The Return of Little Precious: The Return of Little Precious: Moriarty, Lord of the Vampires, Book Three

By Chuck Miller

Eleven years ago, the most lethal terrorist the world has ever seen was apprehended after a four-day rampage that left more than a million dead worldwide. Eight-year-old Jessie Von Cosel, half of the deadly cybernetic entity known as LITTLE PRECIOUS, was tried, convicted and sent to the refurbished detention facility on Alcatraz Island, where she is the only prisoner. The other half of the persona, an unimaginably advanced robot, was never found. Jessie lapsed into a near-catatonic state until...

Today, Jessie Von Cosel has emerged from her decade-long torpor and is showing alarming signs that the Little Precious persona is coming back online. The authorities summon Dana Unknown, better known as Doctor Unknown Junior, and her obstreperous partner, former superhero kid sidekick Jack Christian, to take action-- but it may already be too late. Dana and Jack plunge into a toxic stew of murder, dark secrets, government cover-ups and black magic, with the help of an unlikely band of allies: Vionna Valis; the Black Centipede; a conspiracy-busting journalist named Garrison "Grassy" Knowles; Dana's father, the reclusive Doctor Unknown Senior; and a certain twice-deceased former Napoleon of Crime.

Can our heroes unravel the horrific plans of the Cult of the White Centipede in time to prevent THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS? Find out in Book Three of Chuck Miller’s MORIARTY, LORD OF THE VAMPIRES Trilogy! From Pro Se Productions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pro Se Press
• Release date: Feb 6, 2016

Chuck Miller

Author Chuck Miller is Owner of Chuck Miller Consulting, Owner and Chief Education Office of Chuck Miller Education Services, President and CEO of Chuck Miller Construction Inc., and Managing Member of Chuck Miller Online Enterprises LLC. Chuck has over 50 years of experience in the construction industry. He understands the special needs of small volume builders and remodelers and works with them to create custom solutions.Chuck has earned nine professional designations from the National Association of Home Builders. He became an instructor for NAHB in 1999 and is a licensed provider of NAHB education programs. Chuck is an Instructor for NAHB courses. NAHB named Chuck the 2016 Sales and Marketing/IRM Educator of the Year.In addition to teaching builders, remodelers, Realtors, and other building industry professionals, Chuck works one-on-one with builders, remodelers and construction related companies to develop a working business plan focused on market research and analysis, product development and pricing strategy, sales and marketing strategy, operations planning, and financial forecasting and budgeting to achieve and maintain the key financial and operating ratios."It is my hope that successfully completing the steps in this book and using the completed plan as the most important tool in your toolbox will guarantee that you are one of the small business in the construction industry that survives and thrives beyond 5 years and increase the five year survival rate for small businesses in the construction industry."-Chuck Miller, PLAN TO PROFIT

Book preview

THE RETURN OF LITTLE PRECIOUS

From the Mystic Files of Doctor Unknown Junior

Book Three in the Moriarty, Lord of the Vampires Trilogy

as told to

CHUCK MILLER

Published by Pro Se Press

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters in this publication are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. No part or whole of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing of the publisher.

Copyright © 2016 Chuck Miller

All rights reserved.

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Prologue

The Funeral

Chapter 1

The Prisoner

Chapter 2

Hello, Clarice

Chapter 3

Down the Memory Hole

Chapter 4

Dirty Little Secret

Chapter 5

The Vanishing Curio Shop

Chapter 6

Memory Lane Revisited

Chapter 7

One of Our Centipedes Is Missing

Chapter 8

Hi-Yo Silver

Chapter 9

Doctor Unknown Senior

Chapter 10

The Secret Origin of Little Precious

Chapter 11

The Second Battle of the Benway

Chapter 12

Moriarty

Chapter 13

Back to Death

Chapter 14

The Great and Powerful Oz Does a Fade

Chapter 15

Post-Mortem

Epilogue 1

More Dirty Little Secrets

Epilogue 2

Out of the Frying Pan

About the Author

For Julie

PREFACE

—

Perhaps the most famous correctional facility in history, the federal prison on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay has a history that goes back to before the American Civil War. In 1934, it was acquired by the U.S. Department of Justice and turned into a federal penitentiary.

It was shut down in 1963 and eventually became a popular tourist attraction.

A decade ago, the property was taken over once more by the federal government, and Alcatraz was refurbished and specially outfitted to house one single prisoner.

That prisoner was the most dangerous criminal mastermind, terrorist, and mass killer the world has ever seen.

After an epic trial, she was sentenced to a total of seven thousand years in prison on multiple counts of murder, assault, theft, kidnapping, mayhem, terrorism, and assorted other crimes, ranging from simple felonies to treason, sedition, and crimes against humanity.

