"Finition d'Engraissement"

Trenton – 1984

Noirbarret's next trip into the Aurelia Arms was slightly more dignified than his first. Before he could step out of his car he was met by two of Nicnevin's goons, both sporting immaculate black suits.

"Come to make sure I'm unarmed?" He teased.

"You must leave the umbrella," one of them said. "But you may bring the gun."

"What about the cannoli?" Noirbarret slammed his car door shut and chuckled.

He was the only one.

They sent him up alone in that same threadbare service elevator, this time stopping at a floor somewhere below the one he landed on previously. Another black-suited man awaited him in the hallway and he led Noirbarret through a slipshod construction area and into another of those magnificent Louis XIV style chambers.

This one was a gigantic open room with elegant chandeliers dangling from a ceiling far too high to even see; the chandeliers appeared to spawn from the very darkness above. Most of the room's details were in the walls; grand marble carvings ran along their length, broken by faux windows that seemed like they were carved out of a castle's stone. Beyond the windows white clouds moved on a gentle breeze in a blue sky.

He nearly did a double-take at that. It took Noirbarret a moment to realize the gimmick: the clouds were painted on some kind of paper, lit up with hidden lights, and a mechanism behind each 'window' very slowly unspooled the paper, simulating the motion of the pleasant scene.

He stared at these 'windows' long enough that a polite cough from the room's center was needed to force him back to the issue at hand.

Nicnevin sat at a table draped in a thick white cloth so large it spilled over onto the carpeted floor. She genteelly wiped at her lips with a napkin, then motioned to a chair opposite. Two more of her goons stood at attention, one behind Nicnevin and one behind the empty chair.

Noirbarret sauntered over to the chair, which the goon immediately pulled out for him with a graceful flourish.

"Sorry about that," Noirbarret sat down and waved the goon away as he gestured to the breakfast spread at the table's center. "I was just admiring your illusion..."

The ancient woman had a cup of tea to her mouth as he spoke; when she lowered it her withered lips were twisted in a shrewd smile.

"Is that supposed to be clever wordplay, my agent?"

Her cold, pale eyes seemed to burn with bemusement. Noirbarret had no idea whether that was a good thing or not.

He put his money on 'not'.

"Only if you'd like it to be," he answered.

"Say I do," she said. "What would the 'illusion' be?"

Noirbarret looked over her shoulder at the square-jawed man; he coughed politely.

"All the men you see in the Aurelia Arms are as much a part of me as a limb," she said. "They are my very arms and my legs. Their history is mine; no secret stands between us."

"Your left hand always knows what your right hand is doing, eh?" Noirbarret leaned back in the dining chair, going so far as to cross his legs under the giant tablecloth. "Alright, I'll bite." He motioned across the table at the ancient woman.

"Here we have 'Carlin Gay', supermajority shareholder of the Monarch Real Estate Group, a firm specializing in high-density, low-income housing projects. She's a 'hands-on' woman— even prone to touring her firm's high rises for periodic 'inspections' of the property, meeting the occupants, shaking hands and kissing babies. Naturally lots of young families fill her cramped apartments, and naturally the neighborhoods are often high in crime, so it's no surprise that, every now and then after one of her 'inspections' a child might go missing from the complex, or the occasional whole family befall a 'tragedy' and their kiddo disappear..."

Nicnevin pulled a small plate of toasted baguette slices toward her; immediately the man behind her took up a small jar from the table's center and uncapped it, setting it at her side along with a small silver knife.

"Urban crime is a scourge, is it not?" She said.

Noirbarret chuckled, nodding.

"And what was it they called you in Africa back in the 60's, during the smallpox eradication campaign? Oh, yes: the 'Grinning Granny'. She was a selfless crusader for the World Health Organization, and one of the most dedicated nurses on record. She was a 'hands on' lady too, wasn't she? She traveled from village to village, house to house, hut to hut, inoculating whole families. She even had lollipops for all the children, and she handed them out with a smile. Of course all the places she visited were often rough and remote— and in dangerous country— so it's no surprise that ever so often a household she visited might soon befall the same senseless tragedy as befell the residents of those Monarch properties, no?"

Nicnevin dipped her knife into the little jar and produced a swab of creamy foie gras. She spread it on one of the baguette slices as she spoke.

"Africa is a most treacherous continent, is it not?"

Again Noirbarret chuckled. He leaned back in the dining chair, staring up at the black void overhead.

"Like I said it's admirable: all the illusions. The records I've got go back a thousand years—"

"They are grossly incomplete—"

"I don't doubt that," Noirbarret held up a finger. "Not at all. And it's rude for a gentleman to ask a lady, anyway."

