The Persistence of Time

by Jim Cannon


Chapter Twenty-Three: "Fell on Black Days"

Taiwan

Jones was conscious when Perseus and Shelley mounted the slope and made their way back to where the other Immortal and the women lay. Shelley's eyes were red and her cheeks were wet with tears; she made a physical effort to stop crying, but the grief still threatened to overwhelm her. Perseus, as usual, was a block of granite, his mouth a lipless slash in his newly old face.

Jones showed little surprise at Perseus' physical condition. "You killed Tyr," he said. There was steel in the man's hazel eyes, and Jones' hand strayed to the pommel of his katana.

Perseus shook his head. "Let it go, Jones. If I wanted you dead, I would have left you behind in Hong Kong."

Jones reluctantly let his hand drop from the sword. He looked over at the woman in black, still unconscious. "She should be dead. But she isn't." He turned back to Perseus. "And I can't feel her, so that means she isn't Immortal."

Jones did not actually ask a question, but Perseus knew what the young Immortal wanted to know. Perseus settled to the ground, folding his legs smoothly beneath him. He grunted with the effort, and, for a moment, look surprised that he had uttered such a sound. "Your friend is not supernatural in any respect, Jones. I simply healed the damage she suffered from the flash."

Jones leaned toward Perseus, his eyes suddenly eager. "Yes, but how did you heal her? How did you save us? It was you, wasn't it. I can't imagine anyone else did it..."

Shelley sniffled, bit back more tears, and tried to focus her concentration on the conversation. Clumsily, she found a seat on the hard, rocky earth.

"It was me," Perseus started, and then all three of them jumped as the woman moaned, coming back to the land of the living.

Jones started to get up, but Perseus beat him to it, and stood up quickly to examine the woman. She half sat up, and Perseus put his arm under her shoulders to help her further up. She looked up at him with glazed eyes that slowly focused. After a moment, she croaked, "Am I dead?"

Perseus smiled slightly and shook his head. "No, you are not. You are alive and well, perfectly healthy. Your body is simply adjusting to the radical change from near death to perfect health."

The woman cringed. "Then its true," she whispered. "I hoped..."

"It is true," Perseus affirmed, his voice suddenly hard. She looked sharply at him. "It is my fault," he explained.

She pushed him away. "You were with Lei?" she said.

Perseus actually flinched, as if struck. Shelley didn't know what to say. Jones began to speak, but Shelley grabbed his elbow in a tight grip, and Jones subsided.

"No," Perseus said. "I was not an ally of Lei's. But once, a long time ago, I was his friend. And if I had been a better one back then, this horror could have been averted."

The woman suddenly reached out and touched Perseus on the cheek. "For some reason, I feel sorry... when I should be angry," she said softly.

"For good or ill, Victoria Baron," Perseus said -- and the other three were surprised Perseus knew her name -- "we are linked until death. I used a part of myself to heal you. And part of you slipped through the link into me."

Victoria's eyes widened, but her hand did not leave Perseus' cheek. "Wh- what are you saying?" she asked. Shelley felt a lump rise in her throat, and she couldn't begin to explain why.

Perseus closed his eyes, and his hand came up to cup Victoria's. "I simply mean that, until the day you die, you and I will always know what the other is feeling. The bond will strengthen over time. I am afraid that, to save you, I had to become a part of you."

Jones leapt to his feet. "Perseus! That's monstrous!" he cried.

Perseus turned his head, and when he looked at Jones, his eyes were cold. "Would you prefer I let her die, Dr. Jones? I could not allow that. Not after what we witnessed."

Jones cursed and whirled on his heels. He tramped off a few yards, and then half turned around before continuing his tantrum in the other direction.

"You called him Jones," Victoria said, drawing Shelley and Perseus' attention back to her. "But his name is Falcone. Vincent Falcone."

Perseus looked over at Shelley. She shrugged. Perseus looked back at Victoria. "I think you should know a few things. Starting with what Shelley, Jones and I are, and just who Jones exactly is."

Perseus and Shelley began to explain to Victoria about Immortals, and the various rules of Immortal life -- Holy Ground, decapitation, Quickening, and so on. Victoria, at first reluctant to believe such fantasy, eventually gave way to what her senses told her. Unable to deny what she witnessed, she carefully edited her world view to include the existence of a secret race of Immortals. But as always, knowledge brought questions, in particular questions about the monsters Victoria faced in Lei's fortress home. Perseus was forced to provide more information about the other nine races, and the presence of magick and other elements Victoria never before believed in.

For Victoria, it was difficult tale to swallow, but as she gradually came to accept it, she came to realize how many of the little mysteries she had encountered in her career as a CIA assassin could be solved by applying this bizarre cosmology to the mix. Suddenly, many of the nagging problems she had dealt with in the past made sense.

