The Peregrine Omnibus, Volume Two (2 page)

Kirsten laughed, knowing full well what that meant. She spotted Will across the crowded room and waved to him. “If you want to go shopping tomorrow, give me a call,” she said, moving away from Evelyn.

Not likely,
Evelyn thought to herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Kirsten, but the whirlwind romance between her and Will had gotten the women off on the wrong foot and Evelyn still felt awkward around the German girl.

“Miss Davies, I presume?”

Evelyn jumped in surprise. She turned to face a strikingly handsome man with jet-black hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. He wore a dark suit and was standing with both hands on the head of a walking stick. Evelyn noticed that the stick was topped by a silver wolf’s head.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said, bowing slightly. Something in his manner spoke of old money, like European royalty.

“It’s perfectly all right,” she replied. “I was just lost in thought and didn’t hear you walking up.”

“Understandable. It’s quite noisy here tonight, and my mother used to say that I moved as silently as an alley cat.”

Evelyn laughed, tossing aside the notion of royalty. He seemed far too… down to earth… for that. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, Mr. …?”

“Fernando Pasarin. I am very pleased to meet you. You might find this hard to believe, but I am quite a fan of your work.”

“Well, I’m flattered, believe me. I take it you’re not from Atlanta, Mr. Pasarin?”

Pasarin chuckled gently. “No. I am here on business, actually. My family owns a salvage business—romantic-sounding affairs, like finding lost treasure at the bottom of the sea. It’s not as much fun as it might seem, however. Very dangerous work, with long hours.”

“Not many ships to salvage in Atlanta, I wouldn’t think,” Evelyn teased, throwing herself into the conversation. If Max wanted to leave her alone at an event like this, there couldn’t be any harm in a little idle chat with a handsome stranger.

“You’re quite right,” Pasarin agreed. “But I am going to be speaking to various groups about some of our most recent finds. We believe they date back to the seventeenth century and will be quite the spectacle for men with an eye for history.”

“May I ask what these relics are? Or do I have to buy a ticket to find out?”

Pasarin’s grin widened. “I think I can make an exception for a woman whose work has brought me such joy.” He reached into his coat pocket and retrieved a small nautical compass. “This belonged to a man named Hendrik van der Decken. He was captain of
The Lucky Seven
, a vessel that became the basis for the story of the Flying Dutchman.”

“A ghost ship?” Evelyn asked, her interest rising.

“Exactly. Van der Decken and his crew were victims of a plague—they could find no port that would accept them and so they died, maddened and starving, at sea. Their spirits roamed the oceans for nearly two centuries after, slaying nearly all that came across their path. We found their ship at the bottom of a deep ocean crevice.”

“You make it sound like they were actually ghosts…”

“I believe they were. This is the exact ship that was sighted more than a thousand times over the course of two hundred years.” Pasarin held the compass up in front of her eyes. The needle spun about madly, stopping occasionally before resuming its rotation. “The fissure in the ocean floor where we found the ship… it seems to go on forever. We tried to drop things down into it to test its depth, but nothing was capable of measuring its true expanse.” Pasarin stared at Evelyn, the intensity of his gaze sending shivers down her spine. “I believe we found van der Decken’s ship lodged in the entrance to hell.”

“Are you serious?” she asked, though she knew that he was.

“Quite.”

“Aren’t you worried what you might unleash by tampering with it, then?”

Pasarin’s eyes twinkled in a way that made Evelyn uneasy. This was a handsome but dangerous man. “Not worried, Mrs. Davies. Excited, perhaps.”

Evelyn spotted Max making his way towards her and she stepped back from Pasarin. “I see my husband has finally arrived. Would you like to meet him?”

“I wish that I had the time, but I really must be going. It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Pasarin started to leave but stopped himself. “Perhaps you and your husband would like to attend one of my lectures… free of charge? I will be at the Douglass House tomorrow at three. I hope to see you there.”

Pasarin bowed low and moved away with an easy grace. Max watched his departure and kissed his wife on the cheek. “Make a new friend?” he asked.

“Sort of. What kept you?”

“The usual.”

Evelyn continued staring after Pasarin, watching as he left the building through one of the exits. “Do you have plans for tomorrow afternoon?”

