David ed. - Face Off (2014) Anthology

“Percy? Esme? Hurry now, we can’t be late for your cousin’s birthday party,” she called.

The children ran past her; the ten-year-old boy and his eight-year-old sister scampering down the steps and preceding their mother into the waiting carriage.

Once the sound of the children’s laughter and the hoofs clomping on cobblestones was far in the distance, the man crept across the street and silently let himself into the house. Quietly as he could, he traversed the black-and-white marble squares in the imposing foyer and walked down a hallway to the library’s open doorway where Trevor Talmage worked at his desk, bent over his papers, reading and making notes, oblivious to the intruder.

“Well aren’t you the busy boy.”

Momentarily startled, Trevor looked up, then smiled indulgently. “When did you get here? Why didn’t Peter announce you?”

“I let myself in.”

“I didn’t know you still had a key,” he said, sounding more tired than surprised at the news.

“Would you like it back?”

A moment’s hesitation. Trevor was considering it but would the bastard have the nerve to say yes?

“No, of course not. Would you like a glass of port? I just got a new shipment from Madeira.” Trevor motioned toward the crystal decanters and glasses on the sideboard.

“That sweet stuff? I’ll take a brandy.”

Trevor rose to get him the libation and refill his own glass at the same time and Davenport eyed the papers overflowing the desk. “So at last I see the famed text. Out of the vault for an evening. How are the translations going?”

“Amazingly well.” Now there was palpable excitement in Trevor’s voice. “According to the scribe who wrote this, the lost Memory Tools were absolutely not a legend. They existed. He saw them and gives a full description of each of the amulets, ornaments, and stones. He writes that they were all smuggled out of India and brought into Egypt well before 1500 BC which, you realize, suggests present-day historians are incorrect about when the trade routes opened. This is going to create a lot of controversy when I publish.”

“You’re still planning on publishing?”

Trevor handed his brother a glass filled with amber that shimmered like gold in the lamplight. “Of course. And please, don’t try to argue me out of it again. Our father created the Talmage Trust because he believed history was important. He who controls the past controls the future. I firmly agree and—”

“Control is exactly why you can’t publish. Don’t you understand just how much control you’d be giving up,” Davenport interrupted, pleading, really hoping—now that he was there—that Trevor would not force his hand.

“If these tools exist and if they can aid people in rediscovering their past lives, we—you, me, and every member of the Phoenix Club—need to ensure this power is used for the good of all men, not selfishly exploited,” Trevor argued.

“That document was found at an excavation by a man who was paid with our father’s money. I won’t let you do this.”

“ You won’t let me do this? You can’t stop me.” Trevor laughed derisively. “Don’t you understand how meaningful this is? How spiritually significant? It’s not a cache of gold and silver coins we’re arguing over, this could be the key to finding proof that we return in new incarnations. We can’t own information like this, it has to be available to everyone, how else will the actual Memory Tools be found? This discussion is closed.”

“The decision to publish is not yours alone,” Davenport said.

“I can say that same sentence back to you,” Trevor retorted.

“Damn you!”

Davenport slammed down his glass of brandy so hard that it shattered, spilled liquor quickly threatening to ruin the papers.

Annoyed with his brother—no, with himself, for letting Davenport get to him, Trevor cursed as he scooped up the ancient text and placed it out of harm’s way on top of the books on a shelf behind him. But there were still his notes to salvage. As fast as he could he grabbed pile after pile of his papers and put them on top of other books on other shelves.

He was turned away from his brother so he didn’t see him draw the small silver revolver from his jacket pocket or see the competitive grimace on his brother’s face, as if they were children playing a game that Davenport was determined to win.

The force of the bullet slammed Trevor forward into the shelves, the impact of his body pushing one pile of his notes behind a row of books. He reached out to steady himself, grabbed hold of a leather volume that ironically turned out to be the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

It fell with him onto the floor.

Blood spilling out of him as quickly as the brandy spilled out of the broken glass, Trevor lay dying, watching his brother steal out of the library, pistol back in his pocket, spoils under his arm, fearing—until he stopped thinking completely—what would become of the precious knowledge he tried but failed so miserably to protect.

Chinatown, Boston—Present Day

THE BOOK DIDN’T SAVE HIM in the end.

The old volume, leather bound with faded gold embossing and frayed edges, remained partially grasped in the dead man’s right hand where he’d collapsed onto the floor behind his massive desk, felled by a single gunshot wound to the chest. Now, Boston sergeant detective D. D. Warren stood within an inch of the victim’s well-dressed body, one of the only spaces available in the cluttered office, and did her best to interpret the scene.

“He held it up,” she mused out loud, to her partners, Neil and Phil. She gestured to the fallen tome. “Saw the gun, responded instinctively to block the shot.”

Neil, the youngest member of their squad and a former EMT, immediately shook his head. “Nah. No sign of gunpowder, no damage from a slug. Victim grabbed the book on the way down.” Neil pointed to a fanned-out pile of papers that teetered dangerously close to the edge of the marble-topped desk. “Bet the book was on top. Impact of the bullet spun the victim to his left, he reached for the desk, but caught the book instead. Took it with him to the floor.”

“Book would’ve been knocked to the side,” D.D. countered. This kind of crime scene back-and-forth was one of her favorite games. As far as she was concerned, dead men did tell tales. “Collateral damage. Whereas our guy has the novel halfway in his hand.”

“You want to know how many miscellaneous objects I’ve had to pry from dead men’s hands?” Neil shrugged. “People see the end coming, and reflexively hold tight. I don’t know. Maybe they think if they cling hard enough to this world, they won’t have to pass to the next.”

“No way to prove it,” Phil muttered from the doorway. The senior member of their squad, he was mid-fifties with a devoted wife, four kids, and rapidly thinning hair. Being a family man didn’t mean he was too squeamish to view the victim up close and personal. Two hulking Fu Lions, however, carved from solid stone and standing five feet high, currently kept him in place. Or maybe it was the brightly painted ceramic dragon that roared across the front edge of the marble desk. Or the plethora of jade statuary that sprouted like oversized leaves from cluttered rows of shelves, crammed with more leather-bound novels.

Phil held a mask up to his mouth. Not for the smell, but because sneezing would absolutely, positively ruin their crime scene and in a space this cramped and dusty it was almost impossible not to.

D.D. straightened, pinching the bridge of her nose as she worked to avert her own reaction to the musty air.

“All right. Let’s start with victimology. What do we got?”