The Curiosity Killers (29 page)

If Claudio strolled right up to the front door and turned the key in the bell, what would happen? Would he be shot on sight? He grinned at the prospect.

Let them try. Let them try to kill me. I’ve killed so many in such a short time.

A strange thought occurred to him. All his time travel, all his murders and no consequence. His conquering of half the continent with barely a scratch during the entirety of the bloodiest conflict in the continent’s history.

Can I even die?

Claudio dared to turn his face to the sky, where dusk gathered and the moon rose high and silvery and full. The hood of his cloak slid away from his face, moonlight falling cold and casting an eerie glow on his sharp cheekbones and the bridge of his long nose.

Has something blessed me? Is this my job now, to scrub the earth of lesser creatures, all the while living on and on?

It struck him, then, why and what he must do. A holy man such as himself needed a holy weapon, one not forged on this side of the divide between worlds. It was his right, and he ought to take it.

But what if he tested this theory first? What if to prove himself worthy of this holy weapon, he performed the perfect task, the perfect act of revenge? To reach where he would need to go for that would require another trip, and Ambrose’s tech wasn’t nearby. Perhaps he would have to access Vere’s lab after all.

He walked to the porch, squared his shoulders, and reached for the bell.

Monday, January 20, 2053, Reynard College, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

“You made it.” Davis beamed at Violet and shook her hand. “The speaker’s about to begin. Come on in.”

The room was full of young men, all white, many blond. Violet scanned the room, feeling sick and uncomfortable. Her cheeks burned.

I don’t want to be these people’s poster girl.

She glanced behind her, where Wilbur lingered in the doorway. Occasionally students regarded him with suspicion, while others gave him congenial nods. Ben was nowhere to be seen. Violet tried to catch Wilbur’s eye, willing him to look at her, to somehow answer her silent question.

Where’s Ben?

As if finally hearing her, Wilbur looked back into the hallway, scanning it up and down, before turning back to Violet and giving her a shrug, his eyes sad. He shook his head.

Violet allowed herself to be led to a seat in the second row.

We’ll never get him if we’re not together, all of us.

She looked down to the end of the row and was relieved when Wilbur sat down.

They exchanged a look. Violet understood it was all up to them now. Whether Ben arrived or not, they would somehow maneuver Claudio out by themselves. This Claudio, this young man, wherever he was, didn’t know them. He could be persuaded.

“Thank you, thank you.”

Applause thundered throughout the room. Violet turned her attention to the stage, and there beneath a shaky spotlight stood a scrawny young man with an unmistakable figure and face. The white spot gleamed on the angular planes of his face, throwing the hollows of his cheeks into stark shadow.

He looks like Death.

And it was true, his white face above a suit of black clothes hanging loosely from his slender body, young Claudio Florence looked a skeleton, a Grim Reaper. All he needed was a scythe in one bony hand to complete the image.

Wednesday, September 2, 2043, Rivierdorpe, Missouri, USA

This wasn’t quite right.

Claudio thought he’d aimed for the old apartment, the strips of flypaper hanging in the windows, the sounds of unruly kids yelling at each other outside. But this was a shopping center, some parts enclosed mall-style and some parts storefronts open to a pothole-pitted parking lot. Half-lit signs buzzed above glass double-doors with wheezing pneumatic hinges. Shoes, coffee, electronic cigarettes, payday loans and check cashing. Torn red, white, and blue bunting from the vacated headquarters of a failed mayoral candidate.

A dingy car rattled into the lot, the front passenger door robin’s egg blue but the rest of the vehicle a sickly pea green. An actual gas-and-electric hybrid that rumbled along the ground, even, not a hovercar or a stamper.

I know that car.

Claudio ducked behind a post in front of a five- and ten-dollar store and watched as a scrawny woman, barely out of her teens, dragged a child from the back seat.

“Charlie, come on.”

An indistinct whine.

“Fine, stay there.” The mother slammed the door and stalked up toward the front of the payday lender. Claudio kept his back to the post and slid around, staying out of sight but keeping a view of her.

Flickers of memories. Claudio stifled each one and instead stared at the mother as she tugged at the shop door. She cursed at finding it locked and pulled a short pipe from her jeans pocket.

