“It’s magic,” the Baron muttered bitterly. He patted Marco on the cheek. The so-called gods were generous. There were no ironic punishments or accidental wishes. Even so, miracles could have such a terrible price. For the privilege of surviving multiple murders at the hands of others, this was Marco’s reward. A belly wound, torn stomach lining, and a future full of scars.
“You don’t believe in magic.” The Zombie removed his purple cardigan and wiped his knife and hands with the cloth, then draped it over Marco’s seeping gut wound.
“You know what I meant,” the Baron complained.
Phyllis offered the Cat o’ Nine Lives to d’Holbach. Her wrist trembled as if it weighed as much as a human life. What a terrible burden it was, lifted in a blood-red hand.
“Give it to the Zombie,” the Baron said.
She pivoted, and the Zombie waited like a platform to receive the prize. She dropped the Cat in his palm, and he laughed and slipped it in his pants pocket with the little Swiss army knife. To the Zombie, it was a trivial thing, a pale echo of immortality.
Then Phyllis kneeled beside Marco and gently kneaded her hands on the purple sweater, cleaning them a little. “How are you feeling?” she asked him.
The young man was pale and breathing slowly. “I’m not dying,” he whispered.
“People don’t struggle much when they’re freshly wounded,” the Zombie said. “The real pain starts when the infection kicks in, but we’ll clean you out and zip you up first.”
“You know—” He paused to swallow and clear his throat. “You know too much.”
“That’s because I used to be a murderer,” the Zombie said, “but now I’m a friendly murderer. Come on. I’ll get you up.”
“Lift carefully,” the Baron warned.
“So unnecessary,” the Zombie complained. He knelt and very carefully picked Marco up, one arm under his knees, the other around his back. Marco instinctually hung his arm over the Zombie’s shoulders. It was a smooth lift without any straining or effort. He could hold a static weight forever. “Comfortable, little man?”
“Uh—it’s bending my stomach a little.”
“Bear with it. I’ll keep you still.”
Marco blinked blearily, looking up at the man hauling him around like a fragile sculpture. “Huh. Touching you feels… normal?”
“Is that weird?”
“Yeah. You felt like a rock, last time you carried me.”
The Zombie grinned. “Just don’t move around.”
They left Jackson Square Park, abandoning a bench smeared with fresh blood. Spatters spread across the walk where it’d been slung like sweat. By sunrise, there’d be a crime scene report about one John Doe, an unknown victim of a violent assault.
As a group, they trudged through the pre-dawn darkness towards the block with the temple and the 8th Street Bookstore.
Marco closed his eyes and breathed a little deeper. “How do you two do it?”
“Do what?” the Baron asked.
“This is your job. It fuckin’ hurts.”
“Most of the time, it isn’t like this. It’s investigation, intimidation.”
“I get to scare a lot of people,” the Zombie said.
“We throw our weight around,” the Baron added. “We don’t sling bullets or drop bodies. If it was like this often, I wouldn’t be alive. Hell, civil society couldn’t continue.”
“People would call for your head,” Phyllis suggested.
“Like in the old days,” the Zombie whispered wistfully. “War in the streets.”
“Thank goodness it’s not,” the Baron replied before glancing towards the young man. “Do you know what my other job is, Marco?”
“No.” The young man’s answer was so vague, so terse. The pain must be rising up rapidly now. Attention was fading against the baleful intensity of that belly wound.
The Baron pressed on, trying to distract him. “I own real estate in Boston, but it’s all bad investments. They’re old buildings, last century—insulated with asbestos, every single one. Back in forty-nine, I read that the stuff can destroy your lungs. I’m immune, mind you, but I worry about my renters.”
“It’s costing him an arm and a leg to take it all out,” the Zombie said.
“Asbestos is bad?” Phyllis asked. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Military studies were done on ship builders during the war. The results are hush, hush right now, but it’s going to be big news, like the radium girls.”
“Huh,” Marco said, the universal signal of a young person who had no clue what was being discussed and was barely able to muster enough energy to feign interest.
“Their jaws fell out,” the Zombie said.
“Asbestos does that?” Marco groaned with disgust—or with pain.
“The radium girls,” the Zombie added cheerily. “They licked their brushes, and the radioactive paint killed their bones and their jaws rotted out of their mouths.”
“Gross,” Marco muttered, a barely audible word.
They crossed the street. Underneath the streetlights at the corner, the Baron stole a closer look at Marco’s pale, sweaty face. His grimace was set as if his muscles were pinned in place with needles. The bleeding was proceeding faster than he would’ve liked.
“Does your stomach feel full?” the Baron asked.
“Hurts a lot,” Marco said quietly.
“The Cat’s cavity?” Phyllis asked.
“Hurts… most,” Marco muttered.
“We’re almost there,” the Baron said. He suppressed the urge to tell Marco to stay calm. If the lady doth protest too much, that might clue Marco in to the facts. The Cat had left a ruinous mess in his stomach wall, and he was likely hemorrhaging heavily into his abdominal cavity.
The Baron stepped ahead of the Zombie and started walking faster. “Let’s hurry it up.”
“You ready Marco?” the Zombie asked.
“No,” Marco muttered.
“This is your best chance to say goodbye to us. There’s going to be a lot of shouting.”
Marco almost smiled through the pain. “That sucks.”
The Zombie laughed softly. “Tell me about it. But you’ll be all right, kid. I promise you. Murderer’s honor.”
They reached the entrance to the bookstore. The windows facing the street were lit with dim security lights, just enough to see the painted covers of the magazines arrayed on the shelves. The glass was clean, almost perfectly transparent. In the window of the front door, the schedule was hung. The store would open at 7AM on a Monday. The door was wood and glass seated in a frame and anchored to a brick recess. To get inside, it’d be easier to smash a window, but bringing down a large pane would draw a lot of attention.
“Can you smash the lock?” Phyllis asked.
The Zombie inspected the door carefully. “Not with my hands full.”
Phyllis exchanged looks with the Baron. “Do you want to put him down?”
The Zombie stepped closer to the door, inspected it to his satisfaction, and then twisted a little and toe-kicked the corner. The whole door rattled violently. He pulled back a little further and kicked again.
“You’re breaking the glass?” Phyllis asked.
“No.” He kicked a third time, the door banged like it’d been slammed, and there was a metal pang. He stepped back, Marco still laying in his arms, unmoved and unworried. “Yank it open now.”
Phyllis walked up, twisted the knob and pulled. The door opened easily. “What the hell?”
The Zombie nodded at an external bar latch on the back of the door frame. “They didn’t even use the lock. They just latched it from the inside and went upstairs, lazy bastards.” The Zombie nudged the seating of the latch where it’d fallen on the carpet. “Useless.”
“That’ll be the last easy step,” the Baron said.
They walked inside and Phyllis shut the door behind them. The bookstore was warmer, quieter. The half-height shelves were packed to the brim with Sunday’s delivery of books, and various hardbacks were displayed on stands, some bearing detailed renditions of beautiful men and women, others adorned in modernist, abstract illustrations of characters and symbols. These latter pieces handed focus to the title of the work or the author’s name, whichever a publisher thought would sell better.
Phyllis picked a green and yellow book off a shelf, went behind the cash register and sat down on a stool. She judged if she could read it by the dim light of the windows. “I’ll wait here,” she said. The temple was off limits to her. Even being found downstairs could endanger her life, but she might be able to spin a secular cover story from here.
“If someone finds you,” the Baron said, “tell them a European man took your son upstairs to meet with a doctor. When they ask who, give them my name. They’ll come running.”
“Just make it fast,” Phyllis said.
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be safer to wait across the street?” the Zombie asked.
“The Baron’s cover story makes more sense if I’m here,” she said, “and if I’m out on the street, CPUSA might find me. Down here, I’m at least hidden.”
“We’ll vouch for her if it comes to it,” the Baron said.
Marco’s head lolled back a little and he blinked at the ceiling. “Do I have a story?”
“You were stabbed by a Russian cultist,” the Baron said, “in Jackson Street Square.” He stopped at the temple entrance near the bathrooms in the back and tried the knob. Locked, but it wasn’t a particularly tough door either. “I’m going to kick this one in.”
“Go for it,” the Zombie said.
The Baron reared back, then kicked the door near below the knob with the full of his foot. It flew inward with a crack, spraying thin splinters onto the frayed carpeting. The thin latch had punched through the wooden door jamb without much effort. It wasn’t even reinforced with a metal plate.
Much like the well-worn stairs that lay behind it, it was a relic of cheap residential construction. Before Greenwich Village had become a thriving community of counterculture, art, and literature, it’d been a home for immigrants and low-class laborers like stevedores and construction workers. Before this had become a temple, it’d been a poverty-stricken apartment row.
The Baron marched up the stairs. The kick would wake the dead, but he’d deflect all anger and complaints by yelling about an injured boy. He’d demand the Oracle’s help. This was a bloodsoaked emergency, and cheap doors could be fixed later.
The Zombie followed him closely with Marco in his arms, heading up the steep stairs to a brief landing and a thin white door. At this final vestibule, the Baron turned the knob and threw it open into the great auditorium of the temple. It was at least a quarter of a mile long and fully lit, even at 5AM.
A man with a rifle flinched back from the swinging door. “Hello!” he cried with mocking surprise, and a crowd turned around to see their arriving guests. The noise of that movement was too loud, a unison of shifting cloth and scraping boots, all moving at once.
“Baron d’Holbach?” shouted the Greenwich Oracle from a raised podium.
