Spanners - The Fountain of Youth by Jonathan Maas Read Free Book Online Page A

fever; two days later he emerged and his eyes glowed, albeit faintly. He stabbed his own leg and it healed quickly. Despite our objections, he pierced his own heart, and that didn’t kill him either. So we followed suit, cutting our veins, soaking in the vat, developing fevers and then emerging as immortals.”
    Adam smiled.
    “Spanners are rare,” said Adam, “but humans that become spanners are even rarer still. I don’t think anyone would gain my powers by soaking in my blood.”
    “Perhaps,” said Diego. “We didn’t know at the time the uncommonness of what had happened to us, and if we had known the ramifications of immortality, we wouldn’t have let those leeches go.”
    “Spanner leeches,” said Adam with a smile. “I don’t think I’d ever want to meet them.”
    “Nor would I,” said Diego. “But at the time, Santos, Balthasar and I were ecstatic. We thought we had found the Fountain of Youth . We could live forever; what more could we want? We were excited, but Juan would have none of it.
    “‘ Immortality is nothing ,’ said Juan. ‘ We have not the powers of angels; we are merely the undead. We need to spend the next few years extracting ALL of the Fountain’s power, not stopping until everything that she has is exhausted and we become like gods, destined to rule the world. ’
    “Juan was convinced that the power of the Fountain was limitless, and in retrospect, he was right,” said Diego.
    “A world under Juan Ponce de León would have been a dark place,” said Adam.
    “I had an inkling of that back then,” said Diego. “I saw the look in my brother’s eyes, and I knew that he was going to succeed and that bad things were going to happen. I didn’t quite know what to do, so I spent the evening praying by myself, begging for guidance.”
    Diego looked at his son and smiled just a bit.
    “I was at a loss as to what I should do, but that night the Lord answered my prayers and I was visited by an angel of my own, and he told me what we were doing was wrong,” said Diego. “It was then that I grew a conscience, my son.”
    Diego took his son and had him look at Adam.
    “God sent me an angel that night,” said Diego . “An angel in the form of Adam Parr.”
    /***/
    “I remember when I found you like it was yesterday, Diego,” said Adam. “But I was only in the New World because I’d fallen afoul of Henry the Eighth, and he’d put a price on my head. I wasn’t sent by God; I was on the run, and finding you was pure luck.”
    “This is the fatalistic mantra that you’ve spouted your whole life , Adam,” said Diego. “You do this to protect yourself from the harsh realities of life, perhaps? Regardless, I needed guidance that night, and you came to me. If you were sent by God, fate or luck, it didn’t matter; you ran into our camp and saw that my brother’s actions were wrong.”
    “I did,” said Adam.
    “Each spanner has their own unique power,” said Diego to his son. “Adam is a tree-class spanner, and part of their power is that they use their vast experience to predict the future. They’ve seen every situation a thousand times before, so with a mere glance they can tell what has happened and what is going to happen . After my brothers had gone to sleep, I told Adam our tale, and his eyes flashed green with horror.”
    “I saw that Juan was going to take the power of the Fountain,” said Adam. “I saw that he would take that power and place the entire world in his torture rack.”
    “He would have succeeded too,” said Diego. “The world was at a vulnerable part of history, and he would have bent it to his will; I know not how, but the Fountain contains the powers of life and death; he would have used her to accomplish dark things.”
    “So what did you do?” asked Diego’s son.
    “Harsh leaders must meet their ends in harsh ways,” said Diego, “and Juan was powerful and wouldn’t be deterred from his goal by reason or by force; the only way to stop