Death Blows: The Bloodhound Files-2 (33 page)

The look on Leo’s face darkens. “Whoever he is,” he growls, “he will regret the day he was whelped.”

“Yeah,” I say. “He will.”

Leo returns to the hospital room, but I stay in the waiting area—I suddenly feel drained, just not up to the crush of people and the sight of Dr. Pete all bandaged up.

Sometimes, the worst thing about a case is the sense of loss—not just the loss of a life, but the emotional gravity that the death generates, a swirling pit dragging down everything near it: careers, relationships, hopes. Sal Aquitaine’s child would never know her father. Lucy Barbarossa’s mysterious lover would never hold her in his arms again. All John Dark’s plans and schemes would, in the end, have to rise or fall without him.

It’s always the survivors who bear the scars. Catharine Great Shaka, robbed first of her country and now of her legacy. Silverado, AKA the Quicksilver Kid, a loner now even more alone. Brother Stone, toiling endlessly in his self-created tomb, his only companion his guilt. Even Cassius had been diminished by the loss of the Solar Centurion’s armor; if nothing else, it was a link to his past, the symbol of a simpler, more romantic heroism that the head of the NSA could no longer afford to indulge in.

But maybe that heroism had always been an illusion. Maybe the Bravo Brigade had never been anything but soldiers doing a job, an extension of the Hexagon’s will. Maybe the only one who still thought of them as heroes was my comic-book-obsessed killer—and he was crazy.

“You know, that almost makes sense,” a familiar voice says.

Familiar in a very weird and unexpected way; it’s Jerry Seinfeld. A television is on in the waiting room, bolted to one corner of the ceiling, and an old rerun is showing. It’s the one where Elaine meets a group of friends who are the exact opposite of Jerry, George, and Kramer. This episode is considerably different from the one I’ve seen, of course; by “opposite,” they mean that Jerry’s counterpart is a thrope and Kramer’s is a pire, as opposed to the other way around. Jerry refers to them as being from

“Bizarro-world,” where everything is backward from normal reality. Jerry’s counterpart even has a little figure of Bizarro in his mirror-image apartment, in the same spot where Jerry keeps a statue of Superman. Bizarro looks exactly like Superman, except the S on his chest is backward and—

It’s only on screen for a second, but it’s enough to start the cascade of facts that’s been building in the back of my brain.

The Flash, running backward through time.

The
Seduction of the Innocent
murders, with their metaphysical reversal of punishing the blameless.

“That’s it,” I say softly. “That’s the pattern I couldn’t see. Makes perfect sense, now—perfect nonsense, to be exact.”

I meet Cassius halfway down the hall, which is good; I don’t have time for awkward socializing. “I think I may have broken the case,” I say. “But I’ll need Eisfanger’s help to be sure.”

“What have you learned?”

“That I’ve been approaching this case from the wrong direction. Literally.”

NINETEEN

Cassius arranges for Eisfanger to meet us on the roof of the building in an NSA chopper. I hate talking over the roar of helicopter blades, but I do my best to explain my theory while we’re in the air.

“It’s all backward,” I say. “Saladin Aquitaine’s body was the beginning, but the staging of the scene referenced both the beginning
and
the end of the Flash’s life. Taken on its own, as a singular image, it doesn’t mean anything—but comic books
aren’t
singular images; they’re panels. Images in sequence. I couldn’t see that until I had more than one image to work with, and even then it took me a while to see that the images were reversed.”

“I thought we’d established that Barbarossa was the first victim,” Eisfanger says.

“I’ll get to that. Here’s the way your average superhero career goes: It usually starts with the acquisition of an archfoe, someone he battles on a regular basis. If the superhero sticks around long enough, he eventually joins a team of other superheroes. If he lasts a really long time and starts to get stale, he gets a reboot in the ass—usually highlighted by some sort of epic sacrifice, like dying to save the world—before being relaunched in a different direction.

“Which is where our killer started: at the very end, where the hero has been reimagined. That’s why Barbarossa was first, and why her death referenced Morrison’s
Doom Patrol
. It was a comic that symbolized the reimagining of a Silver Age character—which is exactly what our killer is. After that came Aquitaine, the reverse of a noble sacrifice—it was a selfish act that makes things worse for Gretchen, literally stealing life away from her. Then the Solar Centurion’s armor and African Queen’s shield were stolen—the team-up aspect, only reversed. Finally, there was John Dark’s murder; the acquiring of a superhero’s nemesis is turned into the disposal of one.”