"Are you any more a 'gentleman' than I am a 'lady'?"

He tilted his head, conceding the point.

"I suppose we're just birds of a feather—"

"We are not." Nicnevin bit into her toast and chewed it, her face a blunt wall of ice. She wiped her lips with her napkin. "You want the child Penance out of some sense of base cruelty and hatred. That much I know."

Noirbarret's eyes widened at this. He remembered himself before another outburst and merely looked to one of his armrests, absently playing with the gold tassels dangling off the end.

"So may I ask who 'Nicnevin' is, in relation to Miss Carlin Gay and the Grinning Granny?"

A self-deprecating smile formed on the woman's face.

"Someone far less 'adventurous' and 'outgoing' than those other ladies, I'm afraid. Someone who certainly won't be leaving her semi-gilded tower until the need arises, I suppose."

"The need?"

"To go north, naturally. Same as you."

"With respect: do you really know anything about me?"

"I was told enough by my source. And you know him too, I'm certain. The Ledger Keeper: the one who claims the name of the House of Medici?"

Noirbarret couldn't hide the wounded surprise from his face. He expected very little from everyone he'd ever met in his life, but he honestly didn't expect a betrayal from Medici, of all people.

Before he could speak Nicnevin raised one vein-crusted hand.

"He told me nothing. But that, in turn, told me much. About the two of you, at least. The Ledger Keeper lacks records on very few, if any, immortals of note."

"Maybe I'm just not of 'note'."

Nicnevin took another bite of her foie gras-covered baguette, her old face mischievously taunting. When she again wiped her lips she shook her head .

"If you know the boy Penance, my dear agent, then you're certainly of 'note'. To me, at least."

"That brings us to the meat and potatoes, doesn't it?" Noirbarret pointed at the ancient woman. "You think you know so much about what Penance means to me but, if I may politely ask: what does Penance mean to you? I name-drop him and you do a 180 faster than a car spinning out. Why?"

Nicnevin wiped a stray smear of foie gras from her lips with one finger and held it up.

"Do you know how foie gras is manufactured?"

Noirbarret shrugged.

"It's just mushed-up goose liver, isn't it?"

She put her finger to her mouth, finishing off the morsel.

"There's a bit more to it than that. Yes, it's the liver, but the dish depends entirely on what that liver has been processing, and in what quantities. You see the liver's a dull and ordinary thing by itself without the right preparation, and that preparation can only be done while the animal in question is still alive. It's rather simple: the animal must be gorged on a nutritious feed— corn boiled in fat, for example— and stuffed up to the gills with it. As the liver processes all this feed its composition is fundamentally changed; it's enlarged, and then fattened in such a way that it develops a flavor and consistency that are rich and delicious and incapable of duplication. That is to say, the animal takes in all these base components— corn, water, boiled fats— which are useless by themselves, but when processed and then locked up into the flesh of that animal they become something... 'divine'..."

The pale, puffy flesh around the woman's eyes squinted and she sighed, looking up at the chandelier above them. When she returned her gaze to Noirbarret her pale eyes were like lasers, piercing his forehead with their sharp, precise gaze.

"You know what I seek, agent, so say it to me very plain, and ignore your 'politeness'."

Her curt, regal tone took Noirbarret off-guard, especially coming off that winsome little lecture about animal husbandry. He felt he could do nothing but oblige her.

"You... uh, want to be young again. Physically. You want to somehow— what would you call it?— 'de-age' yourself to a healthy body, in its prime."

The woman set her brittle, capped teeth on edge; at that moment she looked far less regal and very like the 'witch' Noirbarret initially expected.

"'Prime'. I'd settle for less. All I'd settle for is more than this."

The woman ran her reedy arms up and down her body.

"Every ritual, every rite, every step towards gaining a greater understanding of the Source and— yes— every soul sacrificed in my pursuit has been to this end. You would look into my gnarled face and see failure. But know this: I cast aside any 'ladylike' modesty in declaring that my studies, my meditations and my searchings have made me more attuned to the Source's stirrings than anyone left alive."

"Then you can feel them, can't you?" Noirbarret leaned forward. "The presence of immortal children? Even before their first death? And you know when one is near?"

The woman waved her hand at him as if shooing away an annoying fly.

"That is the least of it. If Penance crosses the Delaware River within a mile of this building he'll be mine. And he will; he's feeling the drawing as much as all of us, and Trenton stands in the way of his destination. Now, the question you want answered, I believe, is 'why'?"

Noirbarret had his curiosity, so he admitted it.

