“Christ,” I said. “You give that speech to every mother whose baby starts wailing when it catches a glimpse of you? You’re no fucking superman, you’re a decrepit mess with delusions of grandeur, and you look like the goddamned Crypt Keeper. I fail to see how that makes you better than the people you prey upon.”
Magnusson waved a hand dismissively in my direction. “Your choice of words, though no doubt borne of carelessness, is apt. You do, indeed, fail to see. My outward appearance I manage by employing a simple glamour — one which projects an image of a kindly old man to anyone who looks my way. I can even, for short stretches in controlled environments, force that glamour to imprint itself onto film — a discovery that proved a revelation to one so long relegated to the shadows. Now I’m known the world over as a great pillar of the international business community, one whose holdings in the fields of technology and biosciences have improved humankind’s understanding of themselves and quality of life in ways none but me had the vision to imagine. My false face graces billboards, and speaks to thousands of Magnusson Industries employees every year via my very own dedicated satellite network. But I refuse to wear it here. Here, I am my truest self.”
“Here, where you slaughter innocents, you mean. Your methods may differ from those of your fellow Brethren, but it seems to me you pillage the living just the same.”
“For now, yes, but only by necessity. I derive no pleasure from it. One day soon, I shall possess the means to cultivate my own replacement parts, at which point I’ll no longer have any need to pester the living. And I assure you, those from whom I borrow are hardly innocent. I own a number of institutions both penal and mental from which I draw as needed — once the potential donor has met my rigorous screening requirements, of course. Borrow portions of an undiagnosed schizophrenic’s frontal lobe just once, and you too will become a stickler for prescreening, although the dreams, I confess, were quite engaging. I removed it a week later to stop the voices, opening my skull with hammer and chisel by my reflection in the washroom mirror and scooping it out with a soup spoon in my desperation. But sometimes, they taunt me still.”
“Least you’re never lonely,” I replied. “Speaking of, maybe you and they could finish this conversation without me. I mean, thanks for having me and all, and really,” I said, looking around the dank, echoey space of the abandoned public bath, “it’s a lovely home you’ve got here, but I’ve had about as much hospitality as I can stand for one day. So, if you don’t mind…”
The old man laughed once more. “My home? You think this is my home? Oh, no, dear boy. I’ve a penthouse not far from here on Piccadilly, a country estate some hours north, a small island in the Caribbean, the top five floors of a high-rise in Hong Kong that bears my name. This place is merely a refuge of sorts, where I can carry out my more… esoteric experiments away from the prying eyes of those who might wish to put a stop to them.”
I pictured a bleached white crow, its eyes burned out of its head. And a man made of crows three stories high; an old god named Charon, whose dominion was the vast nothing separating life and death known as the In-Between, and the Collectors who routinely passed through it as they traveled from vessel to vessel. It was he who absorbed the energy released by Danny’s riven soul during Ana’s recreation of the Brethren escape-ritual, thereby sparing the living world a horrid fate. I had it on good authority he was none too fond of the Brethren. He didn’t cotton much to folks who took advantage of his beneficence.
“You’re hiding from Charon,” I said.
“Amongst others,” said the old man. “Unaffiliated deities such as he can prove as volatile as they are unpredictable, and he’s no great fan of me or mine. But there’s value in staying off heaven and hell’s respective radars as well, particularly as they descend once more toward all-out war. Ours are dangerous times, Mr. Thornton — for the living and the dead both. For the first time in three thousand years, I wonder just how long any of us on this spinning rock have left. And speaking of hell’s radar, where does your handler think you are right now?”
“Lilith found me at the cemetery, same as you, so she knows that I’m in Jolly Old, but I didn’t exactly have time to file a flight plan with her before your goon — excuse me, driver — absconded with me.”
At the mention of Lilith’s name Magnusson started, but whatever emotion just passed through him, his hodgepodge features were inscrutable. “That is reassuring to hear,” he said. “For it would not do to have her waiting at the gates, once I take my leave of you this night. It’s shame enough I had to sacrifice my sanctuary just to neutralize the threat you pose, the last thing I need is to tussle with the likes of her.”
At the implied threat behind his words, I tensed. Fear, cold and slithering, coiled itself around my stomach. “You must know I can’t be killed,” I told him. “If I were, I’d be reseeded somewhere else.”
“Fear not, Collector, I’ve no intention of killing you. I simply chose to remove you from the field of play.”
That’s when it occurred to me. “The bed…” I said.
“…is yours, of course. And I do hope you find it to your liking. You’ll be sleeping in it for centuries to come.”
“The hell I will.”
“Oh, I fear you haven’t any choice. And Samuel?”
“Yeah?”
“You really should have accepted my offer of tea.”
And that is when the patchwork man attacked.
3.
Look, I’m no idiot. This gig of mine, as awful as it is, comes with its share of downtime, much of it passed surfing cable in fleabag motels, or thumbing through whatever tacky airport thriller happens to grace my meat-suit’s nightstand. So sure, I’m well aware when a creepy-ass mad scientist transports you to his secret lair unblindfolded and then lays in on the mustache-twirling monologue, you oughta figure your day’s about to take a turn for the shark-mounted death-ray. But what I didn’t expect from this decrepit sack of patchwork skin and bone was that he’d try to take me on himself. Nor did I have the faintest inkling the freaky son of a bitch would be more than equal to the task.
When Magnusson first began to rise from his wheelchair, my brain couldn’t make a lick of sense of it. Then his lap-blanket fell away, and my confusion and mounting fear were replaced by revulsion. What I’d taken for spindly old-man legs beneath the woven blanket were in fact the front-most two of four ropy, mismatched arms, which angled elbows-up away from his withered trunk in such a way the knot of mottled scar tissue at their join where his junk should’ve been was visible as his robe slipped open. The two rear arms, which had been hidden under his robe, folded beneath him, and then pressed palm-down on the wheelchair’s seat, lifting him upward. As I watched, they first one and then the other moved from the leather seat to the wheelchair’s armrests like a gymnast gripping pommels. I had just long enough to think that suddenly the flurry of activity I’d half-glimpsed through the plastic sheeting on my way in made a lot more sense, when this monster rendered in stolen flesh and bone launched himself at me.