Part 15
It was a good thing the police patrols in the neighborhood of the Hob’s Bay Carnival were hunkered down due to the unnatural weather. Explaining why Lois and her companions were racing through the streets of Metropolis at the speed they were going would have wasted time Lois knew they didn’t have. Green lightning was slashing through the darkened sky again. The streetlamps with photoelectric sensors had kicked on, making eerie spots of white mist out of the rain and sleet.
Lois threw the wheel over hard as they reached the driveway that led to the carnival. The jeep skidded through the corner, stopping inches from the chained and padlocked gate. A short distance from the gate, a section of the chain link fence was down – the spot the kidnapper’s car had driven through to escape the police blockade only two days before. Lois didn’t see any other vehicles in the area, but the Carnival covered several acres. Nick’s abductors could be anywhere.
“How the devil are we going to find them in here?” Lois asked, finally realizing the futility of their mission.
“If they were druids, they’d head for a hill,” Komack said.
Lois frowned. She didn’t remember seeing a hill anywhere near the carnival site. In fact, all of New Troy Island was flat.
“But this bunch…?” Komack continued. “As I recall, there’s a stone circle not far from here. Some sort of memorial, I think.”
“That would make sense,” Jackson agreed.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Lois asked, opening her car door.
“Not yet!” Komack hissed, grabbing Lois’s shoulder. Lois looked back at her in annoyed confusion. Clark may have agreed they both would take direction from Komack, but that didn’t mean that Lois had agreed. She wasn't called 'Mad Dog' for nothing.
“He has a measure of resistance.” Komack nodded toward Clark as she kept a surprisingly strong grip on Lois. “You don’t!” the older woman added. She handed Lois an ornate sapphire ring similar to the ones she and Jackson were wearing. “Put this on. It has some power. It may be enough.”
Lois slipped the ring on her finger. The metal felt cold and warm all at the same time.
“I call forth the ancient and sacred spirits of the elements, air and fire, water and earth,” Komack intoned, keeping hold of Lois’s shoulder. “Protect us this day from all evil forces and unfriendly entities. So mote it be.”
Jackson repeated the last phrase with her. Clark murmured ‘amen’ and the sleet and wind seemed to abate just a little. Komack nodded and all four of them took advantage of the lull in the weather to get out of the jeep and run to the protection of the nearest building.
Lois looked over to see Jackson holding a pistol. “Do either of you know how to handle a gun?” Jackson asked. Lois shook her head once and saw that Clark was shaking his head as well. Jackson frowned then handed Lois an automatic pistol. “You’ve seen how police shoot, haven’t you?”
Lois nodded. “Both hands, at eye level. Feet spread for balance.”
Jackson nodded. “The safety is off. Do not fire at anything that you do not want dead and aim for the middle of the torso.”
“Not for the heart?” Clark asked.
Komack chuckled dryly. “Let’s just say that Inspector Henderson would not be well pleased if he knew what sort of ammo we were carrying. A mid-body shot is good enough.”
The older woman beckoned them to follow her as she led the way through the maze of cracked asphalt toward the stone circle. Lois found herself shivering despite her wool coat and knit hat. But it wasn’t as much the cold, or even the damp, as it was a sense of wrongness, a stench she could just barely sense that made her want to gag. A quick glance at Clark showed that he was feeling it too.
“What’s over there?” Clark asked as they passed by one of the storage buildings. He has nodding to another building that seemed to have black or dark brown pain smeared on the door frame.
Komack led the way across the open space between the buildings. On closer inspection, Lois realized what she had thought were smears were actually symbols crudely painted on the door frame. She hoped the ‘paint’ wasn’t what she thought it was.
“Black wards,” Komack explained. “I really do wish these fools would take the time to learn their craft.”
Jackson chuckled. “If they weren’t so impatient and prone to taking short cuts, they wouldn’t be so prone to becoming black magicians.”
“And they wouldn’t be so easy to take out?” Clark added.
