Imperium (Caulborn) Read online

  “Oh, I love what the photographer did here,” Thad said. “Look at her eyes, she looks so smoky and sultry.” Thad flipped through a few more of the pages and stopped on another shot of Petra. “Look here. She looks so statuesque.”

  You have no idea how right you are on that one, Thad. I wonder what you’d think if you knew Petra came out of a box from the back of your shop.

  “Where is Petra, anyway?”

  “She’s been on an extended shoot,” I said. “Punta Cana? Costa Rica? I can’t keep all the little islands she goes to straight. She’ll be home in a few days, though.”

  Thad nodded. “Oh, what’s this?” He leaned over and tapped a blinking button on the answering machine. “Mr. Piper, this is Robert Maxwell,” a man’s voice said. “Thank you for contacting me. I am extremely interested in the pieces you mentioned. Please call me back so we can arrange a time to view them.” Thad smiled.

  “Now this was a lucky break,” he said, gesturing to the phone. “For the last month or so all this man has wanted is antique reading glasses and telescopes. It’s hard to find that stuff. Then, last week I caught wind of an estate sale. The deceased had a whole cache of antique reading glasses, and I paid a pretty penny to scoop them up.” He pointed to a small case on the edge of the desk. “I have eight pairs of Benjamin Martin eyeglasses here. Mr. Maxwell should be very excited.”

  We spent the next ten minutes discussing the best way to organize the back room for this week’s incoming and outgoing deliveries. I’d be back later in the week to arrange everything. When we were done, I finished my soda, gave Thad a hug and left the shop. I pulled up my jacket’s collar as I stepped onto the street. Mid-October in New England gets chilly, and it was a subtle reminder that winter was just around the corner.

  After a brisk walk, I arrived at Caulborn headquarters, a brick structure done in the style of an old mill building. The door was solid steel, and there were no windows on the lower two floors. I pushed through the front door and florescent lights flickered on as it closed behind me. The foyer I was standing in was barely a ten foot square. I walked to a door directly in front of me and pressed my hand onto the scanner next to the door. The door clicked open and I entered the office building proper.

  And that’s when the zombie attacked me.

  Chapter 3

  Begin Coded Transmission

  There are numerous superstitions regarding children born with cauls. From a medical perspective, the child is born with the amniotic sac wrapped around the head, like a veil. Cultures around the world believe these children are destined for great things or possess magical powers. Legends say they can tell the future, are extremely lucky, cannot die by drowning and a host of other useful abilities. Others, such as Vincent Corinthos, gain a powerful link to a certain species of fae.

  Due to agent fatalities, we know that most of these legends are false. One confirmed ability is a caul’s power to prevent mental compulsion and domination. On the whole though, cauls are unpredictable, and further analysis on an agent by agent basis will be needed to determine the full scope of each Caulborn’s innate abilities.

  -NS

  End Coded Transmission

  The zombie reeked of sewage and it struck out at me with a hand that was missing a couple of fingers. Its blue-tinged skin was covered in filth, and its few remaining clumps of dark hair were plastered to its scalp. As it lashed out, something slammed into me, knocking me aside before the zombie’s attack connected. I rolled with the impact and managed to not drop Miguel’s package.

  I regained my balance and tapped the Urisks’ faith. One of the perks to being a god is you gain the ability to do anything your followers can. And since the Urisk have innate psychic powers, I do, too. I sent a telekinetic push out, slamming the zombie in the chest. It stumbled backward, and I noticed the thick silver band around its neck, which was attached to a metal pole. Jake, the Caulborn’s lead security guard, held the pole steady. His thick arms barely strained as he kept the creature stationary. He angled the pole and pushed downward, pinning the zombie to the ground.