She was taken to Alcatraz to begin serving her sentence two weeks after her ninth birthday. She has not aged a day since. Nobody knows why.

So ended the Little Precious Crisis. With Jessie Von Cosel safely locked away, the world buried its dead and tried to forget. The unanswered questions, and they are legion, were brushed aside by our leaders, who told us it was time to look to the future.

But the questions remained, a herd of elephants in the world’s living room. Jessie Von Cosel was only half of the entity called Little Precious. The other half was a mysterious robot, a small mechanical man whose origin and ultimate fate were never conclusively determined. Some experts maintain that the robot was destroyed during the final battle with Little Precious in the Nevada desert, but there is no proof of this.

Where did the robot come from and what happened to it? How did it enter the state of quantum entanglement with Jessie Von Cosel that gave birth to Little Precious?

Where did Little Precious get the super-weapons with which she nearly wiped out mankind?

How can we be sure Little Precious has really been neutralized forever?

If anyone knows the answers to these troubling questions, they haven’t spoken them publicly. Though the government denies it, all information pertaining Little Precious is classified at a level so far above Top Secret that the President himself may not be privy to it. Conspiracy theories abound. The public record has been scrubbed clean of all but the most innocuous and least controversial data.

All of this is troubling enough, but the final unanswered question is the most troubling of all:

Did Little Precious Act Alone?

This reporter believes that she did not.

The Harrison Commission told the public that she did. But the Commission’s proceedings were held behind closed doors, and no transcript has ever been released. Who testified before the Commission and to what did they testify?

This reporter is currently pursuing leads that may establish a link between Little Precious and one of the most respected and revered figures of the modern age, a man who, without explanation, disappeared from public life several years ago. There is credible evidence that this man acted in concert with one of the most notorious criminals of all time, and that, together, they at least abetted Little Precious’s deadly rampage, and may have facilitated it up to a point. These individuals, working with a shadowy secret society, possibly connected with members of our own government, may have pulled the plug on Little Precious once her purpose, whatever it might have been, was accomplished. And there is also the clear implication that the aforementioned public figure worked in concert with the Harrison Commission to prevent the truth from becoming known to the public.

This reporter has chosen to go public with the existence of these leads, before they have been confirmed sufficiently for publication, as a means of safeguarding his own life. Copies of all the information and evidence thus far compiled have been placed with several individuals around the world, to be released to the public in the event of this reporter’s untimely death.

From Who Was Little Precious?

by Garrison Knowles

National Watchdog Magazine

PROLOGUE

THE FUNERAL

—

I make it a rule to avoid funerals. There is nothing about them that I like, and I hate what they represent.

By which I mean death. I have had my fill of death and then some. I’ve stared the Grim Reaper in the face until I’m sick of it. Sick to death, you might say, if you wanted to sound cute. So I generally choose to ignore him as much as possible. I’m under thirty, and already have no living relatives and more friends underground than on the surface. Death is tragic and painful at first; after a while, it just becomes a pain in the ass.

Sometimes, though, I get trapped. That was what had happened to me on a chilly day in late November, as I stood in an unassuming little marble orchard just outside the city of Zenith, next to my adopted sister Vionna Valis, listening to a brief eulogy for the extremely late Professor James Moriarty.

Yes, that Professor Moriarty. You may have thought he died in 1891, and you would have been right. However, he did not stay that way. Not exactly. There was this whole thing with Dracula, you see, who brought Moriarty back as a vampire. The Professor schemed and planned and waited for years. His opportunity came in 1908. Dracula was obliterated, and Moriarty became the Lord of the Vampires.

Vionna has chronicled much of this for posterity in a memoir she wrote and published under the title Vionna and the Vampires. Further details are available in the pages of Black Centipede Confidential, the third volume of the endless autobiography of the Black Centipede. I won’t rehash it all here, except to say that the Professor’s vampiric existence had been brought to an end, and he had gone on to whatever fate, if any, awaited his soul. If he had one.

All that was left to bury was an old suit of clothes soaked through with the foul-smelling ichor into which Moriarty had dissolved after succumbing to severe garlic poisoning. The clothing had been placed inside of a black vinyl body bag, which had been placed inside of an inexpensive but tasteful casket, which had been placed into a hole in the ground and covered with dirt.

* * *

My name is Jack Christian. For the past couple of years, I’ve been working with Doctor Dana Marie Laveau Unknown, also known as Doctor Unknown Junior.

Dana is the daughter of Raoul Deveraux Unknown, the original superhero-sorcerer called Doctor Unknown. What happened to him is a story in itself, one that I won’t go into right now. The bottom line is that Raoul retired, and Dana, who is a Level Twelve Magus, whatever the hell that is, took over his duties and responsibilities.