“’Easy’ is relative, Mister Kent,” Komack said softly as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small vial filled with white crystals. She popped open the top and sprinkled the some of the crystals around the door clockwise. She hummed to herself as she did so. The air in front of the door became palpably lighter and easier to breath. She put the top back on the vial and returned it to her pocket. Then she tried the door.
It swung open on well oiled hinges. Jackson moved ahead of her, holding a flashlight. The room beyond appeared empty except for a small pile of fabric heaped against one wall and a wooden chest.
Clark moved ahead of Lois and went over to the pile to inspect it. “These are kid’s clothes. About Nick’s size.”
Komack touched the pile, fingering the small plaid shirt that on the top of the pile. “He’s close. Very, very close.”
Jackson cautiously opened the chest. “I believe all the ransom items are here, except maybe…”
A wail could be heard outside, a child or hurt animal.
“Nick!” Clark ran out the door, Komack and Lois right behind him, into the still raging storm. Lois’s heart was in her mouth as the wail hung on the wind. She knew without seeing him that Jackson was right behind her.
They ran around the corner of the building across the alley then stopped short. Ahead, a shimmering green wall surrounded a circle bounded by stones. Discernable within the shimmer was a stone altar with a small figure laying on it. Four black robed figures stood between Clark and Komack and the altar.
Lois moved forward, toward the wall.
“Lois, No!” she heard Clark yell.
She touched the wall anyway and jumped back with a curse, holding her hand. “It’s hot!”
One of the standing figures turned at the sound of her voice. The man gave her a vicious smile and turned back to what he was doing, arms outstretched over the altar, an ornate knife in one hand. The wind whipped around the wall as if furious it couldn’t get in. There was something familiar about the man who had smiled at her but Lois couldn’t place the face.
“How do we get in?” Lois demanded, shouting over the wind. Clark had moved to the far side, as if anticipating his next move.
“We ground it,” Komack said, shouting back. She had pulled out her dagger. “The blade is meteoric iron,” she explained. She touched the end of the blade to the wall in a downward motion, slicing it open. The wall disappeared with an unholy wail. Clark ran toward the altar and the figure on top of it.
The four black robed figures reacted but Clark was fast and strong. He took out the nearest figure with a shoulder and arm, ignoring the knife he/she had in their hand and knocking them aside. The other three pulled out pistols. Clark’s momentum took him to the altar. He scooped the small robed figure into his arms and kept moving, diving to the muddy ground with the boy under him once they were clear of the circle.
Lois had the pistol Jackson had given her. One of the figures started after Clark, gun in hand. Lois aimed with both hands and pulled the trigger. She was startled by the loud report and the power of the recoil and more startled to see the figure drop as if pole-axed. Two more shots rang out and the last two black robbed figures dropped.
The wind grew more fierce and ran began to slash at them once more, viciously pleased to have access to the interior of the circle.
“We have to ground the energy!” Jackson shouted.
“And how do we do that?” Lois shouted back.
Jackson gestured to the blue-bladed sword in his hand. Lois didn’t remember him bringing it with him in the car. She realized he must have taken it from the chest.
“I’ll do it,” Clark announced. His clothes were muddy and his glasses were missing. He handed Nick to Komack and grabbed the hilt of the sword.
“Clark, don’t be crazy!” Lois screamed at him.
He seemed to ignore her as he stepped away from them, raising the sword above his head. The wind seemed to pause, waiting. The sky glowed eerily, as though the energies that had been unleashed had a life of their own and were preparing a final assault.
“I call forth the ancient and sacred spirits of the elements, air and fire, water and earth to defend us. I call forth the rulers of the North, the South, the East, the West to defend us,” Kathryn Komack shouted to the wind, arms outstretched. Her dagger was in her right hand. “I call forth the archangels Michael, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael to defend us. Ancient creatures of Earth and Sky and Sea, heed your children from the West and CEASE!”
