Lazarus, however, was not laughing at all. Something about that woman seemed disturbingly familiar. And if his suspicions were correct, then Sovereign City was in terrible danger.
666 Holder Way was in the most desolate area of town and given Sovereign’s reputation, that was saying quite a lot. The streets were lined with prostitutes and drug pushers, along with mobsters who wore their guns openly. The few police who drove through the area were all on the take and even luminaries such as Doc Daye, The Dark Gentleman or Fortune McCall entered the region with caution.
Pemberley parked the car in a covered garage next to a decrepit looking brownstone. The windows were boarded up, there were bloodstains on the front steps and a crudely lettered sign warned “No Trespassers” on the front door. The vile doctor eyed the structure with obvious trepidation.
“Have no fear, Doctor, the interior will be more to your liking.” Constance unlocked the front door with a peculiar-looking key and Pemberley noticed that beneath their feet were a series of shining plates, like marble.
“What is this?” he asked, tapping at the plates with the toe of his shoe.
“They’re electrified. If someone so much as touches the front door without inserting my key first, they’ll be burned to a crisp.”
“Sounds a bit… over the top,” Pemberley said with a dry mouth. “Aren’t you afraid of accidentally killing someone who just comes along and knocks?”
Constance gestured to the surrounding streets, with their plethora of scum and villainy. “There are no Girl Scouts selling their wares here, Doctor. Anyone who is here is a threat.”
Constance led him inside and Pemberley failed to hide his shock. True to her word, the interior of the place was nothing at all like the exterior. The thick carpet on the floor was luxurious and the paintings on the wall were expensive originals. Everything that Pemberley could see was exquisite… and very, very pricey.
“Welcome to the headquarters of Murder Unlimited, Doctor. Would you like to meet your fellow agents?”
Pemberley nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, feeling suddenly much more confident about their chances of success than he had a few moments before. “I think that I would.”
The membership of Murder Unlimited was soon assembled in a meeting room dominated by a circular oak table. Pemberley had been introduced by Constance first and he’d blushed a bit as she’d laid out his qualifications for membership: “Doctor Pemberley is one of the foremost surgeons and experimental scientists of our day. The full list of his accomplishments would take hours to share but suffice to say that he has worked for every major power broker in the underworld and he is wanted by every police force this side of Scotland Yard.”
Constance then gestured to the others in the room, introducing them one by one.
The first was an aristocratic woman dressed in Egyptian finery. With her lustrous black hair, dark eyes and beautiful figure, she looked like every description of Cleopatra that Pemberley had ever read. “This,” said Constance with a slight bow, “is Princess Femi, resurrected from beyond the grave. Cursed to a terrible state of Undeath by the priests of her time, she has been restored to life twice in the past few years, only to be returned to dust each time by Lazarus Gray.[3] She is able to turn men into shambling creatures of death, bound to her will.”
Femi smiled at Pemberley and he shivered to see that her mouth was filled with sharp teeth, obviously meant for tearing human flesh. She inclined her head in greeting, hissing out the words “God is dead,” to which Pemberley responded with a thumb’s up. He had no idea why she had said it, but he wasn’t one to judge.
To Femi’s left was a thin man dressed all in a black suit and tie. He was bald and a thin line of scars across his pale dome was clear evidence that he’d been the recipient of some sort of procedure on his brain. The man held a small saltshaker in his right hand and as Pemberley watched, he shook a few grains of salt into his palm. Like a cat, he licked them up, murmuring slightly as he did so.
Constance seemed to be relishing her role as host and Pemberley heard the pleasure in her voice as she introduced the bald man. “This is Abraham Klee. Born in Sovereign, his father was the notorious Dr. Adolphus Klee. Arrested for his various experiments upon the brains of the city’s dregs, Dr. Klee had one tremendous success: his own son. Thanks to a surgery performed when Abraham was only three years old, he is now able to tap into a full 90 % of his brain’s capability, as opposed to the 10 % that most of use. As a result, he’s faster and able to process information at an unbelievable rate.”
Pemberley nodded, impressed. Adolphus Klee had been one of his greatest inspirations.
The final member of the group was a heavyset man with a goatee. He wore a threadbare coat with patches on the elbows and a dingy white shirt and slacks. He seemed completely uninterested in the discussion, instead focusing on a newspaper clipping held in his right hand. “And this,” Constance said, “is Stanley Davis. He possesses a form of clairvoyance that allows him to focus his attention on an object or picture and glean details about the person who owned it, or is depicted in it. It’s not full-proof but sometimes his insights are quite interesting.”
“Indeed they are,” Stanley said, looking up at Pemberley. He turned the newspaper clipping around and the doctor saw that it was a photo of himself, along with an account of his first arrest. “You’re a very naughty boy, Melvin. You do enjoy your work, don’t you?”
Pemberley colored, feeling uncomfortable under the fat man’s gaze. Stanley laughed at his discomfort.
“So you see,” Constance continued, “That we’re quite a dangerous bunch. My money bankrolls it all, Femi provides us an army of the undead, Abraham is our fighter and assassin, and Stanley is our psychic.”
“And me?”
“You’re our physician and scientist. Not to mention your many contacts with the underworld.”
“And our sole purpose is to destroy Assistance Unlimited?”
“Well… yes and no,” Constance admitted. Before she could continue, Klee spoke up.
“We all want to see Lazarus Gray and his gang in a set of early graves but Constance’s money only stretches so far. We’ve been hiring ourselves out. The Morretti killing a week or two back? That was me, hired by The Monster to do in a gangster who owed him money. And Femi there put the shakedown on a few city councilmen, making sure they’d vote the way another client of us wanted them to.”
Femi made a dismissive noise. “You make me sound like a common criminal. I sent several of my followers to do the unseemly business.”
“Whatever,” Klee said with a grin. “The point is, we’re doing for the underworld what Gray does for the legit society: helpin’ them out.”
Constance reached out and squeezed Pemberley’s hand. “But now that you’re on board, I think we’ve filled out our roster. We’ll resume taking normal jobs once our main task has been fulfilled: it’s time for Assistance Unlimited to pay for all that they’ve done!”
Pemberley surprised even himself with the vehemence of his response. “Yes! Let’s do it! Let’s kill them all!”
For so long, he’d been on the run, an outcast from society. At best, he was a barely-accepted flunky for more powerful men. But here, with Murder Unlimited, he was surrounded by like-minded souls. Here, he was a valued equal… and that gave him the confidence that he needed to swear vengeance on his enemies.
“Good,” Constance cooed. “Then let’s begin Operation: Lazarus in earnest.”
3
Femi was introduced in “The Corpse Screams At Midnight,” The Adventures of Lazarus Gray. She returned in “Die Glocke.”