dochermes

"Awaken the Dragon Within"

6/27-6/28/1996

I.

The whisper of a bare foot moving over grass, the intake of hissed breath between teeth, the rubbing of cotton at a fold in clothing... any one of these would have been enough to jolt Bane into heightened awareness. Deming Street had only one street light, and that was fifty feet away, over the stop sign where Lark Street intersected perpendicularly. Otherwise, there was only a sliver of crescent moon and the stars in the summer night sky to provide illumination. Behind a cluster of elm trees, nearly invisible in his all-black outfit, the Dire Wolf pinpointed where someone was approaching.

On the opposite side of the narrow back street was a strip of grass and then forest. Bane watched as a hulking dark form seperated itself from the shadows of the woods and moved out onto the road. They were one block from Selkirk's quiet house. The Dire Wolf stole silently through the gloom on an interception path. He knew from the furtive way the stranger moved that this was no innocent civilian returning home from a neighborhood bar or out for some fresh air on a sleepless night. No, this was a hunter of men on a mission. No cars had gone by on this short back road for over an hour. They were unlikely to be disturbed.

Now, as Bane rushed toward the stalker, that dark figure froze into position. It swung around a second too late. The Dire Wolf lunged forward, spinning on one heel and driving a stiffened leg deep into the pit of the assasssin's stomach. All the air was forced out of the man's lungs with a whoosh, and he fell back to land hard in a seated position in the middle of the road.

"Stay down," Bane said barely above a whisper. He could see now that this was a big muscular black man, bare from the waist up, quite imposing. "I have a few questions."

"You can ask me when we meet again," spat the killer, "In Hell!" As he spoke, he heaved up to his feet and plunged forward with both open hands ready to clutch. He ran directly into a straight jab that snapped his head back and derailed his attack. A split-second later a fierce left cross spun him halfway around to send him crumbling to the cold road surface.

"When you get to Hell, don't wait up for me," Bane replied. From what he could see in the murk, this man looked like a typical Danarakan with the rich dark skin, distinctive hooked nostrils and prominent cheekbones. Chest and abdomen seemed fit enough, but the arms were overdeveloped to the point of being grotesque... thick columns of bone and muscle, ending in oversize hands.

A Mulongi strangler. One of the Night Gorillas.

The dazed man mumbled a few indechipherable words, one of which sounded very much like 'Kamende.' That got Bane's attention. If Arem Kamende was behind recruiting all these murder societies... The Dire Wolf dropped to one knee beside the groggy African. "What about Kamende? Did he send you here?"

Before the strangler could answer, something whizzed over Bane's head closely enough to ruffle his hair. There was a thump of impact behind him, a gasp and then the dull thud of a body falling. But the Dire Wolf had already sprung twelve feet to the side, rolled and come up behind a bush with his Smith & Wesson extended at full arm's length. He had reacted so quickly that he was concealed and ready to fire before the body behind him hit the ground.

"Steady there," warned a calm man's voice with a faint accent. "Mr Bane, isn't it? You should realize you were about to be bludgeoned over the head by the other Mulongi. My arrow saved you that experience."

The newcomer was a tall, lanky man with pale skin and short blondish hair as shown in the moonlight. He was wearing simple dark clothing and had a Y-shaped leather quiver across his back. In his left hand was a classic longbow. With his other hand, the bowman tugged off a silk headband which had been covering his eyes during the shot.

"A Blind Archer?" said Bane. "Hold very still, buddy, I've heard about you guys. My friend Chen Wong-Lai is dead because of your sect."

Deliberately, the Blind Archer unstrung his bow and placed it on the road in front of him. "You can surely see I am no threat to you now. Listen. My name is Josef Jubilec, and I have been looking for you. As far as I know, I am the first to ever leave the Blind Archers and live."