“No. Why?”

Evelyn looked at her husband and hooked her arm in his. “Because we’re going to hear a gentleman talk about a boat.”

CHAPTER III

Of Ghosts and Men

Fernando Pasarin entered his hotel room, carefully latching the door behind him. He was a man of expensive tastes and his penthouse suite was the finest in Atlanta. A bottle of wine was waiting for him, of a vintage that would have broken the bank accounts of most in the city, but for Pasarin, it was simply one of life’s little pleasures. He set the compass down on a table and poured himself a glass of wine, savoring its bouquet before taking a small sip. He kept picturing Evelyn in his mind, her firm body and full lips… a shame she was no longer quite as young as she had been when he’d first encountered her on film. Still, she was a fetching young woman, more than capable of fulfilling Pasarin’s desires.

“Be careful when it comes to dealing with married women,” a voice warned from the shadows. “Their husbands sometimes come bearing swords and guns.”

Pasarin glanced over into the darkness, seeing the silhouette of a man moving forward. The fellow was dressed like something out of
Treasure Island
, though nothing in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic quite compared to the horror of seeing a buccaneer covered in dripping sores and bearing the odor of rotting flesh. “Captain,” Pasarin purred, taking another sip of the wine. “Would you like a glass?”

“Aye, that I would… but I can’t taste it, so it would be quite the waste.” Captain van der Decken sat down in a nearby chair, water dripping from his boots. His hair was matted and dirty. “Mark my words: stay away from the married wenches. Find yourself a nice whore and get your satisfaction that way.”

“I appreciate the interest in my love life, but I can handle that side of things without you.”

The captain grinned, revealing blackened and yellowed teeth. “I’ll bet you can, a handsome devil like you… Such nice unmarked skin. Not a pockmark on you.”

Pasarin found that his wine was not tasting quite so delicious anymore. “Why are you here, Captain?”

“To remind you of your end of the bargain!” the pirate said, leaning forward to jab at the air with a finger. “I want the rest of me crew up and about… I want my ship to sail the seas!”

“Your men were granted continued existence by a demon. When your time was up, the ship sank into the depths of the sea and your men went to hell.” Pasarin crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the undead seafarer with thinly-disguised disgust. “I found your ship and I revived you by giving up a blood sacrifice… but to bring the rest of your crew back, that’s not quite so easy. It takes time and planning.”

“Don’t play games with me!” van der Decken exploded. “You’re a swift one, with your pretty words, but I know what you are. You’re a power hungry little killer. You sought us out on purpose. You knew how to bring me back to this world, but I won’t be a hired hand for you, no ways, no how. You give me back my ship or I’ll do nothing else for you!”

“You don’t have the power to refuse me,” Pasarin pointed out. “You’re bound to serve me, remember? And I do have work for you tonight, so it’s good that you decided to crawl out from the rock you live under. Do a good job and I’ll continue researching what it’ll take to get your ship up and running again.”

“You’re playing me for a fool, aren’t you?” The seaman rose from his seat and took two quick steps towards Pasarin, coming nose-to-nose with him. “But you’re right about one thing: I can’t do a thing about it. Not yet. But someday this spell of yours will weaken and when it does, you’ll be begging for mercy. Oh, yes you will.”

“The only mercy I’m asking for is from your stench,” Pasarin answered with a sneer. “I want you to kill a man for me. His name is Max Davies.”

“The husband of that little trollop? Didn’t know you fancied her so much.”

Pasarin turned away from him, moving to look out the window. He saw Atlanta lit up in all its nocturnal glory. “Actually, my desire to see Max Davies dead has little to do with his wife. Certainly, I’d love to give her a shoulder to cry upon… she’d be a lovely distraction for me until I tired of her. But that’s mere coincidence. No, I want Max Davies dead for quite different reasons.”

Van der Decken drew his sword and the hunger for violence was palpable in his voice. “Then tell me where to find the lad, and I’ll slice him from head to toe.”

Pasarin laughed softly. “Two things before I tell you where to go, my good captain.”

“Yes?”

“One: Don’t harm his wife, not if it can be helped. And two… make sure that Mr. Davies suffers.”

