Unfinished Tales, Vol. 8

S-words for $1,000,000

Sunlight filtered through the occluded windows above his head as Flynn made his way slowly down the hallway, small tufts of dust billowing from beneath his black combat boots. He tugged at his white collar, imagining for a moment that perhaps there was a God and she was trying to choke him wondered if maybe the maintenance guys had some sort of dislike for this part of the building. People don’t know how to use brooms in Italy?

He checked up and down the hallway, then held up his hand and whispered. His fingers glowed blue as he moved his hand along the wall and both sides of the door in overlapping swipes. A stone to the right of the door changed color slightly; it reminded him of the old Hanna Barbara cartoons of his youth; when something was going to move, the color was always off because they could never match the animation to the background cell.

Flynn pressed the discolored stone, heard a click, then the face swung out revealing a keypad with four blinking red LEDs. He waved his hand over the keypad and the lights changed, one by one, to green. Something moved within the door, then it popped open half an inch, air whistling slightly as though the room beyond was inhaling.

Glancing over his shoulder again, Flynn placed his hand on the worn wood and pushed. It swung inward easily. He slid inside and hipped the door closed, fighting the urge to sneeze. The place smelled of dirt and old books. He could hear the hum of air conditioners in the background, low and steady.

He reached inside the cassock to the inner pocket of his jacket and fished out a Polaroid of a dark room with stone walls, a large wooden desk and a worn khaki jute rug. The picture had a red heart-shaped thumbtack scotch-taped to the back. He pulled off the tack, then turned and staked the picture to the door. The Polaroid swung slightly when he released it.

Flynn made a fist of his left hand, focused on it for a moment. Green waves of light began to glow from his forearm, moving just beneath the skin like seaweed in an ocean current. He lifted his hand and peered into the room.

The first thing that popped into Flynn’s head was the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Shelves stacked with glass cases, wooden chests, weapons, books, scrolls and glittering metals stretched back into the darkness. No windows let in the damaging rays of the sun. Holding up his arm, he peered both right and left, again seeing row upon row of thick wooden shelving. Here and there, red or white lights blinked in the black like stars. For all the brick and mortar, there were some deterrents, never mind finding the thing in the first place. Not that he’d come unprepared…

“The fools. They have no idea what they’ve got there.”

Flynn stuck a finger under the priest collar and ripped it off his neck, then stepped out of the cassock, tossing it onto the floor. Beneath the robes, he wore a fitted black leather jacket, Ramones t-shirt showing beneath, and some old rip-stop black BDUs, the legs of which he had tied around his ankles, down over the top of the combat books. He wore a black nylon messenger bag across his chest, strap festooned with an assortment of pouches of various sizes.

Flynn patted himself down, still gazing into the room, down the shelves. He fished into the bandolier and pulled out a small white drawstring bag. Taking a bit of the white powder inside onto his fingers, he brought them to his mouth, said, “find it” and then blew the powder into the air.

It coalesced into a churning, misty ball then began to drift forward, at first slowly, then with increasing speed. He jogged after it, perusing the room as he went. A sword beneath a glass box refracted the green light from his forearm. He skidded to a stop and examined the blade.

Flynn leaned in closer. “I’ll be damned.”

His right hand reached up to touch the glass, as though to caress it and then … “Fuck it.” He smashed the case and pulled the sword from its dark wooden stand, only then noticing a blinking red light in the bottom of the case. He sighed, but didn’t put the sword back.

The white ball hovered in the air 50 yards farther down the aisle. He raced toward it, and as he closed, the ball raised into the air until it was level with the top shelf. He leaped onto the shelves, boots smashing glass and parchment, each sound worth more than he’d made in the last ten years.

The heavy leather-shod book with its fat brass shackles sat inside what looked like a permanently sealed Rubbermaid box. Flynn snatched it from the shelf then dropped back toward the floor. He landed with a muffled thump and froze in a crouch, eyes focused on the chamber door.

He watched long enough to count the silhouettes – three – then doused the light from his arm and ducked into a perpendicular aisle. His back to a shelf support, he set the sword on the ground then pulled open the messenger bag. The ripping sound of the Velcro echoed into the dark. Goddamn Velcro. He bagged the box, then resettled the bag against the small of his back. Flynn picked up the sword, hefted it, noting the perfect balance. It seemed to hum in his hand.

