Book 2 Chapter 24: Jane Marple

Dorian Gray

April 19, 1787, Realm Time, near the Outworlder Base

To investigate his friends' murders, Dorian made an executive decision and hired the services of Jane Doe. It took two days to reach Sankt Petersburg, and they found it brimming with activity. Convoys of Swedish ships and blimps discharged troops continuously, but also engineers of the magical kind. Together, they had already built a new line of forts and fortifications, one that would have held back even a modern army.

After observing it for half a day, they went to the crime scene. The Empress and the two generals were gone, but the remains of Isolde, her horse's head and entrails, and Janosh were still there, in an advanced stage of ruin. They also found the torso of a dead woman, with her head crushed. A Jane Doe, which made their Jane Doe joke about it. Dorian didn't find it amusing. The detective's cold blood, touching those dead body parts, was making his skin crawl. She spent a day there, taking photos and investigating the corpses, before burying them in place. If Tristan wanted them, he could come to pick the remains himself.

On the site, they also found a rope hanging from a tree—a zeppelin's anchor from the scratches on the bark— and a dinosaur-like footprint. The latter was huge and worrying, but Jane decided to follow its trail.

It led to another clearing, smaller, with another carcass, a bear's. There, where a fight had happened, Jane spent another day. She dissected the animal and opened a grave containing embalmed body parts of more than one person. After shoveling the earth back, they left East, aiming for Moscow again, at Jane's request.

They spent ten days there, following the events from the attic of an abandoned palace; Claudia landing the ship on the roof. History was unfolding under their eyes. The Poles, after taking back all the lands lost in the their country's first partition, conquered Moscow, only to be repulsed hours later by an army of magical beasts and sorcerers. The same army made mincemeat of the New Model Army, which arrived a day later.

Paul, Catherine's son, had taken the credit. His mother, he proclaimed, was not assassinated by the Old Believers, but by a faction of Outworlders and Catherine's own ministers, the same who murdered Paul's father. As a good omen, a day after Paul reinstated the Old Believers' faith as the official religion, the magical beasts had saved the day.

Paul had proclaimed himself Knyaz instead of Tsar, taking an oath to keep Russia within the current borders, renouncing expansion. In days, he made peace with the Swedes and the Poles, and restored the rights the serfs had before the sixteenth century.

For the discontents? The Knyaz's Grim Bureau. Destined to root out treason, ruled by a man without an arm—a Tamer. The magical beasts and the mages followed his orders, fighting the western-fashion nobles. Some fought back. Bombs exploded to the right and left, regiments revolted or submitted, revolutions started and ended in hours.

The civil war was, for now, focused on Moscow, but the team had seen columns of beasts and sorcerers heading toward other cities. The countryside was mostly peaceful. Serfs didn't care about the nobles' ideals; they had their own priorities.

The nobles who managed to escape with their lives, if not their fortunes, were seeking asylum with the Swedes, whose new borders were next to the old Novgorod.

They had filmed it, recording it for posterity. Ten days' worth of a century of events, unfolding under their eyes. For Dorian and Claudia, it was fascinating; for Pops, it was annoying. Jane looked indifferent, more preoccupied with studying the beasts from afar or up close. Pops killed a few, at her request, which she had dissected. No surprise.

After Moscow, Jane showed interest in going to Sweden for whatever reason. They didn’t make it. Starting near Novgorod, the Swedes moved quickly, installing detection systems on hot-air blimps. They had a ton of the latter, and after two picked their signature, somehow, and fired a few warning shots, they gave up.

Finally, they went back south, passing over Polish cities firing fireworks, and entered Moravia, flying slowly. Jane found the dinosaur's tracks again, going their direction, avoiding the roads and sneaking through the woods.

The trail stopped seven miles north of the Base, in a clearing surrounded by woods, about a mile in diameter, big enough to have a village and fields inside. Next to the village was a camp with tents and fires, and the creatures near them were green.

"Land there, on the road," Jane pointed.

"Thank goodness, I couldn't go on anymore," Claudia said. Pops made a thumbs-up gesture, nodding energetically.

Claudia descended fast, dismissing the ship outside the clearing.

"Take a break; I'll call Sam," Jane said, taking out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one.

Stunned by her calm, Dorian made the call himself, blurting out a long line of words as soon as the Duke answered:

"Sam, there's an invasion of goblins and dinosaurs almost at the base. They took a village hostage. Send the choppers with the big guns and—"

"Hold your horses!" Jane yelled, slapping Dorian's hand and taking the phone from him. "It's nothing like that. Hear me out."

"But—" Dorian tried to say.

"You will let me speak with Sam undisturbed, or so I swear, I'll kill you as many times as I need to," Jane sneered, tapping the holster at her belt.

"Pops, help!" Dorian yelled. The old Chinese man was snoring, stretched out on a sunny patch of grass near the road, but he managed to raise his thumb again, for a second.