The Baron had expected some pre-dawn activity, but even for the laboring class, this was the hour to rise, not the hour to muster for action. Yet the auditorium wasn’t empty. The Greenwich Oracle wasn’t asleep in a room near his desk. No, New York was already moving.
More than a hundred men were scattered across the floor plans of three buildings, many forced to stand for a lack of nearby seats, and they were armed to the man with rifles and SMGs of every make and design, a veritable armory of surplus gear from the war.
The Baron and the Zombie shared a look. No wonder the front door had been only latched, not locked. New York cultists were readying to deploy on foot throughout the neighborhood. There hadn’t been any buses or cars on the street—this company of occult warriors had spent the night at the temple, readied its armory in the dead of night, and were moving out to their posts before dawn.
Many men had half-raised their weapons at the sight of the Zombie. A tickling feeling crawled up the Baron’s spine, a sense of danger deferred. You couldn’t harm someone in a temple without ruining its sanctity, but there was a desire to threaten the Baron that suffused the crowd like electric charge. As the Zombie had suggested, he was one of their targets—but not necessarily the only one. You didn’t need an army to bring in one reasonable philosopher.
Into the silence, New York’s local leader, Oracle Maurice Clare, furious and as red-faced as his hair, shouted, “Is that blood on that boy?”
The Baron took a big deep breath, buying himself a moment to think. There was no way back. Only forward. Marco’s life depended on this. “Good!” he shouted back.
“What?” the Oracle asked. The crowd was staring them down.
“I’m glad you’re all here! We can avoid any stupid fighting and solve this now!” He strode forward and pushed his arms out ahead of him, sweeping members of the crowd aside. Hand on a Garand. Knuckles against a Thompson. Aside, aside, he pushed them, and the Zombie followed closely. There was a table. The people there picked up their weapons and moved out of the way, letting social momentum push them aside.
The Zombie laid Marco out on the table.
The Baron grabbed the purple cardigan and swept it back off the great weeping wound in Marco’s belly. The boy’s shirt was half-up, stuck to his skin with blood. “A Soviet cultist accosted us in Jefferson Square Park. This young man tried to help me and the Zombie, and he was stabbed for his trouble.”
There were hisses and mutters of disapproval.
“Quiet!” the Oracle roared. “Baron d’Holbach, what are you doing here?”
The Baron looked around at the myriad confused faces. He hoped that the Soviets—that yesterday’s fights—were the main cause for organizing on this scale. “I’m here for the same reason you are,” the Baron guessed, “there’s a fifth column out there.”
“There really are Communists?” a man asked beside the Baron.
“I’ll do the talking!” Maurice said loudly.
The Baron struggled to recall the exact excuse he’d fed the young Osman. “How much have you heard? I told Osman to tell you, but I never did find that dossier on the nobles.”
“Did Osman help you escape yesterday?” the Oracle asked, practically an accusation.
“What do you think?” the Baron replied, projecting utter certainty with flint and steel in his voice, sparking but not yet starting a fire of resentment. “He’s the son of Osman! He made a judgment call for the sake of New York herself!”
Maurice waved the Baron closer, drawing him through the crowd with a come-hither curl of his fingertips. “Baron, his loyalty isn’t in question, but your corrupting influence is.”
The Baron found himself five meters from the podium, looking up at the Oracle. “These interrogations are pointless. You need these men to quell the fighting in your streets. You aren’t here to arrest me—”
“Like hell we aren’t!”
“Oracle—”
“You’re going to Tammany Hall!”
The Baron acted exasperated. “Yes, of course! Do you think I would’ve marched into the lion’s den if I didn’t expect to meet the lion? This is more important than that!”
The Oracle tipped his glasses down and observed Marco slowly breathing on the tabletop. “Why is that boy here then? Mm?”
“I owe him. He saved my life, and I want to buy the prestige to heal him.”
“That’d be an expensive wish—”
“I can afford it.”
“Your story is ridiculous! The sun hasn’t even risen, and somehow, that dusty corner of a park—that fucking miserable scrap of dead earth—bore witness to violence between three men and a child? A boy who saved you, even when you have the devil himself on your side?”
“He was fast, and we were surprised.”
“And the Soviet stabber—is he a corpse in the park? Was he wounded?”
“No. He dodged after the failed stabbing. Completely gone.”
“Conveniently gone,” Maurice said, nearly spitting that last word. “This is a hoodwink, I can smell it. These rotten lies.”
“It doesn’t matter what you think,” the Baron said, choosing open defiance over any further inquiry. “One of your vassals is dying, and I want him to live. I’ll pay for him.”
“Your reputation isn’t sterling,” Maurice said. “Your checks might as well be paper.”
“My reputation is for morality, and my bank will back my checks. I will pay, and this boy will live because it’s right.”
Oracle Maurice tapped his fingers on his podium. He stared at the Baron, and the Baron stared back. “No,” the Oracle said finally, “I’m not healing the boy.”
The Baron’s gut filled with boiling bile. There was a lot he was willing to endure, but a religious leader couldn’t refuse to help someone. “Are you a monster?”
“I won’t be bullrushed in my temple.” Maurice pointed to Marco. “One corpse would be worth the integrity and authority of my office.”
“He’s one of your vassals!”
“We have countless vassals, Baron, and at least one of them dies every day. The question I should ask myself is, why would someone as important as you come back here, after running away, unless there was a very good reason?”
“His life is the reason!”
“I don’t believe that. Tell me why you’re really here.”
“There is no other reason.”
“Maybe you’ll tell Tammany.”
“Yes, fine, I’ll tell Osman, Tweed, and Gagliano in person. Just heal the boy!”
“We’ll wait first,” Maurice said sternly. “Once I get word from them, then I’ll heal him.”
“No, no.” The Baron turned back, rushing to the table where Marco was laid out, pale and waxen with blood loss. “Look, man! This is fatal! If you don’t heal him now, he’s going to bleed out!” He looked down upon Marco, whose eyes fluttered open. It was a terrifying thing to shout, but he met the boy’s gaze, and he nodded once. I’ll save you, he mouthed.
General muttering was sweeping through the crowd. Opinions were taking shape—about the Baron, about Marco, about Maurice’s stubborn refusal. Who was to blame?
Maurice was quick to glance around, to set terms that resolved the tension: “Listen! If the boy knows what you’re hiding, he can tell us, and then we’ll heal him.”
Marco turned his head to look at the Baron for approval or disapproval. The Baron did nothing. If he indicated that Marco had something to hide, Marco was doomed. If any of them admitted that they had the Cat, Oracle Maurice wouldn’t heal Marco until they’d given it up. They couldn’t acquiesce to these demands. They had to find another way forward.
“Put yourself in this young man’s position,” the Baron said, turning away from Marco and returning his attention to the Oracle himself. “Think morally, Maurice. I’m buying prestige from you. I’m paying for his life. If you were in his position, what would you think about the man who refused to heal him because of a petty contest?”
“I’d hate him,” the Oracle said from the high podium. “I’d fear him.”
“He shouldn’t have to fear you. You’re an Oracle. A peaceful leader.”
Maurice pulled off his coke-bottle glasses and looked at the Baron with bare, pale blue eyes. “Does this look like a peaceful assembly? You either started a war or stumbled across one in our sovereign territory. Which is it?”
“Stumbled. I didn’t start this fire.”
“But you blew on the flames, didn’t you? I’m placing guards across Lower Manhattan on General Osman’s orders. He’s convinced there’s about to be a Soviet assault on New York territory. Langley is moving the National Guard into town. Is that your fault too?”
“No. Langley has seen some of the same things I have, that’s all.”
“And what would those be?”
“It’s best if I tell Tammany directly.”
“You called me a leader,” Maurice said grimly, “but you don’t let me lead. You subvert my authority, as if we were peers and you weren’t a guest in my temple. Ask yourself, Baron. Am I punishing the boy, or am I afraid that you’ll play me for a fool? Don’t answer, I don’t care about your excuses. I simply can’t allow you, an outsider, to command me.”
“I’m not commanding,” the Baron said. “I’m buying, begging.”
“The price is more than money then. The price is information. Why do you want the boy healed? What’s so important about him that you’re willing to pay, after you let a police captain perish in the streets of Brooklyn?”
The police captain, which the Zombie had seriously injured, had been alive when they fled. “I didn’t let that captain die. His cultic associates killed him.”
Maurice scowled. “I checked the records. He was not a cultist.”
The Zombie clapped his hands together, hard, and the sound made everyone flinch in a momentary wave. “He made a wish to unjam his gun!” the Zombie called. “That dead police captain was a cultist! I will swear to it on the hidden names of all the gods!”
The Baron elaborated in the silence that followed: “He was a member of the US communist party, a fifth column fighter. He wasn’t on your record because he was inducted by the Soviets. Most of them were, if not all of them.”
Maurice frowned. “You still haven’t given me anything useful, Baron. You still haven’t given me an explanation for why the Soviets are here.”
The Baron could see he was on the losing end of this argument. The Oracle was desperate to establish dominance, and he had a crowd of followers who’d respect his decision. Not one of them was stepping forward or speaking out in Marco’s defense. He could bleed to death in front of them, and they’d accept it. Conquering the Baron’s will was more important. They weren’t here for the Baron, but he was seen as responsible. He had to give them a half-truth without contradictions, or Marco would bleed out on that table.
The Baron took a deep breath, settling his heart. “Fine, Oracle. Fine. Do you remember the ship scuttling task that Schuler was researching on Saturday?”