"But what about Vince -- Jones, I mean?" she asked eventually. The man in question was still missing, though, so it was up to Perseus to provide the details.

He began slowly. "Around the turn of the century, several horrible incidents occurred that created a kind of depression, a kind of questioning of man's place in the universe that was more pessimistic in nature than anything that came before. Scientific advances in medicine, military weapons, and so on, shook human faith in the Judeo-Christian god. World War One killed more people than any previous war in history, and the tactics used in that war were truly monstrous. The Communist revolution in Russia created fear and paranoia all over the 'free-world.' Suddenly it was apparent that mankind was not as perfectly designed as everyone assumed. Atrocities that were unheard of even in my day were committed on a daily basis. All of this created a kind of apocalyptic feeling among the bulk of humanity, an idea that human beings would eventually ensure their own extinction. And all throughout this century, this feeling has only intensified as human failings continue the threaten the ability for our planet to support human life."

"But in the early 1910s a secret society of Immortals formed, dedicated to guiding humanity through the coming dark times. They wished to preserve the human race, even if, in doing so, they went against the wishes of that species. Their attitude was a rather cavalier one, and quite arrogant even for the time."

"This group of Immortals called themselves the Mystery Council, and consisted of men and women who were born at most within fifty years of the year 1900. Their leader is a man named Greystoke, a British nobleman who emigrated to British East Africa in the late 1800s. He was deeply affected by the evils he saw there, inflicted upon the natives and the wildlife alike. Greystoke is a harsh man, but practical, and his closest advisors run the gamut of Immortal and human personalities."

"For over ninety years the Mystery Council has schemed and fought to keep the human race alive. They have created shadow governments and used agents to manipulate key leaders of countries. The collapse of the communist regime in Russia and Eastern Europe was engineered, in part, by the Mystery Council. They have assassinated people they couldn't control or whose actions painted them as enemies of the Council. I know for a fact that Kennedy's actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis angered one of the Council members -- a man named Walker -- and that afternoon in Dallas was Walker's solution to the problem."

"The Mystery Council, in many ways, is more cavalier and intrusive than the American government. They are certainly much more ruthless, and they have a low opinion of the human race as a whole, despite their crusade to keep the species alive. Greystoke himself looks upon human beings they way humans look upon apes."

"What about Jones?" Shelley interrupted.

"Yes, what about Jones," came a voice from behind her. Unnoticed during Perseus' narrative, Jones had returned finally, and now stood a few yards from the small circle the others formed. His posture was erect, and his face tight, but his hands shook with emotion.

Perseus regarded him coldly, and Shelley felt a bit uneasy when she saw a similar expression on Victoria's face.

"Shall we solve the mystery together?" Jones asked sarcastically. "I shall tell you about 'Jones,' Miss Glover and Lt. Baron. Perhaps even the great Perseus will learn a thing or two."

"I doubt that will be necessary, Jones," Perseus said. "The light is failing, and we should start moving if we plan to get off this mountain before night."

"What? After all that build-up, you're going to let the matter drop? I think you're just afraid that, when I tell the truth, your friends here won't be on your side." Jones' face contorted, almost in pain. However hard he tried to hold them in, his emotions were bubbling to the surface.

Perseus rose to his feet. "Jones," he said, taking a deep breath. "Don't make me regret saving your life."

Jones grimaced, but said nothing. Shelley stood up between them. "Look, you two, I don't know what kind of history you have, but in case you've forgotten we just witnessed the single most horrifying event in human history. So shove the egos. We have bigger problems right now than just which one of you is right and which is wrong. And as far as that goes, Perseus saved all of us, and he would have saved the city of Lei didn't play dirty. For that alone, I'm inclined to trust him more than I trust you."

Jones took an involuntary step backward at the vehemence of Shelley's words. Perseus allowed himself a brief smile. Though he couldn't take too much credit for Shelley's accomplishments, he was proud of her anyway. If only there was more time. To train her, to teach her, to help her grow into the woman and the warrior he knew she could be. But Perseus knew, beyond doubt, that time had run out for all of them.

New Orleans

The rain was beginning to get old. Somehow, the New Orleans weather was getting worse by the day. Old Muddy was champing at the bits and threatening to surge over his banks. The city was building levees as quickly as possible, but nobody knew how bad it might get. And with Mardi Gras only a few days away, many people were beginning to worry about how the weather would affect the festival.

Alec Scott was not one of these people. True, he was sick of the miserable weather, but not because he was concerned about Mardi Gras or the Mississippi. Rather, the weather just depressed him more and more. As if being dead was not enough to lower his spirits, he couldn't see the sun or the moon or the stars with all the cloud cover. The bike hummed between his thighs as he buzzed down the Rue St. Marie, and though the sky was shrouded, he was happy to have the wind in his face. It made him feel clean.