"Don't look at me, I'm in just for the money," Claudia said, raising her hands in the air and stepping back. "Kill each other all you want."

Still frowning and watching him, Jane walked away, whispering into the phone and saying yes, yes, at times. She returned near Dorian five minutes later. "Good news. Sam will be here in about an hour. Tristan is not on the Realm, but the Necromancer elf is, and it's important. Keep yourself occupied until they arrive. I'll be in the woods. I abstained from peeing for over a day now."

"Raise your Constitution and Endurance over fifty, and your bio—" Dorian swallowed his words because she had darted off, grabbing her purse.

Being an awakened is amazing, he thought. Their bodies adapted to circumstances, allowing them to eat and drink normally, even get drunk. Still, when needed, they could go on for lengthy periods without sleep, food, or other necessities.

Since the woman was out of sight, Pops was asleep, and Claudia was exhausted, the only one to keep an eye on the enemies was him. He sneaked forward, hiding behind the trees, and watched the camp from a distance. It was too far to reach a conclusion, but it looked like they were building more huts. The dinosaur's absence was also strange.

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Fuck! Dorian's heart skipped a beat. The dinosaur's the strongest of them, right? What if he's doing what I'm doing, and it's patrolling around?

Being stuck in a monster's belly was not something he wished for. Dorian hid behind a big tree so he could not be swallowed easily and kept watching. Time passed slowly, but in the end, Sam's four-by-four car stopped near Pops.

"Hey, Sam!" Jane yelled, coming out of the woods.

"You want to get eaten? Keep your voice down!"

Jane rolled her eyes and beckoned. Claudia and Pops approached as well, shaking Sam's hand. Cedric and his girlfriend got out of the car and approached as well.

"I had to cancel a meeting," Sam said. "This better be important."

"Thanks for taking me at my word, and not insisting on finding out what's going on," Jane said.

"A detective's rant is sacred," Sam said. "I once designed a game about—"

"C'mon!" Dorian balled his fists. "There's a dinosaur in the woods!"

"You think you can take out a dinosaur, babe?" Juniper asked.

"No problemo," Cedric nodded, raising a staff. "Just let it come."

"Can I speak?" Jane asked.

"I'm listening," Sam said.

"The murders are the work of two Renegade factions," Jane began. "Both dangerous, one flashy, one discreet.

"The Rus—" Dorian began, but shut up immediately, under the woman's stare.

"The flashy faction is made of Russians, the other of Swedes," Jane continued. "They work together."

"How do you know?" Sam asked.

"Have the news from Russia reached you?"

"Yes."

"Qui prodest," she said. "Who profits? Both of them. The Swedes got back their lands and more; the Knyaz got revenge for his mother, who murdered his father, and took power. They're in this together."

"Will they go for Poland?"

Jane shook her head. "I don't know. I'll leave politics for you. Now comes the interesting part. When we reached the murder scene, the Empress and the generals were gone, but we found the remains of Janosh, Isolde, her horse, and an unidentified woman with her head a paste. The bodies were still in good shape."

"Ew," Dorian gagged, remembering the sight. "

"The cold had preserved them. Problem: they were cut into pieces."

"Desecrated?" Sam asked.

"No. Chirurgically cut into pieces. Magic involved as well. My hypothesis started from there. We followed a trail of strange tracks—"

"The dinosaur," Dorian said.

"—near Sankt Petersburg. There, we found many smaller tracks, buried bodies, which might have served in a ritual, and the carcass of a bear, missing a foreleg. The carcass was… empty inside. Like something was there, then cut off.

"Then we moved to Moscow. We witnessed the Poles breaking in, and an army of monsters and magic users chasing them off."

"The Raskolniks' Tamers," Sam said.

"They're no Tamers. They're the Renegades, posing as Tamers, and using biotech or maybe necromancy. Or both. They took power, anyway. I don't know if Paul is a puppet or an accomplice, but he's clearly benefiting from everything."

"Necromancy can't keep dead bodies moving for long," Juniper interjected.

"Are you sure?" Jane stared at her.

"Absolutely. You need a constant source of energy."

"Maybe the living parts are keeping the other ones alive. The monsters are a combination of animals and humans. Anyway. We were talking about the Russian Renegades."

"You're absolutely sure we're dealing with Renegades?" Sam asked.

"They created a repressive police force called the KGB."

"Wow," Sam exclaimed. "Really?"

"Standing for the Knyaz's Grim Bureau. They have thousands of monsters, and soon, armies of freed serfs. I infiltrated a few of their political meetings, and their leaders have nicknames from our world. The Brother Karamazov, for instance, or the director of the KGB, Rasputin."

"Hahaha," Dorian laughed.

"Allegedly, he survived two attempts on his life. A man with a hallucinated gaze, and only one arm."

The elf girl and Cedric were whispering like mad, so Sam shushed them.