"Yeah? Tell me more." Still keeping his long-barreled .38 aimed squarely at the man's center mass, the Dire Wolf straightened up and stepped back onto the road. "If you defected, the Archers must have sent their best to make sure you never got to tell anyone about it."

"The Grandmaster did indeed some five of their senior bowmen after me. But they could not send their very best, of course." Jubilec jabbed a thumb at his own chest. "Because that would be me."

"Interesting." Bane had moved to where he could snap a quick glance at the two Night Gorillas. The one he had slugged was stirring, getting ready to revive. Twenty feet further back, a second strangler was lying in the road with a shaft sticking up from the center of his chest. "What is it you want with me, anyway?"

Jubilec lowered his hands from where he had been holding them up near his shoulders. "It's going to be difficult enough to survive in the real world with no contacts. No connections. All I have is some cash and a few IDs I took from the Archers who pursued me. But everyone in the Midnight War has heard of you, the heroic Dire Wolf. And of your team of Tel Shai knights, the Kenneth Dred Foundation."

Decades of training in reading body language and vocal inflection was prompting Bane to trust this man to some extent. He did not put his gun away, but he did lower it to point at a spot exactly halfway between them. "You're out of luck then. I disbanded the KDF years ago. I don't have a team of Tel Shai knights to lead anymore."

The faintest smile appeared on the bowman's narrow face. "Isn't it time, then, that you started a new one?"

( the rest of the story )

"Jar of the Djinn"

10/21/1996

I.

At ten-thirty, Cindy Brunner was standing in the tiny foyer, watching traffic on 38th Street. Awful lot of humongous SUVs any more, she thought. She was making her way through a bowl of cottage cheese in which she had cut up an apple and some pineapple chunks. At thirty-six, she was more attractive than ever. She was only an inch over five feet tall, slim and fit as a gymnast, with breasts a bit large for her frame (she explained this as somehow coming from being born six weeks premature). Her dark blonde hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail. Cindy was wearing white sneakers, very old and comfortable blue jeans and an open denim shirt over a black pullover. Her inquisitive, freckled face had always been appealing; people felt comfortable with her.

An unmarked police car pulled up and backed into a space just down the block. Finally! She raced to the kitchen down the hall to fling the empty bowl and spoon into the sink and got back just as a familiar figure was starting up the six steps to the front door. He was unaccompanied, so this was unofficial business. She reached out and scanned his mind lightly, found nothing suspicious and opened the front door just as he raised his finger to the bell.

"Good morning and may I say it's about time. You phoned an hour ago."

"Hiya, Cindy," Harold Klein said with a smile. He was a sturdy man below average height, with curly grey hair and a worn face. As always, year after year, he wore a raincoat that had been white the year Cindy was born.

She grinned like an imp with honest delight. "Inspector, I hope you've got something for Jeremy and me. A cult of assassins from Nepal? Giant bats carrying off children? Come on, let's have it."

Klein regarded her affectionately. "Ah, this is unofficial. Where's the Dire Wolf himself? I'll explain it to both of you at the same time."

"He's in the conference room. Right this way."

She turned and trotted up the stairs. Klein glanced briefly at the open door to the reception room where he had always been taken before. He followed her up the wide, carpeted stairs. In those snug jeans, her ascent was worth watching but his mind was as always distracted.

Klein had never been on the second floor of this old brownstone before. He saw the open door to a library and the hall itself was lined with tightly packed bookcases. Smiling at him over one shoulder, Cindy opened the dark wooden door at the end of the hall. "Jeremy," she sang cheerfully, "it's your friend the Inspector here to see you."

( the rest of the story )

The Smiling Brethren"

5/11-5/12/1996

I.

There were twenty Chujirans in the afternoon class, mostly youngsters but with several in middle age and even one elder who participated as best he could. The students were seated in the full lotus, eyes closed, breathing deeply and slowly. Po Lin was still too tense; she fought well but could not learn to let go. At the rear, young Mu Lin was almost out of body. The boy had a natural gift for meditation.

