The Night Sheriff, page 7
“At the moment, Russia is cursed.” She patted her chest. “Trust me, I know the signs. If I am to help free it, I cannot do it by running away.” Her voice dropped to an almost imperceptible whisper. “Which is what you should do, right now.” We looked around, and when our heads swung back, where Madam Urakhov had been standing there was now nothing but a rather ornamental coat rack.
Perplexing, but when the four men with guns burst through the doors and windows less than three seconds later, Mr. Mortimer and I were ready for them.
Over the next five years, she was a thorn in our side, although I like to believe that we gave as good as we got. Mr. Mortimer never stopped trying to get her to come over, even after she made several attempts to actually kill us. He was always convinced that she was under orders, and that Stalin had her heart hidden in a duck egg or some such, which he was using to control her. I would have tried harder to convince him that this wasn’t really how these things worked with witches, but I doubt he would have listened; the foolish man still sent her blue roses every year on her birthday.
We never attacked her, but I will admit that whenever she came after us, Mr. Mortimer did his best to kill her. Personally, I thought that showed a lot of respect. But all witches are hard to kill, and Madam Urakhov was a very powerful witch indeed. However, “hard” is not “impossible.”
The end came in a chemical factory somewhere in Belarus, where some very shortsighted person had rediscovered the papers of Albertus Magnus, the alchemist, and was planning on ending the cold war by crashing the economies of both the Eastern and Western blocks by producing entirely too much gold. Naturally, he sent a manifesto to the United Nations, so he shouldn’t have been surprised that he had agents from, by my count, eighteen different countries trying to kill him, capture him, or simply steal his notes.
It was rather depressing, actually; many of these people were ones that we had worked with. That were still, ostensibly, our allies; and yet here I was, punching through the chest of a very nice fellow from the Netherlands, who had once shown us the proper way to cook tulip bulbs in the middle of a famine. He was not the only one whose heart was no longer in it, let me tell you.
By the end of it, the would-be alchemist was dead, and only Madam Urakhov and ourselves faced each other with the files everyone had died for sitting on a small table on a catwalk overlooking the laboratory, which was in flames all around us, chemical vats roiling and venting great gouts of poisonous steam. I eyed a number of pressure gauges that were reporting that there was a race on to see which boiler would explode first.
“Polina,” Mr. Mortimer shouted. “This is perfect! You can ‘die’ here, and no one would ever know differently!” He held out his hand. “Come with us. With me. Please.”
“And allow Capitalists to possess the secret? Never!”
“Is that it? Is that what you’re worried about?” Without another word, he swung his pistol up and shot out one of the table legs, sending the files over the edge and into a vat of boiling mercury, where it burst into flames.
But Madam Urakhov only reacted to his initial movement. She saw his gun come up, ducked, and shot Mr. Mortimer where he stood. I snarled, and flowed forward, faster than she expected. I raked her side with my claws, but she spun and drove a small dagger into my arm, and I felt pain like none I had experienced in the last millennium. My arms locked into place and I fell onto my side. She laughed in triumph and pulled a second dagger out from her sleeve and strode towards me, confident that she had won, which is why it was so very satisfying to lash out with a well-placed kick, scything her legs out from under her, and sending her over the edge, screaming, into the same vat of mercury. I ripped the dagger out of my arm with my teeth, flowed to the ground, fell actually, and managed to slam the lid down on her and secure it tight. A boiler at the far end of the room exploded. Getting to Mr. Mortimer and pulling him free before the entire complex went up was a very near thing.
It was only after I got us far enough away that the remaining explosions were more entertainment than threat that I was able to determine that while Mr. Mortimer was severely wounded, he would survive.
Over the course of our association, we had saved each other numerous times, of course, and by this point, we no longer bothered to keep track of who owed whom. But Mr. Mortimer took this particular instance to heart for some reason, and I believe that it was at this point that he began to seriously plan for my future in the new world.