"You've been offing child immortals for well over a millennium. At this point you must think that... well... it's not really working out."

Nicnevin again put on that regal smile.

"To that I will only say this: the 'livers' I've eaten until now have been 'dull and ordinary'..."

Noirbarret blinked, and then he suddenly came to her point.

The ancient woman leaned forward in her chair, clasping her bony hands in front of her.

"As you said yourself: nothing about Penance is 'ordinary'. How many kills has he made by now? Last I heard of the child— the creature they've named the 'Rabid Fox'— he'd taken fifteen heads."

"Haven't heard from him in a while, hmmm?" Noirbarret said. "It's an even twenty, now."

Again Nicnevin sat back in her chair and stared up at the chandelier, her eyes shut tight. She drew a longing breath.

"He's gorged himself quite well, I think..." she said.

"So you think that Penance—with all that immortal 'energy' stored up in him— is different from a garden-variety immortal kid? You think that taking his head can give you what you want?"

"I think that the power burning inside Penance is at least enough to be 'divine'." She returned his gaze, and for a brief moment the lines of her wrinkled flesh twisted up with a look of pitiable longing. "And 'divine', I think, is just strong enough for my purposes."

Noirbarret didn't have a response to this, so he sat and waited for the woman to continue the conversation. Eventually Nicnevin took her knife and smeared another dollop of foie gras on her toast.

"It will work, my agent, but for the simple reason that it has to. If it does not then I'll be forced to rely on this silly 'Gathering' to get me what I want."

That particular word got Noirbarret's attention. He sat up, taking his chin off his fist.

"You mean you think the Prize will—"

The woman shook her head.

"I'm almost certain it will not," she answered. "I know far more than you about what the Prize is, but still less than the absolute specifics." She gestured with her head to the men around the table. "I am, however, reasonably certain that it can help me give them what they're owed more than it can help give me what I want. So, if I must, when the time comes, I'll send my hoard out across New York City and have them cut you and all the other immortals down like wheat— no offense— and then I'll take this silly 'Prize', such as it is, but I know very well that it's no prize for me."

Noirbarret gave her a diplomatic smile, equal parts nervousness and discomfort.

"I... would think that's rather against the rules, is it not?"

The woman set her toast down and leaned forward, her downturned face marred by harsh shadows under the chandelier's narrow light. The shadows swamped those pale blue eyes off her face, leaving vapid holes, and they marked every wrinkle in her skin like a fracture, making her ancient face look like an exposed, cracked skull.

"What I want you to understand, agent, is that I believe Penance is perhaps my last legitimate hope. Everything that I am, and everything I have become, is invested in that hope. So when you try to betray me—"

"I would never—"

"—when...you try... to betray me," Nicnevin repeated, "you'll be turning against a current whose strength you don't know, and whose nature you don't understand. I would be especially careful of the undertow."

Noirbarret felt a sharp drop in his chest, something like ice tendrils forming along the edges of his heart; he tried to will the discomfort away with a poker face.

"If you believe I'm going to betray you— just as you believe that you understand my relationship with Penance Cameron— why work with me at all? And why let me visit you with a loaded gun? What, do you have snipers hiding in the ceiling? Someone ready to pull a lever that opens a trapdoor under my chair, dropping me into a shark tank?"

"Certainly not. Those would require action to activate." Nicnevin gently raised the hem of that oversized tablecloth and exposed her feet beneath the table. One foot was perched atop a strange contraption, something like an old-time brake pedal on a classic car.

"This," she explained, "requires inaction."

The ice in Noirbarret's chest suddenly gave way to hot fire. He kept the poker face, however.

"And, uh, in the event of your 'inaction'..."

"There's enough low explosives built into this table to blow us both clear across the room— heads intact, of course— at least until the men waiting outside rush the room and remove yours before you can come to your senses."

He looked at Nicnevin's two guards with suspicion.

"You must offer plenty of benefits to get that kind of loyalty from your muscle. How do your men feel about thatkind of 'occupational hazard'?"

The men said nothing, but Nicnevin extended one hand.

"Give me your revolver, if you'd please."

Noirbarret at first resisted, but after a moment's pause saw no reason not to comply. Come what may he knew that bringing a loaded gun into the building wouldn't ever be of any help to him. Especially if he was given such permission to carry it. He retrieved his revolver from its holster and handed it over.

"A .38, is it not?" Nicnevin turned the weapon over in her hands. "I believe most FBI agents have switched over to the .357 magnum by now, haven't they? A brash, noisy and blunt cartridge. You'd think that would more suit your personality." She looked up at the man. "But then maybe I don't have as much of a grasp on you as I think. Who knows?"

