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BACK TO FRASER'S FRACTURED FICTION HENRY VI Part 2, act iv: scene ii (part the first)by A. Fraser
© Copyright 2004 A. Fraser. All rights reserved. HENRY VI Part 2, act iv: scene ii (part the first) Not all battlefields are fields. Nor are they necessarily strewn with dead bodies, while the cries of the wounded are lost amid the sounds of guns, or of steel slicing flesh, or the call of the carrion birds. Sometimes battlefields are quite civilized. Not all warriors wear armour or uniforms with insignia. Not all of them carry weapons. Some of them wear suits, and carry cell phones. This was a battlefield. It was an office above a little strip plaza on the outskirts of Fletcherville. There was a round table of blond wood, matching blond chairs, a hardwood floor (blond), and a group of unsmiling people in suits sitting in the chairs. There were briefcases open on the table. Someone had a laptop computer set up. There might well have been carrion birds circling, but they were carrion birds in Armani. "... so, as you can see," said one of the suits, handing over a thick file folder to someone else in a suit, "we clearly hold legal title to the land in question." "But it's mine," said the man in the other suit, refusing to take the file folder. Yet another suit reached across him, apologetically, and took the file. "Really," said the first suit, with a tight, terrible smile. "Can you prove that, Mr. Goldanias?" "Of course," replied Alex Goldanias, glancing at the woman in the suit who had taken possession of the file folder. She was reading, paying no attention to him at all. Alex wasn't used to women who didn't pay attention to him. He was a bit put out. When he'd asked Evan to find him a lawyer, he'd been expecting a Nameless One, but a _male_ Nameless One. Women weren't lawyers. The words "male chauvinism" were just a collection of meaningless syllables to Alex. "It's on record that the land in question was purchased in 1800 by a Josephat Fletcher," said one of the enemy suits. "Mr. Fletcher went to Paris in 1815 and subsequently lost the deed to the land in card game. Banquo, I believe." The suit's wearer had green eyes that bored into the stormy grey ones of Alex Goldanias. "Is that correct?" "Yes," said Alex, then, at a nudge from his lawyer, added, "or so the family legend goes." "But the land was never properly claimed by the new owner," the green-eyed suit owner went on. "What?" Alex looked startled. "But I..." "Shut up!" his female lawyer warned him. She looked at the suits opposite. "Care to explain that?" she asked. "The land was won by a man who had recently been reported as missing, presumed dead in his native Romania," the green-eyed one replied. "He had no legal status in France, and even less in America. He simply squatted on the land without registering his claim, and then sold parcels of it to his friends." "He had the deed," said Alex's lawyer, carefully. "That is hardly squatting." "And was the deed signed over to him?" replied the suit. "Did he show proof of his identity to the Massachusetts government? This was part of Massachusetts then." The lawyer looked at Alex, then back at the suits. "Excuse me, I need to consult with my client. In private." "Certainly." The smile was bright and humourless. It brought to mind deep water, with a fin above it. The female lawyer all but dragged her tall, muscular client out into the hallway. She was a Nameless One, after all. She wasn't as strapping as an Evan Jones, but looks were deceptive. Her name, incidentally, was Hermione Russell. One made Harry Potter references to her at their peril. Since Alex had missed out on Pottermania, he didn't make them. But he resented being vampirehandled by a mere female. Even if she was female of a species that could break him in half. "What?" he asked petulantly. Nobody could be petulant like Alex. "Did you get the deed signed over to you when you won it?" Hermione asked without preamble. "Yes, of course," Alex replied. "Did you show proof of your identity to the government? Did you register the change of ownership of the deed?" Alex stared at his shoes. They were very nice shoes. "Um," he said. "No, don't tell me," Hermione groaned. "You didn't think you had to, since you had the deed." "That's right." He looked defiant. "I didn't have a lawyer to advise me." "Huh," said Hermione. "What were you thinking? Never mind, it's obvious you didn't think." "Does that mean I don't own the land?" Alex asked. "Possibly," she admitted cautiously. "We'd