Watching them at the front of the room, Tang Ming smiled to herself. Nearing thirty, her petite size and build made her seem younger. Just over five feet tall and slim to the point of seeming fragile, Ming's glossy black hair was cut straight across at her shoulders. The tawny gold skin tone and single eyelid fold marked her as Asian but she did not closely resemble any of the Chujirans. Ming was full Chinese from Hong Kong, living here farther from the outer world than miles could measure. She was wearing the same pale blue tunic and loose pants she herself had worn as a Tel Shai student years ago.

She softly clapped her hands twice and watched her students come back to awareness. "Thank you all for attending," she announced. "Go in peace. Tomorrow is Market Day in the village but we will have our regular classes on the following morning. And remember to practice every chance you find!"

As the class bowed deeply and began filing out into the late afternoon sunlight, Tang Ming felt she had found the correct balance between Tai Chi and Fu Jow for these people. She would love to introduce some easy form of Yoga in the mix but then the sessions would be too long. Maybe it was time to consider choosing an assistant...?

She felt a twinge at the worry that the esoteric Fang Lung style was being lost. It had been devised by the father of her one love, and Chen Wong-Lai had instructed her in its secrets not long before his death. Only Shiro Mitsuru had learned some Fang Lung and he was irrevocably retired from the Midnight War. Recently, she had been spending quiet evenings writing down the principles of Fang Lung with stick figure illustrations but that was not at all the same as actually teaching it to someone.

The sound of bare feet slapping on the polished hardwood of the floor broke her out of her thoughts. Ming glanced up as a village boy no more than ten ran headlong through the open door and dropped to one knee in front of her. Like most of the townsfolk, he wore coarse white shirt and pants bound at the waist with a sash.

"Liu? What is the matter?" she asked as she took him by one arm to raise him to his feet. She often found the respectful gestures of Chujir embarrassing.

"Sifu Tang. It is the Smiling Ones. They have been seen riding down from the hills. Everybody is in an uproar. I heard there is smoke coming from the farm of Old Tien."

Tang Ming clapped the boy on the shoulder and raced from the room without a word. She leaped down to hardpacked earth outside, vaulting over the front steps entirely, and swung around to the side of the school where her chesnut mare Breeze was tethered in the shade. Ming flung a thin blanket on the horse, untied the reins and bounded up to land on Breeze's back as nimbly as any acrobat. Without stirrups or saddle, she urged her mare forward and the well-trained beast took off at a full gallop.

Hurtling down the plain dirt road through the village, Ming ignored the stares and outcries from the plainly agitated townsfolk. Within minutes, the huts and shops were left behind. Miles ahead, she spotted a black plume of smoke rising into the warm air.

As she neared Tien's farm, Ming galloped around villagers who were running in the same direction. Her heart sank at the extent of the destruction. The house itself was burning so furiously that it obviously could not be saved. Two dead cows lay on the ground, slashed by swords in a dozen places. A yellow dog was impaled on a broken fence post, its tongue hanging out.

Most difficult to endure were the human corpses. Both Tien and his wife had been old, well past middle age, and their adult children had long ago taken over the work of the farm. Both of the parents and the two sons stretched out face down where they had been killed while fleeing. One young girl, engaged to a son and working in the household, was curled up in a ball with her head nearly severed from its neck.

Against the smell of burning wood and the crackle of the flames, Tang Ming leaped down from the saddle. Holding her voice steady took effort. "Could anyone still be in the house?" she asked.

"No, Sifu," said Tien's nearest neighbor. "Only the four of them lived here. Poor Hong. She was too young yet to formally announce her betrothal." His voice started to crack in grief. "She had hardly begun to live...."

"If only you had been here, Sifu Tang!" cried a woman.

"Yes!" said another villager. "You would have taught the Smiling Brethren the lesson they deserve. Poor old Tien."

Sharply aware that every eye was on her, Ming raised a hand. "Did anyone see the dogs?"