Maurice nodded once. “The Port Authority is still dredging.”
“Right. This young man’s father was Federico Barilla, who was the point of contact with all the men who died on that ship. Federico told him about the scuttle, relaying information from the survivors. Apparently, Janos Nagy was on board.”
That name landed like a stone striking a pond. A ripple of conversation again rushed across the crowd. Nagy was famous.
The Baron talked over them. “Nagy was responsible for the loss of life on the Paines, and I believe the Soviets aimed to eliminate the survivors and cover up Nagy’s attempt to snipe the task. This makes the young man, Marco Barilla, a natural target.”
The Greenwich Oracle put his glasses back on his face. “Is this true, Mr. Barilla?”
Marco projected as well as he could. “Yes, sir.”
“Is there anything the Baron left out of his account.”
“No, sir. My father told me about Nagy.” Marco swallowed, his mouth drying up. “I didn’t keep my lips tight enough. Letting the secret out got me stabbed.”
Internally, the Baron beamed. Marco might’ve saved his own life with that tidy little lie. He rushed to reinforce it in words, using his many years of experience to build out the tale. “We’d better hope that nobody in here is a member of the CPUSA,” he said loudly, “or we’ve just informed the literal fifth column that we’re onto them. We’re all targets now.”
Oracle Maurice frowned at the Baron’s upbraiding. “We’re armed targets,” he said, “under my command and loyal to New York. Even if one of these men was once a communist, he’s a New York vassal now. That’s servitude to our cause and our cult. For life.”
The Baron knew a fair amount about New York theology, and he was glad to avoid their inner circle. The last time he was in the city, he’d been called in for a lecture about Salem and the arc of history. He was hardly willing to listen to Maurice expound on similar principles now. “Fair enough,” he said. “Can I buy the prestige to heal Marco? He’s given up everything he knows, and I don’t want him to die for my defense.”
Maurice grunted. “We’re still taking you to Tammany afterwards.”
The Baron bowed slightly in deference. “I understand the need for a debriefing. I won’t struggle.”
Oracle Maurice stepped down from his podium. “Believers, if you’ll please be patient and keep Mr. Barilla’s company, I have a business transaction to complete with the Baron.”
“Yes, sir,” chorused several of the soldiers.
“Follow me,” the Oracle said. “The only public phone is at my desk.”
They walked a rolling aisle, up and down over the businesses below, always in the shadow of the countless tapestries hanging above. The Oracle’s steel desk stood with an open vellum book spread on its surface, a photograph of a beautiful woman turned out to the world with pride, and an inkwell at hand for writing. The Oracle’s direct line must’ve run out of his apartment and beneath the carpet on this hindermost platform. He opened a drawer and pulled out a rotary set, which he set on the desktop with a heavy clang.
“One moment.” This was a number the Oracle knew by heart. He spun the dial almost too quickly to follow. The Baron and the Zombie stood together across from him on the other side of the desk and waited. After a moment, it was ringing out.
A voice picked up on the other side.
“High Oracle Gagliano, please,” said the Oracle, “This is Maurice Clare. It’s a large buy. I’ll need his approval, and a re-up from our bankers tomorrow.” There was a reply. “No, he’ll be up. He was working with Osman and Tweed. Thank you.” He was transferred internally. After a moment, his face lit up—the Greenwich Oracle was engaged. “High Oracle, I’ve taken custody of Baron d’Holbach and the Zombie. He’s agreed to come to Tammany Hall for a debriefing.” Gagliano must’ve only spoken one word. “Yes, a peaceful surrender. He’s also making a large purchase to heal a young man. I just need your approval.” He smiled. “Yes, standard price. Gut wound. I should have enough, but I’ll get a detailed breakdown. Yes. A year of prestige at least. I’ll take a receipt.” He looked up at the Baron. “Baron, any medical details?”
The Baron answered quickly. “Stab wound to the stomach, four inches long, and a hemorrhaging crater in his lining the size of a silver dollar. The Zombie probed with his fingers.”
“Did you get that?” the Greenwich Oracle asked. “Thanks, I’ll put him on.” He shoved the base towards the Baron, then offered the receiver. “Gagliano wants a word.”
He accepted the phone. “Hello?”
“You’ve been looking into the murder?” asked the old mafioso.
Which murder? No, the Baron couldn’t ask that. There’d been too many since Saturday to be certain which he’d discussed with Gagliano. “I have.”
“Old Osman says the Soviets are out to kill him. That true?”
“Not exactly. They have a dossier on him.”
A grunt so wet that it sounded like a sputter of mucus. “Every fucking cult has a dossier on us. Why do you care?”
“Members of the former communist party have been killing the survivors of the scuttling of the John G. Paines. Yesterday, I managed to save one of their lives.”
“Really? Who?”
“Piazzi. The old frogman.”
“Oh, shit—Piazzi? Damn. Figures the lame leg would survive.”
The Baron said nothing.
“So some Russian-trained assholes have been killing the family?” Gagliano asked.
“Yes, Oracle.”
“Report to me in person. General Osman needs to hear this.”
“I will.”
“We’ll sell you the prestige for your vanity healing. Don’t waste time.”
“We won’t waste time,” the Baron said. He looked at Maurice.
“Good.” Gagliano hung up the phone.
The Baron hung up the receiver. His hand was off the phone for no more than a second before it rang again. High Oracle Gagliano must be calling back. He picked it up.
“Gagliano?” the Baron asked.
“Baron d’Holbach?” asked the happy, lilting voice of Meister Schuler. “I heard a hymn in the morning winds. You’re here, but to find you so easily…” He sighed, terribly pleased.
Without missing a beat, “Yes, I’ll write the check to Tammany Hall,” the Baron said, and he casually hung up the phone on the one man that truly frightened him. Schuler’s arrival was inevitable, but if they could’ve avoided him until they were in and out of Tammany Hall, they would’ve been mostly in the clear to deliver the Cat that afternoon. Now that the Diviner was aware of the Baron’s position. They’d have to face New York’s response to the Cat, and they hadn’t planned that far ahead in detail. It was time to think about how to escape from Tammany, if and when they were under arrest for hiding the Cat o’ Nine Lives.
That was a problem for later though. Marco’s wound couldn’t wait any longer. The Baron pulled out his pocket book. “How much for the prestige?”
“One thousand.”
“That’s more than a third of a man’s income.”
“It’s less than a car for his life.”
The Baron pulled out his checkbook and filled out a check to Tammany Hall. In the memo, he wrote down his phone number in Boston and his first expected date of availability. There was a fair chance the bank would call him about the payment. His dark sense of humor was tweaked. If he died before Wednesday, he could rest easy knowing they wouldn’t get the payout. He handed the check over to the Greenwich Oracle. “We square?”
Marucie put the check in a desk drawer and stood. “Sure. If the check bounces, Schuler will find you.”
The Zombie laughed. “The only thing more reliable than his money is my invincibility.”
They left the desk and followed the undulating carpet road back towards the armed crowd. The Baron lagged back a little with the Zombie, then leaned in and quickly whispered, “Schuler knows we’re here. That last caller was him.”
The Zombie nodded.
“When you carry out Marco, tell Phyllis. We’re going to need help leaving Tammany.”
“Help from who?”
“Doesn’t matter. She can use her judgement, but if needed, she should feel free to tell our enemies that the Cat is involved. Make chaos if it’ll get us out of Tammany by noon.”
The Zombie chuckled. “I’ll tell her.”
The Oracle stopped and looked back at them from the peak of a rise. “What’s the wait?”
“I’m sorry. I was complaining about the price. Didn’t want to be rude.”
“You don’t have a choice,” the Oracle said.
“I know.” The Baron forced a gracious tone. “Thank you for your help.”
They followed the Greenwich Oracle closely, and the Baron resumed a fake conversation about raising the rent for six months on their active properties in order to recoup their costs. The Zombie was skeptical, arguing they’d push renters out of the market altogether. It was a dry, technical discussion, which the Oracle ignored.
Veterans of the last war were clustered around Marco, weapons hanging from straps and rifles laid over their knees, speaking to him as if he were a member of the same unhappy fraternity. In a way that he could never tell them, he’d experienced the terror and pain of combat, though sharper and briefer. The story he must’ve told them about the stabbing was realistic enough. They were whistling at their own tall tales and some of them had scars to share.
The Oracle stopped at the head of the table near Marco’s face and asked, “Do you want another scar? Or do you want a clean healing?”
“Make him clean,” the Baron suggested.
Marco looked around at the veterans, as if seeking their approval.
“You’re too young,” said a man in his early thirties, still young himself. “You don’t need big scars to impress a woman.” He scratched a raised cut along his cheek. “Maybe keep a couple though, huh?” A polite chuckle passed through the assembled men.
“He’ll have time to get new scars. Clean them up,” the Baron said. “Check the one on his forehead and those on his back too, while we’re here.” What he was really saying was, Marco, you shouldn’t have to bear the reminders of death and the pain of survival.
The Oracle raised his eyebrows slightly and folded his hands at his waist, but if he was truly suspicious about the sources of the other scars, his pensive posture didn’t show it.
“I’m going to make a series of small wishes,” the Oracle said. “Their specificity will discount their value. I should be able to remove the damage, but if I miss anything because you haven’t reported it, you’ll have to heal it yourself. These are my terms, Mr. Barilla.”
“Yeah,” Marco said quietly.
“First, your wounds. You have a belly full of blood?”