Chapter Three
As I mentioned earlier, I had initially been sheltered from the anti-supernatural feelings that were growing in postwar Europe. We were aware that this feeling was growing stronger, even in the Americas, but I did not consider myself at risk. Proof that even I, with all my experience, was still susceptible to tunnel vision.
This changed early in 1953. Mr. Mortimer had a meeting with a fellow from Washington, and when he returned, he was angrier than I had ever seen him. There was a new president in America, and apparently this administration was determined to sever ties with anything “ungodly.” I had been mentioned specifically.
Mr. Mortimer was frank. “They do not want you around,” he said, “But I have done such a good job of talking you up that they will not let you go. They will not feel comfortable until your file is closed.”
And so he killed me.
It was very well done, in an out-of-the-way castle in Bavaria where (the reports later explained), the Nazis had secretly stored some extremely combustible and satisfyingly pyrotechnic chemicals. It took three of the new administration’s agents assisting Mr. Mortimer to do it, but only one of them lived to witness my operatic demise (and keeping him alive was a challenge, let me tell you). And so the deed was done, and Mr. Mortimer, understandably shaken by the whole thing, returned to the United States for the first time in almost two decades.
I took a more circuitous route by sea, where I was listed on the manifest as a particularly large cask of Madeira, which was being aged the old-fashioned way. It was a delightful trip, as I had never done any ocean travel. The ports the ship visited were always interesting, and it fed my recently discovered delight in the exotic. I even managed to dispatch a couple of Nazis who had attempted to hide from their pasts in more tropical climes. I thought of it as a little something extra to help repay the cost to the Americans of my extended cruise.
What with one thing or another, it wasn’t until early in 1954 that my ship docked at the Port of Los Angeles. Less than ten hours later, I first saw what would later be known as Zenonland. It was still under construction, of course, but even then, the size and scope of the place was evident. Still, I was a bit underwhelmed. “A night watchman.” I looked at Mr. Mortimer askance. “How glamorous my retirement shall be.”
“When it’s finished, it’ll be larger than the village you were happy to spend several centuries in.”
Well, there was no denying that. I examined the paper life that Mr. Mortimer had presented to me when we had met earlier in the evening. I had every confidence that it would all pass muster, but … “Your brother is okay with me being here?”
“Bart is so pleased that I actually asked him for a favor, that he’s perfectly willing to help you out.”
“Even after you told him … everything?”
At this Mr. Mortimer looked uncomfortable. “Well … there is one condition …”
“I won’t have to wear one of those platypus hats, will I?”
“He wants a geas placed on you.”
I stepped back. “A geas? On me?”
Mr. Mortimer looked uneasy. I had never seen him so discomfited. He ran a hand through his hair. “My brother knows just enough about supernatural creatures to think that he knows everything. He … he wants something that would prevent you from attacking children.”
I was outraged. “What does he think I am? How dare he?”
Mr. Mortimer waved his hands trying to placate me. “No! It’s just that … Like I said—he’s heard things.” I opened my mouth. “Not about you, of course! But on the other hand, nobody knows what you are! That’s the problem!” I frowned. Encouraged, he continued. “These days everyone refuses to believe in the existence of the supernatural. If you think of monsters, you think of those ridiculous things they call vampires and werewolves in the movies—And there is a codified mythology about them. Can’t go out in the light! Afraid of crucifixes!
“Whereas you … what are you? Even you don’t know. Now Bart trusts me—but there are limits. This place he’s building—It’s a place where people are supposed to be happy. Be safe. He thinks people will need a place like this. So he demands assurances that you are safe to be around.”
“But this is pointless. I would not attack a child.”
“Then you should have no problem with me putting on a show to reassure him?”
Well, he had me there. I didn’t like it, of course. We’d seen geas’s at work during the war, and they could be nasty things. But I trusted Mr. Mortimer. I did.
