“Wait, what? You just got them?”
“Yep,” Hauser said as he folded them and put them back in his pocket. “The latest and greatest from the masterful wizards that create useful things. They allow me, or whoever is wearing them, to see any active soul collector in the world. Pretty slick, huh?”
“Yeah, slick. So how does it work? You go up there, or wherever it is that you go to meet them, and tell them you have a problem, and they drop everything they’re doing to create this new gizmo for you to, what? Become the bounty hunter of the afterworld?”
“No, not quite. I had this latest piece of hardware within an hour of you ditching me yesterday. I guess they’d had them ready for some time and were waiting for the right opportunity to release them into the collector circulation.”
“I’m confused. Why’d it take you nearly a full day to come find me? If you’ve had a way to see where I was this whole time, why wait until today?”
“Well, buddy, after you lost me in the tubes of London—which I have to give you kudos for being very creative—I had a moment of clarity. I thought back to when I first became a collector, and how I struggled with the conflicting emotions battling inside me. I figured with the extraordinary training that you’ve already been through, you were bound to snap.”
“Listen, I didn’t snap,” I argued. “I’m just not… willing to blindly collect random souls, when you and I both know that there is a better way.”
Hauser nodded in agreement. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, Jack. That’s why I gave you some space. I needed you to find clarity on your own before I came to drag you back, kicking and screaming, if that’s what it takes,” Hauser winked.
“Why are you being so nice?” I asked. “You said it yourself that I’ve been a major pain in your ass through my entire training. And in your eyes, I threw this major tantrum, which we’ll just have to agree to disagree about—”
“No, you threw a tantrum. There’s no question,” Hauser said with a smirk.
“Yeah, whatever. We all can’t be as perfect as you at being an emotionless human, now can we?”
Hauser’s winced slightly, then looked at his watch before stowing it back into his pocket. “Why don’t you have a seat, champ. I see a lot of promise in you, and if sharing some of my past strengthens your ability, then I’m willing if you are.”
Surprised at Hauser’s sudden openness to share, I nodded and eased myself down into the lumpy couch.
Chapter 9
Hauser pulled up a wooden chair from the kitchen table and sat down across from me. He crossed one leg over the other and briefly fidgeted with his hands in his lap, clearly showing signs of trepidation. He stared off into space, as if looking for an invisible solution to his problem.
“You’re only partly correct, Jack. I have far more emotion than I seem to let on. That’s partly a carryover from my previous life.” Hauser paused, folding his arms in front of his chest, then he looked directly at me.
“What I’m about to tell you is something that I am not at all proud of.”
“If it’s any consolation, I’m the last person in this world to judge,” I said.
Hauser smiled. “Let’s talk after you hear what I’m about to tell you. Before I became a collector, I was… a very bad man. I worked, if you would like to call it that, as an assassin… for Napoleon.”
I inhaled sharply.
“See?” Hauser said. “It was shortly after the French Revolutionary Wars, and although a treaty was in place, the Napoleonic Wars were just getting started. I will not be in any history books. I was a… secret to Napoleon himself. At his charge I traveled through France, killing any and all British soldiers I came across, along with any French sympathizers for the British cause.”
Hauser stopped and stood. He slowly paced around the small, musty cabin, almost as if he was looking for something. He opened all of the kitchen cabinets, finally reaching high on the top shelf and fumbling about with its contents. A moment later he withdrew a dingy bottle with a dark liquid inside. He removed the cork and brought the bottle to his lips. Tilting his head back, he poured half of the amber liquid down his throat.
“Whoa! That’s got a kick,” Hauser said as he offered the bottle of bourbon to me.
Nervously, I accepted the bottle and took a swallow. The phenolic sting glided down my throat and warmed me instantly. I handed the bottle back to Hauser, and he recorked it before returning to his chair.
“All in all, I killed nearly a thousand soldiers and innocent civilians between the years 1809 and 1811.”
I gasped, much louder than I expected. I was speechless, but my mind was in overdrive, wondering what all that killing would do to a person’s psyche. I couldn’t imagine what Hauser had to cope with over the centuries, when here I was, unable to take a single soul from an unborn child.
“Sometime in the middle of 1811, Napoleon was beginning to lose his control. His victories in battle were becoming fewer and farther between. His defeats were increasing by the number. He began to lose focus at what he was fighting for, and I was eliminated.”
“You mean, you were the reason for the decline of Napoleon?” I asked.
Hauser shrugged. “If you asked Napoleon at the time, that’s precisely what he’d say. I was his scapegoat.”
“So how did it happen?” I asked.
“How my life ended is not important. What came next is.” Hauser remained seated as he uncorked the bottle and finished off the remaining bourbon in one long draw. “Sorry, kid. There’s none left for you.”
“No worries,” I said. “I’m more of a Scotch guy anyway.”
“Before I was killed, I suffered through four days of horrific torture at the hands of Napoleon himself. In between sessions I drifted in and out of consciousness. I struggled to maintain clarity on what was real and what were hallucinations. At one point, two men came into my cell and told me that they were there to collect my soul. I was sure at the time that they were simply hallucinations caused by the various concoctions given to me by Napoleon or his guards. I was further convinced they were hallucinations when they offered me to live beyond my death. They promised me a long life if I agreed to become a soul collector myself.”
“So they recruited you?” I asked.
“Yep. After a few more encounters with the two gentlemen, it became clear that they in fact were real, and I wasn’t conjuring them up as a form of mental escape. I listened to everything they had to say and figured that I had nothing to lose.”
“If you’ve committed all of those murders, why did the Sentinel want you? Wouldn’t they want to cleanse your soul of all its evil?”
“It was precisely because of all of those murders that they wanted me. They saw me as an emotionless individual and felt that having the ability to collect a soul regardless of how I felt about human life was an attribute they desired.”
I was beginning to understand more about life and death and everything in between. “Then I might be a liability to the Sentinel.”
Hauser nodded. “You might be, Jack. But a man can change.”
“But I don’t want to change, Hauser. I like caring for humankind. I can’t become like you, an emotionless killer.
Hauser nodded. “Toward the end of my tenure as Napoleon’s personal assassin, I began to grow a conscience. Something happened in the last year of my life that I can’t quite put a finger on. I began to feel. I started letting people go that I was sent to kill. The feeling that flowed inside of me with each life that I saved was far more rewarding than that when I took a life. When the two collectors were sent for my soul, I knew I had an opportunity for redemption.”