“That shit’ll kill ya.” The man seemed to come from nowhere. His skin was pale, paler even than Claudio’s own, and his head was shaved so close the skin almost glowed. A tattoo of a copperhead snake wound from one ear to the other.

The mother stepped back. “Stay away from me. I have a restraining order.”

“I got parental rights.”

“You do
not
!” She tucked the pipe between the index and middle fingers of her right hand and jabbed at the air between them. “You are a fucking
psycho
and a
rapist
, and you—”

The man interrupted her with a string of curses so vile even Claudio found himself shocked. He’d said—he’d thought—similar things about this woman, about
all
women, really, but to hear someone else scream them at her still surprised him.

I came here to kill her. Get out of my fucking way, snake-man.

Even then, Claudio knew. This wasn’t some ex-boyfriend of hers, wasn’t a fling gone wrong or even just someone stalking her.

This was Claudio Florence’s father.

He could do it right now, could kill not just his good-for-nothing mother, while his still-small self fussed not twenty feet away. But he could also kill
him
, who’d apparently…what, exactly?

“It
was
rape, you cocksucker!” Claudio’s mother screamed. “You see this?” Suddenly she tugged at something on her face, which she then held out to the man. “
This
is what you did. This and that psycho fucking kid of yours. He sets fires to the carpet. He
scares me
.” She was still holding the thing out, and Claudio couldn’t quite see it, but the man recoiled.

“What the hell?” The fight was all out of the snake-man. He cringed and backed up.

Claudio’s mother closed her fist around the object. Her whole body shook. “You left me with a cracked cheekbone, a broken eye socket, and everything under there was all bleeding and meat and liquid.”

Claudio clamped his hand over his mouth.

“This one ain’t real no more.” She shoved her hand against her face again. “You just took and took and took from me.”

Kill them both.

Claudio looked across the lot at the car. He could almost make out a tiny dark head, likely bowed over a coloring book. He looked back to his parents, but now his mother was stalking off into the alley between two storefronts.

The man watched her go, hairy-knuckled fists balled tight at his sides.

Give me a reason, old man. Just one reason. I don’t need you alive to become what I am now, this god, this indestructible force of change. I am perfection, and it’s my job to destroy the imperfect in this world.

The man strode off to a waiting hovercar. Its sides were painted with flames and a tiny bumper sticker reading “YOU’RE ALWAYS FREE IN YOUR OWN DAMN MIND.”

Claudio stared at the words as the car ascended and flew off. A dim memory told him the kid in the road car was staring at the bumper sticker, too.

He rapped on the window, and the child rolled it down.

“She isn’t going to come back,” Claudio told himself. “Not until she’s slept off a bender and you’ve been two weeks in foster care with a woman who’ll stick pins in you. Call the police, otherwise you’ll get far too warm in here. Might as well wait as little time as possible.”

“Who’re you?” Charlie asked.

Claudio shrugged. “A self-made man, I suppose.” He stared off into the direction his father took off. “Runs in the family.”

He readied his knife before pressing the spot on his palm that returned him to the Jonson basement laboratory. Vere was tied to the chair as Claudio had left him.

“Maybe I’m not brave enough to kill some people,” Claudio snarled, his head pounding, “but others leave me no trouble at all.”

Vere squared his shoulders. “I am a soldier, Mister Florence, and I demand that you let me die on my feet.”

Claudio canted his head from side to side. “Mm, that’s a very brave request, Doctor,” he said. He turned and slashed across Vere’s throat. “But I’m going to have to say no.”

Monday, January 20, 2053, Reynard College, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Davis leaned over to Violet. “I heard really amazing things about this kid, after I left you earlier,” he said. “He’s gonna be big.”

“He’s gonna be something all right.” Violet glanced at Wilbur. He was the only person in the row not applauding.

Gradually, others stopped applauding, too, gasps sprang up in different corners of the room. Violet turned to the center aisle, along which someone walked, loudly, in decisive, measured steps.

Ben stopped when he reached the front row. He alone applauded, but in exaggerated, slow claps.

“Brav-
o
!” he called up to Claudio.