So, I acquiesced, with poor grace, I’ll admit, and several weeks before the park officially opened, we traveled by train to the city of New Orleans, in the state of Louisiana. An odd little city. I’ll be the first to admit that my experiences with American cities is quite limited, but as I stepped down off of The City of New Orleans into the newly opened Union Passenger Terminal, for the first time since I’d arrived in this country, I felt like I had been transported back to Europe. Well … Sort of. A strange, idealized reflection of a Europe that never was, I should say.
There was magic here. Oh, not the subtle, workaday magics that are present in even the most mundane of human habitations. As we debarked, I saw a tall, skeletal figure wearing an improbably large top hat lounging upon the roof of the building across the way from the train station entrance. When he saw me looking at him, he sat up quickly, tipped his hat, and strode off across the rooftops, his legs stretching out to carry him away. Subtle it was not.
We climbed aboard a sleek electric streetcar that rumbled along through the night. “So,” Mr. Mortimer asked idly, “any interesting ghosts hanging about?”
I sighed. When I squint in a certain way, I can occasionally see ghosts. Thankfully, I have to make a bit of an effort, as ghosts can be incredibly needy if they know you can perceive them, and you really shouldn’t bother as they tend to be gloomy, dour, and, frankly, a bunch of whiners. “Sometimes I wish I’d never mentioned that.”
“But my dear fellow,” Mr. Mortimer chided me. “When we arrive in a new town, they’re the one group that can’t be bothered to lie to us.”
Arguing with Mr. Mortimer was an exercise in futility, so I squinted, and gasped in surprise. The ghosts of New Orleans were all around us. Hundreds, thousands of them. But unlike any spirits I had ever seen, they whirled and danced and strutted up and down the streets, playing instruments and obviously having a roaring good time. I blinked and they vanished. I squinted again, and they reappeared, engaged in a street party that stretched for miles, and which, in all the time I was there, showed no sign of flagging. I dutifully reported this to Mr. Mortimer, who vainly craned his head about. “Are you sure?”
I squinted again and saw our streetcar roll through a gigantic skeletal alligator, easily thirty feet long, which was carrying a troop of the dead gyrating to some unheard music. As we passed amongst them, Mr. Mortimer’s fingers began unconsciously tapping out a tune, which, I realized, perfectly matched the movements of the dancers. I saw that the other riders were all smiling and swaying slightly in time as well, and I realized that the positive energy—what we here in California now call good vibes—generated by this ongoing, post-life bacchanal is so overwhelming that a minuscule amount of it was actually managing to leak through the barriers separating life and death. The result is that it gives everyone in the city a bit of an extra bounce to their step, and a bit more apparent joie de vivre, which is rather amusing, all things considered.
“I think you’re just making it up,” Mr. Mortimer said petulantly.
“Look at the people on the sidewalks,” I said.
Mr. Mortimer checked his wristwatch in that manner he had that allowed him to surreptitiously see everything around him. “More people standing about than I would expect for this time of night,” he remarked. “Are they really all watching us?”
“They are, but I assure you that the only ones watching are not actually people.” And this was certainly the case. While they might be unnoticed by the humans strolling among them, there was an unnaturally large percentage of nonhumans taking the night air, and all of them were keenly watching our trolley as it rolled by.
Mr. Mortimer looked interested. “Do tell. What’s that one?” he asked, pointing to a tall fellow.
“Some sort of lycanthrope. You can tell by the ears.”
Mr. Mortimer shook his head. “So you keep saying, but I just can’t see it.” He pointed to a rather shapely young woman in an abbreviated coat. “Her? Is she …?”
I rolled my eyes. I don’t how he always managed to find them. “Yes, she’s a succubus. Well spotted.”
Mr. Mortimer tapped his fingers upon his knee. “Now what is so interesting about us?”
In the trolley seat next to us, an elderly man had drifted off to sleep. At Mr. Mortimer’s question, he raised his head and grinned, and I saw that something unnatural smiled out at us from behind his eyes. His mouth opened and a voice redolent with humor rolled forth. “Well, suh, der ain’t many dat would go face-to-face wit de Queen of N’awlins, suh, much less pay fo’ de priv’lege, an’ to some, dat’s worth seein’.”
