August 2017
Pound Ridge, Indiana
Pablo found the groundskeeper and night security guard at St. Jude’s Cemetery asleep at his desk, a copy of Maxim in his lap and a jar of peanut butter with a spoon sticking out of it on his credenza. Pablo roused him with ten thousand dollars, fanned under his nose. They wanted access to the graves? No problem.
With all the rain, the ground was soft and muddy. Pablo, Raquel, and Fouad did the digging and slinging while the Glowworm stayed in the modified limousine, dialed into the dark net, requesting that the Brotherhood send a copy of the HVT’s fingerprints.
Unearthing the coffin took several hours, and even with the steroids, stimulants, and other drugs coursing through his system, Pablo struggled with the shovel. After all, he was old. He tottered, chest heaving, slick with sweat and rain, peering down into the deep wet hole in the ground, the coffin’s lid visible under a slick of muck.
“Moment of truth,” Fouad said, lowering to his knees. He leaned into the hole, hooked the lid with the edge of the shovel, and pried it open. A fine, dry dust swirled up, into the rain, still slanting down. Fouad swung an LED lamp into the hole, illuminating the soft interior of a mid-grade coffin. Pablo peered over the edge. They had found just what they were looking for—nothing.
Where the body was supposed to have been, there were only three large sacks of gravel, the pebbles spilling out of the old canvas.
Raquel purred. “You were right again. The Glowworm will be pleased.”
Pablo nodded, took off his hat, and rubbed the dirt from his forehead. The bandage on his nose had come off long ago and a trickle of blood ran down the center of his cratered face. “And I hope after this I will have proven myself. I will get to go home.” He looked off in the direction of the groundskeeper’s office, getting an idea. “If you’re going to kill the groundskeeper, we might as well stick him in a coffin before we rebury it.”
“I have a better idea.” A voice came from the darkness behind him. Pablo turned as the Glowworm, naked save for his diaper-like shorts, stalked toward him, his muscles bristling and feeding tube capped.
Pablo had been in the hitman game long enough to know what the Glowworm had in mind—“a two-fer,” as the Americans say. Two bodies, one coffin. And Pablo would be part of the deal.
“But why now?” Pablo asked, backing up to the edge of the grave. “After I have helped you? Why would you do it? You now know beyond any question that I did not kill your father.”
“Yes, you have showed this to me,” the Glowworm said, squaring off across from him.
“Haven’t I repaid the debt to you? Haven’t I been a good servant? Proven my loyalty? Surely my work for you has made up for raising my hand against your mother.”
“Yes. Right again,” the Glowworm said, smiling a weird, toothless grin. “Your debt to me for what you did to my mother has been more than repaid. You are off the hook completely.”
“So then why hurt an old man?” Pablo forced a chuckle, trying to make light of the situation.
The Glowworm wiped rain from his shoulders and looked at his hands before looking back up. “Because I am a killer,” the Glowworm said matter-of-factly, “and both you and my father helped to create me.”
He charged Pablo, and the old man could only put up his hands in feeble defense as the thing that used to be Wilberforce Degas flew through the air like a human missile, an all-pro linebacker, slamming into Pablo. The Glowworm’s fingers were already wrapping around Pablo’s throat as the two bodies fell straight back into the grave, smashing into the muddy side of the pit, falling into the open casket.
* * *
Raquel could see the Glowworm needed a little alone time. After severing the last tie to his old life, the Glowworm sat under a tree in a fetal position, pelted by rain, shivering as he unloosed tears and emotion, baggage from youth. Raquel came and sat next to him. An odd pair. A humanoid hacker and his beautiful demon-child.
“I need to ask you a question,” she finally said.
The Glowworm sniffled, and with his unsettlingly large hands, wiped away tears.
“Anything, my dear.”
“Why did you kill him?”
The Glowworm looked up, a little surprised. “What do you mean, why did I kill Pablo? I was always going to kill him.”
“No, I don’t mean why. I mean why now?” she asked. “We have yet to find Chris Gibbs and we have yet to find the camp. I thought that’s why we were keeping him alive?”
“Ah, you are right, of course, in thinking this,” the Glowworm said. “But while I was in the car, I determined the fingerprints are a match. Eldon Waanders is the same man as Chris Gibbs. And Gibbs is the operator captured by the Brotherhood. He will be in our company as soon as a wire transfer goes through. The Brotherhood is bringing him to New York for collection.”
“Ahhhh … that is good,” she said. “But what about the camp itself? How do we find that?”
The Glowworm grinned. “My dear, that is easy,” he said. “You. You’re going to be the light that lures them in.”