“All right,” Cassius says. “I’ll defer to your expertise. But that doesn’t explain how you arrived at the identity of our killer.”

“Bizarro,” I say. “He’s an old Superman villain. He does everything backward—including thinking. I didn’t know who he was until
Seinfeld
explained it to me for the second time.”

“You watch
Seinfeld
?” Eisfanger asks. “Get out!”

I restrain my urge to push him out of the helicopter. “Bizarro has his own special language, where he says the opposite of what he means. He says good-bye when he shows up and hello when he leaves. He tells his friends that he hates them and his enemies that he loves them—it’s more reverse logic, but at a personal level. But it’s not just a speech impediment—
he acts the same way
.”

I take a deep breath before continuing. “It’s not just the sequence of events that our killer has reversed. It’s his motives, too. He saw killing Dark as being a benevolent act; he saw robbing the Bravos as helping them.”

“Wait—why would he act benevolently toward someone that’s supposedly his nemesis?” Cassius asks.

“Is that another reversal?”

I sigh. “Yeah, I know, it becomes a maze of mirrors after a while. Reverse a motivation twice and it goes back to being the original reason, right? Remember, Dark was killed by the kind of weirdo death trap that a villain usually locks a hero in; maybe he was supposed to escape the way the hero always does. That part doesn’t quite parse . . . but everything else does. See, while Bizarro’s costume is a virtual duplicate of Superman’s, the character himself resembles a crude statue of chiseled white stone. Sound familiar?”

“Brother Stone,” Cassius says. “But Jace—lems aren’t subject to insanity.”

“No, they’re not.
But Brother Stone isn’t a lem
.”

Cassius stares at me. “Impossible.”

“Not a word I throw around much anymore. Think about it: You’ve got thropes and pires and golems on your secret council, but no humans. What if one saw an opportunity to join and took it?”

Cassius scowls at me. “I suppose a shapeshifter could do so, though any long-term masquerade as a thrope or a pire would be detected. But a lem?”

“A solitary lem with a mysterious past. He was supposedly brought to life by a group of monks—but when I talked to him, he claimed to be the only member of his order, at least in this reality. We know he can shift his shape—how else can he move when he’s made of stone? And I think he can change more than just his form—I think he can change what he’s made of, too. From stone to copper to silver, letting him stab thropes with a fingertip or channel lightning—the electrified state of Aquitaine’s body was a statement about Transe’s decision to direct Wertham’s power into the earth instead of the sky, causing a volcanic eruption instead of a storm.”

“It’s possible,” Eisfanger says. “Humans have a natural facility for changeling magic; pires and thropes don’t. It could even account for the transformation of Doctor Transe’s bones and Barbarossa’s body.”

“If my theory’s correct, it should be easy to verify. That’s why you’re here, Damon; he may have some kind of magic concealing what he is. If so, I’m counting on you to crack it.”

Eisfanger shrugs. “Shouldn’t be that hard to do. I’ll use Wittgenstein; he’s got a keen nose for shifters.”

Wittgenstein is a rat skull Eisfanger keeps around, one still inhabited by the spirit of its former occupant.

Cassius abruptly digs in his pocket, then presses his cell phone to his ear and says, “Yes?”

The look of alarm on his face sets off all my own. “On our way,” he snaps, then signals the pilot. “Turn it around,” he says. “Get us back to the hospital.
Now
.”

Gretchen
.

I should have known
, I keep telling myself.
I should have known
.

I thought I was so smart. I figured out all kinds of details on the trip back, mostly to keep myself calm instead of imagining what we might find when we get there. I figure out why there were huge footprints at the game park: Stone was distributing his weight by giving them a broader base, making them look like a giant’s instead of just someone very heavy. There hadn’t been two people with shovels unearthing the shield, just one who could turn both his hands into spades. I even think I have a pretty good idea why the murders had started with the Sword of Midnight.

So why couldn’t I see that Stone would go after Gretchen’s baby?