He looked me up and down. “Plus, a ting like you, suh, in de nawmul way o’ tings, you’d ha been challenged or recruited, let us say, be’faw you had gone ten steps. But de Queen’s word, she be out, and you is to be … unmolested.” He gave us a dazzling smile. “Welcome to N’awlins, gennulmuns.” With that, he slumped back into his seat. A moment later, a gentle snore broke the silence.
The rest of our trip passed uneventfully.
When we arrived at our lodgings, we were met by a tall, elegant, shell of a man. In a voice as dry as dust, he told us that he was here to escort us to le L’Enfant.
I am always amazed at the number of ordinary people that have heard of the original Selene L’Enfant de Lune. She was such a product of this country, an astonishing mix of deepest secrecy and effective marketing. Everyone “knows” that she was the “Moon Queen of New Orleans,” but most people don’t really understand what that means.
If you can perceive magical influence, you will know that the entire city is enmeshed in a protective web that grows stronger and more complex the closer you get to the French Quarter. It is a subtle protection. A hurricane or atomic warhead could still destroy the physical city, but the essence—the heart, the soul, the knowledge that somewhere there is a New Orleans—will remain, and those ghosts, their numbers greatly swollen, no doubt, will joyously dance throughout eternity.
Personally, I don’t really approve. There is a cosmic cycle to human lives. You are born, live, learn, die, and then return, hopefully, to do it better the next time around. But this … this pocket afterlife filled with endless celebration feels to me like—if you’ll pardon the expression—a dead end. How long before the endlessly dancing celebrants begin to wonder if they are in Heaven or in Hell?
The energies become practically palpable when you stand on the L’Enfant’s doorstep. I’m told that there is an emporium where one can purchase Selene L’Enfant de Lune souvenirs, harmless hedge magics, and questionable house blessings, but this was a solidly bourgeois residence on a respectably quiet street, with no hint of the powers that resided within.
The original Selene L’Enfant de Lune had died over seventy years ago. The name and the office had passed down the matrilineal line, and in this year of 1954, the current L’Enfant was the fourth to carry the name and the burdens of the office. I paused at the entryway and marveled at the intricacy of the magical weaves incorporated into the very house itself. There were indications that it had been first constructed over a hundred years ago, and yet it still stood firm, running without the original mage present to refresh and renew it. Old magic tends to decay piecemeal. As it collapses, you can get dangerous or intriguing echoes of what it was supposed to do. But there was no sign of that here. I could have been convinced that these spells had been renewed within the last month. This spoke well of the current L’Enfant whom we were coming to see.
Certainly power tends to run through families, but genetics is a tricky thing, and it’s rare that a familial line maintains that unknown something that allows one to manipulate the world for more than a century or so. My estimate of the power of the original L’Enfant went up another notch. I could only imagine what the place had been like back when Selene was still alive.
The door opened and we were escorted inside. Our guide gestured us towards an inner door and then the animating force drained from him, and he slumped back against the wall. The far door opened and a graceful young woman, less than thirty, stepped inside.
Magical power is something that I can see—or perhaps I should say perceive, if I’m going to be technical about it, though of course there is a trick to it—and this woman seethed with it. If she was but a shadow of the original L’Enfant, then Selene herself must have been terrifying to stand before. Physically, she was surprisingly short, maybe five feet tall, certainly no more. Her skin was a rich golden brown, indicative of the type of genetic mélange that one finds at a crossroads of the world.
Despite the heat, she was wrapped in a heavily embroidered shawl, the threads of which flashed and writhed disquietingly whenever she moved. She was covered with assorted bits of jewelry. Gold and gems nestled amidst plain twists of copper and strips of intricately folded paper chains. It may have looked like a demimondaine’s junk drawer, but it was a conduit for forces that I could see skittering across her body.
