Death Blows: The Bloodhound Files-2 by DD Barant Page B

it shut. But as the leader, he was always the one that had to die. It was somebody like me they had to keep alive.”

    I frown. “I’m not following.”

    She snorts smoke out her nose. “But I was. And that’s the kind of survivor they needed, somebody not too high up. Somebody who was there, who knew the story but wouldn’t be a threat.”

    She leans forward in her chair, the cigarette dangling from her lips. “That’s how Kamic books work, honey. The power isn’t just in the object, it’s in the tale. And a tale don’t exist unless someone’s there to tell it.”

    I’m starting to see. Wertham created his own chronicles of murder and mayhem, but they didn’t give him any power until they’d been read. The Bravo Brigade countered that by creating a narrative of their own, one also read by the masses—but they kept a witness around as well, someone for whom the story was more real and immediate than anything in print. A sort of sacrifice in reverse, kept alive to help keep the story a living thing.

    “What about the Brigade themselves? Wouldn’t they be enough?”

    “The Brigade never did like the spotlight. They cut me a deal—I’d talk to reporters, tell everyone what happened, and they’d let me live. Brigade disappears, government denies they ever existed. Makes ’em real and unreal, all at once. Power in that, too.”

    “Tell me about them. The Brigade.”

    “What for? You’ve read the comic, you know all you need to.” She leans back and rattles off a list in a bored voice. “Doctor Transe, the Solar Centurion, the Sword of Midnight, Brother Stone, the African Queen. And the Quicksilver Kid, of course. Can’t forget him .” She sounds contemptuous, bitter, and I see an opportunity.

    “The Quicksilver Kid. He the one that took you down?”

    Anger flashes in her eyes. “Yeah, that’s right. But it didn’t happen the way the comic said it did. It was written like some big showdown, with the Kid using those damn silver knives of his to pin me to a wall. You wannna know what really happened? He stabbed me in the back. Literally. Transe hadn’t patched me up afterward, I’d be as dead as the rest of them.”

    “Guess you owe him, then.”

    She spits the butt of the cigarette onto the table. “Yeah, I got him to thank for the last fifty years in here. I’m real grateful.”

    “Transe is dead.” I watch her reaction carefully.

    She laughs once, a hard, angry bark of pleasure. “Yeah? One down, then. How’d he get it?”

    “Can’t tell you that. But I will say I’m looking into the other members of the Brigade.”

    Her eyes narrow. “Yeah? Which ones you talk to?”

    “None of them, yet. Thought I’d come to you first.”

    She gives me a slow, nasty smile. “Sure. You got no idea how to find any of ’em, do you?”

    “No,” I admit. I let her savor her victory, her moment of power. After fifty years, it’s not much to let her have. “They haven’t been seen or heard of since you were put away. But I can tell you that Doctor Transe’s real name was Saladin Aquitaine.”

    If the name means anything to her, she doesn’t show it. “He was probably the most powerful one—and you wouldn’t be here if it was anything but murder.”

    I shrug, not giving her anything, letting her figure it out on her own.

    “Guess I’d be first on your list of suspects, except my alibi is pretty much made of concrete and steel. And now that you know the rest of the cult didn’t survive, you figure the killer must be one of the Bravos.”

    “Unless you’re lying.”

    “Me? Oh, I’m as honest as a silver dollar. Burn you just as quick, too.” She grins. “But I don’t know what you expect to get from me. I got no love for the Brigade, but I made a deal with ’em. I go back on that, they might decide to break their contract, too. And it ain’t like I got anywhere to run.”

    “I’m not asking you to break anything. You agreed to tell their story, remember? All