He hadn’t wasted time with subtlety, which was a bad sign. He’d simply smashed his way through a window riding the sky-shield, grabbed the infant from the nursery and left the same way. I’m standing in the middle of a room full of squalling babies, broken glass everywhere, Cassius in one corner giving nonstop, terse orders into his phone. Gretchen’s standing at the broken window, staring out into the night, her hands clenched into fists, her hospital gown flapping around her like a pale green shroud.

“Jace.” Gretch’s voice is as hard and cold as a tomb-stone. She turns around and stares at me. You don’t see pires do the transformation thing very much—usually only when they’re really, really angry. Their eyes go red as blood and their fangs lengthen, making them look exactly like the supernatural creatures they really are.

That’s how Gretchen looks right now.

“Find him,” she says. Her voice scares me.

“I will, Gretch. I promise.”
Because if you don’t
, a little part of my brain suggests,
she will tear your
head from your body with her own hands
.

Think. Gotta think. Gotta see this from a deranged, living statue of a monk’s point of view. One who
thinks he’s a superhero
.

Okay, he started at the end and is working his way back to the beginning. What comes before facing
your nemesis
?

Your origin, of course
.

Every superhero has one. Spider-Man got bitten by a radioactive spider, Batman saw his parents killed
in front of him, Captain America—okay, I don’t
know
Captain America’s origin, but that doesn’t mean
he doesn’t have one. Bitten by a radioactive flag or something . . . focus, Jace, focus. He’s a
shapeshifting golem. What was
Bizarro’s
origin? The Web site I found said he was made from some
kind of duplicating ray . . .

But that doesn’t matter, because Stone’s crazy. The logic he’s following is fractured and incoherent, based on a backward structure but still pretty free-form; you don’t chop a woman’s brain into sixtyfour pieces due to rigorous logic. Speaking conceptually, what was Bizarro’s origin?

The opposite of Superman’s. And Superman was—

Oh my God.

“Cassius!” I say. “You guys have rockets, I know you do—does Boeing still do aerospace contracts?”

“I’ll call you back,” he says into his cell phone, and snaps it shut. “Yes. There’s a satellite launch research facility in Renton.”

“That’s where he’s headed.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you on the way,” I say, headed for the door.

“Jace!” Gretch calls out behind me. Her voice is more anguished than angry. “For God’s sake, why is he taking my baby to an industrial plant?”

I hesitate, but don’t look back. “I’m not sure,” I say, “but I’ll get her back, Gretch. I will.”

And then Cassius, Charlie, and I run out the door.

“I’m surprised she didn’t try to come with us,” I say as the chopper lifts off.

“She did,” Cassius says, punching in another number on his cell phone. “I gave agents orders to restrain and sedate her. She’s too weak to help and I have enough to worry about.” His voice is hard, efficient, and anyone not in my line of work would probably think that means he doesn’t care. They’d be wrong. Every cop gets that tone when they’re chasing someone who’s hurt family—totally, utterly focused, all the anger channeled down to a tight little beam like a rage laser. From now until we catch this guy, we’re not individuals. We’re a machine. Ego, history, personal conflicts all fall away; nothing matters but the target. This must be what a pack feels like when it’s hunting.

“Explain,” Cassius says.

“He’s going to try to launch the baby into space,” I say. “Superman came here from a dying planet in a rocketship, as an infant. He’s going to reverse the procedure, send her away from a living planet.”

“Again—why?”

“Because it completes the sequence. It’s the first panel—there isn’t anything before that. Oh, and because
he’s insane
.”

“It’s hard to believe he fooled us for so long,” Cassius says. He sounds more as if he’s talking to himself than me or Charlie.

“We humans are tricky like that,” I say. “I’m guessing the whole ‘secret identity’ thing both exacerbated his condition and made it easier to conceal his mental instability. He’s been leading a double life for decades; when he started losing control, he managed to contain it to just one of them.”

Neither Cassius nor I comes out and says it, but we both recognize the deeper implications of Stone being human; namely, that he has to be working for someone else. Someone not in John Dark’s splinter faction.

Someone human.

“Security at Boeing’s pretty tight,” Charlie says. “ ’Course, that probably won’t count for much against someone with a flying, force-field-projecting shield, a sword that can cut through time, and magic solar-powered armor.”