  “Easy, Vincent, it’s restrained,” said a woman’s voice. Kristin Tanis stepped into view and made some notes on a pad. She was dressed in her usual orange and yellow hazmat suit; standard attire for someone who spent most of her time with the Underdwellers who lived in the sewers and abandoned subway lines. “Sorry about that, I should’ve had Jake keep it farther away from the door,” she said as she rubbed her eyes. Her black hair was starting to show threads of white, and I noticed the crow’s feet by her gray eyes were more pronounced. Kristin had been a Caulborn since I was in diapers, and she’d forgotten more about the occult than I’ll ever know. “No worries, Kristin. Hello, Jake,” I said, releasing the Urisks’ faith. “And thanks for bumping me out of the way, Mist, wherever you are.” Mist is Kristin’s Fylgiar, a guardian spirit who evidently takes the form of a dog. I say evidently because Mist is invisible to everyone, including Kristin. Luckily, Kristin has a sense of where she is, and they can communicate telepathically. Kristin nodded to a space just to her left.

  “Mist says, ‘You’re welcome.’”

  I gestured to the zombie. “Who’s the new friend?”

  “Well, I’m going to need Doc Ryan to help me do some reconstructive imaging to be sure, but I think this might be Seamus McElery.”

  I blinked at the zombie. “Isn’t he one of the missing fae Miguel has been looking for?”

  Kristin nodded. “Yeah. I picked him up in the sewers about five miles from here.” Jake twisted the metal pole, forcing the zombie onto its back. Kristin deftly scraped off a piece of its skin and placed it into a small plastic tube, which she quickly capped. “Jake, kindly take our guest to holding room one.” Jake nodded and hauled the zombie back to its feet. Then he pushed it down a side corridor, where the elevator down to the holding cells was. In the six years I’d worked here, I think I’d only heard Jake speak about fifteen words.

  “What could zombify a fae?” I asked.

  Kristin turned to me and shook her head. “No idea. But I think Mikey owes me a beer for this one.” She sighed and patted at a spot to her left. A disembodied, satisfied sound that wasn’t quite a growl and wasn’t quite a purr filled the air. “It’s always something, Vincent. Demons, ghosts, fae, and now zombies. I’d hoped I’d seen the last of them after that incident in Oklahoma.” She shook her head. “I need to run an analysis on the zombie’s tissues and begin the reconstruction process. Catch you later.”

  We parted company and I walked past Jake’s security station and took the elevator up to the third floor. The electronic display dinged as I ascended. Floor 1 – Medical. Floor 2 – Workshops. Floor 3 – Offices. I stepped out as the doors swished open. The foyer I was standing in was cheerily lit with light pouring in from outside. Potted plants flanked the door beyond, and between me and that door was a heavy mahogany desk. Leslie, the implacable secretary, sat behind the desk. She was a plump woman in her late fifties with curly gray hair, piercing hazel eyes and a perpetual frown. Stacks of papers were neatly arranged around her, and she was expertly filing those papers into folders.

  “Afternoon, Leslie.” I smiled.

  “Afternoon yourself, Mr. Corinthos,” she said, eyeing me over the tops of her half-moon glasses. She tsked as she looked at the silver watch on her wrist. “You’re late. Galahad was expecting you ten minutes ago.”

  I shrugged. “You know how it is around here, Les. Trains run late, the sidewalks are clogged with tourists, and getting past the zombies in the lobby all make for one heck of a commute.”

  Her eyes betrayed the faintest flicker of a smile. “He’s showing our newest agent her office. The one right across from yours.” I thanked her and pushed through the door. As I walked down the hall, Galahad and a young woman carrying a binder stepped out of the office opposite mine.

  Galahad turned to look at me, and as I opened my mouth to greet him my Glimpse kicked on. A gift from my father, a Glimpse lets me see
a random bit of a person or an object’s past. This Glimpse showed me a much younger Galahad XI. His hair was thicker and salt and pepper instead of gray, and there weren’t as many lines on his face. He was wearing a priest’s collar and his face was crimson with anger. “How could you let them do this?” he shouted. “You knew! You knew and you did nothing! They did those things to children! To children!” There’s someone else in the room with Galahad, but my Glimpse isn’t strong enough to make him out. I only see a red and white blur, and when the figure speaks, it’s a droning buzz.

  Galahad’s face goes calm, the dangerous kind of calm. He reaches up to his neck and pulls the white priest’s collar out. “Go to Hell,” he says in a level voice, and I can hear the capital H when he says it. He throws the collar on the floor and turns on his heel. The Glimpse faded, and I was returned to the here and now.