"I did," declared the neighbor. "They stormed past me on the road, riding their horses and laughing like madmen. Their faces carried that horrible grin. There can be no mistake."

As everyone resumed talking at once, Tang Ming surveyed the scene a final time. She strode stiff-legged over to her mare and hopped nimbly on to its back again. "I call for an assembly at the Well tonight," she called out. "Let the priest of Cirkoth and his acolytes prepare these bodies for a decent burial."

The crowd watched her in silence. Ming went on, "You all know I was not born here. I come from the world outside this realm. Yet, as surely as my beloved Chen Wong-Lai rests in this soil, so will my heart ever be here. I tell you I am a daughter of Chujir now and I promise that Chujir will be rid of the Smiling Brethren. I swear it!"

She wheeled Breeze around and pounded down the road toward her school. Away from all those eyes, Tang Ming fought back tears and took deep breaths to calm herself. She needed clarity of thought. She had not told the crowd, but she had already decided to take some weapons and supplies and begin the hunt that night. First she needed to focus her powers of perception. What would help quiet her mind would be a brief period of meditation. Ming slowed as she neared the village, circling to approach her school the long way around. She wanted to avoid having to face more upset townsfolk.

( the rest of the story )

"The Shade of Achilles"

3/1-3/3/1996

I.

Crouching on the roof of the two-story building across the street, Jeremy Bane watched the robbery with great interest. It was a bitter windy night at the beginning of March, but this street near Washington Square would be deserted anyway at three o'clock in the morning. None of the shops and boutiques stayed open past nine and there were no bars or nightclubs for a few blocks. Only a single car had rolled past in the past ten minutes.

Despite the chilly wind, Bane wore only his usual outfit of black slacks, turtleneck and sport jacket. He did not seem to even notice the cold. Fifteen years of both Kumundu training and the tagra diet exclusive to Tel Shai students had made his body able to adapt to all but the most extreme conditions. Accelerated healing was the main benefit of tagra, but there were other side-effects of the tea that were invaluable in themselves.

Getting down on one knee, the Dire Wolf studied the scene at the rear of Fenneman's Museum of Oriental Antiquities before him. He had looked it up that afternoon and found it was a private collection of Bronze Age relics open to view only for a donation or to approved scholars. It had been founded in 1879 by someone named Alan Fenneman but had long since passed into ownership outside the family. Bane had read the catalogue and noticed all the golden goblets, cauldrons, belt buckles and brooches, vases and urns, as well as dozens of bronze swords and shields. Good enough loot to make it worthwhile, he supposed.

Bane's informant had not been able to provide many details. One of the lower-level thugs had downed a few beers and bragged a little about a new crime boss who was going to have the cops terrified. He had dropped a hint or two about this particular street and how everyone would be talking about it the next morning, then had belatedly gotten some prudence and changed the subject. The tidbit got passed furtively to Bane, who had thanked his informer. Years earlier, Bane had rescued the man's parents from a house that a maniac named Mr Gallows had torched. Ever since, the man had been glad to pass along any underworld tips he thought the Dire Wolf would be interested in.

The solid-looking wooden door at the back of the museum had letters that read simply NO ADMITTANCE and a light burning under a curved steel shield. Next to the door was a green metal dumpster filled with crushed cardboard boxes and wrappers, beyond that was the rear of a natural food store. The alley was wide enough to admit delivery trucks full of presumably natural food, and now a black unmarked panel truck pulled into that alley.

Across the alley, Bane immediately raced to the far edge of the roof, swung around to hang by his fingers on the cornice and then simply dropped down to the paving. He landed lightly on fingertips and toes. Tiny bone fractures or sprains or jolts to the spinal column healed so quickly he was barely aware of them. The Dire Wolf was not indestructible, of course. Damage severe enough would kill him as it had most Tel Shai knights before him through the ages. For relatively minor injuries, though, instant recovery enabled him to pull off many of his seemingly reckless stunts. He leaped up and headed for the robbery.