At any rate, Dana and I knew one another when we were kids, before I left Zenith. A couple years ago, I returned, and we had a strange reunion. Some things I don’t want to talk about right now happened, and Dana ended up sustaining a psychic injury while she was trying to help me. This resulted in a massive loss of her personal magical power. She was getting it back, slowly. Feeling somewhat responsible for her difficulties, I agreed to help her out, at least until she was back to full strength.

As for me, I’m not a level anything anything. I’m just an ex-kid sidekick to a superhero who is no longer with us. Captain Mercury was blown to bits several years ago. It was then that I stopped being Kid Mercury, youthful sidekick, and became the train wreck in progress that I am now.

Well, maybe train wreck is a little harsh, but I have never experienced smooth sailing. Call it a series of huge disasters mitigated to a degree by small triumphs. I’ve done good things. I’m smart and capable, but I have a lot of baggage. For one thing, I suppose I’m an alcoholic. Of course, there are twelve levels associated with that, but I have no ambitions in that direction.

* * *

There were six people present at the graveside service, including myself and Vionna. The others were Dana Unknown, Mary Jane Kelly, the Black Centipede, and a character named Scudder Moran.

In fact, this Scudder Moran was delivering the eulogy I mentioned earlier. Why him? That’s a damn good question. He wasn’t what you’d call the soul of eloquence. I guess he had earned the honor because he was the man who had finally put Moriarty out of business for good. I had a difficult time believing he was capable of such a feat, but Vionna and Mary swore it was the truth.

They also swore that the ghost of Sherlock Holmes had played a part in Moriarty’s downfall.

What the hell, why not?

As Scudder babbled, I stood between Vionna and Mary, holding their hands. Vionna was sniffling and sobbing, wiping at her eyes with a Kleenex. Mary was dry-eyed and quiet, and seemed to be in a very strange mood. Across from us, on the other side of the grave, stood Dana and the legendary crime-fighter/criminal, the Black Centipede, whom I also numbered among my tiny circle of friends. These two maintained a distance of several feet between them; if there’s anything they dislike more than one another, I don’t know what it could be.

Dana looked solemn, and that was about it. The Centipede though, he was unmasked and completely inscrutable as always. He was not one to wear his heart on his sleeve, or anywhere else. He had something of a history with Moriarty, and it wasn’t a friendly one, though he seemed to harbor no ill-will toward the deceased.

And so, Scudder was saying, "as we, uh, commit this fine old suit of clothes to the, ah, clay from which it… y’know, whatever… we look back on our dear, ah, guy that… that we kind of knew for a little while, and we, um… We wish him the best of luck, and no hard feelings, even though he did act like a total dick, you have to admit… But, um, y’know, bygones will be bygones, and he really wasn’t so… Well, actually, he was pretty bad and everything… But I guess there’s no point in just totally ragging on him now. It sort of reminds me of the episode of Professor Conundrum where…"

Vionna, who had stopped crying and started glaring at Scudder, finally erupted:

"Oh my God! That’s enough! I knew it was a bad idea to let you get up and talk! Didn’t I say that, Mary? Didn’t I?"

Vionna has a mysterious past and a rather muddled present. I can’t be sure, but I figure she’s about 19 or 20. She is neither particularly short nor particularly tall, and she has a great deal of reddish-blonde hair that hangs down to the middle of her back. Her face is round. Her eyes are large and always have a slightly demented look in them, or so it seems to me.

About a hundred times, dear, Mary said calmly. I gathered she had spent a lot of time learning how to remain calm around my sister.

Mary is Vionna’s partner in their psychic detective agency. She’s about 28 or 29, not counting the hundred and twenty some-odd years she was dead, of course, kind of large for a woman, with dark hair she keeps pinned up at the back of her head.

And I was right, wasn’t I? Vionna snapped.

Scudder had stopped talking and was looking both confused and hurt. Dana and the Centipede both appeared to be making heroic efforts not to laugh out loud. So was I, but I didn’t think I could hold out for very long.

I looked away and tried to think of something sad so as not to succumb to a giggling fit in the middle of a graveside service. I caught sight of a familiar tree on a familiar little grassy knoll a hundred yards to my left. Just beyond the knoll was a grave in which were interred the mortal remains of Captain Mercury, such as they were. Inside the regulation-sized casket was a small metal capsule containing approximately seven ounces of biological material. That was all that had been left of Captain Mercury after the bomb that killed him had gone off.

That was a part of my life that I hated to think about. This was the first time I had been to this cemetery since the Captain, my old superhero mentor, had been planted. That whole thing was grim enough to keep my merriment under control. In fact, it was more than was required.

