Die Back Page 8

  Addison lowered his cane, eyeing Jules, whose Mohawk had devolved into black micro-braids cascading down her shoulders. “What's she doing here?"

  Jules scowled at him. “The better question is what the hell are you doing here?”

  Nikki stepped between the two. “Okay kids, this is all very touching, but we've got more important things to talk about."

  Jules muttered, “Like begin eaten by damn lions.”

  Addison took a seat at the table, eyeing Jules as if she had been released from an insane asylum. “Lions? I don't understand why she's even here."

  Jules bristled, plopping into a chair across from him. "Me? I've got just as much right to be here as you."

  "Really? Your destiny is to be an Inker? I don't believe it."

  Jules eyes hardened, her voice flat. “My mom sent me to Nikki."

  "Your mom? I thought you said she sailed."

  “You told me your old man was a genealogist."

  "He was."

  "Well, Einstein, my mom sails.”

  Nikki slapped the table. "I'm glad we got that out of the way. Can we focus on why we're here now? Here's how this is going to work. I talk. You listen."

  "Hold on, Nikki. You don't tell me about our girl here, lie about the pen, drag me downtown crawling through secret passages to your Bat Cave, and I'm just supposed to sit here—”

  "I like you, Addison, but you’re being a real enculé. Just shut up and listen. Are we copacetíc?"

  Jules glanced at Addison. "What the hell’s copacetíc?"

  “It's her word. She just wants to know if we're in agreement."

  Nikki turned away. “Forget the training. I’m not putting up with this crap. If you two aren't willing, I'll find somebody who wants to make a difference.”

  "Wait." Addison placed both hands on the table. “Kairos killed my father. I have to do this.”

  "Oh, now you want to hear all about it? Are you sure?"

  Addison eyed Jules, who mouthed ‘Kairos’ with a look of consternation. "We're sure. Right, Jules?"

  “Yeah. We're sure."

  "Très bien." Eying them, Nikki sat, leaning on the table with her elbows. “I think the best way to proceed is a ménage à trois.”

  Jules mouth gaped open. “Excuse me? If you think I’m dropping my panties for you and boy wonder, think again.”

  “No, no. You misunderstand. An inking ménage à trois. The three of us will ink a host together.”

  “All three of us?”

  “Yes. Before you rush headfirst into the abyss, you need some basic inking skills. You’ve both had a taste of inking, but now I will create some structure around your development. Our first inking together and all of the future training scenarios will allow you to experiment without altering something I can't easily fix."

  Nikki ushered them down a wood-paneled hallway lit by sconces. The passageway had two five-panel wood doors on the left, and another at the end, facing them. She stopped at the first door, turning the tarnished brass door knob. Opening the door, she led them into a small room appointed with Victorian furnishings: a sofa, a chair in one corner, wood bookcases filled with leather bound volumes, a small fireplace with a brass surround and a carved oak mantel, and an oaken double pedestal desk with a leather upholstered arm chair on either side. Instead of the modern halogen lighting of the other space, this room glowed with yellow incandescent light from wall sconces and a brass lamp on the middle of the desk with two swiveled bulbs shrouded in opaque glass shades. A box, identical to Addison's, sat on one of two ink blotters on the desk top.

  Jules scanned the shelves. “The remodeling budget got blown on the reception room?”

  “Very funny, mon ange. The League formed in the nineteenth century, so the studies and the adjoining library have a definite Victorian flavor. It’s always been this way. I know it’s not very happening, but I like the stability of it.”

  Addison stroked the back of one of the chairs, as if assessing the quality of the materials. “Library?”

  Nikki held up a hand. “Enough chitchat. Take a seat, Addison. It’s time to get you two inking.” She guided Jules to a seat in front of the box. Opening it, a pen almost identical to Addison’s, but inscribed with the Latin word Memento, rested on red velvet.

  Nikki looked to both of her students. "Any other questions before we start?”

  Jules set the pen on the blotter as if she held a live grenade. "Won't this mess us up? I mean floating around in somebody's consciousness has got to make you a little schizoid."

  Nikki shook her head. "No. Look at Addison."