“I feel sick.”
“That won’t go away, so don’t complain about it.” Oracle Maurice scratched his nose and adjusted his suspenders. Once he was mentally ready, he walked around the table and inspected Marco’s wound up close. “Clean, smooth. Sharply done. Easier to heal.”
The Baron and the Zombie stood in silence and watched.
The Oracle raised one hand high. “Gentlemen, servants of the gods, faithful workers of the divine, heed my words! With each step, your labors will save a young man’s life. Sing with me now, and bless the road to his recovery! Behold the miracle of our deeds!”
“Behold!” the crowd echoed, inciting a New York ritual for a great wish.
The Oracle lowered his hand over Marco’s belly, not quite touching the short wound. “I wish the ulceration in your stomach wall was closed!”
A murmur swept through the crowd, barely audible to the Baron.
The Oracle breathed out. “How do you feel, boy?”
Marco closed his eyes and swallowed. “That hurts a lot less.”
“Again, then! I wish cuts in your stomach were cleaned and closed.”
Another recitation through the crowd, finally rising into an audible chant: “Grant us grace as we work, for we work to earn grace.”
Marco twitched a little, clenching his teeth.
“How does it feel?”
“They’re moving and sticking.”
“Good. I wish the cuts in your abdominal walls were cleaned and closed!”
Another chorus for grace, now louder and more fervent.
Marco winced, twitching his arms at his sides.
“Did that tug on your muscles?” the Oracle.
Marco nodded rapidly, reddening with strain.
“These are rough patches, boy. Try not to overwork them until they’ve had time to finish mending. Again—I wish the gash in your skin was cleaned and closed!”
This was the miracle the audience had been waiting for. With fervor, they chanted at once, “Grant us grace as we work! For we work to earn grace!”
Marco’s skin—weeping and clotted and curled down and inwards and drying up and bruised—began to clear. The mash of blood and fluid evaporated and sublimated, and there was a stench like rotten meat cooking over a fire.
“Grant us grace as we work!”
The dead matter was oxidizing perfectly and blowing away; nothing was created or destroyed. The gods were efficient, and even when mass had to be added to a body, it was believed to come from somewhere nearby, if not just the air itself.
“For we work to earn grace!”
The skin flushed and stretched. Marco squealed in shock as nerves branched and touched; blood vessels sought their partners and matched up old avenues through the flesh. Everything in his corpus cried out at the misery it had endured, including the shock of its resurrection. The crowd fell silent, closing in and staring with wonder. The cut began sealing itself up, briefly filling with fibrous scar tissue like crammed white cobwebs before the fibers shrank and disappeared. Everyone watched in rapt attention as the wound was reduced to a red line, then a pink line, and finally nothing at all. It was a real miracle.
Relief flooded Marco’s face as normal function was restored.
“I wish your membranes were smoothed and unbroken. I wish all the infectious vectors were removed, all the intestinal matter restored to its place.” Maurice touched the place where the wound had been, as if amazed at his own occult power and the mastery of the gods over matter. “Where are the scars you need healed?”
“I have some old ones,” Marco said.
“Where?”
He bushed up his bangs. The Cat had grown back some of his hair, but the scar on his forehead was hard to miss. “One here.”
Maurice touched it. “Gods, what happened?”
Marco took a moment to answer. “A rock to my head, a long time ago.”
“I wish this scar was cleared.” He watched as the spot swelled gently, forming a shallow lump, and then receded and began to dry within seconds. The scar tissue now rested on a blank patch of pink skin, which flaked away when he brushed it with his fingers. “Your hair will grow back eventually. Any others?”
Marco slowly rolled over. “A few on my back.”
Maurice pulled up the teenager’s shirt and goggled at the sight. “Were you burned?”
“An old car accident,” Marco said feebly.
“I wish these were cleared.” He pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re nearly done with the prestige you bought, Baron.”
“That’s fine. It’s enough.”
“Good.” Maurice reached down and helped peel away the broad sheets of scar tissue on Marco’s back, much like peeling loose skin off human feet. It was a medical impossibility, beyond any human science and grossly unfair in its expense and exclusivity.
The Baron knew this was vanity, but he couldn’t bear to let Marco live in discomfort and sorrow. Yesterday’s wounds shouldn’t haunt him for the rest of his life, he didn’t deserve it.
“Anything else?” Maurice said. “I have enough for maybe one small change.”
Marco looked at the Baron, asking permission for something. He feared that his words might reveal too much, but it was fast becoming clear to the Baron that the Oracle knew they’d told an incomplete story. The money was paid however, and the man wouldn’t stop healing now.
“Ask for whatever you need,” the Baron said.
“Do I have my left kidney?”
“What?” the Oracle asked, becoming instantly upset. “Why would you be missing a kidney?” To the Baron, “Just what the hell has been happening out there?”
“It’s news to me,” the Baron said, staring at Marco.
The Oracle was pissed. “Liar! You filthy fucking liar.”
“Don’t talk like that,” the Zombie said gruffly.
“Why not? He’s a liar.”
“You have to leave the temple sometimes,” the Zombie said.
The Baron raised a hand. “Don’t threaten him,” he said. “Oracle Clare, can you tell him if he has a kidney?”
“Gods no, you can’t wish for knowledge—”
“Wish for a little pain in his working kidneys,” the Baron interrupted.
“I can’t wish to hurt him.”
“Then give him the prestige and let him wish for it himself!”
The Oracle gritted his teeth, then said quietly, “I wish you had three days of prestige.”
Marco sighed, feeling the high of prestige wash over him. It was his first real acquisition. His skin flushed bright red. It’d only be that pleasant one more time, on the day that he completed his first task. The high was never that good again. No drug high ever was.
“I wish to ache in my working kidneys,” the kid said.
He hunched over on the table. The crowd watched the exchange quietly, judging it with silent, interested eyes. What did the Oracle think of this? What did it mean when the Baron brought someone in who was missing a kidney? What was the secret?”
“I can barely feel it on my left side,” Marco muttered.
The Baron’s heart fell. It made a terrible kind of sense. The remains of the kidney had been preserved, but they were mostly scar tissue now, just barely functional enough to work. That’s all the Cat ever did, for in the spirit of ancient thrift, it had been created only to do enough and no more. It sustained life and a modicum of good health with minimal intervention, and one kidney could be weak, so long as the other one was clean and fresh.
The Baron gave the best advice he could. “Marco, if it’s ever infected, you should consider removing it. The cost of regrowing missing tissue is prohibitive. Organs are doubly so. Even though they’re well hidden, they’re complex and large.”
Marco took a long slow breath. “Can’t I live with just one?”
“You can, but listen. There might be enough of a kidney left. Someday, you might heal it with a subtle wish, if it isn’t a large change. Otherwise… I’m sorry.” It wasn’t likely, but he couldn’t bring himself to deny the possibility. He inflicted the pain of hope onto Marco, he knew he did, but the knowledge that he was responsible in some way for Marco’s permanent injury was unbearable. Miracles only went so far in a scarce world.
“I’ll get over it,” Marco said.
With that judgement rendered, the crowd stirred. “I’m missing a few fingers,” said one middle-aged man with a peppery beard, who had lost half his left hand. “You’ll do fine.”
“I lost half my teeth,” said one young man, who popped a partial denture off his gumline with his tongue, then settled it back into place and smiled. “Never could afford to grow them back. It’d take too many years of prestige, and I got bills and groceries.”
He wasn’t alone, but Marco didn’t answer their camaraderie. It was a moment of mourning, and these New York soldiers, mostly hired guns and ex-military, were exactly the kind of people who understood. They cleared away from the table, and nobody offered to help him up. Marco would do it under his own power, forcing himself to rise despite his sorrow.
Even without the Cat, living took a bit of will sometimes.
“I’ll walk you down,” the Zombie said. “His mother is outside,” he said to the Oracle.
“Yeah,” Marco said, pulling down the blood-crusted shirt over his smooth belly.
“More lies,” Maurice muttered at the Zombie.
“Does it matter?” asked the invincible man.
“No,” the Oracle replied. “You’ll go to Tammany. That’s enough.”
“Good bye, Marco,” the Baron said, “and don’t take this the wrong way, but you should never want to see me again. It’ll be better for your health.”
Marco couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Goodbye, Baron. And thanks. For everything.”
The Zombie pushed ahead through the crowd, and they walked out of the room and down the stairs, out into the world, alive and free.
“You’ve got a lot to answer to,” the Oracle told the Baron.
d’Holbach grunted. “We’ll see soon enough.”
Author’s Note:
Thus ends arc 14~
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
The Baron led the Zombie, Phyllis, and Marco out of Foley Square a little after 5AM. Together, they walked south to Chambers Street, at the northeast corner of City Hall Park. A handful of taxis were dropping off the first wave of bureaucrats and paper pushers who worked there or in the Municipal Building, and they flagged down one of the drivers for a ride to Greenwich Village. On the way, they reviewed the final details of their plan in four discrete steps. It was simple to implement, fairly flexible in case of failure, and elegantly solved multiple problems at once.
First, they would extract the Cat just outside the temple. The process would be messy, and it’d cause a legitimate medical emergency. However, with the Cat hidden on the Zombie’s person, they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone coercing them to give it up.
Second, they’d bring Marco into the temple to be healed. In every occult community, many people besides the banker assisted with major transactions of prestige and cash. Dedicated treasurers were common, but Oracles often doubled as middlemen for especially expensive payments of either kind. Since most medical wishes were costly, the Oracle usually had the banked prestige and practice to efficiently heal heavy wounds.
