The Peregrine Omnibus, Volume Two (18 page)

The Peregrine shook hands with his friends, thanking them for all their help. Then he was on his way, hurrying out of Tony Quinn’s home and down to the streets below. If Keane was right about the alien weapon lying in Peru, then there was no time to waste.

CHAPTER VI

Laguna de las Momias

“My neck hurts,” Mercy whined, scratching at one of the spots where she’d been shot the day before. There was little sign remaining of her wounds, other than barely-seen white circles where the bullets had emerged from her flesh.

The grasses that the three of them trudged through were knee-high and wet with morning dew, making progress all the more difficult. Had they still been human, they would have been drenched with sweat, but Mercy and Grace both wondered why the Spook didn’t call upon his hell-born powers and transport them directly to their goal. It was almost like he relished the exertions he was putting them through—inhuman or not, they still got weary after a long day of working. Grace suspected this was a mental holdover from their human days, but Mercy thought they simply had limits to their powers.

“Stop complaining,” Grace warned, casting a wary glance over at the Spook. “You know he doesn’t like it when you second-guess him.”

“I’m not second-guessing him. I’m just saying my neck hurts.”

“Just like you said twenty minutes ago that the grasses were too wet. You’re only doing this because he’s making us walk down to the lagoon.”

Mercy smiled, knowing that her friend was right. She couldn’t help it, though. It was in her nature to whine when things weren’t going her way. She and Grace had grown up together, slaves in service to a criminal warlord named the Warlike Manchu. His normal disdain for women had been tempered by reports of female soldiers who fought with ferocity unmatched by most men. And so both had been trained to be killers, taught all the killing arts beginning at the age of seven. They had become friends and soulmates, though their training had mattered little when they’d faced some enemies of their lord, each of them armed with guns. The girls had fought well, killing many of them, but in the end the bullets had ripped their beautiful flesh to tatters and their souls had ended up in hell.

Hell was where they had met Derek Taylor, who was in the process of his own private torment. He was the plaything of a powerful demon, being ritually tortured on a regular basis. But Taylor was smart, and for all the physical weaknesses he had possessed in life, he had a soul filled with an iron-strong belief in his own eventual reward. After befriending Grace and Mercy, Taylor had staged an escape, piercing the barriers between hell and the mortal world thanks to the bizarre powers he’d acquired during his stay in hell. All through his torture, he’d studied his captors, mastering their powers for his own use.

Mercy couldn’t fathom why he’d chosen to garb himself in a mock Day of the Dead costume and call himself the Spook, but who was she to judge? Besides, he’d taken on the role of their master, replacing the Warlike Manchu, and he was much kinder to them than the Manchu had ever been.

The air around them began to acquire a foul stench, and Mercy felt her feet beginning to sink into the increasingly wet soil. The Spook paused at the edge of a small cliff, one that rose approximately twelve feet over the brackish waters of the lagoon. Along the banks of the swampy water was a series of poorly-marked graves, each adorned with a small stick around which a hoop had been fastened. These hoops contained different objects, no two graves bearing the same. The objects ranged from feathers to marbles to small rocks.

“There they are,” the Spook whispered. His voice sounded so soft that the girls weren’t sure that he had spoken at all. The Spook threw himself over the cliff, his cloak billowing out behind him. He landed in a crouch, barely disturbing the grasses below.

While Mercy and Grace followed suit—landing much harder and in such a way that it would have broken bones if they had still been normal humans—the Spook began to inspect the graves. He was looking for one in particular, and when he spotted it, adorned with a series of flower petals, he could scarcely hide his pleasure. He allowed his gaze to wander from there, until he spotted the tomb up against the side of a small moss-covered hill. A stone wall had been erected, with a variety of warnings carved into its surface. A small section of the wall had obviously been separated from the rest and then put back into place, exactly as Allen’s story had claimed.

The Spook approached the wall with reverence, knowing that beyond it lay the key to all his plans. Despite his supernatural powers, he was not capable of achieving all that he desired without something more, something that would make the men and women of the world truly tremble before him. Derek Taylor had seen his father conquer the world of Hollywood, gaining all the women and money any man could want. But Derek desired to exceed his father in all ways: he would conquer the entire planet.

