the Baron, practically throwing herself onto the fallen checker, scrabbling on hands and knees. The man’s head came up half an inch, just in time for her to bring the pipe down on the back of his skull. Thunk.

No further motion. Unconscious? Dead?

Over a century ago, the Baron would’ve reacted to all of the violence with a series of traumatic appraisals, grappling with the enormity of the disaster in front of him. Even after all those years, adrenaline still ruled him. Yet the Baron didn’t subsume his thoughts into mere panic or even controlled aggression. A well-practiced reaction took hold, which he’d learned through an unpleasant amount of personal experience. Ignore casualties on all sides. Pay attention to everything, and look for the next threat, then the next.

That was why he looked up and away from Phyllis’s brutal violence, why he dismissed Marco’s damaged body, why he even ignored the readiness of the Zombie, rising to his feet. He looked along the train, saw the cowering civilians through the small inset windows in the connector doors, and then glanced outside the right-hand windows at the moving lights.

Those were flashlights, he realized, rushing along the only significant gap between the subway cars and the tunnel wall. Yards away and seconds out from contact, a squad of CPUSA was approaching their car, assailants in the dark.

The Baron was in the light. As were his allies.

“Threats, right side! Get down!” the Baron yelled, even as he threw himself to the right, trying to press his body beneath the lip of the puke-green seats. To her credit, Phyllis didn’t hesitate, instantly flattening herself beside the checker.

Only the Zombie remained on his feet, looking curiously out the right-side windows as black-clad figures rushed up to them, holding Thompson SMGs in firing positions.

“Do you recognize me?” the Zombie called to them.

There was a single heartbeat of hesitation—one of the mercs spoke into a radio handset, inaudible through the glass—and then the mercs answered all at once with an execution-style fusillade of firepower, ripping right through the windows.

Cubes of safety glass cascaded down over the Baron and Phyllis alike, while bullets rapidly scattered and splashed off the Zombie. They ricocheted into the walls, the floors, and even the plastic seat cushions, spraying little fiber threads like confetti.

The Zombie cast them a shark’s grin, and amongst the many rounds wasted against him, a single round shattered against his teeth, a momentary streak of shrapnel that deflected off and peppered the back wall. The Baron saw it happen; he wouldn’t easily forget.

The Zombie smiled even wider. CPUSA had declared war on the invincible man.

Author’s Note:

Thank you for reading! It means a great deal to me.

This chapter went up early due to functioning as a bonus Patreon chapter when I hit a Rising Stars run. If you’re seeing this much later, leave a comment about this dated artifact of the release process.

As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!

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July 23, 2026