Thus, they’d bring Marco to Oracle Maurice Clare.
Third, they’d pay for the prestige to wish for Marco’s health. Denisov wouldn’t be able to assist anymore, and Phyllis’s pool was effectively off-limits. The Baron would have to pay for it with a check, and though it’d put a serious strain on his liquid funds, there was an opportunity to make the money back and then some. If they succeeded, the promised payment from the Orthodox faction would cover their losses many times over.
Fourth, they’d have the Zombie deliver Marco back to Phyllis. She would get the teenager to safety. The Baron would remain behind in the temple, surrendering to New York before Schuler could find them. Then the Zombie would return to him, and they’d wait for a summons from Tammany Hall.
They had the means.
The Zombie was once a skilled barber, having removed bullets and other sundry from the Baron’s body during the Fall of Trust. Technically, he hadn’t been taught proper surgery, but he’d known how to pick a man apart with a blade, and he’d always had either the advantage of someone’s prestige or the Baron’s natural resistance to help him. Similarly, though to a lesser degree, the Baron himself was familiar with practical anatomy, having assisted real surgeons with field hospital amputations and the autopsies of murdered officers during the Napoleonic Wars. Either one of them could cut out the Cat with a good knife.
They had the target.
The Oracle of the 8th Street Temple, Maurice Clare, was emotionally invested in bringing the Baron under control. He’d be desperate, malleable, so long as that prize was in sight.
It was the safest place in Manhattan.
Schuler would be searching around major subway stations, beginning most likely near the Biltmore Hotel. By rushing to a secure New York location, they were likely to avoid Schuler’s early sweeps, and any CPUSA members in Lower Manhattan would be avoiding New York’s troops. Best of all, they could surrender and send Marco to safety before Schuler detected the presence of the artifact, and if it was revealed, the temple’s neutrality would briefly protect them. After that, the Baron and Zombie would face New York’s massive, organized response.
The cabbie, who’d remained silent throughout the drive, asked them only one question as they neared 8th and Greenwich. “Are you writers in the Village?” He was an old man, poorly shaven, wearing an ascot cap and too many layers of clothes in place of a jacket. To hear him take an interest shocked them all back to reality. This was still New York City. This was still a secular world.
Their conversation had been too abstract and absurd to be worth hiding from secular ears. Now it was being reflected back onto them. The cabbie was placing their struggle into a secular context. How would it have seemed to him, to hear them talk about these things with familiarity? Artifacts, temples, prestige, and oracles were all sensible terms with pedestrian meanings, and the jargon of the occult reflected them in funhouse mirrors. The semantics of the occult did not map to the cabbie’s. It was yet another reason that the secret of prestige was easily kept. Leaks sounded more like fantasy than fact.
“Sorry, sir,” the Baron said from the seat behind the driver, “We’ve been so wrapped up in our project. We were rude.”
“Oh, it’s fine. What kind of writing is it?”
“Film script,” the Zombie answered. “Ever seen Destination Moon?”
The cabbie’s tired face rose into a sunrise-bright smile. “Oh, I loved it!”
“Did you? We’re working with the producer.”
“It was beautiful, all color, and those props! Did you know the moon was kinda like the Bonneville salt flats? I used to spend the night out there, when I was a youngster.”
“I’ve run the flats,” the Zombie said, and he wasn’t lying.
“There’d be hundreds of us out there after the races. The girls and the beer, you bet! We couldn’t sleep on the speedway though, so we’d go out onto the lakebed with our firewood, and there’d be these cracks in the salt pan wide enough to fit your thumb. Just like the moon, big old cracks, and grey as far as the eye can see. It was something.”
“It was beautiful,” the Zombie agreed.
The driver was smiling after his ramble. Ignorance really was a kind of bliss. Before Marco had become a cultist, swallowing the Cat had been little more than a favor to a half-absent father. It would’ve been easier if it could have remained that way, an artifact lost to the ages, just as it was better that the driver now believed they were spinning yarns.
They paid the fare and the cabbie dropped them off north of the temple at Jackson Square Park. It was a barren triangle of land at the intersection of 8th and Greenwich Avenue, something they’d bypassed yesterday by going up the back alleys of the rows. This little squib of park was surrounded by brick residential buildings, all red and brown.
Once upon a time, plants had grown in the soil here, but only barren dirt greeted them between spreads of rusted iron fencing, a scattering of concrete benches, and a dry fountain. Hollow tree planters pockmarked the fence border every meter or so, reminding the neighborhood of its failure to remain affluent or influential.
Once the taxi had driven off, they entered the park—the most poorly lit stretch of terrain in the area—and laid Marco out on a flat stone bench. This would be their operating table.
“Do you still have that knife?” the Baron asked Marco.
“Jesus,” Marco swore. “Are you talking about my Swiss army piece?”
“I am.”
“Yeah, I still got it.” Marco reached into a pocket, found the little knife, and offered it to the Baron. “You sure this will work? I had trouble cutting a steak with that thing.”
The Baron nodded carefully. “Trust me. It’ll be sharp enough to do the job.”
“Yeah.” Marco closed his eyes and shuddered.
“Do you want me or the Zombie to do it?”
“Who’d do a better job?”
“Honestly, the Zombie would. He’s way better at cutting people open.”
“Then him,” Marco said.
The Baron passed the Swiss knife over. “You’re up, friend.”
“Thank you!” the Zombie said with relish.
“Are you sure we can do this in poor light?” Phyllis asked.
The Baron glanced at her, face half-shaded in the pre-dawn dark, far from any street lamps. “Don’t worry. He’s got a sense for this kind of thing.”
The Zombie opened the little knife and held it up to his eye, inspecting the edge. “I’ll slice you quick. Just tell me, where’s the Cat?”
Marco opened his eyes and propped up on his elbows. “You don’t know?”
The Zombie snorted with delight. “Calm down. I know where your stomach is.”
“Jesus, how could you not know where it is? Jesus Christ.”
The Zombie lowered the blade, frowning at the young man. “I know where your stomach is. I’ll just need your help for a few seconds first. We’ll find the Cat, okay?”
“Okay, okay.” Marco took a deep breath and laid back down. “Jesus, okay.”
The Zombie tilted the little blade around like an instructor’s baton. “The incision will hurt, but no more than being punched hard in the stomach. What I’m saying is, you won’t even have to scream. It just won’t be that bad.”
“God, how do you know that?”
The Zombie grinned. “The Cat is what will hurt badly.”
Marco looked at the Baron. “Why?”
“It’s not just floating around in your stomach,” the Baron said.
Marco’s eyes opened a little bit. Realization must’ve hit him. The Cat hadn’t moved the slightest bit since he’d swallowed it. It was anchored to the stomach lining. “Oh, fuck.”
The Baron elaborated. “We’ll have to reach in and rip the Cat out of its seating. That’ll leave a bleeding crater in your stomach. Our hands aren’t clean either, so we’ll be rushing to heal you before you bleed too much or catch anything.”
“How do you know this?”
The Zombie laughed. “Pulling the Cat has killed anyone who wasn’t healed, kid. That’s why we came here before cutting you open.”
Marco rubbed his eyebrows and groaned. He would’ve preferred not to know the mortality rate of the surgery they were about to perform.
The Baron elaborated with the explicit goal of calming Marco down. “Pretty much the entire Orthodox succession since the rediscovery of the Cat is a series of peaceful guttings followed by another leader swallowing the damn thing. There’s no affordable way to wish it loose, if it’s even possible to wish it out. It’s either magical surgery or death.”
“It’ll be okay,” Phyllis said to Marco. “I’ll take it out. My hands are small, and I can clear your stomach first.” She cleared her throat. “I wish his breakfast moved into his small intestine.”
Marco squinted, groaning for a moment as his stomach made audible squelching noises. “Oh, that is weird. I thought you couldn’t do something like that.”
“It counts as healing ahead of a surgery,” Phyllis said.
He shuddered at the thought. “Okay, anything else?”
“I’ll give you thirty seconds of numbness,” Phyllis added, “but it will hurt eventually.”
“Okay,” Marco muttered. “Okay.”
The Zombie tapped the open blade against his cheek, little blue-yellow flashes as it caught the early light of some distant window. “There’s a silver lining. You’ll be able to brag someday to your friends. ‘See this scar here? This was when I was stabbed with a spear.’ They’ll buy it.”
“When would I have been stabbed with a spear?”
“That’s the fun part. Make it up!” The Zombie reached for the hem of Marco’s shirt.
“Wait! How’re you going to get me inside the temple?”
“I’ll carry you. Kick down the door. Simple. Now stop stalling.” The Zombie pulled up the hem of Marco’s t-shirt past his ribs.
Marco took a deep breath, his chest heaving.
The Zombie traced a finger on the left side of Marco’s abdomen, in the middle just below the last rib. “Is it there?”
“Uh—no? I felt it, uh, a little to the side.”
The Zombie moved his finger in.
“Other way.”
The Zombie tapped Marco on the left side, a couple of inches below the rib. “Right there?”
“Yeah, I remember it burning. Right there.”
The Zombie pressed in gently a few times. “I think I can feel it. Baron? Hold his chest. Phyllis? His waist. Don’t let him move.”
They positioned themselves as directed, putting their limbs down over his body. The Baron could feel Marco’s heart thundering beneath his arms. “Calm down.”
“Don’t piss yourself,” Phyllis added.
