Death's Avenger

by Charlotte E. English

  But Eino Holt? Alina, his mother? She was a Vasilescu by birth, one of their own, and that made a blood relative of Eino, too — even if the pair had been disowned years before. What’s more, Eino had only recently received the benefit of their questionable assistance: the substitution of a healthy heart for his own, faulty one had saved his life. Why had they taken that trouble, only to slay him anyway?

  And what of Lilli and Marko? They had, to Konrad’s knowledge, no connection with the Vasilescu family or the house at Divoro at all. They had been invited as Eino’s friends. That was all.

  ‘Why this, then?’ Konrad said aloud. ‘What is this for?’ In truth, he knew, and that knowledge sickened him too much to say it aloud.

  ‘Revenge,’ said Alexander quietly. ‘For Druganin.’ He pointed at the still forms of Lilli Lahti and Marko Bekk. Pointing next at Eino and his mother, he added, ‘And revenge for their betrayal.’

  ‘That is half of it,’ Konrad agreed.

  Alexander shot him a questioning look, but before Konrad could elaborate, Nanda spoke.

  ‘It’s a challenge,’ she whispered.

  ‘A challenge,’ Konrad agreed. ‘And a trap.’

  ‘They know that one of us killed Druganin,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps not which. But have they guessed why?’

  In other words, had the coven at Divoro realised that the Malykant had been a guest at Eino Holt’s party? That The Malykt’s foremost servant had delivered the brutal justice Druganin had received? Perhaps. Konrad had dispatched Druganin according to his custom: a sharp, sturdy bone from each of his slain victims, delivered through the heart. But — he blanched to recall — he had not been finished with Druganin’s corpse with that alone. He had… gone further. Done worse.

  Well, the man had shown up with the body of a six-year-old child in his hands. He’d shown not the smallest flicker of remorse for stealing her life. Konrad had been forced to open the torso of a dead little girl and mutilate her small, delicate bones; her infant blood still stained the cuffs of the shirt he’d worn that day.

  Her rib bone had gone through Druganin’s eye.

  His mind shied away from a clear recollection of the state he’d left the body in at last, but he could not think that the presence of three extra rib bones in strategic places had been particularly obvious anymore.

  He drifted nearer to the inert form of Druganin, straining to discern detail through the thick layer of snow that packed his corpse. Were the weapons he’d made of Kati and Alen and the little girl’s bones still there? He could not tell.

  Druganin’s eyes snapped open.

  Konrad stumbled back, colliding with the inspector.

  Dark, frozen eyes regarded Konrad with icy indifference. Then, slowly, the snow-crusted lids lowered again.

  There had been not a trace of recognition in those dead eyes, but Konrad’s heart had taken off at a gallop and would not be soothed. He was alive. ‘How can he be alive?’ Konrad gasped.

  ‘Is he, though?’ said Nanda, and it was her turn to steady Konrad. He felt her hand at the small of his back and took a breath, grateful for the comforting touch. ‘He has more animation than is typical for a corpse, but that is not necessarily the same thing.’

  Serpents, Konrad called, and flung the thought far and wide. He had not heard from them for some days; were they near?

  He waited.

  At length, the thin, ear-splitting tones of Ootapi answered him. Master.

  I need you. Immediately.

  We are at a party, Ootapi informed him. There is fresh meat, blood—

  Konrad hastened to cut off any further enumeration of the party’s delights. His mind shied away from envisioning what kind of a “party” might impress a pair of bloodthirsty ghost snakes. This is better, he informed the serpent.

  It cannot be. Pure disbelief rang through every word.

  Come and see. Bring Eetapi.

  They arrived moments later, invisible to all but Konrad, a pair of chill presences drifting silently at ceiling height.

  Eetapi spoke first. You forgot both of our deathdays, she hissed. Again. But… now we forgive you.

  This is ten deathdays all at once, Ootapi agreed.

  These are not gifts, Konrad said sternly. These are victims and we are here to help them.

  Oh. The serpents spoke together, equally disappointed.