He caught sight of two people garbed in bizarre costumes, a little too eager for Carnival. One appeared to be dressed like a scarecrow of all things, while his companion looked like a clown dressed all in black and white. "Fucking freaks," Alec mumbled into the wind. Bad enough the city was crawling with vampires, psychics, secret cults and God knew what else, now the loonies were out wandering the streets instead of sticking to the alleys.

Alec might have stopped to give them a hard time, but he was already running late for an appointment with Rachel Van Horn. Hazard and Bran's assault on the Witches Three the other night had been pretty spectacular, but nothing he or the girl could compete with. No, the two of them were assigned the necessary but unglamorous task of looking for likely sites for a group like the "Narrow Cult" -- the Witches' word for the organization who killed Alec -- to roost.

Alec and Rachel were supposed to meet at City Hall, where the woman worked, so they could examine the city plans and maybe find something useful. Densmore had stressed that they should look for items that appeared out of place or out of whack, and suggested they trust their instincts as to what that meant. All well and good for Densmore to say; he wouldn't be spending the evening poring over blueprints and street plans looking for something that wasn't there.

He found a place to stash his bike not far from the imposing steps of the city hall. Under the overhang provided by a coffee shop, the bike would avoid most of the rainfall. Or so he hoped. With the motorcycle secured, Alec loped off towards his destination.

He found her standing at the bottom of the steps, her hair matted with rain, and her hands jammed into her pants pockets. She gave him an exasperated look when he materialized out of the gloom.

"You're late," she said.

Alec shrugged. "It couldn't be helped." A blatant lie. He had postponed this meeting as long as possible, and only the fear that that he could lose his small group of allies had eventually motivated him. There was something about this scarlet haired girl with the piercing blue eyes that unsettled him, and made him wish he wasn't dead.

She turned and began the slippery ascent to the top of the smooth marble steps. "I hope you plan on being here a while," she said. "We have a lot of material to look through."

Alec shrugged again.

She turned towards him sharply. "You could make this easier, you know," she spat at him. Her brow was dark, and those full lips were drawn into a deep frown.

<Uh-oh. I got the goddess angry,> Alec thought as he gave her his most insolent grin. He said nothing, though. The rain continued to fall, and he felt icy droplets slide down the back of his neck and across his back. His dead body didn't shiver.

After a long moment, she pulled her wet hair away from her eyes and angrily continued up the stairs. "The hell with you," she muttered.

Alec couldn't agree more. But he followed her.

"Rain," Kurt grumbled. "I am sick of wet." He was sick of watering holes as well. All night long he had searched bars, clubs, hotels, motels, strip joints, crack dens, and taverns of all shapes, sizes, and levels of cleanliness. In only one of them had he found so much as a hint of the elusive, alcoholic Kherubim known as Gabrial. A short Lycanthrope with a bad lisp admitted that he had seen a Kherubim fitting Gabrial's description over a week ago.

Kurt cursed his luck. Just when he needed the Angel the most, Gabrial disappeared. Typical behavior for the race, Kurt well knew, but decidedly strange behavior for Gabrial. The Angel was enamored of humanity and its foibles; he stayed among the mortals even when the majority of his brethren left for the unknown reaches of the world, where they could exist unmolested and carefree. Gabrial resisted the temptation to flee, while simultaneously giving in to the temptation to find oblivion in a bottle of Captain Morgan.

On most nights, the golden man would be easy to spot. Yet Kurt's quest was balked at every turn. No one had seen or heard from Gabrial in quite some time. Kurt should have given up, and looked for allies in other places, but with Perseus dead and Baal and Orion several thousand miles away, he didn't know who else to turn to. No, Gabrial was it. If the Angel could not be found, then the defense of all creation fell squarely upon Kurt's shoulders. It was a duty, unsurprisingly, for which Kurt was unprepared.

Hunting monsters and protecting innocents was not so much a career as it was a way of life. And Kurt had lived it for nearly sixteen hundred years. But there was a tremendous difference between taking on a Vampire Lord or two and challenging an Elder God. Both would be considered suicide by anyone with an ounce of sanity, but Kurt was at least comfortable with the concept of Vampire Lords. They had weaknesses that an intelligent hunter could take advantage of, and though a Vampire Lord could manipulate the powers of darkness, they were not completely indestructible.

Not so the Elder Gods. Such creatures were on a scale that Kurt could not begin to fathom. Elder Gods did not manipulate power; they were power. And Kurt was certain that the Earth, survivor that it was, would not long last the depredations of an awakened alien intelligence. Especially not if Kurt was the last line of defense.

No, he needed help. *Big* help. And since Superman was still confined to the funny papers, Kurt was forced to rely on the next best thing: Gabrial the Archangel. But Gabrial had gone into hiding. For all Kurt knew, Gabrial finally followed his brethren, and abandoned the teeming masses of humanity and inhumanity in the wake of certain destruction. Such was not a comforting thought, though Kurt could not help but wonder. If Perseus were gone, why not Gabrial as well?

