Stiletto (34 page)

*

Siegbert’s body was wrapped in a coat and placed in the wagon along with the three surviving invalids and the thermos containing his son. The rest of the journey was punctuated by more abrupt surgeries as the patients variously went into seizures or cardiac arrest. In addition, the party were continually obliged to evade troops, refugees, and the inhabitants of the countryside they were traveling through. Along the roads there were smoldering vacant villages, and violence was always imminent. To cross the border meant going miles across rough country and through forests to avoid sentries.

By the time they made it back to Belgium, Henk, Hans, and Claudette were all three hanging on the edge of death, as the implants in their brains and spines had broken down completely into a foul-smelling syrup. Upon arrival at a Broederschap chapter house in the city of Roeselare, they were immediately taken into surgery and then spent several months in therapeutic comas as their bodies were carefully repaired by some of the Grafters’ most capable fleshwrights.

*

I would have liked to go into a therapeutic coma myself,” said Marcel, “or at least take a nap, but there were important things happening.”

“What things?” asked Felicity.

“The Second World War. The brotherhood sent me on various missions. There were family members scattered around Europe, many of whom needed help escaping the violence. There was much running around. A great deal of derring-do. Nazis were fought and dissolved.” He shrugged. “It was an exciting time.”

After the war, Marcel and Claudette decanted their nephew from his thermos and raised him as their own. A bright and cheerful boy, young Arjan would go on to be the father of Odette and Alessio and a respected paleontologist, though not in that order. For Marcel and Claudette, four other children followed in their own time, although only the youngest would become a member of the Broederschap.

Marcel resumed his studies with the Grafters, partly as a way to honor his parents and partly because he felt he needed to make up for the loss of Siegbert. In the Leliefeld home at Roeselare, grandchildren played with a reclaimed (and un-aged) Chloe. It turned out that Marcel’s parents had heeded their estranged son’s warnings and placed the dog in a stasis of her own in a bank vault in Switzerland, along with all their notes and artwork. Marcel and Claudette continued their work until Claudette passed away. “Only three years ago,” Marcel said.

“The woman who killed your brother, and your relations...” began Felicity.

“Yes?”

“Did you ever find out about her? Where she came from? Why she wanted to kill your people?”

“Actually, yes,” said Marcel. “After the war was over, I returned to Paris and spent some time tracking down her history. It wasn’t easy, but I was very curious.”

“I imagine so,” said Felicity.

“I found where she had been living,” said Marcel. “No one had entered the place in years. It contained various upsetting things: A sort of mangle that was stained with blood. Human bones. Large containers of blood and other fluids. But nothing was as upsetting as the journals I found.”

Her name was Béatrice Mermier. Born to farmers in the northwestern part of France, she had apparently enjoyed a relatively ordinary childhood. The only thing that stood out about her, the only odd thing her neighbors could remember, was that she did not like to eat anything except meat. No fruit, no vegetables — she simply couldn’t stand them. But her life continued normally enough, even when her parents passed away and she sold the farm and moved into town.

At the age of twenty-four, however, she had woken up one morning possessed by a ravenous hunger and tortured by the scent of something unutterably delicious. Her body was shaking, and she was actually drooling. She emptied the larder and devoured a haunch of lamb, but nothing would satiate the gnawing emptiness inside her. All the while, there was that smell, driving her frantic, leading her out of her house to the door of the slightly startled neighbors.

They welcomed her in, and she apologized for disturbing them, it was just that... she didn’t quite know. She couldn’t explain it. She was so hungry. The wife, knowing her tastes, brought her some sausage and watched as she ate it. Béatrice thanked her, still looking around for the source of that tantalizing smell. Then she kissed her neighbor’s cheek and tasted her sweat.

“She wrote that it was like lightning in her mouth,” said Marcel. “The most delicious thing in the world. She couldn’t stop herself from tearing the woman apart.” Suddenly, she had a strength that she’d never known, a strength so great that she tore the neighbor to pieces with her hands. The husband came at her with a knife and she screamed, instinctively. He reeled back, clutching at his head.

