The Peregrine Omnibus Volume One (94 page)

The Peregrine heard a human voice then, rising in some kind of war cry. It came from just outside the exit door and was quickly followed by something crashing through the window. It embedded itself in the wall just over the Peregrine’s shoulder. It was an arrow, its shaft notched with a single red feather.

“Will, get down!” the Peregrine shouted as the door was flung open and two figures entered. One wielded a bow and arrow, the weapon drawn and ready to fire. The other brandished a tomahawk. They were dressed in deer skins and moccasins but what first appeared to be red body paint quickly turned out to be something else entirely: their outer flesh was missing, leaving wet, read meat behind. The flaying was not deep enough that sinew and bone was visible but it was close.

The first of the bloody braves to strike was the one with the arrow, which he let fly at McKenzie. The police chief crouched under the rocketing missile of death, drawing his gun and discharging the pistol. The bullet ripped through the Red Man, blood and gore rushing from the exit wound. The attacking warrior fell back to the floor, leaving his companion to face the Peregrine.

The tomahawk-wielding man bobbed and weaved. He spoke in a native dialect that Max didn’t understand but as they came closer to one another, something seemed to shift. The closer the Indian came to the beating heart, the more his words began to make sense to the Peregrine. And what was being said was nothing short of astonishing:

“Give her to us! She’s been touched by enough of you! She belongs to us!”

The Peregrine leaned back, the tomahawk’s edge just missing his throat. He kicked out and caught the Indian on the leg, knocking him off-balance. “Can you understand me?” he asked but the Red Man didn’t appear to do so—or at least he was unwilling to respond.

Instead, the man let out a roar of anger and renewed his furious attack. The Peregrine did his best to avoid the blade but he was caught once on the upper part of his left forearm, blood oozing from the wound.

Realizing that there could be no dialogue with the man, the Peregrine punched the fellow in the stomach and drew his own dagger, which glowed a brilliant yellow. Infused with mystic power, the Knife of Elohim was a potent part of the Peregrine’s arsenal. When the Indian lunged for him again, the Peregrine drove the blade deep into his opponent’s stomach, yanking upwards to tear loose the man’s intestines.

The Peregrine stood panting over the corpse of his foe, looking at McKenzie. The police chief nodded that he was okay but quickly gestured to the two fallen Red Men.

“Max… look!”

The Peregrine frowned as the dead men’s bodies began to disappear beneath a rising cloud of red tinged smoke. The sounds of a woman’s screams seemed to echo all around them, coming from everywhere and nowhere… and then both it and the bodies were gone.

The Peregrine made sure the box containing the heart was closed and secured within his overcoat. “Will, I have to find out what’s going on…”

McKenzie nodded, a smile touching his lips. “Just keep me in the loop… I’ve still got to find an official reason for these people’s disappearance. I take it they’re not coming back later on? They’re gone?”

“I hope I’ll be able to find them alive,” Max said under his breath. “But something tells me that might not be possible.”

CHAPTER VI

Evelyn’s News

Evelyn Davies was sitting in the kitchen, reading through the morning news when her husband returned home. She was used to waking up with no idea where he was, but that never made it any easier to take. She frequently had nightmares where McKenzie woke her in the middle of the night to give her the grim news: that Max’s luck had finally run out; that he was lying in some alleyway somewhere, having bled out from a gunshot wound.

Thankfully, that call had not yet come.

Evelyn smiled prettily when Max entered the room, having followed the smells of Nettie’s cooking—eggs, bacon and fresh biscuits. Evelyn was several years younger than her husband and retained the sort of breathtaking beauty usually possessed by women in their early twenties. She had shoulder-length auburn colored hair and the sort of glittering eyes that spoke of both high intelligence and a naughty curiosity. Her acting career was just now beginning to shift from the lovely damsel-in-distress sort of roles that had defined her thus far to more mature roles… and it wasn’t a transition that she was entirely comfortable with. It meant that, her beauty notwithstanding, she was beginning to get a bit long in the tooth when it came to playing the young seductress role.

“Good morning,” she said brightly, wondering if he’d already read the doctor’s report she’d deliberately left on the table. She wasn’t at all sure how he was going to react to the news of another child on the way… neither of them had expressed any real interest in expanding the family dynamic. “How was Ascott?”

