A FAIR HELPING OF DELETED SCENES

This scene was to appear near the end of ASCENT and ready the way for APEX. It was written fairly early on and I dropped it because I decided it was better to follow the heroes and be left nearly in the dark as to what was going on behind the scenes. One of the hardest things to do, I have found, when writing a huge elaborate conspiracy, is to NOT show the plan that is being executed. I did leave the Treden Vost cliffhanger because I thought that it would keep the readers guessing for another month.

The fever was beginning to subside. Nicholas Manzetti pulled the blankets close as another wave of chills swept his body. Through the pain his eyes smiled as he looked up at Zahn.

“Scattered to the winds.” He chuckled himself into a cough.

Zahn’s hands glowed as they vanished into Manzetti’s chest. The sorcerer shook his head. “Don’t. Not yet.” Zahn could feel the disease winning. Every time he used his power to subdue the illness, it took longer. It took more power. Manzetti had very little time left. How much longer would this take. They had spent the last year preparing for this. He looked deep into Manzetti’s eyes as the mob leader was held still in the grip of the magic. “We are in the zero hour, Nick. We have to do this soon. We are counting your time in days.”

Again the eyes smiled. As the pulses of light released their grip and Nick could feel his strength returning, he chuckled. The magic had subdued the illness again for a time. Slith always called it “hitting the snooze button”. A slowly degrading facade of wellness. Manzetti sat up on the table top and buttoned his shirt.

“I know you’re concerned about my health Zahn.” Manzetti smiled a hollow smile. “I know I have very little time left. Your payment is contingent on our success. I have great faith that you will succeed.”

“You just seem to be taking a great deal of time with Forray. “

“Every step I have taken has been calculated and planned. All the steps were necessary.” He moved to the liquor cabinet and poured both of them a drink.

*

This was the original teaser for BEGUILED. It was written probably a year before I actually started writing the episode. (I do that sometimes). I wanted to show how violent a thing it was that they were doing. In the end I opted to tack a revised version onto the flashback/death-in-mine/wake-up teaser instead.

Slith hurried down the candle lit hall. Manzetti was dead. The body had been cold. Slith didn’t believe. He never believed. He knew two things; money and death. The boss was dead…and Slith had to touch the body. Slith came to the door and opened it. Zahn turned around from the table, his blood curdling gaze fell on the Goblin accountant.

“Did you get it?” Zahn hissed.

Slith shivered to think of taking it off the dead hand of his boss. He nodded and held up the ring. Zahn smiled and took it.

“That wasn’t easy to get you know,” Slith panted. “I had to knock out a guy at the morgue…and the boss was in this…metal drawer…naked…and dead.” Slith continued to ramble. Zahn had placed the ring on a pillow and was quietly chanting. “You know. If this doesn’t work, Autumn has standing orders to butcher us. Those were his words. Not kill. Not murder. BUTCHER!”

“It will work.”

Slith watched as Zahn’s chanting became more intense. The wizard’s body seemed to crackle with energy as his voice grew louder. Slith swallowed hard. “I hope,” he muttered.

The air around Zahn grew luminous, his voice - deep and wicked. Tears filled the eyes of Treden Vost who was strapped, naked on the table in front of the Wizard. In a final act, Zahn turned and set fire to a cassette tape adorned by the word “Manzetti” written by the hand of journalist Laura Medrano. Zahn seemed still for a moment. He picked up the ring.

“Unburdened,” he said. “The tangles that bound you are cut. Peace. Serendipity. Birth.” The words played like a nursery rhyme in Vost’s ear for a moment. The he felt Zahn’s hand lock down on his wrist. The Wizard’s face drew close. “Goodbye, Mr. Vost.”

Zahn slipped the ring on Vost’s finger.

The captive shrieked, a life affirming bellow. His body shook violently as beads of sweat appeared all over his body. Slith’s breath caught in his throat. The unholy scream faded into a tired wheeze. Treden Vost was dead. Then came the gasp. Like a swimmer, trapped under the ice, surfacing. A first breath. His eyes moved in a panic around the room. Zahn quickly began to unstrap Vost.