  Tell me. Are these people dead?

  Oh, yes! Eetapi all but sang the words. Stone dead.

  But?

  But what?

  That one— Konrad pointed —retains some muscle function.

  He watched as his serpents sailed towards Druganin and conducted a thorough — he hoped — investigation of the circumstances. Nanda and Alexander waited, watchful; they could not see the snakes as he could, but they knew by now how he worked.

  His spirit remains, Ootapi at length announced.

  ‘No.’ Konrad, forgetting himself, spoke the word aloud. ‘It cannot be.’ He’d dispatched Druganin himself, by the most final, irreversible means at his disposal. Nobody came back from that.

  Ootapi’s response radiated irritation. I say that it is.

  He is right, Master, said Eetapi. They are all still here.

  What?

  All their spirits linger, she repeated, patiently. But, they are… asleep.

  Asleep?

  I do not know how else to call it. They are here, but they are not alert.

  That, too, was bizarre. Ghosts did not really sleep. Why would they need to?

  What were these five doing lingering over their corpses? What held them here, if they were not conscious enough to make that decision for themselves? Serpents, he said. How are they here?

  They are bound to their bodies. As we are, Master.

  Konrad let out a slow breath, his heart sinking. He’d been afraid to hear that answer.

  A week ago, or a little more, he had encountered the long-dead body of a man called Jakub Vasilescu. Despite the many, many years which must have passed since his death, the man had been, to some degree, aware. His ghost had never passed on; somehow, it had retained residence of its own body, but not to the extent of being either fully alive or fully undead. He was, in effect, haunting his own corpse.

  Not, Konrad knew, without considerable help from the coven — his own descendants.

  The effect was not unfamiliar to Konrad. It was much the same thing he achieved himself, with his serpents’ assistance, whenever he encountered a freshly-slain corpse. For a limited time after the unfortunate victim’s expiration, the serpents could bind up what remained of his or her soul and force it back into the body, permitting the corpse to speak of what had happened. Konrad had solved many a murder that way. It was simple, direct, efficient — and difficult to achieve. Even the serpents could not hold a spirit that way for long.

  How, then, had the coven kept Vasilescu in an essentially similar state, and for so long?

  Was that what they were now doing to the Holts, and Marko Bekk, and Lilli Lahti?

  Was that what afflicted Druganin?

  ‘We need to find out more about this coven,’ he said grimly. ‘But carefully. I fear they’re more dangerous than we imagine.’

  Alexander nodded. He had his pipe in one hand; the other fumbled for a match. Both were shaking. ‘Shall I send my men to fetch down these poor souls, or shall your Order handle it?’

  ‘Neither.’

  Alexander glanced, questioningly, Konrad’s way.

  ‘Leave them there.’

  ‘Konrad—’ Nanda began.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But something is badly wrong here, and until we find out what’s afoot, they stay up there.’ It cost him to utter such words, and when the look Nanda turned on him proved to be both pleading and disgusted he almost gave in.

  But he could not. Not yet.

  Alexander lit his pipe, and puffed in silence.

  ‘We cannot leave them here alone,’ Nanda said at last.

  ‘They won’t be alone. I am sendi
ng Diana out here.’

  Chapter Three

  From the moment he had seen the dead face of Denis Druganin suspended above the icy hall of the snow castle, Konrad had known that his return to the house at Divoro was inevitable. Few prospects could be less welcome to him. He had driven away from the dismal place with a feeling of profound thankfulness that he need never go there again; fool of a hope. Eino Holt had called the house cursed. Absurd superstition, Konrad had thought then. But Holt was right to a degree: a dark past and darker future hung around the house like a suffocating shroud, stifling everything that ought to have been good and beautiful about it.

  At least he need not go back alone, and unprepared.

  ‘Olya Vasilescu,’ he said to Alexander later that morning. ‘The second of three sisters. Ela was the eldest, Alina the youngest. Alina is — was — Eino’s mother. Olya is — was — Denis’s.’

