The First Book of the Pure (22 page)

Once speeding away in their separate strings
of vehicles, both sides called the police, reporting an unprovoked
attack by unknown parties. The authorities were already on scene,
but it was a confusing mess with no clear course of action but
containment, and that wasn’t too clear either, with no combatants
still in evidence.

No, both sides explained to the police, of
course they couldn’t come back since there had been shots fired and
lives lost. It was far too dangerous. Their attorneys would meet
with the police and fill out the appropriate reports.

“Robert, I think we have a problem.”

“No kidding Max, you’ve been shot, I was
knifed, and the guy we should’ve killed got up and kept going. Hey,
he was shot
and
stabbed. What’s with
that
? And the
people we lost, they were good men.”

“I have a bad feeling that Karl leaves a
trail of bodies behind him. The deal is, I’m afraid, that Karl
Schmidt is one of us. We always assumed there were more, and now
we’re certain. Nobody else could have taken what we threw at him
and lived.”

“You’re okay though, right?” Robert asked as
he glanced over to the blood that had spread to soak much of Max’s
clothing.

“Hurting, but I’ll recover.”

“Hey, didn’t that guy look familiar to you? I
think we’ve run across him before this business deal.”

“Don’t think so.”

“I have, and I have a really bad feeling
about when and where. Let me give it some thought, and I’ll tell
you when I’m sure. It’s been a long time.”

***

By the time Max and Robert had regrouped and
decided to head back to their own US headquarters in New York, they
got a call from one of their secretaries, dear old Shirley. She
told them the police had come into the offices, asked everyone to
get together in one room, and then, with over forty people there
together, the officers opened fire. Nobody survived in that room.
Shirley was an older woman who came across as mousey and careful.
She also had a suspicious nature, and trusted nobody. She hid when
the officers were getting people together. She heard everything
until they got into the conference room and closed the door. Then
she just heard gunshots. She was made of stern stuff, and after a
long time she decided the fake cops had all left, so she came out
of hiding and checked the room. Everybody was dead, with multiple
gunshots in each body, and one tap to each head. After throwing up
and trying to breathe for a while, Shirley decided to call her
bosses first, even before the police. She was also loyal.

Max and Robert had an emergency war meeting.
“Forty people dead. Karl killed them without hesitation. For that
he’ll pay. Those people were ours, loyal and part of our extended
family. Give Shirley a better job and a big raise, Rob, and let’s
bring in people from the field offices and the operations in
Toronto to pick up the slack here while we figure out what to
do.”

Robert was incensed. “What to do? Are you
serious? We need to kill that bastard! That’s what we need to do.
And we need to destroy everything he’s built, I don’t give a flying
…”

“No! Trust me on this. We need to make sure
we’re covered, our people are as safe as we can manage right now,
and that our businesses continue to function. Then we can make
longer term plans to destroy him. Let’s send Tony and his agents to
study him and find out everything they can. He’s our investigator,
so let him investigate. He has to find out when and where Karl came
from, when he entered this time, who he claims to be related to,
right down to his preference in underwear! We’ve got to know every
detail! Everything! We need more information; lots of it.”

Karl, on his end of things, had struck
quickly. He had seen more conflicts than anyone alive, including
any Pures. He knew the snake had to be decapitated, and fast,
before it struck. This snake already knew he was there, and now who
and what he was, and it had to die.
Damn them
.
Always
something comes up to wreck my plans. I won’t skip this time. I’ll
hunt them down and teach them that they can actually die, and quite
unpleasantly. I’ve killed better men than them, and I’ll do it
again
. His grim visage was for more than a determination to go
to war: it was because he thought he recognized one of those men,
and he was pretty sure he
was
a Pure. And he was one he
should have recognized right away.