“I know the feeling,” remarked Marcel. “She wrote that most people just felt the pain. But her voice had a terrible effect on members of the Broederschap — something she discovered later. It seemed to liquefy some of the crucial components in our augmentations.”

After Béatrice murdered her neighbors, she fled to Paris, thinking it would be easier to hunt and avoid notice in a large city. A lifetime’s upbringing in the Catholic faith had been swiftly jettisoned, replaced by the glorious high that came from other people’s fluids, that lightning in the mouth. She was completely untroubled by what she had become, and it was not clear if her lack of concern was a result of her physiology or just plain wickedness. Regardless, she stalked the arrondissements of Paris, taking people when she hungered. After the first murder, that terrible hunger had ebbed a little — she could go weeks without feasting. But then she encountered a Grafter in a café and was entranced by the unique savor of his perspiration.

“It seems we were addictive to her,” said Marcel. Some elements of the Grafter technology made them absolutely irresistible to Béatrice’s already monstrous palate. “She tracked Cousin Jean-Baptiste from the café back to his house and bled him out in his bathtub. After that, she tracked down the other Parisian members of the Broederschap by scent. Well, scent and the contents of their address books. I gather that once she’d drained all Siegbert’s blood, she was going to tap his spine, brain, bones, and bladder for everything they contained, and then, after a couple of days of bingeing on Siegbert-extract, she’d be on to the next one of us.”

“Charming,” remarked Felicity.

“She was terrifying,” confessed Marcel. “But my point is this, Pawn Clements. I have no doubt that if Béatrice Mermier had been born in this country, she’d have been recruited into the Checquy.”

“Or killed by us,” pointed out Felicity defensively. In her secret heart, she felt a stab of pity for the long-dead woman with the uncontrollable hunger and no one to help her. The thought of coming into your powers and being enslaved by them was very frightening to her.
Thank God the Checquy found me
.

“Yes,” he said grimly. “It seems that the line can be very thin between the monsters and the ones that protect us from the monsters.”

“And monsters killed Miss Leliefeld’s friends?” asked Felicity hesitantly. He nodded slightly.

“They were murdered in front of her,” he said. “In broad daylight. They were all staying at a beach house in Marseille, and a thing came in the back door and tore them apart. Odette only just escaped with her life.” Felicity’s eyes opened wide. “She was able to summon help, and when our people arrived, all they found was the scent of oranges and a series of bloody footprints going out the back door and across the sand into the ocean. No explanation of who did it or why.”

“You’re sure the attackers were supernatural?” asked Felicity.

He nodded. “We are not talking about defenseless victims,” said Marcel. “All of them had augmentations that provided them with inhuman strength and agility as well as concealed weaponry.” Felicity nodded, thinking of Leliefeld’s deadly little spurs. “One of them was my youngest son, Dieter.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said Felicity, horrified.

“Thank you. It has been difficult for all of us, but Odette was left significantly scarred, both emotionally and physically. The loss of her dearest friends has been extremely painful for her, but most especially the death of her lover. Alessio knows to avoid talking about them to her, and I would ask you to do the same.”

“I won’t bring it up,” said Felicity.
But I will tell Rook Thomas about this.

“Thank you. It was difficult for Odette to come to this country. I think that she is haunted by the idea that we are tying ourselves to the same sort of beings who killed those she loved best.”

Security Vetting Form

Duplicates of the personal documents requested must be certified by a justice of the peace to be true and accurate copies.