  They had adjourned to the inspector’s office at the police headquarters, there to raid the records for any information about the family that had built, and subsequently corrupted, the house. The room was a monument to the inspector’s habits: no fewer than three pipes littered the desk, amid stacks of books and papers Alexander had, presumably, employed for the solving of a case in the near or distant past, and never restored to whatever had been their original position. More such piles occupied two of four chairs; these were slightly shabby, like the coat that Alexander always wore. It was not, Konrad thought, that the inspector was either poor or mean; he simply grew attached to things and remained so, however threadbare they became.

  It struck Konrad for the first time how little he knew of the inspector’s private life. They had been at least friendly acquaintances for years, and had often worked together. Yet, Alexander never mentioned a family, or a wife, or anything outside of his job as detective.

  Neither, of course, did Konrad.

  ‘So Ela inherited the house?’ Alexander scrawled notes in a worn old notebook, its binding coming loose.

  ‘Yes. According to Alina, she hated the place and was so desperate to be rid of it, she sold it for a song. Much to the fury of Olya, who had other ideas.’

  ‘Hence the plot to put it into Eino’s hands.’

  ‘Which cannot have been much to her taste. I wonder why they did not engineer its passing into Denis’s hands to begin with?’

  ‘How might they have achieved that? Once Ela had sold the house, I suppose it was no longer possible to get it back except by purchasing it.’

  ‘The Vasilescus must be poor,’ Konrad mused. ‘And the Druganins likewise. I wonder what has become of their fortune? They must once have been richer than kings, to build such a mansion.’

  Alexander nodded, and made another note. ‘A cruel piece of irony, isn’t it? That the despised youngest sister and her son, expelled from the family in disgrace, should be the ones with the power to retrieve their house.’

  ‘But not the inclination. They used Eino’s heart to force the issue.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Alexander, still writing, ‘where Ela Vasilescu is.’

  A good point. ‘And Olya,’ Konrad said. ‘Though I imagine she is with her coven.’

  ‘Wherever they are.’

  ‘At Divoro. I am convinced of it. Diana found nothing there, but I am more inclined to think that they were successfully hiding than that they were gone.’

  ‘Why?’ The inspector set down his notebook and took up his pipe, puffing upon it as he gazed at Konrad with keen attention.

  Konrad took a moment to sort through his thoughts. ‘Perhaps because they have shown so much attachment to the house. Such lengths they went to, to get it back! That place is steeped in their family’s history — and until recently, it was still the residence of their star ancestor, Jakub Vasilescu. Everything they have, everything they care about, is there. Would they leave it, unless forced?’

  ‘I think you are right,’ said Alexander slowly. ‘But, recall. They left it for long enough to build that snow palace.’

  ‘And to… decorate it. Yes.’ Was that why Diana had not found them, when she had searched? The Vasilescu coven had been gone — albeit, Konrad was still convinced, temporarily.

  ‘I think they would go back.’

  ‘I think so, too. But whether or not they have just yet, is a different question. What do you suppose was the primary point of the snow palace, and all those murders? Do you think it was aimed at you?’

  Konrad was pleased to note that the inspector could now speak of it without his hands shaking. He looked his usual calm self once more, though his composure did not necessarily reflect the state of his thoughts. ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘But, I am not yet sure why. Is it only revenge? That seems… insufficient. Too petty, perhaps. Druganin alone was proof of the resolve and the ruthlessness this family is capable of. Eino was proof of how little they are affected by sentiment, or even family loyalty. Are they so consumed with grief — or anger — at the death of Denis as to go to so much trouble just for vengeance?’

  ‘He was Olya’s son. Perhaps she was fond of him.’

  ‘Perhaps she was. Then again, she and her coven were more than happy to use him as a tool, as long as it suited them. Their behaviour thus far has indicated a coolness, a total lack of emotion, which is incompatible with a display of enraged passion now. I think that the snow replica of the house and its contents are of a piece with the rest: carefully thought out. Calculated. Aimed at eliciting a certain, desired response. Only I cannot guess what response they are hoping for.’ Except to lure him back to Divoro, but even then: why?