CHAPTER IV

Attacked in the Peregrine’s Nest!

Max yawned as he worked in his lab, a workshop hidden in the storm cellar beneath his home, a former plantation estate that rested just outside Atlanta. The Peregrine’s Nest, as he had dubbed it in a moment of unusual jocularity, provided him a place of his own, where he could work in private on the many inventions that had saved his life again and again.

He thought about his wife and son, both sleeping in the house above, and yearned to join them. But something kept eating at him, preventing him from relaxing enough to consider sleep an option.

It had been several months since his mental powers had been lost in a battle with the master criminal Doctor Satan, an event that had in many ways liberated him. He was now the Peregrine because he chose to be; there were no visions forcing him to take up arms. Those visions had originally been sent from beyond the grave by his father, Warren Davies, but since the loss of his mental abilities, his father’s visitations had ceased entirely, which both pleased and pained Max.

Max stared down at his handiwork—a small handheld device that would deliver a powerful electric shock when applied to the flesh of an enemy—and realized that he was too tired to adequately finish the project.

He set the device aside and started to head towards the door that led outside, but something stopped him in his tracks. Through the small crack where the door met the wall, Max could see a shadow moving past. A half second later, the door to the Nest rattled ever so slightly as someone tested to see if it was locked.

Max looked around, trying to decide with which weapon he should arm himself. His pistols were specially modified, allowing him to fire nearly a hundred rounds without reloading, but for some reason his eyes were drawn to the Knife of Elohim that rested on a tabletop. The blade glowed with a soft yellow light and had once, according to legend, been dipped in the blood of Christ, giving it unearthly powers against the forces of evil.

Clutching the knife in hand, Max took a position near the door. He was curious to see if the intruder would walk away, in hopes of getting inside the main house. If it was a simple thief, they were in for quite a shock.

To his surprise, the stranger didn’t walk away. Instead, they rammed a rapier clean through the wooden door, drawing it back before beginning to hack away at it. Max backed away as the door splintered to pieces, allowing a foul-smelling man dressed like a seventeenth-century pirate to lumber down the stairs, sword in hand. The man’s face was pocked with a number of weeping sores and his beard was matted with blood, grime, and sweat.

The Peregrine jumped back as the pirate leaped into the room, spittle flying from his lips. “It’s the last night of your life, bucko!” Van der Decken proclaimed, taking a mighty swipe with his blade. The Peregrine ducked under it and the sword momentarily embedded itself in the wood over his head.

Van der Decken yanked it free with a growl and continued his violent assault, stabbing at the air, each time growing closer and closer to hitting his target. There was no doubt in Max’s mind that this man was fighting not to wound, but to kill.

The Peregrine responded in kind, wielding the Knife of Elohim with consummate skill. He drove the blade deep into his attacker’s shoulder, but was shocked to see not blood but rather brackish seawater flow from the wound.

Van der Decken laughed heartily at the look of shock on his foe’s face. “I’m not as easy to dispatch as you’d thought I’d be, eh?” The pirate stepped back, twirling the blade and behaving like a cat toying with a captured mouse. “I don’t see why he fears you so much but he does… Oh yes, I could see it in his eyes. Kill Davies, he says, but he’s really telling me to kill this thing that terrifies him so.”

The Peregrine moved towards a nearby work bench, hoping to put it between himself and the intruder. He hoped to occupy the man long enough to find a weakness that could be exploited—and victory was essential, since Evelyn was sound asleep in the house above.

“Mind telling me why you’re trying to murder me?” Max inquired, successfully gaining some space from his opponent. The sea captain followed him slowly, a malicious grin on his pockmarked face. With every step, the man’s boots squished on the floor, water trailing from the leather.

“No harm in answering a few questions from a dying man,” van der Decken laughed. “My name be Hendrik van der Decken, captain of
The
Lucky Seven
,” the man stated, pausing a moment to take a stately bow and to briefly remove his hat. “I am currently in service to a most dreadful lord, and it is he that has sentenced you to your fate. I am but a humble servant.” The pirated suddenly leaped up onto the workbench separating him from Max, kicking a chemistry set to the floor, where the glass shattered, spilling a pinkish fluid across the wood. “So nothing personal, mate.”