“Help me!” he shouted to Slith. The Goblin leapt forward and helped free the naked man. The body lurched and then Zahn and Slith helped Vost to his feet.

There was a moment of quiet. Then Vost dropped to his knees and grabbed at his head. “I felt it! I felt it! Oh God! I felt it!” He began sobbing. “It went in. I died."

Zahn helped him up. “It’s over. It’s all over. That is the past. You did not die. It was merely a pause.”

Vost’s terrified eyes turned. “It’s over?”

Slith looked at Zahn. “Is it…”

Zahn nodded. “Welcome to your new body, Mr. Manzetti.”

*

Originally this scene appeared in BEGUILED in the teaser, between Smiles dying in the cave and then waking up in Hogarth’s library. In my head, because I think in TV images, I saw a montage of Smiles and Manzetti both escaping death through magic. In fiction, it’s not easy to do a juxtaposition montage… so I wrote this scene. It was too much and I scrapped it. I still like some of imagery but it didn’t really work AND it would have added yet another scene to the already jam packed teaser.

After that, it was like being washed away in warm indigo. There was no lifting up. There was no slip downward. Smiles felt himself move outward in all directions. When he was done there was only the Still.

The Ancient Goblin high priests called this place The Plaines of Vroaka, the space between. Knee high, grassy flatland off in all directions, all silhouetted in sunless twilight. A hundred thousand souls dotted the land, standing motionless, waiting patiently. Smiles looked around slowly. There was no need for haste. There was no blinking. These were not really eyes. It was calm… he was one of The Still.

A being was close to him, closer than the others. It seemed strange. There were feelings attached to the sight of the face. But there were no feelings showing. Motionless faces stared into each other. It was him. Manzetti. His features were crisp but nearly fluid. His mouth didn’t move but his voice filled the space.

“I am not of this place. I am going soon.”

Smiles felt a pull at the core of him. Something was tugging at him. Prying him. He looked again at Manzetti. His face had darkened. A slight smile spread across his lips.

There seemed to be a blast in both their ears. it was like a trumpet that quickly became the blare of a train. The warm that they felt around them began to slip away. Their eye locked each one felt themselves rocket away from each other above the Plaines of Vroaka. The ripples of nature folding to the will of magic spread like the shockwave from a massive weapon. Something was twisting the places after. Something was reaching into this place and taking what was theirs.

A gentle voice whispered…”Robert?”

*

In the final version of BEGUILED I replaced this with the Charlie and Stack at the prison scene. I did this to move our first sight of Stack in jail up to scene 2 (or 5 counting the teaser J ). I did like the idea of Charlie and Needless being slightly lost without their mentors but in the long run I liked Charlie trying hard to fill in for Smiles better.

Charlie ran his fingers through his hair and looked at the invoice. He had just had his first haircut since the surgery and it felt great. Things were finally starting to get back to normal. Almost. Smiles had been gone for three months. After Charlie’s miraculous recovery at the hospital he spent weeks trying to track his boss down. The trail seemed to end at Thrombis. No one there remembered him. There was talk of a bar fight whose antagonist matched Smiles’ description. But no one knew what happened after the fight. The leads dried up.

So he set about saving Smiles’ business for him, if he came back. Charlie was now the lead investigator for Big City Eyes. It was a job that kept him moving. He had taken on more cases than he should have to make up for the lack of work that had gone on for months. Now he was looking at another invoice for another case that had been completed. He nodded and handed it back to Emily.

“That’s fine. Go ahead and send that off to Mrs. Tenner, but make sure that she knows that she can pay in installments.” He turned and moved back into the office. He still thought of it as THE office not HIS office. Calling it “his office” meant that Smiles would never return to take it back. “When Needless gets here you can turn on the overnight message and take Dex home. If we get any walk ins I’ll handle it.”

Emily smiled. “Thanks.” She turned and peeled the Tenner address off the label sheet and applied it to the envelope. She glanced over to the extra desk Smiles had put in nearly a year ago. Her son Dex was still doing his homework.