Marco closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
The Zombie put two fingers over Marco’s belly, spreading them apart to stretch the tissue beneath his fingertips. “Marco, this is going to take a few cuts, then Phyllis is going to reach in with a couple of fingers and pull out the Cat. You’ll bleed a lot. Try to stay calm.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Marco said, absolutely not okay. He took a long, shaking breath, then blew it out slowly. “I’m ready,” he lied.
The Zombie gently touched the blade against Marco’s belly, the handle tilted far up. He would apply only a little of the edge, using heavy pressure. “Prep for the cut. Call it when ready.”
The Baron and Phyllis applied their full weight to Marco.
“Numbness for thirty seconds,” Phyllis wished.
“Start at will,” the Baron ordered.
The Zombie pressed in, then dragged the knife. Marco twitched, his limbs stiffened and shook, but the Baron squeezed the teen to the slab until his arms hurt. A sound emerged from Marco’s taut lips, a distant whine squeezed and compressed by force of will.
“I thought he was numb,” the Baron said to Phyllis.
“I lost the prestige,” Phyllis argued.
“I feel cold,” Marco said through gritted teeth. “And pressure.”
“No pain at least,” Phyllis whispered.
Four inches of belly skin were split open like fresh pork, pale pink and briefly bloodless. The Zombie gently tugged to see how deep the first cut ran, and bright red blood began condensing along the walls of the incision. “Dull blade,” he judged. “Four cuts total, maybe five.”
He put the tip at a steeper angle, pressed harder and pulled the blade as smoothly as a machine. A tiny squeal emerged from Marco. The Zombie was pleased with his handiwork. He pushed with his fingers and the wound slid open like a split glove, revealing a filmy membrane and the gristle of fat, the dermal gap already filling with the gentle accumulation of blood.
The Zombie angled the blade even steeper, but there was less pressure and less speed on this slice. Fat, membrane, and orange fibrous layers broke away at knifepoint like clipped elastic, but the real target was a marbled, bacon-like streak of abdominal muscle. The blade eased through thick, succulent muscle fibers, which twitched and contracted, practically ripping themselves in twain. The Zombie sighed at what he must’ve seen as poetic beauty, enjoying the accidental eagerness for the wounded tissue to rend itself asunder. Thicker, juicier arteries immediately gushed onto the bare metal, filling the chasm with thick fluid.
It was always uncomfortable to watch living meat under the butcher’s blade. Phyllis’s eyes were shut. Tears streamed down Marco’s face, even without pain. The Baron watched because he was responsible. Where the Zombie saw beauty, he saw an awful necessity.
The Zombie cut again, and the upmost layer of smooth muscle opened itself like a swollen eyelid, like a terrible toothless maw. He’d cut against the grain here. Below that, another layer was sliced along the fibers. The Zombie eased this deepest slit open with two bloody fingers. The beef-red meat, fatless and smooth, weeped eddies into the pooling blood. The Zombie balanced the knife briefly on Marco’s belly, then used a finger to sweep away all the fluid and sling it out onto the concrete.
Marco was huffing.
“Ten seconds,” Phyllis said softly.
“There.” The Zombie tapped a thin fatty layer, which slid over a thinner membrane below. Beneath his fingertips, a sac bulged ever so slightly into the relieved pressure of the open wound. “That’s the stomach.” He pressed down gently, and Marco suppressed a gag while folding up involuntarily.
The Baron redoubled his pressure, unfolding the teen. “Hurry.”
“I wish to add twenty seconds of numbness,” Phyllis whispered.
“Found it,” the Zombie declared. Blood flowed around his fingertips. “Cut five.” He turned the knife over backward, put the point directly above the bulging sac, and pushed down. Tissue split open eagerly; puffy pink folds of stomach lining fought to escape the pressure through the new wound. The Baron could detect the tang of dilute stomach acid mixing into the overwhelming bloody stench.
The Baron put a hand over Marco’s mouth, suppressing a terrified scream. “Shh,” he said, “shh, you’re okay. Breathe through your nose. You’re okay.”
Marco’s weeping was intense, but he nodded very slightly.
“Phyllis,” the Zombie said as calmly as an instructor. “The Cat is directly beneath the cut. Reach in, push your fingers under the edge of the statue, and pull very, very quickly, like you’re removing a bandage. You’re going to draw up his stomach lining, but if you’re quick, it won’t pull long. The more time you waste, the more this will hurt him.”
Phyllis forced her eyes open, tears streaming sympathetically, nose running, and with her right hand, she forced two fingers and a thumb down into Marco’s viscera. This was the spot where the stomach was close to the abdominal wall. It wasn’t even a deep or broad cut. The bleeding was objectively minor, the pain already completely managed, but the look on her face was of tremendous sorrow. She’d felt less remorse beating a man down with a pipe. She’d killed and felt less. Marco inhaled in a nasty way, and started to cough.
Phyllis’s expression hardened. She thrust her hand in deep, pushing out fresh blood in a splash over Marco’s skin, found something solid, and in one yank, she ripped out the Cat o’ Nine Lives with a wet, soft noise that the Baron hadn’t quite heard before, but instantly recognized as the whisper of tearing flesh.
Everyone winced but the Zombie, whose grin blossomed into a full body expression of triumph. “The Cat!” he shouted. “We have it!”
“Breathe!” the Baron shouted to Marco.
Marco turned his head and coughed up a stew-thick blend of blood and mucus, then took one gasp. He could still breathe. His lungs still worked. “Oh God.” His voice was ravaged, his body was quaking, but he was no longer trying to curl up around the damage.
“The pain will start in a moment,” the Baron whispered. “Stay still.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Marco said quickly. Then slowly at first, and with greater energy, he began to keen with rising agony. He’d survived worse, but the Cat was no longer able to sustain him with unnatural fire.
Phyllis stared at the object in her hands. It was a smooth black stone sculpture of a cat curled up to sleep, perfectly polished and no larger than a hefty walnut. Even after being pulled from the fleshy morass in Marco’s stomach wound, it was perfectly clean. Blood and mucus beaded up, slid away, and collected on her palm. It was always perfect, always clean, and the closest thing to immortality in a fallen world.
Author’s Note:
Whew. Marco is… free of the Cat, but not yet saved.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
Join the Discord to discuss the story and hang out with other readers!
Join the Patreon to support the story and access 4 weeks of early chapters!
The radio alarm clock in the safehouse buzzed at 4AM. The Baron was already up, but Marco and Phyllis were still asleep, even after ten hours of uninterrupted rest.
Last night, conversation had been kept to a minimum, and dinner had been a miserable affair of cold canned goods. No plans had been broached, nothing discussed. While the CIA bugs hidden in the room could only take recordings, they hadn’t risked any information leaks. Heckhaus was permitting them a lot of freedom, and if the Cat appeared on record, Langley would mobilize long before the Baron was ready to deliver the artifact to Denisov.
Suffused with the fog of exhaustion, they’d turned in early.
But before succumbing to sleep, the Baron had thought a little about Elizabeth, the Apostate. What was she doing with eternity? Did she risk losing it for a cause, like the Baron did? Was she still a practicing cultist somewhere outside of the West, thriving in the wider world? Or did she persist in some secular role, biding her time until she could re-emerge under a new name?
Questions had fluttered around his head like black moths. Did she want to meet him, just on principle? Was she curious about the Zombie? Did she dream of the true nature of the gods? In private places, did the gods’ secrets make her smile or bring her to tears? Did the knowledge bring her purpose or rob reality of any meaning? Could she tell him why she’d kept the secret? Was it selfishness and safety that motivated her, or had the knowledge been too destructive for mankind to accept? Had the knowledge threatened something more fundamental about prestige, or about reality itself?
Such questions had soon died for a lack of answers. Then nature had taken its natural course, and the Baron had slept.
Awake again, he rolled off his cot, turned on the closest lamp, and shut off the alarm clock. There was only one thing on his mind after almost eleven hours in a storage room underground. He needed to use the restroom terribly, and while there was a bucket and toilet paper in the safehouse, Marco had protested against their use. Thus, they’d all waited.
“I’m awake,” Phyllis declared.
“Me too,” Marco echoed.
The Baron was pulling on his socks and tying his shoes. “We’re leaving. Now.”
Phyllis was sore and slow, but she rose inexorably like Frankenstein’s monster revived. “I need to pee,” she complained. “Marco, hurry up. I can’t hold it in any longer.”
Marco raised one arm and winced. “Oh Christ. That hurts.”
“What hurts?” The Baron pushed off his cot and wandered over to the teen. In the Baron’s experience, impact injuries caused a great deal of soft tissue damage, and severe inflammation was often delayed by at least a few hours. By now, Marco ought to be suffering the full effects of the car crash—anything and everything that the Cat hadn’t fixed.
“My ribs. My left shoulder.” He tried to bend a leg. A sharp breath. “My knees.”
“Not your back?”
“I don’t think so. My neck is really stiff.”
“Were you hit on your side?”
“My left side.”
Phyllis sorted over a shelf and pulled a couple of pill bottles. “Give him some Saridon?”
“Yes.” The Cat would’ve handled any dangerous internal hemorrhaging already. An A.P.C. painkiller might help him walk under these conditions.
“Are you up?” a man shouted through the safehouse door.
The Baron felt a spike of panic, then a delayed recognition. “Zombie?” he shouted back.
