covered with runes and sigils. “Just lie back and accept it, Larry. You don’t want to go on as you are, do you? I’ll cut the consciousness right out of you, then you won’t care anymore. You’ll sign the necessary papers like a good little zombie, and I’ll put your body to rest. It’s been fun, Larry. Don’t spoil it.”
She came at me with the dagger while she was still talking, expecting to catch me off guard. I activated my wand, and time crashed to a halt. She hung over me, suspended in midair. I studied her for a moment; and then it was the easiest thing in the world to take the dagger away from her and slide it slowly into her heart. I let time start up again. She fell forward into my arms, and I held her while she died, because I had loved her once.
I didn’t want to kill her, even after everything she’d done and planned to do. But when a man’s partner kills him, he’s supposed to do something about it.
So here I am. Dead, but not departed. My body seems to have stabilized. No more maggots. Presumably, the wand interacting with the voodoo magics. I never really understood that stuff. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got, but then, who does? Maybe I’ll have new business cards made up. Larry Oblivion, deceased detective. The postmortem private eye. I still have my work. And I need to do some good, to balance out all the bad I did while I was alive. The hereafter’s a lot closer than it used to be.
Even when you’re dead, there’s no rest for the wicked.
Simon R. Green was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England (where he still resides). He obtained an MA in Modern English and American Literature from Leicester University; he also studied history and has a combined Humanities degree. He is the bestselling author of several series, including twelve novels of The Nightside and The Secret Histories (book seven, Casino Infernale , is due out in 2013). His newest series, The Ghost Finders, will have a fourth novel, Spirits From Beyond , published this year.
The Case: An eagle is found staked out and eviscerated on a mountain near a remote World War II base in the Aleutian Islands. The body of a murdered sailor is nearby.
The Investigators: An unnamed young private, and “Pop,” a corporal who very closely resembles Dashiell Hammett, father of noir mystery fiction and creator of Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man).
THE ADAKIAN EAGLE
Bradley Denton
I
The eagle had been tortured to death.
That was what it looked like. It was staked out on the mountain on its back, wings and feet spread apart, head twisted to one side. Its beak was open wide, as if in a scream. Its open eye would have been staring up at me except that a long iron nail had been plunged into it, pinning the white head to the ground. More nails held the wings and feet in place. A few loose feathers swirled as the wind gusted.
The bird was huge, eleven or twelve feet from wingtip to wingtip. I’d seen bald eagles in the Aleutians before, but never up close. This was bigger than anything I would have guessed.
Given what had been done to it, I wondered if it might have been stretched to that size. The body had been split down the middle, and the guts had been pulled out on both sides below the wings. It wasn’t stinking yet, but flies were starting to gather.
I stood staring at the eagle for maybe thirty seconds. Then I got off the mountain as fast as I could and went down to tell the colonel. He had ordered me to report anything hinky, and this was the hinkiest thing I’d seen on Adak.
That was how I wound up meeting the fifty-year-old corporal they called “Pop.”
And meeting Pop was how I wound up seeing the future.
Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to do that. Especially if the future you see isn’t even your own.
Because then there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to change it.
II
I found Pop in a recreation hut. I had seen him around, but had never had a
She came at me with the dagger while she was still talking, expecting to catch me off guard. I activated my wand, and time crashed to a halt. She hung over me, suspended in midair. I studied her for a moment; and then it was the easiest thing in the world to take the dagger away from her and slide it slowly into her heart. I let time start up again. She fell forward into my arms, and I held her while she died, because I had loved her once.
I didn’t want to kill her, even after everything she’d done and planned to do. But when a man’s partner kills him, he’s supposed to do something about it.
So here I am. Dead, but not departed. My body seems to have stabilized. No more maggots. Presumably, the wand interacting with the voodoo magics. I never really understood that stuff. I don’t know how much longer I’ve got, but then, who does? Maybe I’ll have new business cards made up. Larry Oblivion, deceased detective. The postmortem private eye. I still have my work. And I need to do some good, to balance out all the bad I did while I was alive. The hereafter’s a lot closer than it used to be.
Even when you’re dead, there’s no rest for the wicked.
Simon R. Green was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England (where he still resides). He obtained an MA in Modern English and American Literature from Leicester University; he also studied history and has a combined Humanities degree. He is the bestselling author of several series, including twelve novels of The Nightside and The Secret Histories (book seven, Casino Infernale , is due out in 2013). His newest series, The Ghost Finders, will have a fourth novel, Spirits From Beyond , published this year.
The Case: An eagle is found staked out and eviscerated on a mountain near a remote World War II base in the Aleutian Islands. The body of a murdered sailor is nearby.
The Investigators: An unnamed young private, and “Pop,” a corporal who very closely resembles Dashiell Hammett, father of noir mystery fiction and creator of Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon) and Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man).
THE ADAKIAN EAGLE
Bradley Denton
I
The eagle had been tortured to death.
That was what it looked like. It was staked out on the mountain on its back, wings and feet spread apart, head twisted to one side. Its beak was open wide, as if in a scream. Its open eye would have been staring up at me except that a long iron nail had been plunged into it, pinning the white head to the ground. More nails held the wings and feet in place. A few loose feathers swirled as the wind gusted.
The bird was huge, eleven or twelve feet from wingtip to wingtip. I’d seen bald eagles in the Aleutians before, but never up close. This was bigger than anything I would have guessed.
Given what had been done to it, I wondered if it might have been stretched to that size. The body had been split down the middle, and the guts had been pulled out on both sides below the wings. It wasn’t stinking yet, but flies were starting to gather.
I stood staring at the eagle for maybe thirty seconds. Then I got off the mountain as fast as I could and went down to tell the colonel. He had ordered me to report anything hinky, and this was the hinkiest thing I’d seen on Adak.
That was how I wound up meeting the fifty-year-old corporal they called “Pop.”
And meeting Pop was how I wound up seeing the future.
Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to do that. Especially if the future you see isn’t even your own.
Because then there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to change it.
II
I found Pop in a recreation hut. I had seen him around, but had never had a
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