“Fine,” he responded, picking up a biscuit en route to the table, where he kissed Evelyn on the cheek before sitting down. “Beatrice said to tell you hello.”

“Wonderful. I need to set up a shopping trip with her. It’s been ages since we got together.” Evelyn waited for Max to mention the pregnancy and, when it became apparent that he was more interested in savoring the freshly baked biscuit, she motioned to the newspaper headline, which was all about the strange disappearances from the night before. “Were you working on this?”

“It’s related to the Roanoke thing,” Max confirmed. “Last night after I came home, a professor visited me… he gave me this box.” Max set the small cigar-shaped box on the table. “There’s a human heart inside. It’s still beating.”

“Good lord,” Evelyn whispered, her nose crinkling in disgust.

“It’s covered in soil… so I spent some time in the lab this morning analyzing it. It’s the sort of dirt that could be found in the coastal Virginia area, meaning it’s very likely that it came from either Roanoke Island or Croatoan.”

“That man who visited you… was his name Edward Willes?”

“Yes…”

Evelyn opened the newspaper and flipped to page 2, where an article about the discovery of a University professor’s body was located. “I read it during breakfast. His body was found near his home, riddled with wounds consistent with an attack from arrows. But none of the weapons were found at the scene, indicating that whoever committed the crime was intelligent enough to take away anything that might serve as clues to their identity.”

“The arrows weren’t taken away,” Max stated, shaking his head. “They disappeared. Transformed into smoke and vanished into the air.”

“You’ve run into something like that already?”

“Yes. A couple of spectral Indians last night… they looked like they’d had the outer layer of their skin flayed off. When McKenzie and I defeated them their bodies turned into vapor.”

Evelyn felt a shiver go down her spine. “What’s next, then?”

Max fingered the lid of the box. He was beginning to think he could hear the heart’s beating… though it was obvious that no one else did. “Since I don’t have my powers anymore, I can’t use them to find out what’s up with the heart… and I don’t fancy flying back to New York just to get Ascott to do it for me. So I suppose I need to pay Whisper a visit.”

Evelyn fought the urge to frown. She had never actually met the mysterious Whisper but from the way Max described her, it was obvious that she was sultry and exotic… exactly the sort of woman that no wife wants her husband doing business with. But she trusted Max and liked to think of herself as being above petty jealousy, so she never made a point of the situation… though she was fairly certain that Max detected some tension in her at the mention of the other woman’s name. “Well, do be careful,” she said.

“I will,” he answered, rising. “After all, I have two children to be thinking of.”

Evelyn’s eyes flew open. “You
did
read it?!”

“Of course I did,” Max laughed, dodging out of the way as Evelyn tried to hit him with the rolled-up newspaper.

Evelyn stood up and faced him, her eyes growing moist. “And… are you happy?”

Max took his wife’s hands in his. “Evelyn… I love you. I love William. And I’m sure I’ll love the new baby, too. I can’t think of anything that could make me happier.”

Evelyn flung her arms around him and they embraced, thoughts of murder, bodiless hearts and spectral assassins momentarily—and thankfully—pushed aside.

CHAPTER VII

Whisperings

The woman known only as Whisper had arrived in Atlanta without fanfare, opening a small fortunetelling shop just off of Peachtree. Its unassuming appearance—simply the words “Whisper—Divination and Guidance” stenciled on the window—meant that many people didn’t even notice it. Indeed, Max suspected that only those who had need of Whisper even knew of her existence or where to find her.

Her shop was always dimly lit, even in the harshness of the morning light, with only a few candles and burning incense to illuminate the dark, drab interior. Whisper herself favored clinging black dresses, always low cut in the front to reveal ample cleavage, and long gloves that reached past her elbows. She was a lovely, if somewhat cold, looking woman, with ebony hair and smooth white skin.

As always, Max found her seated in her divining room, performing a reading with Tarot cards. She did not look up when he entered, instead continuing with her actions. Max waited silently, standing with hat in hand, until she finally addressed him. Her eyes never ventured up from the cards and her face remained pensive.