Session 14

Karl stormed, rather than walked, into the
area they’d been using for his monologues. He was obviously
distraught, and Kenneth had no idea what was going on. He seemed to
be moving with effort and in some pain. He was favoring his right
side, and Kenneth hadn’t seen any physical weakness before in his
captor. Karl kept flexing his right arm, like it was asleep or
painful, but not so much that it couldn’t be used.

Speaking to the room and not directly to
Kenneth, he gave directives in a loud and agitated voice. “Kenneth,
collect your notes, the laptop, and the clothing I brought here for
you. In one hour you’ll be moved to a more secure location.” Karl
announced it to him peremptorily. “Be ready.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

For his question he got a slap across his
face that threw him back three feet. “Go ahead, ask me another
question. Do I look like I want to have a discourse with you? Just
do it. One hour.” Then he showed just a flicker of hesitation. “I
think I’ve found my surviving Pure son.”

With that, Karl strode out.

The Conflict Escalates

After Max and Robert had regrouped and felt
like they could begin to ascertain what had to be done, Robert’s
fear had subsided and Max’s anger had done the same. Now they were
both smoldering like hot coals ready to burst into flame at the
most appropriate moment. Karl had attacked them at their main
office, brutally and decisively, before they could regroup. He had
launched various forays into others of their ventures that were
causing them serious problems. They’d done nothing to him as
yet.

Karl was sure he’d found one, or perhaps two
Pures, and he was sure they would be formidable. Based on that
assumption, he was determined to use the best defense, which for
him was always a strong and deadly offense. He kept wondering if
the slight man, Robert, was his son. Surely he wouldn’t keep the
same name after all these years, would he? He hadn’t seen his son
since about 1200 AD, and it wasn’t clear to him what he would look
like now. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to him back
then, but 800 years was a long time, even to him. Well, Karl had
changed his name and was back to his original, so perhaps Robert
had done the same thing.

Do I want to fight my son?
Do I
want my son dead?
He vividly recalled that day in Robert’s
room, several hundred years ago, when he’d stabbed his son to see
if he could recover. He proved himself a Pure, to some degree at
least. Would he be open to a truce? Could they talk it out?

All those thoughts, while still whirling
about in his mind, were summarily dismissed. Robert had always
fought him, and had nearly killed him, which had forced him into a
hidden dungeon to skip many years as his body healed. In a way
Robert had cost him England, although, how long could he have kept
the struggling place together? He’d lost all patience with being a
king by then, so best not to dwell on that event. But Robert, he
would be a problem until well and truly dead. His decision was
made. His newly found Pure son must die. And the man with him, Max
something or other, would die too. He had prepared for this
contingency for decades. This new, techie world was his kind of
place; he wouldn’t give it up for anyone or anything.
It’s all
right. I’ve another Pure son, and one who’ll do anything I
ask
.

It was time he hit the field again. He hadn’t
done much in the way of personal combat or “field work” as he
thought of it, for many years. These opponents were worthy of him
in one sense: they were Pures, they had memories as long as their
lives, and they had the experience necessary to significantly
modify plans in the heat of battle. They could not, however, have
his ability with current technology, nor his overpowering need to
win.
I doubt any of them have been kings
.

He called up his Director of Security, Bosh.
“Get a strike team ready. Tomorrow night we’re going out to do some
serious work. Your best men, unquestioningly loyal.”

“Sir!
We
?”

“Yes, I’m going too. In fact, you’ll be
second in command. I’ll be in charge,
directly
.
Understood?”

“Yes sir. We’ll be ready. A team of
eight?”

“That will do. Have a backup team, same size,
ready to go also. Six o’clock sharp.”

***

While Karl was making his decisions and
arrangements, Max and Robert were doing the same. Max was a “head
on” kind of guy, doubtless from his beginnings as a Roman soldier.
Max knew Karl was going to keep it up until they were dead and
broke, and he wasn’t sure which was worse, “your money or your
life.” Robert was angry, but not as confrontational, and certainly
not as physical. Max had their Security Chief, Manuel, get a team
ready too. He wanted a bomb built that would take out Karl’s
home.