Of the four men who had emerged from the panel truck, he immediately recognized three. The short man in the white suit with the white fedora was Fancy Jim, the alarms expert. He had put down a leather tool box and was pulling on latex gloves. Fancy Jim specialized in disarming alarm systems for robbery, using a techhnique he had invented that somehow used a freon spray that froze wires so they would not trigger an alarm when broken. Looming up over Fancy Jim, watching the smaller man protectively was his long time partner, Tiny Jim. Named with the ironic slang that calls fat men 'Slim', Tiny Jim was six inches over six feet tall and wide enough to fill most doorways. His flat, brutal face under a crewcut that left him almost shaven, showed both low intelligence and the belligerence of someone who does not understand most conversations going on around him. Fancy Jim and Tiny Jim had been working together for years.

The third man was hitting middle-age, bundled up in a down-filled parka with a black wool hat. Bane knew that prominent beaky profile. This was Menlo Park, nicknamed for some reason after Edison's workplace. Park was a minor criminal who had been arrested a few times but never done prison time. He was known as someone who worked with most of the fences and pawnshop owners in the metropolitan area getting good deals on stolen merchandise. He also knew several private collectors of art who were not above paying to gloat over stolen paintings they could not display publicly.

In the second it took him to run across the alley toward the panel truck, Bane had recognized the three known crooks and almost dismissed them as threats. Normally, he was not concerned with lower level operators like these three. His prey was serial killers and maniacs like Samhain, Golgora or Ethan Petrov. It was the fourth man, standing apart from the known crooks, who triggered all of the Dire Wolf's sense of menace. Park and Fancy Jim were known to carry small caliber sidearms and Bane knew the flexible Trom armor under his clothes would protect him from those.

All he could see of the fourth man from the rear was a tall figure just over six feet, wrapped in a bright red silk cloak that reached the ground. The back of the head showed tight golden curls. Just the way the blond man stood off to one side, watching the three thugs work, showed he was in charge. Bane earmarked him as probably the really dangerous foe here. In an instant, the Dire Wolf hopped up on the sidewalk and approached the men just as Fancy Jim unclicked the lock on the rear door with a satisfied grunt.

"We need to talk," Bane said, getting within arm's reach of the robbers without having been seen. Three of them gave a start and swung around in surprise and fear. "Bane!" yelped Menlo Park as he backstepped quickly. "Oh, no. I'm not tangling with this guy."

Tiny Jim snorted. "He don't scare me none." The hulking form drew back his fist back behind one mashed ear and lunged forward. His sheer size and bestial face were usually enough to panic storekeepers or witnesses into flight but Bane stood where he was. Tiny Jim swung his huge fist in a simple roundhouse right. Bane used his own right hand to swing that blow further inward across Tiny Jim's body, while whipping his own left fist up along that thick arm to smash into the center of the brute's face with a sharp smacking noise. Tiny Jim swayed, his defenses dropping. Bane snapped his left leg up in a high side kick that slammed the side of his boot up under the big man's jaw. Tiny Jim fell over backwards with a moaning sound. In less than a full second, the Dire Wolf had felled one of the intimidating goons in the New York badlands.

"Hey, boss!" Menlo Park cried out, "Give us a hand."

The blond man unfastened the clasp of the red cloak and tossed it onto the roof of the panel truck next to him. He was a muscular man with sharp definition in his wiry build rather than bulk, with most of his upper body showing because he was wearing an open leather vest. The man had on heavy loose trousers and high leather boots. He was handsome almost to be point of being pretty in a still masculine way. Under the curly golden hair was a tanned face with a square jaw, straight nose and bright blue eyes. Under the dim light, he flashed a confident smile.

"Fear not," the leader said. "Any mortal is a fool who dares stand up to Achilles."

( the rest of the story )