  I tried not to let on that anything had happened. I’d known that Galahad had been clergy at one point, but he’d never told me about this. I rubbed my forehead and Galahad smiled as he walked up to me. “Welcome back, Vincent.” He gestured to the woman at his side. “This is Megan Hayes. She’s recently been assigned here from New Mexico.”

  I extended my hand. The top of Megan's head barely came up to my chin, and her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She looked like a petite china doll, but her grip was strong. “New Mexico?” I asked. “Were you part of the Roswell detail?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” she said in a chirpy tone. “I was part of the Diplomacy & Negotiations branch.” Her smile was bright, and a dimple formed in her left cheek. “I’m very happy to meet you, Vincent.”

  “Megan is going to be training with us for a while, Vincent.” Galahad said. “I think it best if she shadowed you.”

  “She’ll know the best places to eat by the end of the week.” I smiled. Megan grinned back, her dimple deepening and her ice-blue eyes twinkling. Dang, she was cute.

  Leslie came down the hallway and Galahad excused himself to speak with her. Megan began flipping through her binder. As the pages turned, I could see photos and Caulborn documents.

  “What do you have there?” I asked.

  “Some material on the local legends and paranormal phenomena in this part of the country,” she said. “Wow, I thought a lot of this stuff was just scary bedtime stories, but these things are real.” She looked like a kid paging through a Toys R Us catalog. A moment later, Galahad returned to us.

  “Vincent, Leslie tells me that Miguel has not checked in today, and he’s not answering his phone. I'd like you and Megan to stop by his apartment and make sure he’s all right.”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  I dropped Miguel’s package off in his office, and then Megan and I headed for the elevator. “I read your personnel file, Vincent, and I have some questions if you don’t mind.” She turned those dazzling blue eyes up to me, seeking permission.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Okay, you’re not exactly human, right? You’re a half-god, the son of Janus and a human woman. Galahad brought you in six years ago, specifically to handle a fae situation. You helped an Urisk get back to his home realm, and now the Urisk worship you as their god. Your file has the notation Vincent Corinthos, God of the Dovers, but the people you helped are called Urisk. Where’s Dover come from?”

  Wow, this girl could talk fast. I tried to put my thoughts in order. “Ever hear of the Dover Demon?” I wasn’t surprised when she shook her head. “Okay, back in the seventies, a handful of teenagers saw this ugly creature with gray skin and luminescent eyes running around Dover, which is about twenty miles west of here. The papers dubbed it the Dover Demon. Now, there are all kinds of wild theories on what the Demon actually was, but in reality it was an Urisk who came to our world from the Bright Side. The Dover Demon nickname stuck, so sometimes you’ll hear people call them Dovers.”

  We left the building as we talked. “I’ll drive,” Megan said as she led me over to a blue Toyota Tercel. “I need to learn my way around the city.”

  We drove over to Miguel’s apartment. The ride was short, and Megan’s GPS did most of the talking. She seemed extremely focused on the road, and not wanting to distract her, I kept my mouth shut, except for when I told her where to park. We walked inside Mikey’s building and headed up to the fifth floor. I knocked three times on the door. “Mikey? It’s Vincent. You okay in there?” No response. I waited a minute and knocked again. When no response came a second time, I tried the door. I yanked my hand back in surprise.

  “What’s wrong?” Megan asked.

  “The door handle is cold. Freezing cold,” I said. I put my hand into my jacket pocket and used my coat to turn the handle. The door wasn’t locked, and that made me cringe. Door handles can be cold, hot, or they can even talk to you in this line of work and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But an unlocked Caulborn’s door is always a sign of trouble.

  The apartment was so cold I could see my breath. Patches of frost were on the furniture, and the windows were covered with ice. Megan whistled and rubbed her arms as she stepped inside. It was a good twenty or twenty-five degrees colder in here than it was outside. “Mikey?” I called. I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t get an answer.

  We did a quick loop of the apartment. The entire place was cold, but nothing looked out of place until we got to the bedroom. Some of the furniture had been knocked around, and I found Mikey’s 10mm on the ground next to the bed. There was also a large patch of ragged ice on the floor. It looked like there might have been a larger block of ice there at one point, and the main piece of it had been broken off and carried away. There were thin tracks on the floor through the frost as well, like tiny sled skids or wheels. I waited a moment, hoping my Glimpse would kick in. Nothing.