“There is but one way out of this room,” a voice said from the darkness. He could hear shuffling footsteps moving through the shelves, closing on his position. He looked down at his glowing hand, swore under his breath. Of course they were closing in…

Flynn squeezed his left hand and focused. The green light became a fire, the flames flicking out through the gaps between his fingers. He counted four beats, then, still crouched, he turned toward the sound on his right, closed his eyes and opened his hand.

A man in black robes lifted his arm in front of his eyes as the green flames smashed into his chest. He half screamed, half shouted and stepped back, at which point he received a combat boot in the chin. Flynn continued forward, catching the priest as he fell, absorbing the flames back into his fist. He rapped the man once in the face with the pommel of the sword, just to be sure, then moved toward the door, low to the floor.

He could hear voices in the distance. Reinforcements showing up, he figured. Flynn looked at the sword in his hand, shook his head, then pulled off his bag. He ripped up two more Velcro straps across the top of the bag’s flap, pressed the sword down, then refastened the Velcro. Then he pulled out two black sticks each the length of a Billy club, covered in silver runes, handles wrapped in black leather and end-capped with silver gargoyle heads and set them on a shelf.

He slung the bag back around his chest cinching the strap snug to his body. The sword pommel stuck out high above his left shoulder. He retrieved the sticks, flexed his hands on the grips, and swung them quickly though a kata.

More footsteps. He tapped the ends together and vanished.

Another priest stepped into the aisle, toting a stave with a glowing script running its length. Flynn held his breath and held still as the priest looked back toward the door, then to where Flynn had left the other man bloodied and unconscious. Flynn backed away from the priest and toward the door as the man bent over the prone form. He knew the priest couldn’t see him, but it didn’t make him feel any better about the stave.

The priest yelled, “Phillipe is down, High Inquisitor.”

Inquisitor. This keeps getting better and better. He kept moving. Occasionally, he’d pocket something from one of the shelves into the pouches on his bandolier. He didn’t consider himself a kleptomaniac by any means, but he didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to profit, especially when he doubted he’d be making any return trips.

He reached a junction in the shelves, cut back to the edge of the main corridor and peeked back toward the door. The Inquisitor, a tall man with a goatee, wavy dark hair and a gaunt, angular face, looked right at him. Two more priests now stood to either side of the Inquisitor, eyes scanning the room. Flynn pulled his head back. Had he seen him? Heard him? Why the hell was he looking that way?

“Thief, it would be better for you to come quietly,” the Inquisitor said, voice low and steady.

We’ll see about that, Flynn thought. Smug Bastard.

He stepped out from behind the stack and dropped the invisibility charm. He stifled an impulse to grin when the Inquisitor started at his appearance. He hadn’t seen Flynn after all. He spun the sticks and strode toward the door.

“What’ve you taken?” the man asked, eyes flicking to the pommel of the sword. Then he laughed. “The blade? You come for that? Who would believe you?”

Flynn smiled back. “Oh, I’m not here for the sword. It’s just sort of a bonus.” He could feel the other men closing behind him, gauging the distance by the sounds of their steps. He waited. They stopped a pace away.

The Inquisitor motioned the men behind him toward Flynn. “Take him.”

Flynn watched the move forward, heard the men behind him step forward. He waited until a hand clasped at his right bicep. He twisted to his right, bringing the stick down and up as he turned toward his attacker. The stick caught the priest just below his chin, driving his head up and back, teeth clacking shut on his tongue.

Flynn stepped past as the man fell, clutching his face. He let the momentum torque his upper body to the right, then reversed momentum and brought the stick in his left hand hard across the nose of the second priest, smashing it flat. Flynn finished the kata with a flourish and found himself facing the other two oncoming men. Rather than wait, he charged.

Two running steps then Flynn lunged at the priest on his right, sticks outstretched, one high, one low. The high one caught the priest just below the sternum, the low in the groin, and crumpled. Flynn let his arms retract, still moving forward, and spun past the other priest. He charged the Inquisitor, who now watched him wide-eyed.

Then Flynn was upon him. The Inquisitor threw himself sideways just before impact. Flynn took too more bounding steps then leaped headfirst at the door, arms outstretched in a horizontal dive. His fingers touched the surface of the Polaroid. Green fire flashed around the edges of the picture and then Flynn was through. He rolled to a landing on the jute rug, feet slamming into the stone wall, arresting his motion.

He pushed off the wall, rolled back to his feet and walked back toward the wall from which he’d just emerged. He reached into the Polaroid on his side, into one of the archive. The Inquisitor was regaining his feet with the help of the one still mobile priest and looking in Flynn’s direction.

He winked at them, focused on his left hand, called the fire again and incinerated the picture.