Steele stopped for a moment, pulled his sword back, and took a breath.
“It was mine,” he said, “and she made a travesty of it.”
“You did sell her the rights, you know,” I said, as gently as I could.
“It wasn’t supposed to be a real sale,” he said. “I had these guys after me, trying to collect money I couldn’t possibly pay, and I had to disappear.”
“I figured your disappearance had something to do with the debt collectors,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, how did you get so far in debt? Your nephew thinks drugs.”
“Drugs,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “You can tell who raised him. Just what my brother would say.”
“So if it wasn’t drugs—”
“I paid for printing the last four issues of the comic,” he said.
He was getting caught up in what he was saying. Maybe if I kept him talking, he’d put down the sword, or at least give me a chance to knock it out of his hands.
“The publisher claimed he had cash-flow problems, so I borrowed the money,” he continued. “And then he disappeared, leaving me with all the bills. He never even printed the last issue.”
“The thirteenth issue,” I murmured.
“Exactly,” he said. “Tammy and I figured if we could get a bigger publisher to pick up the comics, I’d have more than enough to pay back the loan sharks. Or better yet, a movie deal. And once we had all that money, I could pay off my debts and resurface. But for the time being, I had to disappear, so I pretended to sell her the rights so she’d have legal authority to cut a deal.”
“And you didn’t have a backup plan in case she couldn’t cut the deal?”
He shook his head.
“I know it sounds stupid, but I never imagined it wouldn’t happen.”
“So you changed your name, faked your death under the old name, and waited for her to sell the comics and rescue you.”
“And she never did a damned thing,” he said. “The bitch!”
Predictably, he lunged on the last word, sending me scuttling backward again while overhead the monkeys shrieked and leaped about. Glad someone was enjoying the show. I wasn’t; this time he kept coming, testing my defenses again and again while I backed away, step by step. So much for distracting him.
“You never asked what happened?” I said.
“She never took my calls or answered my letters,” he said. “Didn’t want to admit she’d stopped trying.”
“Or maybe she didn’t want to admit she’d failed,” I said. “From what Nate says, she put a lot of work into it, over the years, but selling an idea for a movie or a TV series isn’t easy.”
“And when she sold it, look what happened. Crap. And you know what really ticked me off?”
I shook my head, and got ready, because I knew he’d strike when he snarled out whatever he was about to say.
“The credits!” he roared, and even though I was expecting it, I almost didn’t manage to parry. “She stole my creation, after thirty years she finally did something with it, and then she didn’t—even—mention—me—in the credits!”
He nicked me, once, during that mad flurry of thrusts, and I could feel a trickle of blood running down my arm. Maybe more than a trickle; I didn’t dare take the time to look too closely. I’d backed up, nearly to the edge of the stage. I was panting a little—as much from stress as exertion. Steele wasn’t. He was still feinting and slowly advancing. He didn’t really look all that winded. Just my luck to tangle with the one fifty-something at the whole convention in better shape than me.
“Maybe she thought you were dead?” I suggested, sliding to the side as I parried and parried again. His style was getting better, dammit. Fewer dramatic lunges and more constant pressure.
“She knew I wasn’t dead,” he said. “She helped me fake it.”
“That was in 1972,” I said. “You could have died for real in the thirty years since.”
“And that makes it all right to pretend I never existed?”
“Maybe she thought you wouldn’t want to be credited as Ichabod Dilley!” I suggested, “And it would spoil the whole purpose of the phony death if she credited Alaric Steele.”
“Hardly matters now,” he said. “She’s dead. And it’s her fault I had to give up my art all these years.”
“Give it up?” I asked. “You mean completely?”
“Going from one lousy job to another,” he said.
“Until you took up blacksmithing,” I suggested.
He shrugged.
“Gives me independence, I’ll say that much for it,” he said.
Maybe it was the insult to my chosen profession, but I parried his next several feints a lot more easily.
“Why didn’t you do another comic, when you saw Tammy wasn’t going to sell Porfiria?” I suggested. “Make your own deal.”
“Didn’t dare,” he said. “I had people after me, remember? What if they recognized my style?”
“I think you’re overestimating the aesthetic sensibilities of your loan sharks,” I said. “Not to mention their staying power—why would they keep chasing you after your brother paid your debts?”
“Well, I didn’t know that until yesterday,” he said. “That’s another thing she did to me…she had my address, and never passed along any messages from my brother. If I’d known he paid them off, I could have come out of hiding then.”
“So you were mad that you gave up your art all these years for nothing.”
Probably the wrong thing to say—he snarled and lunged again.
“You’re wasting my time,” he said. “I want my sketchbook—”
“Over there, by the door,” I said, jerking my chin in the right direction. “I dropped it when you surprised me.”
“And that little scrap of paper—”
I was running out of space to retreat.
“And then—”
Bad luck. This time, when he lunged, I tripped over a power cable and went sprawling. He loomed over me, sword in hand, and the smile on his face wasn’t the least bit reassuring.
“And then I’m going to make sure you can’t tell anyone. Sorry you—”
Help arrived. One of the monkeys dropped onto Steele’s head, shrieking, clawing, and biting. He grabbed at the monkey with both hands, nearly skewering me with the sword when he dropped it. Half a dozen other monkeys were swinging about overhead, shrieking and chattering as if working up their nerve to join the attack. It only took a few seconds for Steele to throw the monkey off, but when he turned around again to look for his sword, he found himself staring at the business end.
“You won’t use that, you know,” he said, with a menacing smile.
“Really? Try me,” I said.
“It’s a lot harder to kill than most people think,” he said.
“I’ll just have to try, won’t I?” I said. “Inflicting grievous bodily harm is also fine. I’m not going to stand here and let you kill me.”
I could see him tensing his muscles for a spring, and I didn’t even know myself whether I’d have the nerve to impale him when he did. I never found out. Just as he was about to move, I heard a noise overhead.
A low, rumbling growl.
We both froze.
I could see that Steele was darting his eyes up, above my head, to the left, to the right. Since he kept flicking his eyes in different directions, he obviously wasn’t seeing anything. I was doing the same thing, only I finally did spot something.
An African Grey parrot.
As I watched, the parrot opened its mouth again, produced a surprisingly low, rumbling growl, and then preened its feathers, looking very pleased with itself.
And rightly so. Now that I knew it was a parrot, I thought I could tell that the growl was a little less deep and resonant than Salome’s. Then again, maybe I only thought that because I was looking at the parrot. If you expected—perhaps dreaded—hearing a tiger, maybe it sounded just fine. I hoped so, anyway.