  1. Surname: _______________

  2. Christian names (Please note any family members after whom you were named or, if known, any other factors that prompted the selection of these names): _______________

  3. Gender (at birth, and current): _______________

  4. Date of conception (in Gregorian calendar): _______________

  5. Date of birth (in Gregorian calendar): _______________

  6. Time (in Greenwich Mean Time) at which the umbilical cord was cut: _______________

  7. Location (if known) of placenta: _______________

  8. Western zodiac sign: _______________

  9. Eastern zodiac sign: ________________

10. Location of birth (including latitude and longitude and, if born aboveground, feet above sea level). Affix copy of birth certificate: _______________

11. Country (or countries) of citizenship; provide current passport number(s). Affix duplicates of every page from every passport ever possessed, regardless of whether stamped or not: _______________

12. Mother (if applicable):

a.   Full name (include maiden name in parentheses): ________________

b.   Birth date: _______________

c.   Citizenship(s): _______________

d.   Date of death (if applicable). Affix copy of death certificate and location (in latitude and longitude) of interment. If cremated, provide receipt of cremation and, if possible, sample of ashes: _______________

13. Father (if applicable): _______________

a.   Full name: _______________

b.   Birth date: _______________

c.   Citizenship(s): _______________

d.   Date of death (if applicable). Affix copy of death certificate and location (in latitude and longitude) of interment. If cremated, provide receipt of cremation and, if possible, sample of ashes: _______________

14. Siblings (if applicable). Provide names and gender of any and all full, half, step-, or foster siblings. Include current addresses. Please list in order of birth and note, with a red asterisk, where you appear in the birth order:

a.   _______________

b.   _______________

c.   _______________

15. Sexual partners (if applicable):

a.   Current. Provide name, gender, contact details: _______________

b.   List all previous partners, including name, gender, contact details, and the estimated level of acrimony (on a scale of 1 to 14) that they currently feel toward you.

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Odette stomped angrily but carefully through the hallways of the hotel. In an effort to muster every shred of authority when interacting with Pawn Clements, she had put on her tallest, most expensive stiletto heels and her third-best suit (the best and the second-best no longer constituting appropriate business wear except in abattoirs, séances, or, possibly, highly specific erotica). That morning, she had sailed out of the bathroom armored in her elegance, intending to show that she was not cowed. Her confidence had lasted for approximately thirty seconds, at which point Clements had sat her down and given her a half-hour soul-withering lecture on how this whole bodyguarding arrangement would work.

It was apparent that, in the eyes of the Checquy, Odette Leliefeld had come to represent a tremendous liability. They did not trust her to walk in the hallways of a Checquy facility without threatening the negotiations. They did not trust her to cross the street without getting harmed. They barely trusted her to dress herself. And so Clements would be accompanying her everywhere for the foreseeable future.

“I will escort you from this hotel to the various places they are sending you,” Clements had explained. “If you go to Apex House, or the Rookery, or the little field office in Lancaster, I will be standing right with you. When you go to the various social occasions and junkets that they have organized for you, I’ll be frocked up and rolling my eyes right behind you.

“Now, all this responsibility doesn’t fall just on me. It’s going to require a new way of thinking on your part. From now on, before you leave a room, you make certain that I’m with you. If you need to go to the toilet, you let me know, because I’ll be outside the stall door, making sure no one comes in to bother you. If you decide that you want to go out to Harvey Nichols and get some new shoes and a spot of lunch, you run it by me, and you book a table for two, because I’ll be there, not carrying your bags for you.

“You do not try to ditch me. You do not absentmindedly get lost in a crowd. You do not ever, ever, fail to have your mobile phone with you and turned on. If I call you, you take that call. And if I give you an order, you follow it.

“All of this is not just because your safety is at risk. It’s because if anything happens to you, it will affect my career. And I like my career.

“In short, if you even leave this floor of the hotel without me, I will make certain that you regret it.”

It was patronizing, humiliating, and frightening. Alessio had listened, wide-eyed, presumably deciding that he didn’t
really
want a bodyguard like Clements, even if she was a hot woman. At the end, Odette had nodded weakly and then gotten permission to attend the Broederschap planning meeting. Clements had grudgingly allowed her to walk down the hallway by herself, but only because there were guards stationed at every corridor junction.