As she shouted the final word of her litany, Clark plunged the sword into the rain soaked earth at his feet. A green-white aurora coalesced with a shrill scream of rage, drawn to the grounded sword. The air grew thick and Lois felt the foul energy sparking around them. A green aura danced around Clark. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving.
Then Jackson threw something at the sword. Liquid splashed against the metal and the ground. The ground hissed and the sword itself gleamed as if from an inner light. Clark opened his eyes as he took his hands from the sword hilt. There was a look of worried surprise on his face as he walked toward Lois and the others.
The wind dropped to a breeze and the rain slackened, turning into a gentle snow.
“Is Nick okay?” Clark asked. “Were we in time?”
Jackson answered. “Yes, I believe so.”
Nick was snuffling against Komack’s neck. “Where’s Mommy?”
Komack began making comforting noises to the boy.
“Clark, are you okay?” Lois asked. He was looking a little pale and the lack of glasses made his face look both naked and uncannily familiar.
Clark answered her spoken question with a nod.
“Where’s the fourth one?” she asked, looking around.
“I don’t know,” Clark said. “He should have been down for the count. I hit him pretty good.”
“We’ll find him,” Komack promised. “If not now, then when he makes his next move.”
Jackson had been looking around the ground and found Clark’s glasses in the mud. He wiped the worst of the dirt off before handing them back to Clark. Suddenly Clark looked ‘normal’, although Lois couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Clark looked like someone else, too.
Police sirens wailed and halted somewhere close. After a few moments Henderson and several uniformed officers ran up, guns drawn. They skidded to a halt when they saw the black robed bodies on the ground and Nick Thompkins in Komack’s arms.
“Is everyone okay?” Henderson asked. As he approached them, other officers ran and checked the bodies on the muddy ground.
“We’re fine, and we’re pretty sure Nick will be,” Komack told him. “They were trying to raise and bind the spirit of Anthony Blackthorn. We interrupted their ceremony. One of them got away while we were ‘defusing’ the situation. It was rapidly getting out of hand.”
Henderson sighed. “Gee, and I missed all the fun.” Lois wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. She assumed he was. Then she noticed the glitter of a sapphire ring on his right hand, much like the one Komack had given her. Henderson really was one of them.
“Come down to headquarters and we’ll get your statements,” he continued, apparently not seeing her reaction to his ring. “My people can handle the rest of this.”
-o-o-o-
Given the circumstances, the statement Henderson asked Lois to sign was astonishingly perfunctory and brief. It said simply that she and Clark had been accompanying two law enforcement agents when Nick Collin’s kidnappers were located. They arrived at the scene before backup could get there and Nick was in imminent danger. A firefight ensued, leaving three of the four alleged perpetrators dead. There was no mention of Lois firing a gun, nor was there any mention of the green energy barrier.
“Henderson, why did you leave out the part about the magic circle?” Lois asked. “I did see it, you know, and so did Clark. It zapped me when I touched it.”
“I know you and Clark both saw it,” Henderson said. “I also know you’d be a damned fool if you tell anyone about it, outside of those who already know. And I know you’re no fool. Ambitious, headstrong, infernally curious, yes. But not stupid.”
“But the world, the public, has the right to know that magic is real and it can kill…” Lois protested.
“Lois, trust me on this one. The public doesn’t want to know,” Henderson said. “I guarantee you, if you try to put that in your story, it’ll never see print.”
“You’re talking censorship?”
He raised his hands in self defense. “Not me,” he protested mildly. “I think the public should know the truth. But I also know there’s truth and there’s Truth. And the common, everyday people of Metropolis don’t want to hear the truth that there’s more to reality than the daily grind and misbehaving celebrities. Superman was stretching the envelope.”
“I never took you for such a cynic,” Lois commented.
“I’m just passing along the advice I got from my sergeant the first time I ran across something as bizarre as this,” Henderson told her. “Don’t admit to being able to see auras, or ghosts, or to hearing things other people can’t. At best, you’ll be considered a weirdo and at worst, a certifiable nut case. Neither works well as a career move. Like I said, Superman was pushing the envelope big time. And he was an alien.”
