“Don’t think, tell me.”
“Like tic-tac-toe?” I stalled.
“Cheating already.”
“Okay. The Batman.”
“Not Batgirl?”
“Defending my answer wasn’t part of the game. I want every bit of power. You?”
“Captain Midnight.”
“Who’s Captain Midnight?”
“Seriously?” Averna cupped her chin and regarded me. “I’m reevaluating this whole relationship.”
“All six hours of it.”
“My time is precious, Mace. Bouquets of thousand dollar bills could rain from the sky and it wouldn’t be cost effective to stoop for the ones that didn’t fall into my pocket.”
“Okay, don’t be rethinking anything. Give me a mulligan. Who the hell is Captain Midnight?”
“Ace World War One pilot. Could fly anything. Total badass.”
“You’re busting my balls over a cartoon from World War One?”
She undid my bra and tossed it over the side. “Radio show.”
“Seems like an odd choice for a hero,” I said.
“Not if you knew me for more than six hours.”
Ultimately, I told her my darkest secrets: Mom and Dad fought over the heavyweight title and it brought the Mace kids together; my first real love rescued me from the galley of a fishing boat right before it went to the bottom of the sea and a few happy years went by and nobody was around to rescue him; Mom ran out on us a hundred times, and finally, she stayed gone for good, either dead or reborn; when the Eagle Talon Ripper sliced my throat, I thought I’d died. Such a relief! The real reason I emptied the gun into the sonofabitch was because he’d done a half-assed job putting me out of my misery.
“At last I understand your motivation,” Averna said. “It isn’t thrill-seeking behavior. You experience suicidal ideation, probably stemming from survivor’s guilt.”
“I’m not suicidal anymore. Guilt? Not so much of that ether.”
“Dying isn’t easy for most people. Instinct is a real bitch and she wants to live. Sadly, those with a true death wish, suffer terribly. O cruel universe. It imbued you with unbearable misery and a rational mind. Care to guess what the mind says?”
“Let’s fuck? Let’s drink? Let’s forget?”
“The mind says, no more, let’s stop. The universe also imbued you with the genetics of a survivor. Your subconscious resists annihilation; it says, okay, you can die, but only after jumping through fiery hoops, only after completing an obstacle course in hell. Some people with your particular affliction drink themselves to death or go hunting for Mr. Goodbar. They take on risky jobs. You, my dear, follow this hard road. It led to my doorstep.”
“The other shoe droppeth,” I said.
“Just your panties, at the moment.”
What’s your motivation?”
Her long, cruel fingers dug into my hips. “I like it when my prey runs screaming through the forest. I like the idea that animals will inherit the earth. I like the idea that with a little push we could be apes again.”
“Oh,” I said.
On day two we buzzed the estate in the helicopter. Trees, tree-covered mountains, tree-covered valleys, and more trees. Averna piloted. She wore a shiny black flight suit that exaggerated her figure into comic book proportions. Manson sat in the rear, loose-limbed and heavy-lidded. Her suit and mine were dull gray.
My secret of the day: I’d seen this before. In the course of training for the mission, Dr. Campbell had put me into a hypnotic trance and shown dozens of satellite images of the territory. Military grade imagery that dialed right down to the individual acorn. He explained that a photographic memory wasn’t necessary to retain this information—if I got lost in these woods, a certain phrase would trigger the implanted memories and I’d have access to a 3D “mind map” of the surroundings.
I keyed the mike in my headset. “Averna, I read somewhere that you almost died testing a wingsuit in Finland.”
“Norway. Bad landings happen. Fortunately, the crash appeared nastier than the reality.”
Witnesses said she’d hit the turf at an estimated one-hundred and thirty-miles per hour. The article also claimed it required a team of surgeons four operations and a roll of duct tape to put Humpty-Dumpty together again.
“Tycoons evidently score the world’s greatest docs. I know women with C-section scars that could’ve been done with a boar spear.”
“Flawless skin was a gift from my mother. Hold on.” She banked hard right and put the helicopter into a shallow dive toward the foothills. We shot through a notch in the tree line and she leaned back on the yoke into a near vertical climb to hop over the rocky crown of a hill, then pushed hard and dropped hard to skim several feet above a lake, and steeply up again at the last second as a wall of evergreens closed in. My heart remained where it had leapt from my chest, a couple miles back.
Upon our return to the house, I retreated to my room and pondered the implications. Eighteen hours with Averna Spencer convinced me she didn’t possess a scintilla of spontaneity. Her brain functioned on a beautiful, cold algorithm that perfectly mimicked human thought, human desire, yet possessed the nascent spark of neither. Rich folks often exhibit outsized egos and a narcissistic compulsion to impress the peasants. Averna didn’t give a damn. She’d taken me on the flyover to demonstrate the geography and parameters of her estate for a practical purpose. In retrospect, the message was no less subtle than if she’d leaned over and whispered that I should get my track shoes laced. It’s on like Donkey Kong, girlfriend.
The second message was delivered much later in the evening as I prowled through the house, casually testing locks and poking my nose where it didn’t belong. Happened to peek into an antechamber and Lo! Averna (naked and gleaming) straddled Manson (naked and gleaming) atop a couch. Averna swallowed grapes from a prodigious clump. She regurgitated into Manson’s wide-open mouth and sealed it with a kiss. She winked at me. Her yellow eye reflected the epoch when scales and dagger-length talons were king (queen).
I backed away slowly, as one does when menaced by a large and partially satiated predator. Propelled by unreasonable jealousy, I strode to Averna’s quarters, temporarily dismantled the security feed with an electromagnetic device disguised as an earring (in addition to zoology, exobiology, physical anthropology, and several other disciplines, including hypnotism, obviously, Doc Campbell dabbled in experimental engineering), and went straight for the safe. I’d memorized the combo and the doctors assured me that all I needed to do was glance at the documents; vital contents would be retrieved via hypnosis during my debriefing. Campbell assured me the mind operated like a camera and everything it experienced was undeveloped film.
The safe lay empty but for a piece of paper that read, Bluebeard is a cautionary tale, lover, and signed with a lipstick kiss.
I decided to hoof it, mission be damned, and take my chances in the mountains with the bears and the wolves and the inevitable pursuit. Two guards were posted on either side of my bedroom door. Stony-faced guys in military uniforms, assault rifles at port arms. So much for sneaking off, stage left.
Day three, several guests emerged to join the fun. Averna behaved as the convivial lady of the manor. We played games of the mundane variety. Mini golf and horseshoes in a horseshoe pit worthy of the Roman Coliseum. Manson caught my attention and casually straightened an iron horseshoe with her bare hands.
Then supper.
While gnawing on a pheasant wing and swilling fancy imported lager, I rubbed elbows with the new folks. Three of them had arrived at the estate a week prior; two others had gotten flown in that morning. Young men, down at the heels, but strong and athletic. Army guys who hadn’t readjusted to life stateside; a boozy ex-cop; a kid maybe six months clear of high school where he’d wrestled varsity; and a couple cop/soldier wannabes. Each of them hoped to score a permanent security gig or at least a free ride as long as it lasted. I chatted the boys up—no close family; they were at loose ends. Nobody back home would notice, much less care, when they went missing. I won’t bother with names; simpler to think of them as Hapless Victims #1 through #5.