The Spook relaxed his mind, slowly allowing his physical form to melt away into near-nothingness. He passed through the barrier protecting the tomb, stepping into a room that smelled of earth and death. Set against one of the walls was the body of a man, his skin drawn tight against the bones of his body. He wore a loose-fitting cloth garment and an elaborate headdress. The corpse’s hands were drawn together over his chest, the fingers holding a strange object in their grip.

The Spook walked forward quickly, returning to solid form. His cloak rippled behind him and hellish light flared in his eyes. The object was square-shaped with a raised center. A series of concentric circles were etched on the raised area, with a dull blue-colored button in the middle. Along one of the edges was a small pointer, shaped like the head of an arrow.

The Spook could almost picture Allen carefully removing the weapon from the mummy’s hands, trying to avoid damaging the dead body. Derek, however, had no such compunctions. He ripped the microwave device from the mummy, the action causing the brittle bones to splinter. Several fingers flew to the dirt floor and the Spook crunched one of them beneath his boot.

Holding the weapon in front of him, the Spook pointed the small arrow-like portion of the device towards the wall. He depressed the blue button in the center and watched as invisible waves of energy snaked out from the machine, slowly beginning to warm the stone wall from within. He found that he could twist the button, causing a hum to emerge from the weapon as it grew in intensity. The wall began to literally melt before his eyes, drawing a pleased murmur from the villain.

As Mercy and Grace came into view, the Spook strode towards them, stepping over the smoking remains of the wall. “I think we’re all set now, ladies. The world had better hope they do as I say, or—”

The sound of a plane soaring overhead made all three pause and look up. An unmarked black aircraft streaked past, angling lower in obvious preparation for a landing somewhere just outside the fortress.

“Who could that be?” Grace wondered aloud.

The Spook laughed in response. “The Peregrine, I’m sure. And it’s about time. I deliberately left the Iron Maiden and the Black Bat alive, so he’d know for certain where we were headed.”

Mercy stared at her master in shock. “You wanted him to follow us?”

“Of course. Think of it. Both Doctor Satan and the Warlike Manchu had one thing in common: they both failed repeatedly to destroy the Peregrine. It’s the perfect way to show that we’re about to surpass them. We’ll commit the one crime neither of them could commit: we’re going to kill the Peregrine!”

CHAPTER VII

Death in the Fortress

The Peregrine stepped out of his private aircraft, making sure it was locked up tight. His specially-modified plane was one of the fastest in the world, and he’d flown it to the limits in order to get here as quickly as he had.

Max thought about discarding his heavy coat, thinking it might be too warm in the humid air surrounding him. But he elected to keep it in place, knowing that he had a plethora of gadgets in its pockets that might come in useful. Though his usual arsenal of guns and knife were typically all that the Peregrine needed, he also had with him a variety of explosives, communications devices, and first aid equipment.

Max looked around, taking a brief moment to soak in his surroundings. The fortress was a remarkable sight, and even with the current crisis, the Peregrine was moved by the powerful sense of history that clung to the place.

The Peregrine began to move away from the plane, but as he did so, a familiar pounding began in his head, building from behind his eyes. He staggered forward, catching himself in the tall grasses before he landed face-first.

The sound of his father’s voice filled his ears. “Max… You need to be careful. There are things going on here that even I can’t see… dangerous and dark things. I may have misled you about what the threat truly is…”

The Peregrine spoke through gritted teeth, attempting to blot out the pain. “Then
tell
me what it is, damn you!”

Warren’s black shoes appeared before Max’s eyes and the Peregrine looked up to see his father standing before him, surrounded by mist. “The danger is here, son… but I’m not sure it has anything to do with the Spook! He’s the catalyst for all this, but he’s not the one to really be fearful of…”

The Peregrine struggled to his feet as the cloud of pain began to lift. His father faded away even as Max cursed under his breath. Once again, his father’s ghost had shown up and tantalized him with clues but refused to tell him anything truly useful.