  I walked back to the front door and checked the wards Mikey had laid. Any non-Caulborn who crossed over them should’ve been hit with a staggering amount of electricity. They had been detonated. Something had crossed over that and survived? I shuddered.

  “What could do something like this? Some sort of ice demon? Or maybe a frost-based fae?” Megan asked as she snapped pictures of the apartment with a small digital camera.

  “A freeze cannon,” I responded. “One designed to drop a target’s body temperature down to absolute zero and hold them indefinitely.”

  Megan tilted her head at me. “And you know that how?”

  I gestured for Megan to follow. We left the apartment and I locked the door behind us. “We’ve dealt with someone like this before. Her name is Keri Greene. Let’s see if the building’s security caught anything.” We headed down to the building’s superintendent’s office. The super recognized me from before. He didn’t know exactly what Mikey did for a living, but Mikey told me the super thought he was some kind of CIA spook. So the guy never even asked me for ID; he just said he understood. We were given a copy of the last two days worth of tapes, and the super let us use his office to view them.

  Galahad had seen Mikey yesterday afternoon, so we found that point on the tapes and watched them on fast forward. Sure enough, at about 2 a.m. this morning, three men came out of the elevator, and one of them was pushing a large box, about the size of a coffin. They made their way down the hallway and picked open Mikey’s door. Two of them produced weapons and they dashed inside. There was a dazzling flash of light, Mikey’s wards being detonated. A moment later, the third man pushed the box into the apartment. About five minutes later, all three of them came out of the apartment, pushing the box. A thin tendril of fog curled out of the apartment as they left. I cursed.

  Mikey had been kidnapped.

  Chapter 4

  Begin Coded Transmission

  Because of his partially divine heritage, Vincent Corinthos is codenamed the Godling in most Caulborn documentation. Born with a caul, Vincent was marked as a potential agent from very early on. Any traits he may have inherited from his father are classified and will require additional work to obtain.

  Galahad XI recru
ited Corinthos specifically to work with an Urisk named Lotholio. The particulars of why Galahad chose Corinthos for this task are unknown. What is known is that Lotholio had crossed from the Bright Side thirty years earlier and had been across the country and back again, seeking aid for his people from America’s supernatural community. He had apparently given up and was about to return to the Bright Side when he was discovered by Caulborn agents in Massachusetts. This encounter would be the first step toward Corinthos’ ascension as a deity on the Bright Side.

  -NS

  End Coded Transmission

  I took the tapes in hopes that we might be able to electronically enhance them and get a better look at the men’s faces. We went back to headquarters and up to Galahad’s office. He called for us to enter when we knocked on his door.

  The chamber beyond was a sparsely furnished study. The walls were bare, save for a simple charcoal drawing of Christ looking up to Heaven. A small table with three chairs sat in the middle of the room, and beyond that, a wooden writing desk. The only thing that seemed out of place was the sword that was thrust into a block of red marble. It always reminded me of Excalibur, and from what I’d Glimpsed, the story wasn’t that much different.

  Back during the days of the round table, a sword appeared in a block of red marble. None of Arthur’s knights were able to draw it, and Arthur decreed that any knight who could would be the greatest of them all. Lancelot’s son, the original Galahad, was able to, and he went on to find the Holy Grail. Since then, the sword in the block of marble has reappeared at various points in history. The person who has drawn the sword has always become a great champion of good, a Galahad. Joan of Arc found it once. So did George Washington. There have been nine other Galahads since the original, making the man across from me the eleventh. I’ve never learned my Galahad’s real name, even with my Glimpses.

  “Megan, Vincent,” he said with a smile. The smile faded when he saw the look on my face. “What’s happened?” I told Galahad what we’d found and my suspicions. He blessed himself and folded his hands in front of him for a moment. “It sounds like you’re on the right track, Vincent. Do what you need to do to get Miguel home to us.” He pressed an intercom button on his desk. “Leslie,” he said, “please print off directions to Keri Greene’s most current address. Vincent and Megan need to pay her a visit.” Leslie chirped back a yes, and less than two minutes later, Megan and I were headed to her Tercel with a set of directions that were still warm from Leslie’s printer.