Maybe Kurt could find some way to contact Perseus' old friend Viracocha. Maybe. After that, he could always try to find Orion or Baal. Probably Baal... Orion was another face too rarely seen. Mitra was another possibility, though Kurt wasn't sure if the Hindu would be any much more useful than he himself was. It was all so frustrating, really. He knew some of the most noble and powerful beings on the planet, but none of them would be any help against the fate that loomed on the horizon.

Kurt really missed Hazard at a moment like this, when doubts and fears threatened to drown him. The Vampire had a singular ability to see the irony in any given situation, and could laugh in the face of death herself. Hazard would know just what to say to get Kurt's spirits back up and his mind working on the problem, instead of morbidly contemplating the end of existence. But Hazard was hibernating, slowly recovering from the inferno he faced in the Witches' lair. Bran's Immortal blood helped the healing process immensely, but Kurt knew the Vampire would convalesce for a few more days, at the least. One of their number was already eliminated, long before the main bout. How could they all hope to compete against evil itself?

Kurt made a conscious decision to cease such pointless thoughts for the time being. He almost grunted with the effort, so entrenched were the feelings of hopelessness, but he managed it. And then he looked up at the door of Fawlty's Tavern, a little place located close to the banks of the Mississippi. Fawlty's mostly catered to the shady docks crowd, and it seemed unlikely that Gabrial would drink in a place that catered to such rough edged people. His options were fading rapidly, though, so he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

To call the interior dank would have been an understatement. The lights were dimmed so much that only Kurt's Nightspawn enhanced senses enabled him to separate the lumps of humanity from the furniture and the bar. The tables and chairs were wooden, though the original condition of the wood and its grain were obscured by far too many spills of alcohol and other fluids. The surface of the bar, in contrast, looked to be made from a single slab of highly polished black marble, with barely noticeable striations of white hidden in the depths of the glassy surface.

The man stooping behind the bar was tall and bearded, and his left eye was covered by a black velvet patch. His forearms, resting against the bar, were hairy and muscular. Were he to stand up to his full height, Kurt estimated that he would be well over six feet tall. Maybe as tall as Bran. The one dark eye in the man's skull watched Kurt carefully as the Nightspawn navigated his way through the room, trying not to gag on the smoke that hung in the air.

Kurt's eyes swept over the entire expanse of the bar, looking for some sign of Gabrial's presence. None of the drunk figures in the bar evidenced any kind of supernatural presence, and yet Kurt thought he sensed something in the air. He concentrated, trying to find the source of that feeling. He felt...

Suddenly he spun on one heel, shifting into a defensive stance for no logical reason. No one was behind him.

No one.

The sinister bartender and his clientele no longer lounged about the bar. All Kurt could see were tables and chairs, vacant of their occupants. Without deciding to, Kurt shifted into the Becoming, and he shuddered with the ecstasy of it as his body assumed its true form. In less than a heartbeat, Kurt Densmore no longer stood in the bar. The Revenant had taken his place.

Empty eye sockets blazed with fire as the Revenant headed for the door. He casually knocked tables and chairs out of his way as he strode purposely, seeking the point of egress. This bar was haunted by something. He could taste it now; a rank stench that assaulted his nostrils but had been hidden from his human form. The only sane thing to do was escape. In the daylight he might return to exorcise whatever terror cursed this place, but right now it was imperative that he escape to continue his quest.

As he reached for the door, flames exploded in front of him. He recoiled, backing away slowly. He heard a voice behind him. "I'm afraid I can't let you leave just yet, Revenant," it said. The Revenant turned, and saw, across the room, the Demon Mephistopheles. The Demon apparently discarded his own facade, and felt comfortable to display the full power of his demonic might. Heat and hate radiated off the gleaming molten skin of Mephistopheles, and had the Revenant lips, he would have grimaced.

On the right side of the Demon stood the bartender, grasping a heavy broadsword in his hands. To the Demon's left was a dark skinned man with bright feathers knotted into his black hair. He too held a sword; a wickedly curved scimitar. A Demon and two Immortals.

The Revenant's hands balled into fists. <So much for an uneventful evening,> he thought, as tendrils of fire reached out from Mephistopheles.

"I would fain have some words with you, 'breed," the Kherubim said through clenched teeth.

The Revenant tensed, and for a moment, he actually entertained fighting the three of them. And then he shadow shifted the hell out of there. A dozen blocks away, the rain felt like a balm. The Revenant had narrowly escaped certain destruction, and though he wasn't able to find Gabrial, he now possessed an inkling of just who was arrayed against him.

Mephisto. The Dark Prince. What little hope the Revenant had been able to hold on to was suddenly shattered.


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