Max was still pondering this when the sound of movement behind him spurred him to action. He whipped around just in time to block a blow from Mercy, who had moved up on him during his trance.

The Peregrine quickly shifted into battle mode, knocking aside Mercy’s every attack. She was a blur in motion, but Max had trained under the greatest fighters in the world and was capable of matching her, though not without effort.

It was when Grace jumped into view that Max began to wonder if he was going to be up to the task of winning the day—after all, somewhere out there, the Spook lay in waiting.

Grace sprang towards him, thrusting a fist against the side of the Peregrine’s skull. She caught him a glancing blow, but it was enough to send him reeling into a follow-up punch from Mercy. The twin attacks momentarily left Max’s vision blurred and the girls pressed their advantage, peppering his body with kicks and punches.

Luckily for him, the Peregrine was trained in how to take punches and recover quickly. He allowed his attackers to believe him increasingly weakened and then he responded with renewed vigor. The Peregrine managed to put some space between himself and his enemies, allowing him to reach into his jacket and retrieve one of his weapons. He chose the mystical Knife of Elohim without thinking about it, wanting to have the close-quarters weapon against these inhuman foes. Having been dipped in the blood of Christ long ago, the weapon glowed with a yellow light in the presence of evil and dealt severe damage to the undead.

The Peregrine struck first at Mercy, who tried to dodge the sweep of his blade. She slipped in the wet grass, however, and was unable to avoid the weapon’s edge. It drove through her left side, ripping through the skin like a hot knife through butter. Max watched in shock and a bit of horror as Mercy began screaming in a way that didn’t seem to match the severity of her wound. She howled like a woman on the edge of death, and Max saw that her wound was beginning to spread, burning at the edges like kindling. She looked at Grace, screaming her name as her entire body suddenly burst into flames. Her cursed soul was returned to hell as her body crumbled to dust, falling to the dew-soaked grasses.

Grace stood motionless for a moment, her mouth hanging open in shock. She had seen Mercy die multiple times, always to be reborn within moments—their physical shells were, after all, nothing but manifestations of their souls, the real things having died long ago. But this… this didn’t look something Mercy would be coming back from. And that meant that Grace herself was in danger.

The female assassin turned back to face the Peregrine and saw that he was already moving towards her, the Knife of Elohim cutting through the air. Her sudden fear of returning to hell or being snuffed out completely made her sloppy, and she made only a token attempt at escaping his attack.

The Knife rose and fell, the blade piercing her neck and embedding itself alongside her jugular. She stared into his cold eyes as she began to burn, just as her friend had done. When her body was nothing more than dust being carried away on the wind, the Peregrine glanced over his shoulder to confirm his suspicions. During the battle, the Spook had moved close enough to watch. The villain, in his Day of the Dead-style costume, seemed disturbed by what he had just witnessed.

“So,” the Peregrine began, unable to keep the triumph from his voice. He felt supremely confident now that he knew the effect his blade had on them. “Are you going to surrender, or do I have to send you back to hell with a thrust of my blade?”

The Spook’s demeanor shifted to one of anger, and he strode towards the Peregrine with obvious menace. “I’m impressed, I have to admit, though I should have known you’d be capable of some amazing things. Those girls were trained by the Warlike Manchu, and they’d told me many stories about your prowess—and my own mentor, Doctor Satan, claimed that you were second only to Ascott Keane as a threat to his plans.”

“I’ll have to congratulate Ascott on rating higher than me.” The Peregrine pointed the tip of his blade at the Spook, who came to a stop just outside his reach. “I know who you are. And I know you came here to steal a microwave weapon. I’m not going to let that happen.”

The Spook hid his surprise well, though he wondered how the Peregrine had figured out so much—not that he was bothered by this, nor did he truly care about Grace and Mercy. It all merely confirmed that destroying the Peregrine would be a magnificent victory for him, after all.

“I don’t think steal is the right word,” the Spook answered, lifting up the weapon and displaying it for the vigilante to see. “After all, the previous owner is quite dead.”