Lois sat back and considered his advice for a long moment. “How long have you been involved with these people?”
“The Brotherhood? From the first week I made detective,” Henderson told her. “That was more than twenty years ago. My first real case involved an energy vampire. Not like the ones the psychologists talk about, but a real one. She was draining college students, leaving them in comas, and worse. There wasn’t a mark on them. But the energy production in their cells had been so badly disrupted there was nothing left to keep them alive. We all thought it was some new recreational drug with really bad side effects. I went undercover to smoke out the dealer. Instead, I found her.”
“What happened?” Lois asked. She was having a hard time imagining Henderson as a young man going undercover on a college campus in the seventies.
“I see things other people normally don’t,” Henderson said. “I noticed a woman with an unusually strong, unusually configured, energy field around her. She came after me. It got ugly. Sergeant Gaines shot her before she could kill me. The official report was that she was coming at me with a drug injector filled with whatever it was she’d been using to kill the kids. Unofficially, she came at me with her hands, trying to touch me, like in that one Star Trek episode. Then he introduced me to the Brotherhood.”
“Gaines was a member of this 'club'?”
Henderson nodded. “As far as the rest of the department is concerned, the Azure Brotherhood is an international fraternal organization, kind of like the Emerald Society, only most of our members are people who have experienced the more bizarre aspects of law enforcement and aberrant psychology. My co-workers know that if I’m wearing my sapphire ring something weird’s afoot. Something they don’t really want to get in the middle of. If you and Clark were officers under my command, I would probably have already approached you to join.”
“I’m not one of your people,” Lois reminded him.
“I know.” He seemed deep in thought for a few moments then handed her a sheet of folded over paper. “Kathryn and Doug let you go along with them because Esther did ‘readings’ on you and Clark and determined you two could probably handle it. They told me to use my own judgment before passing along her other findings to you.”
Lois unfolded the sheet and skimmed it. It was a list of four names. Loisette de Lynmoran; Sir Charles Beaufort – Abbot, Acre Abbey; Lucinda Lyons; Calvin Kearney.
“Who are they?”
“Supposedly, two of the previous incarnations of you and Clark,” Henderson told her. “You might want to look them up. Esther thought it was important.”
“You really believe in this stuff?”
He shrugged. “You’re the one who saw the power circle. And it was Clark who knew how to ground the energies without being told how.”
-o-o-o-
"It'll take a while, but Rose is going to recover," Clark told Lois as he settled at his desk. Lois was already well started on the story. As per Henderson's prediction, Perry hadn't wanted to hear the facts as she knew them about the black magicians, the green shimmer of energy, or the Azure Brotherhood.
"Now Lois honey, I know you think you saw it, and maybe you really did," Perry had said. "But this isn't the Whisper or the X-Beat. We don't cover vampires, or werewolves, or demons from hell unless you have scientific evidence of it. And Lois, you don’t.”
“You believed in Superman without scientific evidence,” Lois reminded him. He was being obstructive and she knew he knew it.
“That was different. He lifted the module into space in front of hundreds of witnesses and dozens of cameras and then he flew in the window here with you in his arms in front of the entire newsroom staff,” Perry had said. “This is different and we both know it.” With that, Perry headed to his office as she tried to think of a different angle she could use on the story, one that didn’t mention magic working in the real world. She was still working on it when Clark appeared.
“What took you so long?” Lois asked. She’d head back to the newsroom as she as she was done with Henderson.
“Komack, Jackson, and Henderson wanted to debrief me on what happened,” Clark explained. “You’d already left.”
“Sorry, but I wanted to get started writing this up,” Lois said. She felt a pang of guilt at having left him at police headquarters, but he hadn’t been waiting for her by the car the way they had agreed. “Perry doesn’t believe I saw what I saw,” she added.
“Well, it is pretty unbelievable,” Clark told her.
“More unbelievable than Superman?”
Clark shrugged. “Yes. He was an alien. That's actually more believable for most people than the 'other' stuff.”