  Jules glanced to Addison with a frown. “My point exactly."

  “You’ll be safe. Trust me."

  She set paper in front of them. "I've written a name on an index card. When you receive the card, write the date—this is very important—write the exact date provided on the card followed by the name. I do not want another scare like I had when Addison inked Benjamin Waltrop. Okay?”

  Jules looked up from the blank page. “Who’s Benjamin Waltrop?”

  Addison shifted, the bloodbath in the B-17 still fresh in his mind. "He died in World War II."

  "Really? And you were there?” Jules glanced over to Nikki with a mischievous smile. “How badly did you fuck that up?” Nikki held her gaze in a long, uncomfortable silence. Jules shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Nikki peered down at them. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but right now I need you to write the date and the name exactly as it’s written.”

  Addison leaned back. “Wait a second, Nikki. What if there’s more than one person with that name on the same date?”

  “The pen knows, mon cher. The pen always knows. Now let’s begin.”

  Jules wrote the name, Brad Davis, and the date, August 22, 1996. At the same time, Addison picked up his pen, writing on the paper before him. Finally, after watching her two proteges enter an inking trance, Nikki took up Memento, writing the name and date as well.

  ***

  Standing at the airplane’s door, the wind buffets and swirls. Thousands of feet below, the land divides into green and yellow squares, some with houses, others with small brown cows the size of ants. In the distance, a clear blue sky disappears into the horizon. Maggie gives a nod from the cockpit. Time to jump.

  Where am I? Falling? SHIT, I’M FALLING!

  8000 feet.

  “Jules, mon chou, calm down. We’re inked into Brad Davis, who happens to sky dive on the weekends. We’ve only got about forty-five more seconds, so we better get on with it.”

  Yeah, calm down Jules. And why forty-five seconds?

  “Normally, you each ink a single host and work in pairs—”

  I’m with Addy on this. Nikki, why forty-five seconds?

  7000 feet.

  “—because if you screw up and don't die back on time, you need a partner to kill you. Otherwise, who knows what tremors you'll send through the continuum.”

  6000 feet.

  Wait. You're saying the only way for Jules and me to come home is to die? There's no button to push? Pill to take? We have to die every time?

  5000 feet.

  “Exactly, Addison. The lesson today is: “If you want to live, you have to die.”

  So, Addy and I are going back in time, doing our thing, then killing our host?

  4000 feet.

  “No, no. You don't understand. We always identify hosts who will be dying as close to the completion of the mission as possible. So most of the time you let nature take its course. Like Addison did with Emmett or you with your little lion snack.”

  3000 feet. A pull of a D-ring fails to give the usual strain of air filling the chute.

  What the…?

  “On occasion, an Inker might by accident or necessity, allow a host to live beyond their natural death. In which case, you'll have to improvise.”

  2000 feet.

  Improvise. As in kill?

  “Yes, but the host is supposed to die anyway. If you d
on't die, you've altered the space-time continuum. It's a delicate balance.”

  1000 feet. The horizon falls away as the ground rushes up.

  What’s happening? Crap. The chute’s tangled. Godammit, Nikki!

  “You asked earlier why forty-five seconds? The answer is gravity.”

  You mean…? Oh, no…AAAHHHH!

  ***

  “AAAHHH!” Jules and Addison flung away from the desk, arms outstretched as if breaking a fall, their chairs crashing to the floor.

  “Jesus, Nikki!” Jules grabbed ahold of the desk to steady herself, vomit rising in her throat. Addison, back to the wall, took in deep breaths in an attempt to fight the nausea.

  Nikki pulled up a chair, motioning for the two to sit back down. “Time for a history lesson.”

  “Wait a second. Just wait.” Addison sat down, still panting as if he’d just run a marathon. He glanced over to Jules who looked like she had gotten off the Roller Coaster of Death. “Was that really necessary?”

  “A tandem inking is League policy for trainees. Besides, it’s important for you to have confidence in your die back. The more confident you feel, the better you’ll get at it. Trust me, another forty or fifty die backs and the whole process will be natural for you.”