Phyllis gave Marco a couple of pills. “Swallow these.”
d’Holbach turned the knob by the dim light of a single lamp, and the press-button lock popped open. The Zombie was standing outside in the gloom, wearing a royal purple cardigan and other finery. “Good morning, friend,” the Baron said. “Been waiting long?”
“Only about five hours.” The Zombie glanced into the safehouse. “All persons accounted for? Heckhaus sent me this way last night.”
The Baron raised a hand for silence. “Can’t talk here. Heckhaus arrived before us.”
The Zombie grinned and gave him a big thumbs up.
Phyllis lifted Marco up into a sitting position with his right hand. Marco made a pained squealing sound.
The Zombie’s face was a question.
The Baron answered, “Car.”
“Not gooshed?” the Zombie asked pleasantly.
“Not gooshed,” the Baron agreed.
The Zombie sniffed the air. “You haven’t used the restroom in here?”
“Don’t be a creep,” Phyllis said from within the room.
“You expected that?” the Baron asked his friend.
The Zombie smirked. “How many times have you and I been forced to lay low?”
The Baron looked back at the Artemisian. “You learn to ignore the smell.”
“It was the Napoleonic Wars!” the Zombie said cheerily.
“We need to use the restroom,” the Baron said.
The Zombie peered out into the dark tunnel beyond the safehouse. “Then let’s get going. I learned some things last night. Details later.”
The Baron called to Marco. “Can you stand?”
Marco wobbled up onto his legs, hand on Phyllis’s shoulder. “Yeah.” But he wasn’t spry. He was stiff and awkward on his feet, and his tentative first steps were slow and pained. He stumbled over to the Baron and laid his arm over the philosopher’s shoulders.
Phyllis quickly folded up the cots and bedspreads and collected their garbage in a paper bag—crusted tins and bloodstained shirts and jackets. The night before, they’d found a four-pack of white cotton t-shirts along with a first aid kit and medical supplies, and they’d changed into them. The Baron fit into his tee snugly; Marco and Phyllis were draped in their own. The Baron felt especially undignified now, having no opportunities to shave his face or scalp. He’d look more like a muscled dock worker than a noble.
“Ready? Lights out.” Phyllis raised the switch and cut the circuit to the safehouse. Everything plunged into darkness, the kind that excites the eye with a lack of stimulus, filling one’s visual field with purpling afterimages and noisy textures.
They shut the door behind them, and with their hands on the wall, they felt their way through the darkness back to a short tunnel, which led to the train platform. The last maintenance door opened out onto a stretch of darkness reflecting the slightest tint of green. The signal light lay beyond.
“What if we’d been locked in by the CIA?” Marco asked.
“There are plenty of tunnels we could take,” Phyllis said.
“Why bother?” the Zombie asked. “I’d just kick the door down.”
They reached the platform only a handful of minutes past 4AM. Nobody was around to notice them sneaking through the maintenance gate, and the last overnight train had already passed according to the schedules spread on the walls. Until the 5AM business crowd arrived, it was briefly an empty space. Phyllis trashed the cans and clothes, and they climbed out of the station. Unfortunately, there weren’t any restrooms installed at Canal and Braodway.
“Are we good to talk?” the Zombie asked. Overhead, the clouds from last night’s cold front were breaking up, and the brightest stars were visible in the gaps, just a few dotted here or there. The moon was down and only street lights were shining. A few cars slipped past, tires hissing against pavement, headlights bright and shied away from.
“Yes, but we need to hurry and get back off the street,” the Baron said.
“You have no idea.” The Zombie looked around, but there were no pedestrians standing at watch yet. “By dawn, I’m betting every station will have a New York cultist guarding it.”
“There should be a few bakeries just north of here on Broadway,” Phyllis said. “One or two will be open this early. We can buy something and use the facilities.”
When they reached the nearest open bakery, the teenager was ready to stop. It was almost four-thirty by the Baron’s watch, and the shop was unlocking doors to serve muffins and scones with butter and jelly. They greeted the middle-aged owner and his sons, then sat down at a table and drank cold water and ate a hot breakfast while they took turns using the toilet.
“You a family?” the owner asked Phyllis after she returned.
“Co-workers,” Phyllis explained, “It’ll be a long day.”
“Can’t say I approve,” the owner said idly, “now that the war is over.”
So he didn’t approve of a woman co-worker. Phyllis didn’t argue with it. When that kind of judgement was considered idle chatter, what could she say without starting a fight?
“She’s my boss,” the Baron said, needling the baker. “Pays an honest wage.”
The Zombie chuckled. “Got to make money somehow,” he muttered.
The baker frowned, clearly offended but unable to pinpoint exactly what had been said to insult him. He left the table without another word, and they finished eating in peace. After everyone had relieved themselves, eaten a meal, and drank water, the Baron paid and tipped heavily with some coins, and they returned to the night-shaded streets.
“Where to now?” asked Phyllis.
“We need to review the situation,” the Zombie said.
“Foley Square is just a few blocks from here,” Phyllis suggested. “If there are a lot of spotters at the subway stations, we’ll be safer there on the benches. At least until sunrise.”
Foley Square’s central plaza was sparsely lit before dawn, but the edges were flooded with streetlights and high mounted lamps. They sat on benches circling the shallows of a former fountain. Some years before, that spot had been occupied with marble walls and copper statues, dribbling water like piss. The depression in the concrete suggested plans to install another fountain, if social and economic conditions finally turned in Foley Square’s favor.
Public works had recently ground to a halt there. The endowments and funds that filled public spaces with art were avoiding this park, avoiding the protests that’d haunted the trial on its periphery. This was in some sense the civic center of Manhattan, and Foley Square’s borders were defined by its municipal and federal buildings. They were towers of pale grey stone dressed with colonnades and entablatures, wrapped with fancy cornices and rakes, altogether dressed in the stereotypical costumes of Roman and Grecian temples.
To one side, the United States District Courthouse; to the other, the New York County Courthouse. Across the way, the New York Municipal Building. Most notoriously, at their back stood the Foley Square Courthouse, where the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York was held and the Foley Square Trial was conducted.
The lights were brightest there, beams crossing like interlocking fields of fire, casting kill zones onto the plaza ground. If guards had manned the gaps between the columns, rifles laid against their shoulders in silent threat, nobody would’ve questioned the image.
The central tower of the Courthouse rose over its surroundings like a standing castle, and its broad base imposed itself on the urban landscape like earthworks, covering more ground than any other building in the square. This was the court where an FBI case five years in the making had ended with the successful prosecution of twelve CPUSA leaders.
It’d been the longest federal court case in the history of the United States, starting in November of 1948 and continuing until October of 1949. The CPUSA leadership had been secular to the man; only a small portion of it had even been in direct contact with members of the Soviet Union. Most occult infiltration and KGB training had happened at lower levels within the party, where small time workers could be easily placed in war-critical industries and slipped the prestige to covertly sabotage industrial equipment and supplies.
Thus, the Baron had considered this trial ironically ineffective. The leaders under indictment were on record, favoring peaceful transitions to socialism, but they were charged under the Smith Act for “advocating the violent overthrow of the government.” Meanwhile, the actual fifth column threat had been armed and readied without interruption, mostly through the vehicles of existing criminal enterprises and small-time radical advocacy groups.
Three years had passed since the initial trials and its massive picketed protests, those thrumming thousands in the square. The foregone conclusion was to convict the CPUSA defendants, and the convictions were held up as constitutional in every court of appeals, including the Supreme Court of the United States. After that, many CPUSA chapters had dissolved and destroyed their membership rosters in order to avoid prosecution on a state-by-state basis, and the occult fifth column had scattered to the winds. Without a path for Soviet funding and support, it’d been the natural course.
Yet today, that column was easily pressed back into service because of these federal buildings and courtrooms. The greatest threat to rank-and-file CPUSA mercs wasn’t KGB blackmail; it was the raw, endless pressure of American authority, which brought its weight to bear to smother and suffocate communism and socialism in all its forms. They fought like mad zealots because they were afraid of being outed to their own nation.
This was the Cold War after all, and everyone knew the stakes were bigger than the planet itself. This was a pivot point for futurity; only one superpower could become a global hegemon, not both, and only if the whole thing weren’t put to the fire and scattered like ash.
The Baron rested upon the benches between Phyllis and Marco, and together, they listened to the Zombie, who laid out the details as he knew them.
Denisov was leaving through LaGuardia airport, so they’d have to reach him by 5PM that day, or they’d have to give up entirely. A little more than twelve hours remained until the deadline. Meanwhile, New York would be searching with overwhelming force. The violence and death surrounding the Baron had passed a critical threshold, and Schuler was being deployed to bring them back to Tammany. If they were caught as a group, Phyllis’s and Marco’s fates would be short, nasty, and brutish.
Two bullets would be spent, but there’d be only one body for the Cosa Nostra to bury. If Marco still had enough lives remaining, they’d know that he held the Cat, and they’d take him back to Tammany before killing him again and again. His corpse would cough up the ikon.
“We could flee,” Phyllis suggested. “There’s still time to get out of the city.”
“I’m not sure it’s worth risking it,” the Baron said. “We wouldn’t just evade New York. We’d piss off Heckhaus, giving up any chance at getting the cat to Denisov. Langley would probably start a secular manhunt, and they’d have enough firepower and organization to catch us. Once in custody, they’d gut Marco and lock the rest of us up for years.”
Marco squinted in fear. “We couldn’t dodge them like we did yesterday?”
“They’d siege any temple until you starved,” the Zombie said.
“You’re injured as well,” the Baron said. “It’ll be hard for you to run.”