I was going to need a few drinks very soon.

Then I noticed someone standing by the tree. Whoever it was had been behind it, and had stepped out into my line of sight. He or she had on a long black overcoat and a black hat, not unlike the gear the Black Centipede usually wore. I couldn’t see a face, but I had the strong feeling that this individual was looking right at me, but that could have been my paranoia.

Rationality and optimism are fine things, but William S. Burroughs was absolutely right when he said, A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. That’s me. Dana knows a lot of what’s going on, but not as much as she thinks she does.

I looked away from the solitary figure, my attention grabbed by Vionna, who had swatted Scudder over the head with an artificial daffodil and was stomping off toward the parking lot, Mary trailing along behind her. When I turned back to the hill, the person in the overcoat was gone.

Not long after that, so was I.

CHAPTER ONE

THE PRISONER

First I got lost, then I got found

The ones I love are in the ground

Won’t you tell me please was I right or wrong?

—Lynyrd Skynyrd Was I Right or Wrong?

—

It was a dark and stormy night.

Seriously, it was. It’s not all that relevant, I’m just setting the scene.

It was a week after Moriarty’s funeral, just after eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night. It had been pouring down all day, and I was pissed off about it. Too much rain always pisses me off. There had been plenty of lightning earlier, but it had dwindled down to a flash and a rumble every two or three minutes.

Yesterday, said Dana Unknown, propping her wet umbrella up next to the cold fireplace, was Jessie Von Cosel’s eighteenth birthday.

She had just walked into the office on the ground floor of the old brownstone house that serves us as both workplace and home. In case you’re interested, Dana’s appearance is sort of nondescript. You certainly wouldn’t know from looking at her what kinds of things she’s capable of. She is short and slender, with bobbed black hair and glasses.

I’m thrilled for her, I replied absently.

I had been working on my own personal account of one of our recent adventures, if you want to call it that. The strange death and resurrection of the abominable Myra Linsky had been a harrowing affair that had left us with more questions than answers, and no real closure. We were pretty sure a character called the White Centipede was at the bottom of it, but there had been no recent developments.

Jessie Von Cosel, Dana repeated, plucking off her glasses and rubbing the lenses with the tail of her shirt.

Right, I said, even more absently than before. Thrilled. To death. I mean it. If I was a bit testy and distracted, it was because I wanted to get my report out of the way, so I could stop thinking about the whole thing for a while; thirty or forty minutes, if I was lucky. Myra Linsky was history, but the White Centipede was still out there.

"Jessie VON COSEL," she said yet again. This time, it was enough to tear my attention away from my computer monitor.

Dana! I snapped. "Is there some point to… Oh. Jessie Von Cosel."

There we go! she said. The penny has finally dropped.

She’s eighteen? I said. "Well. Tempus fuckit. She’s been locked up for what? Eleven years?"

More like ten. The trial took almost a year. Anyhow, yesterday was her birthday. She is legally an adult. They were transporting her from Alcatraz to the federal courthouse in San Francisco for a hearing.

It didn’t go well, did it?

How did you know?

When has a transfer of a super-villain from a prison to a courthouse, or anywhere else, ever failed to turn into an escape on the part of said villain?

Well, yesterday it didn’t, Dana was saying. No escape, but Jessie had a seizure on the way to the courthouse. She was fine all morning. No history of any kind of seizures.

Hmm, I said, which summed up my entire take on the situation.

She had this seizure, or whatever it was, at exactly 9:44 a.m.

Which is significant because why?

Do you know what I was doing at exactly 9:44 yesterday morning?

Yeah, you were out at that goddamn screwball Scudder Moran’s house helping Vionna and Mary tie up some loose ends, whatever that meant.

The loose end I tied up was the Moriarty Machine, she said. "Did Vionna tell you about it? A very nasty piece of work it was. It’s been sitting there for almost two weeks, and I finally figured out what to do with it. I sent it on its way, and Scudder Moran is going to have the space filled with concrete. I don’t know why he thinks that’s necessary, but he was adamant about it.

He’s a goddamn screwball, I reiterated.

"He is kind of peculiar, Dana said. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I gather he doesn’t get out much, and he looks as though he hardly ever sleeps.

"But, anyhow, it seemed to me that the best way to dispose of the machine was to drop it into something called the Void, an empty space in between a couple of very remote fractal dimensions. So that’s what I did. And I did it at exactly 9:44 a.m."

Ah, I said. Another thing I had learned as a superhero was that there was no such thing as coincidence, particularly when it involved a super-villain and a piece of lethal hardware, no matter how little connection there appeared to be between the two.

There’s a connection, she said. "I can’t imagine what it is, but, as your pal the Black Centipede says, there just ain’t that