  Jules looked to Addison, and back to Nikki. “Forty or fifty times?”

  “I understand this is all new to you, but we need to move on. Now, where was I?”

  Addison mumbled a word. “History.”

  “Ah, yes. In the nineteenth century, a scientist," she nodded to Addison, "your great, great, great, great grandfather, Ezekiah Shaw, met Tobias Faryndon, a guy he initially considered insane. However, he soon became convinced of Tobias’ cause and the truth about inking.”

  Jules asked, “So the inkings I’ve done…the whole ‘idiot eaten by a lion thing’ and falling out of the sky were some kind of hallucinogenic trips?”

  “Yes, you inked. And no, you weren’t hallucinating. You inked into someone who is dead present-side.”

  Jules did a double-take. “Just a sec. Did you say I used the pen to go into a dead guy?”

  “Not exactly—”

  "Like some freakin' zombie?"

  Nikki's lips curled up into a slight smile. “Not the living dead. The dead. You enter a consciousness during a deceased person’s lifetime."

  Jules choked, coughing. “The morons I inked were already dead?”

  Nikki shook her head, cursing in French under her breath.

  Addison, with a crooked smile, leaned in. “Let me try to explain it in simple terms for her.”

  Jules eyes flashed with anger. “Simple?”

  He held up a hand, waiting for her to sit back down. “My bad. Jeeze. Pretty high strung, aren’t you?”

  Jules rose, fist clenched. “You want to take this outside?”

  Nikki glared at Addison in a long uncomfortable silence, not speaking again until Jules returned to her seat. “Inking is more like the time travel of science fiction. When we set up shop in their brains, they're living in the time they were alive." Nikki's voice regained some of her earlier enthusiasm. “So when you're inking, you want to be an observer, especially starting out, unless you’ve been given specific instructions. Addison here," Nikki nodded to him, “played around with Thomas’ pen, so he has a bit of a head start. Fortunately, as best I can tell, he hasn't catastrophically altered reality."

  Jules asked, “What do you mean, ‘altered reality’?”

  “Changing anything in the past has a ripple-effect into the future. If Lincoln doesn’t become President, what happens to the Union? If we don’t create an atomic bomb, how does World War II end?”

  They sat in silence, considering the implications of Nikki's words. Jules fidgeted with a silver ring on her index finger. "So this Tobias guy cooked up some magic ink?"

  "The alchemist, Tobias Faryndon, met a Frenchman, Barthélémy Louviers, on the battlefield of Agincourt on October 25, 1415. They fought. Tobias had the Frenchman at his mercy, his blade poised for the coup de grâce. The man, rather than beg for his life, told Faryndon that he was not Louviers, but a consciousness from another time and place hosted by the Frenchman’s mind and body.”

  Addison glanced at Jules. “An Inker.”

  “Yes. He gave Faryndon a small book, the Alchi̱meía, a document holding all the secrets of inking, imploring him to hide it prior to August 1, 1441. Faryndon commissioned Isaac Johann, a London clockmaker to create the pens using plans from the Alchi̱meía.”

  Addison twirled his cane between his legs. “Hold on, Nikki. You said Ezekiah met Tobias in the nineteenth century, but now you’re telling us Tobias lived in the fifteenth century?

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “So either Ezekiah went back or Tobias went forward. Which is it?”

  Nikki hesitated, Addison assuming she was determining how much truth to share. “Forward.”

  “If we can ink forward, why didn’t you go back to Alexandria and ink my father to the present?”

  “Ah, mon cheri. I wish with all my heart I could. Tobias kept the secret of inking forward to himself. We’re not sure if it’s a pen or another tool, but he didn’t share either the instrument or its alchemy with us.”

  “You told me Kairos tried to blood ink me. Is that how he inks forward?”

  “League inkers use scribe inking, writing with alchemical ink to transfer a consciousness into a deceased host in their living past. We’re not completely sure how blood inking works, but we think it uses an Inker’s alchemically altered blood to transfer his or her consciousness into a living person in the present. You inked back to Waltrop, but it was Waltrop’s present. If Kairos had successfully blood inked you, he would have accessed not only Waltrop’s consciousness, but your own. And if he killed your present-side body, he would have been able to keep you with him, put you in another host, or destroy you for eternity.”