“You’ve come to ask me about the heart,” she began and Max nodded. “It’s a nasty bit of business you’ve gotten yourself wrapped up in, Max.”

“It always is,” he said.

“Why do you still do this?”

Max blinked at the abrupt shift in conversation. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

Whisper looked up then, her dark eyes boring into his. “Your father spoke to me from beyond the veil of death. He told me that your powers… your ability to sense and converse with things outside the realm of the normal… has been inhibited. You are no longer cursed with visions of future crimes and yet you still wear the mask and bear the Knife of Elohim. You still creep along the city streets, ready to mete out vengeance.”

Max hesitated before answering. When he did speak, his voice was low and conspiratorial, as if he was imparting some dark secret. “It’s who I am. I grew up from the age of eight driven to do these things. I can’t just shut it off, powers or no. Besides… a couple of years ago I had a battle with a demon. He wanted to hurt me with the knowledge that I’d outlive everyone I cared about… he showed me a vision of the future. It was early in the 21st century and I was still alive, still wearing this mask. It’s destiny.”

“Men make their own destinies,” Whisper answered. “If you let that vision be your own, then it will come to pass.”

“But I saw it! I know it was real.”

Whisper looked away sadly. “Then that is your fate.” She cleared her throat then and Max knew that part of their conversation was over. He was glad for it. “Show me the box and I will tell you of the threat you face.”

The Peregrine stepped forward and placed the box on the table in front of Whisper. He could smell her perfume—a cloying, seductive scent—and it made him feel strangely guilty. He knew that Evelyn disliked the very idea of Whisper and he could understand why… there was something dangerously sexy about her. If a man gave in to her charms, it would bring intense pleasure… but also inevitable heartbreak.

Whisper seemed to shiver as she reached out to touch the box, lifting its lid. There, amongst the dirt, was the still beating heart.

“Her name was Elizabeth Maddox,” Whisper said. “This is her heart, beating still with fury and rage as its power source. She was 16 years old and freshly married when the attack came. She had lost a child the year before and was beginning to feel what she thought to be the quickening again. She was wandering outside the confines of the colony, near dusk, thinking about the future and what it might hold. Life was so difficult for them all, but she hoped it would get better. She hoped that her children, whenever they might come, would find the peace and prosperity that had been promised them. She was amongst the first of the Roanoke colonists, having arrived in 1585. She was a pretty girl, with the kind of features that men desired and women coveted.”

Max sat down, drawn into the story that Whisper was weaving.

“As I said, it was near dusk and she began to hear movement amidst the trees. She started to turn but she came face to face with three Indian braves. They spoke to her in their strange tongue but she couldn’t understand them… not at first. Not until they began to push her deeper into the forest, pulling at her hair and clothing. That she understood all too well. She put up a fierce struggle but they were too strong. They raped her repeatedly for hours, finally leaving her to lie naked in the dirt, bleeding from her lips and from her womanhood. Any child that might have been growing slowly within her was gone now, its life snuffed out in fury, lust and hatred for the Whites who were coming to steal their land from them. They were rogue members of the Croatoan tribe, having disagreed with their elders, who argued that—unlike some of the other neighboring tribes—the Croatoans would greet the Europeans with open hands.” Whisper took a breath and then continued. “After they had satisfied themselves upon her, they cut her heart from her chest and threw it into the dirt. It lay there, covered with the sands of Roanoke… but it never stopped beating. Not ever. Because that dying girl’s rage took hold, it seeped into the land… and it became something very dark and very dangerous.”

Max stared at the heart, trying to picture the girl in whose chest it had once beat. He’d seen so many awful things in his lifetime that he had little difficulty picturing these vile deeds taking place. “What happened next?”

“Her spirit became a conduit to Hell,” Whisper replied. “She manifested as a living wind, ripping the flesh from the bodies of her attackers like every gust was made of pure glass. And then she animated them as her servants, as her undying warriors. In her madness and grief, she blamed not only the men who had raped her but also the people of her colony… she blamed them for believing that the cold, dead earth of Roanoke could ever bring life. She blamed them for not hearing her screams as she pled for rescue. She blamed them for living when she could not.”