Myke Phoenix 6: The Puzzle of the Talking Dinosaur

Prologue

The rain pounded the roof and raced down the drain pipes as thunder crashed above and all around.

"We sure seem to get a lot of thunderstorms in Astor City," Paul Phillips chuckled to himself. Could the thunderstorms be just another effect of the palpable evil that seemed to plague the city of two rivers? He chuckled again. Of course not – thunderstorms are a force of nature that pay no attention to humans, he said to himself. Evil is a human concept.

The doorbell rang. The visitor he expected had arrived.

The sight that greeted him when he opened the door would have startled anyone who never heard of Quincy Quackenbos. Caught in a nuclear explosion while holding his pet duck, Quincy's soul and body had merged with the feathered beast via some quirk of the radiation. The result was something that looked like a cartoon character, except that he didn't wear a hat, and except that his eyes were no larger than average duck or human eyes. And except that his bill was ducklike, long and narrow, not wide and flat. And except that he wore pants in public.

"Wak," the odd being muttered. "What utterly loathsome weather. Hi, Paul."

"Good to see you, Quincy," Phillips said. "I thought ducks liked rainy weather."

"Ducks like water," Quackenbos snapped back. "You know, water. Water in a pond or a river or a lake or even an ocean. Water that comes out of the sky and soaks your head, ducks don't like this any more than you do."

"Carry an umbrella."

"Do you know what people say to a duck-man walking around with an umbrella?" Quincy said. "I got tired of the stupid comments. And don't you say it!"

"Don't say what?" Paul said, suppressing a smile because he had indeed been just about to say it.

"Don't say, 'Oh Quincy, just let it roll off your back; you're a duck.' I actually did laugh the first 30 times somebody said that to me, but that was a long time ago."

"You're in kind of a foul mood today, Quincy," Paul said, and regretted the pun immediately when he saw his friend's irritated expression.

"So what's up, Paul – or Myke – or who are you anyway? Whatever. Why'd you want me to come over tonight?"

"It was my idea," said a voice from the shelf, a somewhat musical if caustic voice that could not really be identified as male or female. "We're gonna need help soon, there's an impossible menace out there, and you're going to want to be informed as to what we're fighting."

This was the Soulkeeper of Kiribati, the mysterious vase that somehow managed the exchange of Paul Phillips' body with that of Mychus, an ancient warrior whose soul had long ago gone to his final reward, creating the being that Paul named Myke Phoenix in a flight of fancy. A few weeks earlier, Quincy Quackenbos became only the third person to learn of the connection between Paul Phillips, Mychus and the Soulkeeper of Kiribati, an ancient and (if we may be frank) ugly bit of pottery that happened to talk. It had a knack of imparting what knowledge it could share about any connection between a present crisis and the ongoing struggle between good and evil.

The first to hear the Soulkeeper's voice was Paul himself, in a musty antique shop. A few months later the misshapen vase allowed Paul's then-future wife, Dana Dunsmore, to join the conversation. Now, more than 18 years later, a third living, breathing soul had been invited into the Soulkeeper's sphere, one who had been imprisoned for attempting to kill Myke Phoenix but now was reformed.

But tonight the duck man retained a touch of a surliness learned behind bars.

"Oh yeah? What makes you think I even want to be part of this fight?"

"I've been wondering that myself," said the auburn-haired woman who now entered bearing a bottle of wine, three glasses, and a tray of vegetables and dip. "I keep coming back to the part where you spent years researching how to kill my husband."

"Good to see you, too, Dana," Quincy said. "You don't have to believe me, but I'm done with that. I wasted too many years sitting around in an orange jumpsuit staring at the walls. And I don't exactly relish getting back into the battle – I'm 64 years old, for Pete's sake."

"Ah, come on, Quince. Myke saw you in action last month. You've joined the fight on the side of the good guys, and big time." Most people called the duck man Quincy or Mr. Quackenbos. The vase was the only entity on Earth that could call him Quince without a peck on the wrist, and it was not only because the vase had no wrist.

"OK, you got me," Quincy grumbled. "So tell me about this horrible menace you need my help to fight."

"Don't be so coy, Quince. You know exactly who we're talking about."

"Deinonychus," Quackenbos quacked.

"Bingo," said the vase.

"So she is back."

"Let's just say I'm reading levels of pure evil in the air that I haven't sensed in a very long time," the vase intoned. "The last time we ran into her, she had established a network that stretched all over the city and threatened to go around the world. The main reason she was contained for so long was this guy here."

To most of the world, the origins of the superhero who always managed to turn up just when Astor City needed superhuman help were couched in mystery; although many people had their suspicions, only Paul, Dana and now Quincy understood all of the connections.

Or at least Quincy now understood most of the connections.

"All right, I was already in prison when I heard Deinonychus had disappeared," Quincy said. "How did you beat her? And what makes you think she's back?"

Paul looked at the vase as if exchanging a knowing glance.

"Actually, I didn't beat her," he said. "It's the closest I've ever come to dying."

"Wak! So who beat her? She was beaten, wasn't she?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, she was," the vase said.

Paul Phillips exhaled, a long sigh. "The best way to tell the story is probably to start with the decline and fall of Alan Pinkstaff."