"Thanks," Jane nodded at Sam. "Now, here is how I interpret the murder scene. They cut the bodies into pieces to make monsters. Isolde's torso was grafted onto her horse, making her a centaur, and they added organs from a magical beast; there was a strong Mana signature. The one who did it was that dead woman we found. She probably was going to take Isolde's legs for herself. Maybe she was a cripple. There was some sedation, or mind control, in play. Isolde wakes up, kills the woman with her hooves, thus the crushed head. The woman had a tyrannosaur with her, which she used to pull a wagon; there were caravan tracks both there and at the next stop.

"The Tyrannosaurus is old, and probably has bad joints. The footprints were irregular. When the evil woman died, it followed Isolde, like a new boss. Then, Isolde headed toward here. Whether she still has her wits or follows instinct remains to be seen. On the way, many other monsters joined them. Goblins, maybe, but I suspect they were children who were abducted. They're no danger to the base or us. I suggest we approach them calmly, showing ourselves, and we'll soon find out if I'm right."

"What if they attack us?" Dorian asked.

"We retreat and find another way," Sam said. "I won’t kill children. And neither one of ours."

"I have a powerful sleeping spell," Cedric said.

"Sure, try it, but only if necessary."

"Lead the way."

With Cedric leading, they slowly entered the clearing, advancing for minutes before they were noticed. Kids started shouting, running toward them.

"Are you Isolde's friends?" a kid asked in German.

"We are," Sam said.

"She told us you would come. Follow me, don't be afraid."

They followed the children, who seemed local, from the clothes. The adults were working on the additional huts, and they didn't seem scared or like hostages. Some nodded to the group, but most kept working.

The children led them to the edge of the forest, on the other side of the clearing. A log cabin stood near a hot spring, captured in a rock pool. Isolde was in the water, naked, and Dorian diverted his eyes, even if the frothy bubbles didn't display too much.

"Hey, guys," Isolde whispered, with her eyes half closed. "Glad you came first. Sorry I didn't come to meet you, but I'm regrowing my legs."

"You cut the horse part off?" Jane asked.

"A long time ago. I used… someone else's legs for a while, but now I reached a hundred in Con, and I can regrow mine. It's almost done."

"We're happy to see you alive," Pops sobbed.

"Yeah," Cedric said, his eyes watery.

"My condolences for Janosh," Sam said, bowing. "I'm glad you're well. Why didn't you call?"

"Phone's gone. I was waiting to be in one piece, and I have to keep an eye on these folks; their ideas of cottages are a bit different from mine. I'm starting an orphanage and a health center."

"I see," Sam said. "We'll help."

"Thanks…" Isolde said, tears starting to flow down her cheek. "It's nice to be back…"

"Where's the dinosaur?" Dorian said, still a bit scared.

"Sorry?" Isolde widened her eyes.

"The big lizard who left the giant footprints," Jane said.

"Koshchei!" Isolde yelled. "Show yourself."

With a deep growl, the log cabin extracted itself from the ground, standing on three giant chicken legs. It kept the position for a few seconds, then returned to its previous state.

"My class evolved," Isolde said. "I'm a Baba Yaga."

"Hahaha… Hahaha…" Dorian laughed uncontrollably. "Tyranossaurus… Hahaha… Guess the detective doesn't always have the last word."

"Then guess again," Jane said with a smirk, crossing her arms. "There's something else I found out, but I kept her until she was present. I told you the Swedes are involved, right?"

"Yes," Sam said.

"They are," Isolde said. "I heard the King speak with the previous Baba."

"Do you know Gustav the Third?"

"I just told you," Isolde said, looking more awake. "He was at the meeting. He and the witch spoke. Like allies."

"Gustav is dead."

"He was not."

"While we were waiting, I've read the reports Sam forwarded," Jane waved her phone. "A few months ago, Tristan captured a Renegade he eventually made into his thrall. Somebody," she stared at Dorian, "interceded to save his life. On the way to Bratislava, they were attacked by a group of Transylvanian riflemen, one of whom was taken prisoner, in bad shape. He was in a coma until recently.

"I interrogated him, and he told me something very interesting. Their officer ordered them to shoot Tristan and Dorian, but not the Renegade. The only logical conclusion was that he knew him. Judging from the motorbike Cedrin noticed on the barge, the Renegade was the liaison sent to lead the German sniper platoon.

"Then, instead of dying, Tristan and Dorian survived, and the Renegade realized he couldn't escape. He shot the sniper commander, the only one knowing his real identity, and blended in with the Chaos company.

"There's only one hypothesis that explains what followed. In time, the Renegade found a way to communicate with his friends, and they made a plan: take over Sweden and Russia. Vampires survive as long as their brains and hearts are left alone, right? The witch transplanted them into Gustav. The one you heard speaking with the witch was Janosh. He knew exactly what he was doing when he shot you."

Wings spread out from Isolde's back, and talons from her hands. She erupted out of the bath with a wild scream, flying, her hair floating up. A howl answered from the woods, so terrifying that Dorian's knees mollified, and he swallowed a lump.