  Alexander set down his pipe. ‘I will see what I can find out about the family.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Konrad rose from his chair. ‘Oh. May I borrow Tasha from you?’

  ‘I’ll see if I can find her.’

  ‘Thanks. She saw a lot more of those cellars under the house than the rest of us did. I want to ask her some questions.’ And, when he went back to Divoro, he wanted her with him. If he was going to face the coven again, he wanted as many supernatural allies at his back as he could command.

  Back in his own library at Bakar House, he sat at his desk with a sheet of paper before him and a pencil in hand. Serpents, he called. I require assistance.

  Yes, Master, came both voices at once, chiming discordantly in his head.

  Must you do that?

  Yes. The disharmony was different this time, but still repulsive.

  Konrad sighed, and rested his forehead in one cool hand. The cellars at Divoro. You explored them thoroughly, did you not?

  Yes, Master.

  I want you to describe them to me. What’s there, how they are laid out. Everything.

  He ought to have known better.

  They go on for miles, said Eetapi, and began to sing in haunting tones, miles and miles and miles and miles…

  All right, Konrad interrupted. They are extensive. And?

  Cold, chimed in Ootapi. Frost on the walls, and the water all frozen.

  Water? Where?

  A lake, deep below.

  Konrad adjusted his ideas. He ceased to think in terms of cellars, and pictured instead a network of subterranean caves. It was not unheard of for lakes to form, far below the surface of the earth. Though for one to freeze there was, perhaps, less usual.

  Good, he said, encouraged. He set pencil to paper and began to draw. He had walked some little way into those caves himself; that was how he had encountered the unusually talkative body of Jakub Vasilescu. He drew, as near as he could remember, the passages he had walked down, and added the large chamber in which Jakub’s bier had lain. Now that he came to think of it, those passages had not had the appearance of naturally-formed structures; someone had dug their way into the caves. How long ago?

  What lies beyond these areas? He asked of his serpents, indicating the blank expanse of paper with a sweep of his hand. I would fill this space with a map of your making.

  Many passages, said Eetapi.

  Excellent. In which
direction do they tend?

  All directions.

  Konrad massaged the space between his eyes. Ootapi?

  Yes, Master?

  Do you have better information?

  No, Master.

  Konrad went to screw up the paper in sheer frustration, but thought better of it. Perhaps Tasha would prove more useful. Very well, he said, as calmly as he could. Tell me, then, everything you do remember. There were people in some places?

  Oh, yes! Said Eetapi, energised. A great many!

  Alarmed, Konrad sat up. A great many? Just how big was this coven? If they were as numerous as all that, he would need more than Tasha and the serpents when he went after them. He should take Diana, half the Order—

  He remembered who he was talking to.

  Define “a great many”, Eetapi.

  She thought. As many people as there are eggs in a clutch.

  Not helpful. Konrad’s knowledge of the breeding habits of snakes was not profound, but he did know that, depending upon the breed, a typical clutch of eggs could contain anything from half a dozen to over a hundred. How many is that?

  I have just told you.

  The snakes, and perhaps Konrad’s sanity, were saved by the arrival of Tasha.

  Not that Konrad knew anything about this until her voice spoke from a mere six inches distant. ‘Are you that bored?’

  ‘I don’t draw for my own amusement. I want your help with this.’ The room being, ostensibly, empty, he added, ‘Where have you left your body?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘For that matter, why have you left your body?’

  ‘That’s none of your business either. What do you want me to do?’

  Konrad spent a few minutes apprising the little lamaeni of the day’s events. He expected some form of sarcastic commentary, but she listened in silence.

  When he had finished, she said: ‘I believe they understand you perfectly.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the perfect way to get your attention. Pique your interest, make you angry, add a few layers of guilt, and you will go chasing down there at your earliest convenience.’

  ‘All right. Yes. I had worked that out for myself. But why do you imagine they want me to go chasing down there?’