Claudio put his hand along his brow line to shield his eyes from the spotlight. “Can I help you?” he asked. He nodded up to a spot above the lighting rig. “Hey, Jer, can you—” Claudio slid his hand along his throat, and the spotlight turned off. “Thanks.” He hopped off the stage. “Usually I don’t get a ‘bravo’ until I’ve actually said my piece.” He looked up and down at Ben and laughed. “But, uh, something tells me you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

A smattering of nervous laughter from the audience.

“You know, whenever someone not of the
pure race
comes to hear me speak, to heckle me, they’re committing the political sin of forgetting,” Claudio said.

Ben blinked at him. “Excuse me? Forgetting? Have
you
forgotten the Holocaust? Slavery? Genocide in almost every nation in the world?”

“Slavery, see, that’s a good example,” Claudio said. “The Civil War wasn’t a single-issue conflict. The Confederacy was interested in more than just preserving their noble way of life. They were concerned with the implications of a federally controlled government.”

“That’s a subject for debate among historians and social scientists,” Ben said. “Not this little Nazi propaganda rally you got going on here.”

Violet tensed in her seat and balled her hands into fists. If things got ugly, she knew some moves that would at least temporarily incapacitate Claudio, though how the audience would react to that was another matter. Maybe instead it would be better to get Ben out of there and hope Wilbur could blend in and sneak off on his own.

She gauged the numbers. Twenty on one side of the room, perhaps another three dozen on the other. All young and fit. She did more scanning of the room and realized there were only two other women in attendance.

These aren’t good odds.

“I thought I remembered this.”

Another voice, eerily similar to that of the young man standing in front of Ben. Violet couldn’t get a good view, so she rose and squinted down the center aisle.

The same face and body, only now decades older. From inside his jacket pocket, the Claudio Florence whom Violet recognized from the newsfeeds withdrew something smooth, something gun-like and yet not.

Oh, my God. That’s the weapon.

Why hadn’t she brought a gun? She owned one, a little snub-nosed Taser- and laser-job the bureau issued her. She thought of it, in her dresser drawer at home, useless. Hell, they were in the past, weren’t they? The damn thing probably hadn’t even been built yet. Maybe hadn’t even been
invented
yet.

“Mister Jonson, I don’t know that we’ve technically had the pleasure, not officially, at least.” Claudio stepped forward, the weapon still trained on Ben. “Ben, I’d like you to meet me.” He patted his chest before gesturing across the aisle. “And me.”

“Um, what?” Younger Claudio peered at his future self. “Are you—you look like my—”

“I’m not your father,” Claudio snapped.

Ben wore a smile tinged with madness. “Shouldn’t you be erasing each other by now?” he asked. “This—I’m sorry, I know I should be scared here or something, but this is all very split-screen-in-an-old-movie kind of cool.”

“Ben,” Violet couldn’t help herself. As soon as she’d blurted out his name, she clamped her hands over her mouth.

“Veronica?” Davis’s face fell. “You
know
this Pak—”

Violet didn’t let Davis utter the full word before slapping him across the face. “You shut your racist mouth, you piece of shit. You hear me?” She scanned the crowd. “All of you. I don’t even care anymore. You found me out. Do whatever you want, but at least let me die saying this—you’re all
evil
.” She looked at young Claudio. “And you’re the worst of them. Getting them stirred up like this, starting this whole crap.”

“You mean I’m not the worst of them?” the elder Claudio asked. “I’m hurt, miss.”

“That’s Miss
Dare
to you.” Violet felt her adrenaline pump as Claudio’s brow furrowed. “That’s right. I am
Virginia Dare
, and your own little lackey
rescued me
because of the fucked up way you were going to use me for this.” She spread her arms wide, indicating the room. “I am
not
going to be the mascot of what you’re building here, not now or
ever
.”

Claudio raised the weapon higher, aiming it over Ben’s head and toward Violet. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. Violet could almost imagine a gleam of tears in his eyes.

Almost.

“I’m afraid,” he went on, “that I’ll have to erase you.” His confused scowl melted into a grin. “Much the way I erased Doctor Vere to procure this device.”

Ben flew at Claudio without hesitation, knocking the weapon away from aiming at Violet. She fell to the ground and covered her head, intent on crawling to the fight and knocking Claudio off-balance, but the sound of screams made her shudder and stop.