“I still have a few lives left,” Marco said.
“How many?” The Baron counted them off on his fingers. “At minimum, you’ve been shot in the back, poisoned, and maybe asphyxiated on top of those two deaths. Then you were killed twice on the train, and one of those shots pulped a kidney. Egregious wounds can take multiple lives to heal. Say it healed the initial wound, the ruined organ, and the exit wound separately. It’s possible. Finally, you were hit by a car, and I honestly couldn’t tell if you died there. That’s between four and eight deaths by my count.” He folded and unfolded fingers uncertainly. “You have between six and two lives left, so the Cat might only save you once more. We just don’t know, and frankly, I don’t want to find out. I want to finish this without risking your life.”
“Is there a way to figure out the count?” Phyllis asked.
“No. The artifact was designed when you could just wish to know,” the Baron replied.
“I ain’t that hurt,” Marco said. “I ain’t crippled.”
“Yesterday was just CPUSA irregular forces,” the Baron said. “Today it’s Schuler and the New York cult that’ll come for us, and you’ve already died this many times. We have to cut you out of the equation, literally. Your life depends upon it.”
“So what? Do we go to this Russian guy right now?” Marco asked.
“Mm. No. The Zombie saw Russian special forces napping in the Secretariat building, and I can guarantee we’re not the only people who know about them. From a secular perspective, there’s already a minor crisis at hand, and the US government will be prepared to start—or end—an international incident at the drop of a hat. We couldn’t get close to the UN without tripping over their surveillance, and frankly I don’t want to show up in their reports. One mistake, and we could end up on a most wanted list for decades. The Zombie and I would have to flee the country.”
“Excuses,” Phyllis muttered.
“I’m just thinking about the facts. That’s all. They’re sending Schuler out to find me. Do you understand how bad that is? There’s no greater threat in the New York arsenal.”
“I was there,” Phyllis said gruffly. “I saw his bullshit.”
The Baron rubbed his palms together in the cold air. “If he even drives by, say a mile or so away, he’ll find us, and he’ll know the Cat is here.”
“Do you really believe in that awareness story?” Phyllis asked.
“I’ve seen it with two other Diviners,” the Baron said. “On the island of St. Helena. Kaiser Abbas used to tell everyone that the Zombie burned like a torch in the dark. He was aware of everything, just a little bit, but he was intensely aware of occult activity, and the Zombie was one constant miracle.”
“There were party tricks.” The Zombie grinned, eyes glassy and nostalgic. “I’d stand outside and he’d tell everyone which direction I was in, which hand I was holding up, and how many fingers I was showing. He was never wrong.”
“Napoleon thought the whole thing was a gag, a circus illusion.” The Baron shrugged. “It was proof for us. Kaiser Abbas was tapping into some kind of divine awareness.”
“You’re acting like we’ve already lost,” Phyllis said. “Schuler is just one man.”
“We haven’t lost, but we have to make realistic plans. Soon, New York is going to capture us. There’ll be nowhere to run to, and they’ve got the living occult equivalent of a mine detector. In our current state, we can’t stand up to them without risking your lives.”
“I can handle the risk,” Marco said.
Phyllis nudged the Baron with an elbow. “Stop dooming and just give us some gods-damned decisions. Or ask me to plan. Something other than worrying, please.”
“Fine. It may be time to go back to our original plan,” the Baron said.
“What’s that?”
“The Zombie and I take care of this alone.”
Phyllis gawked. “Do you remember the reason I came along?”
“I do,” the Baron said.
“You said I’d be safer following both of you around.”
“That was true yesterday.”
“What’s changed?” Phyllis got up off the bench and stood in front of the men. “Tell me, what’s different now, that you think it’s better for two instead of four to take on the world’s largest cult?” The Baron looked up at her in silence. “Don’t tell me it’s about stealth. That’s bullshit. Radio drama bullshit, and I know you’re thinking about it.”
He had been thinking about it, but it wasn’t the main reason. “I said you’d be a valuable target for CPUSA, and that’s not going to change until we’re done.”
“Then why go alone?”
“What’s changed is why you’re valuable.”
“What’s changed is your attitude!”
“Yes!” the Baron cried. “It’s true, and that’s the point. Yesterday, I thought we were going to win. Today, I think we’re going to lose, but only this battle, not the war. What the Zombie and I have that you don’t is privilege. You said it yourself yesterday. He’s invincible, and I’m protected by a death pact. More than any other cult, New York will respect that—but strictly!”
“Only the Baron is protected,” the Zombie said.
“Exactly, and I can’t extend the privilege. They’ll kill you without hesitation.”
“You wouldn’t try to save our lives?” Phyllis asked darkly.
“That’s not what I mean. The Pact is enforceable because it’s specific. It’s a compromise that nobody can deny because it’s absolute and clear. I don’t want you or Marco to die. If we’re captured as a group, they’ll use you both as leverage against our privilege. Alone, we can push back. With either of you around, we’ll have to listen to their demands. That, or they’ll take your lives.“
Phyllis huffed. Her silvered hair was blowing in her face, but she hadn’t kept any supplies in the safehouse to pin or shape it. She ignored a lock whipping along her nose and stared the Baron down. He looked back, capable as always of accepting silence without anxiety or fear. “You don’t look old,” she said harshly, “you look like a young idiot.”
The Baron ran his fingers over the stubble on his scalp. “I sometimes do.”
“Always,” the Zombie said lightly.
Their eyes remained locked until Phyllis snorted and suppressed a chuckle. “Did you practice staring with the Zombie?”
The Baron blinked when she called him out, and he finally broke his gaze away from hers, looking down at his feet instead. “Actually, yes,” he answered, after a moment of uncharacteristic embarrassment.
“That’s what he did,” the Zombie said. “We argued a lot in our early days.”
What the Zombie didn’t say was, he’d killed a lot of people back in Europe—more than the Baron had ever wanted to admit or acknowledge. It’d taken everything d’Holbach could muster to stare down his savior repeatedly and demand that he stop murdering for his sake. Often, the Zombie had said nothing, simply becoming angry and destructive. The only way the Baron could win those silent struggles was by failing to react, by refusing to budge. He’d once practiced his poker face on an invincible man tearing down the walls of a log cabin.
Marco spoke up. “So I can’t help you anymore?”
The Baron turned to the young man next to him. “You’ve already taken bullets for me.” He gave Marco’s shoulder a squeeze. “Not anyone could just do that, and I mean it. You’ve pushed through the pain of death by force of will. You’ve got willpower!”
“Yeah,” Marco said, his tone flat and unconvincing.
“No, really. You made a wish to dodge because you pushed your dead body to move. You endured the Cat o’ Nine Lives, and I was free to act. It’s never easy to admit, but I don’t think this would’ve played out nearly this well without your assistance.” The Baron looked up at Phyllis. “We’re running out of time though, and we have to adapt.”
“What’s the new plan then?” Phyllis asked. “Not just you—what should I do? What does Marco do? We can’t just walk away, not if we’re as important as you say.”
“You can’t,” the Baron agreed, “but we don’t have to wait around to be captured. We can dictate the location, the conditions—we can direct their attention wherever we choose.”
“What—we can lose in a controlled manner?” Phyllis speculated.
“Exactly. Lose the battle, win the war,” the Baron said. “There are only two crucial steps, really. We need someone to remove the Cat from Marco in a controlled setting. We need him healed and ready to go. Then the second step is for the Zombie to draw attention to the Cat.”
“All eyes on you?” Phyllis asked the Zombie.
The Zombie grinned. “I can protect anything.” He wiggled his fingers by the dim light of the street lamps. “Invincible hands.”
The Baron finished his argument to Phyllis: “Once New York is aware that I have the Cat, they won’t care about you or Marco. You could sneak him out, get him to his mother, and get them on the road. His life would be saved.”
“I’m not leaving the city,” Phyllis said.
The Baron raised his hands, then let them fall to his sides. This wasn’t an argument he could win, and even though he wanted her to flee the state rather than return to New York territory, his head overruled his heart. She’d survived a long time alone. She wouldn’t be doomed just because she stayed in the city. “Fine. Once Marco is with his mother, you can do what you want. I wouldn’t refuse your help, and I trust you to be careful.”
Phyllis finally smiled. “So you’ve squelched your pride.”
“This wasn’t about pride.”
She shook her head. “Don’t argue about it. You’ve reasoned it out haven’t you.”
“I have. If anyone can help, you can, and you’re a survivor.”
“But you’re unhappy.”
“I am.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Why’s that?”
“This is what the Apostate would’ve wanted her cultists to do.”
“Her book doesn’t ask you to risk your life.”
“It doesn’t have to. I wouldn’t be a cultist if I wasn’t willing to risk it.”
The Baron felt a little weight lift off his brow. “Yeah. Elizabeth didn’t really define the purpose of the Cult of Artemis. I think she just wanted to make a little space for women.”
“Well, this is what I’m doing with my space. For the world, and for the principle of the thing.” She rubbed her nose. “To avoid nuclear fire.”
Marco nodded very slowly. “I just want Malik to die.”
“Then I think we have a plan to make a plan,” the Zombie said. “Baron?”
The Baron sighed. “Fine.” And for the next fifteen minutes, they sat together, hashing out the steps between here and Marco’s survival, between this moment and the hopeful delivery of the Cat to Denisov’s hands, between events beginning today and a long future.
Author’s Note:
Went up on an off day due to a bonus chapter over on RR. Thanks for reading! <3
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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