A few moments later Sgt. D’yen entered looking a little worse than usual. He waved at Emily, slipped into Charlie’s office and shut the door. Emily turned, punched in the numbers on the phone to activate the overnight message and packed her bag.

Needless crashed down on Smiles’ beloved green vinyl couch. Charlie had the phone to his ear. The two nodded to each other in greeting. Charlie shifted weight as Laura’s voicemail picked up.

“Hey. It’s me. Needless is here and we’re gonna talk a little bit. I’ll meet you at the paper in about an hour.” Charlie was tenderly trying to step around the fact that Needless and Laura were not really speaking much anymore. Laura’s story on Manzetti’s return seemed to condemn Stack in the mind of a large segment of the public. The timing was terrible. It only worked to further deteriorate Stack’s situation. Laura was beating herself up over it already. Needless wanted nothing to do with her. “Love you.” Charlie hung up the phone and looked across at the tipsy cop. “I see you’ve already had dinner.”

Needless blinked. “Any news?”

*

Originally the Season B opener was going to be a two-parter. I planned to shock the hell out of everybody at the end of the first episode and then seemingly do the impossible in the second half to finally resolve it. I still like the idea, but I thought that after a whole season and a cliffhanger finale, the Manzetti story was due to end and this would only prolong it. I am also not yet confident enough to think that I could pull something like this off and keep my readers. Here is the original ending for BEGUILED. I won’t tell you how this was going to be resolved, in case I want to use it in the future…

“Stack! Help!” Needless cried for his partner. The half elf wrestled to the ground, nearly losing his grip on the gun in his assailant’s hand.

Stack stared into the eyes of Manzetti. He heard nothing else. He thought of nothing else. He wouldn’t let go. Not this time. There was no escape.

“Forray! You’re going to kill us both!”

Contempt erupted from Stack’s throat. “You first!” With a primordial scream Stack Fury flung Nick Manzetti over the edge of the building. Manzetti’s arms flailed, grabbing at anything. His grip found purchase…Stack’s coat.

Still clawing at each other Manzetti and the cop they called Stack slipped from the edge and plummeted fourteen stories. They died, their bodies intertwined.

Needless’ eyes filled with shock and horror as he watched Stack fall from the building. Struggling with the attacker to get to his feet, he faltered…a wail went up from Needless…Stack’s name became a heartbroken cry.

The cry was cut short by a gun blast as the thug sent a bullet through Needless Action’s mind. The half elf crumpled to the ground in a pool of his own blood. From the open door a shotgun blast tore through Needless’ killer. Smiles pumped another into the killer as the assailant collapsed dead on top of Needless’ body.

Smiles ran to the ledge and peered down. Far below he saw his former partner…the man who loved his sister so much, dead. Stack Fury…Adam…and John were gone. Smiles dropped to his knees and sobbed. The knife slipped into him so easy…it was disappointing.

Autumn’s arm encircled Smiles throat and held him still as he struggled against the twisting of the blade. She chuckled as she felt the life leaving the detective. Smiles could hear the chuckling. The chuckling he heard when she killed him two days ago. He could feel the wetness of his shirt as his blood began to soak his clothing. The edges of his vision pixilated as his breath stopped. He thought of his father. His mother. His sister.

Smiles died not knowing that Charlie was only a few feet away, rushing at the Sklaar assassin. Laura bounded from the door and watched as Charlie shot Autumn in the head. An inhuman howl went up from her as he watched the form of Autumn shift over and over again through different faces and creatures. A life time of deception replaying, like a confessional for Charlie. He rolled the quivering assassin out of the way and pulled Smiles to him. It was too late. Smiles Johnson was dead.

Laura wrapped her arms around herself as she watched Charlie sob over Smiles’ body. The wind whipped up. She couldn’t let herself cry. Not yet. The damage was too great. She looked down and saw Needless. Her eyes scanned the rooftop for Stack…but he was gone too.

It was all over. It had all been for nothing.

When the tears finally came to Laura, she wasn’t sure they would stop.