“So, you're okay with Perry refusing to let us tell the whole story?" Lois challenged.
"I didn’t say that," Clark said. "But I think the whole 'black magicians in the real world' thing needs to be handled very carefully. Luckily there aren't very many of them. At least not many that can actually do much besides give magick a bad name."
"So that's the tack you think we need to take? That Nick and Rose were abducted by nut cases?" She was having a hard time believing that Clark would cave to the status quo so easily.
"Lois, they were nut cases, even if we don’t have an official diagnosis," Clark said seriously. "They were a cabal of serial killers. They thought they could bring back a dead person by committing murder. Normal people don't do things like that."
Lois breathed slowly, forcing air in and out of her nose as Master Hong had taught her. Getting angry at Clark for being another voice of reason wasn't going to do either of them any good even though she wanted to yell at him for assuming she would follow Komack and Jackson blindly even if it was to get the exclusive. She also wanted to yell at him for risking his life, again.
"So, what did happen there?" Lois asked, trying to keep her voice level. "Not the version Perry's going to get, but the real thing?"
"I honestly don’t know," Clark admitted. "They raised some seriously dangerous energies. When Jackson said it needed to be grounded, it was like I knew exactly what he meant and what I needed to do. I knew it. And I knew that Komack was going to invoke the elements and angels and I knew the strike to ground had to coordinate with her spell."
"And did you know that it wouldn't kill you?" Lois hissed. "People get killed by lightning, you know."
"I know that," Clark said. "But I also knew I had the strength to do it."
He made it sound so simple, so obvious. He was so stupidly brave he was going to end up dead. Superman had been the same way and he was dead.
"I'm going to finish this up," she told him. "We'll do a follow up as soon as the police release more information." When she left MPD headquarters, the identities of the dead, two men and one woman, hadn't yet been established. The three dead had been naked beneath the black robes. They had no identification on them. No cars had been found, although there had been tire tracks.
Henderson had predicted it would take at least twenty-four hours to positively identify the three, assuming there was a previous record of them in the U.S. The tire tracks were too common to trace in the city the size of Metropolis. Her description of the one that got away had been too vague to be helpful although she couldn’t shake the feeling she had seen him before.
-o-o-o-
Perry had been very pleased with the story she and Clark had finally turned in, even turning a blind eye to Lois's description of Rose and Nick's abductors as 'black-robed sorcerers'. A minor victory, considering everything.
"Henderson gave me a list of names to look up," Lois told Clark as they were leaving the newsroom for the day.
"Loisette de Lynmoran; Sir Charles Beaufort, Abbot of Acre Abbey; Lucinda Lyons; Calvin Kearney," Clark quoted. "Henderson gave me the same list," he explained. "Apparently we're part of the same soul group. We tend to get reincarnated together. At least that's how Jackson explained it."
"So, who are these people?"
“Legend has it that Sir Charles was one of the founders of the Azure Brotherhood," Clark said. "The story is that he was a Robin Hood type character called 'the Fox'. He went into exile with his people to keep them from being massacred by Baron Bayard Tempos who had designs on Beaufort's lands and Beaufort's betrothed, Loisette de Lynmoran. Beaufort fought in the first crusade, became a Templar when Payns founded the order. Later he took up a more contemplative life and the study of things the Church would have deemed heretical had it known about them."
"Sounds like my kind of guy," Lois joked. "What happened to Loisette?"
“Her history isn’t quite as well documented. Apparently she married Baron Tempos as part of the deal to save Beaufort’s life and those of his people after the Fox fell into one of Tempos's traps. But when she failed to provide Tempos with a male heir, he sent her away to a convent. Supposedly she ended up running the place.”
Against her will she found herself interested in the tale he was telling. “And Charles and Loisette were never together again?” Lois asked.
"It doesn’t seem likely," Clark said.
"How very sad," Lois said. "What about the other two? Lucinda and Calvin?"