better listen to what else they have to say." "Right." Alex squared his shoulders, which did interesting things to the cut of his suit. Hermione was unmoved. Damn, was this woman even human? Technically no, he admitted. Just as he was about to open the door to go back into the room above the strip mall, Hermione stopped him. "You _have_ paid property taxes, haven't you?" "Yes, of course," Alex replied. "I'm not completely stupid." She gave him a look that indicated she thought he was wrong, but said only, "Then we probably have a good case. Let's go talk to the suits." They went back in. The suits were still sitting there, unsmiling, with briefcases open and laptops humming. "My client," said Hermione, getting down to brass tacks, "has always paid property taxes on the land in question, as have his antecedents. So you have no claim based on unpaid back taxes. What claim do you have to this property?" "We bought the deed," said a suit, smugly, "from Mr. Fletcher's descendants. From the legal owners of the property." "The deed is mine," Alex protested. "I won... my ancestor won it." "Yes?" Another suit looked up. "And you can prove legitimate descent from this ancestor, can you?" "Of course," Alex replied. "Really." It wasn't a question. Alex glanced at Hermione. There were... undercurrents here he didn't like. Who _were_ these suits? They spoke as if they knew who he was. _What_ he was. "Excuse me?" he asked. One of the suits leaned forward, his hands steepled. "Tell me, Mr. Goldanias... how well would your identification stand up in a court of law? Under intense legal scrutiny?" "I don't know what..." "I suspect that it could not... Count." Hermione slammed her own briefcase down on the table. "This is some kind of joke, right?" she demanded. "Not a very funny one. My client is an American citizen..." "Is he?" The suits all smiled. "American citizens are alive, Ms Russell. Not the undead." "Who are you?" Alex demanded, voice carefully under control. His fists were clenched, though. There would have been veins throbbing at his neck if he'd had a normal circulatory system. "A little late to ask that, isn't it?" replied one of the suits. "However, we are with the Bureau of Occult Obliteration." Alex almost fell out of his chair. Only superb self control kept him seated, instead of flying at the nearest throat. There was the slightest of noises from behind the raised covers of one or two briefcases that indicated that small crossbows had been cocked. "I thought that BOO was a bad joke being played on us all by Adrian Talbot," Alex said lamely. "Nobody really believes you exist." "Yes, we were rather fortunate that one of our first encounters was with... that actor," said the most talkative of the BOO agents. "And even more so that _his_ first encounter was with ORC, so that he was not inclined to take BOO seriously. Until he met our top agent there, of course." "If it was your top agent, why didn't he just stake Talbot then and there?" Alex asked. He was beginning to wonder if he was going to make it out of this strip mall. He'd been staked through the heart once before and wasn't anxious to repeat the experience. "She, Mr. Goldanias." It was a female BOO agent who corrected him, icily. "Stake him? In BOO's headquarters? When other vampires knew he'd gone in there? No, Talbot was much more useful to BOO unstaked." "So now you're going after the Brotherhood," Hermione spoke up. "What is evicting them off their property going to do for your cause? All you're doing is making them homeless." "Precisely," beamed a BOO agent. "Homeless. The vampires and other occult vermin have been too settled here for too long. Deprived of their homes, their safety nets, the willing acquiescence of the rather stupid villagers here, and their little comforts, they will be helpless." "So you're chasing them off their land to pick them off one by one?" Hermione pressed the point. "No comment, Ms Russell." "We'll fight," Alex warned. "On what grounds, Mr. Goldanias? We have legal entitlement to the property; any kind of legal battle would reveal that your identity is forged and that you actually died in 1815. Dead people cannot own property. We have the law on our side. And if you attempt a physical battle... then, we also have the law on our side. We will be using the sheriff's office to evict you. Do you really want to show the nice police officers in Fletcherville that you really are vampires and monsters?" "You bastards." "Go home, Mr. Goldanias. You have forty-eight hours in which to pack." |