  “But it could work. I could bring my father back with blood inking?”

  “Thomas would never agree to such a thing. Blood inking is a nasty piece of work.”

  Jules had gotten up, roaming the room as she took in Nikki’s words. She appeared to be studying the texture of the wall when she turned back to Nikki. “So, Tobias had until 1441 to hide the document. What happens in 1441?”

  “Tobias is murdered. Louviers, or whoever inked the Frenchman, told Tobias to destroy the Alchi̱meía if he couldn’t hide it in time.”

  “Did he? Did he find a hiding place?”

  “Yes.”

  Addison leaned back, arms crossed. “But you’re not going to tell us.”

  “Kind of one of those, “if I tell you, I’m going to have to kill you,” things. After Tobias hid the Alchi̱meía in a location known only to himself, he enlisted Ezekiah to create a security measure against anyone in the past who might attempt to obtain the document or alter the space-time continuum. Together they originated the League."

  “But why the security?” Addison asked. “Did he have somebody after him?"

  "That brings me to my first reason for starting your training tonight. Faryndon never got specific, but yes, someone going by the name Kairos is out there using inking for their own purposes. Since the League's founding, we’ve encountered small anomalies in the space-time continuum, evidence of tampering by a rogue Inker. Twelve years ago, we had a significant encounter with someone named Kairos, but the League dealt with him. Or at least we thought we had dealt with him. Recently, the number and intensity of anomalies has increased. Just before your father died, Thomas and I ran into a rogue Inker in third century Alexandria, Egypt. My guess is it was either Kairos or an associate. And I’m quite certain he doesn't plan on making the world a better place."

  "Why's that?"

  “His actions have led to the deaths of several Inkers. “

  “Including my dad.”

  “Yes, mon ami. And his agent killed my host and stole the Alchi̱meía—essentially the Inker bible.”

  Jules sat
on the edge of the table. “I thought only Tobias knew where it was?”

  “A few weeks ago Thomas discovered a sealed air tight envelope in his safe. He was the only one with the combination and he had never seen the envelope before. When he broke the seal, he found a slip of paper with a location and a date written by hand. Fortunately, Thomas had a good memory, because within thirty seconds, the paper ignited from exposure to oxygen, leaving only a fine gray ash as evidence. We inked to the location to confirm the information and the security of the document. Somehow, Kairos knew the location and the time of our inking.”

  Addison asked, “Who gave us the envelope? Tobias?”

  “We believe he must have inked into our future. For some reason he wanted us to know the location.”

  “So now Kairos has the Alchi̱meía.”

  “If we don't get it back, God only knows…”

  Jules sat at the table across from Addison again. “The same guy attacked my mom, didn’t he?

  “Yes, it was either Kairos or one of his associates. Addison also ran into him during one of his unauthorized inkings.”

  Jules grabbed a pen and a small note pad off the desk. “Who is this Kairos guy?”

  “He might have been one of Faryndon’s colleagues or someone else along the way who learned about the pens. We do know he wants to control reality.”

  “To what end?”

  “We’re not sure. From the Roman emperor Augustus Caesar to the Mongol warlord Tamerlane to Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot, totalitarian dictators tend to be motivated by the acquisition of territory, wealth, and power.”

  “Nikki.” Addison locked eyes with her. “He said something to me when I inked Waltrop. It sounded almost biblical. ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.’”

  “Merde.”

  “What?”

  “I see you never went to church. Those words are from the Book of Revelation. He’s quoting God. Except, it sounds like in his mind, the Alchi̱meía will make him a god. Ultimate power and control over space and time.”

  Addison met Jules' eyes, as she let out a long exhale. "Craptacular..."

  “The increasing presence of Kairos is why Jules has been called up. And Addison, Thomas wanted to keep you out of the League, but given the changing circumstances and you being such a merde petite about the pen, it made sense to bring you in as well. The League needs you both. Time is short and the stakes are high. The next two weeks will be preparation for your first mission."