"Firearms fan, are you?"

She shook her head.

"Quite the opposite; I detest the devices. Always have, ever since those damn Chinese alchemists botched their search for the 'elixir of life' and ended up with black powder, instead. "Fire medicine"! And to think I paid them in advance..."

Noirbarret's brow ticked up questioningly. 99-percent of him was sure that was a joke, and the other 1-percent screamed at him to be quiet in any case.

"No, agent, I'm not a firearms fan. In fact the regular policy in the Aurelia Arms is no firearms at all, anywhere above the basement-level armory. You're an exception, so perhaps you should feel honored..."

Nicnevin set the weapon on her lap and opened the cylinder; she idly spun it about as she spoke.

"Now, no matter how much I've pegged your personality, and how certain I am that you'll try to 'steal' Penance from me— for whatever base reason you have— know this about my men's resolve..."

She snapped the cylinder shut and moved the weapon across the table to the man standing beside Noirbarret.

"Pick it up and put the barrel to your temple."

The man picked up the weapon and dutifully set it to the side of his head.

"Wait," Noirbarret got up and took a step back, "that's not necessary—"

"Pull the trigger," Nicnevin coldly ordered.

"Wait!"

The man did as told without hesitation, and the sharp report of the noise was deafening in the large, empty room.

Click.

Noirbarret caught a breath. The man, conversely, stood stone-faced and unmoving, the gun still pressed against his temple in a steady hand. He looked over at Nicnevin.

"Please give our agent his weapon back," she said.

The man extended Noirbarret's revolver to him butt-first. Noirbarret drew a shallow breath and snatched it from him.

"That was unnecessary," he grumbled.

"Everything I do is 'necessary', and nothing more. Since Penance is necessary to me then you should know the strength of our resolve." The woman took a long sip of tea and then sighed. "And, to answer your previous question— why work with you to find the child— the answer is simple: you can be of value in finding him, given your shared history, you will not find him on your own, and you desperately need to find him, for your own reasons. Therefore when you betray me it won't be until Penance is found, and frankly I'm reasonably confident you will not be able to take him from my clutches, although doubtless you have a plan."

"I didn't need to come to you at all, you know—"

"Yes, you did."

"How do you figure? I already said I caught him once—"

"Yes. Quite recently in fact, as you mentioned, after which he threatened to hunt you down in kind. Threatened to kill you, even, in no uncertain terms. Tell me: do you know why Penance uses the surname Cameron?"

That question caught him off-guard, and it took a moment for him to respond.

"Of course: he lived with the Clan Cameron in Scotland for a few years—"

"Over twenty years, in fact."

"So?"

Again Nicnevin sipped her tea, her calm face a contrast to Noirbarret's exasperated glare.

"I, myself, was in a certain... 'treatment' back then, and it required me to be 'dead' for almost all that time. Pity to wake up and learn, from relatively widespread knowledge, that an immortal child was holed up in that once place for such a very long time. Regrettably I missed my opportunity to take Penance, then."

"What's your point?"

"Where were you, then?"

Noirbarret grit his teeth.

"I couldn't get to him either. I don't have to explain myself to—"

"No, you don't, because I know the reason why you 'couldn't get to him'. It's patently obvious. And it's the same reason you need me, now. So stay with me, help me find him, and then— if you must— hatch your scheme to take him. It'll be the end of you if you do, but then something tells me it'll be the end of you if you don't, as well."

Nicnevin tossed something up from her lap and he reflexively snatched it out of the air; it was a lone .38 round, and it sparkled under the chandelier light.

Noirbarret clenched it in a tight fist, still glaring down at the woman with a hateful scowl.

He was beyond arguing with this vile crone.

He was ready to get back into control.

"Where," he hissed, "do you suggest that we start, then?"

Nicnevin finished her tea, sighing contentedly, and she looked up at him with an overly-sunny, mocking smile. She held out one hand and instantly the man behind her produced a rolled up piece of paper. The other man cleared her dishes out of the way while the first man unfurled his paper on the tabletop.

It was a map of the Delaware Valley, concentrating on the cut of river between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Trenton, to be specific.

The Calhoun Street Bridge, just south of the Aurelia arms, was circled with a bright yellow highlighter.

Further downriver lay the side-by-side crossings of the Lower Trenton Bridge and the Trenton-Morrisville Toll.

Each bore prominent red 'X's' over them.

"Well, my dear FBI agent, since I've already got plenty of helpers out there manning the 'race-course' I wonder if you might help me set up the proper 'finish line'..."