“Max, we can’t. That guy is nuts. He won’t
stop if we escalate this with him. Let’s send a message that we can
go our separate ways and, you know, live and let live. Let’s try
and negotiate.”

“Sometimes you’re weak, Rob. That won’t work.
He’d say yes, and that would make us easier targets for him later.
This is war, and we have to be all in. That man has to die.”

“But he can’t die! He’s a Pure! You saw that;
he can’t die anymore than we can. We need to stop all this before
we destroy everything we’ve worked for over the centuries,
please.”

“He
can
die. Make no mistake, we
aren’t immortal. We just have a highly evolved regenerative system.
If we could manufacture it and market it we really could rule the
world, absolutely and completely. Nobody wants to die. But we can’t
duplicate whatever this ability is; I’ve tried. We do know that our
bodies regenerate tissue incredibly fast. Mine does it faster than
yours, but both of us can survive heart punctures, deadly physical
trauma, and even brain injury. Poison hasn’t killed me, but I’m
sure not all of them have been tried. My poisoners were never in
good enough condition after I found them to tell me what they used.
I told you about my amnesia, right?”

“What? You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I took an arrow once that penetrated my
skull. It hit my brain, and it was just accepted by my compatriots
that I’d die. But I began to heal, and talk, and they waited to see
what would happen. Mu’dar was my friend and teacher at the time,
and he knew my story, and so he had reason to believe I might
recover. After a while I could function as well as ever, but there
were gaps in my memory. Those gaps were never filled in.”

“Wow. I had no idea. When was all this,
Max?”

“Well, it was while I was still Mu’dar’s
student, so it was several hundred years ago. Both a mentor and
friend, he was the gentlest man I ever knew. He wasn’t weak, just
more concerned for others than for himself. He’d die before hurting
someone else. Several times during our relationship I had to fight
to keep him alive.” Max went silent, staring at nothing.

“I remember you talking about Mu’dar from
time to time. How did you get hurt?”

“Mu’dar and I were traveling with some
others, a couple of teachers and their students, and four guards
hired by one of them. Bandits came out of nowhere. I was told they
were very skilled.”

“You were told?”

“Yes, I have no memory of the event itself,
nor of the two years prior to it with Mu’dar. Fortunately I’d been
with Mu’dar long enough to have a history I did remember, so I knew
him as my friend and teacher, but that gap…

“I took an arrow to the brain. I can’t tell
you how or exactly where it hit, because I’ve no scars now, and no
memory of it. But I do know this: if enough of my brain had been
injured, I would’ve died. Your body can’t live without your
autonomic system functioning. You just die. Bad enough I lost some
memory, but it could have been much worse.”

“Hmm, I suppose certain things would insure
death, even for one of us. Getting one’s head chopped off would
work, I suppose. Or burning up in a good hot fire, or being bombed
with a big enough explosion. I see your point about Karl, and
us.”

“We need to completely destroy him. If he
survives, he’ll keep fighting. You saw him in Toronto. He was shot,
took a knife, spraying blood like crazy, and kept fighting. He’s
one of us. We have to be extreme to kill him, as he’ll try to be
with us. If we don’t, he’ll pursue us and more people will die like
the forty in our main office.” For a warrior such as himself Max
was surprised at how upset he was about the loss of those people.
“This isn’t about revenge. It’s about retribution. What goes around
really should come around. He can’t be allowed to keep devastating
people’s lives like this. Forty of our people, plus the ones in
Toronto. That’s a lot of families with tragic losses. He’s got to
be stopped.”

“So we’re going to blow up his house? Good
plan. I’ve always loved explosions. When?”

“I think we have to move quickly. He was
already prepared. Look at what Karl’s done to us already. He’s
killed an entire shift at our office, excluding Shirley, bless her,
who called to warn us, and you know he’s coming after us next. We
should have been ready for this kind of attack. We should have
planned for more than just making money.”