"I haven't had the chance to look them up," Clark told her. "I'm not even sure what time period they are."
"Clark, do you believe we were those people?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "A lot of cultures believe in the transmigration of souls, past lives. Even the early Christians didn’t discount it until about the time of the first Council of Nicaea."
Lois sighed as she maneuvered the jeep through the Thursday afternoon traffic. They weren't too far from the New Troy Medical Arts Building where Clark had his standing appointment with Doctor Friskin.
"What are you planning on telling Doctor Friskin about today?" Lois asked.
"I don't know, yet," Clark admitted. "Probably nothing."
Lois nodded. "Has anything…?"
"…Come back? Not really, except in dreams and those are just confusing," Clark said.
"Dreams usually are," Lois said. "Superman shows up in mine. Sometimes it's so real it's almost like I can grab him and drag him back with me and other times…" She let her voice fade away. Sometimes she dreamed of making love to Superman only to wake up panting and needing release. Other times she woke up with her pillow soaked with tears. She wasn't sure which dream was worse.
"In my dreams, I'm flying like I've done it all my life," Clark said. "Flying like Superman. Sometimes you're with me and other times I hear you calling but I can't get back to you, I can't find you."
"And what does Friskin say about your dreams?"
"That I need to find my own meaning."
"And what do you think they mean?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe that I'm not as worried about losing Superman as I am about not being able to be there for you if you need me?" His mood was somber and she saw him studying her reaction out of the corner of her eye.
"Clark, you're my friend and my partner. You'll be there," she told him. "So, what are you doing after your session with Friskin?"
"Heading over to the Chows for self-defense lessons," Clark reminded her. "Plus Chen mentioned something about an investigation he was working on."
"What sort of investigation?"
Clark chuckled. "Like I'm going to tell you so you can grab it and run with it?"
"Would I…?" Lois began then she caught the bemused grin on Clark's face. "Don't answer that, Clark," she warned. "Besides, I'm going to be too busy tomorrow with the Laderman sentencing to worry about some investigation into the local fortune cookie factory for the Chinatown Weekly."
"Chen is the editor of the Chinatown Daily, Lois," Clark corrected.
“Whatever.”
Lois pulled the jeep into loading zone in front of Friskin’s building. Clark opened the car door to get out.
“Clark? If it’s not too late when you’re all done, maybe you can stop by and we can talk about this penchant of yours for running into dangerous situations…”
Clark gave her an incredulous look. “My penchant?”
“Superman isn’t with us anymore. You don’t have to try to take up his cape.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Clark told her, closing the door behind him. “But I’ll come over…if it’s not too late.”
-o-o-o-
Lois settled down to watch An Affair to Remember playing on AMC. It was getting near to the time that Clark should be getting done with his class with at Master Chow’s dojang. Lois had spent the evening thinking about what had happened, about Clark and the sword and the black magicians who had taken Nick and Rose. About Henderson and the Azure Brotherhood and how comfortable Clark seemed with the whole idea that there were people out there who had mysterious powers.
Superman had mysterious powers, but he had been an alien and above human frailties – jealousy, hate, vengeance, greed. He was the epitome of goodness. Reverend Leroy had described him as an angel. Maybe Leroy had been right – maybe Superman had been an angel sent to Earth.
She knew that line of thought wasn’t going to get her anywhere. It was a path she had traced and retraced ever since his funeral, ever since she had come to some degree of acceptance that Superman wasn’t coming back, that his last promise to her had been one he couldn’t keep.
On the screen Cary Grant was chatting up Deborah Kerr. Was it possible to have a love develop so quickly but was also so deep it seemed to transcend time and space? She had thought she loved Superman that way. He was an alien but she had loved him anyway.
‘They are both old souls. They’ve trod this path many, many times. Almost always together,’ Esther had said, referring to her and Clark.
‘We're part of the same soul group. We tend to get reincarnated together,’ Clark had explained. Lois opened the book on reincarnation she had bought on her way home and looked up what it said about soul groups and soul mates.
